Heroes Are My Weakness: A Novel

The freezer was virtually empty, and the hydrator drawer held only carrots and radishes. She gazed around the kitchen. Where was the junk food? The bags of tortilla chips and tubs of Ben & Jerry’s? Where was the stockpile of potato chips, the stash of peanut butter cups? No salty, crunchy things. No sweet indulgences. In its own way, this kitchen was as creepy as the other one.

She picked up the spray cleaner, then hesitated. Hadn’t she read somewhere that you were supposed to clean from the top down?

Nobody likes a snoop, Crumpet said in her superior voice.

Like you don’t have any faults, Annie retorted.

Vanity isn’t a fault, Crumpet retorted. It’s a calling.

Yes, Annie wanted to snoop, and she was going to do it now. While Theo was safely out of the house, she could see exactly what he kept in his lair.

Her sore calf muscles protested as she climbed the steps to the second floor. If she craned her neck, she could see the closed door that led to the third-floor attic, where he was supposed to be writing his next, sadistic novel. Or maybe chopping up dead bodies.

The bedroom door was open. She peered inside. With the exception of jeans and a sweatshirt tossed across the bottom of the badly made bed, it looked as though an old lady still lived here. Off-white walls, drapes printed with cabbage roses, a raspberry slipper chair with a tufted round ottoman, and a double bed covered in a beige spread. He certainly hadn’t done anything to make himself feel at home.

She went back out into the tiny hallway and hesitated for only a moment before making her way up the remaining six steps to the forbidden third floor. She pushed open the door.

The pentagonal room had an exposed wooden ceiling and five bare, narrow windows with pointed arches. The human touches that were missing everywhere else were visible here. An L-shaped desk jutted out from one wall, its top cluttered with papers, empty CD cases, a couple of notebooks, a desktop computer, and headphones. Across the room, black metal industrial shelving held various electronics including a sound system and a small flat-screen television. Stacks of books sat on the floor beneath some of the windows, and a laptop computer lay next to a slouchy easy chair.

The door squeaked open.

She gave a hiss of alarm and spun around.

Theo came inside, a black knit scarf in his hands.

He tried to kill you once, Leo sneered. He can do it again.

She swallowed. Pulled her eyes away from the small white scar at the corner of his eyebrow, the scar she’d given him.

He came toward her, no longer simply holding the black scarf, but passing it through his hands like a garrote . . . or a gag . . . or maybe a chloroform-soaked rag. How long would he have to hold it over her face before she was unconscious?

“This floor is off-limits,” he said. “But then you know that. Yet here you are.”

He looped the scarf around his neck, holding the ends in his fists. Her tongue was frozen. Once again, she had to call on Scamp for courage. “You’re the one who’s not supposed to be here.” She hoped he didn’t hear the squeak in her normally reliable voice. “How am I supposed to snoop if you don’t leave when you say you’re going to?”

“You’re kidding, right?” He pulled on the ends of the scarf.

“It’s— It’s really your fault.” She needed to come up with something quickly. “I wouldn’t have come in here if you’d given me your password when I asked.”

“Fortunately, I’m not following you.”

“A lot of people tape it to their computers.” She gripped her hands behind her back.

“I don’t.”

Hold your ground, Scamp ordered. Make him understand he’s dealing with a woman now, not a grossly insecure fifteen-year-old.

She’d aced her improv classes, and she gave it her best. “Don’t you think that’s a little moronic?”

“Moronic?”

“Bad word choice,” she said hastily. “But . . . Say you forget the password. Do you really want to have to call your satellite company?” She coughed and sucked in some air. “You know what that experience is like. You’ll be on the phone for hours listening to a recording telling you how important your call is. Or that their menu has changed, and you’re supposed to listen carefully. I mean, isn’t changing the menu their problem, not yours? After a few minutes of that, I usually feel like killing myself. Do you really want to go through that kind of hell when a simple Post-it note solves the whole problem?”

“Or a simple e-mail,” he said with the sarcasm her ramble deserved. “Dirigo.”

“What?”

Dropping his hands from the scarf, he wandered to the nearest window, where a telescope was pointed toward the ocean. “You convinced me. The password is Dirigo.”

“What kind of password is that?”

“The state motto of Maine. It means ‘I direct.’ It also means you’ve lost your excuse to snoop.”

Nothing much she could say to that. She edged backward toward the door.

He lifted the telescope from its tripod and carried it to another window. “Do you really think I don’t know you’re doing Jaycie’s work for her?”

She should have realized he’d figure that out. “What do you care, as long as the work gets done?”

“Because I don’t want you around.”

“Got it. You’d rather fire Jaycie.”

“I don’t need anybody here.”

“Sure you do. Who’s going to answer the door while you’re asleep in your casket?”

He ignored her, peering through the eyepiece of the telescope instead and adjusting it. She felt a prickling at the back of her neck. The window he’d moved to was the one that looked down on the cottage.

That’s what you get for challenging a scoundrel, Leo sneered.

“I have a new telescope,” he said. “When the light’s just right, it’s amazing how much I can see.” He shifted the telescope ever so slightly. “I hope that furniture you moved wasn’t too heavy for you.”

The chill traveled all the way to her toes.

“Don’t forget to change the sheets in my bedroom,” he said without turning. “There’s nothing better than the feel of clean sheets against bare skin.”

She wouldn’t let him see how much he still frightened her. She made herself turn away slowly and head for the stairs. She had every reason to tell Jaycie she couldn’t do this anymore. Every reason except an absolute certainty that she couldn’t live with herself if she let her fear of Theo Harp force her into abandoning the girl who’d once saved her life.

She worked as quickly as she could. She dusted the living room furniture, vacuumed the rug, scoured the kitchen, and then, her stomach pitching with foreboding, she moved to his bedroom. She found clean linens, but stripping the old sheets from his bed was too personal, too intimate. She set her jaw and did it anyway.

As she reached for a dust rag, she heard the attic door close above her followed by the click of a lock and the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs. She told herself not to turn around, but she did anyway.

He stood in the doorway, one shoulder propped against the doorjamb. His gaze moved from her untidy hair to her breasts—barely visible beneath her heavy sweater—then glided over her hips, lingered, moved on. There was something calculating about his inspection. Something invasive and disturbing. Finally, he turned away.

And that’s when it happened.

An unearthly sound—half moan, half growl, and totally chilling—seeped into the room.

He stopped in his tracks. She twisted her head to look up toward the attic. “What’s that?”

His brow knit. He opened his mouth, as if he wanted to offer an explanation, but no words came out. Moments later he was gone.

The door slammed below. She set her jaw.

Bastard. Serves you right.


THEO’S BREATH FOGGED THE AIR as he unlatched the door to the stable, the place where he’d always go when he needed to think. He’d thought he’d anticipated everything, but he hadn’t anticipated that she’d be back, and he wouldn’t tolerate it.

The interior smelled of hay, manure, dust, and cold. In past years his father had kept as many as four horses here, animals boarded at the island stable when the family wasn’t on Peregrine. Now Theo’s black gelding was the only horse.

Dancer gave a soft whinny and poked his head over the stall. Theo had never imagined he’d have to see her again, yet here she was. In his house. In his life. Bringing the past with her. He rubbed Dancer’s muzzle. “It’s just you and me, boy,” he said. “You and me . . . and whatever new devils have shown up to haunt us.”

The horse tossed its head. Theo opened the stall door. He couldn’t let this go on. He had to get rid of her.