Chapter Ninety
Ninety
Quaddra returned home from Seattle the next day like he’d said he would, and Mary was surprised with how well she was able to isolate ‘evil Quaddra’ into some hidden part of her mind and keep him there, allowing her to concentrate only on ‘good Quaddra’.
And her performance was worthy of a standing ovation.
As Quaddra got back home, Mary kissed him like she always did, they had dinner and shared a bottle of wine like they’d done countless times before, and they had sex as if they hadn’t seen each other in months… and this time, Mary didn’t even have to fake it.
‘Every time you come back from one of your trips,’ Mary said, as Quaddra rolled off her to his side of the bad, his breathing labored, his smile so wide it practically reached his ears. ‘You come back… hungry, if you know what I mean.’
Quaddra took a moment to catch his breath. ‘That’s because I miss you so much. But…’ Their eyes met. ‘You seemed pretty hungry yourself, baby.’
The smile on Mary’s lips was just as wide as Quaddra’s, her breathing just as labored. ‘That’s because I miss you more.’
‘We’ve been married for a year,’ Quaddra said, turning on his side to look at Mary. ‘We dated for nine months before that, and you still take my breath away… every time.’
‘And so do you,’ Mary replied, her chest rising and falling hard with each breath. ‘As you can clearly see.’
‘I’m not talking about only when we’re in bed, honey,’ Quaddra countered.
‘That’s just a bonus. I’m talking about all the time.
’ He ran the back of his index and middle finger against her left cheek.
‘Whenever I look at you… no matter where we are… my heart beats faster. It happened right on that first night that I saw you at that art exhibition and it has never changed in all the time that I’ve known you.
You complete me in a way that it’s hard to explain.
It’s like… if I’m a ship, you’re the ocean that carries me forward, do you know what I mean? ’
Mary held his gaze for several long seconds. ‘Is this pillow talk, baby? How good was I tonight?’
Quaddra laughed. ‘You were fantastic, as always, my love, but this isn’t pillow talk. This is real talk. I love you so much.’
Mary slid a little closer to Quaddra to kiss him on the lips before whispering. ‘And I love you so much back.’
‘I really can’t wait to be back in Salzburg with you next week,’ Quaddra said, reaching for her hand and kissing it. ‘That was so much fun.’
‘That was absolutely crazy,’ Mary corrected him, her memory clearly taking her back to the private drone show that Quaddra had organized when he asked her to marry him. She swung her legs off the bed and put her panties back on. ‘I’m going to go get some water, would you like some?’
‘Actually, yes. Can you get me a bottle of sparkling, please, baby?’
‘Coming right up.’
Mary exited their bedroom, leaving the door open. At the bottom of the stairs, she turned around and looked right. Quaddra’s office door was closed. She looked up, towards the second-floor landing.
No Quaddra.
The kitchen was ahead of Mary, past the stairs, and past the office. In her normal walking pace, she headed towards it, and as she reached the door to Quaddra’s office, she, very casually, without losing a stride, tried the handle.
Locked.
‘Of course it would be locked,’ she whispered under her breath. ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’
In the kitchen, Mary grabbed two bottles of sparkling water from the fridge and headed back upstairs, and as she got to their bedroom door, she was surprised to find Quaddra already asleep – the bedside lamp on his side of the bed already switched off.
Mary didn’t move. She simply stood there, at the door to their bedroom, watching as Quaddra breathed in and out in an even and steady pace – a pace that she recognized only too well. That was Quaddra’s sleep-breathing pace.
A bead of cold sweat pearled on the back of Mary’s neck before slipping down along her spine. The bedside lamp on her side was on. Its glow was strong enough to allow Mary to see that Quaddra’s wallet, together with his keys were right there, where she knew they would be – on his bedside table.
Of course, she wanted to execute the ‘obtain proof’ part of her plan as soon as possible so that she could get the hell away from that house and from Quaddra. She just never imagined that an opportunity would present itself so soon.
At the door to their bedroom, Mary hesitated for a beat, pondering her options.
She’d been a con artist for a very long time and as such, she fully understood how huge a part ‘luck’ played in her game – so if ‘lady luck’ ever smiled at her, even if only for a fraction of a second, she had to smile back, because she never knew when she’d get the chance again.
You’re not doing anything wrong, the voice inside Mary’s head tipped in. All you’re doing is placing a bottle of water on his bedside table, like he asked you to.
Mary knew that, but she also knew that this was when compartmentalizing made no difference at all.
Acting normal, as if she didn’t know anything about Quaddra’s secret, was one thing.
Risking getting caught by stealing his office keys when he was less than two feet away from her was something completely different, and Mary was worried that the beating of her heart, which to her sounded like a twenty-one-gun salute going off every half a second inside her chest, would wake him up.
She paused, closed her eyes, and urged herself to get a grip.
The walk from their bedroom door to Quaddra’s bedside table was done quickly and on tiptoes.
Once there, Mary placed the water bottle on the table, and just like her old self – the professional pickpocket – allowed her pinky finger to smoothly hook itself through the ring on the keychain that held Quaddra’s office key.
Once a pickpocket, always a pickpocket, because the movement was seamless and soundless, and just like that, she had Quaddra’s office key palmed in her right hand.
Quaddra’s breathing stayed steady, his body still, his eyes firmly shut.
The twenty-one-gun salute going off inside Mary’s chest didn’t seem to bother him.
Mary held her breath, stepped away from the bedside table and tiptoed back to the bedroom door.
She was about to leave the room and run downstairs, when she remembered that she didn’t have her cellphone with her.
The whole point of getting back into Quaddra’s secret basement was so that she could obtain photographic or video proof of what was down there.
‘Fucking stupid!’ she silently mouthed the words, as she paused and turned around. Her cellphone was on her bedside table.
Mary breathed in through her nose and held it in her lungs while she tiptoed back to her side of the bed – a little faster this time than she did moments earlier.
Absolutely no movement from Quaddra.
Mary picked up her cellphone and right then, wished that she had grabbed her robe from the ensuite bathroom before going down to the kitchen. There was no way that she would risk crossing the room for it now.
By her bedside table, she stood still for several seconds, watching Quaddra, as his midriff expanded and contracted with each breath. It looked like he was reaching deep sleep.
That was her chance and she knew it.
More tiptoeing, even faster this time, and as Mary reached the outside of her room, the tiptoeing became more urgent, until she reached the landing at the top of the stairs, where it turned into a mad sprint.