The Sinner - Molly O'Keefe Page 0,41

Louisiana summer morning.

All of it, the burn of my tired and sore muscles, the heat of the day, the buzz of insects, seemed somehow removed, disconnected from me.

Instead, my ears roared with the screams of metal and the thundering splinter of wood.

“Matt?”

Everything went silent at the sound of Savannah’s voice. I turned looking for her in the shadows, wondering if this was another figment of my imagination.

Another ghost coming to get a piece of me.

Savannah sat on the steps, her bare legs, honey-colored and long as the horizon, curled up to her chest. Her eyes, wide and liquid in the dark, looked up at me. Right through me.

She knows. The thought was like a gong in my empty chest. It made sense, of course—she was a researcher and my crimes were hardly hidden.

“I brought coffee,” she said, holding out a mug.

It smelled good, bitter and dark. My body practically screamed for the caffeine.

“No thanks,” I said, stepping past her toward the courtyard. She brought the coffee because she wanted to talk. And I wanted to start digging trenches for the box hedge maze.

“Matt,” she said, that Southern accent winding through the courtyard to curl around me, like smoke from some internal fire. “I know about the accident.”

I didn’t answer, just opened the shed and started taking out my tools.

“Did you know?” she asked from a few feet away. “About the floors?”

Did I know? Strange that everyone thought that knowledge meant guilt. Or that lack of knowledge meant innocence. As if it were that easy.

“Does it matter?” I asked, kicking a clod of dirt off the sharp edge of my shovel then throwing it on the ground.

“Of course—”

“I don’t want to talk about this, Savannah.” I gave her a hard look.

“Well, if you want to keep punishing yourself in my courtyard, you’re going to have to talk.”

I ducked farther into the shed, grabbing the hand tools.

“I’m not going to leave this alone,” she said, from the doorway.

Of course not. Of course she’d make this hard.

“It’s none of your business.” I growled the words, stomping past her to the cypress.

“You’re right,” she said. “It’s not. But—”

“How about we talk about Katie’s father?” I asked, shifting to offense, my temper lit. “Where is he?” She went pale and I arched my eyebrows, waiting. I wanted to hammer on her like the ghosts hammered on me.

A mourning dove cooed and a dog barked someplace close by and I waited. I waited and I watched her, remembering the way she tasted. The way the inside of her thighs felt against my body. The sound of cries around the fingers I’d shoved in her mouth. And I wanted it all again.

Ferociously.

“Go to hell, Matt,” she snapped. She spun on her heel and left.

I already am.

Nine hours later, I put the tools away, my work for the day done. The heat had been relentless today. So thick, so heavy it dragged at my limbs, sucked at my head. Katie’s mid-afternoon water balloon shower had been a fantastic relief. I’d thanked her, which got me the scowling of a lifetime.

I shut the door to the shed and my vision swam, the earth dipped under my feet. Luckily, the shed was there to hold me up.

“You’re eating with us tonight.”

I forced the world to right itself and my vision to clear. When I was sure I wouldn’t fall over, I turned.

Margot looked regal in pressed linen, a red scarf around her hair. Diamonds sparkled at her ears.

“Is that an order, Margot?”

“Damn right it is. I didn’t ask you to stay so you could kill yourself.”

“For a group of women so angry with me, you’re awfully concerned about my welfare.”

“And I’m tired of living with martyrs. We’re eating in an hour.” Margot’s eyes raked over me. “Clean yourself up.”

SAVANNAH

I could not leave it alone. Matt and the Elements Building tragedy were like a sore tooth from which I couldn’t keep my tongue.

Hours passed in a few clicks of my mouse.

With each story I read, my pendulum regarding Matt swung back and forth between hero and bad guy, lingering more and more on hero.

He didn’t know about the floors. Research rarely lied and the research proved it.

During the final push of the construction, he’d been in Moscow, then Nebraska. Peter Borjat, who’d died in the accident, was also the sculptor whose work was being shown in that fatal corner. He was supposed to be showing a piece made of glass and pine at the opening, but it had sold two weeks