Free Just One Look (2004) by Harlan Coben Page B

was listening. Who? Was someone with him--or was he afraid because she was with the cops? She hoped the latter, that he was alone and simply didn't want police involvement.
    But when she considered all the facts, that possibility seemed unlikely.
    If Jack had been free to talk, why hadn't he called her back? He'd have to realize that she'd be out of the police station by now. If he were okay, if he was alone, Jack would have called again, just to let her know what was going on. He hadn't done that.
    Conclusion: Jack was with somebody and in serious trouble.
    Did he want her to react or sit tight? In the same way she knew Jack--in the same way she knew that he'd been sending her a signal--Jack would know that Grace's reaction would not be to go quietly into that good night. That was not her personality. Jack understood that. She would try to find him.
    He had probably counted on that.
    Of course, this was all no more than conjecture. She knew her husband well--or maybe she didn't?--so her conjectures were more than mere fancy. But how much more? Maybe she was just justifying her decision to take action.
    Didn't matter. Either way, she was involved.
    Grace thought about what she'd already learned. Jack had taken the Windstar up the New York Thruway. Who did they know up there? Why would he have gone that way so late at night?
    She had no idea.
    Hold up.
    Roll it back to the start: Jack comes home. Jack sees the photograph. That was what set it off. The photograph. He sees it on the kitchen counter. She starts asking him about it. He gets a call from Dan. And then he goes into his study . . .
    Stop. His study.
    Grace hurried down the hall. Study was a rather ornate word for this converted screened-in porch. The plaster was cracking in spots. There was always a draft in the winter and a stifling lack of anything approaching air in the summer. There were photographs of the kids in cheap frames and two of her paintings in expensive ones. The study felt strangely impersonal to her. Nothing in here told you about the past of the room's main occupant--no mementos, no softball signed by friends, no photo of a golf foursome taking to the links. Other than some pharmaceutical freebies--pens, pads, a paperclip holder--there were no clues as to who Jack really was other than a husband, father, and researcher.
    But maybe that was all there was.
    Grace felt weird, snooping. There had been strength, she thought, in respecting one another's privacy. They each had a room closed off to the other. Grace had always been okay with that. She'd even convinced herself it was healthy. Now she wondered about looking away. She wondered if it'd derived from a desire to give Jack privacy--needing space?!--or because she feared poking a beehive.
    His computer was up and online. Jack's default page was the "official" Grace Lawson Web site. Grace stared at the chair for a moment, the ergonomic gray from the local Staples store, imagining Jack there, turning on the computer every morning, having her face greet him. The site's home page had a glam shot of Grace along with several examples of her work. Farley, her agent, had recently insisted that she include the photograph in all sales material because, as he put it, "You a babe." She reluctantly acquiesced. Looks had always been used by the arts to promote the work. On stage and in movies, well, the importance of looks was obvious. Even writers, with their glossy touched-up portraits, the smoldering dark eyes of the next literati wunderkind, marketed appearances. But Grace's world--painting--had been fairly immune to this pressure, ignoring the creator's physical beauty, perhaps because the form itself was all about the physical.
    But not anymore.
    An artist appreciates the importance of the aesthetical, of course. Aesthetics do more than alter perception. They altered reality. Prime example: If Grace had been fat or homely, the TV crews would not have been monitoring her vital signs after she'd been pulled