Page 5

C HAPTER 5

T he warm evening embraced me in a thick hug when I made it outside. I was still wearing the jeans I’d worn up to the city and had put on a tank top to combat the heat. I’d stowed the key in my bra, in case something went amiss, and I needed to keep it hidden somewhere less obvious than a pocket. By the time I’d cut through the side gate and into Anthony’s yard, sticky sweat had sprung up beneath my arms and at the nape of my neck.

My heart thrummed wildly as I approached the house. I almost immediately regretted my decision to be more adventurous. I threw a glance over my shoulder at Libby’s house, for fear I might find her spying on me from a window. The coast was clear, but the vantage point made me realize what a direct shot into my bedroom window Anthony had from his backyard. I flushed at the thought and made mental note to keep my curtains closed.

Before I could stop myself and fully consider that what I was doing was a terrible idea, I climbed the back steps and headed for the door.

It opened before I even reached it. Of course it did; Anthony had been waiting all day for my arrival.

“Hi,” he said. “Thank you for coming.” His voice was as smooth and velvety as the night.

“My sister knows I’m here and she’ll come looking for me if I don’t come back,” I burst by way of greeting. The first part was a lie, and the latter only true if Libby woke up from the couch and found the note that I’d stuck to the alarm clock in my bedroom set to go off at midnight: I’m next door. If I’m not home by midnight, call the police.

Anthony’s mouth tugged up on one side. “Okay,” he said, and sounded like he was trying not to laugh. “Please come in.”

A draft curled around my ankles as soon as I stepped inside, as if the house had reached out to grab me. Anthony had the air conditioner on, but the chill felt like more than simply refrigerated air being pumped through vents. Something sinister hid in the walls, and its presence made me shiver.

I wondered fleetingly if Portia was somehow stashed in this very house.

When I entered, I intentionally stepped out of the hall and into the office where I’d seen the safe. If there was a chance Anthony was going to open it in my presence, then I wanted to see what was inside. The painting, a ship on a stormy sea in swirls of blue, gray, and black, had been swung back over the hole in the wall.

He followed me into the room and stopped in the doorway, notably blocking it.

My heart kicked up into my throat. I fought to keep my voice steady. “So, did you fix the issue of people thinking I’m your girlfriend?”

He shoved one hand into his back pocket and combed the other through his hair. “I told the police, yes. And that reporter from this morning.”

“You think that’s enough?”

“It’s the most I can do.”

I glared at him. “Well, that’s a defeatist answer if I’ve ever heard one. I’ll have you know the chair of my tenure committee asked me about it because he saw it on the news. He said there better not be any distractions that could compromise my case.” I narrowed my glare even sharper and pointed a finger at him. “I swear, I am this close to the finish line after breaking my back for five years, and I can’t give them any reason to doubt me. If you do anything to mess it up . . .”

He stepped back from the threat in my voice. “Penny, I—” He couldn’t say another word before the sound of shattering glass cut him off.

We both flinched, and Anthony strode across the room and grabbed my arm so quickly, I got dizzy. Before I could blink, he was yanking open the closet door and shoving both of us inside.

“What—?”

“Shhh!” He clamped a hand down over my mouth and pulled the door shut. He pressed his back to the wall and held me flush against the front of his body. My nose hovered an inch from the closed door. The small space swallowed the light, save a tiny line near our feet. Dangling coat arms brushed against me in scratchy wool, and I felt the hard corner of a filing cabinet digging into my thigh. The closet hardly had room enough for storage, let alone two adults.

“Don’t make a sound,” he said on a nearly silent breath right beside my ear.

I nodded as much as I could in his grip, having no idea what was going on, but trusting the fear in his voice. His hand was warm and hard over my mouth. Small, rough calluses dotted the otherwise-soft skin that smelled like clean soap. He squeezed me like a vise. My heart thrashed in my chest. I was sure he could feel it pounding against his arm where it was fastened over me. His other arm wrapped around my waist. I couldn’t have moved even if I had the space.

