Chapter Seven #3
A splatter of blood marred the right side of her brown boot.
She jerked her head up, her stomach roiling, unable to handle the sight of that blood. She made the decision right then and there to throw away all the clothes she was wearing.
“Was tonight the first time you met with him about the book?” she asked, changing tack.
Luke nodded.
“What did he tell you?”
“Not much,” Luke admitted. “He was familiar with the book, which surprised me, considering I’d been led to believe it was obscure.” The glance he gave her was questioning, as though he was looking for confirmation that she had been told the same thing.
Margo inclined her head as if to say “yes.”
“He told me he would get back to me,” Luke added.
Was Mr. Thornton planning on letting her know that Luke was searching for the book? He’d worried about her after the divorce, so she wouldn’t have been entirely surprised if he had been, especially considering they had always been closer than he had been with Luke.
“Did you tell the police about the book?” Luke asked.
“I told them that he was helping me find a book. I didn’t get the impression that they thought it was particularly pertinent. They took down the information I gave them.
“The police think it was a robbery. Apparently, there had been some in the neighborhood. A bakery was hit. They think this was simply an escalation. Maybe Mr. Thornton fought back and the robbers acted impulsively.”
Every single time the thought was introduced, every instinct she had rejected it. She couldn’t imagine Mr. Thornton risking his life for money. A book, maybe? But a few hundred pounds? He would have cooperated.
“Did the till look like it had been disturbed?” Luke asked. “Were there signs of forced entry?”
Margo took a deep breath, closing her eyes for a moment, trying to remember her first impression of the store, trying to retrace her steps. She told him what she remembered of the scene, of the mess she’d found.
“Where did you find the body?” Luke asked.
“In the back room…There was a broken coffeepot. At first, I thought maybe that was what had injured him—silly, I know. The whole experience was just so surreal. I just never imagined—it hardly seemed like the kind of place where you’d find a dead body, much less a murdered one.
But there was so much blood.” She took a deep breath, welcoming the rush of air into her lungs, taking the pause she needed to still her racing heart.
“He was lying on his stomach, and I couldn’t tell if he was alive; I just knew he needed help, so I called emergency services. ”
“You did exactly what you were supposed to do.”
She nodded, absorbing the words, wishing she could believe them.
The truth was she had been turning those crucial moments between when she had found Mr. Thornton and when the paramedics declared him dead over and over in her mind, wondering if things would have turned out differently if she had acted with urgency sooner, if she had walked through the Tube station more quickly, if she hadn’t paused to check her email on her phone, if she had pressed harder to stanch the bleeding, if she had arrived a few minutes earlier.
“Whoever did this to him, I think they might have been in the shop while I was in the back room with him.”
“What do you mean? Did you see someone?”
“I heard a noise while I was on the phone with the operator. I thought it was the police, but the operator said they were still a couple minutes away. Someone was moving around the main part of the shop while I was in the back room with him. I heard the bell on the door. I think they fled out the front.”
Luke turned, walking toward the bar cart in the corner of his study. When he faced her again, he had two crystal glasses full of whiskey in hand.
The familiar scent filled the air, tugging at her memories.
She took the glass from him wordlessly, their fingers grazing.
She couldn’t hold it together much longer.
She downed the liquid.
Luke didn’t touch his.
“Do you think he was killed because of this book?” Margo asked. “I didn’t get the impression that it was particularly valuable. Rare, yes, but now it feels like I missed something—”
“I had the same impression as you. I’ve only been working on it for a few days.
Like I said—I was finishing another job in Europe.
Mitch’s hospitalization was unexpected, and who knows how long he’s going to be out.
I hoped it would be an easy enough case to help with.
The last thing Mitch needs to worry about is work, but that’s the sort of guy he is. ”
So whoever hired Mitch had hired him before Greer and his boss hired her .
Luke was silent for a beat, then two. He took a sip of his liquid, studying her over the rim of the glass. “Something else is bothering you.”
Margo hesitated. “I think someone is following me.”
Luke set the glass on his desk.
Luke had always been one of the most self-contained people she had ever known. She could count on one hand the number of times she had seen him lose his temper, and all of them had been during the disastrous dissolution of their marriage.
She watched him fight for control now.
“After I left the initial meeting with my new client in Mayfair, I called Bea to make sure the wire had cleared before I got to work tracking down the book. It was crowded and snowing, and I noticed a guy walking behind me. There were some young girls between us, and it seemed like he was focusing on them. I was worried about them, so I kept an eye on him. But the girls left, and he was still there. I thought I’d lost him when I got on the Tube, but after I left the bookshop, he was on the platform when I hopped on the train from Notting Hill Gate.
That’s when I recognized him, when I realized I’d seen him earlier, too. ”
“And this was the first time you went to Mr. Thornton’s shop to ask him about this book?”
“Yes.”
“What did the man look like?”
“Blond hair. Broad shoulders. Tallish.”
“Six feet?”
She studied her ex-husband for a moment.
Luke was six-three; the man had been shorter and more broadly built.
“Around there, yes.”
“Eye color?”
She shook her head. “He was never close enough for me to say for certain. Light, maybe? He was pale. Muscular.”
“Any scars, tattoos, other features you can think of?”
“No.”
“Have you seen him again?”
