Chapter Ten
Cora was hit with the scent of him like a tidal wave, the old him that used to carry on the breeze. Her thoughts spun out. So many at once, fracturing and blinding.
“Cora,” Jack said.
She choked back a scream as his grip on her arm tightened.
He hadn’t forgotten.
He had recognized her. He still remembered her name.
“Let me go,” she said, her voice low and gritty in her throat. His hand loosened on her arm, and in some distant part of her brain she had the thought that this was the first time they had ever really touched each other. The first time they had spoken without a fence between them.
She took in the swift, faint beat of his pulse at the base of his neck.
“I need to talk to you,” he said in a low voice.
“I don’t think so,” she said. Heart racing, she glanced furtively at the walkways, at the places where the guards would pass by at any moment.
“How did you find me?” he demanded. He was dressed more casually than he had been the night before, wearing a three-piece day suit. He ran his hands through his hair, coolly, but he grazed the cowlick on the side of his head the way he always did when he was nervous.
He thought that she was there to catch him out.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” she said. She glanced toward the ballroom door, keeping an eye on her escape route. Her blood quickened. She could hardly believe that after everything that had happened, they were breathing the same air again.
“Damn it all to hell,” he said. He rubbed at his clean-shaven chin, and glanced behind her. “Should I be expecting an escort to appear any moment?”
Every nerve in Cora’s body sparked. There were things she almost needed to know from him. Answers to long-held questions she’d never hoped to get. Wounds she had sheltered for so long. She tried to hide the slight tremble that went through her.
They stood in the shadows of the ballroom. Its doors were all glass, glinting behind them like a frozen waterfall.
And then Jack tensed, turning his head infinitesimally, like an animal.
Cora heard it too: a guard approaching, his boots a soft click on the stone path.
Even despite everything else, they weren’t supposed to meet together—an esteemed guest and a maid, in dark corners.
The rules had been drilled into Cora by Macready since day one.
No dalliances with guests, or she would be out.
For one brief second, it felt just like their days on Pelican. Trying not to get caught by a guard. Their eyes met, and she was struck by the look in his. Haunted. Hunted. They both knew that with one scream, the rest of his days would be spent rotting in a tiny cell.
Cora opened her mouth.
Then against her better judgment, she hissed: “Come with me,” and pulled open the door to the ballroom.
Bloody bout of endless bad luck, Jack thought.
He tensed as he stepped inside the ballroom, half-expecting to be greeted by the entire San Luis Obispo police outfit with their weapons drawn—but instead he found a still, quiet indoor courtyard set beneath a glass skylight.
A fountain burbled quietly in the center.
He scanned the room, instinctively glancing up to the open-air balcony that overlooked them, but it too was empty.
A veil of brilliant orange nasturtiums was draped over the second-floor terrace, and a massive chandelier hung above their heads.
The light poured in through the glass, and—for a fleeting moment—he almost felt peace.
Cora led him to the side of the room, where they could talk in secret.
He followed her warily, wondering what she was playing at.
Why hadn’t she turned him in yet? There was something he was missing, and it set his nerves on edge.
He felt like the first time he’d sat down at a blackjack casino and realized he was playing with a rigged deck.
He had to keep playing until he could get out without losing everything.
“What are you doing here, Jack?” she asked in a low voice.
She glared at him, across air that held the lush scent of roses.
She looked older to him, of course, but the same fire was still there.
When she turned, he saw flashes of her as a young girl again.
Her innocence on Pelican, the wind blowing her auburn hair.
He smiled at her ruefully. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Fair play to you,” she shot back immediately. “I don’t intend to believe a single thing you say.”
She took a step nearer to him. The scent on her breath was lemon and sugar.
He could see the fine hairs at her ear. The way her curves had filled out beneath her dress and her cheekbones had risen so that she was no longer a girl.
“And yet I am admittedly quite curious,” she said, turning to fix her bright eyes on him.
“You were the first convict to ever escape Pelican and survive. Everyone thinks you’re dead.
Why would you risk all of that by coming here? ”
He felt guilt like a sudden punch to his gut. The way she looked at him, with those eyes that looked suspicious rather than trusting. Once she had believed in his innocence.
