Page 10

C HAPTER 10

“A car?” I said once we’d stepped inside the unit, and Anthony had pulled the door shut behind us. He found a switch on the wall that powered on a buzzing fluorescent light dangling from the ceiling.

I looked around as if there might be something else in the unit—a bed, some snacks—things that seemed infinitely more helpful than a car in the moment—but saw nothing other than the hunk of metal on wheels shrouded under a giant gray sheet.

Anthony pulled off the sheet with a flourish, sending dust tickling my nose and exposing a glossy black muscle car straight out of a 1970s action movie.

“That’s discreet,” I said.

He walked its perimeter, gathering the sheet in his hands and checking the tires. “What can I say, Uncle Lou had style.”

I slid my fingers along the shiny hood and felt the power underneath even while it sat at rest. The hulky, two-door, black-on-black bullet, with silver accents and a low profile, had Camaro curled in metallic script outside the fender. “While I can agree with you on that point, I’m wondering how an old sports car is supposed to help us. When was the last time this thing was driven? Will it even start?”

Anthony fished the key out of one of its tailpipes and unlocked the driver’s door. “Yes, it will start. And it’s not just an old sports car.” He rounded to the trunk and unlocked it. “Come here.”

I walked to the back, thinking I’d only be happy if there was a foot-long sandwich in there, but quickly realized my needs went beyond hunger at the sight of what it held.

“Whoa.”

“Backup plan,” Anthony said with a proud smile.

Two suitcases, a duffel bag, and—the thing we both reached for first—a case of bottled water.

Anthony ripped open the plastic and handed me one. I was halfway done with it, shocked by my own ravenous thirst, by the time he tore the lid from his bottle and drank with the same zeal.

“What’s in the suitcases?” I asked, and wiped a dribble from my chin. The water was so refreshing, I wanted to backstroke in it.

He finished his bottle before tossing it aside and reaching for the nearest suitcase. The red hard-shell case came from the same era as the car. He squeezed two silver tabs with his thumbs, and it opened with a pop.

“No way,” I said with a gasp. “That’s a pretty solid backup plan.”

Stacks of neatly bound cash lined the case in rows of green. Anthony grabbed one and flipped through it, as if to make sure it was real. “Uncle Lou was always prepared.” He plucked a small stack from the bundle and replaced it in his wallet.

“This is why you let me take all your money for Dave earlier, isn’t it?” I said. “You knew there was more here.”

“Yes. The rest is for later,” he said, and snapped the case shut. “What we really want is in here.” He reached for the other suitcase, the larger green hard-shell, and popped the clasps.

Billows of brightly colored clothes burst free, as if they’d been waiting spring-loaded for decades: silky shirts in loud floral patterns, color-blocked button-downs, khakis, hats, a pair of vintage aviators. It was a Halloween costume goldmine.

I reached for the aviators and put them on. “What happened to Uncle Lou’s style? I thought he was more of a somber-suit kind of guy.”

Anthony was digging around in the pouch that lined the top flap of the suitcase. “If he ever needed this backup plan, it would have been to change his appearance. That’s why all this stuff is so—”

“Colorful?” I asked, and held up a truly hideous mustard-yellow button-down with a flared collar.

“Yes.”

I pawed through more of the clothing, wondering if there was anything in my size so I could change out of my torn dress. “And he never thought to, I don’t know, modernize over the years?”

Anthony pulled a zipped pouch from the suitcase’s pocket and set it on the trunk. Then an old flip phone that miraculously turned on when he powered it up. “Here’s something modern for you.”

“Burner phone?” I asked and could hardly believe I’d spoken the words out loud.

“Yep.”

“Can I use it to call my sister?”

He frowned at the phone as he pressed the clicky plastic buttons, maybe entering a passcode. “Not yet, but soon.” He set the phone down and reached back into the suitcase’s pouch. This time, he pulled out a small first aid kit in an old, dented tin.

“Hey, that’s handy,” I said, and reached for the kit. I quickly found the Band-Aids inside were crinkled and had lost their adhesion. “Or not. Also old.”

Anthony was still digging in the bottomless suitcase with one hand. “The fact nearly everything in here is old goes to show he never needed his backup plan. This car used to be stored in New York, but he brought it out here with him basically untouched. Yes!” he victoriously hissed, and pulled a rattling pill bottle out of the suitcase. “Bless you, Uncle Lou.” He uncapped it and dumped two white pills into his hand.

“Painkillers?”

“Mmm-hmm.” He popped them in his mouth and opened another water bottle to wash them down. “He was prepared for all scenarios.”

“How old are these?” I asked as I examined the bottle. However they’d ended up in the trunk, it was not by way of legitimate prescription.

“Either old enough to have lost their potency or double it. We’ll find out. Want one?”

“I think I’ll pass. What’s in this one?” I asked, and reached for the duffel bag.

He snapped out his hand and grabbed my wrist. “Don’t open that one.”

I cautiously held my hand steady, suddenly nervous. “Why not?”

“Because it’s exactly what you think, and I don’t want you to freak out.”

A tingle trotted up my spine. My palms began to sweat. “It’s a bag of guns?”

“Among other things.”

He was right. Knowing there was a gun in his waistband was enough to put me on edge. The thought of other things only made me want to run away.

I relaxed my arm and he let it fall from his grip. “What about this?” I asked, and reached for the zipped pouch he’d set on the trunk’s floor.

