by Chelsea Cain
“What is she doing here, Jack?” Leo asked from the stairs. His voice was firm but strained, and it made Susan feel even worse for coming, because Leo so clearly had no idea she would be here.
Jack stepped beside Susan and put his arm around her and gave her a squeeze. “The social event of the season, and you don’t invite your girlfriend?” he called up to Leo. “You’ve been banging this one since what, January? And you’ve yet to bring her out to the house. I was starting to think you were embarrassed by me.”
Leo didn’t move. “She’s not my girlfriend.”
There was that gargoyle smile again. “She thinks she is,” Jack said.
Susan’s eyes burned. She’s not my girlfriend. She told herself that this was part of Leo’s act. He lied for a living, didn’t he? He’d told her he was working for the DEA. He was probably trying to protect her. So why wasn’t he coming down the stairs to get his father off her?
“I don’t want her here,” Leo said.
“It does make fucking Star later awkward,” Jack said. Susan forced herself not to react to his goading. She wasn’t going to give Jack the satisfaction. She just wanted to get out of here.
“I want her taken home,” Leo said.
Finally.
But Jack’s fingers tightened over her shoulders. “She’s all dolled up,” Jack said. The playfulness had left his voice. “She’s here, and she’s staying the night.”
Susan couldn’t stand the smell of him, the cigars, the cologne, the brandy. “I can’t spend the night,” she said. She had plans. She had to wax her legs and watch Law & Order.
Jack’s blue eyes settled on hers. “I wasn’t asking,” he said. She was chilly, but his touch wasn’t making her warm—it was more like he was sucking the heat right out of her. He gave her another smile, this one more shark than gargoyle. “If everything goes well, you’ll be home tomorrow in time for brunch. In the meantime, enjoy the party. Have you tried the mini-quiches?”
Susan looked up the stairs, searching for some sort of guidance from Leo, but he remained a silhouette in the dark.
“We should get back to our friends,” Jack said to her. “Let Cooper know if you need anything.” He turned and climbed up the first part of the stairs to where Leo was standing. When he reached his son, Jack settled his hand around the back of Leo’s neck. The gesture made Susan shiver. She didn’t know what sort of fucked-up game Leo and his father were playing, but she was pretty sure that Jack had just tossed her on the table and raised the stakes.
“Susan,” Leo said. “Don’t do anything stupid, okay?”
“Can I come with you?” she called.
Jack Reynolds chuckled in the dark. “She’s a hoot,” he said.
“Yeah,” Leo said quietly.
She watched as Jack steered Leo around and then escorted him up the rest of the stairs. She was on an island. Without cell reception. Dressed like a Mardi Gras Christmas ornament. And her boyfriend was acting like the Manchurian Candidate. This was so fucked.
A gust of wind blew off the river, and dried leaves rained from the trees. She wondered if Cooper had been telling the truth about the pythons.
The party sounded louder, like people were drunker, but she could still hear the sound of Cooper breathing.
“So which is it?” Susan asked him. “Is he using me to make sure Leo does something, or doesn’t do something?”
Cooper put his hands in his pockets. “You want to know what I would do if I were you?” he asked.
Susan gazed out at the cold black water. “Swim for it?” she said. It had been less than a year since she’d almost drowned in the flood. Technically, she had drowned. She had been clinically dead when Archie had pulled her from the river. Even the thought of her body in that lake made her squirm.
“It’s nine P.M.,” Cooper said. “The party will go on until four in the morning. There’s food, music, scintillating conversation. Relax. Have a drink.”
Was he serious? “Because a champagne cocktail is exactly what I need right now,” Susan said.
Cooper leaned close to her. He was a foot taller than she was, and three times as wide. The weird thing was, the gesture didn’t feel threatening—just the opposite. He made Susan feel safe. She had thought he was following her in order to scare her. Now she wondered if he was actually trying to protect her.
“It will be better for him if he thinks you’re not afraid,” Cooper said.
