Chapter 6
R iordan
In Cassie’s apartment, she closed and locked the door with a side-eye peek at me. Silence fell around us.
“Well, this is more awkward than I was anticipating.”
I moved to the window. Peered out into the dusk. “What exactly were you expecting?”
“Oh no, I’m not sharing that.”
Her cheeks pinkened, but she gestured around the big room. “This is my living space, obviously. Those doors at the end are to a hall. First on the right is a kitchen. There’s a huge fridge which is mostly just filled with drinks, though I had a thing for fancy ice cubes for a while so the freezer’s stocked, and then on the other side, there’s double doors to my bedroom. The bathroom’s down there as well. Make yourself at home. Take a nap, if ye want.”
I propped up the wall, folding my arms. “I work nights and have had more than enough rest.”
“Right. Courtesy of moi.”
I twisted my lips. “Besides, who knows what you’ll do to me in my sleep. Actually, for all I know you could just dope me again if you get bored.”
Her jaw dropped in pretty shock. “I steal one tiny needle and suddenly I’m the queen of sedation.”
“What did you do with the rest of Shade’s kit?”
“I never took it. After I found the note, I ran downstairs to Arran’s office to borrow a gun, discovered Shade’s little leather pouch, stole one dose then returned back upstairs. Ye were in my doorway and scared the life out of me.”
My view of events shifted. “You thought I was the killer? That’s why you took me down?”
“No. I knew it was ye. I shot out half the contents of the needle so I didn’t kill ye, and the rest is history.”
She could’ve lied. That alternate reality was a damn sight more acceptable than the truth, and more importantly, forgivable. But Cassie was unapologetically honest.
She bounced on her heels. “If you don’t need rest, want to watch a hockey match with me? I’ve got some work to do, but the matches are fun. The dudes really go for it with their fights.”
“We’re not friends. This isn’t a hangout.”
Cassie puffed out her cheeks and gave a rueful smile, giving up on persuading me. Pottering around the room, she collected a folder of paperwork and her tablet then settled on the couch. She switched on the TV and found a hockey channel, the sound on low, and got to work with a notepad, drawing up some kind of action list while referring to her paperwork and what looked like emails on her tablet.
I prowled the room.
If there really was a team of people arriving tomorrow, as her brother informed me, I could leave. Which meant there was only tonight for me to take my reading of Cassiopeia Archer.
Like the rest of the mansion, the structure of her big living room was high ceilings and crown moulding to within an inch of its life. It was a corner apartment, one floor up. The right-hand wall held three huge windows, the central of which opened onto a balcony, while the other exterior wall hosted a curved bay.
The view from each was concealed by heavy velvet curtains that ran ceiling to floor. They were a moody, stormy grey which made a plain backdrop along with the white plaster walls and the plush rug atop polished wooden floorboards. Even the sofa was linen-coloured, warmer where the pools of lamplight met. Here and there, gold accents brought the subtle hint of extreme wealth.
Time and time again, my eye was drawn back to Cassie. Her glossy black curls, her patterned playsuit, the boldness of her sea-blue eyes whenever she peeked at me.
She was a flare of colour in the calm surroundings. Unmissable.
I forced my attention off her.
The wall behind us, that held the exit to the hall, was heavily decorated with bookshelves and endless picture frames. Kids and adults smiled back, her family, clearly. Many were taken here in the mansion they owned. Some elsewhere in Scottish locations. Mountains, pine forests.
It told me how much she cared about her kin.
Back home, in the flat Gen and I had shared with her father, he’d kept photos of loved ones. I’d never made that list. I wasn’t sure anyone had a picture of me on display anymore.
I drifted over to Cassie’s books, unable to pull myself out of the comparisons. We’d never had a bookshelf. I’d never even had my own bedroom, sleeping on the sofa after our mother died and Gen’s dad was forced to take us in, and interest curled in my gut over the legacy of books Cassie had kept, presumably starting from when she was small.
A series of adventure stories featuring kids on a boat. Graphic novels with cute anime-style characters. Romance novels with skulls and daggers on the covers. Or half-naked men.
I’d always figured people kept bookshelves to show off collections of classics, like Austen or Bront?. Books you were forced to read at school. Not Cassie.
Interspersed between the different series were Funko Pop! characters, I guessed from the books, or maybe her favourite shows.