“I don’t think so.” She studied him. “Have you noticed anyone following you? Does he sound familiar to you?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Someone took this picture, though,” Margo added, gesturing to her phone and the image stored there.
Luke nodded, his mouth in a grim line.
The fact that Luke hadn’t noticed someone watching him worried her.
He glanced away. “I was—I was distracted going to see Mr. Thornton. I wasn’t sure—I wasn’t sure how it would feel seeing him after so long. After everything.”
Silence fell between them.
“Did you tell the police about the man who was following you?” Luke asked.
“No. I honestly wasn’t thinking about it; I was so distracted by Mr. Thornton.
Like I said, the police were convinced it was a robbery.
They seemed more concerned with whether I had seen someone I could identify than any suggestions I had.
I got the sense that they thought I was too shaken up to be credible.
They dismissed what I told them about the book, and honestly, I think if I’d mentioned that I was worried someone was following me, they would have completely written me off. ”
“What did they ask you?”
“Not much. They asked why we were meeting, what I knew about him, that sort of thing.”
“Who were the officers you talked to?”
Margo gave him their names.
“I’ve never heard of them, but I can ask around with some of my old colleagues from the Met.”
“Thank you.” She couldn’t help but wonder if he was checking on things because he was worried for her or because he was covering his own bases, considering he had an interest in the book, too.
“Are you going to talk to your client?” Margo asked him. “Do you think they could be responsible for this?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to find out, though. What about you? If someone is following me, your client seems the most likely one, considering they sent you that picture.”
It also hadn’t escaped her notice that Greer’s boss might have hired her for this job specifically because she was Luke’s ex-wife and they knew that his firm was looking for the book, too.
“What are you going to do?” Luke asked her. “Are you going to walk away from the job? Surely, you can’t keep working for them.”
How many times had they had a variation of this fight?
In the past, even as it had bothered her, she’d understood that he worried, that he saw things in his job that haunted him, his view of the art world so different from the clients she had who collected items with joy and sent her kind notes when she sourced an item for them.
When they’d begun working together, Luke’s instinct to protect had only magnified, but what he’d never understood and what had taken a lot of therapy for her to understand was that growing up with only herself to rely on had made it difficult to trust others.
Luke’s attempts to shield her from any unpleasantness in her business or life had her feeling panicked and trapped.
Much like his suggestion that they have a child.
“I haven’t decided,” she lied, even though she fully intended to return the money and sever the relationship.
Luke opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, but he closed it just as quickly with a shake of his head.
“I wondered how you were doing,” Luke said. “If you were well.” He paused. “It’s been what—eighteen months?”
“Nineteen.”
“Nineteen,” he echoed in agreement.
The last time they saw each other, they had both been flanked by attorneys as they signed the final papers to end their marriage. They hadn’t spoken; there hadn’t been words to adequately express her emotions in the moment.
“I’ve been okay…until now,” Margo replied. “Busy. Work. You?”
“Same. I just got back from a job in Luxembourg.”
Luke had always maintained a grueling schedule when he worked in law enforcement, and she remembered the nights when he would come home to her in the late hours, stumbling into bed, exhaustion overtaking him as he reached for her, tucking her body into the curve of his as though it was the first time he’d come up for air.
Those were her favorite moments as a wife, when he would reach for her and she could be there to offer him solace, when she wasn’t running herself ragged trying to juggle all the things that came at her.
She’d hoped that working together would make it easier, but Luke was Luke, and if he wasn’t doing things at full throttle, then he wasn’t interested.
“Congratulations on your company, by the way,” Margo said. “I thought about saying something when I heard you’d gone into business for yourself, but I don’t know—I wasn’t sure it was a good idea, that you would want to hear from me—”
“I would have. Wanted to hear from you, I mean. But I understand why you didn’t reach out.
When I heard about this case—how Mitch wasn’t going to be able to take it on after all—I thought about calling you and asking for help.
After all, you’re the expert for finding things. I suppose Mr. Thornton felt—”
He didn’t finish the sentence, let the words hang between them, but then again she knew exactly what he meant.
Mr. Thornton felt safer , given how complicated everything was between them.
Margo took a deep breath, glancing back toward the direction of the kitchen before turning to face Luke once more.
“Please give my apologies to Sasha. I didn’t mean to startle her. I’m sorry I interrupted your evening.” She knew what she had to say, knew that circumstances required her to be gracious even as it scraped her raw to do it. “She seems lovely. I’m glad you’re happy. That you’re doing well.”
She was happy for him—truly. She’d always believed Luke deserved someone wonderful in his life. They’d just both realized too late that it wasn’t her.
“She is,” he replied, his voice so soft, she could barely hear it over the sound of blood rushing through her ears.
Time to go.
Margo took a step forward, instinct taking over to engage in some sort of polite goodbye—a hug, a kiss on the cheek—and then she froze.
What the hell was she doing?
Awkwardly, she raised her hand in a half-hearted wave.
Luke’s lips twitched.
Right.
“I’ll be in touch about the book once I talk to my client,” Luke said. “I’ll talk to the police, too.”
Margo’s legs couldn’t carry her fast enough out of the home she had once occupied.
She shoved her hands in her coat pockets as the blistering London cold greeted her once again. Her fingers curled around the flash drive Mr. Thornton had passed her.
Why did he give it to her? And what was on it?