6. The First Move #2
“This is Mr. Kavanagh, from the agency Detective Loxley recommended,” Tobias said, gesturing toward the hallway. “He’s going to be right outside the door, sweetheart. Nobody gets on this property without him clearing it first.”
Tobias smoothed the lapels of his suit jacket. “I have to go to the firm, but I’ll be back before dinner.”
Tobias had paid a syndicate to drag me across wet concrete, and now he was welcoming their boss into his own home. He thought he was locking down his alibi. He had no idea he had just given me exactly what I needed.
You have no idea what you just did.
“Thank you, Tobias,” I murmured, keeping my voice soft and dependent. “Have a good day at work.”
Tobias stepped over the threshold, his leather shoes gliding over the rug as he crossed the room. He leaned down, placing a hand on the mattress near my hip.
I held my posture rigid. My palms flattened against the bedding to fight the instinct to recoil from him.
Tobias pressed a lingering kiss against my forehead.
The damp warmth of his lips settled on my skin, mingling with the suffocating scent of his cologne.
My stomach turned, but I endured the contact without flinching.
“Rest. I love you,” Tobias whispered.
He pulled away, offering a practiced, devoted smile. Turning on his heel, he walked out of the room. His polished footsteps echoed down the corridor, fading as he reached the main staircase.
Bastien stepped fully into the bedroom and pushed the heavy mahogany door shut. The brass latch engaged with a sharp click. He remained near the threshold, his broad frame blocking the wood panels.
“He’s gone,” Bastien murmured.
“Lock it,” I whispered.
He reached behind his back and twisted the deadbolt. The metal cylinder slid into place. “It’s secure.”
The exact second the lock turned, I let my shoulders drop and my fingers fall still.
I raised a hand to my face. I dug my bare knuckles into my forehead, right where Tobias had just pressed his lips.
I scrubbed the skin back and forth until it burned.
I wanted to scrape the lingering, damp warmth of his mouth right off my skull.
I pushed off the edge of the bed. My bare heels sank into the plush fibers of the rug. The silence of the vast bedroom settled over us, leaving only the faint ticking of the wall clock.
I took two steps toward the window, turning my back to the door. Morning light slanted through the glass, catching the dust motes hovering over the floorboards. I closed my eyes, letting the solitary quiet wash over me.
Bastien rolled his shoulders, dropping the rigid posture. He adjusted his stance, planting his boots wide on the rug. The deferential act vanished, replaced by the quiet edge I remembered from the penthouse. It brought a sudden spike of relief. I didn’t have to perform for him.
“God, it makes me sick,” I said. “Letting him touch me, letting him pretend to care. It takes everything I have not to scream.”
Bastien stepped away from the door. He moved to the center of the rug, stopping just a few feet away. His dark eyes studied my face. He watched me in silence, offering none of the suffocating sympathy my mother had.
“You don’t have to pretend in here,” Bastien said. “As far as I’m concerned, you can scream as much as you want. No one would blame you.”
The offer hung in the silence of the bedroom. For twelve hours, I had suffocated under my mother’s floral perfume and my husband’s manufactured devotion. Bastien was offering the one thing they hadn’t: a safe place to break down in. The temptation to let the grief take over was staggering.
I gripped the mattress, locking my jaw against the exhaustion. If I broke down now, I would lose the leverage I needed to survive them.
“I’d blame myself,” I told him, holding his gaze. “I’ll scream when this is all over and I’m through with Tobias and Lavinia.”
“I’ve spoken to my men and to some of my other contacts,” Bastien said. “It appears your husband was in heavy debt to the wrong kind of people.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. It made sense. Tobias was a coward. He never would have risked a federal kidnapping charge unless his back was against the wall.
The ransom wasn’t a payout for the thugs; it was a pretext to extract my trust fund to save his own skin. But my mother’s involvement remained a sickening puzzle. Lavinia didn’t have gambling debts. She just had bottomless greed.
“And let me guess,” I said. “They’re not exactly the type to cooperate with the police. Or with you.”
“Exactly,” Bastien said. “I could push, but it seems unlikely I’ll get anywhere without giving away the game.”
“We can’t let it get to that,” I said.
I turned away from him and walked to the bedside nightstand.
I grabbed the brass handle and pulled the drawer open.
I pushed aside the hand lotion and sleep masks, digging toward the back until my fingers found a stack of thick household stationery and a silver ink pen.
I pulled them out and set the heavy cardstock flat on the smooth wood of the table.
Bastien stepped up beside me, close enough to look down at the blank paper. “You already have a target.”
“I know exactly where he hides things,” I told him.
I uncapped the pen. I pressed the nib hard against the paper, focusing entirely on the sharp scratch of the ink.
I dragged the tip across the cardstock, carving a rough, definitive box to represent the estate’s ground floor.
I sketched the foyer, the grand staircase, and the kitchen.
I drew a small square near the front entrance and shaded it with a dense block of blue ink.
I nudged the paper toward Bastien. The thick cardstock rasped against the polished wood.
“Tobias has to have some kind of evidence here,” I said, tapping the pen against the shaded square.
“He practically lives in his home office when he’s here.
He keeps the door locked, and the maids are only allowed to clean it when he’s supervising.
If he’s hiding bank statements or unmonitored devices, they are in that room. ”
Bastien studied the diagram. He reached out, his calloused index finger tracing the line I had drawn for the main corridor.
“The office doorway opens directly onto the main downstairs hallway,” Bastien noted. “It’s a high-traffic area for the staff. We can’t just kick the door in.”
“Then we wait until the house is empty,” I said.
I stared at the ink bleeding into the paper fibers.
The estate was crawling with staff, but they were manageable.
The real threat was the woman currently drinking mimosas downstairs, performing her grief for them.
She hovered over me constantly, making it impossible to move around the house undetected. We needed a physical distraction.
“And to do that…” I started.
“We get rid of your mother,” Bastien finished.
I stood over the hand-drawn map of my own home, my eyes tracking the pathways I had carved in blue ink.