Chapter 29
Madison
Usually it takes people a whole interaction before they decide they don’t like me.
Eleanor, Nicole, and the mini horse lead me into the kitchen, and I try—and fail—not to audibly react to the splendor.
But this is some serious Iron Chef shit, with gleaming stainless steel appliances and polished stone.
The island lives up to its name—a large entity in the center of the room.
I can see several half-started projects, with a flour-covered rolling pin, half-diced vegetables in piles on different cutting boards, and stainless steel bowls filled with shredded meat.
It’s like being at Abuela’s for Christmas tamales, when all my tías would make an assembly line with stations for each phase of the labor-of-love process, and it smells so good that my stomach immediately starts growling.
I want to examine what’s on the stove, but Nicole leads me to a big glass table along the wall and sits me down. “I’m going to go get my kit.”
“It’s really just a scratch,” I protest.
“Yeah, but George probably drooled all over it, right?” Eleanor says, then starts cooing at the dog, “Yes you did, because you’re a big, dumb, slobbery sweetheart, yes you are.”
He pants back with a dog grin, a glob of said drool falling to the floor with a wet slap.
“Oh, maybe,” I say, though I’m sure soap and water would suffice.
“Better safe than sorry,” Nicole says before she disappears through the big French doors that lead out to a patio with what I assume is a covered pool.
The mini horse follows her to the door, presses his nose against the glass and whines once, then settles into an enormous dog bed in the corner of the room.
I glance around, grappling for something to say. I’m not great with new people—especially when I’m not sure where to find common ground—but I want to try, since it seems like everyone in this house is so important to Wesley.
But Eleanor saves me from having to come up with the small talk, and it’s such a relief I could kiss her.
“I still can’t believe you’re the girl from the Rouge Elephant,” she says, shaking her head as she resumes what I assume was her position before all the hullabaloo—between the stove and island, in front of a large wooden cutting board with half-chopped stalks of celery.
“Small world,” I agree, thinking about how Wesley and I have lived so close all this time. “Do you guys still go to dinner there?”
The smile freezes on her lips. “Not so much anymore. It was our favorite restaurant for a while, but… something happened. Made it kind of hard to go back.”
“Someone spat in your food?”
She laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “I wish.” Just as I’m about to ask her to elaborate on that weird as hell comment, she gasps. “Oh my God, I love your nails!”
I look down and grin at the colorful designs. They needed a fill, like, last week, but I’ve had other priorities. “Thanks, I love my girl, Natasha. Want her info? She makes house calls.”
She casts a disparaging look at the tips of her own fingers. “As much as I wish I could be that girl with the cute nails, it never works for me. I’m too hard on them in the kitchen. The acrylic always pops off.”
I make a noise of commiseration. “You gotta try hard gel. The same thing used to happen to me since I type so much, but this stuff is great. I haven’t had one pop off in ages.”
Her eyebrows lift, and she reaches for her phone. “Hard gel, you said?” she asks, tapping like she’s looking it up or adding it to her notes app.
I grin and nod. “I can send you what she uses, if you want.”
“Oh!” she smiles brightly. “Yeah, once you get your phone back, definitely send it to me.”
I frown, confused, and lean forward to dig into my pocket, just in case she knows something I don’t because she sounds so sure. But, nope, my phone is still there, so I pull it out and show it to her. “Or I could do it now?”
She gapes. “They didn’t take your phone?”
I clutch it against my chest, an odd flare of panic rising. “They can try…”
Laughing at my reaction, she sets the knife aside and disappears behind the island for a second, reemerging with a large steel bowl that clangs loudly against the marble when she sets it down.
“No, sorry, not like that. I meant they’d take it temporarily until everything blows over.
It’s like a safety thing so no one can track you that way.
They put mine in a little metal box and got me a new one.
Nicole’s fared a bit worse,” she grimaces, then lowers her voice.
“She said Dimitri threw it out the window of a moving car.”
“Oh,” I feel myself relax, then I chuckle. “Yeah, no one’s tracking me with this phone. No need for a Faraday box—that metal box they put yours in that blocks the signals,” I explain. “I added a whole bunch of goodies to it for my personal safety. Hazard of the job.”
“That’s right, you’re a tech genius like Wes!” she says, wiping her bangs with the back of her hand. “Ugh, I’m so jealous. I’ve never been good with technology. I think I actually heard my laptop sigh when I googled how to take a screenshot last night. I always forget.”
