Becoming Rain
PROLOGUE
CLARA
It’s a modest Seattle suburban home, with two stories, steep gables, and cream-colored siding. A row of artless bushes lines the walkway, courtesy of the builder’s unimaginative landscaping. It looks exactly like the house to its left and too similar to the house to its right.
And yet the number above the garage marks this house as altogether unique.
I hunch down in the passenger seat of the cruiser, just enough to spy the glow from the second floor through the cold drizzle. A bay window frames the blond woman swaying, the little boy curled within her arms, his cheek resting against her shoulder in a way that suggests he’s asleep.
“Where are they going to go?” I ask, eyeing the large “For Sale” sign staked into the front lawn. Just another thing for the neighborhood to look at as they throw sympathetic glances on their way by.
“She can’t make the mortgage,” Officer Burk confirms through a casual sip of coffee, its pungent aroma filling the car’s interior. “Her parents have a farm outside the city. Sounds like that’s where they’re heading.”
“He had no life insurance? Nothing?”
“She had to take a loan out on the house just to pay for the funeral.”
A dull pang throbs in my chest as I watch Betty-Jo Billings drift over to the window, listless eyes resting on the driveway below, where puddles of water pool in the indents formed by the tires that used to sit there. The exact place where her husband waved to her for the last time before climbing into the passenger side of his cherry-red Ford F-250. The truck he had advertised for sale on Craigslist. The truck he was allowing a prospective buyer to test drive.
Seattle police found Wayne Billings’s body fourteen days later in a city dump. The truck hasn’t turned up and it probably never will. No witnesses to interrogate, except for Wayne’s wife, and all they could get from her was that the driver wore a baseball hat and he was dropped off by someone in a dark sedan. She hadn’t been paying any real attention and I understand why. With a two-year-old hanging off her leg and a three-week-old baby in her arms, the poor woman was asleep on her feet, exhausted. When Wayne left, all she was probably thinking about was the family-friendly minivan they would buy with the cash from the truck.
The wipers swish back and forth in a monotonous song and heat blasts out from the dashboard to counter the chill in the damp spring air. I arrived on the West Coast one week ago and, though locals swear it’s not usually this bad, it hasn’t stopped raining.
I don’t mind it at all. I find it soothing, actually.
“It’s a real shame. Everyone says he was a decent guy. His kids will never get to find out,” Burk murmurs in that wearied voice that tells me that this is just another case to him. He has succumbed to the job. It’s not his fault; it’s how many cops learn to deal with the kinds of things we see every day.
Detachment.
The case sits open, but the local police force has pretty much written it off. I knew that the second I made the request for the files. Under a generic guise of a Washington, D.C., cop researching similar cases on the East Coast, of course. None of these guys knows why I’m really here.
I peer up at the little boy’s angelic face again.
And make a silent promise that Rust Markov—and anyone tied to him—will pay.
Becoming Rain
ONE
LUKE
I drop my glass onto the table with a heavy thud. “Miller can go. I’m ready to run the shop on my own.”
Uncle Rust’s eyes wander over an attractive woman passing by, on her way to the restrooms of The Cellar, her hips swaying in rhythm with the throbbing bass. “I’ll tell you when you’re ready.”
The mouthful of vodka barely quells the bitterness ready to leap from my tongue. “Seriously? What else do I need to do? Haven’t I proven myself yet?” I stare hard at him as he rolls his drink around inside his cheeks. Rust has always shown patience with me, but that’s a sign that his tolerance with my drunken persistence is running thin.
“All good things come to those who wait.”
“I have waited. Hell, I’ve done more than wait. I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to do! Do you think I enjoyed changing tires and going home every night stinking of motor oil?”
He drops a hand down on my shoulder, slightly too hard. “All part of the plan, Luke.”
The plan. Rust starting singing “the plan” song to me when I was thirteen. He pulled into our driveway one day, in his latest ride—a silver Cadillac—and dressed in a sharp-looking suit, and I told him I wanted to be just like him. I still remember his words. “Listen to me, kid, and I’ll set you up for life.”
Eleven years later, I’m beginning to wonder if he really meant it.
“Yeah, well, maybe you can enlighten me on this master plan of yours so I have a better handle on it. Like, why I’m looking at Miller’s ugly face across a desk and taking his bullshit. You said the garage would be mine by now.” Facing off against the current manager of Rust’s Garage—an overweight, under-groomed jerk who barks orders at me like I’m his personal bitch—every day for the past two months since Rust moved me from the mechanics bays to the office as “associate manager” is wearing on my nerves. Miller’s no idiot. He expects that at some point his fat ass will be evicted from that squeaky office chair to make room for me, and he’s been making me suffer for it since the day my feet hit that dirty concrete floor.
“I need Miller there.”
“Until when?”
“Until I say so.”
“And then what?” Rust keeps telling me I’m smart, I’m going to go far. I assume “going far” means more than the glory of filing paperwork, ordering parts, and being called “Nurse Boone” by a bunch of greasy mechanics for the rest of my life.
The revenue from the garage isn’t bankrolling Rust’s high-end lifestyle; that much I know. Neither does RTM International, the online vehicles sales company he co-owns, though that company puts him on the map as a legitimate global businessman.
I have a pretty good idea where his money comes from by now.
But he has yet to admit anything to me and, until he does, I’m nothing more than an errand boy. He can be such a secretive son of a bitch, even when it comes to family.
“I just . . .” I try to bite my tongue, but the dam breaks anyway. “Stop dangling this big plan in front of me like a diamond-encrusted carrot.”
I get a sour smirk in response. “How about you stop whining like a pissy brat and spend all this energy establishing yourself as a leader. Run the garage as well as Miller does. Better than Miller. Learn how to deal with people. You’ll meet all kinds when you’re in charge and you’ve got to be personable and keep them all happy, kid. I didn’t build up that place so you can drive it into the ground with your smart mouth.”
Same old spiel. “It’s hard to believe that’s really so important, considering you’ve got King Kong Grouch dealing with the customers right now.” Rust knows he doesn’t have to worry about my personality. I’m Prince Charming, for fuck’s sake. Just, maybe not after this much vodka . . .
“The customers come back. Plus, he has the guys’ respect.”
“That’s not respect. That’s working for a paycheck under constant threat. The dickhead told me he’d cut an hour from my pay today for being late. To my own fucking shop!”
“It’s still my fucking shop,” Rust throws back, his tone warning.
I hold my hands up in surrender. “Fine. But I need to start making real money, Rust. My own money.”
“You aren’t exactly suffering. I’ve taken good care of you.” His manicured fingertip taps the face of my gold Rolex—a hand-me-down from him when he upgraded last year. It’s part of the long list of gifts and cash that he’s easily doled out and I’ve gratefully accepted, just as easily as a son would accept something from his father. Because that’s the role Rust has played since I was six years old, ever since my dad skipped out on my mom, little sister, and me.
I lean back against my bench, trying to decide if this argument is worth it. I know I can’t win. Rust’s an unmovable bastard when he wants to be. “I’m just tired of Miller’s crap,” is all I say. I’m tired of punching in and out every day, of working Saturdays. It’s a sucker’s life and it’s not one I have any interest in living. It’s the one Rust promised me I wouldn’t have to live.
A harsh chuckle escapes Rust. “You’re only twenty-four years old. You’ve got too many years to go to be tired of people’s crap already. Go on . . .” He waves a lazy hand back toward the common area of the club—we’re sitting in the VIP section, as usual. It’s packed with bodies and thrumming with deep-bass trance music. “It’s a busy night here. Why don’t you cheer yourself up with a bliad.”
I roll my eyes. Go find a whore and get laid. Classic Rust advice when he’s trying to blow me off. Sometimes I listen. It’s never hard to find one. Not in this place, not looking the way I do. Like money. That’s what these kinds of girls like. And I’ve never minded playing the part of a guy who has it if the night ends with one of them naked and on her back in front of me.
I down the rest of my drink and flick the empty glass across the table. “I’m going home.”
“Probably a good idea. You’re obnoxious tonight. Doubt you’d impress anyone in your state.”
I have no interest in impressing anyone tonight. Not even Priscilla—a bartender and a sure thing, if she hasn’t already dug her claws into a true high roller for the night. “When you hear that I’ve beaten Miller to death with that fucking stapler of his, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” I slide out of our booth to the sound of Rust’s booming laughter. Pushing my way through the crowd, I keep my head down to avoid all conversation.
A sudden splash of cold liquid hits my chest, doing nothing to cool my simmering rage.
Becoming Rain
TWO
CLARA
“I’m so sorry!” I peer up through the dim club lighting to take in his face. It’s angular and masculine. He’s far prettier than the pictures do justice. And, by the deep furrow and the clenched teeth, he’s also oh so pissed.
He’s too busy glaring at the tumbler’s worth of Coke that I just dumped all over his steel-blue shirt to even bother a glance up at me. “Fucking perfect,” I hear him mumble.
“Let me get that dry cleaned for you. Please,” I offer, my voice a seductive purr, hoping the view down the front of this slutty overpriced dress will finally grab his attention. I place my hand flat against his stomach as I step into his personal space. Physical contact usually works.
Instead, he shoulders past me, pushing through the crowded bar and toward the exit.
Shit. I didn’t nurse a drink on this bar stool for the past two hours with the better part of my breasts on display so this asshole could ignore me.
Again.
Tossing a twenty on the counter, which will more than cover my bill, I weave through the other patrons, trying not to be too obvious as I chase after him. He’s at least two hundred pounds of muscle and he’s carrying himself well, but I watched him chug six glasses of vodka. He’s got to be drunk.
By the time I get up the narrow stairs of the underground club to the side street, Luke Boone is in the back of a cab and speeding off, leaving me staring at the taillights as they disappear around a corner, my ever-growing frustration weighing down on my shoulders.
“Strike five for Rain Martines,” I mutter, picking my way along the sidewalk in my painful stilettos to where my white Audi sits. “ ‘It’ll be easy,’ they said . . .” I slam the door shut behind me. “ ‘He’ll be all over you.’ ” I start the engine and lean back against the headrest. And sigh. “This isn’t going to work.”
My phone rings in response.
“Who told you this would be easy?” Warner’s heavy Boston accent fills the car’s speakers as it kicks into Bluetooth mode. “Don’t give up just yet, Clara. What happened tonight?”
I fumble with the gold dragonfly pendant around my neck until I feel the minuscule switch on the back. I flick it, deactivating the listening device. “You heard what happened.”
“Walk me through it. Step by step.”
I pull out of the parking lot and make the five-minute drive home, filling my handler in on the night’s events: how I watched my target stride to the booth—the same booth in the VIP section that he always sits at—as if he were on a mission, pour glass after glass of vodka from the bottle and toss it back, get into what looked like a heated conversation with his uncle, and then suddenly stand up and storm through the crowd.
How I did the first thing I could think of to stop him. “He didn’t even look at me,” I admit and, after a long pause, add, “I’m not his type, Warner.” Despite the posh outfit and the top-to-bottom grooming I’ve undergone to transform into the prototype of what Luke Boone typically brings home, I have yet to earn so much as a sideways glance from him.
“Yeah, you are. He just hasn’t laid eyes on you yet.”
“And probably never will, at this rate.”
“Impossible.”
I shake my head, though he can’t see it. “How many nights can I hang around that club, dressed like an escort, before you guys realize that you’ve got the wrong undercover on this?” It pains me to admit that.
“Fifteen minutes. Your place.” The phone line cuts out, leaving me to brood over my impending failure alone.
Weeks of case preparation, down the drain. I don’t know what I was thinking. When my boss called me in to his corner office and introduced me to the man in the suit filling the spare chair, my life changed. Assistant Director Josh Sinclair wanted me. Or, more appropriately, the FBI wanted me—twenty-six-year-old Officer Clara Bertelli from the Washington, D.C., Major Crime Unit. They had a big case, one that stretched internationally, one they’ve been working for eighteen months.
After two failed attempts to infiltrate the group, they were trying a new strategy and it required a very specific profile. One that they failed to find in their database of FBI agents, so they were reaching beyond their organization, as they sometimes do. They had been searching for a suitable undercover for weeks, and then my file hit their radar and winning bells went off.
My youthful look, my cool demeanor, my impeccable arrest record, my compelling court testimonials, even my diligent case notes . . . Sinclair said I was exactly what they were looking for. Then he asked me if I was interested in being a part of what could be one of the biggest car theft ring busts in U.S. history.
