by Claire Kent
She felt a sudden ache of knowledge. Maybe Mike wasn’t happy. And maybe it wasn’t just Drayton he wasn’t happy with.
“He doesn’t want to leave me,” she said again, almost brokenly this time.
“That scared you, didn’t it?” Helen reached over and pushed gently against her knee. Before Julia could figure out exactly what she’d meant by that gesture, Helen continued, “And are you really going to tell me that you and Drayton are all right? Are we not sitting in the car at eight o’clock at night, waiting to follow Drayton because you think he’s up to no good?”
“Well, he’s hiding something,” Julia muttered. “And it was your idea.”
Helen laughed. “Like I was going to miss out on the chance to play detective. But the distrust does speak to something intrinsic in the relationship that’s not as it should be.”
“Yeah. Drayton has changed. Mike insists he’s gotten selfish, but I’m not sure that’s it. It’s more like he’s…he’s driven. Like something is pushing him, and everything else kind of falls away in the face of it.”
“Do you suppose he’s possessed by a demon?”
Despite herself, Julia chuckled. “Helen, I’m serious.”
“I know. But you said that hot guy at the antique shop made everything sound kind of creepy and dark—like some sort of cult.”
Julia had been focused on the exit of her parking garage—visible halfway down the block. “Antique-shop man would be a perfect cult-leader, but it didn’t seem like that. I’m not sure what it seemed like.”
“Well, we’ll see what happens tonight.”
They both saw Drayton’s Lexus pull out of the garage at the same time. Helen put the car into gear while Julia put back on her seatbelt. Helen pulled out into traffic, which was heavy at this time of evening, and followed several cars back.
Drayton took a different route than he had the day Julia had followed him, so she knew he wasn’t heading to the antique shop. He got onto the highway and went south, and Helen tailed him as well as she could, with a lot of advice from Julia.
They’d almost left the city limits when Drayton finally got off on an exit. Julia was worried when they got stopped at a light, only one car between them, but it was dark out and Drayton wouldn’t recognize Helen’s car.
While they waited for the light to turn green, Helen turned to look at Julia. “They’re probably jealous of each other, don’t you think?”
She’d returned to their previous topic, but Julia knew exactly what she was talking about. “They never used to be. They were happy to share me. Drayton always enjoyed watching—he still does. And Mike…”
“An exhibitionist?”
“Maybe.” Julia gave a half-smile as Helen eased her car into motion again as the light changed. “I must be one—at least a little.”
“Oh, I know,” Helen agreed with a smirk.
Sneering good-naturedly and flushing a little, Julia went on, “Mostly, I think he enjoyed the freedom. Great sex. And no exclusive demands from either of us. The fact that there were two of them meant he never got too much pressure.”
“But that’s changed.”
“Yeah. It feels—” She broke her thought when they saw Drayton’s Lexus turn off the main road.
“Where’s he going?” Helen muttered, slowing down and peering down the side road. They’d driven past the suburbs and into the country. There were still houses, but they were widely scattered.
“Turn,” Julia said. “We’re far enough behind.”
Helen turned onto the road in the direction of Drayton’s tail lights. She drove slowly, partly because it was dark and she didn’t know the road. But partly so Drayton wouldn’t realize they were following him.
They drove for more than five minutes before they saw Drayton pull into a long drive.
“What now?” Helen asked.
“Drive past it,” Julia said, feeling a stab of anxiety, “So he won’t wonder why the car behind him is stopping. Then turn around and come back.”
Helen did as Julia suggested, driving half a mile up to the next drive and turning around to pull onto the side of the road across from the drive Drayton had turned onto.
There was a house set back far from the road. It was big, and old, and rambling. Rather run-down. Definitely creepy.
“For God’s sake,” Julia muttered. “It’s like something out of a Gothic novel.”
“How appropriate,” Helen said, sounding almost delighted as she peered through the darkness toward the house. She’d turned off her headlights before they’d approached the drive, and it was too dark for anyone from the house to see them. “Just perfect for a mystery cult.”
“So what should we do?”
Helen moved her cell phone to her pocket and pulled a flashlight out of the glove box. “Let’s go snoop.”
Julia could see the excitement sparking in her friend’s eyes, and she felt a glimmer of matching enthusiasm herself. But the big, rambling house looked like something from a horror movie in the darkness, surrounded by old trees and without any exterior lighting. “It’s kind of creepy, don’t you think? You really want to act like Nancy Drew?”
Zipping up her jacket, Helen chuckled. “You’re right. It could be dangerous. The hot antique dealer might jump out at us.”
“Seriously, Helen. We should be careful. We don’t know what’s going on in there. You’re not planning to break into the house or anything, are you?”
Helen sobered at Julia’s wary tone. “No. You’re right. Just because Drayton is in there doesn’t mean it’s definitely safe. I suppose we can’t barrel in stupidly and get ourselves caught or captured. Or worse.” She exhaled and made a face. “What a downer.”