None of it screamed crazy. It all felt normal.
Until my gaze settled on an ornament at the end of the row. Next to a thick tome was a polished, bleached skull. The top of the cranium was hollowed out, and items were stuffed inside. A university identity pass. A ticket stub to see a band. Between the skull’s teeth was a piece of paper with the words ‘FAILS’. What. The. Fuck?
“Come on!”
I spun around at Cassie’s yell. She knelt on the sofa, a hand out in outrage. Her gaze slid my way.
“Sorry. That was a bad tackle. Check out the replay.”
I curled my lip at the screen. “I don’t know anything about the game.” Hockey for me had been played on a muddy field in winter with sticks and a ball.
“Me neither. I’m just watching for the hot guys and yelling because everyone else is.”
She beamed, and something tightened in my chest. So much, I didn’t turn back to my morbid find. This attraction made no sense. I’d wanted Cassie from the first second I saw her. She was pretty. More than a little dangerous. I wanted to scoop her up and hold her. Even after she’d drugged me.
I had to be as fucked in the head as her skull ornament.
And I was still staring. She tilted her head in question, her interest in the sport lost, and her focus fully on me. It quickened my breathing. Sent my blood south.
Her ringtone blared out, breaking the moment and releasing me from its grip. Cassie fumbled her phone and swiped to answer, cutting off the music that was the theme tune to a police procedural TV show.
“Skeleton Girls Detective Agency, Cassiopeia speaking, how can I help?”
Everly’s laugh came over the line. “I like that greeting. Genevieve and I want to talk about exactly that.”
“Ooh, I’m so down.”
“Have you got the note to hand?”
She jumped up. “I left it in my bedroom when I got changed. One sec.”
Cassie trotted away, still chatting with my sisters. I moved over to the sofa, intending to mute the TV for her. But as I reached for the control, my gaze fell on her notepad.
I’m not obsessed with him. It’s hyperfixation , she’d written.
I swallowed and skipped my gaze off it, unintentionally focusing on her paperwork instead. At the top of each scattered page was the name and office address of a therapist, and there were notes beneath which Cassie had annotated.
She’d been working through this? And had reached a conclusion about me?
No way would I read those, but I was an asshole for jumping back to her notepad list to see what else she’d decided.
I’m probably just sex-starved.
At some point, it will be over. I just have to ride it out.
Do nothing permanent.
Don’t hurt him.
The strange sensation in me expanded. She was trying to fix herself and the impulses that had led to her actions towards me. And I was even more fucked up for the hit of disappointment that her obsession wasn’t real.
She returned, and I dropped the remote and resumed propping up the wall. Cassie’s gaze drifted over me as she talked with the women.
Everly’s gentle voice came over the line. “What I don’t get is why the note is signed in Riordan’s name.”
Genevieve answered. “Alisha’s note was signed off by Convict, who she’d had some kind of relationship with previously. Maybe a one-night stand, but it was enough to draw her in. Why would they think the same would work on you, Cassie? Why Riordan?”
Cassie’s dark eyebrows furrowed. “That’s easy. Because I have a thing for your brother.”
I palmed my forehead.
Genevieve choked. “Since when? And how would anyone know?”
“I told Dixie, and she said she’d inform all the other women so no one made a play for him. That wasn’t fair of me, though. It’s all one-sided.”
“Does he know?” my sister spluttered.
Still focusing on the phone, Cassie jacked her thumb at me. “If he didn’t before, he does now.”
“He’s listening?”
She winced. “My bad. Shocking video call etiquette. I should have mentioned he’s here on security duty, though he’s mostly ignoring me.”
For fuck’s sake. I left my post and rounded the sofa to sit next to her, then raised a hand for my sisters.
“No comment from the bodyguard,” I told them both.
Cassie snickered and huddled in closer, her shoulder brushing mine. Her pretty scent surrounded me, and need surged at the light touch. Her bare skin to mine, just below the sleeve of my black skeleton crew t-shirt. Soft and smooth to bulky and hard. There was no reason it should take effort to keep a neutral expression, yet there I was, inching away, gritting my jaw, and forcing my attention to stay on the screen.
Genevieve peered at me. “I called Dad earlier and asked him to pack a bag for you, since you’re staying away. Want to guess what he told me?”
“I can imagine.”
“Should we talk in private?”