My own set of winning bells went off.
I didn’t give it a moment’s thought before I answered with an exuberant “Hell, yeah.”
But maybe I should have considered it a bit more. Maybe I shouldn’t have assumed it’d be as easy as a hooker sweep or busting some idiot john. All I thought about was what this could mean to my career if I succeeded—ideally a job in the Bureau, exactly where I want to be. A bit of my own digging uncovered that Assistant Director Sinclair is the kind of guy that can make that happen.
Maybe I should have considered what it would mean if I failed, where I could land if I don’t pull this off. A very likely possibility, if the past few weeks have been any indication.
I park my Audi in my private garage, appreciating the luxury car’s handling ease. Part of my undercover persona and definitely one of the perks, as is everything else that now surrounds me. Back home, my real life consists of a drafty one-bedroom apartment with cracked tiles and a squeaky fridge, a ’95 Jeep Wrangler with more miles on it than a retired cargo plane, and chain store clothing bought at 50 percent off. Sixty grand a year with student loan debt hardly buys me more. I’m not complaining—I’ve always loved my job and my life.
But then I take a smooth ride in this mirrored elevator that will lead me to the top floor with the slip of a key and step into “my” loft-style designer condo—with the computerized control panel for the lighting and sound system to my left, floor-to-ceiling windows to my right, and everything from Miele kitchen appliances to Brazilian walnut floors and travertine tile in between—and I get to experience how the other side lives. A lifestyle I will never afford to have on a regular cop salary.
I have to admit, it’ll be hard to leave some of this behind.
Kicking off my shoes, I head over to the wall of windows and take a peek out around the shades that are always drawn. A few condos in the twin boutique loft building next to mine are still lit, but most sit in darkness. There’s only one I really care about, though.
The one with my target in it.
Maybe the Feds thought this would be a cute, kismet story for Rust Markov’s nephew and me to giggle over when I finally succeeded in winning his attention—the fact that we have a perfect view into each other’s lavish homes. I certainly do, anyway. Luke doesn’t seem to believe in drawing window covers, regardless of time or state of dress. I haven’t yet figured out whether it’s due to ignorance or arrogance.
Flashes of light from the TV on the wall fill his living room, each burst highlighting his body, now clad in nothing but boxer briefs and a T-shirt. As with every other night for the past few weeks, I watch him drop down to the white shag rug and begin the nightly regime of crunches and push-ups that give him those hardened muscles. Without fail, drunk or not, he will go through this routine, his bulldog stretched out next to his head, tongue lolling. I’ve caught my own tongue lolling once or twice, when I had a brief lapse in memory and forgot what Luke Boone really is. For all else that he may be, he has a body and face for magazine covers.
Too bad he’s a budding criminal.
At least, that’s the assumption. That’s why I’m here.
I wonder if the women he brings home know. Or care. I’m guessing not. They’re not the type to care about much except what he can buy them. From what I’ve seen in the reports, the joke’s on them because this guy doesn’t wine and dine anyone. He’s after only one thing and he gets it. Thankfully, on the few nights I’ve witnessed a “guest” trail him through the door, the women had enough modesty to draw the blinds in his bedroom.
With a heavy sigh of frustration, I head to the pretty watercolor painting that hides my safe. I pull the case files for 12—our code name for Luke Boone—out, dropping them on the coffee table, one hand on my zipper as I head to the bedroom to peel off this uncomfortable dress and change into sweats.
I come back to find a six-foot shadow at my window, stealing the same glance across the way at our target that I had not five minutes ago. “Would you stop using your key? I could have been naked.”
“I was hoping,” Warner throws back over his shoulder.
I offer up a bottle of Chianti. He waves it away, instead helping himself to a can of Harpoon—a Boston I.P.A. beer that he insists on stocking in my fridge—before dropping his big body into my white leather sectional.
I flop into the couch next to him. “I just don’t know . . .”
“What don’t you know, Bertelli?” Warner stretches long legs out over my coffee table, fanning the thick folder of surveillance notes that I just set down over the glass. “That you’re a smart cop? That you were handpicked by the F.B.I. for a reason?”
I smile, giving his knee a friendly pat. “I can always count on you for a motivational pep talk.”
“We all knew this wouldn’t be a cakewalk.”
“No, I know. I just . . .” I yawn, the adrenaline that kept me wired through the night finally seeping from my body, leaving me weary. “We’ve been pinning all our plans on the expectation that 12’s going to fall to his knees at the sight of me. Dog me around and tell me whatever I want to know. That’s clearly not the case.” I won’t lie; privately, it’s a hit to my ego. I’ve never had a hard time attracting a target’s attention. With my long, wavy chestnut hair, olive skin, and light blue eyes, we all assumed I was Luke Boone’s type. On paper, I am. But either something else is at play or I just don’t quite fit into the lineup of gold-digging beauties.
Warner sucks back a mouthful of beer, his face pensive. “You said he was fighting with 24 tonight?” The Feds are so clever with their code names.
“Looked that way.”
Warner shrugs. “Drunk . . . arguing with the uncle . . . last thing he’s in the mood for is putting any work into a woman.”
“I guess . . . But what about last time?” He hadn’t noticed me last week either, and I had made sure my steps were as slow and purposeful as a peacock’s as I strutted past his table on my way to the restroom, my provocative dress clinging to my ass.
“He took the bartender home.” Warner stares at me like that answer says it all. Finally, my blank look compels him to elaborate. “Guaranteed lay with no effort and no hassle. He obviously wanted something easy that night.”
I roll my eyes. “He definitely had that.” And I got an eyeful, making it home just in time to see her do a Full Monty sashay to the bedroom blinds to draw them. Months’ worth of surveillance—pictures, written reports, videos—mark Priscilla Grishin as Boone’s “go-to girl.” Nothing more, nothing less. They’re certainly not exclusive. “I’m just not sure this is going to work. I mean . . . these women . . .” I let my words drift off. These women, they’re not common prostitutes working to pay their rent, like the ones I normally deal with. Like the ones I’ve learned to emulate. These ones stalk through life with their stunning faces and perfect figures—either naturally granted or acquired with the help of a plastic surgeon—with the single goal of climbing the boyfriend ladder until they reach the top and become the wife of a rich husband who will cater to their every high-maintenance need.
They’re vapid.
Insecure.
Unkind.
I can’t stand their type. And I can’t stand the kind of guys who are attracted to them.
“These women ain’t got nothin’ on you, kid.” His eyes dip down to survey my body, which, while well cut from a strict gym regime, can’t possibly look appealing right now.
I smack his stomach, a smile creeping out from behind my frustrations. At thirty, FBI Special Agent Warner Briggs is what a lot of women look for in their ideal man. Tall, athletic build, dark hair, square jaw. As charming as a southern boy, though he grew up in South Boston. Extremely successful. The first day he was introduced to me as my handler and lead cover on this case, I’ll admit I took a second glance. He certainly did the same of me.
But I won’t let my career or my goals get derailed by flings with coworkers and I have no interest in dating another cop. That just has disaster written all over it. Female officers already have it hard enough, without adding on opportunities to be accused of sleeping our way to the top. Besides, Warner has quickly become a friend and sounding board. Something I need far more desperately than a good lay.
“Come on, Warner. Honestly, between you and me . . . what did they think was going to happen if I actually managed to grab 12’s attention? Look at his file!” I gesture at it. Three months of gathering intel on Luke Boone. Five one-night stands. Three overnight visits with his bartender. “The guy’s not looking for a wife. He’s not looking for romance, or even great conversation. He’s bringing them home for the one thing I won’t give him! They would have been better off with an informant for this. At least they’re not bound by the same rules.”
Warner barks out a laugh. “Come on, Clara! Sinclair’s not gonna use an informant for a role like this. They’re too unreliable. Winning this case will move him up in rank, and Sinclair’s all about rank.” He stretches an arm over the back of the couch in a playful way. “Don’t worry, you’ve got this. All you have to do is string twelve along. Let him think that he’s got a shot at you. That you’re special.”
“I am special,” I mutter, earning his snort. “But this isn’t a guy you can string along. He’s not into virginal girls and he’s not looking to make money off me.” In hindsight, how the Feds thought putting an undercover on this target with the hopes of luring him with mere words and seductive gestures is beyond me. Desperation—that’s the only explanation I can come up with. They have plenty of evidence at the low level but nothing connecting it all, nothing concrete enough to pull the entire organization down. Not to mention two failed efforts by undercover agents to gain a foothold into the top level, attempting to earn their trust and friendship.
Apparently, neither Rust Markov nor Luke Boone is interested in making new male friends. Female “friends,” however . . .
Warner shrugs. “You say whatever you need to say to hook him.”
I sigh, knowing that Warner’s not going to give me the satisfaction of agreeing. He’s 100 percent committed to the job. “Well, I can’t sit in that bar week after week. People are going to start noticing.”
“I’ll get the guys to rotate. Make it look like they’re hiring you for the night.”
I shake my head. “Too risky. None of the girls 12 takes home are escorts. That may turn him off.”
“Okay then . . .” He leans forward to scoop up the case files, tossing them onto my lap. “What’s gonna work? You’re the one with your neck on the line. You’re looking to go Fed. This is a big deal for you. So you tell me . . .” He stabs the stack of paper with his index finger. “What’s our next move, boss?”
That’s one of the things I like most about Warner. He could be an arrogant, condescending dick. The big-show FBI agent versus a mere metro cop pawn. But he’s been nothing but a team player from day one. In fact, he reminds me a lot of the guys I work with back home. A tight group who take every opportunity to joke around and let loose, knowing how much we all need the release from what we see in our day-to-day.
Sipping on my wine, I start flipping through the pages of candid shots. Luke Boone is a decidedly handsome target by anyone’s standards, with wavy caramel-brown hair that he styles in a sexy mop and clothing that’s tailored to a well-honed body, courtesy of daily jogs with his dog and workouts in his building’s gym.
Son of Oksana Boone, single mother to him and his younger sister, Ana Boone. Biological father’s whereabouts unknown.
Nephew of Rust Markov, who has raised him like a son, footing his tuition for a bachelor’s degree in business, followed by two years in a mechanics program. The nephew of a man pegged as the leader behind one of the West Coast’s biggest car theft rings by a confidential informant avoiding heroin-dealing charges. The nephew who seems glued to his uncle’s side, who is now stepping into a managerial role at one of Rust’s legitimate businesses—a car repair garage—and who lives in a million-dollar condo that his uncle gifted to him, either out of the goodness of his heart or to protect his assets.
The nephew who the Feds believe is being groomed to step into a leadership role in the car theft operation.
“Be thankful. He could have been your target.” Warner taps a shot of Rust Markov leaving his office one afternoon. A man I can’t wait to see stripped of his Versace suits and sleeping in a bunk bed behind bars for a very long time.
“Wouldn’t be the worst I’ve had.” At forty-five years old, Rust’s fit and by no means bad looking. Likes younger women, from what I know. “May have been easier.”
“No, it wouldn’t. 24’s smart. You need the dumb nephew. Kid’s too new. Get him comfortable, get him drunk . . . He’ll slip and, when he does, we’ve got him.”
“I just don’t know what the best way in is with this guy. I don’t think it’s the bar scene.”
Heaving himself off my couch, Warner strolls over to the kitchen to drop his empty on the counter. “We have a few more weeks before the warrant’s up. Sleep on it. We’ll regroup in the morning.”
“ ’kay. Night,” I call out as the condo door shuts. As tired as I am, I know that the stress of looming failure—of being sent back to D.C. to bust pimps and drug addicts—is going to keep me up. I’m half-tempted to drink wine until I pass out, but I’ll only feel worse tomorrow. Not that I have anywhere that I need to be.
So I start flipping through the case files, beginning to end, like I’ve done over a hundred times. Luke Boone’s schedule is pretty basic: he’s either at the garage, at a club with his uncle, working out, or “entertaining” one female or another. There have been no reports of him disappearing into warehouses or storefronts at erratic hours of the night. The team’s never lost track of him in the few hours per day that they’re on him. Unlike his Uncle Rust, who continuously slides through their surveillance detail like a bar of wet soap.
Frankly, there’s no solid evidence that Luke Boone has any involvement with this ring. Only speculation. Enough to get a sixty-day warrant from the judge. I need to spend time with him to get a better read. Surveillance tapes and reports give me only background. They help me to speculate about what he might respond best to.
So far, all of our speculations have been wrong.
