Constance (Constance #1)(37)

The way he said it, Con could feel his pain just below the surface. She said nothing, leaving space for him to go on if he wanted, but instead, he asked her father’s name.

“Corporal Antoine D’Arcy. Did you know him?”

He shook his head. “It’s a big army. May I ask where?”

“Central America. Mexican-Guatemalan border.”

“Operation Southern Vigilance,” Peter said with grave familiarity. “That was a cluster from start to finish. We lost a lot of good people down there.”

The subject put a damper on their conversation, and Peter worked on in silence. Con rarely thought about her father; he was more an idea than a person to her. She’d only been six when he died, and even before that, he’d been gone more than he’d been home. It didn’t help that shortly after Con had gone to live with her grandmother, her mother had purged all traces of Antoine D’Arcy from her house. Con had stopped by to pick up a few things one afternoon when her mother should have been at work, only to find a bonfire raging in the backyard and Mary D’Arcy curled up in a broken-down lounge chair, reading the Bible.

When Peter was finished, he stepped back and held up a mirror. Con caught her breath at the transformation. She had her grandmother’s straight black hair but had never worn it this short before. She’d been afraid she was going to wind up looking like a new recruit, but Peter had managed to give her something approximating a pixie. It worked better than she could have hoped. She looked, dare she say it, almost cute. More important, for the first time, she looked like someone. Not herself, not exactly, but someone. Like if someone glanced her way, she wouldn’t worry anymore that they were wondering what species she was. To both their surprise, she threw her arms around Peter and hugged him gratefully.

“So I passed?”

“You have no idea. Thank you so much.”

“I’m happy you’re happy,” he said, extracting himself from her grasp.

“Peter, can I ask you a question? Off the record? What’s your boss like, for real?” Maybe it was na?ve of her to think Peter would give her a straight answer. He worked for Vernon Gaddis, and cutting her hair didn’t make them buddies. Still, she found herself trusting him, and that meant something. She rarely trusted anyone this fast.

“Well, that’s a complicated question. But I assume you mean can he be relied on?”

“Something like that.”

“He can. Does that mean you should? Not sure that’s my place to say, really. The man saved my life, so I might not be objective on the subject.”

“He saved your life?” she asked.

“You have to understand that Mr. Gaddis’s situation is incredibly complex. And rich people, they don’t think like you and me. I’m not even sure they live on this planet some of the time. He will surprise me at times, but he has always treated me fairly. Still, in the end, it’s up to each of us to look out for our own interests, because no one else will unless their interests align. Do you understand me? That’s the best answer I can give you.”

“Thank you,” she said. “That helps.”

With that, Peter excused himself, saying he had work to do and that if she needed anything to ask the house. She spent the rest of the afternoon exploring and thinking about what Peter had told her about aligning interests. One thing was for sure, it was going to be an interesting conversation tonight. Despite Gaddis’s hospitality, they weren’t friends. Quite the opposite, he just needed something from her. There was also a fifty-fifty chance that everything Brooke Fenton had said was true. She would need to be on her toes.

The house was room after room of perfectly decorated spaces. Each one empty and devoid of any sense of life. It was like walking through a luxury resort after the season was over and all the guests had gone home. Besides dual kitchens, the house also boasted a movie theater; an enormous library that belonged in an old English university; a game room with a fully stocked bar, pool tables, Ping-Pong, and shuffleboard; a full-size gym; a racquetball court; and a climate-controlled wine cellar that held thousands of bottles. She passed through a ballroom so large, it echoed when she walked. But it wasn’t until she came to the hospital-grade medical suite that Con’s envy began to turn to pity. Peter had told her Gaddis rarely left the island. He hadn’t built a barbershop and doctor’s office out of convenience. He’d built them so he wouldn’t have to leave the safety and privacy of the island. All that money, and he was still trapped. It wasn’t a home, it was an A-list prison.

Upstairs, she found his kids’ rooms. Each was immaculate and frozen in amber, toys and clothes scattered around where they’d been left. It reminded Con of the way parents sometimes mourned the loss of a child because they couldn’t face up to the truth. On one of the boys’ desks was an unfinished homework assignment. But Peter had said the children didn’t live at the house. The children hadn’t been on board the plane, so where were they?

Out the daughter’s bedroom window, Con saw a limousine pull into the circular driveway and stop at the front door. Vernon Gaddis got out and walked briskly into the house. She should take a shower and make herself presentable. It was almost time for dinner.





CHAPTER THIRTEEN


A little after eight, Peter showed Con onto a terrace that looked out over the seawalls that kept the island from being reclaimed by the rising Chesapeake Bay. The sun hung low in the western sky and framed the house in a golden halo. Gaddis sat at one end of a table that could easily have hosted thirty. He rose to greet her, wearing an impeccably tailored suit. After her shower, Con had agonized over what to wear. Did she pick something from the rack of new clothes to show her gratitude, or did that make her appear weak? She’d tried on several options, but in the end, she’d gone with the T-shirt and jeans that she’d arrived in, which she’d returned to find cleaned and folded on her bed. She kept on insisting that she was Con D’Arcy, so she might as well act like it.