“IDs.”

I unzipped it and out slid a small stack of driver’s licenses and a few passports. They all contained Lou’s picture—at various ages—at least one thing other than the phone had been updated—but with different names: Jonathan Walker, Christopher Kirk, Nicholas Miller.

All generic names, all from different states. The passports were Canadian, French, and Italian.

“How do you even get one of these?” I asked, and held the Canadian passport up to the light, searching for a watermark that would indicate fraud. I nearly dropped it with a yelp when I saw Anthony had taken his pants off.

“What are you doing?” I said, and clumsily tried to throw a hand over my eyes. I hit myself in the face with the fake passport and only made matters more awkward. I’d been too distracted to notice him stripping down right in front of me.

“Changing out of my bloody clothes. Feel free to do the same. I’m sure there’s a belt in there somewhere you can use.”

He was so casual about standing there in his tight, short underwear. Black, of course. I’d caught him stepping into a pair of khakis with his muscular thighs on display and felt a hot sweat instantly break out over my skin. He’d taken off his shoes and set the gun in the trunk. His black jeans sat in a pile on the floor. I had to turn away from the adjusting of various body parts he was doing as he struggled to pull on pants with one arm. His left arm—the one nearest his broken ribs—hung nearly slack at his side.

“Sure. Yeah. That’s a good idea. I’ll change too,” I said, and reached into the suitcase for distraction.

“I’m going to need help with my shirt,” he said with a pained grunt. “I don’t think I can lift my arm over my head anymore.”

I turned to him with my mouth hanging open, trying and failing to keep my composure as I flushed a deep shade of crimson. Good thing he was too distracted by his broken bones to notice. “You want me to . . . help you take off your shirt?”

“Yes. You know what? Get the knife out of my pocket; we’ll cut it off.” He spoke like a man simply trying to be pragmatic, and not one with any clue he was making the situation progressively sexier.

“Okay,” I said in a dizzy haze. I squatted to reach for the pants he’d abandoned and found the knife in the back pocket. I pulled out the blade and nearly dropped it with a gasp when I saw it was still stained with blood. The tweed man’s blood from when I’d stabbed him.

“Don’t look at it,” Anthony instructed, realizing what had happened. “Here, let me.” He closed his warm hand over mine and took it. “Hold my shirt.”

I shook away my memory of sinking the knife into flesh and took a deep breath. I did as instructed and held his shirt out away from him.

He plunged the knife through the fabric and dragged it up. I followed the path, tugging at the separating sides until it hung open over his bare chest.

The hot sweat returned to my skin at the sight of his toned muscles and the dusting of dark hair trailing faintly all the way to his waistband. He was a sculpture, and I desperately wanted to touch him, but all my lecherous feelings cooled at the sight of the bruises flowering his left side.

“Oh, Anthony,” I said on a breath. I couldn’t help but press my palm to the injury, hoping my touch would somehow soothe it.

He sucked in a pained breath, but slowly let it out, as if I did in fact have some effect on him. “It’s really not that bad. I’ve had worse.”

“Are those expired trunk pills kicking in, or are you trying to impress me?”

“Both?” he said with a soft laugh.

I gave him a sincere smile and leaned in conspiratorially. “I was already impressed when you threw me over the wall.”

This seemed to put an ounce of wind in his broken sails. His lips pulled into a soft smile. “Help me out of this, will you?”

I nodded and bit my lip to keep from smiling at the opportunity to undress him. As gently as I could, I peeled the shirt over his right shoulder and then his left. I slid my fingers into the pocket between the short sleeve and his skin to push it farther off his right arm. His shoulder muscles flexed as he tugged his arm free, putting the rounded contours right in my face. I moved around to his left side to repeat the process much more gingerly.

“You know you’re, like, cut, right?” I said, unable to keep the commentary inside my head silent.

He shyly laughed. “Do you mean literally? Because yes, I am aware I have multiple open wounds at the moment.”

“No. I mean, how often do you work out? Do you own a gym back in New York? Look at you!”

“Penny, stop it. You’re embarrassing me.” He was sincerely blushing, and it was adorable.

“Hey, man. You’re the one who asked me to undress you. I’m simply stating objective facts here. How many abs do you have? Eight? Is that eight ? I thought those things only came in six-packs, max.”

Now naked from the waist up, he threw his arms over his torso. “Please don’t make me laugh. It hurts too much.”

I poked him in the right shoulder, as far from his injured ribs as I could go. “Not so tough now, huh? You can throw me over a wall like I’m a garden gnome, but you can’t handle a laugh?”

“Seriously, please stop. You’re going to kill me,” he said, still laughing.

“Maybe you should pop some more expired trunk pills. That might help take the edge off.”

“ Penny. Pick out a shirt for me. Make sure it’s hideous.”

“Well, that’s an easy order.” I bent over into the trunk to shop for the ugliest thing I could find while he gathered his destroyed clothes into a pile. “Good thing you and your uncle were the same size. Well, I guess good thing you are the same size he was a few decades ago. Perfect.” I landed on a purple button-down with an atrocious pink floral pattern.

“Not exactly,” Anthony said when I turned around. He tugged on his khakis to show they hung too short by about three inches.

I shrugged. “High-waters are in now. Arms out.”

We put on the new shirt as carefully as we’d taken off the old one. He buttoned it himself and rolled the sleeves to his elbows. Of course he managed to make it look good.

“How do I look?”