Closing the file, I pack everything back up into the hidden safe and pull out my personal phone, checking it for any messages. My parents are aware that I’ll be away for an indefinite amount of time on a case. That’s all they know, though, and that’s all I can tell them. As far as my mother is concerned, I’m only ever sitting at a desk, working behind-the-scenes detail. If she knew what I was actually doing—the kind of danger I put myself in on a daily basis—she’d beg me to quit with tears in her eyes and Sicilian prayers rolling off her tongue.
If they could see me now . . . This loft is a far cry from the small, semi-detached house they’ve owned for the past thirty-one years, complete with the original stiff-backed floral couches and the large vegetable garden they tend to in the backyard. It’s nothing special, and yet it’s their dream come true after immigrating to America from a small town outside Palermo, Sicily, with nothing but one suitcase of clothes and my grandmother’s white linen tablecloth. It took almost ten years and at least four honest jobs between the two of them at all times—my mother in bakeries, my father as a janitor—to scrounge up enough money for the down payment.
My brother Dino, older than me by eleven years, remembers those years being tough. Socks with darned toes and jeans with patches in the knees, used toys for Christmas, summer vacations at local parks. Cold winters, to save on electric bills.
By the time I came along—an accident when my parents were in their mid-thirties—they were living in luxury by comparison.
Still, it’s nothing like what I’m living right now.
No calls from the family tonight, which doesn’t bother me. I talk to them enough. A few texts from my girlfriend Aubrey, telling me about the upcoming girls’ weekend that I won’t be going to because I’m 2,300 miles away. It bothers me a little bit but I’m used to it. I miss a lot of birthdays and holidays and getaways because of my job.
What I still haven’t gotten used to is not seeing a message from David, my latest ex-boyfriend. Nine months of messages all day—every day—until I came home with a black eye and busted lip from a takedown and he decided that he can’t handle being with a cop.
I really liked this one, too. I thought he might be different. Stronger.
I thought I’d prove my police college instructor and that author with her PhD label wrong. That keeping a relationship in this field isn’t as hard as they made it out to be. I still have that stupid paperback that they handed us in class, about loving a cop. It’s at home, collecting dust. At first I thought it was a joke, until I started flipping through the pages and digesting everything I should expect in the years to come. How the long shifts and overtime coupled with the daily hazards earn this field high divorce rates. How the things I see every day make it hard for me to carry on a normal dinner conversation. How I’ll have a difficult time meeting men to begin with because of all the trust issues I’ll develop, dealing with liars all day long. With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I pushed it off as a stereotype that wouldn’t fit me. I hoped that being aware of the challenges would prepare me enough to avoid them.
The dozen or so failed relationships since then have proven that little pocket book not so stupid after all.
My mentor—a staff sergeant in her early forties, who’s been divorced twice now—only validated it by warning me to expect a whole lot of heartbreak before I find the right relationship. If I ever do. Dating a female cop may be a fantasy involving handcuffs and wild sex, but marrying one isn’t a reality most guys can stomach. The day she told me that, three days after David ended things, I went home and cried into a bottle of red wine.
With one last gun check—a habit more than anything else—I lock everything back up into the safe and head for bed. My mind is still spinning, in search of the way into Luke Boone’s life. I have only a few shots at this before accidental run-ins become too much of a coincidence.
Another glimpse past my bedroom blinds finds him now stretched out on his back, a flurry of cars racing across his television screen. His arm is wrapped around his dog’s body, and he’s stroking its belly with slow, affectionate movements.
When I look at him, all I see is just another twenty-four-year-old guy. A guy I might meet at a party or at the club. A guy my friends and I would definitely notice, would probably drool over. Who I’d gladly give my number to. A guy I’d go home with if I had one too many drinks and needed a release.
A guy I wouldn’t believe could be involved in something that left two children without a father.
But that’s the thing with so many of the worst kinds of criminals. They don’t wear signs, they don’t don a uniform. They’re hiding in plain sight. It’s my job to reveal Luke for what he truly is, which will reveal the man we’re really after—his uncle.
But how?
Women. Dogs. Cars. Three things that seem to grab Luke’s attention.
I’m an attractive, smart, confident woman—you have to be both smart and confident in a job like mine or you could end up dead—so I have that going for me. You also have to be a little crazy, but I hide that well. Maybe the issue isn’t me; maybe it’s the surroundings.
I need to find a better place to meet. A place he can’t possibly miss me.
Yes.
I hit “one” on my phone’s speed dial. Warner picks up almost immediately.
“Hey, I think I have an idea.” I smile. “But it involves messing around with that beautiful car of mine.”
Five Ways to Fall
Chapter 1
¦ ¦ ¦
REESE
I’ve never seen that look on Daddy’s face before.
He’s had it since he walked back from the pay phone. “Go on, now,” he urges, his gruff voice cracking. “Go on inside.”
“But . . . why?” I whine, casting wary eyes at the truck-stop diner, empty but for a man with a Santa beard.
Daddy rests his hand on the steering wheel and turns his body to face me. “Reesie, baby.” I don’t like his tone. It’s that serious one that makes my bottom lip wobble. “I need you to go back inside, sit down in our booth, and ask that nice waitress for another piece of that pecan pie you like so much,” he says slowly, evenly.
I swallow back my tears. “Alone?”
His face tightens, like he’s mad. “Only for a little bit.”
“And then you’ll come in?”
He squeezes his eyes shut and I’m afraid I just made him really angry, but . . . I’ve never gone anywhere alone. I’m only five. “Remember that Daddy loves you, baby girl. Now go on.”
Stifling back a sob, I slide along the old bench seat and push the heavy old Ford truck door open.
“Reesie,” Daddy calls out as my red shoes hit the sidewalk.
Turning, I see his hand wiping at something on his cheek before he gives me a wink and a smile. The truck door makes a loud bang as I swing it tight. Holding my breath, I climb the steps and push as hard as I can against the diner door, the jangle of the bell ringing in my ears. I dart across the black-and-white checkered floor and climb into our booth—the one we were sitting in before Daddy called Mommy; it still has our dishes on the table—just in time to see the taillights of Daddy’s truck disappear.
When the nice waitress with the big hair comes by, I tell her my daddy will be here soon and I order that piece of chocolate pecan pie with a please and thank you. I sit in that booth and gobble it up, thinking how lucky I am to get two pieces in one night.
And I wait.
With my chin resting on my palm, tucked into the corner of the booth, I stare out that window, watching for the familiar blue truck to reappear, checking the door every time that bell jangles. When the kind policeman sits down across from me and asks me where my daddy is, I tell him he’ll be here soon.
¦ ¦ ¦
There’s no kind policeman to comfort me now. No nice lady bringing me a piece of chocolate pecan pie to combat the sourness in my mouth. But at least this time I wasn’t abandoned.
I’m reminded of that the second I see my stepfather’s face through the small glass window in the door.
His salt-and-pepper hair is more salt than pepper and he’s gained at least ten pounds around his waist since I last saw him—nine years ago—but there’s no mistaking Jack Warner. I don’t think he recognizes me, though. The way his steely blue eyes wander over my violet hair . . . my piercings . . . the giant “Jared” tattoo that coils around my right shoulder, I think he’s wondering if the police officer led him into the wrong room.
I’m lucky that I’m even in a room this time. Normally they throw you into a holding cell or make you sit in an uncomfortable chair next to a drunk named Seth who stinks of malt scotch and body odor. I’m pretty sure the female arresting officer felt sorry for me. By the lethal glare she threw at Jared and Caroline as I was escorted out of Lina’s apartment, past their apartment door, on my way to the cruiser, the officer wasn’t impressed with what she’d heard of the situation.
She didn’t hear it from me, of course. Growing up around lawyers, I’ve learned not to say a word to the police without one present. It was my best friend and next-door neighbor, Lina, who declared that the apartment I trashed earlier today is still technically mine—even if my name isn’t on the lease—and that they should be arresting the thieving, heartless bitch who stole my husband.
Unfortunately, I’m the only one sitting here now.
I hold my breath as I watch Jack take a seat, adjusting his slightly rumpled suit jacket on his large frame as he tries to get comfortable in the hard plastic chair. It’s ironic—in this moment, it feels like he’s both an integral part of my childhood and a complete stranger.
I can’t believe I called him.
I can’t believe he actually came.
With a heavy sigh, he finally murmurs, “Reese’s Pieces.” He’s looking down at me the same way he did when I got caught rearranging the letters of a Baptist church sign to read something no nine-year-old girl—or twenty-year-old, for that matter—should have in her vocabulary. Despite the severe strain in our once close relationship, warmth immediately spreads through my chest. I haven’t heard that nickname in years. “So . . . destruction of private property?”
I guess the cops filled him in. “I prefer to call it artistic expression.” The canvas included Caroline’s prissy clothes, her pretentious throw cushions, and that damn pornographic picture of them hanging over our bed. “Besides,” I raise my hands, stained in crimson, and offer in a deadpan tone, “they can’t prove it was me.” When Lina found me sitting quietly in the dim kitchen light of her apartment, where I’ve been staying for the past two weeks, she let out a single yelp before realizing that I hadn’t turned into a homicidal maniac and was in fact covered in red paint. I probably should have made the cops’ job harder and showered before they arrived.
A tiny sad smile creeps over his face. I wonder if my attempt at humor adequately hides the crushing heartbreak and rejection that I’m drowning in after finding out my husband was having an affair with his high school sweetheart.
“I phoned Barry on my way here. Sounds like you’ve kept him busy these past few years.” By his clenching jaw, I see that wasn’t an easy call for Jack to make, even nine years later. Not surprising. Friends since they could barely walk, Jack and Barry were once equity partners together in his law firm. Until Barry had an affair with Jack’s wife.
My mother.
All relationships instantly dissolved in a bath of bitterness that obviously hasn’t fully drained yet. Glancing at his hand, I can’t help but notice the absence of a wedding ring. I guess he hasn’t remarried. After what my mother put him through, I don’t blame him.
“And I understand why you called me now. You didn’t have a choice, did you?”
“Not really,” I admit, focusing on the stars and circles I’m finger-drawing over the table’s cold metal surface. Barry is a high-priced, successful criminal lawyer who has gotten his unruly stepdaughter out of more than one debacle. The last incident was on my eighteenth birthday when I decided it would be funny to go retro and moon cars.
One of those cars was a police cruiser.
The cop was an uptight prick.
And I was drunk.
After helping me avoid indecent exposure and underage public drunkenness charges, Barry announced that my juvenile record was sealed, I was now an adult, and he was officially washing his hands of me. Three months later, when my mother left him for husband number four, it really became official.
“I’m surprised Annabelle’s new husband didn’t want this swept under the rug quickly.”
“I didn’t phone Annabelle. I don’t want her to know about this.” I stopped calling her “Mom” when I was eight. We both agreed it wasn’t fitting for a woman whose true passions lay in exclusive club status and dirty martinis.
My doodling finger freezes suddenly. “You didn’t phone her, did you?” That would be like handing her torpedoes for an effective insult air strike. She had called it after all. She’d said I didn’t have what it took to keep my “blue-collar pretty-boy” husband happy for long.
Jack chuckles softly, though there’s no mirth in it. “No, I definitely did not phone her. What would I tell her, anyway? You weren’t exactly informative on the phone. Sounds like you’re in some hot water, though.”
My sigh of relief slides out and I’m back to doodling. “That’s what they tell me.” When the cops started throwing around words like “larceny” and “threats of bodily harm”—things that sounded excessive and unfitting, but permanently damaging to my fresh and clean adult record should they stick—I knew I wasn’t going to talk my way out of this one. It didn’t help that I used the picture of Caroline for target practice during my rampage, leaving a pair of scissors strategically placed through her eyes. “It’s a good thing you still have that same law firm. You were easy to find.”
Jack folds his arms over his chest and regards me with an unreadable face. A tiny part of me—the angry little girl lost somewhere inside—is ready to burst, to demand, “How could you have left me? I know why you left my mom, but how could you have shoved me out of your life so easily, too? I didn’t cheat on you!” But I bite my bottom lip. Pissing off the one person who can help me right now wouldn’t be smart. And I need to be smart.
Finally Jack leans back in his chair and says, “Okay, Reese. Start from the beginning and let’s see how we can solve this.”
I press my lips together to keep from smiling. Not because this is amusing. It’s just that we’ve been here before. This really is starting to feel like days long since lost, when we’d meet up in the kitchen around midnight—after Annabelle had gone to sleep, when Jack was finally home from work—to contemplate my latest mischief over bowls of ice cream. He’s even adopted the same hypnotic tone that always got me talking when my teachers, my guidance counselor, or anyone else really, couldn’t. I’m pretty sure he uses it on all of his clients.
