I cleared my throat. “Absolutely. Yes.”
“I pick out the sexiest woman in the room, and I pretend I’m approaching her. Imagine I’m standing in front of her, about to ask her out for the very first time. I muster all my resources—all my charm and wit and confidence—and then I just slay her with all the amazingness that is me.”
He was still smiling, but when I looked into his dark eyes, they were locked onto mine.
He is like me . . . We are the same . . .
“You understand?” he asked.
Somehow I managed to speak. “I think so. Slay with my amazingness.”
“So go ahead. Do it. Look around and pick out the sexiest guy in the room.”
“Oh.” It was all I could do to tear my eyes away from his and scan the room. My gaze fell upon the guy who’d stood next to me in the group picture, a plastic surgeon. A red-faced, somewhat sweaty guy with caterpillar eyebrows and a scraggly goatee. He wore a giant gold pinky ring.
“Really? That guy?” Heath sounded incredulous. A little crestfallen.
I smiled, then covered my mouth. “I, uh—”
“No, no. It’s fine. I didn’t mean to criticize. I just . . . I guess I expected somebody . . . else. But, different strokes.” He grinned broadly and touched my arm again. My skin goosepimpled.
“When she takes the picture, all you have to do is pretend you’re standing in front of that guy—that strapping fellow you just selected. You stand in front of that guy like the strong, beautiful, intelligent woman that you are. And you give him a look that says, Hey, sweaty guy with that sad beard and pinky ring. We should go out for burritos later.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Burritos?”
“That’s right, burritos.”
He gave me a gentle push back into the lights. The next thing I knew, Lenny and I were draped all over each other, laughing and posing. The camera clicked nonstop, and all the while, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Heath Beck, who, incidentally, wasn’t standing anywhere near the guy with the sad beard and pinky ring.
Later, as Lenny and I made our way through the parking lot to her car, my phone vibrated with a text. Only one word, from a number I didn’t recognize.
Daphne.
I stopped, my heart thudding while Lenny danced around me, oblivious, chattering about the shoot and her husband, Drew, and how much he was going to love the photos.
“Did you give him my number?” I asked her.
She just grinned, and then another text appeared, directly under the first.
We should go out for burritos.
Friday, October 19
Evening
I am sliding sideways down the face of the mountain, skiing over the blanket of wet leaves, using the slender beech trees for balance. The big coat flaps around me, and I’ve wedged the iPad against my back in the waistband of my jeans. My glasses keep slipping down. They’re fogged too, but I don’t bother to stop and wipe them. I don’t have time. I need to find the road, wherever the hell that may be, before it gets dark.
I’m not a woods person, even during the day. Past sundown, they’ll feel like they’ve grown deeper, darker, more labyrinthine, the setting of a monstrous fairy tale. There are bears and coyotes and God knows what else out here prowling, stalking. But there is also a man. And I am more afraid of him than I am of any wild animal.
I’m soaked through now, from my own sweat and maybe even blood, but I keep going. All those dawns on the track come back to me. Funny how I was always trying to push myself harder for some reason. It must’ve been all for this moment.
Chapter Four
Sunday, October 14
Five Days Before
The stairs to the second floor led up to a long hallway filled with more sideboards, wardrobes, and chiffoniers—scrolled mahogany behemoths from a bygone era. Along the hall, I counted three doors and one at the very end. All closed.
Reggie executed a perfect flight-attendant gesture. “That first room is vacant and the door is locked. The McAdams and Siefferts are in the next two rooms. You”—he pointed at the far end of the hall—“will have that room, the largest suite, which overlooks the front of the house.”
“What’s back that way?” I pointed at a closed pocket door, only a few feet from the stairs, which blocked the other end of the hall.
“That’s Dr. Cerny’s suite. The entire wing is strictly off limits, but he has his own set of stairs that lead down to the kitchen and back door. Another set lead up to the attic. The attic is off limits as well, of course.”
