Chapter 7
The last time I’d followed Theo Witherborne into the bushes, he’d led me to a body.
And now here I was again, willfully going along with him.
I could tell myself I was investigating Jay’s murder, and I was, but a closer look at my motives would reveal a whole array of other reasons.
Such as liking the thrill, and liking Theo. Apparently, I never learned.
This time, we headed toward the sprawling yard at the back of the house. Coconut Grove, outside of the Witherborne Mansion, was a tightly packed development of elite homes. The Witherbornes had clung to their land like a weighted blanket, perhaps using it as a buffer from the outside world.
I walked alongside Theo, deeper into the garden’s unlit areas. In the distance, Miami twinkled. Far enough away to look pretty and untouchable. A plane rumbled, crickets chirped, but otherwise our footsteps were the loudest thing around us.
“The Briar lands extend around the back of ours,” Theo was saying. “They bought plots but never built on them, Mother said.”
Clearly the Briars liked their outside space too.
There was no obvious path through the Witherbornes’ rear garden, just a selection of bushes and palms, grasses, and the occasional decorative pile of rocks.
The grounds were looked after, but not for show, not so far back from the house.
I looked behind us at the mansion shrinking in the orange-hued darkness.
It got pretty isolated so far back from civilization.
It wasn’t long before we came to a section of old fence. The wire had been pulled back where it was supposed to join a post.
Theo pulled the loose wire wider and slipped through with ease, as though he’d done this a few times before. On the other side, he beckoned me to follow.
I hesitated, instincts trying hard to warn me.
“Nothing is going to happen,” Theo said, hand outstretched to take mine. “I just wanna get a closer look at the pool is all, and figure out why Jay was over here so much. See if there’s anything weird. We take a look, we come back.”
This is the part where you’re screaming at the TV for the main character to stop making bad decisions, turn around, go home, and live happily ever after.
A boring, lonely ever after. I wasn’t going to turn around, I knew that much.
Which meant I had to take Theo’s hand. The TSTL guy? Yeah, that was me.
I squeezed into the gap in the fence and took Theo’s hand halfway.
He did a little pull, and I spilled out the other side.
Theo steadied me again, one hand still on mine, and the other landed on my shoulder.
His touch was warm, for a vampire. I’d expected it to be cold.
Clearly, I really did need to take a vampire awareness course.
“I used to always come back here,” he said. His fingertips trailed from mine, as though not wanting to let go. Or maybe I was telling myself that because I’d liked how they’d felt, skin on skin.
I shoved my hands into my pockets. “What stopped you?”
He walked backwards as he spoke and rolled his eyes. “Mother. She said if I came back here again, I’d be stripped of the family name.”
“Oh wow.” I glanced at the gap in the fence behind us. “And you still want to come back here?”
“It’s a bluff I’m willing to challenge her on. If it was that easy to shake off the name, I’d have camped out here.”
“You don’t wanna be the heir, huh?” We fell into step, side by side, heading toward the distant twinkling lights of the box house.
“You’re getting that?” He laughed softly and tucked his hands into his pockets too. “Honestly . . .” He glanced side-on at me, his eyes catching Miami’s distant lights. “I wanna be a nobody, like you.”
“Like me?” Wow.
“Yeah, you know. You can walk down the street and nobody knows your name. I want that. I want to be anonymous.”
“No you don’t.” I laughed. He did not want a life living from paycheck to paycheck or staring at beige walls on a Friday night.
“Yeah, I do. Get a real job, have friends who care, not people who want something all the fucking time.”
I weirdly knew exactly what he meant. At least about the “friends who care” thing.
He looked at me, his smile moving on his lips, and there was honesty on his face.
Not curated, just . . . him. All the angles on his face had softened too.
Even his eyes seemed kinder, less . . . critical.
Could he talk as freely as this to anyone else?
If not, then it was pretty sad that he had to talk to the pool boy to feel like someone cared.
The Briar box house came into view, and the soft moment between us faded under urgency. The blocky structure cut into the orange-hued skyline, like a monolith to modernism.
