Avery shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s the sole beneficiary to the estate. Does this kid, probably a man by now, have any right to it?”
“I’d have to see the family trust. Probably not. Not that an illegitimate child can’t claim differently to a court.”
“That would put a halt to everything we’re doing. Am I legally obligated to say anything? To question the estate and who has the right to sell it off? Sheldon hired me, but it isn’t like I have ever needed to see a will to prove my clients own what they say they own. That’s between the bank and them, right?”
“Yeah. You’re in the clear. Maybe you should just show them to Sheldon and let him deal with it.”
Avery shivered.
“You don’t like that idea,” Lori said as she peered closer. “Why?”
“I want to avoid any personal conversations with him. Asking him if he knew his dad was sleeping with someone else and possibly fathered a child is entirely too personal. What if Sheldon’s father treated him differently than he did this child, assuming it is his? Showing him these pictures might open a door that, while painful, at least has answers. What if he knew, or assumed? Not knowing and questioning yourself can haunt you. Trust me on that. Even though I don’t really like the guy, I don’t think this kind of secret should be kept.”
“Why don’t you like the guy?”
Avery gripped her glass. “He has a strange affect. Like he watches and studies people. Then there is the fact that he asked me out.”
“You refused.”
“Of course I refused. I’m seeing Liam. Even if I wasn’t, the guy just gives me a weird vibe.”
Lori lifted a hand in the air and started clicking off facts one finger at a time. “So the guy likes you, asked you out, you turned him down, and then you show him these pictures. That does exactly what for your business relationship?”
Avery cringed. “Makes it even more uncomfortable. It forces intimate conversations about his family that I really want nothing to do with.”
“Right.” Lori dropped her hand and pulled her wine back to her lips. “This is a rock and a hard place. You want my advice?”
“God, yes.”
“You don’t tell anyone about the pictures. Finish the job. Once you’re off the payroll, you can give them to him. These kinds of things can be embarrassing even if the affair is decades old. It isn’t up to you to investigate the rightful heirs to Mr. and Mrs. Lankford’s estate.”
There was some relief in that route. “So do nothing.”
“For now.”
Avery sighed. “Thanks, Lori. I knew you’d have the answers.”
“Not all of them. I work with divorce, not this.”
The two of them sipped their wine in silence for a few seconds.
“Are you going to tell me about this haunting thing?”
Avery snapped her head toward her. “What?”
“You said the not knowing haunts you.”
Avery needed more wine for this. “You know it’s almost been a year.” She crossed to the kitchen, grabbed the bottle, and moved back to the living room.
“You’re thinking about what happened in New York. I’m guessing that’s normal.”
She refilled her glass, set the bottle down. “I haven’t stopped thinking about it. I’ll go down on the mat in krav and freeze. I think I see his face, something. Then it’s gone.”
“We’ll circle back to the krav thing in a minute. Although that does explain a few things. Why haven’t you told any of us this?”
Avery looked over her glass. “You were getting married. Trina was engaged and on cloud gazillion . . . and Shannon has her own demons to chase.”
“So we only get to be there for you when things are good? That’s not how friendship works.”
“If you haven’t noticed, I don’t foster too many friends. I suck at relationships. All of them.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. As Wade pointed out, you’re the blonde pit bull. You’re fiercely protective with your friends but won’t allow us inside to be there for you.”
Lori was right, but Avery didn’t want to admit it. “You guys know me better than anyone.”
That seemed to satisfy Lori. “I know. Don’t be afraid of talking to us. It’s why we formed the club to begin with.”
“We formed the First Wives to deal with dating after divorce. Somehow that has turned into a murdered husband, assaults, spies, and all kinds of soap opera drama.”
Lori refilled her glass. “Krav. Seriously, you’ve been taking krav?”
Avery found her smile. “Yeah. That gym I said I met Liam in . . . krav studio.”
“Why the secret?”
“Didn’t want anyone to worry about me.”
Lori narrowed her eyes, lips flat.
“Okay. Got it. I’ll try.”
“You do that.”
Chapter Twenty-One
For the first time in six months, Avery’s haunts woke her in the middle of the night.
Cold sweat, racing heart. She shot straight up in bed, screaming. Her hands went to her face, and she expected them to fall away soaked in blood.
The vividness of the recurring dream was palpable. She could smell the stench of cigarettes and asphalt. And blood. Her blood. She tasted the salt in the back of her throat and gagged.
The clock by her bedside flashed 2:20 a.m. She swung her legs off the bed and padded into her bathroom. She switched on the glaring light and turned the water on hot. When she looked in the mirror, she briefly saw the image of her face the first time she was allowed to look at it after the attack. The bandages covered nearly everything, her eye swollen shut, the other just a slit. No wonder she needed to use reading glasses a decade sooner than normal age would have suggested.
She peered closer to the mirror. Almost forgetting what her nose had looked like before the surgery to correct the break and stop the bleeding. Nothing had been wrong with her other nose. This one was smaller. The scar underneath was a little bigger than most since the bastard that had kicked it in shredded it with his boot. Razor sharp tread, like they were new. Work boots. She closed her eyes to capture the image. Pants. Not jeans. Tan pants, frayed at the bottom. Dirty with her blood splattered on the leg.
