Chapter Two
TAT.
Tat-tat-tat-tat.
Tat-tat-tat.
Crrrch.
Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.
Ding!
Sienna lurches up in bed, the sound of the typewriter echoing in her ears.
Beside her, Malcolm rolls over, without fully waking. Lucky bastard. She cocks her head, listening, is just beginning to think the noise was part of a dream, one she can’t remember, when—
Tat-tat-tat, it starts again, devolving into a harsh flurry of keys, and Sienna finds herself flinging back the covers.
Arthur Fletch might have found the typewriter a fun affect, but the sound is jarring, traveling through wood and bouncing against stone, a painful reminder that one of her competitors is already up.
Already writing.
She tugs on a pair of sweats and her soft old hoodie, the one she always packs because it feels like comfort, the one she’d never dream of wearing around other people, thanks to the hole in the pocket, the bleach stain like a drip down the front.
But it’s the first thing in reach, and in that moment all she wants to is to get into the hall—she has to get into the hall—and find out where the sound is coming from.
Of course, by the time she stumbles to the door and tugs it open, the typing has stopped. She holds her breath, cocks her head, and listens, listens.
Nothing.
Then it starts again.
There are only two other rooms on this wing, Jaxon’s and Millie’s. Both doors are closed. Sienna puts her ear to the wood of Jaxon’s door and strains to hear, but the room is quiet. She continues on to Millie’s, but halfway there, the typing stops.
She holds her breath again, waiting to see if it will start again, and then begins to feel vaguely ridiculous. She closes her eyes, drags in a deep breath, and catches the all-too-welcome scent of coffee.
Coffee—that’s what she needs.
Sienna ducks back into her room, where Malcolm’s still snoring, and swaps the ratty old sweatshirt for a more fashionable sweater—cashmere, a gift from him last Christmas.
She pulls her hair up into a bun, swipes on mascara, and arranges her face into something that says Oh, I woke up like this, before starting out again, this time moving swiftly past the other bedrooms and toward the stairs.
She’s already at the top step when she sees Cate and Jaxon near the bottom. Her immediate instinct is to jump back, retreat into the hall, out of sight but not out of earshot. But Cate glances up, her hands wrapped around a steaming mug.
“Good morning.”
Foiled, Sienna flashes a casual smile and jogs down as they trudge up, Jaxon giving her an odd little salute as they pass.
“Like I was saying,” he goes on, and Sienna’s ears perk up. Her steps slow as she rounds the table with its bouquet of antlers. “You shouldn’t get in your head.”
“It’s just, I mean, the odds aren’t exactly in my favor.”
“Hey now, you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have a shot.”
Is Jaxon Knight seriously giving a pep talk? Sienna didn’t know he had it in him.
“It’s not fair, is it?” murmurs Cate. “That only one of us can win.”
Jaxon sighs. “Welcome to publishing. The land of the zero-sum game.”
As Sienna listens, she reaches out to touch a bony point and flinches, surprised by how sharp the antler is. She looks at her finger, half expecting to find a bead of blood welling up, as if she’d pricked herself on a thorn and not a gaudy, oversize sculpture.
“Of course,” Jaxon says, “there are other prizes.”
Peering through the tangle of antlers, Sienna sees that they’ve stopped on the landing, their heads tipped back in twin relief as they study the roundel of stained glass over the gong.
It must be a sunny morning, because light hits the colored panes, illuminating Julia Petrarch and her glowing golden book.
Which must be the golden book, the one everyone was going on about last night.
Sienna squints up at the image and wonders if it’s real, or just another bit of Fletch’s personal mythology.
People forget that, don’t they? That the stories on paper aren’t the only ones we tell.
That novelists can spin fiction well beyond their books.
Everyone lies, of course, but writers lie well. Some lies are small, like the impression of success—a cashmere sweater instead of a hoodie, photos taken in the only renovated room of an apartment in the city you can’t afford—but some are grandiose.
This house, this island, it’s all part of Fletch’s narrative, a revision, a rewriting of his lore, as if he wasn’t born to middle-class parents in Nebraska.
She can’t help but think of Arthur’s adage, the one written over the door.
He who holds the pen tells the truth.
Maybe it’s just a good story. Or maybe there is a golden book, worth more than any deal. But Sienna Buchanan—formerly Wood, and soon to be Wood again—isn’t about to hang her financial hopes on the chance that it exists. She’s here for the real prize. A future. A fresh start.
“Here’s a question,” muses Cate. “If you got your hands on Fletch’s golden book, would you even care about getting the deal?”
