Page 10 of Edge of Secrets (The Edge Trilogy #2)

Chapter Seven

Nell

“ O h, no. Thanks, but I couldn’t. It’s okay,” I babbled. I waved my arms wildly at the next cab that went by, even though its light was off. “It’s far. All the way out to Williamsburg, and with all this traffic, too. It would eat your whole evening. I’ll just walk downtown until I find a cab.”

Or Snake Eyes finds me. My sisters and I had promised each other that we would take cabs as often as possible. Not that catching cabs had helped Nancy much. She’d been nabbed out of a crowded hotel restaurant, surrounded by all the people she knew.

“No.” Burke’s voice was low and authoritative. “You’re not walking. It’s late, and it’s raining. I’ll drive you.”

I opened my mouth to politely slap him down to size. Who did he think he was, anyway—announcing what I could or could not do?

Then I looked into his eyes, and the anxious babble in my mind just stopped.

It was dark, wet, and no cabs were stopping. My neck was prickling in the worst way. The people on the street had all hustled for shelter, leaving the street dismal and deserted. Why not just accept his offer?

I tried to talk myself down from this silly clutch of panic. Burke was plenty intimidating in his own way, but he was no Snake Eyes. And I was no brainless bimbo, whatever he might think with his I-don’t-hire-young-women-just-for-scenery comment.

I could handle anything this guy dished out and serve it right back. And have fun doing it, too, I realized. Being uppity with Duncan Burke was kind of fun.

I licked my dry lips without thinking and quickly regretted it when his gaze flicked to my mouth and stayed there.

“Um, thank you.” My voice felt dry and scratchy. “I appreciate that. If you’re sure.”

“Great. I’m in a garage close to the office building,” he said. “Just a couple blocks.”

We took off down the sidewalk, side by side, in total silence.

I was freshly strangled by shyness, and angry at myself for feeling this way.

For God’s sake, I had just accepted a job from this man.

We had plenty of things to talk about, but my voice was huddled into a tight, nervous ball in my throat, like a twelve-year-old at her first dance.

He led me down into an underground parking garage near his office building.

I stumbled on the steep concrete slope, clutching the folder that held the game outline I was supposed to study tonight.

He caught my elbow and held on to it, all the way to the sleek silver Mercedes that answered his remote beep with a pert flash of lights.

He helped me into the car, which smelled luxurious and new. The soft, plushy leather seat felt like it was hugging me.

My mute and strangled state did not improve, even after the necessary interchange about the best route to take to my Williamsburg address.

After a few minutes, he spoke up. “What are you so afraid of?”

That question took me utterly by surprise and left me floundering. “What on earth are you talking about?” I demanded.

“You looked scared when you were hailing those cabs.”

His sharp perception made me feel naked. “Ah, wow. I didn’t ... I’m not … that is to say, I’m surprised you noticed that. I had no idea it was so obvious.”

“Only to me,” he said. “Why would you be surprised at me noticing?”

Yikes. Now he might think I was criticizing him, and only thirty minutes after hiring me.

“It’s just an unexpected observation,” I hedged.

“I think I cover pretty well, all things considered. Most people wouldn’t see it.

And … well, it’s very intuitive of you. I wouldn’t have thought you were the type to notice. ”

He glanced at me with a puzzled frown. “What type? Why not?”

“I don’t know,” I said, helplessly. “You never noticed anything in your field of vision at the restaurant. You never made eye contact with me, or anyone else, for that matter. You always order the same thing. You seem to have an extremely narrow range of focus. Intuition requires ... well, openness. So that the data can go in.”

His laugh had a touch of bitterness to it. “Hah. You and my family. That’s Duncan for you. Thick as a brick wall.”

“Not at all! I don’t think anything of the kind,” I protested. “Just very focused. More than most people could ever dream of being. I’m sure it’s a sort of superpower. And like most superpowers, it’s probably a double-edged sword. I have a few of those myself.”

He was silent for an unnervingly long time. “It’s true,” he said finally. “I do have a narrow range of focus, when I’m in work mode. But there’s a flip side. Whatever is inside that narrow range of focus? Oh God, do I see it. Every last goddamn detail of it.”

I felt my face heat up. “Well, thank you, I guess, for noticing all these subtle and intimate details about me. I appreciate your intense interest, but?—”

“But you still haven’t answered my question. What are you afraid of?”

My chest jerked with nervous laughter. “Good God. You’re like a dog with a bone!”