Twenty minutes later, after I’ve given him a rundown of my situation, I hear his disappointed sigh. “Working in a pet shop, Reese?”
“Not anymore.” After leaving work early with the flu and coming home to the big discovery of Jared and her in the shower—oddly enough, the more it replays in my mind, the more it begins to resemble the shower scene from Scarface—I spent a week in Lina’s bed, heavily sedated with Jim Beam and Nyquil. My boss fired me over the phone.
I don’t care.
“And eloping in Vegas with a guy? At nineteen years old? After knowing him for six weeks?” I know that the chuckle that fills the room now isn’t directed at me, even before his words confirm it; Jack’s laughing at the irony of it all. “And you were always so adamant that you’d never get married.”
I have no answer to that, except a quiet “I loved him,” as the painful knot forms in my throat, as I fight the sob from tearing out of me. I did. I think I still do, despite how much Jared has hurt me. Since that day eight months ago when I stepped out of my best friend Lina’s apartment and quite literally ran into her neighbor, a reincarnation of a mint-eyed Greek demigod, I knew that I had met my soul mate. Fireworks exploded, lightning struck, electricity coursed. All that love-at-first-sight bullshit that I didn’t believe in—I instantly became a poster child for it. Common sense flew out the window with a cement block tied to its ankle.
Jared said he felt it, too.
And now, after six months of marital bliss, without a single warning sign, he’s back with her.
That rotten illness festering inside me enflames with the thought, the humiliating reality a burn that doesn’t want to subside.
“Look, Reese. I know you’ve always had a wild streak in you, even as a little girl. These choices you’ve made since I saw you last, though,” his head is shaking, “possession of marijuana . . . trespassing . . . underage drinking . . . a fistfight?”
“It’s not really that big a deal. A lot of people drink and smoke pot in high school,” I argue, adding, “I’m just the one who kept getting caught.”
“Drag racing?” He stares at me questioningly.
“Those were derby cars and that was totally blown out of proportion,” I clarify.
Jack slides his glasses off and gives his face a rough rub, looking exhausted. It’s a four-hour drive from Miami to Jacksonville and he arrived here five hours after I called, meaning he pretty much dropped everything to come. I can’t help but wonder why he’d do that.
“At least I didn’t get knocked up,” I joke.
By the look of exasperation he shoots me, he doesn’t find that remotely funny. “I had hoped you were too smart to get into this kind of trouble.”
“I guess even smart girls can make a clusterfuck of their lives, can’t they?” I mutter, though his words sting.
Because they’re true.
There’s a long pause, where Jack’s mouth twists in thought as he regards me. “What are you going to do with yourself now, Reese? How are you going to make up for this?” When I was little, Jack always asked me for suggestions as to how I should be punished for my various childish misdemeanors. I think it was his way of getting me to agree on the outcome without looking like the harsh stepfather. I was pretty good at coming up with suitable penances and it was definitely preferable to sitting in a chair while my mother shrieked about what an embarrassment I was to her, the gin sloshing out of her martini glass with her mad hand gesticulations.
But I’m not a little kid anymore and Jack’s not asking me to come up with a suitable punishment. He’s asking me how I’m going to fix my life.
All I have for him is a defeated shrug.
Because that’s how I feel right now. Defeated. “I don’t know. Get another job, I guess.”
“What about college?”
The eye roll happens before I can stop myself. Jack always hated my eye rolls. “My transcripts aren’t exactly going to woo the administrative offices.” Neither will the private school expulsion, earned when I broke into a teacher’s office and stole a midterm exam.
“Because you couldn’t do the work?” My arched brow answers him. “Because you didn’t do the work,” he answers for himself, shaking his head, his face a mask of extreme disappointment. “Is this how you want to live your life? In and out of police cars? Working minimum-wage jobs? In unstable relationships?”
“Does anybody ever really want that?”
Jack’s right. I was smart. Some may say I’m still smart. But I’ve made so many wrong turns along the way, I don’t know how many right ones it will take to course-correct.
I don’t know if that’s even possible.
I sit in silence, listening to the monotonous tick-tick-tick of the second hand on the wall clock above, watching Jack as he spends an exorbitant amount of time playing with the gold Rolex on his wrist, his breaths deep and ragged. I don’t know that I can count on him. I mean, he forgot about me once. Looking at the twenty-year-old version of who he once knew, he’s probably ready to stamp “lost cause” across my forehead.
And then he settles those kind gray eyes on me. “I honestly didn’t know what to expect when I arrived, but I had a long car ride up to think about it.” Folding his hands together on the table in front of him, a stern expression settles over his face. “I have a proposition. It comes with conditions, though.”
A small exhale escapes me as I chew the inside of my mouth, relief and wariness dancing together. “Okay. I guess?”
“No more, Reese. Not even the harmless stuff.”
“This is my first time here in years, Jack.” Ironically, I convinced myself that meeting Jared was a turning point in my life, leaving me the sated and smiling wife who was happy hanging out at home and keeping out of trouble.
“Yes . . .” His eyes graze the walls of the police station room. “And yet here you are again.”
He doesn’t get it. He must not have heard me. “This was different, Jack! She moved in! I haven’t even moved out yet! All my stuff is still in that apartment!”
He raises his hand to silence me. “You should have turned around and walked out. That would have been the mature, responsible thing to do. Instead, you let your emotions get the better of you.”
I smirk as another wave of familiarity washes over me. “You always said I was too emotional for my own good.”
“I did say that,” he acknowledges with a sad smile. “And I’m still right. No more, Reese.”
Picking at a loose thread on my sleeve as if the topic isn’t cutting into my heart, I offer casually, “Well, I can definitely promise that I won’t be getting married again. Ever.”
That earns a soft chuckle. “You and me both, kiddo.” A pause. “You remember Mason, don’t you?”
My geeky stepbrother who used to spend half his time scowling at me and the other half staring as if my head were about to revolve on my shoulders. I recall that the day we moved out, he watched with a bitter smile, condemning me to follow in my mother’s footsteps.
He despised my mother from the very first day that he met her.
My pursed lips at the mention of that name has Jack smiling. “Oh, yes. How could I forget? Your nemesis. Well, he’s finishing law school this spring.” Jack takes a deep breath and then holds it, as if he’s hesitating. “Why don’t you come and live with us until you get back on your feet.”
What?
Jack continues, not addressing the bewilderment that must be plastered over my face. “I can get you into the paralegal program at Miami U. If you finish that, you can work for me. It doesn’t have to be forever, but at least you’ll have something solid to put on a résumé. It’s a fresh start.”
“I . . . uh . . . ” Did I just hear all that correctly?
His eyes drift over my hair again. “You should think about a more natural color for an office environment and . . .” His focus settles down to the tiny diamond-encrusted septum ring in my nose and he cringes. “Maybe a few less piercings.”
But . . . My tongue has somehow coiled itself into a useless ball inside my mouth as my mind grapples with this offer. It’s far from what I had expected. “Why are you doing this, Jack? I mean, it’s great and all, but why?” He really doesn’t owe me anything. It’s enough that he came all the way out here to bail me out.
“Because I shouldn’t have turned my back on you, Reese. I let—” A flash of pain betrays his otherwise calm demeanor. “Let’s just say I’m making amends.” He pauses. “What do you say? I need to get out of this town. I can feel Annabelle’s shadow looming.” He shivers for effect, making me snort.
“Well . . .” My fingers rap across the table as I give my current situation—that of a police station room—another once-over. I have no job, no home, a shattered heart, and a pending criminal record. I should probably make the first smart choice I’ve made in a long time. But . . . “Not sure the cops will let that happen, Jack.”
“You leave that with me.”
Another pause. “I’m riding my bike down.”
His mouth twists with displeasure. “I assume you’re not referring to one with pedals.”
“No pedals,” I confirm with a small smile. I got my motorcycle license when I turned eighteen and bought a bike a few months later. Another element of my “badass” self that Jared loves.
Loved.
Jack heaves a sigh. “That shouldn’t surprise me. You always did threaten your mother with getting one. Anything else I should know?”
“I’m a slob,” I warn him. “And a certifiable bitch in the morning.”
“Well, I guess some things just don’t change, after all.” Reaching up to give his neck a slow scratch, he mumbles, “Mason will be thrilled.”
¦ ¦ ¦
Six months later
“Could we have picked somewhere more commercial?” I ask dryly, draining my fourth margarita in record time as my gaze drifts over the beachside bar, complete with canopies, twinkling Christmas lights—in July—and too many happy, laughing people. Even with the sun setting and the light ocean breeze passing through, a light sheen of sweat coats the back of my neck. It’s a typical summer night in Cancún, Mexico—hell-hot.
“Commercial is safe,” Lina answers in her distinctive flat tone. She always sounds bored to tears.
I roll my eyes. “You’re safer in this country than you are in our own nation’s capital—you do realize that, right? That’s all just media hype.”
“Tell that to the American couple who just had their heads lopped off a month ago.”
“If I were going to tell them anything, it would be to not run drugs for the cartel,” I retort.
She acknowledges that with a lazy shrug as she sips on some frothy calorie-laden pink thing with an umbrella sticking out of it.
“Why don’t we put on a pile of diamonds, jump into a random cab, and get the guy to drive us through the quiet, dark back streets of Mexico City?”
Lina’s thin lips purse together tightly as she regards me. “It’s never fun to discover your best friend has a death wish.”
With a snort, I wave the server down for another drink. “But it would be fun to watch someone try to take Nicki down.”
As if hearing her name from across the lounge, Nicki—who I met when I answered a “roommate wanted” ad in the newspaper—and the third member of our little “Reese is turning twenty-one and is still bitter as hell so let’s go to Cancún” entourage, turns her head to catch our gaze from her seat on a swing by the bar. She winks as she downs another shot of tequila.
“How does she make that work so well?” Lina mutters with a hint of envy. I know exactly what she means. All around us are flirty girls in pastel barely-there dresses and sun-kissed skin. Not Nicki, though. She sits by that bar like a femme fatale in a skin-tight leopard print dress and four-inch black heels, her platinum-blond hair coiffed like Gwen Stefani’s, her red lips glaring against her pale skin, and sparkly chandelier earrings dangling from her ears. All that femininity oozing from her is counterbalanced by a full sleeve of ink and the muscular physique she’s honed through her latest passion: dead-weight lifting. The tall guy talking her ear off right now? She could bench-press his two-hundred-odd pounds without breaking a sweat. That, coupled with her three-year stint cage-fighting before she switched hobbies, makes her one badass twenty-five-year-old woman.
“It works so well because she’s beautiful and mysterious and she’s not stupid enough to run off and marry some guy she met in a hallway who’s still in love with his ex,” I mutter around my straw, catching the wince flash across Lina’s face. It’s the first time I’ve made any open reference to Jared since leaving for Miami, perfecting the art of denial while I impatiently waited for my heart to freeze.
Our waiter places a fresh margarita on the table next to me with a wink. I force a smile and I’m sure it’s altogether hostile by the way he hightails it back to the bar. I can’t help it. He has dark, shaggy hair and olive skin. Just like Jared.
“You have to let it go, Reese. It’s been six months. You—” My flat glare makes her voice falter, her words a dishonor to the very real, very raw pain I still feel. Especially today, on what would have been our one-year wedding anniversary.
And is instead Jared and Caroline’s wedding day.
Because karma hasn’t been cruel enough.
She quickly changes tactics. “You’ve started a whole new life. New city, new home. Soon, a new look . . .” Her free hand reaches up to flip strands of my hair, reminding me that the purple will be gone the day that I return. “You’ve got that great new job.”
I roll my eyes.
“It’s not cleaning up puppy shit and getting bitten by snakes.” She taps the puncture marks on the meaty part of my thumb. A physical reminder of the day I made the idiotic mistake of sticking my mouse-scented hand into a cage to freshen the aspen chips and ended up with a two-foot-long ball python’s fangs embedded in my flesh.
That happened the exact same day my sky fell. A very fitting scar.
“Not literally. But I’ll be working in a law firm, Lina. Plenty of snakes.”
After we made our agreement, Jack quickly went about throwing all kinds of legal jargon at the cops. In the end, it was unnecessary. Given the epically huge lack of judgment that Jared used sending me into that apartment unprepared to collect my things, he convinced Caroline not to press charges. So I walked out the police doors without any record of my moment of crazy.