I strained to hear over the sound of my own panic. I held my breath, aside from tiny sips of air, taking them in through my nose as quietly as I could. Somewhere in the distance, on the other side of the door and my raw terror, I heard the sounds of voices, the crunch of a boot on broken glass.

“Is he home?” someone said. The closed door muffled the man’s deep voice.

I tensed in fear and felt Anthony’s grip tighten. His chin pressed into my temple. Never had I been held so tightly. The dizzying power of it made me wonder if he was protecting me or desperately trying not to get caught. Or maybe both.

“Should we wait for him to come back?” a second voice asked from out in the room, closer this time.

I heard Anthony suck in a breath. I couldn’t see a thing, but felt his lips inches from my ear.

Heavy footsteps approached the door. I glanced down at the line of light near our feet to see a shadow cut through it. I squeezed my eyes shut, silently begging whoever was on the other side not to reach for the knob. The way Anthony was holding me like our lives depended on not getting caught had me burning in silent terror.

The footsteps stopped, and I sensed someone large and dangerous on the other side of the door. A wolf outside our tiny house. I couldn’t tell if I was feeling my own heart beating erratically or if that second wha-whomp every other time was Anthony’s heart pounding into my back.

Please leave, please leave, please leave! I screamed inside my head.

One second expanded into ten, thirty, a thousand, an eternity.

Finally the footsteps resumed and moved away from the door.

“No. He’ll get the message,” the first man said. Another crunch of glass underfoot, and then silence.

The tension in Anthony’s body didn’t release for a solid minute. When he loosened his arms, I felt like a balloon that had been let go—weightless and buoyant. He reached around me for the doorknob and leaned both of us forward to open the door slowly. The light crept back in, bit by bit. I didn’t fully exhale until I saw the room was empty.

Anthony let out a breath and stepped around me. “Stay here.” The look in his dark eyes was deadly serious.

I couldn’t do anything but nod.

He marched to the office doorway and looked side to side in the hall before disappearing around the corner.

I listened to him walk toward the back door, the crunch of glass again, and realized only then my legs were shaking.

I wobbled to the desk chair and sank into it, the worn-in leather gently hissing under my weight. I held my head in my hands and took deep breaths. The room spun. I jumped at the sight of someone passing by the door, but realized it was only Anthony heading to the front of the house in his sweep. After five of the deepest breaths I could manage, he reappeared at the door.

“What the hell was that?” I asked.

His face was flushed and the unsettled jump in his eyes telling, but he tried to play it cool. “A couple of visitors.”

“What did they want?”

His full lips pressed into a line, instead of answering. He only then seemed to take in the sight of me slumped in the chair with my forehead in my hand and elbows on the desk. “Are you all right?”

I glared at him in response. “Are you serious? What was that?”

He huffed a breath and dragged a hand through his mussed hair in a move I’d nearly memorized by now. “That was . . . a thing.” He pivoted back into the hall.

I pushed up out of the chair, my legs less wobbly now, and followed. “A thing? Two people just broke into your house!” I sucked in a sharp breath. “Wait, is that who you expected when I rang the doorbell last night?”

I noticed then he had no gun stashed in his pants, which was perhaps the reason he’d shoved us in the closet.

He didn’t answer me, but instead swung open a narrow door at the end of the hall and pulled out a broom. Broken glass glittered on the polished floor. Those men had punched in the back door’s window. Anthony silently set about sweeping up the glass. The plastic dustpan looked like a toy in his big hands.

“Anthony? Can you hear me? What’s going on?”

He turned, still bent over, and held up a hand. “Give me a second, please.”

“A second for what?”

He stood to face me, suddenly towering over me. “To think.” He then bent back over and scraped the pile of broken glass into the dustpan and carried it out the back door, which still stood wide open.

