Perfect Paige

by Ines Saint

  * * *

  The search continued until the early morning hours. Alex felt bad for Boyd, who had a family he’d been away from all night, and who now had to go to the deposition with Alex. Jerome had to be on a flight to D.C. on an entirely different matter later that day. All they’d found that Alex had missed was an empty secret compartment under one of the floorboards at the top of the stairs at Mad Maddie’s. Like Alex, they’d gone on to check the other mansions, too, but Mad Maddie’s had been the only one with the compartment.

  They were weary and exhausted, and later that morning Alex would have the added unpleasantness of having to inform everyone who’d helped them in town that it had all been for naught, while not being able to tell them that another agency would most likely descend on the them sometime soon. It didn’t sit well with him, but he knew it was how it had to be. He’d find a way to warn them once he knew what would happen next.

  More than ever, he felt like he was missing something. But, as usual, too many things came at him at once, and, as usual, he had to prioritize because there wasn’t enough manpower or time to check out every last thought.

  Alex went back to the Tudor for the very last time. He and Boyd had agreed they’d each try to get at least three hours of shut-eye in. It was imperative for them to be sharp and on top of their game during the immunity session.

  Glenn had bet big and lost big, but he’d won the gamble of keeping the whereabouts of the journal to himself. And Alex needed more time to figure it all out . . .

  He drifted off into a fitful sleep, where Mad Maddie was madder at him than ever before, screeching at him at the top of her lungs from the stairs she was supposed to protect.

  * * *

  Paige was in the kitchen preparing lunch bags when she heard the rolling suitcase. It took her a moment to decide what to do. He’d coached the kids. They’d liked him, but it had also confused them. The whole thing had become one complicated blur.

  He was now rolling out of their lives, and that was a good thing. Good-byes would be stilted and strange.

  She walked over to the window and hid behind the curtain, though, to watch him leave. There was no way he could’ve gotten much sleep, and yet, from a distance, he looked like the same strong, solid, icy man who’d stormed into her life nearly five months before. It was his mask, and he needed it.

  He looked up, and she stepped back, not wanting to see anything other than the mask. Too much was running through her mind already. Fear that they hadn’t found the journal on time, that it could land Glenn in more trouble down the road, and the fact that she was selling her car today and needed to do it quickly so she could be at work on time, all flitted in and out of her head.

  Alex left. The kids had picked up their lunch bags and book bags and were waiting by the door. Life went on. Paige fought off a new emptiness. She’d be driving the kids to school instead of walking, to make it to the bank on time.

  “Did you hear that jazz music last night?” Tyler asked.

  “I didn’t hear it last night, but I’ve heard it before. It’s a pleasant tune, though, isn’t it? Can you imagine if they decided to play the big band stuff right in the middle of the night?” Paige asked.

  “You’d be so mad.” Riley grinned from the backseat.

  “I would.” Paige smiled at her through the rearview mirror.

  “I almost got scared when I heard it, but then I didn’t because I didn’t hear anyone in my closet or under my bed,” Tyler said.

  “I told you. Mad Maddie only guards the top of the stairs.” Riley rolled her eyes at him. “You’re such a scaredy-cat.”

  “Mom! Riley called me—”

  “I heard . . . Riley, apologize.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  They arrived at the school and Paige hurriedly walked them to the door before getting back into the car and making her way to Beaver-creek, the only town with a branch of the bank that held her car loan.

  But the moment Paige hit the red light, her brain felt like it had jerked to a stop along with the car. Mad Maddie only guards the top of the stairs . . . It was the second time Riley had said that. She hadn’t paid it any mind the first time.

  But Paige now knew that piece of information was nowhere in the ghost tour notebook. She pulled over to think for a moment, and figure out whether that had any significance. Should she call Alex? No. He was on his way to the immunity session. And Riley might have heard it from someone else, like from a kid at school. She should go back and ask Riley where she’d heard it . . .

  Paige called her grandmother instead. “Let me think . . . Well, Mad Maddie was standing at the top of the stairs when she was throwing things at the agents. Maybe that’s where Riley got the idea.”

