And yet.
The thrill of discovering Isabella or Kira or whatever she called herself now, the long-lost daughter, the runaway teen who had turned into a bombshell despite chopping off her hair and piercing her face—shot him full of adrenaline. It was all he could do not to call his father and brag. Story of a lifetime, he’d say. Right here in this house. He couldn’t wait to hear his father splutter in disbelief, then turn his words around to grudging admiration.
And yet somehow Steele didn’t want to share the story at all. He wanted to get to know Kira. To listen to her talk. To sit beside her and watch the storm while she curled against him, and if that wasn’t a fucked-up departure from the way he usually felt about women, he didn’t know what was. What the hell had she done to him?
Steele pulled out the photos he’d lifted from the album in the parlor and examined them again. He rubbed one thumb along the edges and held them up to the light. Edoardo’s face was the only thing he could clearly identify. The woman was just an arm and a torso, turned away from the camera to gaze at the baby.
He rolled his shirtsleeves to the elbows and wished he’d brought along a change of clothes. The house, though cooler since the sun had set, still closed in on him. Stale, thin air rose to his nostrils and slipped down the back of his throat. It tasted like the forgotten corner of a museum.
He retraced his footsteps to the foyer. For a moment, temptation drew him to the stairs. He could almost breathe in the scent she’d left on the staircase. Follow her. But he was afraid she’d bolt completely if he did. He shook his head and forced himself to turn around. He’d give her some time. Minutes ticked by. He craned his neck and listened, but he heard no voices on the upper floors. No sobs. All he could see were closed doors in every direction. He guessed that was what happened when you lived a life so exposed for so long—you spent the rest of it trying to shut out the world that both made you a star and raked out your intestines.
Steele moved to the front windows and lifted a curtain. Camera and car lights surrounded the perimeter of the lawn, aimed at the house like a semicircle of piercing eyes. He tried to count the number of media crews. Seven? Eight? Where had they all come from, and when?
You’ve got to be kidding me.
His face turned hot. Had they found out about her? Did they know Edoardo’s daughter had snuck back into town? His hands drew into fists and a strange, fierce sense of protection crawled up his spine.
She’s my story. Mine.
Steele glanced at his watch. After eight. He pressed the intercom button. “Simon? You still there?” Despite the crowd of vultures outside, he needed fresh air in the worst way.
“Yes, sir? What do you need?”
“I just gotta get some air. Gonna step outside. Two minutes.”
But the minute he stepped onto the front porch, he cursed his poor judgment. Flashbulbs popped and voices clamored from the shadows. The paparazzi had been sitting out here all afternoon and evening. He should have guessed that the slightest glimpse of a human being would send a ripple through the lot of them. Someone shouted from his left; someone else whistled from the right.
He backpedaled into the foyer and closed the door again. “Shit.” Lights swung in the direction of the house, and he heard a car engine start up. Terrific.
Looked like he was stuck inside after all. Worse than that, he’d stirred them up like a damn hornets’ nest. Now they’d be revved up for the next hour, imagining they saw things they didn’t and running the stories anyway. He could picture them, a knot of young, excited college grads slurping eight-dollar lattes and hanging their hopes on a story they could barely begin to understand.
“Believe me,” Steele muttered. “I don’t even understand it, and I’m standing in here looking at it.” He scanned the oil paintings on the wall, thought of the photos in the kitchen and wondered for the twentieth time what had happened in this house to make Kira-Isabella leave it.
“Sir?” The intercom startled him. “There’s a private entrance around back. Off the library. Might be a little better.”
“Oh. Okay.” Steele hurried down the hall and found the door still ajar, the way he’d left it. He threaded his way into the cramped, dark room. He flipped a switch by the door, and a light clicked on after a few seconds’ delay. Crimson paper covered the walls, where ceiling-to-floor bookshelves didn’t. Two armchairs flanked a sealed-off fireplace. Curious, he ran his fingers along the seams of the fireplace, still imagining the entrance to a tunnel. But he found nothing. He shivered. Windowless, almost creepy the way it hovered under the grand staircase, this room raised the hair on Steele’s arms. He headed straight for the small door at the back. One twist of the ornate gilt handle and fresh air greeted his tight lungs.