I followed him with needles in my gut at fear those men were waiting in the backyard. The night felt thick and close. The only light in the dark yard was what spilled out from the house and the moon above. He crossed to the trash bin sitting outside the detached garage and tilted the dustpan, dumping in the pile of glass. Then he opened the garage door, the hinges groaning in greeting, and he stepped inside. “Come here, I could use a hand.”

Once more, I followed.

The inside of the garage wasn’t entirely the horror show of rusty bone saws and bear traps dangling from the ceiling, like the twisted nightmare I’d imagined, but it wasn’t totally innocent either. A roll of plastic sheeting stood like a statue in one corner, piles of rope coiled in snakes of different thickness: thin enough to bite through skin and thick enough to tie up a boat. Spools of fishing line, but no poles. An axe. A hard black case with a heavy clamp sat atop a workbench next to a pair of pliers stained with something dark. A clear bag of zip ties spilled over. The crowbar hung from a hook on the wall beside a hammer.

“Umm . . .” I muttered as Anthony went to a dark corner where an assortment of different-sized panels of wood leaned against the wall. He looked through them as someone might a bin of vinyl records before he found the one he wanted.

“Grab that hammer, will you?” He nodded at the workbench while he hoisted the piece of plywood out of the pile. “And nails.”

I hesitated, wondering if I should touch anything in the garage in case it implicated me in a crime. “What exactly are we doing?”

“Fixing the window. The nails are right there.” He moved past me with the board and flicked his chin at a set of drawers beneath the workbench.

I glanced around and found a rag stained in what I hoped was oil and used it to pull open the drawer. I grabbed a handful of nails out of a jar, their thin shape a fistful of icy spikes in my palm, and found the hammer hanging on the wall. I followed Anthony back out into the night. He already stood on the back porch, holding the board up to the broken window.

“Come here and help me hold this.” He moved to the inside of the door and beckoned me with a hand.

I did as instructed and followed him back inside. He closed the door and held the board up to cover where the window used to be. “Nails?”

I presented a handful. He took four and stuck them between his teeth like a row of metal toothpicks. “Hold this in place.” I shoved the rest of the nails in my pocket and handed him the hammer, understanding how I would be assisting. I gripped the board, its splintered edges biting my palms, and held it in place. “Don’t let it slip,” he said around the nails, and pulled one out. He reached to the board’s top corner and pounded the first nail in, with a series of loud whacks. I flinched at each one while I did my best to hold the board steady.

With his arms up over his head, and me beneath, sandwiched between him and the door, and not unlike how we’d been in the closet, the heat of him encompassed me once more. He finished the first nail and leaned over to do the second in the opposite corner. I watched his hands as he pounded it in, one holding it with surgical precision, a point between his thumb and index finger, and the other, strong and laced with veins as he wielded the hammer.

“You can move now,” he said behind me when he finished, still talking around the nails.

I slipped out from between him and the door and watched him pound in a bottom corner. I hadn’t thought I was attracted to manual labor, but I had never seen Anthony Pierce use a hammer before. “Why are you so good with your hands?”

He paused and looked at me, the final nail still sticking out of his lips. He pulled it free and set about securing the final corner. “We’re covering a hole; it’s not rocket science. More nails, please.” He held out his hand.

I fished the remaining nails out of my pocket and watched him hammer them along the sides of the board, further securing it in place. “Well, sure. But you still didn’t answer my question.”

He stayed silent and finished the job. Once the last nail was in place, he stood back and assessed his work with a nod. Then he reached out and locked the door.

I thought he was doing it for safety purposes; his house had just been broken into, but when he turned to me and held out his hand, the locked door took on a whole new meaning.

“I’m going to need that key now.” His steady, low voice put the tiniest jump in my nerves.

It occurred to me then—locked inside his cavernous house, standing in front of him as he held a hammer—that I actually wasn’t afraid of him. If he intended to hurt me, he would have left me to face the intruders, instead of stowing me away in the closet. Not only that, but I had all the leverage, seeing I had the key, and he’d clearly gone to desperate measures to open the safe with a crowbar in its absence.