  It made sense . . . but still. So much was at stake. Maybe she should take one more look at the stairs in Maddie’s house. She texted Hope and told her she’d be about fifteen minutes late. Hope texted back to say she was already at the bank, but the buyer still hadn’t arrived.

  When Paige turned onto her street, she saw a Toyota Avalon she’d never seen before parked all the way up the street.

  * * *

  Alex turned onto the I-675 ramp and made his way to Cincinnati. Defeat weighed heavily on him. It felt like he was giving up, but what more could he do? His hands were tied. There had been a deadline. He’d left no stone unturned.

  Still, he pulled over onto the shoulder and sat for a moment, reviewing everything in his head, one last time. Manor Row made the most sense. It was even probable that Glenn had been on his way there the other night before he realized he was being followed.

  But he and Paige had conducted a thorough search of Mad Maddie’s and the judge’s houses, and Alex had even gone back a second time. Other mansions on the street had been searched as well. Boyd and Hess had double-checked all of them and had found nothing.

  Alex frowned. That wasn’t true. They’d found the empty secret compartment under a floorboard at the top of the stairs of Mad Maddie’s house. The board hadn’t been loose, but Jerome had stepped on it on his way up and thought it sounded different from the others.

  The song “Stairway to the Stars” floated to the front of his consciousness again, annoying him. The earworm kept playing in a loop in his head. Stairway to the Stars . . .

  Alex jolted up, remembering the sun medallion on the second-floor landing of the Tudor. With time closing in, he hadn’t asked the Amador brothers if any secret compartments had been found under the floorboards there, the way they’d been found at Maddie’s. The Tudor had once had drawers that doubled as steps, after all. He made the call.

  According to Sam, the hardwood floors in the Tudor had been in great shape. No loose floorboards. Nothing had had to be done except sand, restain, and polish . . .

  And Glenn had been told by Dave, Dan’s crew member, that that was the last job in a renovation before a house was put up for sale. Alex’s heartbeat picked up the way it did when he felt he was on to something. All he had to do was unravel it. He thought it all through.

  They knew Glenn had been on Manor Row. The Tudor where Paige now lived was on the corner, which meant he’d had to walk past it. It had just gone up for sale. The floors had been restained and polished, which Glenn knew meant no one would touch those floors again. Was there something about a secret compartment beneath the sun medallion in that damn book he’d stolen? It certainly was unique. Alex shook his head, the pressure and frustration he always managed to keep under control beginning to claw at him.

  Glenn had been desperate, and his ability to think and evaluate had not been at its best. Hiding something in a converted, recently renovated mansion might have seemed like a better option than hiding it in an abandoned place that anyone could enter. He could never have imagined that Sherry, Rosa, and Ruby would buy the Tudor, and that his wife, his sisters-in-law, and his case agent would all move in . . . in fact, most people would have thought it would have taken a lot longer for those apartments to sell. They were on a stree
t full of mostly abandoned mansions, after all.

  Alex thought back to Glenn’s reactions. It had been easy to think he’d been angry only because Alex was there. The day Paige had told Glenn she had been recording him came back to him then. Glenn’s eyes had flitted about, looking for security cameras. And Alex had been so enraged over Glenn’s insults to Paige that he hadn’t fully analyzed the look in Glenn’s eyes. Had there been more panic there than the situation called for?

  Alex stopped thinking. He put the car into gear, took the next off-ramp, and headed back to Spinning Hills. No matter how far-fetched the idea seemed, he had to search the floorboards under the medallion.

  A minute later, Sherry called him. “Paige called to say that Riley was talking about how Mad Maddie only guards the top of the stairs, and how that information wasn’t in the ghost tour. I told her Riley must’ve made it up because she knew that was where Maddie had been standing when she threw the dishes, and that could be true, but what if Riley heard it from Glenn? Do you think it means anything?”

  The stairs. Again. Except everyone was focused on the stairs at Mad Maddie’s, and not on the stairs of the Tudor. “It might, but don’t worry, I turned back, and I’m almost there. I’ll check it out. Please stay where you are, okay?” Alex hung up and speeded up.