“Yeah. I’m like a pit bull, my family tells me,” he agreed easily.

I shot him a nervous glance. “Family? So you’re, ah?—”

“Married? No. Absolutely not. I’m talking my mother, brother, and sister. I am one hundred percent single. So? Let’s have an answer.”

My loaded question and his matter-of-fact answer made my face burn hotter.

It was impossible to sidestep a man this blunt and insistent.

Not without being rude and brusque, and I did not have the stomach for that while cuddled up in the yielding leather seat of his Mercedes, feeling so warm and dry and safe. At least for the next half hour.

There was no reason not to tell him the truth.

God knows, there was nothing to be ashamed of.

But still, it was a dark, flesh-creeping tale, still frighteningly unresolved, and this guy had just become my new employer.

I wouldn’t want a person on my payroll with the kind of problems I currently had. No one needed that kind of trouble.

Plus, it was none of his damn business. But he clearly did not care.

He waited patiently. I could feel his relentless insistence in the silence. He just sat there, motor idling, in no hurry at all. Waiting for me to snap.

“It’s a long, complicated story,” I said warily.

“So what? We’re stuck in traffic. Entertain me.”

True enough. They were motionless in a gridlocked snarl. But still.

“It’s not entertaining, unfortunately,” I went on. “It’s awful. Sad, ugly, violent, scary. You might be better off not knowing. I wish I didn’t have to.”

He glanced over at me, one eyebrow up. “I’ll take that chance. Tell me, or I will literally die from curiosity right now. And you will be the one who killed me.”

I let out a snort of laughter, pressing my hand against my belly.

That sour ache, my constant companion, was still there, but it was less than before.

It was therapeutic to sit in the dark, in a warm, luxurious car with Duncan Burke, with windshield wipers swooshing soothingly over the glass in that hypnotic rhythm.

“It started a few weeks ago,” I began, my voice halting. “When my mother died. In a home invasion.”

He shot me a startled glance. “Oh God. I am sorry to hear that. My condolences.”

I acknowledged that with a nod. Then I told him the whole tale, as simply and sequentially as I could.

The burglar, the necklaces Lucia had commissioned for us, the mysterious letters.

The elderly clotheshorse the cops had found at the landfill, the luckless jeweler and his family being murdered, the attack in the stairwell, and finally, my sister Nancy almost getting abducted in that hotel in Boston.

My long, winding, improbable tale—and Duncan’s quiet, probing questions—got us all the way across the Williamsburg Bridge and all the way to my apartment.

He double-parked as I concluded, telling him about Nancy getting together with Liam, the only good thing to come out of this shitshow so far.

At least Nancy wasn’t all alone in the void, like Vivi and me.

In the thoughtful silence that followed, I was intensely uncomfortable.

He must think I was a paranoid, attention-mongering nutcase.

“So, anyway,” I said. “That’s it. That’s why I’m scared. Me and my sisters. Whatever we do, it feels like the wrong thing. The stupid, boneheaded thing that’s going to get us tortured and murdered. So, let’s have it. Do you want to fire me now?”

He frowned. “What? Fire you? Why on earth would I want to do that?”

Before I had to come up with a reply, a guy opened the door of the SUV parked right in front of us, got in, and pulled out onto the street, leaving a parking spot right in front of my building. Which was unheard of. It simply never happened.

Burke pulled into it and killed the engine. “I’d better walk you up to your door.”

Oh. How very gallant of him. If only my heart would stop trying to pound its way violently right out of my chest. “Oh, don’t worry about it,” I told him, with a breathless laugh. “It’s a fifth-floor walk-up. I wouldn’t wish those stairs on anybody.”

“I’m fine with stairs. I always choose stairs over an elevator. You know. Cardio.”

Cardio, my ass. I looked over at his body, strangling a crack of laughter and transforming it into a cough. Then I got out and led him into my building.

Up, up, up. Those damn stairs never ended.

I stopped in front of my door, glad for a legitimate excuse to be that breathless and flushed.

“I appreciate the ride, and the company, and walking me up the stairs, and the listening ear,” I said.

“You were very patient and kind. Thank you. It was good to lay it all out. It makes it seem less like, you know … like this vast, shadowy thing looming over me. Even though it still is.”

He nodded and kept standing there. A mountain, a monolith, just waiting for something from me.

But whatever it was, I just wasn’t ready to give it to him. And it looked like he was going to make me just say it, right out loud. Damn the man.