Jack let me wallow in his spacious Miami house for one week, wearing my pajamas and gorging myself on Ben & Jerry’s Butter Pecan ice cream out of the tub for twenty-one consecutive meals, before he tossed a bunch of application papers my way. He said, “It takes four to six months for most students to get through, depending on how hard you work. You can do it all online if you want and I have a paralegal spot waiting for you when you’re done. Decent pay, good people. It’s just a start, Reese.”
I’ve never had any interest in working at a law firm—especially the one tainted by my mother—but I had made a deal with Jack and I am smart enough to see a good opportunity. So I immersed myself in the program, using it as a distraction. Once I got into it, I actually didn’t mind the course work. It took me five months to complete and I ended up finishing with a near-perfect score.
I start my new job the Monday after I get back from Cancún.
“Oh, no. You’re having doubts. You’re going to bail on Jack. If you do, you’re dead to me,” Lina says.
“Oh, ye of little faith.” Surprisingly, as unreliable as I can be at times, the thought of bailing on Jack has never crossed my mind.
“Fine. Let’s talk about happier things. How’s Annabelle?”
“Okay, see this?” I gesture to my face, which has contorted into a mixed pucker of disgust and loathing. “Sour face. Do not speak of she who must not be named.”
“Do you want me to break into her place while she sleeps and turn her fans on? Guaranteed death, according to my people.” Lina was adopted by a lovely Korean couple as a baby and raised to fully embrace their culture, including all of their death-by-fan superstitions. The fact that she’s a five-foot-eleven-inch willowy blond who towers over both her parents means nothing in the Chung household. Her name is actually Li-Na, but she Americanized it in high school to make life easier. She speaks Korean fluently—throwing more than a few people off—and can shovel food into her mouth with chopsticks like the best of them.
We’ve been best friends since sophomore year, when I discovered Lina crying in a bathroom stall after Raine Higgins and her posse of bored and bitchy juniors had been bullying her. I did what any naturally spiteful high school kid who hates bullies would do. I spray-painted Raine’s car with Korean expletives that I found on the internet. That, along with a picture of her giving her boyfriend a blow job in a parking lot that I covertly took—after stalking her at a party—and glued to the inside of the windshield of her locked car with Krazy Glue, was enough to keep Lina from ever being bothered by her again.
The tightness in my chest suddenly lifts with Lina’s attempts to sway my mood. “Are you sure you and Nicki don’t want a third roommate?” Lina and Nicki moved down to Miami about a month ago, into a condo that Lina’s parents bought for her as a college graduation present.
“Absolutely sure,” she confirms without missing a beat, her focus intent on the little pink umbrella twirling between her thumb and index finger. Lina’s living habits are about as opposite to mine as the Arctic Circle is to the Sahara Desert. Everything in her apartment—from her linen closet to her pasta jars—is tidy and labeled accordingly. Those two weeks that I sought refuge in her apartment after breaking up with Jared nearly destroyed her.
“Okay, enough about bad stuff. Didn’t we talk about finding you a fling?”
I groan as I survey the crowd. “I remember you talking about it and me ignoring you. I’ve tried. Three strikes is enough for me.”
“You have not tried, Reese. Admit it.”
Either there’s an influx of douchebags or Lina’s right and I’m subconsciously sabotaging myself. First there was Slick Steve, a senior at Miami U who showed up to our date with perfectly coiffed hair and an outfit right off the set of Grease the musical. Then there was Metrosexual Mark, a blind date from Nicki’s work who picked his teeth with his fork and had a weird habit of adding “if it were me” to 90 percent of the sentences that came out of his mouth.
The final straw, though?
Emilio. Good ol’ Spanish I-look-enough-like-your-ex-husband-that-if-you-dim-the-lights-this-might-actually-work Emilio. I might have been willing to see where it went had he not opened his wallet and laid it out on the table to proudly display his collection of extra-large Trojans, and then propositioned me in Spanish.
I shudder with the memory. “I’m starting my harem of cats.”
“You hate cats.”
“True. But I also hate limes, and look at me now!” I hold up my glass. “Besides, I’ve already found my Cancún fling. Lina, meet Mr. Cuervo. Mr. Cuervo . . . my best friend, Lina.” Leaning in, I waggle my brow and whisper, “If you’re nice, he’ll let you call him Jose. I plan on spending the next six nights with this naughty little Mexican.” I wave a hand at the server as he whizzes by, letting him know that I need another drink by pointing to my nearly empty glass, as I add, “He can be a bit of a whiny bitch in the morning but he makes up for it by dark.”
“Great. Because you’re not emotional enough when you’re sober,” she mutters, adding with a sigh, “Well, an incessantly drunk Reese should make for an interesting trip, at least. Just try not to get arrested. I hear the cells here aren’t as nice as the ones you’re used to back home.”
Nicki must have been monitoring my drink levels from her perch by the bar because she saunters over with a fresh margarita in hand, either oblivious or ignoring the attention she naturally garners. “Here you go, señorita,” she offers in a deceptively soft voice as she flicks her tongue piercing. I automatically roll my tongue, sensing the absence of mine. Jack hasn’t outright demanded that I remove my piercings but I knew, by the way he kept cringing, that the barbell through my tongue was truly freaking him out. I removed that one out of respect, but I’m holding out on the others until the last possible moment.
“Jose isn’t complaining about my level of intoxication,” I respond to Lina, giving the rim of my glass a slow, sultry lick. I have a high tolerance for alcohol, borne from years of underage partying. It would seem, though, that lame, tourist-trap Cancún serves strong margaritas and the warm and fuzzies are really kicking in.
“Who the fuck is Jose?” Nicki asks, her pretty face scrunching up.
“It’s Mr. Cuervo to you.”
She finally clues in and that musical laugh of hers rolls out. “Oh . . . oh, buddy! No! That’s so sad. We need to fix that.” Her curious eyes scan the lounge. “You promised me you’d exorcise Jared from your vagina if you met a hot guy . . . There. The one in front. Perfect.” She raises her inked arm, signaling someone as if she knows him.
Oh, God. I suck back a large gulp. “Seriously, Nicki. After the tooth picker you set me up with, I think I’m done. And exorcisms take at least two days to prepare for. Can’t I just drown myself in frozen green goodness for tonight? I’m not even dressed for it.” I’d thrown on a pair of shorts and an old faded rock concert tank. I don’t even have makeup on.
“What do you wanna be this time? Architect from L.A.?” she asks, ignoring my opposition completely. Her eyes twinkle as they flash to me. “Stripper from Pasadena?”
I nod with appreciation. “That was a good one.” Before Jared, the three of us used to head out to the bars on the weekends—Lina and I with fake ID. We’d make up identities: jobs, cities, sometimes names, and see how long we could keep it going while guys bought us drinks. Once, I had a guy completely sold on me being a goat herder from Iowa. He was as dumb as a bag of bricks.
The shuffle of approaching feet stirs an anxious flutter in my stomach. I really don’t want to carry on a conversation tonight, fake or otherwise. “Helloooo boys,” Nicki purrs playfully. I feel the eyes of women around us as they sit up to take notice, their rays of envy scorching my skin. I decide I can’t play disinterested just yet. I need to know what type of fiend Nicki has targeted. As casually as five margaritas will allow, I turn and . . . slide right off my chair, my shorts providing my ass with little protection against the hard tile floor.
“I have shamed Mr. Cuervo,” I mutter, ducking my head, the night air carrying mocking giggles my way as I accept that it’s only eight o’clock and I’m way more drunk than I realized.
A large hand appears in front of me, palm up. “Well, I’m impressed.” I hear the smile behind the masculine voice and I can’t decide if I like that or not. Accepting the help—because the sooner I’m off the floor, the better—I’m pulled to my feet and into the broad chest of a blond with a big, obnoxious grin.
Wearing a fucking red shirt.
Five Ways to Fall
Chapter 2
¦ ¦ ¦
BEN
I love the angry ones.
Of course, anyone who knows me would argue that I love any and all women, and I can’t exactly disagree. But I love the angry ones the most. They’re a challenge to be conquered, the reason for their fury usually fitting neatly into three buckets: insecure, scorned, hormonal.
And this chick gazing up at me with fire in her caramel eyes?
I’m betting on bucket number two.
“My, what an awfully bright red shirt you have on,” she pushes out between gritted teeth, as if she’s trying to be polite but can’t hide her disdain.
I didn’t know what I was walking into when the punk-rock chick with the crazy-ass muscular body waved us over, but her friend with the purple hair and her back to me had me intrigued. Now that I’m getting a good look at her face, I know who I’m spending my last night with in Cancún. She’s not what some would call traditionally “pretty.” Her eyes are slightly too big and far apart, her nose is slightly too long and slender, and her lips—though nice and wide—are on the thin side. Yet something about all of that put together makes her sexy as hell. Maybe it’s the little nose ring. Or maybe it’s the way her decent-sized tits are pressing up against me, her low V-neck tank top—a casual shirt, telling me she’s not trying to pick anyone up—giving me a fine view of her cleavage. Whatever it is, my dick is certainly pleased. “You like it?” I ask.
An irritated glare flickers to the material. “No.”
I can’t help but chuckle at her candor. “Will you at least give me a head start before you gore me?”
Those thin lips curl into a condescending smirk. “Bulls don’t see color. That’s a myth.”
The only thing I love more than an angry girl is a smart, angry girl.
This is going to be fun.
“Well, how about I solve the problem for you.” I take a step back from her and swiftly yank my shirt off, exposing six days of suntanned skin and an upper body that I know looks damn appealing because I work my ass off to keep it that way. The random catcalls from the tables around confirm it.
And then I simply stand there and grin like the cocky ass that I am as Angry Girl can’t keep her eyes from scanning the muscles I’ve honed since my college football days, her lips parting ever so subtly. I see the shift in her, the moment where she realizes that, though she’d prefer to castrate the entire male species right now, she can’t ignore her attraction to me.
At least, that’s what I want to see.
“Sir. Excuse me, sir.” A glance over my shoulder finds Angelo, the short Mexican waiter who’s been serving us all week, standing there with a tray of beers for my friends and me. We didn’t even have to ask. Hell, I love Cancún. I could live here forever.
“Angelo! Why the fuck are you calling me ‘sir’?”
“Uh . . .” He licks his lips as his eyes dart to the tile floor. “Please. Management requests that you wear proper attire in the lounge area. Please.”
“No worries, pal.” Poor Angelo is probably ready to shit his pants, as afraid as he is to offend me, the guy who has lined his pockets with a month’s worth of rent in tips. Snagging a beer off his tray, I take my time sucking back a few mouthfuls, feeling her eyes riveted to my throat.
Yeah, I’ve got this one in the bag.
With an easy smile, I place the bottle down on the table and pull the shirt back over my head. “Though you may have to deal with Angry Girl in front of me, now. She hates my shirt.”
Angelo casts a polite smile her way as he hands out beers to my friends, and I know exactly what he’s thinking. He’s seen me walk out of here with a few different women this week.
What else can I say but . . . I’m on vacation.
I was planning on just hanging low tonight, going to bed solo. Now, though, getting this purple-haired chick naked sounds like more fun.
“Angry Girl will try to restrain herself, Angelo,” she purrs, draining the last of her drink and placing it on his tray before scooping up a fresh one. She still has a full one sitting on the table, too. “But only if you come back with another one of these in under five minutes. Otherwise, there’s no telling what she’ll do.” Narrowed eyes glimmer with secret amusement.
“Sí, señorita.”
I smoothly tuck a twenty into his shirt pocket and pat his shoulder. “For causing you any trouble with management.” Angelo nods and quickly heads off as I stick my hand out. “I’m Ben. And you are . . .”
Angry Girl accepts it, the skin of her hand soft and cool within mine. “Jill.” Thumbing to her left, she adds, “Sabrina. And that’s Kelly over there. She’s Korean.”
What? My brow furrows as I regard the cute girl-next-door blond sitting across from us, trying to make sense of that strange introduction. A skillful distraction, it would seem, because it gives Jill a chance to slither into her seat, her back to me once again. She props her feet up to rest on the only vacant chair at the table, her long, shapely legs all the more visible thanks to the tiny shorts she’s wearing.