We crouched behind a shrub. The Briar grounds spread left and right, and each corner of the house had its own garden theme going on.
I could see what looked like a maze to the front and right of the main house, then another area with topiaries shaped like animals and people.
The pool and patio area was lit from below, and I assumed there’d be more themed gardens at the front, out of our line of sight.
These massive grounds with their manicured layout probably took a small army to upkeep.
“Looks as though nobody’s around. We’ll cut to the right, follow that low wall, and come up on the pool from behind. There’s no camera there.”
“There are cameras?”
“I just said there aren’t.”
“But there are cameras on the grounds?”
“Maybe.” Theo grinned. “Just don’t walk in front of them.” And with that, he headed off, his black shirt and dark pants melting into the shadows.
I was not dressed for this. What was I even doing here? “Theo . . . wait.”
I scooted after him, acutely aware I’d chosen a light-colored shirt to go snooping around the neighbors’ yard in. This was definitely one of those situations that Bet had told me not to get involved in. “Stay out of trouble and you’ll do just fine.”
Except, trouble smiled and held out a hand, and here I was, right in the middle of it.
A clanging sound rang out over by the pool.
I skidded to a stop next to Theo, behind a bush, my heart going hard.
He grinned, clearly enjoying himself. What the heck had I expected?
He was in his element. Vampires were natural night hunters.
Apex predators. Top of the food chain. On that chain, I was down around something slow moving and cute, like a possum. Except possums weren’t all that cute.
Voices.
Low.
Mumbled.
I lifted my head and peeked over the foliage. Two guys were over there, dressed in dark overalls. Maintenance, maybe? At eleven p.m.? If we moved, they’d hear us. If we retraced our steps, they’d see us.
I thumbed over my shoulder, suggesting we should go back.
Theo shook his head and pointed toward the next bush.
I stared hard, trying to convey a definite “no,” and gave my head a shake.
He nodded, mouthed “Yes,” then grinned.
I widened my eyes and tried to portray an expression of “bad idea!”
His grin grew.
I drew a finger line across my throat and pointed at him.
His eyebrows jumped. He was enjoying this far too much.
This silent conversation took about three seconds.
My heart was up to a hundred and something, body buzzing. I smiled, because clearly, any common sense I’d had had vanished, buried under his pretty smile.
He moved on, and I tucked in close, keeping low, picking different shrubs and spiky plants to hide behind, until coming up behind the large patio and pool area, lit up like a landing strip. There didn’t appear to be any cameras around, which was maybe why Jay had been killed here.
Why were we here? We weren’t going to find anything in the pool almost a week after Jay’s death. Theo wanted to find clues, something strange? Something so he could understand what had happened to his friend and why.
I was here for Theo, I realized.
He needed this, needed to see where Jay had died.
Damn. I cared. Not about Theo . . . about all of this. About Jay and speaking up for someone who’d had their voice taken. I cared about doing the right thing.
That was going to be a problem.
Theo walked onto the patio, his dark clothes in stark contrast to the sandstone slabs and bright lights, like someone famous walking onto a stage.
I emerged from the bushes too, and approached the pool a few steps behind him. Nobody was around. The water glittered, reflecting moving shadows back onto the glass and black metallic house peering down at us. I had no idea what the house was clad in, but it looked like brushed metal.
Crickets chirped all around. The house behind us was quiet. The maintenance guys had gone. It was just us, and the calm blue water of the pool.
Theo crouched at the edge and dangled his fingers into the water, then lifted them out, gave them a shake, and stayed crouched at the edge, arm resting on his knee.
“He looked contemplative, don’t you think?” Theo asked, his voice sounding thoughtful too. “Jeremy, I mean. I caught the look on his face before I passed out. He wasn’t surprised, or shocked, just . . . thinking.”
He had looked calm, for sure. “He reacted like a guy who knew the body was there,” I whispered. “Not someone who was surprised to find a man floating in his pool.”
Theo sighed. “What the hell had Jay gotten himself into?”
He clearly needed a minute, so I took a good look at the poolside, not sure what I was looking for exactly.
