Chapter 33 #2
“Upgraded,” I say slowly, too rattled to remind Pell that Hugo’s not my anything.
He pulls out two black, palm-sized gadgets, each with different dials and gauges.
“RF detector,” he says, tapping one, then the other. “Camera lens detector. Let’s see what we’ve got.”
He fires up his anti-peeping tom devices and moves slowly around the perimeter, passing them over my beloved paperbacks, my collection of framed vintage postcards, the pretty blown-glass vase from my trip to New York with Felicity last year.
He does the same thing in my kitchen and laundry room, and the detectors light up.
They light up so many times.
“He asked me to recommend some high-end surveillance cams ’round the time you moved in,” Pell says twenty minutes later around the screwdriver gripped in his teeth.
He’s standing on a stepladder to disassemble my smoke detector.
My fucking smoke detector. “I assumed it was for a target.” He glances down at me. “Guess that was you.”
When he finally pulls the unit free, he holds it at eye level and gives a low whistle.
“Spared no expense. This is high-end shit. Clear-as-day picture and audio.”
“Great,” I say tightly. “So glad he’s been enjoying me in high-def.”
Along with the smoke detector, Pell finds pinhole cameras in electrical outlet covers in the living room and laundry room, plus ones in the clock in my kitchen and my front hallway coat hook and nearly invisible motion sensors over my doors nestled alongside my own goddamn security cameras.
I feel a little sicker with each one he uncovers and removes.
“Upstairs next?” he asks.
I already know what he’s going to find. I saw it on Hugo’s phone last night. I stand in the upstairs hallway, my arms wrapped around my midsection.
“Hell, even I don’t put cameras in people’s bedrooms without a damn good reason,” he mutters as he exits my bedroom holding the cardboard box full of the removed cameras. Pointing at the hallway smoke detector, he says, “This is the last of ’em.”
I watch as he positions his ladder under it and makes quick work of the retrieval. When he’s done, I say, “Thank you on behalf of whatever unsuspecting woman he rents to next.”
“You’re movin’?” he asks as he descends.
“Uh, yeah.”
His brows lift. “Damn, neighbor girl. Guess I’ll have to find another place for ya. At least this time, I can tell you ’bout it directly.”
“… this time?”
“What, you thought the email with this listing came from a leasing agent?”
“You…”
My hand’s barely started moving toward the knife in my pocket before Pell’s right there, folding me into his side. His thigh presses against my hip, and the steel band of his arm wraps around my waist to restrain me just below my elbows, locking my upper body in place.
“None of that,” he says lazily, shifting his leg back when I try to scrape my heel down his shin to get him to let me go.
“You threw me into his path without warning?” I seethe.
“Maybe I threw him into your path.”
He’s laughing. I want to explode. “Why the fuck would you do that?”
“I was bored. It amused me. I thought you might hit it off.” He shrugs. “Pick one.”
“You’re such an asshole,” I mutter.
“Also true.”
Goddammit, I have had it with these men who toy with my life like this. I may not be able to throw a punch or elbow him in the balls from this position, but I can bend my arm to reach his hand where it’s splayed on my stomach. I move fast and wrench his little finger back until something pops.
He releases me with a hiss, sending me reeling backward, scrambling for my knife.
What a dumb way I’ve just chosen to die.
Pell turns to where I’m plastered against the wall, his expression perfectly still, almost pleasant.
As he walks toward me, my screaming brain locks on little details about him: the precise edge of his sideburns, the lack of soap or coffee or toothpaste scents, the fact that he’s breathing normally while I’m gasping.
I keep my eyes open and wait for him to wrap his fingers around my neck or gut me with my own knife. Instead, he stops three inches away.
“That,” he says quietly, “is strike two, Miss Alsop.”
My veins fill with ice, but instead of pursuing the threat—to me? To Fi? To both of us?—I choke out, “Y-y… you know?”
“Of course I do.” As if all of the State’s efforts to protect the identity of Jennifer’s daughters were child’s play to him. “Now behave, or I won’t tell you what I found in your bathroom.”
His brows lift as his eyes drift to my knife. I nod woodenly and slip it into my pocket, my hands shaking. Then a grin splits his face, and he reaches up and boops my nose like I’m a little kid, his dislocated pinkie jutting out at a grotesque angle.
“Bathroom was clean,” he tells me, his molasses accent creeping in as he grabs his pinkie and forces it back into place with an audible crack.
A hard exhale through his nose is his only reaction.
“Gimme a sec to pack up, and I’m gone.”
Once I’m alone in the hallway, I give myself twenty seconds to steady my breathing before I stumble into my bedroom and sink onto the edge of my bed, taking in the walls, the ceiling, the dresser. None of it looks any different than yesterday morning.
A few minutes later, Pell strolls in and drops a cardboard box full of disabled cameras and motion sensors on the mattress next to me, setting the RF and lens detectors on top.
“Keep ’em. Scan everywhere, every day. Set up cameras on his side. Put ’em up in your new place. Whatever it takes to make you comfortable.”
“Comfortable,” I say with a bitter laugh.
Moments later, the garage door on Hugo’s half of the duplex rumbles to life, and I spring off the bed.
“You said we’d be done before he got back.” I’d been planning on following Pell out the door to avoid any accidental neighbor sightings while I’m figuring out my next move.
“Oops.” He lifts one hoodie-clad shoulder in a lazy shrug. “I did warn you this’d take longer than I thought.”
“Great.” I glance across the room to see Pell openly pawing through my jewelry box, examining the few pieces I own. “Knock that off! What are you, a raccoon?”
Pell grins at me. “Yes, ma’am, I am.” He selects a pair of gold hoop earrings, holding them against his own ear. His pinkie’s already starting to swell. “You should wear these more. They go great with your complexion.”
I growl and yank them out of his hand, tossing them back in the box. Then we both listen to the muffled sounds of Hugo’s homecoming: the door slam, the clatter of keys, his heavy footsteps alongside a lighter, faster tapping sound I don’t recognize.
“Shit, these walls really are thin.” He chuckles. “Your boy didn’t need cameras at all. Just his imagination.”
“You are not helping,” I say testily, cocking my head when Hugo’s back door opens and closes. Against my will, I drift to the window overlooking our two fenced yards and gasp. “You gave him Cosmo?”
Pell joins me at the window.
“Yep,” he says. “What I saw Thursday night, the only thing he loves more’n you in this world is that little guy.”
He leaves me alone at the window while Hugo lets the dog, more brown than white thanks to the muddy yard, use his stomach as a trampoline.
God, Hugo.
I rest my forehead against the glass. My body wants him. My heart wants me to have him. My brain’s too smart to let those two bitches call the shots. And all three want to cry as I watch him roll around in the yellowing grass with the happily barking little dog.
No. I’m not doing this.
I bolt from the room and down the stairs, shouting at Pell, “Let yourself out, and send the bill to him.”
“Already done,” he calls after me.
When I burst through the latched gate in Hugo’s fence, he and Cosmo both look up from the ground, startled.
“Why didn’t you just talk to me?” I demand.
“What do you mean?”