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“Maybe, but—”
She frowned. “I’m not explaining this right. I felt it when we were here last time, but that headache distracted me. Right now we’re standing here facing the hall leading into the kitchen, and the muscles in the backs of my legs are pulling, like I’m having to keep myself from falling forward.”
“But the floor is flat. Level. I can see that,” Charlie said. “I think it’s just your Spidey senses on alert. How about I start checking out the living room, and you start in the kitchen. I’ll join you shortly.”
She nodded, but instead of going into the kitchen, something kept pulling her toward the bedroom at the end of the hall. Her footsteps were muffled by the carpeting as she passed a half bath, and the linen cabinet a few steps down. When she walked into the bedroom she paused, trying to figure out what was off about this room. She walked into the bathroom, then back out into the room and turned and stared at the bed again when it hit her. There were no windows anywhere in the master bed or bath.
She went back to the kitchen, and the window overlooking the back of the property with a view of the grounds, the pool and one end of the parking garage.
She stood there a moment, thinking. The interior wall of the kitchen was even with the backside of the living room wall. And there couldn’t be hidden accesses in the floor because of the residential living areas below.
At that point Charlie walked into the kitchen and saw her staring out the window.
“What?” he asked.
She turned. “Do you remember how many windows were on the back of the house on the original blueprints?”
Charlie thought a moment. “I know there were windows, but I didn’t count them.”
“Come look in the bedroom again,” Wyrick said, then led the way into the room. “Now, tell me what’s missing in here?”
He stood a moment, looking past the ornate furniture, the elegance of the old crown moldings and the tray ceiling above the bed, before he saw it.
“There aren’t any windows!” Charlie said.
“Right. So who builds bedrooms without windows? Allen Carson said there were no physical alterations to the exterior of the old mansion when he turned it into apartments. So what’s the deal here?”
“I’ll call him right now,” Charlie said, but when he reached for his phone, it wasn’t in his jacket pocket. “My phone. I think I left it in the living room,” he said and left the room.
Wyrick moved into the walk-in closet. The back wall was shelving. The clothes hanging on the racks were color-coded, and the shoe rack below was full of shoes. Nothing out of the ordinary.
She could hear Charlie’s voice as she came out of the closet. He’d obviously found his phone and was talking to Allen Carson. Maybe he’d have answers.
She was standing with her hands on her hips, waiting for Charlie to return, when she had a sudden sense of danger. Before she could turn around, there was a sharp pain in the back of her neck. She was losing consciousness too fast to call out, but she knew when it was happening that this was exactly what had happened to Rachel Dean.
Sonny was in the old servants’ passage, standing on the other side of the wall in Rachel’s bedroom, waiting for Dodge and Wyrick to arrive.
He’d found the passage by accident right after he moved here, because there was one in his room. Once he knew it was there, he had to know where it went. Finding out it ran the entire length of the backside of the house was surprising, and then intriguing.
It occurred to him that, if there was a hidden access in his room, then there could be more in the other apartments, as well. So the entire first week of his residence, he began searching for more secret doors.
What he discovered was that some of the doors were now blocked because of the interior restructuring. But there were three other apartments in the building with access doors that still worked. After doing a little remodeling of his own, he had peepholes into those people’s lives—a plus for the Peeping Tom fetish he’d developed during his teens.
As the apartments were leased, he’d had his own little behind-the-scenes playground. A safe place where he could jack off without being seen, watching them dressing and undressing, overhearing their phone conversations. Witnessing their fights with their lovers. Witnessing every intimate aspect of the residents’ lives without their knowing it.
After a time he became so embroiled in their personal lives, that by the time he took his first woman, he had convinced himself that they were lovers. And it had worked. Perfectly. Until now.
He didn’t know Rachel Dean had a sister. He’d gotten sloppy in his research. And now this was happening. He was alternating between being hyped beyond anything he’d ever felt, and scared out of his mind. There were too many variables and too many loose ends to enjoy this.
The sad part was not being able to play the game with Wyrick, but he couldn’t let this go on. She’d figure it out. And he’d be toast. He also knew he couldn’t take both of them down. All he could do was hope the opportunity arose when she’d be in the bedroom alone. He didn’t need more than ten seconds to take her down and get her out.
The problem was going to be Charlie Dodge. He was a giant of a man skilled at finding lost people. He would not take kindly to losing his partner right under his own nose.
When he finally heard their voices inside the apartment, he tensed. The expectation of seeing Jade Wyrick in the flesh was a sensual high. The first time she walked into the bedroom, he got hard. And just watching her walk, seeing the glint in her eyes, he could only imagine how she was processing what she saw. And then she walked out before he had a good chance to come at her unobserved. He was silently cursing his luck when she and Charlie came back.
Looking at Charlie Dodge from up close and personal was intimidating. He was one big son of a bitch. Sonny had always wanted to be taller. But he’d had to settle for shoe lifts and toning up the rest of his body instead.
He was silently cursing the situation in general when Charlie suddenly left the room.