Chapter 1
We were in the middle of dinner when Mark suddenly set down his fork. He looked at me and asked, “Who is Walter Briggs?”
My chopsticks froze midair. My heart skipped a beat.
Walter Briggs.
It was a fake name—something Cecilia and I had invented. One drunken night, we made a pact: if one of us ever got into trouble and couldn’t be reached, “Walter Briggs” would be the code.
Besides the two of us, no one else knew that name.
And Cecilia had been missing for a month.
She said she was going on a trip to Thailand, and she never came back.
I looked at Mark’s casual, untroubled face, and my heart sank. How could he possibly know that name?
The name Walter Briggs was born the year Cecilia and I graduated from college. We had finished a whole bottle of wine and were lying on the rooftop, staring at the full moon. Cecilia had her arm slung around my neck, her words slurred.
“Sophie, we need a code.”
“A code for what?”
“You know… if one of us ever gets into trouble, disappears, and the other one hears the name, they’ll know something’s wrong.”
I laughed, calling her dramatic. But we spent the next hour brainstorming until we landed on Walter Briggs. It sounded so old-fashioned and clunky that it couldn’t possibly be a real person’s name.
Only two people in the world knew what those words meant: me and Cecilia.
And Cecilia had been gone for thirty-one days.
She said she was spending a few days in Chiang Mai, Thailand. She had even video-called me from the airport, panning her phone across the duty-free shop.
“Sophie, see anything you want? My treat.”
That was the last time I saw her face.
After that, my texts went unanswered. My calls wouldn’t go through. Her last social media post was a photo from a night market in Chiang Mai.
I called the police. Her family called the police. The authorities in Thailand were investigating, but there was no trace of her.
No body. No witnesses. Nothing.
It was as if Cecilia had simply vanished from the face of the earth.
And now my husband, Mark—a man who, in theory, had no connection to Cecilia, a man who had never even liked her posts—had just casually uttered that name over dinner.
“What’s wrong?” Mark asked, noticing my stunned silence. He smiled. “You look strange.”
“No, it’s nothing.” I lowered my head and took a bite of food. It tasted like nothing. “I’ve just never heard that name before. Where did you hear it?”
“Oh, a friend mentioned it,” he said, taking a sip of water. “Just curious.”
He changed the subject, starting to talk about his day at work.
I couldn’t hear a single word.
My mind was stuck on one thought: How did he know that name?
How?
After dinner, Mark went to take a shower. I sat on the sofa, my palms slick with sweat. The sound of running water echoed from the bathroom.
I glanced at the closed door, then stood and walked to his phone, which he had left on the dining table.
I knew the password—our wedding anniversary.
My fingers trembled as I unlocked it. I scrolled through his messages, his call logs, his notes.
Nothing.
It was too clean. Suspiciously clean.
No one’s phone is that pristine.
Next, I went for his laptop. It was in the study. And I knew that password, too. He had never tried to hide it from me.
I checked his browser history, his files, his downloads—one by one.
Then I opened the cached records of a booking app, and my hand froze.
A month ago, Mark had told me he was going to Shanghai for a three-day business trip. I had even helped him pack his suitcase.
But the booking records told a different story.
He hadn’t bought a ticket to Shanghai.
He had bought a ticket to Chiang Mai, Thailand.
His departure date was one day before Cecilia’s.
His return date was two days after she disappeared.
The water in the bathroom shut off.
I quickly closed the laptop, walked back to the living room, and sat on the sofa, pretending to scroll through videos on my phone.
Mark came out, toweling his hair. He glanced at me.
“Still up?”
“Yeah, just a bit longer,” I said with a smile.
He went into the bedroom and turned off the light.
I stared at the dark doorway, my fingers digging into the arm of the sofa.
Mark… what did you do in Thailand?
The next morning, I told Mark that an urgent project had come up at work and that I needed to go out of town for a few days.
He was tying his tie, his back to me. “Where to?”
“San Francisco.”
“When will you be back?”
“Not sure. Maybe three or four days.”
He turned and gave me a smile. “Be safe.”
I smiled back.
That afternoon, I took a flight—not to San Francisco, but to Chiang Mai, Thailand.
I landed at four in the afternoon, local time. A wall of hot, humid air hit me as I stepped out of the airport, and for a moment, I felt dizzy and disoriented.
This was the city where Cecilia had taken her last photo.
The night market. The lights. The crowds.
She had been standing in front of a mango sticky rice stall, grinning like a little kid.
I didn’t have time for grief.
I went straight to the hotel where she had stayed.
I knew the name. She had sent me a screenshot of her booking at a place called the Lotus Courtyard, a boutique hotel near the Old City.
At the front desk, I showed the receptionist a photo of Cecilia.
“Did you see this girl? She stayed here about a month ago.”
The receptionist glanced at the photo and shook her head.
“Her name is Cecilia Chen. She’s Chinese American,” I added.
The woman typed something into her computer, then nodded.
“Yes, we have a record of her. She stayed for three nights. She never checked out or extended her stay. Her luggage is still in our storage room.”
My heart seized.
Her luggage was still here.
But she was gone.
I steadied myself and asked the question I dreaded most.
“A month ago… was there a man from the U.S. staying here as well?”
I handed her a photo of Mark.
She looked at it, then checked the computer again. Her expression grew hesitant.
“Yes. He stayed for five nights.”
Five nights—longer than Cecilia’s three.
“Which room was he in?”
“Room 312.”
“And Cecilia?”
“315.”
The same floor. Two doors down.
I stood at the front desk, a roaring in my ears.
The first thought was the obvious one: they were having an affair.
Cecilia and Mark, in adjacent rooms in Thailand.
But another voice in my head immediately shut that down.
Impossible.
Cecilia hated Mark.
Not a polite, behind-the-back dislike—a direct, in-your-face animosity. Whenever I brought Mark to a party, Cecilia would ignore him.
One night, after a few drinks, she had pointed at him and said, “Sophie has great taste in everything except men.”
Mark’s face had turned green.
They hadn’t made eye contact since.
How could two people like that be having a secret affair in Thailand?
Then why was he staying next door to her?
What was he doing?