“Say it one more time, and I guarantee you somebody sneaks in there.” I grinned, but he didn’t return it, just led the way to our room, swung the door open, and stepped back. He puffed his chest, and as I entered, I turned a slow, appreciative three-sixty and saw why.
Our bedroom was the one I’d seen when we’d first driven up. Nearly all glass, the walls retrofitted over the spindles of what had formerly been a porch. Heavy cream silk curtains lined the wall of windows, and every piece of furniture—bed, nightstands, dresser, and desk—was a meticulously restored Danish-modern original. At the far end of the sitting room, a leather-and-walnut recliner was artfully arranged beside a Delft-tiled fireplace. Which was, of course, invitingly laid with wood, ready to light. The room was bright and spotless and smelled of lemon verbena.
Heath shed the bags in a heap at the foot of the bed and moved toward a small oval mirror hanging over a blond-wood dresser. He glanced at his reflection, then moved to the wall of windows. The sun must’ve broken through the clouds and pierced the heavy canopy of trees, because all at once the room was filled with light.
I bent over to examine the fireplace and yelped in surprise.
“Oh, yes,” Reggie said. “I should’ve warned you.”
Heath turned.
“It’s a face, in the back,” I said.
“We call him the fiery fiend,” Reggie said. “He’s in every fireplace in the house. Part of the original design, I’m told.”
I glanced around the room. “And what about the cameras? Where are they? There’s not one in the bathroom, I hope.”
Teague tilted his head. “Camera, singular. It’s in the main room. And my advice is to forget all about it. Pretend it’s not there. The more naturally you behave, the more you are yourselves, the more Dr. Cerny will have to work with.”
Heath had unlocked several of the windows and thrown them open. Cool air blew in, the scent of river and rock and pine overpowering the lemon smell.
“The cameras are activated every morning at eight a.m. and shut down from ten p.m. until midnight, at which point they run again until five a.m. They’re also down briefly from one thirty to two thirty every afternoon. A free block.” He raised his eyebrows, giving us a moment, I supposed, to get his meaning. “I know it feels somewhat uncomfortable, but keep in mind, filming patients is a legitimate technique for research and diagnosis. There are several well-regarded labs all over the world that employ it to great success. Learman’s Intimacy Institute at BYU and James Deshpande’s facility that explores work-related violence.”
I snuck a look at Heath. He was leaning out one of the windows, gazing off into the distance. Unfazed by the fact that we were being watched like zoo animals. Or criminals.
Reggie clasped his hands. “Well, then. I’ll let you two get settled, freshen up, then in exactly fifty minutes, we’ll meet downstairs for the tour and your meeting with Dr. Cerny. We’ll have you around the place and back to your rooms by seven for dinner.”
He left, and as I unpacked, Heath disappeared into the bathroom.
“So the schedule around here seems really precise,” I called out. There was no answer. When he came back, he returned to the opened windows and leaned out into the darkening night air.
“You okay?” I said. “It seems a little chilly to have the windows open.”
“I like the way the mountains smell.” He turned to me, a playful look in his eye. “You know, Reggie said we have f
ifty minutes.”
“Well, more like forty-five now.” I pointed around the room. “But more importantly, it’s showtime, remember? We’re being watched. Even though, I should point out, we haven’t signed the releases yet.”
“I bet the Siefferts are in their suite, banging it out hard-core.” He kicked back on the bed and aimed his blindingly sexy grin at me.
I turned away. Mrs. Sieffert, or whoever it was who’d been lurking in the dining room watching us, was certainly, one hundred percent, not upstairs banging it out with her husband.
“Come on, Daph. Real quick.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Are you kidding me?”
“Come. Here.” He said it in that voice—the one with the deep, slow cadence that made the area below my stomach twinge. He crooked one finger, and I moved to the bed, only a hair out of his reach.
“You want me to come closer?” I asked. “Never say real quick.”
I bent to him, just so my hair fell over his face and my breasts brushed his chest. He moaned. He reached for me and I crawled up beside him. Cradling me with one arm, he pulled the white comforter over us, and I closed my eyes as he fitted the length of his body against my back and legs. He was already hard.