The vision vanished.
She opened her eyes. Her pale image stared back at her, hands gripping the sink as the water flowed down and steam filled the mirror. “Holy shit.” She remembered something.
Avery ran to her kitchen and yanked open her junk drawer to find a pen. She found a notepad and frantically scratched down her thoughts and images. What she’d smelled. Anything.
When done, she stared at the piece of paper in front of her. She conjured up the face of the man the police said did the deed. “Why can’t I see you?”
He was already dead, killed by the man who hired him.
But Avery couldn’t see him.
She pulled a bottle of water from her refrigerator and her telephone rang.
She jumped, nearly dropping the bottle.
“Who the hell? Hello?”
“Avery?” It was Lori.
“Is everything okay?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
“It’s two thirty in the morning, Lori.”
“I know. Alliance security called Reed. They heard a scream and then logged in on the cameras. Are you okay?”
“Jesus, I forgot about the cameras. I thought they’d been turned off.”
“Off, but not disconnected. Are you okay? You sound okay.”
“I had a bad dream. I’m fine. The phone ringing scared the crap out of me.”
“She says she’s fine,” Lori said, away from the phone.
“Hey, Lori?”
“Yeah?”
“What security company takes ten minutes to ask if I’m okay?”
Lori sighed. “You’re wearing a red T-shirt and standing in your kitchen. Reed said you were fine. But after tonight’s conversation—”
Avery
looked across the room to where she knew the camera had been placed the year before. She stared right at it. “I’m fine. Now turn off the damn camera or I’m ripping it off the wall.”
“I can’t do that,” Lori said.
Avery turned her attention back to the phone. “I was talking to the guy watching the camera. I’m okay. Go back to bed.”
“Okay. Good night.”
“Good night, Mother Hen.”
This was why she didn’t tell her friends what was going on in her head. The security guys would have heard her scream, clicked on the camera, seen she was fine, and then turned it all off. Over-the-top for a security system, but when the guy who hired the man to kill her last year was still alive, it had been necessary. Now, not so much.
Avery twisted until her gaze landed on the kitchen counter. The memory of Liam as he . . .
Oh, yeah. The cameras had to go.
Avery’s ass dragged the next day. She was 100 percent sure her emotional barometer was not ready to tackle the attic, but she was doing it anyway.
The Santa Ana winds were in full effect, with red flag warnings everywhere. The lack of rain and dry heat were a disaster waiting to happen. Days like this always made her happy she lived in a high-rise. Not much chance of a brush fire attacking her home.
The lack of cars in the driveway was a blessing. Her occasional helper wasn’t coming in today, and it didn’t look like Sheldon was there checking on the progress. In fact, she hadn’t seen him since he’d asked her out. Maybe it would stay that way. She had two more weeks on the job but was pushing to get out of the house in one. It would still take time to sell everything, between auctions and estate home garage-type sales. But her day in and day out would be over. Avery looked forward to it.
The air snapped when she walked into the house. Or maybe it was just the vibe coursing through her skin. Knowing the skeletons that were hiding in the Lankford closets wasn’t a comfortable feeling.
She glanced into the study where she’d found the hidden drawer in the desk. At first, she had every intention of selling the thing to an antique dealer. It wasn’t auction worthy, but it was old. But if there was any question from Sheldon about where she’d found the photos, having the desk, and the drawer, would make it easier for her to show him. Since he’d given her permission to determine where the best dollar would be found, she’d lie about the desk and keep it there until the last possible day. After she gave him the photographs.
She set her empty coffee cup on a hall table and walked upstairs to the attic access. The stairs had been pulled down the day before, but Avery hadn’t sucked up the nerve to climb them.
In addition to the concern that she’d find more shit she didn’t want to see, Avery had a deep respect for spiders. Respect defined as you stay on your side of the room and I’ll stay on mine. Again, a plus for high-rise living. The little shits had a harder time finding her than they would if she lived in a normal house with the foundation sitting on dirt, where those eight-legged, fast crawling creatures lived. Then again, maybe the guy she hired to spray for the things every year was doing his job.
She stared at the space above her head for several seconds. “Stop being such a girl.”
Avery forced a fast pace up the steps and hauled herself up at the top. Two dormers on the east and west sides of the house let natural light into the space, but it wasn’t enough. There looked to be old hanging lights, with chain cords to turn the things on, spread out every twenty feet or so.
She brushed away a cobweb and told herself it was probably decades old and the spider that made it was long gone. “Nope. Spiders need food to survive. None of that up here.”
Yeah, except the few flies she’d already swatted away from her face. Maybe opening the stairwell the night before hadn’t been a good idea.
She turned on the first light and took in the space around her. It was huge, spanning nearly the entire frame of the house. Most of it had plywood covering the floor space, except closer to the dormers. The musty smell of insulation and maybe the decay of a mouse or two rounded out the joys hitting her brand-new nose. Attics in larger, older homes all held the usual suspects. Old furniture people weren’t ready to part with, some of it worth something, most of it sentimental to the dead, so in other words, worthless.
