Finlay Donovan Is Killing It(Finlay Donovan #1)(36)

A man swung open the passenger-side door. The long legs of his tailored suit took crisp, precise strides to Patricia’s front door. He rang the doorbell, running a hand over his dark, meticulously styled hair as he waited for someone to answer. The driver stayed back in the car, concealed behind its tinted windows.

The man rang the bell once more, following it up with two sharp knocks I could hear in my van. When no one answered, he moved to the garage, his tall frame allowing him to peer easily inside the high, narrow windows. He turned back to his car with a tight shake of his head.

The driver’s door flung open. A pair of broad shoulders and sturdy, thick legs wedged their way out. With heavy, lumbering strides, the driver stalked around the side of the house, a silver blade slipping from his sleeve into his meaty hand as he disappeared behind it.

The man in the suit laced his fingers behind him, casually pacing the driveway, his eyes roving the street as he waited beside the Town Car. I sank lower in my seat, peering over the top of my steering wheel, hoping he couldn’t see me with the low afternoon sun at my back.

A moment later, the driver returned. He brushed his empty hands together, and with a tight nod to his passenger, they ducked back into their fancy black car. Heart racing, I dropped to the floorboard as the Lincoln reversed out of the driveway and swung in my direction. I waited for the purr of its engine to pass before cautiously sitting up.

Were these the people Patricia had warned me about? The ones with eyes and ears all over town?

My husband was involved with some very dangerous people.

Checking my mirror to be sure they were gone, I threw open my door and returned the mail to the box. Every voice in my head was screaming at me to go. To run. But what if Patricia had been home all along? What if she’d been hiding, not from me, but from those men? The driver had been carrying a very large knife, and it hadn’t been in his hand when he’d come back. I couldn’t just leave without making sure Patricia was okay.

I crept to the garage, leveraging myself on the edge of a raised planter beside the driveway to peek in the window. A brown Subaru wagon was parked inside, the same one she’d disappeared in when she’d left me in Panera, its rear window layered in stickers—JMU, Animals Are Friends Not Food, Adopt Don’t Shop, and Shed Happens. Stick figures of a man and a woman and two stick-figure dogs trailed across the glass.

Patricia was home.

I ran through the side yard and rounded the Micklers’ house, stopping short in the middle of her back porch. Sunlight glimmered off the long blade of the knife embedded in the trim beside the door. A piece of paper fluttered, held in place by its teeth.

YOU’VE TAKEN SOMETHING THAT BELONGS TO ME.

YOU HAVE 24 HOURS BEFORE MY PATIENCE RUNS OUT.—Z



I touched the bank statement in my pocket. Had all those small, incremental monthly deposits been retainer payments from clients? Or had Harris been embezzling money from his clients’ accounts?

… if they find out what we’ve done, they’ll come for both of us.

I had assumed Patricia had meant these dangerous people would find us if they knew what we had done to Harris. But what if that wasn’t what she was suggesting at all? What if she was referring to what she and Harris had done? What if the money in his account had belonged to these men and she’d stolen it—not from her husband, but from them? Could these men be the ones who had killed Harris?

I blew out a shaky breath. At least the men hadn’t gone inside.

I banged on the back door, cupping my hand to peer in the window. The kitchen was dark, the sink empty of dishes and the counters tidy. I dragged my sleeve over my hand and tried the doorknob, but it was locked. So was the window beside it. I looked around for a pet door I might open and shout through, surprised she didn’t have one. I knocked again, but if she was home, she clearly had no intention of answering. After what I’d just seen, I couldn’t say I blamed her. If I were Patricia, I would have hidden under my bed and called the …

Oh, no.

I let go of the knob, ears alert for the sound of sirens, nearly tripping off the porch stairs in my rush to get back to my van. Patricia would be fine, I told myself as I shut myself inside. By the end of the night, forty-eight hours would have passed since Harris’s disappearance, and the police would be crawling all over this place. The scary man in the suit and his very scary driver wouldn’t be foolish enough to come back. And if I were smart, neither would I.





CHAPTER 18





I was being prodded by instruments of torture. I prayed to every god, in every corner of the globe, my prayers consisting mostly of four-letter words, to please, please, for the love of all that was holy, make it stop.

Peeling open one eye, I waited for the room to come into focus. Delia sat on the edge of my bed, her spiky hair silhouetted against the light streaming into my bedroom from the hallway. She rocked me fervently back and forth, her tiny hand pressing into my right kidney until my bladder threatened to burst. Zach leaned over me with his milky breath, his pudgy finger poking my cheek.

I covered my face with a pillow.

Delia plucked it away from my head. “Wake up, Mommy. Vero says it’s time for dinner.”

“Dinner?” I pushed up on an elbow. What day was it? What time was it? The last thing I remembered was putting my computer to sleep, closing the door to my office, and lumbering to my bedroom like a zombie.