Page 15

Chapter Fifteen

Briar

T aking his car anywhere would be a death sentence, so using my car, I drive him about a mile from the mansion and drop him off. No words pass between us as he exits the vehicle. Anything we needed to say has already been said.

After shutting the car door, he slips into the thick wooded area beside the road. I cut on the interior light and pretend to look for something in the center console. This is all an act in case someone spots my car. They’ll remember seeing a lone woman and nothing more.

When enough time has passed and at least three cars have driven by, I glance into the dark woods and find him hunkered down behind a large tree trunk and a few thick bushes. I nod toward him, and he nods back, signaling that we’re ready to do what needs to be done. With a flick of my fingers, I cut off the dome light, then pull onto the road.

He’ll wait in the brush until I get back to the house and call him. He didn’t have a cell phone, so that meant he had to use mine. I’ll use my laptop to communicate with him while he’s in the house. I’ll be his eyes.

The mansion should be empty for a few days—Gloria’s kind sister took the kids away for the weekend, exactly as planned—but I’m not taking any chances. Especially not when someone else is already tweaking the footage. Whoever cut the section from the video doesn’t know who is watching, but they know that someone is, and that makes me nervous.

Thirty minutes later, I pull into my driveway and hurry into the house. It was weird to leave him at the house while I’ve been going to work, but it’s even stranger to enter my bedroom and not see him sprawled across the bed, wearing his little metal collar. It’s an absence I’ll need to get used to. He might dick me down one final time before he takes off, but when the sun rises tomorrow morning, he’ll be a distant memory.

I thought I’d be fine with this arrangement. Not many women would relish the idea of tying themselves to a murderer for the rest of their lives, but maybe those women aren’t also killers. Waking up to him every morning wouldn’t have been the worst change in my life.

I understand why he can’t stay, though. With such a memorable face, he’d be discovered in no time. Leaving with him is another option, but he hasn’t asked me to join him. If he did, I would definitely say yes, but I can’t just insert myself into whatever he has planned after this. If he still hasn’t said anything before he leaves, I’ll drop a hint.

With my computer in hand, I hurry to the kitchen table and begin setting everything up. None of these fantasies and plans will amount to anything at all if we don’t get that money. Before booting up the feed to the security cameras, I call Grey. He answers on the second ring.

“Can you hear me, psycho?” he asks.

I nod, even though he can’t see me. “Loud and clear, killer.”

“Good.” Something crunches, and he drops his voice to a whisper. “I’m still in the woods, but I should be nearing the back of the property now. Can you pull up the feed that shows the back lawn?”

After a few keystrokes, I’m in. “I’m watching now,” I say as I study the screen. It shows the sprawling grass and a corner of the back porch.

“Any movement?”

I click another camera view, then another. “I don’t see any movement or lights in the house. Do you want me to do a full sweep?”

He grunts, then says, “Yeah, might as well. The brush just thickened up, and I may have to take the long way around anyway.”

I click through the different camera views as his breath and footsteps occasionally come through the laptop speakers. Everything looks ideal. The large rooms are dark and empty, and the house is quiet.

“There aren’t any hidden surprises that I can see. The alarm is armed, but we expected that,” I say. “You still remember the alarm code for the back door, right?”

“One-two-three-four,” he grunts, and a shadowy figure appears on the screen overlooking the backyard.

His shadowy figure.

As I watch him slink across the grass, I have never been more turned on. He’s like my own personal Robin Hood, stealing from the egregiously wealthy to help out poor little old me. Granted, he’s lining his own pockets as well, but that’s beside the point. He doesn’t have to give me any of it, yet he plans to share it.

“I have a visual,” I say, and he waves at one of the cameras. “Wrong way. Turn toward the south.”

He turns and faces the camera I’m watching, and my thighs rub together. His eyes look back at me through the hole in his balaclava, and I can only think of the moments we’ve shared while he wore that mask. I hope he plans to fuck me one more time while wearing it. It won’t be enough, and I’ll always long for more, but it’s better than knowing our last time was our last time.

“Let’s get this shit show on the road,” he says.

I switch the camera to the interior shot that shows the back door. Seconds later, Grey hurries inside and disables the alarm. We’ve seen this room so many times from this high vantage point, so it must be disorienting for him now. He turns in a tight circle and tries to get his bearings.

“The room you need is down that long hall to the right,” I say, and he nods.

As he wanders through the maze of hallways and eventually finds the bedroom, I click through the cameras and follow his journey, only speaking up when he seems lost. When he finally reaches the closet, I hold my breath.

He opens the door and steps into the deep room that could likely double as sleeping quarters. With the speed of a snail, he steps toward the massive black box sitting on the carpet. I grip the edge of the table and nibble my bottom lip as he squats and punches in the first code, which must be incorrect, because he looks up at the ceiling and shakes out his hands before trying again.

This time, the safe clicks open.

“Jackpot,” he whispers. But instead of hurriedly shoving piles of cash into the black bag dangling from his shoulder, he pulls a single slip of paper from the safe and begins reading it.

“Grey, what does it say?” I ask. “Is it a will or something? What is it?”

“I don’t know what to make of this,” he says. On the screen, he goes to stand, and I can finally see inside the safe.

It’s empty.

“What does the paper say?” I scream at the screen. “What is happening?”

Grey faces the camera and fluffs the paper before reading aloud. “I was hoping you’d come for this, but I had to move it to keep it safe. You gave the children freedom, and now I want to give the same to you. Fly high, vigilante.”

I wait for him to continue, but he doesn’t. He just folds the paper, stuffs it into his pocket, and stands beside the bed.

“So that’s it?” I finally say. “It’s over. I can’t save my house, and you can’t run off to Mexico to catch the next flight to China.”

Grey blows out a breath. “I wouldn’t have enjoyed China anyway. I speak neither Mandarin nor Cantonese.”

“Wait, wait. Back up. Read that note again.”

He pulls it out and reads it again, and I hear what I thought I remembered.

“They said they had to move it. What about the painting?” I click through the cameras until I land on the long hall. “Leave that room and take a left, then take the next right.”

A few seconds later, Grey appears on the screen. “They said to fly high, so maybe they were trying to nudge me toward the painting.”

“Exactly,” I say as I allow hope to rise.

Holding my breath once more, I watch as Grey creeps closer to the painting. The massive gold frame still hangs at an almost imperceptible off-kilter angle. It’s too big for any one person to lift, so I don’t know how he’ll get it down from the wall.

But then he doesn’t have to. As he grips the frame, I’m the image of astonishment as it spins on the wall and becomes a door. He looks back at the camera once more, then grips the frame and opens the wall.

That’s when the camera feed cuts out, and the screen displays an error message.