Boxes of holiday decorations sat closest to the stairs. Which made perfect sense. Those things were brought down year after year, while the other stuff morphed into the dingy space.
Avery moved deeper, turning on lights as she went. Old lamps, one that had a Tiffany thing going for it. Was it Tiffany? Rare? She had no idea.
She wiped dust off an old chest and clicked the stiff locks until they sprang free. “Quilts?” The Lankfords didn’t seem like quilt people, but clearly someone had been at one time. The homemade blankets were stacked on top of each other without any other protection than the box they were in. Again, Avery knew nothing about these kinds of handmade items except that they didn’t tend to fetch any money. The chest itself was 1920s modern. The deeper in the attic she went, the fewer furnishings she found. Old toys. Some that looked much too old for something that Sheldon would have played with.
She turned a corner and found a desk that looked a lot like the one in the father’s study. Her hand hesitated before opening the drawers. A few old coins, a pen, and a paper clip. She once again looked under the desk but had no intention of searching for a secret drawer. Her quick visual made her jump.
“Hello, Charlotte.” It was big, it was black, and it was definitely alive. “You just stay right there.” She backed up on the balls of her feet, lost her balance, and fell on her ass.
She bounced up. “Okay, I’m done in here.” She’d hire a crew to bring everything into the light, and keep an eye out for the things she thought held value. But right now, she wanted out. The stale air was stealing her oxygen.
Avery dodged at least four spiderwebs before reaching the stairs. She backed her way down and brushed at her arms and legs with her bare palms, muttering, “Yuck, yuck. Yuck!” A mirror and a bathroom, that’s what she needed.
She turned around and nearly toppled over Sheldon.
She screamed for the second time that day and lunged back.
He lifted his hands. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”
Avery clenched a hand to her chest. “Son of a . . .”
“Sorry.”
“I didn’t see you.”
“I called your name downstairs.”
Her heart was still in her throat. “I didn’t hear you.”
She brushed at her arms again, certain a sticky web was taking root.
“It’s pretty dirty up there.”
“Yeah.”
She dared to look him in the eye and found him looking at the top of her head.
Avery froze. “What is it?”
“I think you have a hitchhiker.”
Her squealing girl meter ramped into overdrive. She didn’t care who he was or how much he creeped her out—a spider in her hair ushered her toward him. “Get it off! Get it off!”
She suddenly felt like she did when she watched Raiders of the Lost Ark. Things were crawling on her, she could feel them.
Sheldon calmly lifted a hand to her head and brushed at her hair.
She held perfectly still, eyes closed. “Did you get it?”
He backed away. “I got it.”
She finally had the nerve to swipe at her hair as she opened her eyes.
What she saw then made her head explode in pain.
Sheldon was letting the long legged, hairy spider crawl on his arm.
“What’s the matter? It isn’t going to hurt you.”
Only it was.
A spider on the inside of his arm. A tattoo.
She was going to pass out.
Avery stumbled away from him and the insect, or small animal, whatever you wanted to call it. “I’ve got to go.”
“I think you should sit down. You don’t look too good.”
&nbs
p; She backed away from Sheldon, keeping him and the spider in sight until she found the top of the stairs. “I can’t. I have to go.”
“I’ll take it outside.”
She ran down the steps, finding air in gulps as she went.
“Avery?”
She snatched her purse and ran to her car.
For two seconds, she gripped the steering wheel, closed her eyes, and slowed her breathing.
Then she tore out of the driveway as if hell’s hounds were biting at her ankles.
Nine hours later she was stepping off a plane at JFK.
By the time she reached her hotel it was after eleven New York time.
She dropped her bag on the bed and opened the blinds wide. There would be no sleeping in tomorrow.
Her phone buzzed in her purse.
It was Liam.
She forced a smile she knew would help her sound normal and answered, “Hey.”
“Hey back. Are you still at the studio?”
Avery cringed. She’d forgotten to call Brenda.
“No, uhm, I had to fly to Seattle.” Even as she told the lie, she looked out over the dark vastness of Central Park and the skyline surrounding it. “An unexpected problem with my client up here.”
“Oh, okay. I was going to see if you wanted to grab a bite. I know how hungry you get after krav.”
“I’m going to have to take a rain check.”
“When do you think you’ll be back?”
New York was a big ass city. Lots of places to hide. “I don’t know. A couple of days, I think.”
“Must be a big problem.”
“Nothing I can’t handle.”
He paused. “Are you okay? You sound tired.”
“I am tired. Not a lot of sleep this weekend, or last. Now I have to be here. I think I need to go to bed early.”
“Sounds like a good idea. We wouldn’t want you getting sick.”
“Not that, please.”
“What hotel are you in? I’ll send flowers since you had to leave the ones at your place.”
“You’re too much, Liam.” No point in telling him a hotel. That would be the fastest way for all of them to know she wasn’t there. “Orchids last forever. They’ll be alive when I get home.”
Chasing Shadows (First Wives Book 3) Page 16