Page 115 of Wasted

The door cracked open.

A brown-haired head appeared.

Cillian rolled the throttle one more time.

The guy stepped out onto the concrete walk behind the building. Clinton Glenn.

“Hey, Clinton.” Cillian gave him an unfriendly grin. “Surprised to see me?”

The curator’s eyebrows lowered as he stared at Cillian.

“Or maybe you’re more surprised to see my bike.” Cillian leaned back on the seat and swept his hands down to include the bike and himself. “We’re both still alive, no thanks to you. Guess you didn’t fix my bike or my jeep as well as you thought, huh?”

“Who are you?”

“What is it they always say in the movies?” Cillian swung a leg over the bike to dismount and started toward the curator. “Oh, yeah. I’m your worst nightmare.”

“Now hold on.” Glenn moved back toward the door. “I don’t know who you are, and I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Cillian paused. Wouldn’t do any good to scare him into the building too soon. “You sure about that, Glenn? Then I suppose you don’t know anything about the fraud and theft either, right? Those paintings you had forged so you could sell Briscoe’s real ones on the black market.”

Glenn paled, his eyes widening.

Cillian grinned for real this time. “Oh, yeah. We know all about those. We found Briscoe’s evidence. You know, the stuff you were looking for when you pushed Victoria down and made me chase you to your car. Briscoe did a good job collecting all that. Very thorough.” He crossed his arms over his jacket. “I handed it all over to the cops yesterday. Same morning you tried to kill me.”

“I…I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Glenn swiveled toward the door, fumbling to find the knob.

“Hold it, Glenn.” Cillian stalked toward him, stopping when the curator faced him again. “Just one last thing. While you’re waiting for the cops to come get you for the fraud—oh, and for murdering Briscoe—don’t even think of trying to hurt Victoria Weston again.”

Cillian swapped his fake casual tone for a growl and pinned Glenn with a full-on glare. “If you do, you’ll have to go through me.” He moved toward the curator.

Glenn spun away and yanked open the door, running inside as fast as he could.

No surprise. With any luck, the information Cillian had just shared would make the curator keep on running. Right into a jail cell.

A rap on the door jerked Victoria’s attention away from the notebook computer on her bedspread. She rose and went to her bedroom door, pulling it open. “How did it go?”

Robert smiled, but the curve of his mouth quickly fell into a frown, as if losing the battle with the heaviness that furrowed his brow. “Can I come in?”

“Of course.” She backed away from the door and went to the edge of her bed to sit.

He scanned her room. “Your room is as ridiculously clean as it was at home.”

“Thank you.” She forced herself to wait to ask the questions she wanted to until he sat in the wingback chair in the corner.

He was clearly trying to stall or avoid something with humor.

She would give him a moment, though she’d been waiting an hour to hear how his session with Sydney had gone. “And thank you for agreeing to see Sydney this afternoon. I didn’t expect you to fit her in so soon.”

“We had that cancellation.”

Victoria nodded. Robert had already explained that when he had texted earlier. He’d also shared that he would come to Victoria’s house for the session since Sydney would be more likely to open up in a familiar, comfortable environment. “Did it help, holding the session in my living room instead of at your office?”

He met her gaze. “Yeah. And Max was a big help, too. If he wasn’t so afraid of people, I’d want to borrow him as a therapy dog.”

“I’ll tell him you said that.” Victoria gave Robert a small smile. Then waited another few seconds for him to elaborate. Unless he wasn’t going to share anything. “I know you can’t divulge specifics. I would just like to know if the session was helpful for Sydney.”

He nodded. “I believe it was. It’s a pretty disturbing situation.”