Headlights approached them on the road, and Julia felt a flare of panic, realizing that the lights would illuminate the location of their car. If it was someone else going to the house, that could be a problem. “Duck,” she whispered urgently, lowering her voice by instinct rather than reason.
Helen obeyed, and they both lowered their heads below the level of the dashboard, so the approaching car wouldn’t see anyone was sitting in it.
It was a good thing they’d done so, since the car slowed down and turned into the same drive that Drayton had—as Julia learned when she peeked through the window after the lights had faded.
They both straightened up and peered into the darkness at the unkempt house.
“Maybe he has secretly become an interior decorator and has a job at this house. He’s afraid that admitting it will besmirch his manly pride,” Helen suggested.
Julia choked on involuntary laughter and searched her mind for what might Drayton really might be doing at this house. The car that had just turned in looked suspiciously like the antique-man’s car. The one that had almost hit her.
“Drayton, what are you doing?” she muttered, just under her breath. He was acting so strangely. None of it made any sense.
“Are you sure you don’t just want to ask him what he’s up to?”
“I have asked him. He just lies to me.”
“You better talk to Mike about it, then.”
“I’ve talked to him some, but I don’t want it to seem like I’m taking sides or—”
“Screw taking sides. This affects him too. And it does feel like this could be potentially dangerous. I don’t think it’s smart to just trust Drayton and ignore all the warning signs.”
“Yeah, I’ll talk to him.”
“You know, if I were in a relationship with a man who did nothing but lie to me—even if it was supposed to be a no-emotional-strings relationship—I might be tempted to give up on it.”
“I’m not giving up on it.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t do that. And it would all fall part.” Julia closed her eyes as the wave of distress she felt when she thought about that possibility. “I would lose…everything.”
“Oh.”
Julie cut her eyes back to Helen at her friend’s tone, which so
unded like she suddenly understood something. “What did that mean?”
“Nothing. Just that I can understand how it would feel like you’d lose everything.”
They both sat in the car in silence for a few minutes, staring blankly at the house.
Out of the blue, Julia murmured, “It will atone.”
“Huh?”
“I said, ‘It will atone’,” Julia repeated. “Sorry. I was just thinking.”
“Channeling Rochester, are you?”
“What?” Julia turned from her fixed stare on the house to look back at Helen.
“You just quoted Jane Eyre. I asked if you were channeling Rochester. I guess it’s appropriate. The creepy, Gothic house and all.”
“It’s from Jane Eyre?” Julia asked, genuinely confused. “I didn’t remember that. Drayton said it, actually. That’s what I was thinking about.”
Helen leaned forward, her voice suddenly urgently. “He said ‘it will atone’? When? In what context?”
Julia shrugged. “A few days ago. He asked if I’d been happy for the last year, and then he muttered, ‘It will atone’. What’s the big deal?”
Helen put her seatbelt on without warning and put the car into drive. “We’re getting out of here.”
She seemed so urgent that Julia didn’t object. Just put on her seatbelt too. “Why are we leaving?”
“Because, if Drayton has an insane wife hiding in the attic, I sure as hell don’t want to run into her.”
***
Helen dropped Julia back at her car—in the parking lot at work where she’d left it when her friend had picked her up earlier—and then Julia headed straight home.
To her disappointment, Mike wasn’t there. She called him but got no answer. She tried twice more over the next half-hour but still couldn’t reach him. She grew increasingly impatient, annoyed, and a little worried—although she did her best to talk herself into the recognition that Mike didn’t always have to be at her beck-and-call.
Still. He should have been home by now. Or he should have at least picked up his phone on one of her calls. Where the hell was he, anyway?
It was after ten when he finally called her back. She snatched up her phone before it rang the second time.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded at her greeting.
“Nothing. I just wanted to talk to you, and I didn’t know where you were.”
“Sorry.” His tone held a real note of understanding, although the pitch was as matter-of-fact as always. “I left my phone in the car. I’ve been in the university library for the last three hours.”
“The library? Why?”
“Doing some research.”
She instinctively knew why. “On Drayton?”
“Good guess.”
“Did you find anything?”
“Maybe,” Mike said, sounding oddly reluctant. “I wanted to run it by you.”
“I’ve got a couple of things to tell you too,” she admitted, realizing she was going to have to come clean about her silly, incautious attempt to spy on Drayton tonight. “Let’s meet somewhere so we can talk about it.”
Neither of them needed to say that it wouldn’t be wise to talk about private matters regarding Drayton in an apartment that belonged as much to him as to them.
“Let’s meet at that coffee shop next to the park,” Mike suggested. “In about fifteen minutes.”
She agreed and went to put on her shoes and grab her purse. She left the apartment immediately and, since the coffee shop was only a few minutes away, she arrived first.
After getting herself a cup of coffee, she managed to snag her favorite table in an isolated nook. She waited for Mike, trying to plan out the best choice of words for her explanation of this evening’s activities.
When Mike arrived, for some reason she noticed more acutely than normal how he attracted the attention of nearly every female eye in the shop. He looked normal, in jeans and a long-sleeved blue shirt. Handsome, casual, quietly confident, with slightly rumpled hair.