Okay, I like her. A lot. She’s so… easy to be around. “Well, I can write code, but the only thing I can cook is breakfast tacos, so I’m pretty jealous of your skills. What are you making? It smells so good.”
Her enthusiasm only grows as she delights in the opportunity to talk food. “A couple of things! Some freezer meals and quick protein for the guys, and dinner tonight is wild mushroom risotto with pan-seared chicken breasts in a white wine sauce with a garden salad.”
My jaw falls as she casually drops the most gourmet meal on a random Wednesday.
Despite how my stomach grumbles, I resist the urge to demand how long I have to wait.
“Dios mio, girl, you can’t just say things like that to me.
I’m over here salivating now. Is this place a safe house or a Michelin-starred restaurant? ”
Her grin is so happy, it’s infectious. “I’m a chef,” she says proudly. “But enough about me. I want to hear how you got into your line of work with Wes—I bet it’s a hell of a story.” She considers that, then asks, “That’s your meet-cute, right?”
“We—”
Her head comes up. “Oh, shoot, wait a minute,” she says, leaning forward and craning her neck to see out the wall of windows. “I meant to wait to ask so Nicole could hear the story, too. Here she comes.”
The nurse in question breezes back into the kitchen and settles on the seat at the head of the table.
Her mini horse lifts one drooping eyelid in interest then perks up, his tail thumping twice when he sees her, and promptly drops his head back onto his paws like it weighs too much to hold it up. I bet it does.
Nicole smiles to herself as she lays the first aid kit on the table in front of her and begins unzipping the bright red bag. “I didn’t realize all Great Danes did was eat and sleep,” she muses.
“What a life,” Eleanor agrees, then gestures my way, pointing at me with the tip of her chef’s knife. “Madison was just about to tell me how she and Wes met.”
Nicole threads the loops of a mask around her ears and pulls on a pair of gloves. “Dimitri said you’re one of Wesley’s spiders?”
“Is that what he calls us? I guess it makes sense since his handle is SpyderMan. The man loves a pun.” I laugh, bending my arm and offering her my elbow. “Such a nerd.”
“Can confirm,” Eleanor laughs. “So? The meet-cute?”
I wince at the stinging sensation on my arm as Nicole swabs the area with an alcohol wipe. “Ah!”
“Oh, sorry.”
“No problemo, just warn a girl, eh, Nurse Ratchet?” I joke, trying to lighten her mood.
But it doesn’t land how I thought it would, and my stomach nearly falls out of my butt as Nicole’s brows lift and she says, “Of course. Sorry again.” Her voice is muffled by the crinkling noise of the mask, but her tone sounds tight.
“I didn’t… um…” I grapple with how to backpedal effectively. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it… It was supposed to be a joke. Obviously, it was a bad one.”
She won’t meet my eye; she just says, “It’s fine. You were saying?”
“Um…” I hesitate, but there’s not much I can say to undo it, so I’ll just move on and hope she’s not really offended by stupid jokes.
“About two years ago, I found him in one of the forums I was using at the time to sell tips. He posted a job, I had the info he was looking for, and the rest was history,” I finish lamely. I’m not usually trite, but I’m nervous.
“I didn’t realize you’d known each other for so long,” Eleanor remarks.
“We’ve talked almost every day since we met,” I admit, feeling a little heat rising to my cheeks at the admission, for some reason.
It only burns hotter when Eleanor cries, “Aw! So this is like a friends-to-lovers situation?”
“More like… intentionally anonymous internet coworkers secretly pining for each other… to lovers.”
“I’d watch the hell out of that Hallmark movie,” Eleanor declares.
But focused Nicole isn’t nearly so romantic. “Just a Band-Aid,” she says, an exaggerated warning in her tone as she starts unwrapping it.
It just about kills me to do it, but I bite back the retort.
Once the bandage is in place, she collects all the trash and gets up from the table.
After tossing it, she slides onto one of the counter-height stools that I know I’m going to have to leap onto, and turns to study me with a tilted head.
“What does it mean to be an informant? Where do you get your information?”
It’s not that I’m not proud of what I do, but I try not to air all my dirty, illegal laundry with people I just met—especially ones who I’ve accidentally already offended. With a teasing grin, I waggle my finger. “It’s classified.”