“Yeah, I really fucking do, okay? Just . . . let me do this. Please.”
She looks at me, eyes crinkling, nose scrunching up, like I’m a puzzle she’s trying to figure out. It makes her look younger—cuter.
“All right. I’m this way.”
We walk side by side in easy silence, and about ten minutes later, we arrive. The house looks like a Victorian dollhouse, with a rounded tower on one side, a wraparound second-floor balcony, arched windows, and a spiked wrought-iron fence framing the roof. The same fencing surrounds the big corner lot. The house needs a paint job, new shutters, new steps where the old ones are sunk and uneven—but there’s so much potential. With a little love, it could be magnificent.
“I’m having it restored—which is about as miserable as it sounds when you’re living here,” Kennedy says. “But it’ll be worth it. My Aunt Edna left it to me.”
My head turns sharply. “Aunt Edna died? Shit, she was cool. Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
Kennedy nods. “You were on a skiing trip—I overheard someone talking about it at the wake. Your mother probably forgot to mention it when you came home.”
I look back toward the house. “I’m glad she left it to you.” Then I grin, easily imagining her as a kid in that big old house with its cobwebs and secrets. “I bet you had a blast going through the attic.”
Her eyes widen. “I did, yeah.” Bull’s-eye.
Because people really don’t change when it comes to qualities like that. A love of adventure, of exploration, even if it’s of the past. She hasn’t changed.
“Maybe you can give me a tour sometime?”
She still looks a little wary, distrustful of my intentions. Old habits die hard, and this one’s gonna go down screaming.
She unlocks the front door, then turns. “Good-bye, Brent.”
I run my hand down her arm, ’cause I just can’t help myself. “Good night, Kennedy. I’m . . . I’m glad we talked. Cleared the air. And if I didn’t say it before, I’m really fucking glad you’re home.”
Her smile is small—but it’s there.
“Me too.”
I give her arm a gentle squeeze, then walk down the front steps toward the gate. Halfway there she calls, “Brent?”
I turn around.
“This doesn’t change anything. About the case, I mean. On Monday, I expect you to come at me with everything you have. If you go easy on me it’ll mean you don’t respect me—that you think I can’t handle it. And I’d never forgive you for that.”
I give her a quick nod and she goes inside, closing the door behind her.
My eleven-year-old self was right: girls are weird.
? ? ?
I wake up earlier than usual on Saturday, with the echo of Kennedy’s words in my head. Curiosity rubs me raw, like two jagged sticks sparking a fire. So I skip my morning run and spend an hour in my home office doing online research.
It’s amazing, and kind of fucking frightening, how much of our personal information is floating around out there, and how simple it is to access. After I get the info I wanted—an address just an hour outside of DC—I tap the address into Google Maps, then I head out.
When I knock on the door, I hear muffled voices inside, then the sound of walking feet.
And then the door opens.
And Victoria Russo, Kennedy’s old boarding school roommate, stares at me. “Brent Mason?”
I nod. “Hey, Vicki.”
She looks good, almost exactly the same. Her laugh lines are a little more pronounced, but her shoulder-length hair is still jet black with a streak of bright blue, her nose is still pierced with a diamond stud, and she still has that sharp, no-bullshit-taking shine in her eyes. The last time I saw her she tried to kick me in the balls.
“Why are you here?” she asks.
I look her straight in the eyes. “I need your help.”
9
Ten minutes later, Vicki sets a coffee cup down in front of me at her kitchen table. She has a nice house—a family house—in a development with green lawns and brick-paved driveways and swimming pools in yards lined with arborvitaes to have some privacy from the neighbors. Her kitchen’s huge, with mauve-colored walls and cream cabinets. There are framed pictures all around—some of dark-haired little girls, some of Vicki and Brian Gunderson.
Brian was a student at Saint Arthur’s too. A tall, lanky kid who sagged his pants, listened to Snoop Dogg, and attended on scholarship. I remember seeing them together around campus—he was her date the night of the senior dance . . . and it looks like they’re married now.
In the den off the kitchen, there’s a cluster of book covers with shirtless men in various stages of embracing equally hot, half-naked women. And the author is V. Russo.
“You’re a writer?” I ask, sipping my coffee.
“Yeah. I write romance.”
I glance at the pictures again. “Brian’s a lucky guy.”