Page 111 of Merciless Prince

“Yes. It’s probably one of the first places he’ll check when he realizes I’m missing.” I glanced up at the cuckoo clock on the wall above Cooper’s head. “Which will happen in about twenty minutes.”

“You could stay at my place.”

I shook my head. “No, I really can’t go back to Bellingham at all. Not just my dorm. The whole campus is off-limits.”

“I didn’t mean my dorm,” Cooper replied. “I meant my family’s house in Glen Cove. You could hide out there for a while.”

I chewed my bottom lip. Then I shook my head. “No, Killian knows who my friends are at Bellingham, so he’ll probably start stalking all of them to see if any of them are helping me. I don’t want you or your family to get into any trouble.”

“Fair enough.”

“Shit.” I sat up straight. “You’re my only male friend. He’s totally going to know it was you as soon as the maintenance man tells him that some guy got me out of there.”

Cooper smiled and patted my hand. “Don’t worry about me. Just focus on figuring out where you want to go.”

I looked down at my plate again. There had to be somewhere I could go where Killian couldn’t easily find me. But where?

Motels and hotels were out of the question because they all required patrons to put down a credit card. I didn’t have a card on me, and I couldn’t let Cooper risk his life by putting his own card down, especially when Killian was going to figure out that I was with him right away.

I sat up straight a moment later. “I have an idea.”

“What?”

“It’ll take me forever to explain,” I said, anxiously glancing at the door. “We should probably just go.”

“We have plenty of time. I doubt Killian is driving around checking every single diner in the state,” Cooper said, eyes twinkling. He leaned forward. “Tell me while I finish my pie.”

“Okay.” I briefly gnawed on the inside of my cheek again. “So… my parents were wonderful people. But they weren’t perfect.”

“How so?” Cooper asked, brows furrowing.

“I’ll get to that in a minute,” I said. “Anyway, they were both lawyers. Quite successful, too.”

“No shit. They owned a place in Carnegie Hill,” Cooper cut in, eyes crinkling at the corners.

“I don’t mean to sound like I’m bragging. It’s relevant to the story, trust me.”

He lifted a palm. “I know. Sorry. Go on.”

“We had a vacation house out on Long Island, and we used to go there every summer,” I said. “When I was fifteen, my parents decided to hide the fact that they owned it. I can’t remember any of the details about why they did it, but I know it was something to do with avoiding some sort of tax. Apparently it was a massive one, and Dad didn’t want to pay it. Like I said before… he wasn’t perfect.”

“Right,” Cooper said, scratching at his chin.

“Anyway, my parents asked our housekeeper if they could transfer the house into her name. They were really close, so they trusted her and knew she wouldn’t try anything shady. She agreed to do it, and in return she got a pay rise. She was also able to use the house whenever she wanted, as long as we weren’t vacationing there at the time.”

Cooper’s face brightened. “So we can go and stay there, right?”

“Yes. Killian won’t be able to find it easily,” I said. “I mean, I assume he’ll dig through my family’s real estate history to try to find any possible hiding places, but he’ll probably skip right over the vacation house because it looks like we got rid of it years ago. He’d have to do alotof digging to realize that the new owner was actually our housekeeper, and he’d have to do even more digging to figure out the deal she made with my parents.”

“What if she’s staying there right now?”

I shook my head. “She won’t be there. Last time I spoke to her, she told me she was going to stay in Austria for a year or two so she could spend time with her extended family.”

“How would we get into the house, though? You don’t have the key on you.”

“I know where the spare is. I don’t think Leonie would’ve changed the alarm code, either.”

Cooper nodded and hastily ate the last piece of his pie. Then he pulled out some cash and slapped it down on the table. “Let’s go.”