  Hope called not two minutes later. There was no buyer at the bank, Paige hadn’t showed up, she wasn’t answering her phone, and Hope was on her way to check on her. “Hope, please listen, I’m already on my way, and I’ll be there before you. Whatever you do, don’t barge in when you get there. Stay outside no matter what.”

  Alex put the red lights and siren on and raced down the highway toward Spinning Hills.

  * * *

  Paige wasn’t about to go to Mad Maddie’s alone, not when there was a car she’d never seen up the street, so she decided to go up to the apartment Alex had just vacated and look out his window, which had a better view of the street, to see whether she could see anything. A quick glance at her watch told her she’d better be quick.

  But the moment she entered the Tudor’s lobby, she halted. Gerard Galloway was at the top of the stairs, on his knees, holding a chisel. He looked down, and they stared at each other for a long moment.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, and started up the stairs.

  “Stay away!” he yelled, taking a frantic look around.

  Paige kept climbing, as things began to fall into place in her mind.

  Gerard reached around him and pulled up a gun. Paige stopped. She was near the top of the stairs and could see a pry bar, a floorboard, and a compartment with the spine of two books facing up. “You knew!”

  Her phone began to ring, but Gerard waved his gun at her. “Don’t answer. Don’t move.” He wiped his forehead with his sleeve, and his hands began to shake. She’d seen the gun at his house before, in a locked glass cabinet. It was old. A collector’s item. Did it even work? “Gerard, put that old gun away, and let’s talk. We can figure this out.”

  “There’s no figuring it out! You were supposed to be at the bank . . . You want Glenn in jail and our family name destroyed! There’s nothing to talk about.”

  Paige’s mind raced. Her confident, self-absorbed, refined father-in-law was acting like a madman. “You’re a reasonable person, Gerard. You won’t shoot me. You know that. All we can do is talk and find a way out of this. Why would you even bring a gun here?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. You don’t understand.” He wiped his brow with his left arm. His movements were jerky, and his right hand was shaking badly.

  “Put it away, or at least point it somewhere else, and we can figure it out. I don’t want Glenn in jail, Gerard. I promise you that.”

  “Then why was he here?” Gerard angrily waved the pistol toward 2B. “You think I don’t know?”

  * * *

  Alex turned the siren off when he reached West Main Street. He parked beside the Tudor and made his way to the front. When he got to the door, he slid a quick look inside.

  His heart stopped. Gerard Galloway was pointing a gun at Paige.

  Alex raced to the back of the house, climbed the back trellis, picked the lock on the sliding door, and entered apartment 2B. Without a sound, he crossed the living room to the front door and looked through the peephole.

  Paige was trying to reason with Gerard, but the man looked anxious and volatile. He was pointing an antique pistol her way. His hands were shaking.

  Heart in his throat, Alex stood ready, waiting for the moment when Gerard pointed the gun elsewhere. The last thing he wanted was to scare the guy. When Gerard angrily swung the pistol toward his door, Alex opened it, slipped out, and pointed his Glock at Gerard in one swift movement. “Lower your weapon, and place it carefully on the floor,” he ordered, while moving toward Paige.

  “What?” Gerard froze. “N–no. You don’t understand.”

  “Lower it now.” Alex locked eyes with him.

  Gerard lowered the gun, but his entire body was now shaking, badly. “Amala’s research could have disastrous consequences. I told her, but she didn’t believe me. The journal has to be destroyed.”

  “We can talk about it, but first you have to place your weapon on the floor,” Alex repeated.

  Gerard’s eyes looked vacant, and his voice grew thin. “The genetically altered bacteria can contaminate large bodies of water with methyl mercury. Glenn didn’t know. Glenn didn’t know.”

  A door opened downstairs. Gerard pointed his pistol at the journal. The metal pry bar and chisel were next to it. A shot went off. Alex dove in front of Paige.

