by Nora Roberts
“I would’ve told you if your family hadn’t been here.” Then she accepted, and told the whole truth. “I probably would’ve put it off for a while. I might’ve told myself you keep getting hammered, and there was no point adding to that until I knew more or it had been resolved in some way. I might have. But that’s not about trust.”
“Pity?”
“Concern. And my own confidence. I don’t like the word ‘conceit.’ I needed to take care of myself, make decisions, handle problems and, yes, maybe take on other people’s problems to build up the confidence Derrick shattered. I need to know I can take care of things when there’s no one to depend on but myself.”
“And when there is someone else to depend on?”
Maybe he was right again, and that was where it got sticky. And maybe it was time for a little self-evaluation.
“I don’t know, Eli, I just don’t know the answer because I haven’t given myself that choice in a long time. And still, I leaned on you that night, after I was attacked. I leaned, and you didn’t let me down.”
“I can’t get involved again with someone who won’t give as much as she takes, take as much as she gives. I found out, the hard way, if you do you end up empty-handed and bitter. I guess we both have to decide how much we can give, how much we can take.”
“I hurt you because I didn’t reach out.”
“Yeah, you did. And you pissed me off. And you made me think.” He rose, picking up dishes. Neither of them had done justice to the meal. “I let Lindsay down.”
“No, Eli.”
“Yeah, I did. Our marriage might’ve been a mistake, but we were in it together. Neither of us got what we wanted or expected out of it. At the end, I couldn’t stop what happened to her. I still don’t know if she’s dead because of some choice I made, choices we made together, or just some random piece of bad luck.
“I let my grandmother down, going longer and longer between times coming here, or seeing her at all. She didn’t deserve that. We almost lost her, too. Would it have happened if I’d spent more time here, if I came here to stay with her after Lindsay’s murder?”
“You’re the center of the universe now? You want to talk conceit?”
“No, but I know, I know I’m somewhere in the center of this, and all of it’s connected.”
He turned to her, didn’t go to her, didn’t touch her, but stood with that space between them.
“I’m telling you, Abra, I’m not going to let you down. I’m going to do everything, whether you like it or not, whether you sleep with me or not, to make sure nothing happens to you. And when this is done, I guess we’ll see where we are, and where we go from there.”
Because she felt a little boxed in, she rose. “I’ll do the dishes.”
“I’ve got it.”
“Balance, or as you said, give-and-take,” she reminded him. “You fixed the meal, I clean up.”
“Okay. I want a copy of your schedule.”
She felt, literally, prickles of warning at the back of her neck. “Eli, it changes. That’s the beauty of it.”
“I want to know where you are when you’re not here. I’m not a goddamn stalker. It’s not about keeping tabs or trying to sew you in.”
She put the plate she was holding on the counter, took a breath. “I want to say I didn’t think that, or mean that. And I also realize something I didn’t until today, until all this. I realize I brought more baggage with me from D.C. than I thought. I think—hope—it’s down to a small hand tote. I hope I’ll figure out how to toss that out.”
“It takes time.”
“I thought I’d finished the time, but apparently not quite. So . . .” She lifted the plate again, slid it into the dishwasher rack. “I’m here most of the day. I have my morning class, church basement, and I have a massage at four-thirty. Greta Parrish.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
She finished loading the dishwasher, began to wipe off the counters. “You haven’t touched me, not once since you came up the steps to my cottage. Why is that? Because you’re mad?”
“Maybe some, but mostly because I don’t know how you feel about it.”
Her eyes met his, held. “How do I know how I feel about you touching me if you don’t?”
He brushed a hand down her arm first, then turned her toward him. Drew her in.
She dropped the rag on the counter, locked her arms around him.
“I’m sorry. I was holding things back, holding things in. But . . . Oh God, Eli, he was in my house. He went through my things. He touched my things. Derrick went through my things. He touched my things, broke things while he waited for me to come home.”
“He won’t hurt you.” Eli pressed his lips to her temple. “I won’t let him hurt you.”
“I have to get past it. I have to.”
“You will.” But not alone. Not without him.
When she left the next morning, he told himself not to worry. Not only was the church less than two miles away, but he couldn’t think of a single reason for anyone to harm her.
