his lips to convey silence, then casually spoke to someone else in the room. A moment later, a man dressed in the same prison uniform left the laundry, and Luke darted to the vent.
“Hello, beautiful,” he said through the opening. “Wait there while I open the other vent.”
He disappeared, but she heard scraping from the pie plate vent a few feet away. She went to stand before it, and Luke’s hand came through the opening. She fell to her knees and grabbed it, pressing kisses to his palm.
“Watch out, I smell like bleach,” he cautioned. “We’ve got about five minutes before Stillman gets back from his toilet break.”
That didn’t leave her much time to pry the truth out of him. She withdrew her hand and squatted low so she could see his face through the vent. She drank in the sight, amazed at how happy he looked to see her.
“How did you figure this out?” she asked.
He snorted. “I spotted the possibilities the first hour I was assigned here. I’ve got nothing better to do than plan various means of escape.”
“But you won’t, will you? Luke . . . it will go worse for you if you run.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It depends on how things go.”
A lump of dread settled in her stomach. “This is my fault, isn’t it?”
“Never,” he said fiercely.
“I know what the charges are. I know it’s because of those studies and—”
He reached through the opening and laid a finger on her lips. “Shh,” he soothed. “It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.”
But his finger trembled, and she sensed his anxiety from that single bit of contact. She pulled his hand away from her mouth so she could see him again.
“Why didn’t you tell them it was me?”
His smile nearly broke her heart. “It would have killed a piece of me to do that,” he said in a ragged breath.
“I want you to. If they bring charges against me, I’ll be okay. I’m not afraid of enclosed spaces. I’ll be okay.”
“So will I.” But for once he didn’t sound like his usual brash self. His tone was pale and thin, and he sounded exhausted.
“What can I do to make this easier?”
“Come back tomorrow. I’m here every day.”
He should be out planning how to reinvent the city for the new century. He should be dancing at weddings, teasing members of the Poison Squad, stirring up the world with one fiery article after another. He didn’t belong locked in a jail, doing laundry.
“I guess this was one way to get you off the Poison Squad.”
Sorrow made his eyes glint. “I feel like I’m letting the other guys down.”
“Don’t,” she rushed to say, wishing she hadn’t brought it up. He was so endlessly generous with his time and his body. Now he was suffering in jail because of her.
He glanced over his shoulder. “Stillman is coming back,” he said and quickly set the ventilation tube back in place. She shifted over to the window fan but pressed against the side of the wall so no one inside could see her.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she promised.
Twenty-Seven
She met Luke at the laundry vents for the next four days. They were only able to steal a few minutes while his fellow inmate took his break, so there wasn’t much time to waste arguing, but she broached the subject of Luke’s defense at every meeting.
“You don’t even have to use my name,” she said. “Just tell them that someone with connections on the inside gave you the pictures.”
He squeezed her hand through the vent opening. “Never, never, never,” he vowed, his voice warm with affection, and each word felt like a caress.
The prospect of being exposed terrified her, but she wished he would do it. They couldn’t keep meeting like this forever. Their secret meetings would eventually be discovered, and the punishment would fall entirely on Luke. This situation had to come to an end sooner or later, but he would never turn her in.
The only way to help Luke was for her to confess, and she would have to start by telling her parents. Would they let her continue living with them, or would she be banished from the house? At least when Aunt Stella was cut out of the family, she left with a husband. Marianne would be all alone.
She pondered the dilemma as she brewed a cup of ginger tea for her mother on Saturday afternoon. Vera’s headache was brutal today, and she lay upstairs with the blinds