Chapter 30
ALEXA
When Barbie told me to get therapy because I was missing out on way too many mind-blowing orgasms, I thought she was exaggerating about the mind-blowing part.
But no, my brain had been scrambled, fried over, and put through a blender, much like the breakfast Nolan had served me before he left for Sacramento with Juno to get her booster shot.
The veterinarian in Mason’s Hill had retired two months previously, and Nolan said finding a replacement was proving to be tricky.
Few people wanted to move to the middle of nowhere.
I’d been one of them, but the peace was growing on me.
And there was no chance I’d be giving up Nolan, not now we’d finally found each other again.
He’d brought me a smoothie, fluffy scrambled eggs, and pommes Lyonnaise on a tray so I could eat as I carried on working.
Thanks to an early morning call from Priest—and by “early,” I meant three a.m.—I was already running on coffee and irritation.
Who cared if some congressman’s email got hacked and the unencrypted emails he’d sent to his mistress leaked?
Okay, so the mistress was allegedly a Russian spy, but that wasn’t my problem either.
I’d spoken with Demelza, who hadn’t been swayed by my argument that we should follow Darwin’s theory of natural selection and get dumbasses out of Congress, and then I’d spent three hours tracing the breach to a middle-class home in Maryland.
A SWAT team had rousted the sixteen-year-old culprit and confiscated his computer, and I thought that when he got released from custody, I might see if he was interested in an internship at Astela because it hadn’t actually been a bad hack.
By the time that was wrapped up, I’d been too wired to sleep, so I’d read through my emails, including one from Noah Weekes, the wet-behind-the-ears Special Agent assigned to investigate Sasha Cheesel’s murder.
I replied with two sentences that basically said I worked on my own terms and not his, and then I sent a three-word message to Willard Branning: What the fuck?
As I pressed “send,” a box of goodies arrived from Paris, and with Chase still overseas and Nolan gone as well, I was forced to do manual labour and stow the snacks away myself. Then it was time for coffee.
Nolan’s old coffee machine had been passable flavour-wise, but it was slow, so I’d had Teo move it to the employee break room.
My new machine had arrived last week, a glorious feat of engineering that made a double espresso in less time than it took me to set three of my freshly delivered macarons onto a plate.
I hesitated for half a second, then pushed the button again.
This new blend didn’t have the same kick as the last one.
The beans came from a Colombian acquaintance of Priest’s friend Black, and rumour said the guy’s main exports were coffee and cocaine.
I half wished he’d mixed the two because the caffeine wasn’t hitting the spot this morning.
Or maybe I was still doped up with sex hormones?
I checked my watch and saw it was nine a.m., late enough to call André, who didn’t get out of bed before eight thirty on a Monday, not even if there was a Lululemon half-price sale.
“Nolan finally fired his interior designer,” I said as an opener after he croaked out a groggy, “Bonjour.”
“Hallelujah, darling. Should I send champagne?”
“It’s a vineyard, André. There’s wine everywhere. But you can send a couple of designers to finish off what the bitch started.”
“Is there much left?”
“I don’t think so, but you’ll undoubtedly want to redo most of it.”
“Give me two days to finish my current project, and I’ll hop on a plane myself.”
“Perfect. And did your New York friends ever find any dirt on Marielle?”
The question was more or less redundant now, but I still wanted to know for my own curiosity. Plus if I’d be sticking around in Mason’s Hill for a while, I wasn’t averse to stoking the local rumour mill.
“There might be something. I spoke with Hayden—you remember Hayden?—and he spoke with his friend Stefan, but Stefan wasn’t sure you sent the right photo. He’s going to check with Latoya, because Latoya works at Ivory and Ink, but she’s on vacay until next Monday. The Seychelles, lucky duck.”
“What do you mean, the wrong photo?”
“Stefan met Marielle and her friend—Rina? Rita?—at a party once, the opening of some wine bar or another. He thought the photo was Rina-Rita and not Marielle, but the two women worked together, so he probably got confused. Anyhow, he thought he’d ask Latoya because she’ll know for sure.”
“Can you confirm the other name?”
And why did it sound vaguely familiar?