I spoke. “There was a woman when we came in. Kind of spying on us from downstairs. Did you see her?”
“No.” He nuzzled my neck.
“She was staring at us, like . . .”
He kissed my neck gently, reached around and removed my glasses.
“Like . . .”
He whispered in my ear. “Whatever happens—no matter what I do—don’t move.”
I didn’t, not when he unzipped my pants under the covers, then eased them down past my knees, ankles. Not when he did the same with my underwear. Not even when he ran his hand along the inside of my thigh.
I let him touch me for as long as I could stand it, then guided him into me, turning my face into the pillow. After it was over, he buried his head in the crook of my neck and whispered one last time, “Always us.”
Maybe it was the sex or just that I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in months, but right after, I fell fast and hard into a dreamless sleep.
When I woke, the room was lit with the soft glow of the bathroom night-light, and Heath was sleeping beside me. The window was still open and I inhaled a lungful of cool, pungent air. I guessed the months of nightmares really had depleted both of us, more than I’d realized. If nothing else, the two of us might actually be able to catch up on all our lost sleep in this creepy house. I groped around on the nightstand for my phone. Right. I’d turned it over to Dr. Teague. Reggie. Crap.
I found my glasses under my pillow, then dug under the comforter for my pants. Easing out of bed, I crept to the fireplace, trying not to think about the fiery fiend’s grotesque, leering face. I ran my hands along the mantel. A small brass clock on it ticked softly: 9:40 p.m. I bit my lip. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept like that.
We’d missed our first meeting with Dr. Cerny. As well as the tour and the signing of the releases, which was not at all the way I’d planned to start things off. I was not usually one to oversleep, arrive late to an appointment, or forget details of clients’ orders. But then again, I usually had a phone glued to some part of me, pinging alerts right and left.
We’d also missed dinner. Damn. Scallops, I remembered with longing. Reggie had said it was scallops and wine. It was possible somebody had saved our meals in the fridge or something. Possible, but not for sure, and that was the thing that really got me, the not knowing. And right now, with the house spreading out like a maze around me, the worry that I wouldn’t be able to find anything to eat—I could feel the old food obsession dancing around the edges. Could feel myself close to panicking.
Daphne. Stop.
I went into the bathroom and dug in my makeup bag, pulling out a hair band and slipping it over my hand. I snapped it against my wrist—once, twice, three and four times. Then inhaled and exhaled, letting the pain pull me back to the physical room. I couldn’t panic. Not now. I needed to get organized, be thinking about my plan. How I was going to find the car and check my email. How I was going to deal with the information, if any, that Annalise Beard decided to share.
I peeked through the door at Heath and watched him breathe for a moment. It was a relief to see him like that—practically comatose, arms flung out and mouth open. How odd that he couldn’t sleep in our cozy little house, but here he conked out like an innocent babe. I had the feeling sleep wasn’t going to return so easily for me, not with my gnawing stomach and my nerves. But being up wasn’t such a bad thing. I might as well try to find where Reggie had put our car keys.
Out in the dark hallway, all the doors were shut. The McAdams and Siefferts must have turned in early too. The pocket door with tarnished brass fittings at the opposite end of the hall—the one leading to Dr. Cerny’s quarters—was open just a couple of inches.
I tiptoed to it and peered through the crack. Beyond it was a spacious landing area, as big itself as our bedroom. At the far end, I saw another closed door—Cerny’s suite, no doubt. On the left side of the landing, there was a set of stairs that probably led down to the kitchen. From the right, another set of stairs, narrower than the others, wound up to the next floor.
The attic.
I heard a noise, coming from the attic stairs. A clicking sound, then a low drone. I glanced at Cerny’s door at the opposite end of the landing. It was far enough away that I could probably slip in unheard, if I was careful. I pushed the pocket door open and eased through.
