Stacy huffed loud like a teenager, socked him in the arm and ran back upstairs to finish her hair and makeup. Steve followed Kirin into the kitchen, grabbed a coke from the fridge and leaned against the sink.
“So,” Kirin said, a little unnerved, “what’s new?” He took a swig and ignored her question.
“How’s the book coming?”
His tone held something…anger maybe? Or sarcasm. Kirin stopped chopping and turned toward him. “Pretty well, why?”
Never taking his eyes off her, he answered her question with another question. “What do you know about Todd’s parents?”
“Oh,” Kirin said, “Not much. Only that Todd worships his dad, calls him ‘Father.’” Kirin made a funny face. Steve’s expression didn’t waver, so she continued, “His stepmom isn’t much older than us, and I guess the trophy wife. That’s pretty much all Stacy’s said about them.”
Kirin turned back to cutting the veggies, but Steve’s stare never faltered. She could feel his eyes looking at the back of her head. Kirin picked up the veggies and headed straight for him at the sink to rinse them off.
“Move it, mister,” Kirin said, smiling to lighten his mood. Steve scooted over about a foot, looking at her as if he was in the middle of solving a puzzle and never cracked a smile.
Steve took another sip of his coke, still watching her every move, “So, that’s all you know about them?”
“Oh wait, I do know they’re from out West somewhere, and your sister is absolutely crazy-nervous, so you’d better not mess this up for her!” Kirin poked him in the arm playfully.
“Trust me,” he said, “I won’t be messing this up for her.” He threw his drink in the trash and walked outside to talk with Todd.
Kirin shook her head. Cryptic dude. The whole FBI thing had made him weird.
Kirin checked the time. She needed to change for the party, text Sam to make sure he was on his way and check her cameras. She stopped to take a deep breath. She’d rehearsed everything she’d say to Saul enough times in her head but the idea of being face to face with the man sent hatred through her veins.
Kirin picked up her phone. With three swipes she moved the camera outside to the left and right. Nothing looked out of place. A carpenter bee darted in front of the camera making her squeal, knocking a few veggies off the counter. She looked around Stacy’s kitchen holding her chest, then picked them up and washed them off. Get a grip, Kirin.
Her playfully abusive text to Sam, chiding him about being late, went through but no reply. Kirin trotted into the guest bath off the kitchen. She changed into a nice sleeveless brown silk blouse with dress khakis and copper wedge heels. She fixed her hair and makeup and sprayed a touch of Sam’s favorite perfume. She came out of the bathroom at the exact same time as Stacy walked down the main stairs.
Kirin had to stop and pick her jaw up off the floor. Stacy wore a beautiful spring royal blue dress that hugged every curve and set off her dark skin and hair.
“Wow.” Kirin let out a whistle and smiled. Stacy had always been pretty, but today, today she looked stunning.
Stacy grinned wide and appreciative. “Thanks, friend. I needed that, and I’m so glad you’re here with me.”
“I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”
~*~
In one corner of Stacy’s formal living room, they’d set up a small bar complete with sparkly crystal glasses, top-shelf liquors, wine, and beer. Her house looked like a page from Southern Living magazine. Huge bouquets of purple and yellow flowers were placed strategically on tables and in corners. Freshly laundered linens and all her good china, crystal and silver were lying about in complete harmony. It was 5:20 and Stacy’s guests would be there any minute. Kirin went back into the kitchen to check her phone. No text from Sam.
Odd. He didn’t like to be picked on without replying some sarcastic remark, and he hated to be late. She put her phone on vibrate and dropped it in her pocket. She looked out through the kitchen into the foyer. Stacy fanned her face with one hand and rearranged flowers on the table with the other. Kirin poured two small glasses of wine and handed one to her friend. She’d fretted over this day for two weeks.
“They’re going to love you,” Kirin told her.
Todd walked over and for once, sounded generous adding, “Of course they will!” Todd wrapped his arm around Stacy and hugged her. Her tight shoulders loosened until the sound of a car pulling in wafted into the living room.