Cassie already knew about that shitshow. Everly and I were brand-new to being siblings, and it was better for both of us to share our lives if we were ever going to make up for lost time.
“No need,” I said. “He kicked me out.”
Genevieve clasped her hands to her mouth. “That isn’t what he said. He claimed you left after a fight. He kicked you out? God. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Because I’d been hurting. Because I hadn’t wanted her to lose faith in the single parent she had left. A man who was a terrible person in most other ways but whose one saving grace was that he loved her. Almost as much as he hated me, the cuckoo in his nest. Another man’s child he’d been forced to tolerate.
I heaved a sigh. “What good would it have done? I only stayed in that flat because you were there. Now you live in the warehouse with Arran, I can look for someplace else.”
Her gaze flickered with acceptance. “I found your car in the warehouse’s car park. There’s a tarp over the back seats. All your stuff’s in there, isn’t it?”
I shrugged, accidentally touching Cassie again. “I haven’t found anywhere yet. It doesn’t matter. I’m pulling long hours, so paying for a room somewhere would be a waste of money when I’m out most of the time. I shower and do laundry in the club. I sleep in my car. It’s fine for now.”
Genevieve sighed then groused about me keeping everything inside.
Everly shook her head. “I can’t help feeling this is my fault. You told me we shared a father only because you were trying to protect me from an abduction attempt. You can’t say it’s a coincidence that your stepdad kicks you out straight after.”
“It’s not a coincidence,” I conceded. “I challenged him and brought an end to the pretence of our relationship. It had to happen at some point.”
Everly asked Genevieve something about her dad, and I exhaled, sitting with my thoughts for a moment. My biological father, Everly’s dad, was far worse than the stand-in who I’d believed had fathered me right up until my mother had made her confession. Days before she died.
The mayor of Deadwater might have produced two children in Everly and me, but that was the only good thing the man had ever contributed to the world. The more I learned about him the angrier I got. He was corrupt. Abusive. The unknown bane of my life. He’d rejected my pregnant mother and told her to get rid of me.
Maybe being raised by a parent who never wanted me was the lesser of two evils.
Hurt added to my upset, unwanted but real.
The mayor was the reason I’d pushed Cassie away. I planned to get my own back on him, which had consequences. Falling in love with someone was out of the question when I’d very likely end up dead.
A hitch of Cassie’s breath pulled my attention back to the moment. She held the phone in front of us then tapped something that switched us from being the small in-image picture to taking up the whole screen. Then she leaned in closer and took a screenshot. I stared at it. Her amused pout and my more serious expression. Her dark curls brushing up against my shorter brown hair. Something unidentifiable in both of our expressions.
“Couldn’t resist,” she whispered. To herself, she added, “That one’s going straight in the spank bank.”
My sisters were still talking. I twisted to stare at Cassie.
The pink on her cheeks returned, and she gave an embarrassed little shrug. “What? We look good together.”
I didn’t deny it.
Her grin shifted to something devilish. It sent another rush of desire straight through me. The image of her gazing at a picture of me and sliding her hands down her body. Holy fuck.
“Oops. Should’ve asked permission. If ye don’t like it, tell me to delete it.”
I clenched my fists and didn’t say a single goddamned word.
Throughout the dark hours, Cassie switched the hockey for a telenovela she claimed was crack-level addictive. She curled up on the sofa under a blanket, her bright-eyed gaze half on me.
I guarded her. Stayed alert.
“If I doze off, feel free to check the cameras on my phone. My PIN is two-two-six-three.”
“I won’t use it.” Still, I committed that number to memory.
By the time morning came and her brother thumped on the door to tell us the cavalry had arrived, I was on the edge of my nerves, waiting for something to happen. Yet it hadn’t.
We exited to the echoing marble hall downstairs, and Cassie hugged her family goodbye. Sinclair took me aside for one last word.
“Something occurred to me in the night. My guess is Cass came here for your sake, not hers. She likes being part of the drama. Lives for it. Right now, she’ll be thinking about the action happening in Deadwater. She might try to go back. I’m counting on ye, Riordan Jones, to keep her safe.”
With a meaningful look and a hard smack on the shoulder, he walked away, hailing the skeleton crew that had just arrived with rumbles of tyres on gravel.
He was wrong about Cassie.
He was also wrong about me. Now she was covered, I was free to go.