CHAPTER
12
Archie had never liked crowds. He depended on his ability to absorb detail, to notice what was out of place, and too many people softened the lens. Everyone blended together.
He had been patrolling the party for the better part of an hour. He hoped it looked like mingling. Every once in a while he would set a drink on a tray and pick up another one, so that to anyone watching it would look like he was drinking more than he actually was.
There was no good vantage point. The grounds were a maze of horticultural nooks and crannies.
The island was crawling with guests. Everyone looked sweaty from alcohol, and glowing with their own importance. Most of the tuxedos looked custom. Most of the women had hair that cost more to maintain than Archie brought home in salary. The valets had stopped parking cars. The gates at the end of the bridge were closed. None of the guests seemed to mind that they were all essentially now trapped on the island.
Archie hovered near the house, scanning for signs of Leo. Some people had given up on their masks, abandoning them for the sake of comfort or conversation, or maybe because they were tired of looking like idiots, but Archie kept his mask firmly in place. He liked it. For the first time in three years, he could move among a crowd without worrying about someone recognizing him as the man who survived ten days with Gretchen Lowell.
A bar was set up near a hedge maze in the left quadrant of the front yard, and people waited in line for drinks. Others streamed in and out of the house. The music had transitioned from instrumental to electronic dance music. It pounded through speakers erected in the trees, and vibrated the leaves on the branches.
The main house was three stories of winsome Tudor architecture. Archie could see lights on throughout the house. The exterior walls were either stone, or stucco crossed with decorative half-timbering. The roof was pitched and accounted for two-thirds of the house’s surface. Getting an idea of the interior layout from looking at it was impossible. It looked like someone had taken fifteen storybook cottages and smashed them together.
Archie grabbed a new drink off a server’s passing tray and headed for the front door. The first floor of the house was technically open to guests, except for a few rooms, like Jack’s office, which were locked. Most people who came inside to look around quickly left. Archie didn’t have a reason to be there. There wasn’t a bar or a table of food, so he did what people trying to get away with poking around had done for millennia—he pretended to look for a bathroom.
He was within a yard of the bottom stair when he felt a hand tighten on his shoulder. Archie turned around and found himself face-to-face with another one of Jack Reynolds’s private security detail. This one didn’t have the same military bearing as the others, and his suit was cheaper. He was wearing a black mask like Archie’s, probably given to him by the same person. Archie could see the tiny pricks of razor burn where he’d shaved with a dull blade or rushed the job. You could tell a lot about a man by how he shaved: if he cared about using the right tools; if he lacked patience. “Upstairs is closed,” Razor Burn said.
“I’m looking for a bathroom,” Archie said.
Razor Burn scratched at his sideburn. “Didn’t you just use that bathroom a half hour ago?”
For someone with a bad shave, he was very observant.
“Prostate issues,” Archie said.
Razor Burn lifted his hand off Archie’s shoulder and jabbed a finger down the hallway to the left of the stairs. “Second door down the hallway to your left,” he said. “Same place it was thirty minutes ago.”
“Thanks so much,” Archie said.
Archie backed away and headed down the hall where Razor Burn had directed him. A very young-looking woman had her ear against the bathroom door. She was skinny in an unformed way, like she’d just had a growth spurt and hadn’t gotten used to her longer limbs yet. She looked like she should be wearing jeans and a backpack, on her way to high school, but instead she was wearing a royal blue slip dress and carrying a pair of stiletto heels in her hand. A mask coated in purple glitter was pushed up on her forehead in a tangle of blond hair. When Archie got close, she looked up at him and laughed. Her face was pink. The whites of her eyes were bloodshot. She reeked of alcohol. Most cops didn’t need a sobriety test to tell if someone was drunk. The sobriety test was for the courts. Cops could tell the moment you rolled down the window. It was all in the eyes.
“Are you okay?” Archie asked.
“My friend’s a little wasted,” she said. She held up another mask—this one coated in gold glitter—which Archie assumed belonged to the friend. She laughed again, and Archie could hear, underneath her giggles, the distinct sound of someone violently vomiting on the other side of the bathroom door.