“I’d take both. Of course, that would mean finding the book.”
“Might be easier than finding the end to Fletch’s novel. Or maybe that’s just how it feels right now.”
Jaxon laughs. “Speak for yourself.”
As they part ways on the stairs, he glances back, not at Cate but at Sienna, a crooked caught ya smile on his face. She tries to act surprised, like she definitely isn’t lingering on purpose, like she’s forgotten they were even there.
Sienna turns and hurries from the foyer, and nearly collides with Priscilla in the hall.
The romance author is dressed in a blush-colored jumpsuit and cradling a cup of coffee, a few blank sheets of pastel-pink paper folded into a makeshift notebook and tucked under one arm.
She’s standing before a framed picture, head cocked slightly to one side.
Drawing closer, Sienna sees it’s a map of the island.
There’s the jetty where they stepped off, the steep stairs and the house perched on the cliff.
But as big as the house is—and it is big—it only takes up a fraction of the land.
According to the map, it hugs the sharpest corner, the rest of the island sloping down and away.
There are hills and valleys, a handful of structures, little more than sheds, a copse of trees like a shadow in the middle map, and a handful of narrow trails crisscrossing the slopes before running down to a second, smaller dock.
“Huh,” she says, “it’s bigger than I thought.” She could spend the whole weekend exploring the island—if she had time, which she doesn’t. “Have you seen anyone else?” She looks around. “Those typewriters are so loud. I heard someone working.”
Priscilla takes a slow sip of her coffee. “Don’t worry about them.”
Sienna studies the other woman, marveling at how calm she is.
Maybe Malcolm was right. Maybe she simply knows she doesn’t have a shot.
After all, romance is a far cry from crime.
But there’s something about Priscilla, her placid-lake poise, that makes Sienna nervous.
She must be staring outright, because Priscilla finally looks away from the map, one brow lifting behind her pink frames, and the question spills out.
“Do you even want this?” Sienna says, and Priscilla inclines her head. “I mean, Fletch was a thriller writer, which is about as far from your genre as it gets. And I’m not saying that romance is easy, or anything like that, but—I mean—it’s so different, and—”
“You don’t think I deserve to be here?”
Heat rushes to Sienna’s face. “No, no, that’s not what I mean.”
Priscilla looks at her, clearly content to let her dig her own hole. Sienna feels herself getting flustered.
“It’s just—you’re so calm.”
Priscilla shrugs, turning her gaze mercifully back on the map. “You know, the best piece of advice I ever received was to keep my eyes on my own paper.”
Which is a nice idea, thinks Sienna. But—
“Easier said than done,” she murmurs. “Especially when there’s so much at stake.”
Priscilla nods. “It is, but don’t you see? That’s when it matters most.”
Sienna sighs, trying to breathe the way she learned in yoga—slowly, like the sea is there in the back of her throat—to imitate the other woman’s stillness, as if the calm beneath will rub off too.
She tries, she really does, but every time she blinks, she sees the blank sheaf of paper stacked neatly beside the untouched typewriter in her room, hears her pulse ticking like a clock, along with the echo of someone else’s keys, and—
“I need coffee,” she says, escaping down the hall, away from Priscilla and her maddening poise.
On the way to the kitchen she passes Fletch’s office, the time blinking on the safe now down to 52.
Sienna groans inwardly. The ticking clock is one of the most popular tools in a writer’s shed, a surefire way to create narrative tension, but it turns out it’s the kind of thing that may work better inside a novel than in the making of one.
The weight of it looms over her, makes her skin prickle with nerves and her mind begin to race, because she doesn’t have a solve, not yet, and—
“Get it together,” she mutters, forcing herself on, past the office door and into the kitchen, where Kenzo, hands braced on either side of the espresso machine as if to guard it, is being accosted by Jaxon, who’s traded his boxers and robe for a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie with the sleeves hacked off.
“I don’t know why you drink that stuff.”
“Because it fuels me,” says Kenzo, as the machine grinds and brews.
He spots Sienna and smiles, obviously thrilled to have backup. “Morning,” he says. “Kettle’s hot, I think, if you’re the tea type.”
“Actually, I’d kill for a coffee. Strong as you can make it.”
“A woman after my own heart,” he says with a wink.
“Your gut biome deserves better,” warns Jaxon.
“My gut biome doesn’t write books,” counters Sienna, opening the fridge. “And my brain doesn’t work without caffeine, so I think I’ll take my chances.”