I took a step back in the hall, which once again felt narrow and cramped. “No. You can’t have it. Not until you answer some questions.”

His eyes narrowed. I felt them dart to my pockets, like he might try to search me. Little did he know, he wouldn’t find anything there but lint. I felt the key burning my skin inside my bra like an invisible flare.

My face flushed at the thought of him searching thoroughly enough to find it.

His gaze softened and he sighed. He tried for patience. “Can I please have the key?”

“No.” I pivoted on my heel and marched down the hall toward the front of the house. I knew a three-year-old who could play keep away like a champ, so I was ready for a battle. “We had a deal: the key for information.”

He followed, the size of him apparent and looming behind me. “It’s not information you want, trust me.”

I spun around to glare at him. He almost ran into me. “I beg to differ. You just shoved me into a closet and held your hand over my mouth like we were going to die if we got caught, and I think I deserve to know why.”

A bolt of guilt shot through his eyes. His lips tightened, and he shook his head with a quick, remorseful angst. “Fine. Three questions.”

“How about ten?”

“You really have ten things you want to ask me?”

“At least.”

“Well, that’s too many.”

“Fine. Five.”

He glared down at me. We’d made it to the edge of the foyer. The sweeping staircase spilled into the room to our left; the giant chandelier dangled from above, throwing dim sparkles of light. I saw his jaw working as a silent battle played out in his eyes.

“Fine. Five, but I get veto power over what to answer.”

I knew it was as good as I was going to get. “Deal. Who were those guys?”

“Veto,” he said plainly, and stepped around me into the foyer.

“What? You can’t veto the first question.” I followed on his heels.

“I can veto anything I want; that’s how a veto works. It’s better if you don’t know. Next question.”

We rounded into the kitchen. Remnants of whatever he’d had for dinner littered the butcher-block island. From the looks of it, something meaty and juicy with a salad.

“Fine,” I said. “What does this have to do with Portia Slate?”

“Veto.”

“Oh, come on!”

“Also better if you don’t know,” he said, and pulled a bottle of scotch out of a cabinet. He grabbed two crystal glasses and set them on the island. I didn’t like scotch, but after what had just happened, I wasn’t opposed.

“Well, this is going nowhere fast. How about you volunteer some information I’m allowed to know, then. Tell me a fact.”

He filled each glass with two fingers of caramel-colored liquid and spoke without looking up. “Okay. You look great in a bathing suit.”

My face caught fire; I could feel it scorching like the surface of the sun. Surely, I was ten shades of scarlet.

He sipped his scotch while sliding the other glass across the island toward me. When he eventually looked up, his eyes raked over my body like he was reliving a memory of seeing me in a swimsuit. He must have seen me in the backyard with the kids. He shrugged with a sly grin. “You said you wanted a fact.”

My tongue tripped over itself. “I, um, yes. I did say that.” I picked up the glass, for lack of a better idea for what to do with myself, and sipped the harsh liquor. It went down in a smooth, fiery gulp, like someone had selected the bottle with great care and paid a large sum for it.

Anthony rounded to my side of the island and leaned back against it. The heat and smell of him seemed to mix with the liquor. I didn’t know which ingredient was making me drunk. “Here’s another fact, a few more, actually. You’re not a very good spy; I’ve seen you watching me, I find you exasperating yet fascinating, and I wonder what it is you find so interesting about me, because you’re obviously intrigued enough to be here.”

I looked up at him and studied the planes of his handsome face. Memory of his body squeezing mine in the pitch-black closet sent a warm rush through me as I noticed the ochre-colored flecks in his dark eyes. In the right light, they could have been gold.

“You seriously don’t know?” I asked. My voice came out low and breathy. Transfixed. “Why I find you interesting?”

