Chapter 26 Kaylor #2
The wine cellar. It was small, cramped with rows of expensive bottles, and smelled faintly of wood and earth.
I slipped inside quickly and locked the door, pressing my back flat against the solid wood as my pulse thrashed wildly in my throat, praying no one saw me.
It wasn’t glamorous or comfortable, but I could get drunk off my ass if things went to shit.
Most importantly, it was completely, blessedly private.
Finally.
Opening my phone, I put in my earbuds and dialed the number.
One ring. My heart hammered.
Two rings. My palms went slick with nervous sweat.
Three rings. Maybe he wouldn’t answer. Maybe this was a sign to abort.
Then he picked up, voice low and cautious. “Hey.”
I let out a shaky breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding, my shoulders sagging with relief. “Hey,” I whispered back, glancing at the locked door like it might spontaneously sprout a fucking Corvo. “Can you talk? Are you alone?” I asked.
“Yeah. For now. What’s wrong? You sound weird.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m living with the guy who—” Footsteps sounded in the hallway outside. Close. Too close. I froze completely, phone pressed to my ear, barely breathing. The footsteps paused directly outside the closed door. A shadow moved across the gap at the bottom
“Kay—?”
“Shh. Hold on,” I whispered. The doorknob rattled once. Testing, checking if it was locked.
I didn’t move a muscle until the footsteps moved on, fading down the hallway. I waited ten full seconds before exhaling. “Sorry. Someone almost—”
“Where are you?” Concern bled through his voice.
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I don’t have a lot of time to talk. We need to make this quick.”
“Are you sure about this?” His voice dipped. “About what we’re doing?”
Was I sure? No. Not even remotely, but that didn’t matter anymore. “It’s too late to back out now. Everything’s already in motion.” I pressed my shoulder into the cool stone wall of the wine cellar, the phone cupped to my ear.
“He wants me to bring you to him.” He sounded sad, and I couldn’t blame him.
There was a tragic sort of poetry to being summoned by a monster you once cared for.
A man who’d been in and out of my house, who’d ruffled my hair when I was little, who’d sworn he would protect me.
A man who smiled at my father like a brother and then put a bullet in his chest.
“Good,” I said. “When?”
“Tonight.”
I closed my eyes. “Fine.”
“This is a really bad idea,” the voice on the other end replied, speaking what we were both thinking.
“Letting him get away is worse,” I said.
A shaky exhale crackled through the speaker. “How do you think you’re going to get out of that house unnoticed? They’re not going to fall for one of your tricks again.”
Obviously. “I’ve got it covered. The less you know, the better this plan works. You stick to what you need to do.”
“This is going to get messy, isn’t it?”
“We just need to detain him long enough for the cops to arrive,” I murmured. “The important thing is we get him alone. Isolated.”
“We can’t trust him,” he stated, which at this point was common knowledge.
“I have to go,” I whispered, cutting him off as a faint shuffle echoed somewhere above me, sounding eerily like footsteps or floorboards settling. “I’ll call when it’s time. Be ready.”
“Kay—”
I hung up before he could say anything else and immediately deleted the call log, covering my tracks. My heartbeat thudded as I stood in the cramped darkness, surrounded by zinfandels, merlots, pinot grigios, chardonnays, and rosés, many stamped with years before I was born, and listened.
What the hell am I doing?
The quicker I got out of here, the less likely someone would find me looking guilty as hell. Shaking out my hair, I opened the cellar door, the hinges squeaking. I winced and stepped into the hallway, the door swinging shut behind me with a loud clank.
Could I be any more inconspicuous?
I had no future in espionage. Zero. Negative zero.
“What are you doing, my little kitten?”
I jumped at the sudden voice so violently my phone shot out of my hand, clattering across the marble floor. “Jesus!” I gasped, whirling on instinct, adrenaline spiking.
Fucking Mason.
He lounged against the wall, arms folded loosely, dimples flashing as if scaring me out of my skin was the highlight of his evening. Dressed in a cream sweater with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of baggy jeans, he eyed me with a devilish twinkle.
“You scared me,” I snapped, pressing a hand to my chest, willing my heart not to leap straight out of my throat.
“A bit on edge, are you?” he teased, pushing off the wall. He crouched to pick up my phone, where it had skidded closer to him. For a terrifying heartbeat, I thought he’d check the screen. What if I got a message? Or a text?
He didn’t. He held it out to me, brows lifting like he already knew I was up to shit.
“Can you blame me?” I muttered. God. Why hadn’t I grabbed a bottle of wine? Any bottle to justify being down there like a normal human instead of a panicked soon-to-be-felon?
“No, not really,” Mason said lightly. “I’ve never had anyone hunt me with such reverence as Rusty has for you, but I imagine it’s taxing, to say the least.”
“Taxing,” I repeated, deadpan. “Sure. Let’s call it that.”
“Don’t worry,” he added, grin widening. “Kreed’s nearly got him pinned to the wall.”
My breath froze. “Really? How do you know?”
“You’re not getting any information from me, kitten.” He made a zipper movement across his lips. “My mouth is Fort Knox.”
I snorted. “Your mouth is a lot of things, but Fort Knox is not one of them. Just ask any girl at school.”
He gasped theatrically. “That’s rude. Also accurate. But I’m still not telling you shit.”
Shifting to one foot, I shot him a look. “What happened to no more secrets?”
He shrugged. “I could ask you the same. What are you doing sneaking around down here?” His gaze moved behind me to the cellar. So he had noticed.
Think, Kaylor. Think.
I stretched a smile across my lips, praying he couldn’t hear the lie forming. “I thought wine might be nice for dinner. We haven’t had a meal all together since I moved back. With all the stress, I figured we could use…normalcy.”
He lifted a single brow, unimpressed.
“I got overwhelmed by all the bottles,” I added quickly. “I was about to see if Kreed had a preference.”
“Ah.” He brushed past me, opening the cellar door again. “I got you.”
Great. A chaperone. Exactly what I didn’t need.
I stayed in the hall, pulse hammering as my phone buzzed with a message in my palm.
Everything okay?
I typed back a quick yes and shoved the device into my back pocket just as Mason reappeared, a bottle in hand.
“See?” he said with a smirk. “Not that hard.”
I forced a smile, sweet, easy, harmless. But inside? I was already pulling threads of my plan tighter. I had learned how to play the game.