“Travis, Kent, Murdock,” I toss out with a lazy gesture toward the guys, three of my roommates from Miami. They can take care of themselves. I’m on a mission. I waste no time seizing an empty lounge chair from the table next to us. Flashing a big smile at the cougar eyeing me, a redhead who is definitely hot enough to fuck should this thing with Jill go sideways, I swing the chair around and take a seat so close that my knee—the one that cost me a guaranteed NFL career and still throbs in damp weather—rests against Jill’s bare leg. She doesn’t shift away. “First night in Cancún?”
One of her perfectly shaped brows arches. “You’re persistent.”
“A persistent fool,” I correct her with a grin, earning the non-Korean girl’s laughter. “First night in Cancún?” I repeat.
“How can you tell?”
Finally. An open door for a conversation. I jump through it like a circus dog. “Because you’re way too tense, you’re downing those drinks like you’re on a mission to wake up naked on the beach, and you have no tan lines.”
“Huh . . .” She ponders that for a moment while I inhale her perfume. She smells like strawberries and cream. I wonder if she tastes like strawberries and cream. “What are you, a detective?”
“Bouncer at a strip club.”
Her head falls back and she starts laughing, a deep, throaty laugh that I want to record and play back again at a later date. “Of course you are.”
I shrug. “It pays the bills.” I could kill whatever assumptions she’s making about me by telling her why I’m really here in Cancún: to celebrate finishing law school and taking the bar exam.
But I don’t.
I simply watch her tongue curl around the salty rim of her glass. Dirty thoughts flash through my head and I’m forced to discreetly adjust myself. If she notices, she doesn’t comment. Hell, she probably knows exactly what she’s doing to me. There are no innocent vibes coming off this chick.
“And what do you do?” I ask.
She purses her lips. “I’m a marine biologist. From Seattle.”
“A Doogie Howser marine biologist?” The girl could pass for twenty-three. Twenty-four, tops.
“I’m twenty-nine.”
“Sure you are.” I jut my chin in her friend’s direction. “And she’s Korean, right?”
In response, her friend spews off a string of something that sounds a hell of a lot like Korean, followed by a smug smile, and I’m left with my mouth gaping wide.
Okay. Still . . . “Marine biologist? Really?”
She takes another long draw of her drink and licks her lips before she announces, “I love me some big fish.” Yeah . . . lying. Fine. I’ll play along. “How long are you here for?” she asks, feigning disinterest, as the guys find chairs and pull her friends’ attention away.
I let my eyes skate over her features again, silently counting seven piercings—two in her nose and five in her ear—and wondering how many more she has hidden under those tight little shorts and that tank top of hers. And I suddenly find myself wishing I were just starting my vacation today. “This is my last night.”
“Really . . .” An unreadable look passes through her eyes as they quickly flitter over my features, landing on my mouth. “The exorcism needs more time,” she mumbles under her breath.
What the fuck? Wouldn’t that just be my luck to land a nut job for my last night. Not that that couldn’t be fun. I’m always up for something different. “Maybe we should start right away then?”
The heated look she shoots me with—like she’s deciding between jumping onto my lap or filleting me—makes me give this a moment’s pause. Maybe I should be more careful about who I bring back to my room. I take another look at her frame—she’s probably too small to cause any real damage without weapons—and notice the giant name inked into her arm. As much as I want to trace the letters, I keep my hands to myself. It’s like petting a strange dog; you don’t even reach out until you know it’s not going to lunge at you. So I point at the tattoo instead. “That would suck if it were an ex.”
“Yeah, it would.” The bite in her tone is suddenly back, and this time it comes with a sheen just barely glistening in her eyes. She quickly blinks it away, trying to keep the tough act going. Dammit. I groan inwardly as disappointment settles in. She’s not just scorned. She’s still raw. She’s going to be one of those drunk chicks who suddenly erupts in tears. Probably during sex.
Nothing worse than a girl crying halfway through sex. A definite limp dick maker.
She clears her throat. “I don’t see any tattoos on you.”
Okay, at least she’s trying to steer the conversation away from her and her current situation. I can roll with that. “You haven’t seen all of me yet.” I know I sound like a cocky bastard, but it somehow works for me.
A tiny sly grin curves her mouth for just a moment before she stifles it, as if she didn’t mean to let it slip out. “Any hidden ones?”
“Nope. Hate needles,” I answer truthfully.
“Wuss.”
I shrug. “You obviously don’t mind them. Any tats or piercings besides the ones I see?”
All I get is a taunting smile in return. Fuck.
A sudden burst of Rihanna pumps out over the speakers as the regular lights dim down and the dance-floor lights kick in, indicating that the hotel lounge is turning into a club as it does every night at this time. Jill’s cringe tells me she’s not impressed.
“Not your kind of music?” My gaze immediately drops to her tank top, a faded Pearl Jam album cover printed on the front of it.
She shakes her head. “I’m more into classic rock and nineties alternative.”
Seriously? “Were you even alive for that?”
“I can play every single Aerosmith song ever recorded on the guitar,” she says, as if that answers my question.
Sweet Jesus. Stretching my legs out as I try to picture her rocking out with a guitar strung over her shoulder—naked—I offer, “You know, girls who play the guitar are fucking hot. You any good?”
Another cunning smile behind her drink answers me. Yeah, she’s good. And, damn it, so sexy. In a loose-cannon kind of way. The only kind that snags me like a trout on a shark hook. Just like Kacey, one of my best friends, did. That girl had a self-destruct button affixed to her chest for the longest time. I saw it a mile away and I still fell for her hard.
Angelo chooses that moment to swoop in and place a drink in her hand and a shot of tequila on the table for everyone. Jill doesn’t even wait. She lifts the glass to her lips and downs it. No salt, no lime.
“Am I going to have to carry you home tonight?” I offer with a wide grin.
She smacks her lips as she drops the glass onto the table rather loudly. “I think I’m going to aim for waking up naked on the beach.”
“I have some experience with that. I can give you a few pointers.”
Her hawkish eyes roll over my body slowly before landing on my face, fixing a hard gaze on my mouth. “You’re not my type.”
I’ve heard this before and I don’t believe her. Hell, I’m everyone’s type! Eventually. “And what is it exactly about me that you don’t like?”
A wicked gleam in her eyes tells me she thinks I’m going to regret asking. Little does she know, I don’t give a shit. I have a thick skin and an easy sense of humor. This should actually be amusing.
“The womanizing mama’s-boy football-player part who spreads the charm on like peanut butter and has had a different girl in his hotel room every night this week.”
“Not every night.”
She rolls her eyes. “Oh, and you’re blond. I’m not into blonds.”
“You’re completely wrong about me.” She’s pretty much nailed it, actually.
“Really?” As if to prove her point, she taps the ring on my finger. The one I earned taking my team to the national championship.
“I don’t play anymore.”
“Not good enough?”
I chuckle. She’s good at the hits to the ego. “Too good, apparently, because some guy felt the need to wreck my knee.” Between the dislocated joint, the torn ligaments, and the nerve damage, I’m surprised I can even run anymore.
Those caramel eyes soften for just a flash, so fast I almost miss it. “I’m still not sleeping with you.”
“Well, I don’t know what you had planned, but I’m just here to hang out and make some new friends,” I offer, feigning innocence.
This one’s going to be a bit more challenging than I thought.
But she’ll change her tune eventually.
He Will Be My Ruin CHAPTER 1
Maggie
November 30, 2015
The afternoon sun beams through the narrow window, casting a warm glow over Celine’s floral comforter.
It would be inviting, only her body was found in this very bed just thirteen days ago.
“Maggie?”
“Yeah,” I respond without actually turning around, my gaze taking in the cramped bedroom before me. I’ve never been a fan of New York City and all its overpriced boroughs. Too big, too busy, too pretentious. Take this Lower East Side apartment, for example, on the third floor of a drafty building built in the 1800s, with a ladder of shaky fire escapes facing the side alley and a kitschy gelato café downstairs. It costs more per month than the average American hands the bank in mortgage payments.
And Celine adored it.
“I’m in 410 if you just . . . want to come and find me.”
I finally turn and acknowledge the building super—a chestnut-haired English guy around thirty by my guess, with a layer of scruff over his jawline and faded blue jeans—edging toward the door. Given the apartment is 475 square feet, it doesn’t take him long to reach it.
I think he gave me his name but I wasn’t listening. I’ve barely said two words since I met him in front of Celine’s apartment, armed with a stack of cardboard flats and trash bags. An orchestra of clocks that softly tick away claim that that was nearly half an hour ago. I’ve simply stood here since then, feeling the brick-exposed walls—lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and filled with the impressive collection of treasures that Celine had amassed over her twenty-eight years—closing in on me.
But now I feel the need to speak. “You were the one who let the police in?” Celine never missed work, never arrived late. That’s why, after not showing up for two days and not answering her phone or her door, her coworker finally called the cops.
The super nods.
“You saw her?”
His eyes flicker to the thin wall that divides the bedroom from the rest of the apartment—its only purpose is to allow the building’s owner to charge rent for a “one-bedroom” instead of a studio. There’s not even enough room for a door. Yes, he saw her body. “She seemed really nice,” he offers, his throat turning scratchy, shifting on his feet. He’d rather be unplugging a shit-filled toilet than be here right now. I don’t blame him. “Uh . . . So you can just slide the key through the mail slot in my door when you’re finished, if you want? I’ll be home later tonight to grab it.”
Under different circumstances, I’d find his accent charming. “I’ll be staying here for a while.”
He frowns. “You can’t—”
“Yeah, I can,” I snap, cutting his objection off. “We’re on the hook with the lease until the end of January, right? So don’t even think of telling me that I can’t.” I’m in no rush to empty this place out so some jackass landlord can rent it next month and pocket my money. Plus . . . My gaze drifts over the living room again. I just need to be in Celine’s presence for a while, even if she’s not here anymore.
“Of course. I’m just . . .” He bites his bottom lip as if to stall a snippy response. When he speaks again, his tone is back to soft. “The mattress, the bedding, it’ll all need to be replaced. I would have already pitched it for you, but I figured that it wasn’t my call to make. I pulled the blanket up to cover the mess and tried to air the place out, but . . .”
I sigh shakily, the tension making my body as taut as a wire. I’m the only jackass around here. “Right. I’m sorry.” I inhale deeply. The linen air freshener can’t completely mask the smell. Her body lay in that bed for two days.
Dead.
Decomposing.
“I’ll be fine with the couch until I can get a new mattress delivered.” It’ll be more than fine, seeing as I’ve been sleeping on a thin bedroll on a dirt floor in Ethiopia for the past three months. At least there’s running water here, and I’m not sharing the room with two other people. Or rats, hopefully.
“I can probably get a bloke in here to help me carry it out if you want,” he offers, sliding hands into his pockets as he slowly shifts backward.
“Thank you.” I couple my contrite voice with a smile and watch the young super exit, pulling the door shut behind him.
My gaze drifts back to the countless shelves. I haven’t been to visit Celine in New York in over two years; we always met in California, the state where we grew up. “My, you’ve been busy,” I whisper. Celine always did have a love for the old and discarded, and she had a real eye for it. She’d probably seen every last episode of Antiques Roadshow three times over. She was supposed to start school this past September to get her MA in art business, with plans to become an appraiser. She delayed enrollment, for some reason.
But she never told me that. I found out through her mother just last week.
Her apartment looks more like a bursting vintage shop than a place someone would live. It’s well organized at least—all her trinkets grouped effectively. Entire shelves are dedicated to elaborate teacups, others to silver tea sets, genuine hand-cut crystal glassware, ornate clocks and watches, hand-painted tiles, and so on. Little side tables hold stained-glass lamps and more clocks and her seemingly endless collection of art history books. On the few walls not lined with shelves, an eclectic mix of artwork fills the space.
Very few things in here aren’t antique or vintage. The bottles of Ketel One, Maker’s Mark, and Jägermeister lined up on a polished brass bar cart. Her computer and a stack of hardcover books, sitting on a worn wooden desk that I’d expect to find in an old elementary schoolhouse. Even the two-foot-tall artificial Christmas tree has well-aged ornaments dangling from its branches.
I wander aimlessly, my hands beginning to touch and test. A slight pull of the desk drawer finds it locked, with no key anywhere, from what I can see. I run a finger along the spine of a leather-bound edition of The Taming of the Shrew on a shelf. Not a speck of dust. Celine couldn’t stand disorder. Every single nutcracker faces out, equidistant from the next, shortest in front, tallest in back, as if she measured them with a ruler and placed them just so.
Being enclosed in this organized chaos makes me antsy. Or maybe that’s my own ultra-minimalist preferences coming out.