“Like Rambo went to church in the eighties.”

“Excellent.”

I tugged at my dress in a hint I wanted to change as well, but I wasn’t about to do it in front of him. He set about reorganizing the trunk and still didn’t get the hint when I cleared my throat a second time.

“Anthony? Do you mind?”

He straightened up and looked at me. “Do I mind what?”

I let out a dramatic sigh and waved my hand in a motion for him to turn around. “Could you look away while I change, please? Not all of us are centerfold-worthy and ready to strip down in front of strangers.”

A soft flush curled into his cheeks, and he gave me a devilish grin. “Are we still strangers?”

“Well, no. I guess not. But I’d still rather maintain whatever dignity I have left. So, if you don’t mind.” I circled my hand again to shoo him away.

He folded his arms with a smug grin. “Fine, but so you know, I’ve already seen up your skirt three times today.” He spun around and faced the wall as I gasped.

“You were looking!”

“I was not! The situation kept presenting itself.”

“ Twice! There was the chair and the wall. But you said three times. That means you looked on purpose! What was the third time?”

He stalled, and I could feel the guilt radiating off him. “Okay, fine. In the van. With Dave. When you climbed in before me. You’d ripped your dress to make me this headband, which was very kind and helpful of you, so your skirt was shorter. And then you bent over, and it was just there, right in front of me. The situation wasn’t as desperate as the others had been, so I could have looked away, but at the same time, I couldn’t. I mean, have you seen yourself from behind? And I—”

I tapped him on the shoulder to stop his babbling.

He turned around to find me changed into the repulsive yellow button-down and a pair of linen pants I’d tugged up to my boobs and rolled three times at the ankles. I’d latched a belt around the middle of it all to hold it in place.

“How do I look?”

He eyed me up and down with his mouth still open from his apology tour about my skirt. When he snapped it shut, I expected something charming and smooth, but instead he said, “Like a banana.”

“A banana ?” I cried. “I liken you to one of the greatest action heroes in cinematic history, and you call me a banana? ”

“A sexy banana?”

I held up my hands in protest. “No. Too late. Get in the car. I assume whatever comes next involves driving this beastly closet on wheels out of here, so let’s go.”

He grabbed another water bottle and shut the trunk as I headed for the passenger door. “A very sexy banana?” he tried again.

I cast him a glare, with my middle finger in the air, while I secretly swooned he’d called me sexy. Twice.

We might have made less of a disturbance if we’d shot off all the guns in the trunk at the same time than when Anthony started the engine and pulled out of the unit. The car roared like a beast with a fire burning in its belly. It was deafening inside the unit, slightly less earsplitting as we rolled down the aisle to the gate, and almost a normal level of obnoxious when we finally pulled onto a street.

I demanded we stop for food before we got on the road, and he even let me run in to pee as he sat in the drive-through of an In-N-Out. For once, I welcomed the chaos inside of the always-busy burger joint. I pulled my hair forward to hide my bruises, but no one even looked up from their fries and milkshakes.

Once we had our food, I devoured the best cheeseburger of my life—Anthony ate two—and sucked down a giant soda. I could feel the caffeine feebly trying to kick-start my nervous system, but I was basically a dead battery. The only juice that was going to bring me back to life was sleep.

I’d nabbed a lumpy sweater from the trunk and folded it into a pillow as Anthony drove east. We’d crossed the Bay Bridge and headed northeast toward the valley cities between the Bay and Sacramento. We were in a gap between two of them now. The highway stretched deep into the night ahead of us. I knew from traveling this route many times that sweeping fields filled the space on either side of us as we cut across California’s agricultural spine.

“How do you know where we’re going?” I asked. Without a smartphone, we had no GPS, and the car certainly didn’t have a navigation system. All it had was a radio with giant knobs and an orange dial to indicate what station we’d landed on.

“I memorized a map,” Anthony said. He drove with one hand on the wheel, his left resting on his thigh. He’d left his window cracked as we’d driven through the Bay, perhaps to keep himself awake with the cool air, but now had closed it. His hair was still brushed back from his face like the wind had run its fingers through it.

“Always prepared,” I said after an eye-watering yawn. “How long are we driving?”

“Until we get there.”

I rolled my eyes at his vague answer and stuffed my sweater pillow into position to lean my head against the window. The low rumble of the car and the bouncy suspension as we rose and fell over the highway’s various lumps was enough to lull me to sleep. “Anthony?”

“Yeah?”

“Are we someplace safe now?”

A pause filled the car while he weighed his answer. “I’d say so, yeah.”

“Good. Then tell me the whole story. You said you would when we were someplace safer.”

He softly chuckled as I yawned again. “You really want to hear it?”

“Of course I do. It’ll keep us both awake. Start from the beginning and don’t leave anything out.”

He sighed. “Okay. Here goes.”

I kept my eyes on the taillights ahead of us, glowing red like sets of eyes in the dark. Despite my various aches and pains, when Anthony’s warm voice poured over me like I’d slipped into a bath, I felt myself relax.

“I met Portia when I was seven. Well, I guess more accurately, I met her brother, Jake, when I was seven, and she was the annoying little sister who wanted to follow us like a shadow. But she was cute.” He paused to laugh quietly and fondly before his voice turned darker.