Once, a very long time ago, he had been innocent.
He hesitated. Cora was the single thing he couldn’t have prepared for.
“Did you finally burn through all the money from the Bastion heist and now you need more?” she continued, guessing at his silence. “And with Byrd as your target—maybe you saw a chance for a little extra … payback?”
He felt a jolt. All the inviting warmth of being near her instantly dissipated. Instead, her words felt like a branding iron. “If I wanted Truman dead,” he said curtly, “I could have done it last night.”
It was just a look, but he saw the flash of her acknowledgment. She knew that. She had already reached that conclusion herself. She must have been watching them.
He felt a flicker of irritation. This was going to be trickier than he thought.
But he had spent thirteen long, bitter years to get there. Done unspeakable things. Nothing, and no one, was going to stand in his way at this point. Not even her.
“Are you with the mob, then?” she asked.
He thought quickly. Calculating just how much he should reveal.
It had been a much more straightforward answer at first. After Pelican, he had done what he had needed to survive and stay hidden.
He had started off working as security in card tables, listening for bits of information.
Over the years, he had found people who deserved to be punished, and he punished them.
He had formed his own moral system. He wouldn’t take jobs that targeted debts or settled petty crimes.
He went for the traffickers, the men who beat women behind closed doors.
He had cut off the fingers of a pimp who kept his dolls too drugged to fight back; afterward, he wondered why it didn’t make him feel better than it did.
He leaned toward Cora. “I know you have no reason at all to believe me,” he said. “But I guarantee you that nothing here is what it seems.”
Cora’s hazel eyes widened. They both heard the sound of the glass door sliding open behind them.
A maid stood silhouetted in the daylight. She hesitated in the doorway as her eyes adjusted. She looked to the two of them, standing in the shadows, alone.
“… Ella?” the maid asked tentatively. She took a step forward. And that’s when Jack saw it. The last thing he had expected to see in Cora’s eyes.
It was alarm.
Something bigger was going on there, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. The maid looked past Jack to Cora, and gave her a searching glance, as though it wasn’t the first time a guest had cornered one of them in a dark, empty place. A guest who was used to getting whatever he wanted.
That thought made Jack flare with unexpected anger.
“I’m fine, Daisy,” Cora reassured the maid. “Just helping Mr. Conner here with something. Can you come back in a few minutes and we’ll finish cleaning then?”
Daisy hesitated. But at Cora’s insistent nod, she turned and slowly let the glass door drift closed behind her.
Jack tilted his head at the faint flush that was spreading up Cora’s neck, her cheeks.
“ ‘Ella?’ ” he echoed. Realization was dawning, and his curiosity sharpened, followed by a slow smile.
When she turned toward him, her eyes were fire.
“Why are you here with a name other than your own?” Jack asked.
“I could ask you the same question,” she retorted. “I’m wondering what the going reward might be for turning you in.”
“So you haven’t turned me in, then,” he said, watching her face carefully.
“Yet,” she said.
They stared at each other, breathless, and he had a sudden memory of the Western radio shows that Leo used to listen to when they were young. Two outlaws, facing off. He saw the rise and fall of her chest. Her hazel eyes were alert and dilated, framed by a fringe of lashes.
“You’re working as a maid here, but you don’t want anyone to know your real name,” he said.
“Interesting.” He kept his eyes on her. “You wouldn’t need to go to any of that trouble on my account.
Unless …” He fiddled with the button on his cuffs, thinking.
“You’re actually not here for me after all. ”
His smile became easier when he rolled up his sleeves.
More relaxed, like a fist loosening, and with a fierce, hot swell, Cora looked as though she hated him.
It was fascinating to watch the planes of her face, the way she had grown from a girl into a woman.
He had never seen her truly angry—scared or annoyed, sometimes, and sad, and so many other emotions that had played out across her face as a young girl, but this was something else entirely.
“It appears we both are different people than everyone else thinks we are,” he said. He leaned forward, just a bit.
“And yet that’s where the similarities between us end,” she said, drawing away from him. “Because only one of us is a killer who should either be locked up or rotting away in the Bay.”