She’d be back by mid-morning, and once he knew she was safely in the house, he could work. With his mind too busy to slide into the story, he went down to the basement, spent nearly an hour unloading the shelves, walking them back.
It took more time to open the panel from the basement side, and once he had, he decided to oil the hinges.
The creak added interesting atmosphere, but should he want to surprise anyone, silence served. Armed with a flashlight and a box of lightbulbs, he worked his way through the passage, testing each light, moving on, until he’d reached the third floor.
Once he’d oiled those hinges, he considered, then angled a chair in front of the panel, checked to make sure he could open and close it again, then backtracked.
He repositioned the shelves, again tested so he could easily move around them, in or out of the panel. Then he reloaded them.
Camouflage, he thought, should he want or need it.
Trap set, or nearly. All he needed was the hook and the bait.
Since working in the passages transferred dust, grime, he changed, washed up, then spent some time checking out video cameras and nanny cams on the Internet.
He was pouring himself his first Mountain Dew of the day when Abra came in with her market bags.
“Hi!” She dumped the bags, reached into one. “Look what I got you!” She turned to Barbie with a big rawhide bone. “This is for a good dog. Have you been a good dog?”
Barbie slapped her butt to the ground.
“I thought so. Have you been a good boy?” she asked Eli as she unsealed the bone.
“Do I have to sit on the floor?”
“I got makings for my lasagna, which is legendary, and for tiramisu.”
“You can make tiramisu?”
“We’re going to find out. I’ve decided to have a good feeling about today, and part—a good part—of the reason is balance. Or knowing we’re working on finding a balance. Another?” Now she wrapped her arms around Eli for a squeeze. “I found out you don’t hold grudges.”
“I can hold grudges with the best of them,” he countered. “But not against somebody I care about.”
“Grudges are negative energy turned inward, so I like knowing you can let go. And speaking of negative energy, I stopped by my cottage, and it felt better. Not all the way back, but it felt better.”
“Due to a smelly smoking stick?”
She drilled a finger in his belly. “It worked for me.”
“I’m glad, and sincerely hope you’re not thinking we need a couple of cases of smelly smoking sticks to offset the negative energy in Bluff House.”
“It couldn’t hurt, but we can talk about that later.”
Much, much later, he also sincerely hoped.
“Are you going to work now? I’ll just strip the bed and grab the laundry, then I’ll stay out of your way until you break.”
“Fine. But I want to show you something first.”
“
Sure. What?”
“Up.” He jerked a thumb at the ceiling before taking her hand. “You missed a spot.”
“I did not.” Automatically insulted, she picked up her pace as they went upstairs.
“A really big spot,” he added. “Up.”
“Third level? I only do that once a month. Just vacuum and dust. If you wanted it back in use, you should have—”
“Not that. Not exactly. I’m thinking about moving my office up there, though, into the south gable.”
“Eli, that’s a fabulous idea.”
“Yeah, I’m playing with it. Great light, great view from there. Really quiet. Too bad I don’t paint or sculpt because the old servants’ hall would be a hell of a studio.”
“I’ve thought the same. One of the beach-facing bedrooms would be a wonderful little library—like for your reference books, a kind of library/sitting room when you wanted to take a break but not actually stop work.”
He hadn’t thought that far, but . . . “Maybe.”
“I could help you set it up if you decide to do it. Oh, these wonderful ceilings. So much potential, and I’ve always thought it was a shame not to use the whole house. Hester told me she used it years ago to paint, but found she worked better in her own sitting room, and best of all outside. It’d be hard on her to do two flights of stairs in any case.”
“The whole house is exactly what I’m thinking of using again.” He walked over, opened the panel.
“Oh! My God, this is fabulous. Just look at this.” She dashed over to do just that. “This is so utterly cool.”
“The lights work.” He demonstrated. “Now. And it goes all the way to the basement. I moved the shelves out so the panel works down there.”
“I would’ve played princess warrior in these as a kid.”
“Really?” And he found he could picture it perfectly. “See, you missed a big spot.”
“I’ll get on that, if you make sure any spiders bigger than a housefly are dispatched first. You should open up all the panels.”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“To think of all the times I’ve cleaned in here and never realized this existed. It’s . . . He doesn’t know about this.” Eyes alight, she looked at Eli. “He doesn’t know.”