“My dad split when I was a baby, and my mom drank away her problems. Their dad is a piece of shit who hit their mom. None of us really had anyone looking out for us at home, so we looked out for each other—and Uncle Lou, of course. He always kept an eye out. When he’d come around for dinner at my mom’s, he’d always ask if Jake and Portia were joining, so, of course, I’d run down the street and go get them. Their mom was doing her best to keep herself alive, so she took any chance to have the kids off her hands. So we ended up spending a lot of time together.” The fondness had cautiously crept back into his voice. He sounded almost reluctant to let it, as if he’d knowingly let it lure him to a cliff—with certain pain at the bottom.

“When we were in high school, Jake fell in with a really bad crowd. Basically, a street gang. One night, there was this fight, and both Jake and this kid from another gang got shot. They both died.”

“Oh, my God.” I noted how bluntly he’d said it, as if it would only feel like striking himself with a club, instead of a knife, if done right. “I’m so sorry, Anthony.”

He gave his head one shake and thickly swallowed. “It was a long time ago.”

“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt.” I softly placed my hand on his leg.

He looked down at it and blinked a few times. I felt his eyes flick to my face before he returned them to the road and kept speaking. “After Jake died, the gang came after Portia—the other kid’s older brother, specifically. He was their leader—the head asshole. I mean, he was an adult harassing a teenage girl. The guy was scum. He said she was going to pay for what Jake took from him. It got really bad. Portia was afraid to leave the house, to go to school. She got death threats. It went on for almost a year. I told Uncle Lou about it because I was so worried, and because I’d promised her brother I’d look out for her. Lou cared about Portia too, obviously. They were both over for dinner one night, and she was skinny as a rail by then. All cheekbones and dark circles from all the stress. She wasn’t sleeping or eating anymore. Uncle Lou pulled me aside and asked me in the most serious tone I’d ever heard him use if I wanted him to take care of it. ” He paused and flashed his gaze to me again.

I was wide-awake, riveted, and pretty sure I knew where this story was going.

“I didn’t know too much about his business at the time,” he went on, “but I knew he didn’t have a normal job. He’d come and go a lot; he wore expensive clothes and nice watches. He drove that big, old Cadillac around like a king. One time, when I was ten, my mom was between jobs and our electricity got shut off. Uncle Lou got it turned back on, and then came over with this thick envelope. I hid around the living-room corner and watched their whole conversation as he tried to get my mom to take it. She kept refusing, saying it was wrong and she didn’t want it, and they got in an argument. He left it on the kitchen table when he went. My mom went to her bedroom and shut the door. I could still hear her crying when I went into the kitchen and opened it.”

“What was in it?” I asked when he paused, doing my best to slip my voice gently into the stream without disrupting his narrative.

“Twenty thousand dollars. I spent half the night lining the bills up in stacks on the kitchen table and counting them. I kept losing track and having to start over. It was more money than I’d ever seen in my life. I knew Uncle Lou loved us, but people didn’t just give that kind of money to each other. Unless. . . they had lots of it. That’s when I realized he could make things happen; he could fix things, like no one I’d ever known.” He heaved a heavy breath. “So fast-forward to when he asks me about Portia. I was eighteen, about to go off to college, and I didn’t want to leave Portia—because I knew she wouldn’t be safe. So I said yes, not really knowing what taking care of it would entail.”

His words were as loaded as I expected them to be. “I thought you said Lou wasn’t a hit man.”

“He wasn’t. But he knew a couple. You can find anyone to do pretty much anything for the right price.” He stroked his hand over his jaw; he was reliving that conversation where he’d said yes and perhaps still feeling the weight of his decision. “So he tells me he’ll take care of it. But then my mom gets wind of things, and swears she’ll never speak to either of us again if he goes through with it. She’d always known what line of work he was in and had tried to keep me away from it; she never knew about that night I counted all the cash. They went back and forth for a while, but then Lou says I’m an adult now, and leaves the decision up to me. Since he and Portia were the most family I’d ever had, I said yes, again. And he took care of it.”

My eyes were wide as saucers as I blinked. I swallowed hard. “And then what happened?”

“I went off to college at Penn.”

“You went to Penn?”

He turned to look at me. “Yes. Uncle Lou paid for it. Should I be offended by how surprised you sound?”

“I—No! Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.” My cheeks burned.

A small smile twitched his lips. “Sorry, not all of us can have PhDs from Berkeley, Dr. Collins.”

My flush only burned deeper. “How do you know that?”

“There’s this thing called Google.”

“Ah. Yes, well, in my defense, I Googled you, and there was nothing there, so I couldn’t possibly know anything about your education—which, how does one even accomplish that? You have no digital footprint—even in shady places.”

He flashed me another coy grin. “ You looked in shady places for me? I thought you were a professor, not a hacker.”

“That is not the point. I want to know how you managed to erase yourself from the Web.”

“I know people.”

I sat up and turned toward him, engaged. “See, that is a piece of this story I’m truly interested in. How do we get from the kid from Queens, with a rough homelife, to a Penn undergrad majoring in . . .” I trailed off, thinking of everything I knew about him. I took my best guess, “Business?”

“Econ, technically.”

“ Econ ?! I didn’t exactly have you pegged for a numbers nerd.”

“I told you, I’m the suit.”

“Yes, there are obviously many layers here, but I want to know how you ended up in this line of work. How did you go from straitlaced econ major to a not-bad-guy financial consultant slash fixer? Do they offer that as a minor at Penn?”

“Who said I was straitlaced? And no, Pen, they don’t.”