He held my gaze like it was something alive and precious between us. His lips parted, and a soft, oaky breath spilled out before he spoke. “I would imagine it has something to do with the body in the closet, but other than that, no.”

He was right; the body in the closet was the primary factor. But strip that away, and he was still an enigma. Brooding, curt, surprisingly polite when he wanted to be. Not to mention gorgeous, smart, and good with a hammer. Despite everything else, gazing into his eyes had me wanting to know something personal about him. Anything.

“Tell me something about yourself, Anthony.”

He kept staring at me, slowly blinking his thick lashes. The hard edge in his eyes melted away and a welcoming vulnerability replaced it. His voice came out in a soft, raspy murmur. “My friends call me Tony.”

I was so lost in the heavy haze of his voice and his stare, the warm liquor pooling in my blood, that I didn’t think of the words coming out of my mouth. “You have friends?”

He snorted an amused, awkward laugh. “I’ve got a couple, yeah.”

I wanted to drown in my glass of brown booze. “Sorry. That sounded so rude. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just, you seem like a lone wolf.”

He polished off his drink and set the glass on the island. “That’s fair. Uncle Lou was really the only person I had; no one else in the family talks to us. I can guarantee I’ll be the only family member at his funeral on Tuesday. But besides that, people like me can’t really afford to get close to others. It creates leverage, and that’s a dangerous thing in my line of work.”

The statement left a lot to unpack, but one question was obvious. “And what does your line of work involve exactly?”

He folded his bulky arms and tapped his thumbs against his biceps. His lips pursed out like he was debating what to disclose, and I wondered if I was going to get another annoyingly vague answer. “Technically, I’m a financial consultant. It’s just that some of the stuff I consult on isn’t exactly on the books. I’m basically the suit side of Uncle Lou’s business.”

I blinked in shock to have learned anything at all. “And he was, what, a hit man?”

“No!” he said with an affronted laugh, even though I wasn’t kidding. All evidence pointed to the obvious.

“Okay, then what was he?”

He sighed with another pass through his hair. I wondered if he’d go bald early because of all the tugging, but based on the thickness of the wavy mane, the chances seemed slim. “Look, sometimes people get into bad stuff, and they need someone to make it go away. That’s what Uncle Lou did. He made bad stuff go away for people.” He watched me as I put the pieces together. I felt his eyes outlining my face, my lips, dipping down to my throat and back up again.

I knew what he meant; I just didn’t think such people actually existed in real life. “So he was a fixer.”

He silently held my gaze for a few telling beats. “And all of this”—he gestured to our general surroundings, and I took it to mean everything from the house to the body to the break-in—“was part of a job he was working on. That’s why I’m here, and why I need that key.”

I felt it vibrating like a tuning fork, where it was buried in my bra. Anthony’s eyes dipped to my hip again, my pocket, and I tried not to give myself away that he was looking in the wrong place. “What’s in that safe?” I asked.

He watched my lips through hooded lids as I spoke, as if he wanted to bite them. “Something important.”

I fought to keep my voice steady while I tingled all over. “And what happens when you get it open? Are you going to finish the job and leave?”

“That’s the plan,” he said in a tone so close to a growl, I gripped the island for support. “So,” he said, leaning in even closer, “I really need you to give me that key.”

I was under his spell. Completely hypnotized. I would have done anything he asked. And judging by the size his eyes grew to when I dug my hand into my bra, I had as much power over him too.

I removed the key and held it between us.

He took it from me, and a sincere smile spread across his face. If I expected him to invite me back into the office to see what was in the safe, I was sorely mistaken. “Thank you. I’ll walk you home now, if you’d like.”

I blinked at him. “That’s it?”

“Yes.”

I folded my arms and frowned. “You didn’t hold up your end of the deal, pal. I still don’t know what this has to do with Portia Slate.”

He released a breath that sounded painfully weary. “I really shouldn’t answer that question, but I have one for you: What do you know about her?”