“Wait a sec, he sent me a message. Oh, what do you have there, Princess?”
Princess was André’s cat, a fluffy Persian who’d shown up outside his apartment building with matted fur several years ago.
Despite him postering the neighbourhood and calling every veterinarian in the area, nobody had ever claimed her, so André bought her a diamanté-studded collar and a litter tray.
There was a shriek, then a clatter, and it sounded as if André dropped the phone.
Nolan kept a notepad beside the refrigerator, so I flipped to a blank page and found a pen. Then I added sugar to my coffee, seeing as Chase wasn’t around to chastise me, took a sip, burned the roof of my mouth, and waited.
And waited.
Finally, André came back. “So sorry, darling. Princess dropped a live frog in the kitchen. Where would she even find one of those? There aren’t exactly many ponds around here.”
“A pet store?”
“Do pet stores sell frogs?”
“Who knows? I’ve never been into one. Did you find the name?”
“Rayna—R-A-Y-N-A. Unusual.”
“And does your friend have Latoya’s number?”
“It can’t wait until next week?”
“Patience isn’t one of my strong suits.”
André sighed. “Then I’ll ask him. See you on Wednesday, darling. I’ve always wanted to spend a week in wine country.”
“You’ll be working.”
“Yes, but not twenty-four-seven. We’re not all workaholics like you.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
He hung up, and I leaned back against the counter. Rayna. If I recalled correctly, that was the name of the “friend” Marielle had caught with her fiancé. What happened to her? And did the confusion with the photo mean anything?
My phone buzzed.
Branning.
“Don’t you think the Cheesel case warrants sending an agent with more than three months’ experience? You might as well have GutterMuse change the name to ‘Room 72, sponsored by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.’”
“Just hear me out…”
I sighed, picked up my coffee, and headed for the study.
* * *
I woke up with a Post-it note stuck to my face.
When I unpeeled it, I found it said Always U, and the U was shaped like a heart.
Nolan used to leave me notes in Blackstone House as well, except they usually said things like “Don’t let the assholes get you down” and “There’s cheesecake in the fridge. ”
I stuck the note on the bottom of my left-hand screen, then rubbed my eyes.
After Branning’s call, I’d spoken with Weekes, and then I’d hit the dark web to see if any clips of Sasha’s torture session had been uploaded yet.
One had. I’d just rested my eyelids for a second while I ran another search program, and…
lights out. Okay, not literally—I’d turned on a floor lamp because I liked to keep the drapes closed for that cosy cavelike vibe.
“Why am I so tired?” I asked the universe.
“Because I switched your coffee for decaf,” came the reply, except it wasn’t the universe, it was Marielle, and she was standing in the doorway.
“How did you get in?”
“The door was unlocked.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
She laughed. “Okay, you got me. Nolan gave me a key.”
Did he? Or had she stolen a spare like the creepy stalker that she was?
“Well, you can give it back and leave. Why are you even here?”
“I left my fabric shears behind. Do you know how hard it is to find good, sharp fabric shears?”
Until that moment, I’d merely been irritated. Pissed off that Marielle couldn’t take the hint and get out of my life and Nolan’s. But now unease stirred in my belly. There was a note of insanity in her tone that sent a shiver through me.
That was when I realised that if Marielle had come through the back door, she would have passed the refrigerator to get to the hallway, and I hadn’t picked up the notepad. The notepad where I’d jotted three names. Those names wouldn’t mean much, not unless Marielle was guilty of something.
Something that had happened in New York.
My brain was still sludgy, but four little words repeated in my head.
What happened to Rayna?
What happened to Rayna?
Marielle had sabotaged a winery belonging to the man she was infatuated with, and she’d kicked a dog lying in her way without a second thought. What kind of revenge would she take on a woman who stole her fiancé?
But…André’s friend of a friend thought the photo of Marielle was Rayna.
Maybe I’d been asking the wrong question.
Maybe I should have been asking, What happened to Marielle?
The woman before me smiled, and her eyes glittered with madness.
The scissors in her hand gleamed in the lamplight.
Chase was in Japan.
Nolan was in Sacramento.
My gun was in the bedroom.
Fuck.