  A split second later, his thigh felt as if it were on fire. Paige screamed. Pain like he’d never known came next. Something was shredding his thigh and wouldn’t stop. Warm liquid began to spread. Paige kept yelling. The words “ambulance” and “pressure” reached him. Her face came near. Hands were on him. The pain got worse. Alex tried to move, to tell them to stop, but darkness swallowed him whole . . .

  Chapter 15

  “How’s he doing? Has he awakened?” Hope asked as she stepped into the room. Gracie was right behind her.

  Paige didn’t lift her eyes, she simply watched Alex, silently willing him to wake up. They’d already been told he’d be okay, but she wouldn’t feel calm until he was back to normal. “He was delirious a little while ago, talking to Mad Maddie and apologizing for not listening to her earlier.”

  Hope sat down next to her. “I wish he’d wake up so I could apologize.” Her gruff voice belied how badly she’d been feeling.

  Gracie sat down, too. “For the hundredth time, it wasn’t your fault.”

  “He told me to stay outside. He told me not to come in.”

  “You were worried about Paige, and all you did was open a door,” Gracie insisted. “It was an accident. A stupid accident caused by stupid Gerard, but an accident all the same.”

  “Shhhh. You’re disturbing him. The left side of his upper lip twitched.”

  They were silent, but Paige soon became aware it was because they were staring at her. She could feel their eyes boring into her, but she couldn’t seem to tear her own eyes away from Alex. Even while delirious and lying on a hospital bed, hooked up to monitors and IVs, he looked strong and capable.

  Hope sighed. “I knew it.”

  “What did you know?” Paige asked, distracted.

  “Come on, Paige. It’s obvious,” Gracie’s gentle voice coaxed.

  “What’s obvious?”

  “You’re sweet on him,” her youngest sister confidently declared.

  That made Paige’s eyes snap away from Alex and latch on to Gracie’s. “Are you crazy? You must be. Because that’s crazy.”

  “It is,” Hope said. “But you are. You’re looking at him all . . . forlornly.”

  “Forlornly?” Paige scoffed. “Is that even a word? It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.”

  Hope hit a button on her phone. “Siri? Is forlornly a word?”

  “Let
me think about that,” Siri answered. “Okay. Check it out.”

  “In a forlorn manner,” Hope read aloud.

  Gracie giggled before speaking into her own phone. “Siri, what does a forlorn person look like?”

  Siri’s no-nonsense voice answered, “Pitifully sad; unlikely to succeed or be fulfilled; hopeless.”

  “Wow. Siri’s a genius.” Hope grinned.

  Paige glowered at them. “Agent Hooke risked his life for me. I’m grateful, I have something like survivor’s guilt, and I’m worried. That’s the look in my eyes.”

  “Don’t be mad. We’re worried, too.” Gracie squeezed her arm.

  “Well, don’t worry about me. I won’t be sweet on anyone ever again. Look where it got me the first time.”

  “Look where it got all of us the first time,” Gracie said, her voice hinting of disdain. “At least you got two cute kids out of it.” She playfully kicked Paige’s foot and managed a rueful smile. “Who knows? The second time could be the charm.”

  “We’re pretty messed up, aren’t we?” Hope sighed.

  “No. Glenn, Gerard, Dr. Kumar, and Muffy are messed up. All of you and all of us are perfectly normal.” Ruby appeared before them, with Sherry, Helga, and Hilda trailing behind.

  Paige looked at them all. If they were normal, well . . . then she wanted to be normal, too.

  Boyd came in next. His eyes locked on to Gracie and Hope. “Oh no. You two are here, too? I’m pulling rank out there, but I’m gonna have a mutiny on my hands if a nurse comes in and sees so many of you here.”

  “He move!” Helga pointed at Alex’s hand. They all remained silent a moment, staring at Alex’s hand.

  * * *

  Beep, beep, beep.

  For a long time, nothing existed in Alex’s world but that sound. It was predictable. It was easy. Easier than the intense, throbbing pain in his thigh. Something was stinging him, too. His mind focused on it. It was a needle. On his hand. He tried to move his hand.

  “He move!”

  Alex knew that voice. It was his grandmother. He tried to open his eyes. A blur of light made them flutter shut.