I held his gaze, glad to be getting somewhere. “I met her once. She came to campus when the Slate Foundation donated a computer lab. We had coffee together . . .” I paused to emphasize the next thing I said. “Her bodyguard was with her.” I could tell from the look on his face that he understood my implication. “How did he end up in your closet, Anthony?”

His jaw was working so hard, he hardly opened his mouth to speak. “I really can’t tell you that.”

“ Can’t or won’t ?”

“Shouldn’t. For your safety.”

The word safety landed like a stone dropped in my belly. I suddenly felt cold.

He let out a stiff breath. He stood very close and rested a hand on my shoulder. His eyes melted into a sincere plea. “Penny, I’m very sorry you’re involved in this. But the more you know, the worse this will end up. The best thing you can do is stay away from me.”

“Gladly. But do I need to be worried?”

He weighed his response for longer than was comfortable, and looked like summoning the answer was causing him distress. “I’ll keep an eye on things.”

“‘Keep an eye on things’? What does that even mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like. Now I need you to go home.” He hooked his hand behind my elbow and started leading me out of the kitchen.

I tried to dig in my feet, but the floor was slick, and his grip was firm. “Wait!” I wormed my way out of his hold and faced him with my hands up. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me about Portia.”

“Well, I’m not going to, so maybe you should make yourself comfortable in one of the bedrooms upstairs. That would make it easier to keep an eye on you anyway.” He tugged at his collar like he was uncomfortable and frustrated. It was the first I’d seen him truly flustered, other than the closet incident—which, somehow, there were two of now.

I defiantly held my ground and crossed my arms. I was quickly running out of bargaining chips and still didn’t have what I’d come for. “Well, what if I go to the police and tell them I know who was in the closet?”

“Go ahead. They already know.”

I flinched. “What? How?”

“Because I told them.”

It was the last thing I expected him to say. My face folded in a frown of confusion. “Then why isn’t it all over the news?”

He gave me a hard stare, which sent a shiver prickling my skin. “Because someone doesn’t want it to be, Penny.”

The silence that followed his statement might as well have been a scream. It echoed through my mind like a banshee telling me to run.

Several pieces clicked sharply into place.

“Right. Okay, then,” I said, and started to back away. I needed to get out of the house, but I didn’t want to turn my back on him. “I’m going to head home now. Thank you for the chat. I hope you have a nice night.” Words kept falling out of my mouth like books from a broken bag.

Anthony watched me go with his lips hinting at a smug, little grin as if he’d finally found the right button to press to get me to leave. “Do you want me to walk you home?”

“Oh no. I’m fine,” I said with a wave of my hands and a confidence I didn’t feel. I was going to sprint, hop the fence if I had to, and hide under the covers all night.

“Okay, Penny. Have a good night,” he said with a little wave as I disappeared around the corner into the foyer.

“Good night.” As soon as he was out of sight, I dashed for the front door. I tore it open and ran down the front steps, not even bothering to close the door behind me. I skirted the side of the house, glancing over my shoulder to make sure he hadn’t followed, and made my way back to Libby’s gate, which I’d propped open. I didn’t fully breathe until I was on the other side of it.

Inside, Libby slept on the couch in front of a glowing TV, as expected. I left her there and hurried up the stairs.

It wasn’t until I was in pajamas, tucked into bed with the curtains drawn that I let myself fully process what I had learned.

Anthony said his uncle Lou made bad things go away for people and he’d stepped in to finish the job. Portia Slate was missing; her bodyguard was dead. The first was widespread news; the latter had been covered up, perhaps because it would have exposed the truth about the former.

I squeezed my eyes shut and let the pieces fall into the most logical pattern. A terrifying, chilling mosaic exploded behind my lids, and I was almost certain of one thing.

Portia Slate was dead, and Anthony and his uncle had covered it up.

They were a family of fixers, and they’d fixed her murder.