“They’re here,” Stacy whispered, exhaling. Todd grabbed her hand and said, “It’ll be fine, relax.”
Todd and Stacy walked hand in hand to the door. Kirin jogged into the kitchen where Steve had taken up residence. She placed the pan of chicken and veggies into the oven, setting the timer. The front door opened, and voices carried into the kitchen.
“Stacy, this is my father. Father, this is Stacy.”
Stacy said, “Nice to meet you,” to Todd’s father, but Kirin noticed either he spoke softly, or he said nothing in reply. Todd then introduced Stacy to his stepmother, Jennifer.
“Nice to meet you,” Stacy said in her singsong voice. Knowing Stacy’s judgmental side, Kirin knew that voice meant she’d sized up the new stepmom.
Kirin peeked through the kitchen doorway and into the formal dining room to catch a glance of Todd’s parents. They stood in the entryway talking with their backs to her. From her vantage point, she couldn’t see much.
The back of the man’s silver head and the thin, straight line of his stepmom’s tanned jaw. She was taller than him with long blonde hair falling effortlessly down the back of her short red dress. When she turned to walk into the main room with Stacy, she was relieved the woman had a kind face. She’d be grateful for Stacy’s hard work.
Todd and his father hadn’t turned yet, but his father’s booming voice carried. So much for thinking he was soft spoken. He was balding, and the back of his neck looked tan and leathery.
His gray fitted suit, Kirin noticed, looked tight as if it’d been made for him, yet he’d gained a pound or two. As he and Todd turned toward the room Kirin’s breath caught in her throat.
She couldn’t rip her eyes from the sight of his bright yellow tie.
Chapter Thirty
All at once, the air around Kirin’s face became stagnant. Too thick and too hot. She couldn’t force air into her lungs. Recognition of this man hit her like a wall of heat in August. As she stumbled back toward the sink in the kitchen, her vomit reflexes kicked in and she ran through the kitchen to the half-bath next to it. Kirin shut and locked the door and threw up her entire day’s food. She slumped to the cold tile floor making a small thud. A soft knock at the door made her body freeze and her mind alert all at once.
“Hey?” Steve whispered. “You okay?”
“Fine,” she whispered back, voice shaking. “I’ll be fine.”
It was him. Todd’s father was Saul. Dear God. What was she going to do? Please God, don’t let Sam come here, she thought. With shaky hands, Kirin pulled her phone out of her pocket and checked for a message from Sam.
Nothing.
An email silently popped through from her video monitoring system telling her that her cameras had initialized due to movement in her house. Kirin searched her brain for a minute. Rosa was headed out of town with her sister, so she knew it wasn’t her. Might be Sam. But why would he be there when he was supposed to be with her? Kirin texted Sam telling him not to come to Stacy’s because she wasn’t feeling well, and she’d be home later. Still no answer.
Something was wrong. She could feel it. Voices close by in the kitchen sounded as if they were right outside the bathroom door. Kirin laid still, holding her breath and trying to get her head to stop spinning. She prayed her stomach would settle and not heave again. Stacy spoke eloquently, giving Jennifer and Saul a quick tour.
“…and here’s the kitchen, and my brother Steve. Steve, this is Saul and Jennifer Calamia, Todd’s father and stepmother.”
“Hello,” Steve said, using his
authoritative voice, “pleasure to meet you both.” His voice and footsteps trailed off. He walked away from her door. Jennifer commented on the great smelling dinner.
Oh God, Stacy, please don’t say my name. Kirin tried telepathically sending her a message.
Stacy said, “Well, I can’t find my cook, otherwise known as my best friend. I don’t know where she’s run off to, but she’s mainly responsible for that wonderful smell.”
Steve was quick to speak up.
“Stacy, I think your cook’s not feeling well and went home.” Steve’s voice shifted as he continued, “Saul, why don’t you let me buy you a drink over here in the living room?”
The muffled voices sounded fainter as they dispersed from the kitchen.
Kirin stood, trying like hell not to throw up again despite her pounding head. She braced herself on the sink as her options fled through her mind.
