“Sorry, Soph,” Vlad said in his unaffected grumble. “Didn’t see you there. What about Will?”
Nina spun on her heel and went to the kitchen, yanking open the fridge. I heard glass tinkling and cellophane crinkling as she searched inside. “Sophie slept with him.”
All the color that drained from my face must have gone out through my feet and rooted me the carpet. For a fleeting second I thought that perhaps if I stayed perfectly still, I could blend into the apartment landscape and everyone would forget that I was there—that I had ever been there.
“Way to go, Sophie.” Vlad chucked me on the shoulder on his way to the dining table. He seemed to lose interest in me the second he sat down and booted up his laptop. “I don’t like either of them, but I think Will might be the lesser of your two evils.”
“No.” Nina shook her head, straightening up and massaging a blood bag. “I was hoping she’d hold out for Alex again. I like the whole fallen angel thing.” She hipped the refrigerator door closed and waggled her sculpted brows. “Doomed love. So romantic.”
Humiliation crept up my neck. I wanted to interject something, to change the subject, but all I could come up with was what I was sure was a look of complete dumbstruck silence.
“But I still don’t get how you sleeping with Will is making people die,” Nina said, popping a straw into her snack.
“We are not talking about sex,” I said finally, my teeth gritted. “Or Will.” I looked from Nina to Vlad and back again. Nina was sucking her fresh-from-the-fridge bag of O Negative, her cheeks hollowed with the effort. Vlad gave me one of those blank teenage boy looks, then clicked on his game. I sighed, not entirely sure that I wanted to restart a conversation about other mistakes I may have made.
I grabbed my jacket from the peg by the door and my shoulder bag. “I’ll see you guys later,” I said, clicking the door shut behind me.
I stepped into the hallway and paused in front of Will’s door yet again, then pressed my ear up against it. I could hear Mr. Sampson moving around inside, could hear the muffled sound of people on television making mundane conversation. I closed my eyes.
“Please, Mr. Sampson,” I whispered to the closed door, “please don’t be the one responsible for any of this.”
The movement on the other side of the door stopped abruptly and I stiffened, then hurried down the hall. I snaked around the corner when Sampson yanked the door open and stepped into the hallway. He had a dish towel thrown over one shoulder and one of Will’s aprons tied around his waist, Charles and Camilla smiling smugly from their spot just under his belt buckle.
“Sophie?” he said into the hall.
I straightened and took a tiny step from my hiding spot. “How’d you know it was me?”
He raised an eyebrow. “I fetch, I roll over, and I have incredible hearing. What are you doing lurking in the hallway?”
I blew out a defeated sigh. “I’m not sure.”
“Come in.”
I followed Sampson into Will’s apartment and leaned my hip against the counter as he went to work poking at a steak crackling and caramelizing under the broiler.
“I didn’t know you cooked.”
“A man’s got to eat. So what’s going on with you?”
I closed my eyes and lobbed my head back against the microwave. “I want to help you, Mr. Sampson, I really do. But I just don’t know where to start. You’ve got to give me something to go on.”
Mr. Sampson swung his head. “I told you, Sophie, you don’t need to worry yourself about me right now. Not with what’s going on over at Sutro Point. You have a job to do.”
I swallowed, not feeling the least bit convinced.
“Like I said, I appreciate you wanting to help me, but you don’t need to. I’m going to do what I can from here and if I can’t find what I need, I’ll move on.”
“You mean you’ll go back into hiding. To running.”
Sampson shrugged and began scrubbing potatoes in the sink. “You should be helping Alex find this murderer.”
I gave him a closed lipped smile. How am I supposed to tell him that so far, tracking down this murderer had only brought me here?
“Sampson.” I worked the grout with the tip of my fingernail. “Look, I want to help Alex and I want to help you. I can do both. But I need your help. What do you know? Where do I go? How do I get my hands on this contract, or figure out who penned it? Right now, I’m not just looking for a needle in a haystack, I’m looking for the actual haystack.”
Sampson smiled softly and popped two freshly scrubbed potatoes into the oven with the steak. The luscious smell of the meat wafted out and I felt my mouth water, despite my growing desire to shove my head in the oven beside it.
“So about finding the contract. Maybe Alex and I can do a little double-detective work.”