I sigh and drop my purse onto the couch. My phone goes next, but not before I send a text to my personal assistant, Taryn, to ask that she arrange for a firm double mattress to be delivered to Celine’s address. Then I power the phone off before she can respond with unnecessary questions. I’ve had it on silent since my plane landed in San Diego five days ago for the funeral. Even with two proficient assistants handling my organization’s affairs while I’m dealing with my best friend’s death, the stupid thing hasn’t stopped vibrating.
They can all wait for me, while I figure out where to begin here.
I know I have a lot of paperwork to get to the lawyer. All estate proceeds will eventually go to Celine’s mother, Rosa, but she doesn’t want a dime. She’s already demanded that I sell off anything I don’t want to keep for myself and use the money for one of my humanitarian efforts in her daughter’s name.
I could tell Rosa was still in shock, because she has always been a collector by nature—that’s where Celine got it from—and it surprised me that she wouldn’t want to keep at least some of her daughter’s treasures for herself. But she was adamant and I was not going to argue. I’ll just quietly pack a few things that I think would mean a lot to her and have them shipped to San Diego.
Seeing Celine’s apartment now, though, I realize that selling is going to take forever. I’m half-tempted to dump everything into boxes for charity, guesstimate the value, and write a check. But that would belittle all the evenings and weekends that Celine devoted to hunting antique shops, garage sales, and ignorant sellers for her next perfect treasure.
My attention lands on the raw wood plank shelf that floats over a mauve suede couch, banked by silky curtains and covered with an eclectic mix of gilded frames filled with pictures from Celine’s childhood. Most of them are of her and her mom. Some are of just her. Four include me.
I smile as I ease one down, of Celine and me at the San Diego Zoo. I was twelve, she was eleven. Even then she was striking, her olive skin tanned from a summer by the pool. Next to her, my pale Welsh skin always looked sickly.
I first met Celine when I was five. My mom had hired her mother, Rosa Gonzalez, as a housekeeper and nanny, offering room and board for both her and her four-year-old daughter. We had had a string of nannies come and go, my mother never satisfied with their work ethic. But Rosa came highly recommended. It’s so hard to find good help, I remember overhearing my mother say to her friends once. They applauded her generosity with Rosa, that she was not only taking in a recent immigrant from Mexico, but her child as well.
The day Celine stepped into my parents’ palatial house in La Jolla, she did so with wide brown eyes, her long hair the color of cola in braided pigtails and adorned in giant blue bows, her frilly blue-and-white dress and matching socks like something out of The Wizard of Oz. Celine would divulge to me later on that it was the only dress she owned, purchased from a thrift shop, just for this special occasion.
Rosa and Celine lived with us for ten years, and my daily routines quickly became Celine’s daily routines. The chauffeur would drop Celine off at the curb in front of the local public school on our way to my private school campus. Though her school was far above average as public schools go, I begged and pleaded for my parents to pay for Celine to attend with me. I didn’t quite understand the concept of money back then, but I knew we had a lot, and we could more than afford it.
They told me that’s just not how the world works. Besides, as much as Rosa wanted the best for her child, she was too proud to ever accept that kind of generosity. Even giving Celine my hand-me-down clothes was a constant battle.
No matter where we spent the day, though, from the time we came home to the time we fell asleep, Celine and I were inseparable. I would return from piano lessons and teach Celine how to read music notes. She’d use the other side of my art easel to paint pictures with me of the ocean view from my bedroom window. She’d rate my dives and time my laps around our pool, and I’d do the same for her. We’d lounge beneath the palm trees on hot summer days, dreaming up plans for our future. In my eyes, it was a given that Celine would always be part of my life.
We were an odd match. From our looks to our social status to our polar-opposite personalities, we couldn’t have been more different. I was captain of the debate squad and Celine played the romantic female lead in her school plays. I spearheaded a holiday charity campaign at the age of thirteen, while Celine sang in choirs for the local senior citizens. I read the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times religiously, while Celine would fall asleep with a Jane Austen novel resting across her chest.
And then one Saturday morning in July when I was fifteen, my parents announced that they had filed for divorce. I still remember the day well. They walked side-by-side toward where I lounged beside the pool, my dad dressed for a round of golf, my mom carrying a plate of Rosa’s breakfast enchiladas. They’d technically separated months earlier, and I had no idea because seeing them together had always been rare to begin with.
The house in La Jolla was going up for sale. Dad was buying a condo close to the airport, to make traveling for work easier, while Mom would be moving to Chicago, where our family’s company, Sparkes Energy, had their corporate headquarters. I’d stay wherever I wanted, when I wasn’t at the prestigious boarding school in Massachusetts that they decided I should attend for my last three years of high school.
The worst of it was that Rosa and Celine would be going their own way.
Rosa, who was more a parent to me than either of my real parents had ever been.
Celine . . . my best friend, my sister.
Both of them, gone from my daily life with two weeks’ notice.
They’re just a phone call away, my mom reasoned. That’s all I had, and so I took advantage. For years, I would call Celine and Rosa daily. I had a long-distance plan, but had I not, I still would have happily driven up my mom’s phone bill, bitter with her for abandoning me for the company. I spent Christmases and Thanksgivings with Rosa and Celine instead of choosing to spend them with Melody or William Sparkes.
To be honest, it never was much of a choice.
Through boyfriends, college, jobs, and fronting a successful nonprofit organization that has had me living all over Africa and Asia for the last six years, Celine and Rosa have remained permanent fixtures in my life.
Until thirteen days ago, when Rosa’s sobs filled my ear in a village near Nekemte, Ethiopia, where I’ve been leading a water well project and building homes. After a long, arduous day in the hot sun, my hands covered with cuts from corrugated iron and my muscles sore from carrying burned bricks, it was jarring to hear Rosa’s voice. California felt worlds away. At first I thought that I hadn’t kept myself hydrated enough and I was hallucinating. But by the third time I heard her say, “Celine killed herself,” it finally registered. It just didn’t make sense.
It still doesn’t.
Hollowness kept me company all the way back—first on buses, then a chartered flight, followed by several commercial airline connections—and into Rosa’s modest home in the suburbs of San Diego. The hollowness held me together through the emotional visitation and funeral, Rosa’s tightly knit Mexican community rocked by the news. It numbed me enough to face Rosa’s eyes, bloodshot and rimmed with dark circles, as she insisted that I come to New York to handle the material remains of her only child.
The case is all but officially closed. The police are simply waiting for the final autopsy report to confirm that a lethal dose of Xanax—the pill bottle sitting open on her nightstand was from a prescription she filled only two days prior—combined with an unhealthy amount of vodka was what killed her. They see it as a quick open-and-shut suicide case, aided by a note in her handwriting that read I’m sorry for everything, found lying next to her.
The picture frame cracks within my tightening grasp as tears burn my cheeks, and I have the overwhelming urge to smash the entire shelf of happy memories.
This just doesn’t seem possible. How could she do this to her mother? I shift my focus to the picture of Rosa—a petite brunette with a fierce heart, who gives hugs to strangers who look like they’re having a bad day and spouts a string of passionate Spanish when anyone tries to leave the dinner table before every last bite is finished.
Before this past week, I hadn’t seen Rosa since last Christmas. She still looks frail eleven months after the doctors told her that the double mastectomy, chemotherapy, and radiation had worked and she was considered in remission. It’ll be a year in January since the day Celine phoned me to give me the good news: that Rosa had fought breast cancer hard. And had won.
So why the hell would Celine make her suffer so horribly now?
I roam aimlessly through the rest of the apartment, in a state of extreme exhaustion after days of travel and jet lag and tears, taking in everything that remains of my childhood friend.
But there are things here that surprise me, too—a closet full of designer-label dresses that Celine couldn’t possibly have afforded on an administrative assistant’s salary, a bathroom counter overflowing with bold red lipsticks and daringly dark eye shadows that I never saw touch her naturally beautiful face, not even in recent photos.
Knowing Celine, she bought those dresses at secondhand stores. And the makeup, well . . . She would have looked beautiful with red lipstick.
I smile, sweeping the bronzer brush across my palm to leave a dusting of sparkle against my skin. I’m supposed to be this girl—the one with the extravagant clothes and makeup, who puts time and stock into looks and money. As the fourth generation of one of the biggest energy companies in the world, I will one day inherit 51 percent of the corporation’s shares. Though my parents don’t need to work, they each run a division—my industrialist father managing the ugly face of coal burning while my mother distracts the world with a pretty mask of wind and solar energy farms, hiding the fact that we’re slowly helping to destroy the world.
I grew up aware of the protests. I’ve read enough articles about the greed and the harm to the planet that comes with this industry. By the time I turned twenty-one, still young and idealistic and embroiled by the latest disgrace involving our company and an oil tanker spill off the coast of China, I wanted nothing to do with the enormous trust fund that my grandmother left me. In fact, I was one signature away from handing it all over to a charity foundation. My biggest mistake—and saving grace—was that I tried to do it through my lawyer, a loyal Sparkes Energy legal consultant. He, of course, informed my parents, who fought me on it. I wouldn’t listen to them.
But I did listen to Celine. She was the one who persuaded me not to do it in the end, sending me link after link of scandal after scandal involving charity organizations. How so little of the money ever actually reaches those in need, how so much of the money lines the pockets of individuals. She used the worst-case scenarios to steer me away from my plan because she knew it would work. Then she suggested that I use the trust fund to lead my own humanitarian ventures. I could do bigger, better things if I controlled it.
That’s when I began Villages United.
And Celine was right.
VU may only be six years old, but it has already become an internationally recognized nonprofit, focused on high-impact lending projects throughout the world geared toward building self-sustainable villages. We teach children to read and give them roofs to sleep under and clean water to drink and clothes to wear and books to read. Between my own money and the money that VU has raised, we have now left a lasting mark on thirty-six communities in countries around the world.
And I’m not just writing checks from my house in California. I’m right there in the trenches, witnessing the changes firsthand. Something my parents simply don’t understand, though they’ve tried turning it into a Sparkes Energy PR venture on more than one occasion.
I’ve refused every single time.
Because, for the first time in a long time, I’m truly proud to be Maggie Sparkes.
I haven’t even warned them about my newest endeavor—providing significant financial backing to companies that are developing viable and economical green energy solutions. VU was preparing to announce it to the media in the coming weeks. As much as I can’t think about any of that right now, I’ll have to soon. Too many people rely on me.
But for now . . . all I can focus on is Celine.
I wander into her bedroom, my back to another wall of collectibles as I stand at the foot of the ornate wrought-iron bed, the delicate bedding stretched out neatly, as if Celine made it this morning. As if she’ll be back later to share a glass of wine and a laugh.
I yank the duvet back, just long enough to see the ugly proof beneath.
To remind me that that’s never going to happen.
Edging along the side of her bed—I actually have to turn and shimmy to fit—I move toward a stack of vintage wooden food crates that serve as a nightstand. A wave of nostalgia washes over me as my finger traces the heavy latches and handmade, chunky gunmetal-gray body of the antique box sitting next to the lamp. The day that I spied it in an antique store while shopping for Celine’s sixteenth birthday, it made me think of a medieval castle. The old man who sold it to me said it was actually an eighteenth-century lockbox.
Whatever it was, I knew Celine would love it.
I carry it over to the living room, where I can sit and open it up. Inside are sentimental scraps of Celine’s life. Concert stubs and random papers, a dried rose, her grandmother’s rosary that Rosa gave to her. Rosa is supremely religious, and Celine, the ever-devoted daughter, kept up appearances for her mother, though she admitted to me that she didn’t find value in it.
I pull each item out, laying them on the trunk coffee table until I’m left with nothing but the smooth velvet floor of the box. I fumble with a small detail on the outside that acts as a lever—remembering my surprise when the man revealed the box’s secret—until a click sounds, allowing me to pry open the false bottom.
Celine’s shy, secretive eyes lit up when I first showed her the sizeable compartment. It was perfect for hiding treasures, like notes from boys, and the silver bracelet that her senior-year boyfriend bought her for Valentine’s Day and she was afraid to wear in front of Rosa. While I love Rosa dearly, she could be suffocating sometimes.
My fingers wrap around the wad of money filling the small space as a deep frown creases my forehead. Mostly hundreds but plenty of fifties, too. I quickly count it. There’s almost ten thousand dollars here.
Why wouldn’t Celine deposit this into her bank account?