If Saul found out she was Stacy’s friend, he could use it against her and possibly hurt Stacy. How in the hell was she going to sneak out of Stacy’s house unseen? And where was Sam? Did he know Todd was Saul’s son? He had to. And if he did, why didn’t he warn her before now?
Kirin checked her phone again. The pictures had uploaded to her phone, but they were fuzzy. Shadows of three humans were all that was visible. She nor Laura’s husband had thought about how the sun would affect the lighting. The men looked like Transformers with the sun at their backs and their faces dark.
She had a live feed from inside coming through, but it hadn’t loaded yet. Part of her hoped it was a mistake and they weren’t inside yet. This was disastrous. The main player in her equation was inside Stacy’s house with no cameras and standing in front of someone she cared about. Her phone buzzed. The video finally loaded.
They hadn’t turned on the lights in the house, so she couldn’t make out anything except shadows. No noise came through except the ticking of the clock on the wall closest to the camera. She hadn’t thought that through either, dammit.
Something gnawed at the back of her mind. The kitchen timer. The timer for the chicken would ring soon to remind her to take the chicken out of the oven. She had to make a run for it now or she’d be discovered.
Kirin pressed her ear to the bathroom door. No noise in the kitchen. The laundry room and back door were a few feet from the bathroom and they too were quiet. Lucky for her, she’d left her keys and purse in the car with the keypad engaged.
She could release her car door in a matter of seconds by entering the code.
Switching off the light, she pulled the door open a crack. Holding her breath, she peeked out into the hallway.
Nobody.
From her vantage point, she saw the kitchen timer. Fourteen seconds remained. Oh God. Faint footsteps and muffled laughter upstairs reached her ears. Stacy was showing them the workout room upstairs.
Good. Kirin took off her wedges, sucked in a quick breath and ran out the back door. She’d parked her car in the grass on the right back corner of Stacy’s wide driveway. As she caught sight of her car, she couldn’t have been happier, nobody parked behind her.
With shaking fingers, she entered her code. Red light. Crap. Once again, pressed in the numbers, slower this time. Thank God, it opened. Kirin slipped into the driver’s seat, grabbed out her car key and prayed while she started the car. Her hand shook as she backed down the driveway too fast with her head down as if she stole it.
The entire drive back to her house she prayed, “Lord, help me. Please keep the boys and Sam safe.”
Kirin rang Sam’s number several more times, but he never picked up. She couldn’t help but think Saul’s men had him. She wondered what they’d do to him. She hoped he was one of the shadows she saw on her phone. Kirin tried calling Rosa to make sure it wasn’t her at the house, but she didn’t answer either.
Why aren’t they answering their phones?
Slow down. She hadn’t even thought through what she would do when she got there. What was her plan, to waltz in the front door? Sneak in the back? They’d be ready for that. Then it came to her. What if she parked in the trees between Arthur’s driveway and her own? She could rush to the old trap door in the yard beyond the swing set and enter the safe room. Where Jack had stashed his guns. Yes! Why hadn’t she thought of that before?
Turning off the main road she cut her lights. Twilight had settled in, but it wasn’t yet dark enough to need them. She pulled into the mouth of Arthur’s paved driveway and parked her car inside the small dense patch of trees that separated his property from hers.
She prayed Arthur wouldn’t notice. This would shield her from their view as she ran toward her backyard. One final time, she checked her phone and found nothing from Sam. She touched the icon to initialize the cameras to record and prayed it worked.
The sound of her car door shutting was drowned out by the songs of the cicadas in the trees. Kirin crouched and pulled her purse across her body. Then stood and jogged through the dense trees toward her backyard. She stopped and crouched again, low at the base of the forest and held her breath. Her eyes darted from left to right searching for movement but found none. If she could get the outside hidden door of the panic room to open, she could sneak down, grab a gun or two and quietly enter the house through the pantry.
Not a foolproof idea, but the best she had. Finding the grass-covered door would be as impossible as opening it, plus there were no trees to hide her, but it was getting darker by the minute and she had to try. She’d be exposed in the backyard with only the swing set as cover.