“I see what you did there.”

“I take opportunities where I see them.”

“But really. What happened next?”

“I was getting there, but then you took us on an alma mater detour.”

“Sorry. Continue, please.”

I sat back against my seat and prepared to keep listening.

“So, after it all happened and I went off to school, I kept an eye on Portia from a distance. I’d go home on weekends to visit; she’d take a train out to see me. She was doing better, but she still wanted out of her life. She wanted to be free. When I was in my junior year, she finished high school and moved to California and never looked back. She reinvented herself.”

“ I’ll say. There was nothing about this when I searched her online, and there is a ton of stuff about her online. And as I am saying this out loud, I am realizing the same reason I saw none of this online is the same reason there is nothing about you online.”

“Now you’re keeping up,” he said with a grin.

“Damn. What’s the going rate for a thorough internet scrub?”

“Not cheap. You saw the suitcase in the trunk. But we make exceptions for friends and family.”

“Love a good discount. So, where are we now? Portia is in California, and you’re still at Penn, with your pocket protector and calculator, and you’re wooing dates with enthralling discussions of your favorite Excel formulae.”

“That is an egregious stereotype.”

“Tell me one part of that sentence that is not accurate.”

“I didn’t date.”

“Another surprise.”

“Why is that a surprise?”

“Are you really going to make me tell you how attractive you are, again? The ego on you, I swear.”

He blushed, and I smiled.

“We are never going to get to the end of this story, if you don’t stop derailing it.”

“Sorry.” I made a motion like I was locking my lips and throwing away the key.

“So, yes, I’m finishing school, and Portia is in California. I’d considered moving to the West Coast after I graduated, but Uncle Lou was still in New York; and to be honest, I was kind of hoping to fix things with my mom.” His voice fell off. Aside from when he’d told me his best friend had died, this statement carried the most weight—like a rain cloud the color of a bruise waiting to split open.

“And did you?”

He sucked his teeth with a defeated flick of his head. “Still trying. And I didn’t make it any easier for myself when Uncle Lou offered me a job working with him and I said yes.”

“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere.”

He shot me a glare, and I pressed my lips together again. “I moved back to New York and interned at a brokerage firm after college, and the finance world was not all I’d hoped for. The hours were brutal, and the competition was cutthroat. Everyone was five seconds away from a heart attack or an aneurysm—I literally saw someone have an aneurysm one day. I could feel my soul leaving my body after a year.”

“Fair. I’ve seen The Wolf of Wall Street. ”

“Yeah, well, I’m not one of those guys.”

“No. Your career path sounds much more . . . tame ?” My voice pitched upward because I could not find the right word, and the one I landed on sounded as equally sarcastic as it did serious.

Based on his smirk, I could see he interpreted it as the former. “It was tame, compared to all this.” He gestured out the windshield at the dark night. “Like I told you before, I was the suit side of things for Uncle Lou.”

“And what exactly does a suit for a fixer do?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Whatever Uncle Lou needed. I worked in an office. I was making calls and doing research and balancing books. The job was like half PI, half accountant. Uncle Lou would say, ‘I need this information on this person’; then I’d go find it. No questions asked. Or he’d tell me to transfer a pile of money into some account, and I’d do it. And, of course, I was keeping his income on the legal side of financial affairs by overseeing several business ventures in his name. People are willing to fork out a lot to make their problems go away; he had to put all that money somewhere. Uncle Lou brought me on as temporary at first, a trial period and basically to save me from the corporate scene, but I liked it too much to quit. It was the most interesting work I’d ever done, and I didn’t want to give it up.”

“So you didn’t.”

“I didn’t. It’s been thirteen years now.”

“That’s quite the trial period. And in that time, I have to imagine you’ve seen some things, present situation excluded. I mean, you seem to have a lot of street smarts for a numbers nerd with an Ivy League degree who works in an office.”

He partly frowned. “Yeah, well, like I told you: rough childhood. Most of my smarts came from before this job, and Uncle Lou kept me away from the on-the-ground stuff, but I have picked up a thing or two, I guess.”

“Like how to throw someone over a wall?” I said with a sly grin.

He softly chuckled with a shake of his head. “A surprisingly useful skill.”

“So, why did Lou move to California?” I asked, remembering I had watched him move in next door to Libby five years ago.

“Well, my mom still wasn’t talking to either of us, and he said he needed a change of pace as he got closer to retirement. Honestly, I think he had some heat on his tail. You can only do his job in one place for so long before you’re the one who needs a fix. But he gave me this whole speech about California being a land of new opportunity, saying there was a whole different set of problems out here that needed fixing—what with the entertainment and tech industries. Turned out he was right.”

I marveled at how one man’s decision to uproot and move cross-country had put everything in motion to land me in a classic Camaro cruising down the midnight highway with his nephew.

“Why didn’t you come with him?”

He half shrugged again. “Because I’m a city rat. It’s too sunny here, and you all are too nice. Everyone smiles and wants to stop and chat—neighbors bake each other pies, for God’s sake.” He shot me a little grin. “Not to mention your appalling public transportation system.”

“Did you try my sister’s pie?”

“Yes. It was delicious,” he said bitterly.

“Of course it was. Okay, so now we’re up to speed: Lou is in California, and you’re still in New York. What is Portia up to?”

