“But Christmas isn’t until tomorrow,” Lucky said. “My gift for you is back at the house.”
“We’re not going back to the house,” he said, smiling. “Open it.”
She did. There was a folded piece of paper inside. “A title deed,” she said. “For a house… in Boise, Idaho?”
Cary pointed at the page. “That’s your name, right there. Alaina Cadence. The house belongs to you.”
“Well—” she began.
“No, that’s you. All your official papers are under that name. You’ve got a passport and a birth certificate, a business degree, and now, a deed. You always said you wanted a simple, normal life. And Boise, Idaho—that’s the place! Our future starts tonight.”
“But Priscilla—”
“We’re done with her. I did what I promised, I did what I had to so she would eventually let us go. I held up my end of the bargain and now it’s her turn. We’re taking off. Tonight. She’s not going to follow us.”
“Where did you get this house?”
“It doesn’t matter, okay? The point is, it’s yours. Ours. This is where it’s all going to begin. A fresh start, finally. The life you’ve always wanted. I’ve made you wait long enough.”
He stood and picked up the bag with the cash box, looked around the dim room. “I think I’m actually going to miss this place,” he said. “Turns out I didn’t mind running a club. Even if it was just a front.” He held out his hand, and she took it and stood, too. “Car’s outside,” he said. “You’ll have to leave everything behind at the coach house, but I promise, what you need is in the car.”
“What about Betty?”
He smiled. “We’d never leave our girl behind. She’s in the supply room. Let’s go get her and then let’s hit the road. Are you with me?”
She smiled, kissed him, allowed the happiness, the hope, to edge in and elbow all the uncertainty and fear out of the way. “Of course I am,” she said. “Always.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
As the rest of the Priscilla’s Place residents looked on, Priscilla advanced toward Lucky; Betty started barking, and Sharon tried to grab the leash again. “I’m so sorry—I don’t know what’s with her tonight; she’s normally so gentle. But she sure seems to like you, Jean.”
“Easy, girl,” Lucky said. Betty immediately calmed and stood beside her, wagging her tail. Lucky longed to greet her dog properly, to kneel down and bury her face in the familiar auburn fur. But she needed to try to keep up the pretense, as weak as it now was, of never having seen this dog before in her life. “Is she a rescue?” she asked Priscilla, trying to keep her voice steady. “I must remind her of a previous owner.”
“She belongs to my son,” Priscilla said. “He went overseas for work. He needed someone to take care of his dog while he was away. You’re a dead ringer for his ex-girlfriend, you know. That must be it. She sees the similarity.”
“What a coincidence,” Lucky said weakly.
“Shall we head upstairs for that tea and chat, Jean?”
* * *
Priscilla’s apartment was decorated in rich fabrics and dark colors. In such a small space, it was cloying—and in stark contrast to the utilitarian sparseness downstairs. Priscilla closed and locked the door. Lucky knelt beside Betty and she licked Lucky’s face. Lucky looked up at Priscilla. “Why do you have my dog?”
Priscilla, ignoring her, crossed the room and lifted a piece of paper from her desk. “I had Nico, my bodyguard—you would have seen him on your way in—search your pod during dinner. All he could find was this, taped into a book.” It was the fake shopping list. Lucky could see the numbers there, and started repeating them in her head so she wouldn’t forget them. She should have memorized them before. She hoped it wasn’t too late. “Why would something like this be important enough to hide? Is it really a shopping list?”
Lucky recalled what her father had said about how important it was to pretend she had something Priscilla wanted. “Yes. It’s our code.”
“It has something to do with how you and Cary are supposed to find each other?”
“Yes.”
“He told you to use this? You two had a plan? You knew he was going to disappear?”
“Yes.”
Priscilla looked at Lucky for a long moment, then back down at the sheet.
“When did you establish this code? When you were in Vegas? Don’t look so shocked. I had you followed by the same private investigator for years. There is nothing I don’t know about you and my son. Now, how does this code work, exactly?” Priscilla was chipper, businesslike, acting as if she were simply have a collegial conversation about a mutual problem they needed to solve.
Come on, Lucky. Think of something. “Facebook,” she said. “I’m supposed to set up a profile under the name Doll Conovan, list my home city as Cincinnati and my interests as screenwriting and bird-watching. I make my profile public, and post a recipe for white bean and spinach rice on my wall.”
Priscilla walked over to her desk and opened up a rose-gold-colored laptop. “Doll Conovan. From his favorite movie. Of course. Okay. Come here. You can sit in my chair. There, I’ve got Facebook all cued up now. Make the profile.” Priscilla hovered behind her as she created the profile, and followed the steps she had just outlined. “Now what?”
“Now, I wait for him to add me as a friend and send me a message.”
“Yes, but what’s his profile going to be? How will you know for sure it’s him? You thought of that, didn’t you?”