She hoped they were all occupied trying to find the book. Kirin snuck down the property line a little farther where the trees thinned out on the left side of the house. Her eyes adjusted to the fading light. Taking a deep breath, she ran from the woods to the side of her house. Her heartbeat thumped in her chest. She must have looked around the corner thirty times. She had to move before someone saw her.
The unwelcome inhabitants she knew were inside, still hadn’t turned the lights on and weren’t moving around from what she could tell. Kirin crouched low, ten feet from where the painted rock marking the hidden door laid in the yard. The door was heavy, creaky and covered with grass. In theory, if she could make it to the handle, she could yank on it and scurry down before anyone caught her.
A stick snapped behind her. Kirin spun, ready to fight. A rabbit spooked by her sudden movement bolted away toward the small forest. Shaking her head, she shook out her shaking hands and cinched her cross-body purse tighter. After a beat, she crawled, head down and fast toward the rock.
Halfway there, she glanced down and saw the flaw in her plan. Her dark shirt might have been a good idea in the fading sunlight, but her khaki pants stood out like a rose in the snow. She was exposed. Crawling past the rock, her hands searched frantically around the grass for the handle. Her left hand skimmed across something hard and metal. Praise God, there it was.
Kirin squatted over the top, yanking upward as hard as she could. The door had been closed tight since before Jack died, but she hoped the reason it wouldn’t budge was only a rusted seal and not that the door was locked. As long as it was only rust, she could yank hard enough to open it. Besides, she had no plan B.
Two more times she pulled as hard as she could, looking around between times. The third try, the door moved, making a sound and giving her hope. Kirin summoned up all her strength, sucked in a deep breath and pulled.
The grass crunched behind her.
The thud of wood hitting her skull rattled inside her head. Then pain and darkness. As she fell to the ground, the last thing she remembered was a faint shadow of a tall man holding what looked like Will’s old wooden T-Ball bat.
Chapter Thirty-One
Kirin was inside her house. Her face smushed against the cold, wooden floor. She smelled the familiar floor cleaner she used every week.
Her head ached from the inside out, and she faintly remembered being carried in and dropped on the floor like a bag of dog food.
T
he next sense that slowly came back was her hearing. Voices. Male voices stood above her, but she couldn’t figure out who was doing the talking. She knew enough to stay still with her eyes closed and listen. But she had to focus her mind and concentrate to determine what was going on.
“Stupid son of a bitch!” One man yelled. “We’re not supposed to kill her yet.”
She knew that voice.
It was Sam, only different, harder somehow.
“Sorry, boss,” came another voice. Younger. She assumed this was the one who’d hit her on the head.
“Boss, she dug for something. You think she buried that book out there?”
“No, dumb ass, it’s in her purse. Pick her up, carefully this time, so I can get it off her.”
The 2nd man lifted her up and Sam yanked off the purse, angry and harsh. Her body was lowered back to the floor.
Quick footsteps and a third man came into the room. He stopped right in front of Kirin’s face. She could smell the leather in his shoes and the smoke on his clothes.
“You ready to do some real work and stop whoring around lover boy?” The second man sneered. She knew that voice too. Scar. So, the one that hit her over the head had to be Babyface.
“Right. Trade getting laid and paid for breaking thumbs? Nah. I got the better deal. All you get is to go home alone or sleep next to this goon every night.”
The room fell silent and she imagined Scar seething. Sam’s voice had sounded smug yet angry. Kirin fought hard to hold back her fury, so she wouldn’t move. She wanted to jump up and punch Sam in the face. How could she have been so stupid? He didn’t love her. His promise and her father’s money weren’t nearly enough to keep him honest. This was all part of his plan. Sam was one of Saul’s leaders. She knew that now. She’d been a fool to trust him.
But wait. She knew better, didn’t she? This was part of his game. He had to play both sides to keep them alive. Her head injury clouded her ability to reason. But it didn’t stop her sudden urge to sweep his legs out from under him.
Entangling: Book One of the Kirin Lane Series Page 23