“Making the worst decision of her life,” he said. “When she first told me she met someone, I was happy. I thought, ‘Good, finally some stability for her.’ She invited me out to drinks to meet Connor when they were visiting New York once. He was there on business, and she’d tagged along. She had stars in her eyes that night. I’d never seen her so lovesick, and I’d known every boyfriend she’d ever had. Don’t get me wrong—it was a fantasy at first. Private planes, penthouses, limitless shopping sprees. He gave her the world on a platter. But he was possessive, and demanding, and extremely jealous. He kept her on a leash. Locked in a cage. She was an object to him. It got to the point that she couldn’t breathe without his permission. He had control over all her finances, her travel, what she ate, where she went, who she talked to.” His voice had grown strained. His knuckles were white where they gripped the steering wheel.

“She hid it all, of course. All the social media posts, the gala appearances, the magazine interviews. No one knew, but she couldn’t lie to me. I’ve known her since she was four years old. I could see straight through the real-life princess she’d molded herself into and back to that terrified teenager afraid for her own life.”

I tried to picture what Anthony saw when he looked at Portia and I thought back to that day she visited campus and the sad cloud that seemed to hang over her.

“I noticed it too,” I said.

He looked over at me in curiosity.

“That day I had coffee with her on campus, she was nothing but nice and friendly, but I couldn’t shake this feeling it was an act. A performance.”

His head bobbed in a sad, slow nod. “You were right. It was.”

“So, what happened? What set all this off?”

The air inside the car grew tense, crackling with electricity. I could feel his rage simmering from deep inside him. “A few days before she disappeared, she showed up on my doorstep. She and Connor were in New York for a short visit. Him for business; her to attend a charity event. It happened to coincide with EnViSage backing out of that deal with StarCloud.”

The words set off a lightbulb in my mind. “Wait, that actually has something to do with all this? The deal with StarCloud?”

He didn’t scold me for another interruption, perhaps finally accepting I was a very dynamic listener. “Yes.”

“I knew it! A multibillion-dollar deal going bust and the CEO’s wife going missing within days is too shady not to be connected. What happened?”

The air thickened with tension again. His voice strained. “Well, that night she showed up at my door, she was a mess. Trembling, crying. She had a cut lip and a black eye, and the first thing she said to me was her husband was going to kill her.”

“Oh, my God.”

His hand tightened on the wheel again. “It wasn’t the first time he’d hit her, but it was the first time I’d ever seen her that terrified. I brought her inside my apartment. She said after their fight, she ran from their hotel room—before her bodyguard could follow—and came straight to me. She was . . . It was really bad, Penny. I wanted to go kill him myself. Once I got her to calm down, she explained what had happened. Turns out, that deal with StarCloud fell through for good reason. EnViSage is essentially broke. Connor has been stealing money from his own company for years, and Portia found out about it. When that high-profile merger suddenly didn’t happen, the FBI took notice. Apparently, Connor has been on their radar for a while, and this was enough for them to officially come knocking.”

I opened my mouth to speak, and he cut me off.

“And before you ask, no, I will not tell you what Portia specifically knows about her husband. She hasn’t even told me all of it; and the fewer people who know, the better, given Connor is willing to kill to keep it quiet.”

I snapped my mouth shut and swallowed hard, because that was the exact question I was going to ask.

“Let’s just call it large-scale fraud, ” he said. “So news of the failed deal comes out, and the FBI takes notice. They hear that the Slates are in New York for a few days. Unfortunately—or probably intentionally, the more I think about it—they come knocking when Portia is alone in their hotel room. She swears she didn’t tell the agent anything, and only talked to him long enough to find out what he wanted. I said unfortunately because Connor showed up while the agent was still there, and, of course, to him, it looks like his wife is ratting him out to the Feds. The agent leaves, Connor goes berserk and beats the shit out of Portia, and she comes running to me.”

My heart was pounding and aching at the same time. I was hardly breathing.

“She fell apart right in front of me. I couldn’t stand it. I begged her to leave him, to file for divorce, to just fucking run—and she wanted to, but she said it would be impossible. He’d never let her go. And now that he thought she’d talked to the Feds, she was sure he was going to kill her.”

The words hung inside the car with a chill. I shivered and spoke softly.

“So you made her disappear.”

“That was the plan, yes.”

“What went wrong?”

He sighed another breath, which was deep enough to make him wince. “All of it. Portia wanted to stay in the city for the charity event, and we needed time to prepare anyway. I told her to give us three days and we’d have it figured out by the time she got back to California. Lou was not happy. Certainly, not about the rush—he was methodical to a fault and took time to plan everything—and definitely not about a job involving Connor Slate. He warned me it was a huge risk, and that pulling together a convincing disappearance in three days was near impossible. But I didn’t care. I had to get her out.

“We built a whole new identity for Portia—that’s what was in the safe and why I needed the key: her new passport and ID. Uncle Lou had it all ready to go. The plan was to stage a kidnapping. She goes missing, and we make sure Connor—who would be the prime suspect—has an alibi, so they all think she’s really gone, even him. Maybe it would be seen as retaliation for the StarCloud deal, we didn’t know. We weren’t really thinking things through, because we were moving so fast. It was my fault it got so sloppy, but Lou cared about Portia enough to go along with it. We planted the shoe in the woods by their house to make it look like there’d been a struggle. We had her picked up and moved to a safe house, where Lou was going to meet her with her new identity, and then we’d put her on a plane, and she’d be gone. Forever.” His voice wavered at the end, and I wondered if a permanent goodbye between them was supposed to be part of this disappearing act. “Connor was always going to look for her when she disappeared, even if he believed she’d been kidnapped. But she was supposed to be gone. Untraceable by even him.”

