the hell happened to her? Who tried to kill her? Is she here under your protection?”
“Whoa!” Susan put down the knife, held her hands up. “That was a swift right-angle in the conversation.”
She was right. I’d leaped at her, pushing about things I knew she didn’t want to talk about in response to her hitting on something I didn’t want to talk about. The loft had been Siobhan’s dream place. Sometimes I’d catch her looking out the cracked window at the sea, her shadow stretched on the floor. Our bedroom. Our safe place.
“I was just thinking about Effie.” I cleared my throat. “She’s got a little pet now.”
“The rat. I saw.” Susan nodded. “Look, Effie and I met through the Bureau, yes. Something terrible happened to her, yes. We’re both here, and we’d like to keep that discreet, yes. But that’s as far as I’ll go on that, Bill.”
I took up my knife.
“Siobhan wanted us to take the loft,” I said. “And I’m not ready to be up there without her. That’s as far as I’ll go on that.”
There was tension in the kitchen. We both worked on our separate chopping blocks, waiting for it to melt away.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
HE WAITED UNTIL she was in that golden haze, tipsy but not taken, swaying to the music and smiling at boys who wouldn’t know what to do with her even if they got her in their grasp. And yes, it was only boys who surrounded her, some of them frat douchebags who couldn’t carry on a conversation with her without looking down her top or letting their eyes rove over other girls, others local dropouts hunting for easy prey they could take to the woods behind the house. Cline, resting his arms on the second-floor banister, watched her come up the stairs, a confident smile on his face.
Self-assurance. She’d probably never seen it before. She was drawn to his stylish clothes, his superior gaze, the expensive wine in his hand. He could see her recognizing him from that afternoon, when he’d been surrounded by men he owned and commanded. She probably wondered if this guy was the king of the castle. Of course he was.
“Nice place,” she said, trying to be casual. “What’s the party for?”
He shrugged and walked over to her. “When a man’s successful, he ought to celebrate it every now and then.”
He could tell that his words tickled something inside her, stroked her in that exact right spot, piqued her interest. Success wasn’t something that rolled around here in waves. She was looking for it, the key to the door that led out of her small-town world, the path to the kinds of things she saw in movies. Big houses, lavish parties, trips to New York, yachts. Dreamland on the horizon. Cline had her pegged. She was probably washing dishes in a café around here somewhere, scraping fried food off plates for minimum wage. Cleaning toilets. Daddy was absent—one of the crab wranglers who left and returned in the dark—and she’d promised herself a long time ago she wouldn’t end up with someone like him. Cline watched the pink lights dancing in her eyes.
“You want a little tour?” he asked, sliding his hand down her arm and curling his fingers around hers. He saw goose bumps rise on her neck.
“Sure.”
“We’ll start with the VIP room.” He smiled.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
THE SMELL OF the food and the sound of the music brought people into the kitchen. Nothing I’d ever cooked before had smelled this good, but Susan had helped, and she had the chef’s wisdom. She knew the onion went into the pot before the carrots and the meat needed to be browned before the wine was added.
Nick came into the kitchen and lifted pot lids and smelled and stirred things and raised his eyebrows at the sight of me drinking wine and cooking and bopping around the little space with a woman who was not my wife. I ignored him.
Soon Effie was there tapping her wrist, demanding to know when this glorious-looking feast would be ready, and I shooed the two of them, which left room for Doc Simeon to come wandering in. He was carrying his ivory-handled walking stick and had a book under his arm that was so thick, it threatened to capsize the guy like a small, fat tugboat. I tilted my head to look at the title. The Science of Flight in Apoidea, whatever that was.
“I’ve been meaning to come up and talk to you,” I told