“I’ll fix your door,” he said as he crossed the threshold back into the studio.
“Don’t worry about it.” I smiled, but in my mind I was recalling the location of my keys and calculating the distance between the front door and the side driveway. “I’m getting in the shower. No peeking.”
“Okay.” He moved from the bathroom backward, hands up, smiling with the mouth that had just sucked my pussy off my fingers. He couldn’t possibly kiss another woman with that mouth.
I reached for the shower knob, tinkling my fingers good-bye when water flowed.
He smiled and waved. Made the thumb-and-pinkie calling gesture.
I pulled my shirt up at the hem but slowly, so he could decide what to do. He left before he got an eyeful of tit.
When I heard the studio door shut, I pulled the strap back on, shut the shower, and ran to get my keys. Put on my clogs. Went outside. The door locked automatically behind me. I got in my car, pulling out before I’d finished buckling in, and tapped the wheel with impatience as the driveway gate slid open. My only hope was that he was going east on Olympic. If he was, he’d be stuck at the light long enough for me to catch him, and he wouldn’t be going past the driveway where he’d see my open gate.
The black Audi was at the corner of my small street, waiting for a light that heavily favored Olympic Boulevard. If he wanted to make a right, he could have already done it. He wouldn’t see me. I’d be stuck at a light for a second, but the light just east was poorly synchronized. I could catch up.
It worked out perfectly. His light went green. I pulled out in the camouflage of stopped cars. I caught up with him in three blocks. In rush hour, my Volvo looked like every other Volvo on the road.
“That’s right, fucker. I got you. You can’t keep secrets from me.”
Left on Crenshaw. Right on Wilshire. Left on Lorraine.
Shit shit shit. He was stopping. In this neighborhood? The mayor’s mansion was three blocks away. What were they paying the guy?
I ducked low and passed as he pulled up to a house that already had a crossover SUV in it. I parked at the end of the block.
Another car in the drive meant another adult in the house, and a crossover meant one thing and one thing only. Kids.
That fucking fucker.
For all his talk of security, his house didn’t have a gate or a hedge in front. None of the houses did. It was getting dark, and I was still in my tight black shorts and clogs.
I scrolled through my phone. I needed someone to tell me I was being crazy. I couldn’t call Darlene. She was probably busy. She was always busy. Simon should just be getting out of rehearsals. I could call him and tell him I figured out the steps to “Make Him Yours.” Then I could blithely mention I was stalking my bodyguard.
Yeah.
No.
I should go home. I should put in a movie and just trust him. I should be a grown-up and ask him the way I asked Vince to lay off and expected him to just do it. Because being a grown-up had worked so well. Now I was the one living in a fortress because people were liars and couldn’t be trusted.
Which reminded me. I was out of the house. On the street. By myself. At night.
To hell with it. I just wanted to know. I had a right to know. I didn’t want to disturb or disrupt him. I just wanted to be sure I wasn’t getting involved with a lying, cheating douchebag.
I walked down the block. The streetlights were old school, casting a warm, pleasant glow onto the tops of the old-growth trees. My clogs crunched against dropped leaves and pods. The houses I passed were set back. Wide porches. Big front windows. I felt perfectly comfortable and safe until I got to his house.
What are you doing?
“Just looking,” I said to myself, believing it. I was just going to look, then I was going to head home and watch a movie.
There were high gates at the driveway. I couldn’t get to the back of the house. I intended to look into the one side window accessible from the street. I’d have to be on the neighbor’s property, and I didn’t want to get caught, so I bent over and hustled to the house.
He has to have a security system.
I approached, waiting for an alarm to go off.
Nothing. No motion-sensor lights.
Maybe he didn’t have it on when he was home.
Maybe it’s not his house.
The side window looked lower from the street. When I got there, it was over my head.
Damn.
Quickly and with as much stealth as I’d ever done anything, I went around the front and up the steps to the porch. There were two mountain bikes against the brick rail. One was grown-up size; the other had wheels built for a kid. A boy, if I was guessing correctly. A third racing bike was pink. Grown-up size.
A deep rage built inside me. It came from the same place as the sexual arousal. It was base and instinctual. If it turned out he was a lying, cheating philanderer, none of it would matter anyway.
Crouching by the front window, I looked through.
No one. Lights on but not a person in sight.
There was a mantelpiece, and his life was on it.
Carter and a woman. He held her shoulders and kissed her forehead. Carter and a little boy. Carter and the woman and the boy. Boy and woman. Just boy.
His house.
His family.
Son of a fucking bitch.
A quick squeal and a bright light cut the air at the same time. The light turned blue-red-blue, and the sound of engines rose with it.
“Don’t move!” More lights right on me. “Hands up! LAPD!”
CHAPTER 26
CARTER
No matter what anyone tells you, night-vision cameras aren’t perfect. Not even close to halfway perfect. So when I went to the monitors to see what the system was beeping about, I didn’t notice her clogs or the slimness of her frame. I just saw a black-clad person skulking around the house and up the porch.
I worked for famous people with crazy fans. Before that, I put people in jail. I made a very nice living and had things to steal. Mostly, and at the top of the list, I needed to protect Phin from my life without making him feel as if he lived in a prison. So the security system was invisible and thorough. It conformed to frustrating Historical Society guidelines. It had been silent for years.
When I saw the figure crawling around the house at dinnertime, my instinct was to protect first and ask questions later. I’d been a cop when Genevieve Tremaine and her estranged husband wound up dead. I took stalking very seriously. I told Phin and Mom to get upstairs now. When Phin asked questions, I practically threw him up the stairs by the back of his collar.
I scared the shit out of him.
My mother was more scared of me than the intruder.
Who wasn’t an intruder.
Once the LAPD showed up, I went outside, where Emily had her hands up and the same sexy little black outfit she’d been in all afternoon. She was drowned in light, squinting, scared. Two uniforms had their guns on her. I stood away from it all, in a dark corner.