“Do you want me to get help?” Archie asked.
The young woman had her hand on the door, holding herself upright. Her silver nail polish was chipped, like she’d chewed at it. “She’s fine,” she said with a hiccup. “She said so.”
“Get her some water, okay?” Archie said. She nodded vigorously and Archie started to turn away, but then turned back. “How old are you?” he asked.
She paused—probably longer than she thought she did. “Twenty-two.”
There was no way she was more than nineteen. “Listen,” Archie started to say. But his concentration was broken by the sound of Jack Reynolds’s voice behind him. Archie turned to look down the hall and saw Jack leading two men in tuxedos through the foyer in the direction of his office. Jack was between them, a step behind—a hand on each of their shoulders. Archie couldn’t see the men’s faces, only Jack’s. But as they stepped out of Archie’s view, Jack looked up, right at Archie, and smiled.
Archie hurried forward down the hall, leaving the underage girl, but when he reached the foyer, Jack and the men were gone. The door to the hall that led to Jack’s office was closed, and a new goon was standing in front of it. The goon had his arms crossed over his chest and was staring, heavy lidded, into the middle distance. He wasn’t wearing an earpiece and he wasn’t wearing a mask. He also wasn’t wearing a suit. He had big hands and a broad nose and a leather jacket that looked like it weighed twenty pounds.
Archie looked down at his drink. It was half empty. He drained it. Then he held it up in front of the goon. “Do you know where I should put this?” he asked him. The goon didn’t respond. Archie held the glass between them and then opened his hand and let the glass drop. It hit the floor with an explosion of splintered glass shrapnel.
“Dolboeb,” the goon snapped under his breath. He stepped back a few inches and kicked the broken glass off his shoes.
Russian?
Archie smiled.
The Russian straightened up again, his dead gaze fixed over Archie’s shoulder. He didn’t make a move to clean up the glass.
“Sorry,” Archie said. “I’m a little drunk.”
Archie waited. The Russian didn’t move. He didn’t leave the door. He didn’t call for someone to clean up the glass. Archie turned his head and glanced back at Razor Burn, across the foyer, still leaning against the wall at the bottom of the stairs. He wasn’t in any hurry to help. These two didn’t work together. They had different bosses. The Russian had come with whoever was in the office with Jack.
Archie was considering the pros and cons of dropping another glass, when a woman appeared at the top of the stairs. It was hard to miss her. She was wearing a black dress that was made out of some sparkly gauze material. A triangular piece of fabric harnessed each breast and then attached behind her neck. Her back was bare all the way to her waist. Her dark curly hair was twisted up loosely on top of her head. She was carrying a reusable grocery bag. Her head was turned so that Archie couldn’t see her face, but he recognized her body.
Star. His lap dancer.
Razor Burn saw her, too. He’d lifted his shoulders off the wall and pulled his hands out of his pockets. It was a predatory move. His posture shifted forward to put his weight on the balls of his feet. He was leering at Star as she descended to him. She kept her head down, a classic ploy to avoid interaction. But she had to pass him, and when she did, Razor Burn caught her by the waist.
The Russian across the hall unfolded his arms.
A caterer hurried through the foyer with a tray of small bites from the kitchen, and exited through the front door.
Razor Burn pulled Star to his chest. She smiled and straightened up and said something to him and Archie saw her move the bag she was carrying behind her hip. Whatever was in it, she didn’t want it drawing Razor Burn’s attention.
Razor Burn’s lips were shiny with saliva. He wrapped his hand around Star’s wrist and moved her hand to the front of his pants. He was either oblivious to anyone else’s presence, or he didn’t care. No heroics, Sanchez had said.
“Star,” Archie said loudly.
Razor Burn and Star both snapped their heads in Archie’s direction. Archie strolled toward them, feeling the Russian’s gaze on the back of his neck.