“I don’t think so. He sure as hell hasn’t used it. It took Mike and I and a lot of sweat to move that armoire. And it took me over an hour working alone to move the shelves out far enough to get through.”
“Laying an ambush. Eli—”
“I’m thinking about that, too.”
“Proactive instead of defensive.” Hands fisted on her hips, she strode around the room. “I knew this was going to be a good day. We can do something. We could catch him in the act.”
“I’m thinking about it. It’s not as simple as jumping out and saying boo. If the simplest explanation is also true, he’s not just an intruder. He’s a murderer. We don’t just jump into this.”
“We plan,” she agreed. “I think creatively when I clean. So I’ll get started, and we’ll both think.”
“And we wait to hear from the cops.”
“Oh yeah.” She deflated a little. “I guess we do. Maybe they’ll trace the gun and this will all be done. It would be better that way. Not as exciting, but realistically better is better.”
“Whatever happens, I won’t let you down.”
“Eli.” She took his face in her hands. “Let’s make a new pact, and promise not to let each other down.”
“That’s a deal.”
Twenty-two
HE HAD TO WORK. HE LET PLOTS AND PLANS FOR PROACTIVE ambushes cook in the back of his brain, but he had to get the story out, get those words on paper.
He hadn’t heard from his agent about what he’d sent her, but the holiday weekend bogged things down. And, he reminded himself, it wasn’t as if he was her only client.
He wasn’t even an important client.
Better to keep riding the wave of the story, and he’d have more to send in. If she had problems with what he’d already done, he’d deal with it.
He could go back, polish up another five chapters, send it off to give his agent a bigger part of the whole. But the story was running hot for him, and he didn’t want to risk dousing it.
He didn’t break until well into the afternoon when Barbie pulled him out of the zone by sitting at his knee, staring at him.
Her signal, he’d already learned, for: Sorry to bother you, but I’ve gotta go!
“Okay, okay, one second.”
He backed up, saved, and realized he felt a little buzzed, as if he’d downed a couple of excellent glasses of wine in rapid succession. The minute he stood, Barbie scrambled out of the room. He heard her running down the steps at warp speed.
She’d sit, quivering, in the kitchen, he knew, waiting for him and the leash. He called out absently to Abra as he moved toward the kitchen, and found the dog exactly where he’d expected.
He also found an artful club sandwich under clear wrap, topped by a Post-it, on the counter.
Have some lunch after you walk Barbie.
XXOO Abra
“She never misses,” he murmured.
He took the dog out, enjoyed the break nearly as much as Barbie, even when it began spitting chilly rain. With his hair damp, his dog soaked and his mind sliding back toward the book, he answered the phone in his pocket on his way up the beach steps.
“Mr. Landon, this is Sherrilyn Burke, Burke-Massey Investigations.”
“Yeah.” His guts tightened a little, anticipation and dread. “It’s good to hear from you.”
“I have a report for you. I could e-mail it, but I’d like to go over it with you in person. I can come out to you tomorrow, if that’s convenient.”
“Is there something I should worry about?”
“Worry? No. I like the face-to-face, Mr. Landon, where we can both ask and answer. I can be there about eleven.”
Brisk, he thought, professional. And firm. “Okay. Why don’t you send me the report in the meantime, then I’ll be up-to-date when we ask and answer.”
“Good enough.”
“Do you know how to get to Whiskey Beach?”
“Had a nice weekend there several years ago. And if you’ve been to Whiskey Beach, you know Bluff House. I’ll find you. Eleven o’clock.”
“I’ll be here.”
Nothing to worry about, he thought, as he took Barbie inside. But of course, everything about Lindsay’s murder, the police investigation, his own position worried him.
But he wanted those answers. Needed them.
He took his iPad and his lunch into the library. Abra would be running the vacuum or something upstairs, he assumed. And the rain made him want a fire. He lit one, then sat down with his tablet. He’d read the report while he ate.
Ignoring other e-mail for now, he downloaded the attachment from his investigator.
She’d personally reinterviewed friends, neighbors, coworkers—both his and Lindsay’s. And reinterviewed Justin and Eden Suskind, as well as some of their neighbors, coworkers. She’d talked to Wolfe, and had cornered one of the assistant prosecutors.