“So, what happened?”

“The night after she gets to the safe house, I get a call Lou never showed up with her IDs. An hour later, there’s a knock on my door in Manhattan. That motherfucker who had you tied up in the basement is standing on my doorstep and tells me my uncle is dead and I’m next—if Connor doesn’t have Portia back by the next day.”

My whole body tensed at the mention of the tweed man, and I suddenly didn’t feel very bad for stabbing him. “How did they know?”

“I don’t know, but I would guess Portia’s bodyguard. He knew the plan. We had to have him in on it, or it would have been impossible, given he never left Portia’s side. She swore we could trust him, and I believed her. But it turned out his loyalties remained with Connor after all. I mean, he didn’t protect her from her own husband abusing her, so, clearly, he had priorities.”

I thought back to the man I’d seen on campus that day with Portia, and in all the photos online. He was so stoic and faithful. Given what Anthony had told me about her life, I’d imagine Portia had trust issues, and if she trusted her bodyguard, she must have had reason to.

“Maybe he regretted never protecting her at home, so he was loyal now, and they killed him because he wouldn’t talk,” I offered.

“Maybe. Or maybe he talked, and they killed him for even considering helping her escape.”

I shivered again, unsure which theory was true, and not really wanting to think about the body in the closet anymore. “Why weren’t you there?” I asked, and almost immediately regretted it by the way his shoulders slumped.

“I should have been for something this important. But we moved too fast. Uncle Lou knew all the intricacies of making things happen on the ground and was better at it anyway, so he put it in motion before I could get there. I was still in the city tying up all the logistics of it. I thought we’d been careful enough. I should have listened to him. It was too risky from the start, but we were desperate.” He shook his head and briefly gazed out the side window. His disappointment and his guilt were thick enough to taste.

He went quiet, and I let the silence linger so I could organize all the new information and let it sink in. I’d been right about a few things, but mostly wrong. Anthony was not a bad guy. Sure, perhaps he was tangentially connected to some uncouth activities, but at least this situation with Portia was a rescue mission and not the murder conspiracy I’d believed it to be. I studied his profile against the window’s midnight backdrop. A divider with bushy oleander plants separated us from any oncoming traffic, so the only light came from the moon and the dim glow of the car’s dash. It bathed his skin in a deep golden hue. I’d been right about how enigmatic he was. I’d learned so much in the past few hours and felt like I’d still only scratched the surface. Part of me still couldn’t believe I’d ever crossed paths with him.

“How does the estate sale fit into all this?” I asked. “Seems like a strange event to throw into the mix.”

He scoffed like the frustration was fresh. “Yes, it was. It’s Uncle Lou’s Realtor’s fault. I was listed on everything as next of kin, so I was getting a million phone calls when he died. His Realtor called about the house, suggested an estate sale so we could get it on the market ASAP, and I said yes without even thinking about it. Next thing I know, she’s asking if I’m available that Saturday to run it—and, by the way, it’s already been advertised. It was a moving train. I couldn’t stop it. So I fly out, and I’m dealing with the mortuary, funeral services; keeping the murder out of the news, because I didn’t need that added heat; Googling how to run an estate sale; trying to pick up where Lou left off to get Portia the hell out of Dodge; and a goddamned body shows up on my back porch.”

I blew out a breath, trying to lighten the mood. His anxiety over what must have been hell to deal with hung on him like a tangy cologne. “That’s quite the to-do list. Is Detective Warner on Lou’s case too? How did you convince him to keep it under wraps?”

“He is on the case, but he’s not the one who kept it under wraps. Uncle Lou had connections in the press, and I called in a favor.”

I had a sudden moment of realization. “Wait. That night in your kitchen when you told me someone didn’t want news about Portia’s bodyguard getting out, you were talking about yourself, weren’t you? You kept it out of the news.”

He nodded. “Yes. Until Portia is someplace safe, I don’t want word getting out that someone is picking off people in her inner circle. It will be too messy. People just know Lou died, not how. And thankfully, her bodyguard doesn’t have a family that is going to come around asking questions anyway.”

A pang of sadness hit me at thought I’d been right about nobody mourning the bodyguard. “What was his name?”

“Tyler.”

I wasn’t sure if that was a first or last name, or perhaps he was mononymous, like a celebrity, but I paused in a moment of silence for Tyler.

“So, does Warner know all this? That both deaths are tied to Portia?”

“I’m sure he has suspicions by now, but I certainly didn’t tell him. After I pulled strings to keep Uncle Lou’s murder quiet, and then Tyler showed up in my closet, Warner was ready to arrest me. Mr. Mitchell, the lawyer you met at the station, used every trick in the book short of bribery to get him to let me off.”

I thought back to the day of the estate sale and how quickly the crime scene tape had come down. “I wondered how you managed to clean that up so quickly that day. Little did I know. And sorry if I added to the stress. I had no idea what was going on.”

He glanced sideways at me, and his frown tugged up on one side. “Yeah, I was already losing it, and then this feisty professor shows up and starts yelling at me about candlesticks.”

“Yelling at you?” I said with a gasp, completely scandalized. “For the tenth time, I was only trying to prevent a rip-off in progress.”