Star didn’t pull away from Razor Burn. She was smart. Men like Razor Burn needed to feel in control. If she disentangled too soon, he might react violently.
“You remember me,” Archie said, lifting his mask above his eyebrows. “Detective Sheridan.”
Archie saw a trace of a smile cross Star’s lips. “The birthday boy,” she said.
“That’s right,” Archie said.
“You’re Leo’s friend,” Star said with a glance in Razor Burn’s direction. Archie saw what she was doing. She was spelling it out for him, but letting him put it together himself. Razor Burn might be dumb, but he knew enough not to do something stupid in front of a friend of the boss’s son. Sure enough, Razor Burn retracted his arm. “I’ll find you later,” Archie heard him snarl.
Star adjusted the strap of her dress and stepped forward, out of Razor Burn’s reach. Her wrist was red where he had grabbed her and Archie could see the pulse in her throat throbbing. She had been afraid, even if she’d done a nice job not showing it. Her knuckles were white where she clutched the straps of the grocery bag. It was one of those polypropylene grocery totes that the stores guilted people into buying instead of using paper or plastic bags. This one had a recycling symbol on the side of it and a sad-looking polar bear. Archie had five similar bags in his trunk right now. His bags were all empty. The bag Star was carrying was not. She saw him looking at it, and moved the straps up her arm and onto her shoulder.
“Can I buy you a drink?” Archie asked.
“The drinks here are free,” Star said.
“Even better,” said Archie.
“Well, come on, then,” she said, and Archie followed her toward the front door.
Star’s legs were bare and her dress showed them off. She was wearing black strappy high-heeled sandals, which didn’t slow her down at all. Her polypropylene bag was secured under her arm like a top-secret diplomatic pouch.
“Good luck with your prostate,” Razor Burn called after Archie.
Archie ignored him, but did glance back one more time at the Russian as they left the house. He had recrossed his arms and was looking straight ahead, where Razor Burn had settled back against the wall, directly in the Russian’s field of vision. The broken glass was still at his feet.
Then Archie followed Star through the door and out into the night.
She was several feet ahead, and Archie had to hurry to catch up with her. She navigated the grounds easily—she had clearly spent some time here. They passed other guests, but everyone was drunk and no one seemed to notice them as they went by
, moving off the main path to a smaller one and then around the left side of the house along the border of one of the waist-high hedge mazes that Jack had installed throughout the grounds. Archie wondered how many decomposing bodies of lost guests turned up in those things. Star led him around the back side of the hedge. The path was gravel and their steps made a grinding noise as they walked. Tiny rocks spit out from under Star’s heels, but it didn’t slow her down. There wasn’t a bar on this side of the house, and it wasn’t well lit. Archie couldn’t see any other guests now. The electronic music still pounded but they were far away enough from any speakers that it was background din.
Star stopped, hugging her arms for warmth as late evening set in. A lone torch flickered nearby, casting her face in a jittery tangerine glow. It was the first time Archie realized that she didn’t have a mask. Her glittery black dress winked and sparkled. Something glinted in her hair. At first Archie thought it was a barrette.
“Thanks for the graceful exit,” Star said.
It was a kiss-off. Archie had served his purpose. She was in a rush. And it had something to do with whatever was in the bag.
“What are you doing here?” Archie asked her. He was trying to stall her. It wasn’t a barrette; it was something wet. Archie peered at Star’s hairline, attempting to puzzle out what had briefly caught the torchlight.
“Look,” she said. “You’re sweet. But I have to go.”
Archie reached his hand up and touched her hair. She didn’t pull away. She didn’t even look surprised. She was used to men hitting on her. She took it like a pro.
Archie moved his fingers away from her head and showed them to her. The torchlight bathed them both in uncertain dark shadows that quivered with the flame. Archie could smell the citronella torch oil burning, a pungent chemical lemon mixed with sulfur. He held his hand nearer to the torch so she could see the stain of red on his fingertip.
“It’s blood,” he said. “It’s called transfer splatter. That means that someone touched blood and then touched you.”