I’d know when I saw it. Every pool had its own closed-loop filtration system maintaining it, and each system was different, each had its own set of parameters.
I called it character. Pools talked to me, in their own way.
This one was quiet tonight. Which told me it was well maintained.
No floating debris, no scum, pristine and with no story to tell.
I scanned the nearby areas for the filtration system and spotted a large shed hidden behind planted screening, set back from the patio so as not to get in the way of the glamorous aesthetic. Large enough to stand up in, that had to house the filtration system.
“I’m just going to check out the filter,” I whispered.
Theo barely registered that he’d heard, just stared at the pool.
I opened the pump-house door and found the pump and filtration system humming inside.
The Briars were on a well, like a lot of properties this far out, and Florida well water came up hard as nails.
So the pump house pulled double duty. Pool gear on one side—chlorine granules and the like—and on the other a hulking water softener fed by forty-pound bags of salt stacked along the wall, half of them split open and spilling onto the concrete.
Standard stuff. You softened the water before it went anywhere that mattered.
A row of switches glowed. I flicked the pump off, stopping water from flowing through the system, and cracked the lid of the huge bucket-like filter itself. Inside, I hoped to find something lodged in the filter, like I had at the Witherborne house, but the Briars’ was all clean. Too clean.
A shove slammed me forward, into the tiny gap between the filter and pump.
I yelped, hands going out to stop myself from falling face first into the hoses.
Then Theo was everywhere very suddenly, dark eyes inches from mine, warm hand over my mouth.
He pulled the pump-house door closed on us, shutting out the ambient light, and squeezing both of us into the tiny space.
I breathed hard through my nose. This was it. This was the moment I got eaten by a vampire. He’d brought me here to kill me, just like the last pool guy. I was done for.
“Shh,” Theo whispered, his whole body pushed against mine. “People.”
People.
Right.
Not murder number two.
I heard the voices then, getting closer. The maintenance guys from earlier.
They were talking about some groundworks and needing heavy equipment.
Theo turned his head, listening, which meant I got a fine view of his face’s bone structure up close and in profile.
Light from the patio filtered through the shed’s wooden slats, landing in little lines across his cheekbones.
His jaw could cut glass. His hair, in the filtered light, had me aching to run my fingers through it.
These thoughts came fast, racing alongside the fear that we were about to be discovered and my fragile little life would disappear as fast as a click of the fingers.
Why am I here?
Then Theo faced me again, and under the weight of his serious gaze, my thoughts got muffled behind the pounding of my heart. He slowly removed his hand and lowered it to my hip, as though to steady me. Or maybe that’s the only place it would fit.
He couldn’t read my mind, could he? He didn’t know how I’d been gazing at his face. Maybe he didn’t need to read my mind. My expression was probably revealing everything in my head.
My heart pounded harder. Theo’s sudden proximity had my body sparking alive.
Firm, male, warm. All up against me. The tingling from his hand on mine earlier ramped up to level eleven, and my skin buzzed.
It had been a long time since I’d been this close to someone, even with clothes on.
His thigh had worked its way between mine, his hip nudged my waist, and all the things I’d been trying very hard not to imagine while alone in bed at night came roaring into my head.
My dry spell had me lusting after Theo like he was the sunshine after a long winter of rain.
In the midst of our locked gaze, a sore burn sizzled against my arm. I looked down. Blood darkened my shirt sleeve around a small tear.
When he’d shoved me inside, I must have cut myself on one of the hose clamps.
Theo hissed through his teeth.
I looked up.
His eyes rolled. His head lolled. His body pitched backward, through the shed doors, and Theo Winterborne flopped out of the pump house, sprawling on his back on the grass, arms akimbo, out cold. Again. Right in front of the two maintenance guys.
They stopped chatting and stared.
Yeah, okay, this was definitely a problem.
“Hello.” I smiled, and stepped out of the shed, brushing my clothes down. “Wow, would you look at that. Vampire in a pump house. That’s a first for me.”
The two men frowned at me. The guy on the right, bigger than his friend, looked as though he’d throw punches before asking questions. “Who the fuck are you?”
This was going to take some creative explaining.