Chapter Six
KNOX
What the hell was she looking for? I watched Lily Spencer slam the laptop shut and cross the room to the closet. I'd planted cameras all over the house as she'd slept the night before.
I already knew that closet was office storage: shelves filled with supplies, reference books, and baskets with odds and ends. The other side had built-in file cabinets. Drawers and drawers of files, three-quarters of the way to the ceiling, with more shelves above.
Lily wasn't paying bills or balancing her checkbook. She wasn't answering email. She wasn’t cleaning out the closet. There was no trash bag, no pile of things to discard.
She was looking for something.
Fortunately, I'd had the forethought to stick a camera high in the corner of the closet. From that vantage point, I had a bird’s-eye view of the top of Lily's head right down into the scoop-neck of her T-shirt.
For a second, I was distracted by the swell of her breasts as they rose and fell with every breath.
Okay, I got distracted for more than a second.
Get your head back on the job, Knox. If she’s wrapped up in this mess with Dad, you can't afford to let your cock fuck with your head. And if she needs your help, you won't be any good to her if you're distracted by her tits.
I tried not to enjoy the view down the front of her shirt. I did. But watching her search the files was mind-numbingly boring. Whatever Lily was looking for, she wasn't finding it.
It couldn't be a copy of the will. She'd said she'd seen that document, and it was on file at their attorney's office. Access to bank accounts? Trey Spencer had left their household accounts flush with cash. Unless Lily had expensive habits, she wouldn't run out of money any time soon.
Methodically, she opened a drawer, thumbed through a file, and put it back. When she was done, she closed the drawer and moved on. As the morning passed and her search proved fruitless, her shoulders slumped lower and lower.
Two hours after she started, she'd searched every drawer.
As far as I could tell, Lily hadn't found what she was looking for.
Proving me right, she turned around and started on the shelves.
In a few places, there were stacks of papers and file folders.
Lily went through those with the same attention to detail she'd paid to the file cabinets.
The rest of the shelves were filled with matching woven baskets, the dark fibers a contrast to the gleaming white shelves.
Starting from the bottom, she pulled out one basket after another, sorting through the contents before sliding it back on the shelf and starting again. One was a jumble of cables. Another old issues of magazines. None of them held what she was searching for.
The lower shelves done, she studied the rest. She'd already looked through everything she could reach, but the shelves went all the way to the ceiling. As if she followed my train of thought, she strode from the closet.
I followed her on the cameras to the mudroom where she grabbed a tall stepladder, hefted it onto her shoulder, and carried it back to the office closet. When she had the stepladder in position, she climbed up two steps and began to search the higher shelves.
Something about the way she looked told me this wasn't the first time she'd searched the office closet.
She finished the shelves she could reach from the second step and climbed to the third.
I winced as she leaned out over the side of the stepladder to pull a basket from the end closest to the wall.
She wasn't that high off the ground. If she fell she wouldn't really hurt herself, but with the bulky basket in her arms, her position was precarious at best. Bracing the basket against the shelf in front of her, she rifled through it, then leaned out again to replace it.
I let out a breath of relief when it slid onto the shelf and she was standing on two feet once more. Her eyes went up to the next shelf.
Under my breath, I muttered, “Don't do it, Lily”.
Lily couldn't hear me and probably wouldn't have listened if she had. She climbed a step higher on the ladder and went through the same routine, searching every basket on the shelf.
Again, she came up empty. She stood still for a long moment, apparently thinking as she eyeballed the top step of the ladder. The one clearly marked DO NOT STAND. She looked at the step, then the highest shelf, before lifting her foot and placing it right over the yellow and black warning sticker.
I leaned forward in my seat, gripping my knees, willing her to hold onto the shelves. Willing her not to do anything stupid. The top shelf was well above her head. She wobbled as she strained to catch the sides of the box above her with her fingertips.
I saw it happen in slow motion. Lily inched the box back, took a step to steady herself, and misjudged the width of the ladder.