I crept to the attic stairs, put my foot on the first step. Waited. When nothing happened, I mounted the next step, then another and another, keeping to the edge so the boards wouldn’t creak. At the top of the stairs, I found a black fireproof door, cracked open just the slightest bit. The drone was louder; I had definitely found the source. I listened for any indication that I’d disturbed Cerny. When I heard nothing, I pushed open the door and walked in.
The tiny, hexagonal garret was crammed to bursting with all sorts of oversize metal hardware. Machinery and shelving ringing the room like a cabal of mechanical giants. Dozens of thick black cords snaked across the bare wood floor. To my right, a row of three boxy video monitors sat on a sagging plywood shelf. On the left were two enormous machines as big as refrigerators, covered with rows of multicolored buttons, dials, and gauges. And more unidentifiable machines next to those.
“Hello, Dr. Strangelove,” I whispered.
In the center of the room, a battered metal desk and folding chair faced the monitors. Only a yellow legal pad and pen were on the desk. I opened the drawers—all six of them—but they were empty. No car keys. I crept around the desk, taking in the strange setup. The computers, if that was what they were, must have been the main servers, linked to the cameras downstairs and to the monitors up here. To timers, as well, most likely. And there was probably, somewhere, a mechanism for recording the captured footage so Dr. Cerny could review it later. I could see slots that looked like they might fit VHS tapes, but I was hopeless at technology, and the rest of the knobs and buttons and dials were meaningless to me. Frankly, the whole tableau looked very KGB circa 1980.
I examined the monitors. Feeds from our in-room cameras, maybe? They were dark, at least they appeared to be at first glance—but then a curtain fluttered in the corner of one, and I jumped in fright. The cameras were running, even though it was after ten. Either somebody had screwed up or the timers were off.
I moved closer.
Each camera must have been mounted near a fireplace mantel, allowing for a wide shot of the suite, even a bit of the windows. On our monitor, the one on the far right, I could see the bed, the door to the bathroom, and the small sitting area. The monitors were illuminated the slightest bit, by some light source outside the house, maybe. The moon or a floodlight on one of the eaves.
Heath was still sprawled out, his leg kicked out from under the comforter now. On my
side of the bed, the comforter was thrown back, and I noticed, with a guilty flush, the twist of underwear lying on the floor. I turned my attention back to my fiancé—that beautiful, strong, tormented man—and, as I watched him sleep, thought back six months ago, to the night of his first nightmare.
Heath asked me to marry him on a perfect April night.
We were at our house—the bungalow Lenny’s father had agreed to sell to us to bolster Heath’s fledgling private foray into Atlanta real estate. We’d eaten pizzas loaded with every leftover vegetable I could scrounge from the fridge and now were relaxing on the back deck. The sky was perfect and clear, promising a star-sprayed canopy after the crisp spring dusk had passed.
We were stacked together on one of Barbara Silver’s hand-me-down Adirondack chairs, my head resting back against Heath’s shoulder. As we’d watched the night settle around us, he’d been gathering my hair over my shoulder and gently twisting it. It felt so good, I’d nearly fallen asleep.
After a while, he ran one finger down the length of my arm. His skin, pale like mine but with an olive tint, was warm. He turned up my hand and laid a ring in the center of my palm. It looked like an antique, a simple silver band, but heavy, engraved, and set with diamonds. The lines of my palm converged in the ring’s center.
“It was my grandmother’s.” Heath’s voice was soft in my ear. I tore my eyes from the ring, twisted in the chair to look at him. The kitchen window was a bright block of light behind him, so I could barely make out the expression on his face, but I knew he was smiling.
The Silvers were wonderful, but I’d never had a family, not a real one of my own. All my junkie mother had left me with was an enormous need for privacy and an annoying eating disorder, not family heirlooms. But now, starting that night, everything would change. I was about to become a part of a new family. The family Heath and I created together.
“Daphne,” he said, and this time his voice had a ragged edge to it. A vulnerable, open need that made me feel scared and exhilarated, all at the same time.
Every Single Secret Page 4