For a moment he simply stood there, welcoming the breeze against his cheeks. Then he stepped outside. He left the door cracked open and followed the exterior of the house a few feet away. Just for some space. The rain had turned to a gentle mist, and he lifted his face and let it cool him.
“Hey. Psst.” To his right, a figure materialized.
Steele stiffened. A thief? A reporter who’d somehow snuck onto the grounds? “Who the hell’s there?”
“Steele, dude, it’s me.” The man took a few more steps, and light from an upstairs window fell across his face. Peter Mirables, a college student interning at The Chronicle, grinned at him. “Hey, man.”
“What the hell? How’d you get past the moat?”
“There’s a spot in the water that’s pretty shallow.”
Steele’s gaze moved down, and he saw Peter’s pants, dark from knee to ankle. “You waded through?”
“Sure did.”
“Why?”
“Only place to get past security,” Peter said. “Your father asked me to...” The intern’s mouth snapped shut.
“To do what?”
“Just come up here and check out the situation.”
Because he thought I couldn’t handle it myself? Steele’s temper went from two to eleven in less than a second. “What the fuck? He didn’t tell me anything about that.” He checked his phone. Nope, no calls or texts. “What, he thought I ditched? Just took off and was calling from somewhere else?”
Peter didn’t answer. He didn’t have to, Steele thought. Though his father’s doubt pissed him off, some other part of him admitted it wasn’t totally unfounded. How seriously had he taken this job before today? How many times had he blown off an assignment, an early meeting, a bogus town hall event, to feel sorry for himself because he wasn’t doing something more important?
In fact, he recalled that Mirables himself had mopped up some sorry animal adoption event for him just last month, when Steele had called in sick—make that hung over—and then hung up on his father’s tirade about irresponsibility. He cracked his knuckles so that he wouldn’t punch the side of the house—or worse, the intern. “Well, I got it covered, so you can take off.”
“Yeah, I—uh, okay.” But Peter didn’t move. He stood there looking over Steele’s shoulder.
“Problem?”
“Nah. It’s just—”
Suddenly, Steele itched to be back in the house. He wanted to talk to Kira. He wanted to frame her face in the lens of his camera and capture the heartache that shone in her eyes. He wanted to know why she’d come back, and what she was hiding. The story—and there were layers upon layers of it— was that close, and he stood outside talking to an idiot. Irritation turned him cold.
“Take off, Mirables.”
The intern’s face reddened. Doubt colored his expression, and then Steele knew. Everyone back at the office thought he was a joke, a playboy who couldn’t manage to write a serious article if his life depended on it. Everyone, not just his father, assumed he’d taken off hours ago and had been playing golf instead. Even Peter the intern, who stood three inches shorter than Steele and looked like he’d started shaving sometime last week, thought Steele would screw up this story too.
“Tell my father I’v
e got a story.”
Peter frowned. “But there’s nothing new on Morelli. Is there? Did you get Francesca to talk?”
“Nope.”
“Then what?”
He paused only a moment before blurting it out. “Isabella Morelli’s here in the house. She’s back.”
9:00 p.m.
Kira sat in a chair beside Francesca’s bed. Stiff and covered in some kind of scratchy fabric, the chair was the most uncomfortable thing she’d ever sat on. Bet it’s worth a fortune, though. That could be said for almost everything in the house—expensive, but not warm. Rare and valuable, but not for using or sitting on. It was a house that would never be a home. You couldn’t make it one if you tore out all the furnishings and started from the bare bones.
She looked around. She’d rarely been allowed into this wing of the house as a child. Overdone, filled with rich reds and purples that belonged in a boudoir rather than a single woman’s home, it featured the bedroom, an office, a dressing room, two walk-in closets and a bathroom the size of Kira’s apartment back in Yuba City.