Unlike Drayton, Mike appeared completely oblivious of all the interested looks he was receiving from the females in the place. He found her immediately and gave her a smile—fond and private, making her want to preen—as he ordered his coffee and paid.
She noticed as he approached her table that he was carrying a file folder and a legal pad. He sat down without speaking, took a sip of his black coffee, and cocked one of his eyebrows at her.
She returned his questioning stare with one of her own.
“You first,” he said at last. “What have you done to make you look so guilty?”
Julia hadn’t thought she looked guilty. She’d thought she was doing a good job of looking blithe and unconcerned. But Mike had always been able to read her better than anyone else.
Forgetting her carefully rehearsed explanation, she blurted out the story of how she and Helen had followed Drayton to the old house.
Mike’s jaw tightened visibly, although it relaxed when she said they hadn’t gotten out of the car. He didn’t say anything until she had finished her story.
After a minute’s silence on the completion of her tale, he said, “I always knew Drayton had secrets. Even when we were roommates in college, he would disappear for days and nights and never tell me where he went. I never really cared before, but…”
“But what?”
“But it’s different now.”
She studied his face, thinking through why it might be different now. Then, “Anyway, it looked strange. Furtive. Like he really shouldn’t have been at that house.”
Mike stared at a spot on the floor, three lines appearing between his brows. He was a good problem-solver. Maybe it was the way his mind worked—he was an engineer, after all—but he could so easily take small, random details and put them together to form a convincing, coherent whole.
“Well,” he said at last, “let me tell you about what I found.” He opened the file folder, looking as sober and studious as she’d ever seen him.
“I can’t believe you actually went to the university library,” she said, prompted by the incongruity between his solid, physical appearance and the scholarly way he was reading the file.
To her surprise, he frowned. “I’m not illiterate. I’ve had my share of education. How do you think I became an engineer?”
“I know,” she said quickly, anxiety flashing up as she realized he was a little offended. “I didn’t mean it like that. You know I think you’re brilliant, but you don’t look like the library type. Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m not really.” He shrugged off his reaction and concentrated again on essentials. “Anyway, I was looking up stuff on Six, that thief Drayton had the clippings on. I had to get one of the research librarians to help me. She helped me dig into stuff for almost two hours.”
This time, Julia frowned. She could just imagine how helpful and willing the female librarian had been to answer Mike’s questions and meet his needs. “What did you find?” she asked, pushing aside the unworthy possessiveness.
Mike opened his folder and looked down at the top sheet of paper. “He was evidently some sort of mystery. Some people thought he was a legend, since they didn’t think any one man could successful get away with so many high-risk thefts. The thefts stopped completely seventeen years ago. There are all kinds of theories about Six’s identity. Here is one of them.”
He pulled a print out of a photograph and laid it in front of her.
Julia stared down at an attractive man who looked sophisticated, affluent. Like Drayton.
“That could be Drayton’s father.”
“I think it must be. The resemblance to Drayton is really strong. He was a local man, actually. Had a really successful business in imports—but he might have had this secret side-business. Could this be the asshole at the antique shop?”
Julia almost smiled at his calling the man an “asshole”—she assumed because the man had hit on her. “It’s not him. Although it looks like the two could be
friends. Maybe that’s his connection to Drayton.”
“If that guy was just a friend of his father, then why not tell us? Why all the mystery?”
She sighed. “I guess maybe Drayton taken up his father’s old career. Do you think he’s a cat-burglar or something?”
“I thought about that. But then why did he get so much more secretive lately? And why all the weaponry? He feels different now than he used to be, so I think there must be something darker driving him. I don’t think there’s going to be an answer to this mystery that you want to hear.”
Julia could see both concern and determination in the lines of his face, and she swallowed hard. “Maybe not.”
Mike finished off his coffee. “Until we get this sorted out, I think you should be careful about being alone with him.”
“Mike,” Julia began, a warning note in her voice.
“I know what you’re going to say, but we don’t know what’s going on. He could be a danger to you. Look what happened with that car.”
“I really think that was a warning and not an actual attempt on my life. I know you don’t trust him. But I still care about him, Mike, and the three of us are still in a relationship.”
Mike tightened his lips. “Are we?”
She felt a familiar pang in her throat. “Yes, we are. It’s not fair to make decisions about our relationship and keep Drayton out of the loop—not even give him a chance to explain. We owe him that, at least. I really care about him, Mike. I know he’s keeping secrets, but I care about him.”
“I heard you the first time.”
Mike’s features were composed and unrevealing, but something impalpable was simmering beneath the surface. She could sense it, even though she couldn’t specify where she saw the signs. It looked like Mike was restraining himself, reining himself in, holding himself back by force.
Holding back some sort of aristeia.
It scared her, in a way she couldn’t explain.
“I’m trying to be fair to both of you, and I’m feeling ripped apart here,” she said, vaguely startled that her voice sounded so wobbly. “I don’t know what you want from me, Mike.”