I didn't hear her scream as she fell. I was already out the door.
Images of Lily, broken and bleeding, flashed through my mind as I bolted for the house. She could have hit her head. She could have broken an ankle or an arm. If she'd come down the wrong way and cracked her neck on one of those hard, wooden shelves—
Don't worry about it until you know what you're dealing with.
I burst through the door to the mudroom and raced down the hall, cursing Trey for putting his office on the opposite side of the house.
“Lily! Lily! Are you all right?” I skidded to a halt in the office to see Lily sprawled in the doorway of the closet blinking up at the ceiling, a basket upside down on top of her, papers scattered everywhere.
I went to my knees beside her, scanning for signs of injury. There was nothing. No blood, no limbs bent at an awkward angle, not even a bump coming up on her forehead.
“Lily, what happened?” I demanded, moving the basket and running my hands over her, searching for an injury I couldn't see.
“Knox?” Her dazed eyes focused on my face, and her brow knit in confusion. “Knox? What are you doing here?”
“I was outside and heard a shout,” I lied. “Are you all right? What happened?”
“I was up on the ladder trying to get a box down, and I slipped.”
“Are you okay? Are you hurt? Did you hit your head?”
Lily rolled her head from side to side before trying to sit up. I slid an arm under her back, lifting her. She winced at the movement.
“What?” I demanded.
“My back,” she said, reaching to run her fingers under her shirt. I lifted the soft fabric to see a scrape on her right side.
“Not too bad,” I said. After that fall, it could have been far worse.
Lily probed the scrape with her fingertips, biting her lip as the salt on her skin touched raw flesh. She brought her hand around to stare at her fingers. “It's not bleeding.”
“Not really,” I agreed, though droplets of blood welled here and there. “Mostly it's just raw. It'll sting for a day or two, but it'll heal up pretty fast.”
“I guess I should count myself lucky then.”
“What were you doing at the top of that ladder?” She followed my gaze to the empty space on the top shelf and back to the basket upended on the floor.
“Nothing,” Lily said. Then, maybe realizing that wasn't much of an explanation went on, “Just looking for some old paperwork.”
She picked up a loose piece of paper from the floor and turned it over. I plucked it from her hand and scanned.
“Auto maintenance records? For a Mercedes CL coupe? That's not your car.”
“It was Trey's,” Lily said, snatching the paper out of my hand, busying herself trying to organize the mess on the floor. I reached for a pile of papers, and she snapped, “I've got it.”
“Next time you need something over your head, ask. Might as well take advantage of having someone around who can reach higher than you.”
“Is that a short joke?”
I ignored her comment. “Don't do that again, Lily. If you need to get up to that shelf and you don't want to ask me, use the other ladder.”
“It doesn't fit in the closet,” she muttered under her breath as she finished shoving the last of the papers from the floor back in the box.
“Then ask for help,” I said. “You want me to put this back on the shelf?” I asked.
“No, you can leave it.” She dusted her hands off on her shorts, her eyes on the basket by her feet. “Do you want a cup of coffee or anything? I baked blueberry muffins.”
My stomach turned over at the thought of what Lily could do to blueberry muffins if the rest of her baking was like that coffee cake. “I'm not hungry, but I'll take you up on the coffee.”
I followed Lily down the hall into the kitchen inhaling the scents of coffee, blueberries, and something savory and rich. “What's for dinner?” I asked.
“Pot roast. I can't seem to get the hang of baking, but my pot roast is pretty good.”
Lily was in the middle of pouring my coffee when she caught sight of the clock on the stove. “Shoot, I didn't realize it was that late. Can you take this to go? I need to get Adam from preschool.”
She shoved me out the door, mug in hand, before I could object. Lily didn't want to leave me alone in her house.
As her personal security, I should have had access to the entire property, whether she was there or not. I didn't bother to object.
I already knew Lily had secrets. It was only a matter of time until I uncovered them, one by one.