Yuba City. What she wouldn’t give to be there right now, knees pulled up to her chin while she and Isha watched sitcoms and sappy movies. Or perched on a stool next to Scotty, making coffee and churning out ideas for his next film. Hell, she’d even prefer to be working the second shift at Permanent Addiction. Anywhere but here.
Her gaze shifted to the door across from the king-sized bed in which Francesca lay sleeping. The office. If she closed her eyes, she could picture the furniture inside as it had once been. An ornate wooden desk in the center of the room. Drawers locked. Shelves on the walls with Hollywood awards and accolades. A tall cherry cabinet in the far corner. Also locked.
The secrets that room held were the reason Kira had come back. The only reason.
Francesca murmured something and shifted under the sheet. The older woman had pulled a comforter up to her shoulders, and her hair spilled across the pillow. Even in sleep, she’s beautiful. Ready for a photo shoot. A chill worked its way up Kira’s spine, and she stood to shake it off.
On the opposite side of the room, the windows hung closed. She twisted the lock and pushed them open. The rain had subsided, and the song of tree frogs and crickets floated inside. She inhaled deeply. The lights of the news crews waited along the perimeter of the property, and Kira flipped both middle fingers out the window, into the dark. She knew no one could see her, but it still made her feel better.
On impulse, she turned and stared through the closed bedroom door. Screw you too. She sent the thought downstairs, to Steele. She wanted to kick herself. Stupid wine. Stupid good-looking reporter. Stupid kindness and compassion in the place she’d least expected it. Her tears, and the rain, and the way he’d held her, had turned into one dangerous moment of weakness.
“Isabella.”
She jumped. Francesca was sitting up in bed. “How are you feeling?” Caught in the woman’s gaze, Kira felt like a child again. Inept. Disappointing. And desperate to please.
“Please come here. Please sit with me.”
She couldn’t say no, as much as she wanted to. She walked over and sank onto the edge of the mattress.
“I’m so glad you’re here. I’m glad you came back.” Tears welled in Francesca’s eyes.
“The kidnappers still have him.” Kira said. She didn’t want to talk about the past or coming home or memories or anything like that. “We saw an update on the news a little while ago. They want prisoners in exchange for letting him go.”
A sharp intake of breath cut the stillness. “Did you see him?”
“On a video, yes.”
“How did he look?”
Kira hesitated. “Okay. Tired. But alive.” She prayed he would stay that way.
“What’s happening? What are they waiting for?”
She wasn’t sure who Francesca meant by they—the military? the kidnappers? the forces from on high that would never let something like this happen to someone as beloved as Edoardo Morelli? She half-thought Francesca expected a white knight to sweep down and make it all go away, like a bad nightmare swept under the rug. When you lived in Hollywood, those things happened. Problems went away if you had enough money or enough influence.
“I don’t know.”
“I’m going downtown.” Francesca climbed from the bed, pulled open the heavy doors of her wardrobe and began pushing hangers aside. A navy wrap landed on the ground, along with a hat that probably hadn’t seen daylight in forty years. “I’m going to talk to the police, to someone who actually knows something.”
“There’s a bunch of reporters outside.” Had Francesca forgotten what it was like? Perhaps. She’d shunned the film industry and the world that revolved around it for almost ten years. She’d thrived in the spotlight until it turned on her, and then her films went from blockbuster to lackluster to straight-to-video. After that, she’d simply shut herself up and let the world go by without her.
For an instant, Kira felt a pang of regret for the woman who had raised her. The paparazzi had only gotten worse in the last decade. Francesca had no idea how bloodthirsty reporters could be, or how quickly a single image or sentence could turn viral. Kira could only imagine how social media was tearing apart every Morelli right now. People were vicious. Cruel. Memes were generated by the minute. Truths were dissected. Lies were turned into truths.
“If you go out there, they’ll want you to say something. Or they’ll want pictures of you crying on the front step.”
“Oh.” Francesca stopped going through her wardrobe.