I pick up the ornate bronze key and a creased sheet of paper that also sits within. I’m guessing the key is for the desk. I’ll test that out in a minute. I gingerly unfold the paper that’s obviously been handled many times, judging by the crinkles in it.
My eyes widen.
A naked man fills one side. He’s entrancingly handsome, with long lashes and golden-blond tousled hair and a shadow of peach scruff covering his hard jawline. He’s lying on his back, one muscular arm disappearing into the pillow beneath his head, a white sheet tangled around his legs, not quite covering the goods, which from what I can see, are fairly impressive. I can’t tell what color his eyes are because he’s fast asleep.
“Well then . . .” I frown, taken aback.
I’m not surprised that Celine could attract the attention of a guy like this. She was a gorgeous young woman—her Mexican roots earning her lush locks, full lips, and voluptuous curves tied to the kind of tiny waist that all men seem to admire.
Nor am I surprised that he’s blond. It has always been a running joke between us, her penchant for blonds. She’s never dated anything but.
But I am surprised that she’d have the nerve to take—and print out to keep by her bed—a scandalous picture like this in the first place.
I wonder if she ever mentioned him to me. She always told me about her dates, utter failures or otherwise. Though it’s been years since she was seeing anyone seriously, and she was definitely seeing this guy seriously if she was sleeping with him. Celine usually waited months before she gave that up to a guy. She didn’t even lose her virginity until she was twenty-two, to a guy she had been dating for six months and hoped that she would one day marry. Who broke up with her shortly afterward.
So who the hell is this guy and why didn’t I ever hear about him? And where is he now? When were they together last?
Does he know that she’s dead?
Worrying my bottom lip between my teeth—it’s a bad habit of mine—I slowly fold the paper back up. Celine’s cursive scrawl decorates the back side in purple ink. Words I hadn’t noticed before.
Words that make my heart stop now.
This man was once my salvation. Now he will be my ruin.
In Her Wake
Chapter 1
April 26, 2008
“Last one and then we’re heading out.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” Derek’s deep voice carries over the steady thrum of house music. He hands off an empty beer bottle to a passing buddy in exchange for two full ones, tossing one to me. “It’s what,” he glances at his watch, “only twelve. And we drove an hour to get here!”
Twisting the cap off, I suck back a big gulp, the fresh, cold liquid like icy relief on a scorching day. Even though it’s April in Michigan and barely tipping the freezing mark outside, it’s sweltering hot in here. “I warned you that I wanted an early night. I’m hitting the books first thing tomorrow morning or I’m screwed.” Four finals in three days. I’m screwed either way. That’s probably why the Millers are going down so damn fast tonight. I’m definitely more relaxed than I was when we first arrived.
“You’ll be home by tomorrow morning. Until then . . .” He gives his cousin’s living room—jam-packed with a blend of college kids and locals—a once-over, stalling on two blonds who look like they could still be in high school.
“If we don’t head out soon, I’ll be a write-off and you know it.” It’s no surprise that Derek’s busting my balls to stay. He’s never been one to miss a party. Normally we have to pry him off the keg. But I only agreed to watching the hockey game—the Red Wings are in the play-offs, after all—and somehow it turned into this. If it weren’t my last Friday night in Michigan, I would have said no in the first place. “Don’t you have finals to worry about, too?”
Derek shrugs, taking another long drag of his beer and then settling his eyes on the brunette tucked into the tight space beside me on the couch. Michelle, I think she said her name was. She’s pretty and sweet, and she’s casually nudged her thigh against mine enough times for me to know she’s into me. But, even though it’s been six weeks since Madison came to visit me and I’m dying to get laid, I’m not about to cheat on my girlfriend. Especially not for a one-nighter.
I ignore Derek’s dumb smirk. “Where’s Sasha?”
He dips his head to the left. I follow his lead to where our friend stands toe-to-toe with a brawny guy wearing a blue Wolverines T-shirt, their lips moving fast and tight. If I had to guess, their little “chat” has something to do with our bowl game against the other Michigan college football team three months ago—which we won—and things are about to heat up. It doesn’t help that Sasha wore his “Spartans rule, Wolverines drool” shirt tonight, knowing we were heading into U of M territory.
“Great,” I mutter, dragging my six-foot-three-inch frame off the couch. The room sways and I stumble slightly, my foot bumping the tidy line of empties on the floor.
I’ve had way more than I planned on having in the last four hours.
Shit.
I’m the DD tonight.
I guess that means we’re stuck here for a while. And I’ve probably just fucked myself over for finals.
Wandering over to Sasha, I drop my hand on his shoulder, getting a good grip in case I have to pull him back. Sasha’s no runt, only an inch short of matching my height and, thanks to an intense off-season practice schedule, just as built. He can handle his own. I should know; we’ve been roughhousing together since we were in diapers.
“We all good here?” I eye the guy in front of him, an olive-skinned Latino with a unibrow and an intimidating scowl. I don’t recognize his face from the field. Then again, we all wear helmets and I don’t waste my time on anything but which number I need to take out.
Sasha thrusts a hand through his shaggy brown hair—almost identical to mine in color—but doesn’t answer me, eyes locked on the other guy. I’ve seen him like this before. It almost always ends up in a fight.
“Sash? Finals start next week,” I remind him. They’ll be hard enough without swollen eyes and split lips. Plus, I can’t be getting into a fight with my healing shoulder.
“Yeah.” The word drags on Sasha’s tongue and then he smirks. “We’re good. Just sharing some helpful tips. You know, the basics. Like how to throw a fucking ball to your receiver.”
I step in between them to serve as a barrier just as the other guy leans in.
Thankfully, Derek’s cousin, Rich—a big guy himself—strolls out from the kitchen then. “Take it outside. I don’t want my place trashed.”
Sasha’s hands lift, palms out, in an act of surrender. “Nothing to take outside. We’re good.” Slapping Rich’s hand in a friendly way, he leads me away. But not before tossing a wink over his shoulder at Unibrow.
I shake my head but I’m chuckling. “You’re a dick. You know that?” When you’ve lived next to a guy for eighteen years, shared hockey pucks and bloody noses and secrets about rounding bases with girls in school, you can say that without repercussions.
Sasha’s the brother I never had.
His smug smile hasn’t faded. “I know. And we probably need to get the fuck out of here now because I just gave that asshole the gears. He’s gonna pummel me soon, no doubt. I’d hit me if I were him.”
“Sorry, man. We’re stuck here for a bit. I lost track of the beers.” This sucks. I really just want to get home. Maybe Rich knows of a sober girl here that Sash can hit up. Maybe—
“I’ll drive,” Sasha offers.
“Seriously? You good?” That would make things easier.
“Yeah. I’ve been chugging water for the past hour. I’ve got finals to worry about, too.”
My body sags with relief.
“Come on.” He jerks his head toward the door and holds his hand out. “Let’s go.”
“All right.” I slide the keys of my Suburban out of my jeans pocket. It’s actually my dad’s SUV. We swapped cars over spring break so I can haul back the essentials when I head home for the summer.
I toss them to Sasha.
He has to dive to catch them, taking a few quick steps to regain his balance as he stands upright. “Forgotten how to throw already?” he mutters with a grin.
¦ ¦ ¦
“Stay for summer classes!” Sasha drops the SUV into fourth gear as the quiet, dark road opens up into a long stretch toward Lansing and our apartment near the Michigan State campus. He’s still pissed that I’m going back to Rochester until July. When I told him, he didn’t talk to me for two days.
We’ve never had a choice but to stay in Lansing, what with the football summer training schedule. But then I tore my rotator cuff in the last bowl game and had to have surgery to repair it over spring break, so I’m out for the time being. Maybe for good.
Secretly, I’m happy to be going home for a while. I’m even happier that I won’t be pushing sleds uphill and running hundred-yard sprints every day at six a.m. As good as I am at the game—and I’m good, otherwise I would never have made a team like the Spartans in the first place—I never held any ambitions to go beyond college ball.
Still, Sasha and I have never been apart for more than a week.
“Nah . . . Madison would kill me if I changed my mind now.” I let my spinning head fall back against my headrest and close my eyes. I could pass out right here. Maybe I’ll get a half-decent night’s sleep tonight after all.
“She can come visit,” Sasha grumbles.
Derek’s loud bark of laughter erupts from the backseat. “You actually wanna listen to Cole givin’ it to your little sister in the room next to you?”
“Shut the fuck up, Maynard.” I crack an eye to see Sasha’s knuckles white against the steering wheel. It took Sasha the better part of a year to come to terms with me dating Madison. Four years later, he still gets uptight with any conversation that even hints at his sister getting laid.
“It’s just for a few months, bro. I’ll be back at the apartment before you know it,” I say, trying to ease Sasha’s ire.
“Well, I for one am happier than a pig in shit that you’ll be gone,” Derek announces. When I let the guys know, Derek immediately jumped on the chance to take my room. He lives with his parents in a small house just outside Lansing and, though his folks are nice, I don’t blame him for wanting some space.
I’ve known Derek for almost as long as I’ve known Sasha. Derek’s family lived with his grandparents three doors down from my parents for a few years while Derek’s dad struggled to keep a job in the failing IT industry. Apparently my mom went to welcome them—an apple pie in hand and me clinging to her leg—and Derek greeted us in a pink polka-dot dress. By choice. I don’t remember it, but Sasha and I sure as hell have teased him enough about it over the years. I’m kind of surprised he kept in touch with us after they moved to Lansing.
I chuckle. “Have at ’er. Just leave it clean.”
“Are you sure you want to agree to that, Cole?” Sasha chuckles. “You’ve seen what he picks up.”
“Hey now . . .” Derek’s warning tone only spurns Sasha on.
“What was the last one’s name? Tia? Ria?”
“Sia.”
“Sia,” Sasha echoes. “That chick was—”
¦ ¦ ¦
Hi, my name is Tara. I’m a paramedic. Can you hear me? You were in an accident. We’re going to help you.
Hi, my name is Tara. I’m a paramedic. Can you hear me? You were in an accident. We’re going to help you.
“Hi, my name is Tara. I’m a—”
“What?” The single word scratches my throat. I open my eyes to the dark sky hanging over me, flashes of red and blue light pulsing rhythmically within my peripherals. Wailing sirens assault my ears, both distant and approaching.
So many sirens.
A woman leans over me. She locks eyes with me and speaks in a calm voice. “Hi, I’m Tara. I’m a paramedic. You were in an accident. Everything is going to be okay. Can you tell me your name?”
I pause, struggling to process her words. “Cole.” It hurts to swallow.
Someone else is crouched beside me. I try to turn my head to see who it is, to figure out what’s going on.
But I can’t turn my head.
“Just hold still, Cole,” Tara says as something tightens across my chin. It’s then that I notice the stiff brace wrapped around my neck.
“What happened?”
“You were in a car accident, but don’t worry. We’re going to get you to a hospital real soon.” An ambulance’s ear-piercing wail abruptly cuts off behind me as brakes squeak.
“How bad is it?” Besides the pain in my neck, I can’t feel much of anything else.
“We just need to finish securing your neck as a precaution,” she explains, not answering my question, as the other person tightens a strap over my forehead.
Car.
I was in the car.
Who was I in the . . .
Sasha.
Derek.
“Where are they?” My eyes strain, first to the left and then to the right, but I can’t see anything. “Where are my friends?”
“Everyone is being taken care of, Cole. Do you know what month it is?”
I have finals next week. Yes. I need to get back for finals. “April.”
“Good. Who is the president of our country, Cole?”
“Bush.”
“And how old are you, Cole?”
She keeps using my name. Why does she keep doing that? “Twenty. Twenty-one in December.”
The other paramedic finishes working on the straps. Hands that I didn’t realize were holding my head in place disappear as Tara offers me a sad smile. “Do you remember where you were tonight?”
“A party. At Rich’s house.” I pause. “Where’s Derek? Sasha?”
“There are several paramedics on-site. Everyone is being taken care of.” She calls out to someone unseen, “Can we get him out of here?”
A gruff “yes” answers and suddenly I’m moving. Low voices and competing emergency lights surround me from all angles. I search with my eyes—the only part of my head that I can move besides my mouth—to catch a glimpse of something. Anything. But the straps pin me down tight.
“They’ll bring my friends to the same hospital, right?”
“They’ll get the best care possible,” Tara says, climbing into the back. Again, not really answering my question.
Just as the ambulance doors are closing, a voice crackles over a police radio nearby.
All I catch is “D.O.A.” before the locks click shut.