“Well, you got a lot more than you bargained for.”

“Good one.”

A yawn suddenly hit me like a rogue wave. I shielded it with my hand and felt my eyes swim with moisture. “Was it the same case with the funeral? It was already in motion, so you had to see it through, even though you were in a rush to help Portia?”

“Yes and no. It was partly to keep up appearances. I didn’t want Connor to think he’d rattled me—and I knew all of Uncle Lou’s clients would want to pay their respects. But also”—he shrugged his bulky shoulders—“I wanted to. For Lou. So I planned it.”

I reached over and squeezed his arm in sympathy. “What are you going to do with the house now? Or, well, I mean, after all this is sorted out.”

He tilted his head and looked at me from under his lashes with a grin. “I admire your optimism that this is going to get sorted out.”

“Uh, it better get sorted out. Otherwise, you can turn around and take me home right now, because I still have to make tenure before summer is over.”

His laugh was tight and laced with uncertainty. “And what exactly does making tenure involve?” He shot my earlier question about his job back at me.

“Chaining myself to my desk to crank out research papers, serving on committees, teaching courses, earning awards, getting grant funding, presenting at conferences, and mostly sucking up to the old white men who run my department and university until they decide I have jumped through enough hoops to be unfireable.”

“You have to do all that this summer?”

“No. I’ve been doing all that for the past five years. I still have to finish some of it, but if I don’t submit my case—basically, a portfolio documenting all that—by the end of this summer, my clock is up and I’m no longer eligible.”

“And then what would happen?”

I turned sideways and gave him a serious look, not liking what he was implying. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, and thank you for voicing my biggest fear, but I would lose my job and have a hard time finding another one.”

“I see. So it is very important not to mess this up.”

“Correct.”

He thoughtfully stroked his chin, like he was realizing the full weight of my situation. “Have you always wanted to be a professor?”

“Pretty much. Both my parents are professors. Though sometimes I wonder if I’m really cut out for it.”

“What makes you say that?”

I shifted, feeling the familiar wave of insecurity wash over me. “Well, for starters, I’m constantly fighting an uphill battle in a male-dominated field. Many of my peers are particularly skilled at questioning my qualifications and overlooking my work. It’s mostly just exhausting, but when it happens enough, you start to wonder.”

“Fuck them,” he said sharply.

I jumped in surprise and laughed as heat splashed my cheeks.

“Sorry,” he said with a soft grin. “But seriously, fuck them. As far as I can tell, you’re brilliant.”

I was thankful for the cover of darkness shielding my deep blush. “Well, that’s kind of you to say, but you don’t have much to go off of.”

“Sure, I do. You got us out of the Slates’ house, didn’t you? And you put the pieces together about Portia on your own. And on top of being smart, I think you’re pretty brave. I can’t imagine being a professor prepares you for being kidnapped and chased, and you’ve handled tonight like a pro.”

I snorted. “That’s generous. I was mostly just reacting to the situation.”

“Are you capable of taking a compliment? Or did those insecure cavemen you work with train it out of you? Stop downplaying what a badass you are.”

“I—” I snapped my mouth shut when his words landed like a little epiphany.

Did I downplay my abilities? My competence? When I paused to consider, I felt the reflex to deflect praise coiled under my tongue like a spring. Had that always been there? I frowned and mentally spit it out.

I looked over at him and caught his eye. Even in the dim light, I felt like he could see right through me. He gave me a nod, like he knew his words had penetrated. Perhaps he was right. I’d thought the scariest thing I had to face down was my tenure committee, but I’d escaped a kidnapper tonight.

I chewed away the shy smile bending my lips. “I am not a badass.”

“I beg to differ. The move with the chair in the basement was one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen. Give yourself some credit.”

My traitorous lips betrayed me and fully bent upward. “Okay, fine. I guess that was a little badass.”

“Mmm-hmm. And if you can survive all this, then I have no doubt you can survive whatever a bunch of stuffy old professors are making you do to make tenure.” He said it with enough conviction to boost my confidence and flutter my heart.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Glad to see you’re already making progress on the compliment front.”

I sat back against my seat and smiled.

We cruised along in a comfortable silence for several moments. When he spoke again, his voice came out warm and soft. “To answer your earlier question, I don’t know about the house. I did plan on selling it, but then . . .” Even in the dark, I noticed the shy flush in his cheeks. His eyes said but then you showed up. It sent my belly loose with tiny flapping wings.

“But then some feisty professor’s nephew opened your closet, and a body fell out, and now you’re on the lam with said professor, who everyone thinks is your girlfriend, heading to some undisclosed location to finish the very dangerous job of rescuing your childhood friend, who is married to a megalomaniac billionaire, who wants to kill both of you?”

He cast me a look like he wanted to laugh, but knew he shouldn’t. “That about sums it up.”

“Hmm. Well, I, for one, am rooting for you. You seem like a solid guy. And I’d rather you didn’t die.”

He snorted. “Thanks. I’ll do my best.”

I yawned again and repositioned my sweater pillow, taking comfort in his words even if we were joking around. “Tell me your favorite childhood memories. What were Portia and her brother like as kids? What were you like?”

A warm, slightly surprised sound popped from his mouth. Almost like he didn’t believe I was interested in knowing. “Sure. I’ve got a few stories.”

I listened to the soft hum of his voice, a velvety blanket over the car’s purr, and eventually gave up trying to keep my eyes open.