“And that reporter downstairs,” Kira began. He needs to go. Now.
“Steele? He’s a nice boy.”
Kira wasn’t sure he was so much of a boy as a strapping six-foot hunk who was too handsome for his own good.
“I dated his father, a long time ago. Did I ever tell you that?” A smile played over her lips.
“No.” But that didn’t surprise Kira. According to rumor, Francesca Morelli had dated just about everything that breathed, back in the days of too much fame and too many drugs.
“That’s the only reason I agreed to let him come here.” Her eyes clouded. “He’s nice. Kind. Like his father.”
Something coiled in Kira’s stomach. The expression on Francesca’s face looked too familiar, too soft around the eyes as she spoke. Kira knew exactly why Francesca had let Steele Walker into her home, and it had more to do with a thirty-year-old who smiled in the right way than a memory of his father from twenty years gone by.
“Don’t you think it’s time he left, though? There’s no reason for him to be here now.”
“I suppose. You go tell him. I’ll stay up here a while. Try to...” Her voice broke. “Try to figure out what we can do.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Kira closed the bedroom door behind her and leaned against it. She felt suddenly claustrophobic, in spite of the cathedral ceilings above her and the hallway that stretched a hundred feet in front of her. From here on the second floor landing, she could see the entire foyer—the drapes drawn tightly against the night, the open parlor door, the hall that turned into shadows as it led to the back of the house. Shadows everywhere, that was what she remembered most about this house. The sun never seemed to reach the corners, no matter how wide the curtains were open.
She descended the stairs, running her fingers along the expensive oil paintings that lined the wall. She knew none of the faces, none of the scenes captured in color. Yet she’d passed them every day for eighteen years. I was looking without seeing. Or I was seeing the wrong things, like the light reflecting off the brush strokes, rather than the faces of people I’m supposed to belong to, or relatives I’m supposed to feel connected to. That was the problem. Kira had always paid attention to the wrong things in this house, until it was too late.
At the bottom hung the largest, newest painting. She touched their faces, the three of them standing in front of an enormous beach house. Francesca s
tood in the background, with one hand on Edoardo’s shoulder. Kira sat in his lap, a child of three or four. Her father wore swim trunks and sunglasses. Francesca wore a green dress that billowed around her bare feet. Kira wore nothing but a yellow swimsuit.
Dark eyes on them all. Dark skin, too, in varying shades: Francesca’s medium olive, Edoardo’s deeper bronze, her own paler hue that fell somewhere in between. They looked like a happy family out for an afternoon on the beach. Bile rose into the back of her throat, and she moved away before it brought her to her knees.
A door slammed. What the hell? Kira whirled but saw no one. A moment later, she heard it again, thudding sounds and then voices. Had Steele let someone into the house? One of his buddies from the newspaper office? Furious, she stomped into the parlor. Empty. She peeked out the tall front windows and checked the front stoop. Nothing. Hands on her hips, she stood in the middle of the foyer and listened.
There it was again. More voices. She spun around. Someone was in the goddamned library.
Fuck him.
She flew through the foyer and down the hall. He must have gotten on his phone and called someone as soon as she split. Come on up, take a look, take some pictures, post them online, who cares? Fury raged through her. How had he gotten anyone past security? Back when she’d lived here, a robin flying from tree to tree practically had to ask permission to cross the property. The voices faded, then escalated again. She heard a scuffle and the sound of books hitting the floor. Were they looking for something? The stupid rumored tunnel entrance that didn’t even exist?
“Hey!” Kira turned the knob and pushed, but the door resisted after opening only an inch. Then it promptly shut in her face. For an instant she stood there, stunned. Then she leaned against it with all her weight. When it finally opened, she almost fell onto the floor on the other side. A man she didn’t recognize stood panting on the far side of the library, and the place looked as though a cyclone had gone through it. Books lay scattered on the floor, their pages creased and spines broken. A lamp lay on its side. A chair had been knocked clear across the room.
Countdown: Steele Page 8
