Finlay Donovan Is Killing It(Finlay Donovan #1)(37)

Zach giggled when his wet pacifier found my ear. I shuddered at the memory of Harris’s tongue as I sat up, the events of the previous three days slowly coming back to me. “How long have I been sleeping?”

“All. Day. Long.” Delia rolled her eyes so hard I could see their whites in the dark.

“I know. I get it. It’s a mood.” I sat up and stretched, the muscles in my back and shoulders howling. I was sure it was karma. The pain I was suffering for burying Harris Mickler was directly proportional to my own stupidity.

Maybe Vero had been right about the front-end loader.

I switched on the bedside table lamp, wincing as the light threw my life into stark relief. My captors took my hands and dragged me from my room. The hallway smelled like garlic butter, oregano, and simmering tomatoes, and my stomach growled as I hoisted Zach onto my hip and carried him downstairs.

Something was different. Or maybe everything was different. I looked around the kitchen as I strapped Zach into his high chair. At the clean stretches of countertop where random piles of clutter used to gather. At the vacuum tracks in the living room carpet and the baskets of clean, folded laundry. At the open notebooks and calculator and accounting textbooks where the missing piles of collection notices in the dining room had been yesterday.

A sinking feeling swept over me. “Where are the bills?” I asked Vero.

“I handled them,” she said, serving out bowls of spaghetti and garlic bread.

“What do you mean, you handled them?”

“I paid them.”

“With what?”

She raised an eyebrow as she slid Delia’s plate onto the table. I ran upstairs to my office and threw open my desk drawer. Patricia Mickler’s envelope was gone.

I rushed back down, nearly slipping on the fresh floor polish at the bottom of the stairs. “Where’s the money?” I whispered, darting an anxious glance at the kids. Delia slurped up a long noodle. Zach picked up a handful of pasta and sauce, dropping it onto his tray with a squeal.

Vero sat down in the empty chair beside them. “I started an LLC in your name, opened an account, and used it to pay off your bills.” She tore off a mouthful of garlic bread. “You’re welcome,” she said around her food.

Appetite gone, I sank heavily into my chair. “All of them?”

Vero speared her fork into her spaghetti, as if the answer should have been obvious.

“Don’t you think that’s going to look a little bit suspicious? How am I supposed to explain that to Steven when he asks me where the money came from?” Delia’s eyes lifted from her plate at the sound of her father’s name, and I let my argument drop.

“It’s a new account. And it’s your company. His name isn’t on it.” Vero shrugged as she poured herself a glass of wine. “By the time he realizes the bills have been paid, your book will be done.”

“What book?”

“The one you’ve been working on at night.” She took a long sip. “It’s good, by the way.”

“What do you mean, it’s good? How could you possibly know it’s good?”

“And who’s Julian Baker?” She waggled an eyebrow.

“Were you snooping on my computer?”

“You left your browser open on his Instagram page.” She smirked at me over the rim of her glass. “He’s hot.”

“Who’s hot?” Delia asked.

“No one.” I glared at Vero as I shook a mountain of parmesan onto my plate and slammed down the can. The muted TV flickered in the living room, set to the local news station. Vero’s eyes darted to the ticker as she ate. “He’s just a friend,” I muttered into my plate.

“A little young, isn’t he?” Vero asked.

I stabbed at my pasta. “I’m thirty-one. It’s not like I’ve got one foot in the grave.”

“Last I saw, you had two.”

I kicked her under the table.

“How about Andrei Borovkov? What’s his story?”

I stopped chewing. I hadn’t mentioned anything to Vero about Patricia’s rich friend or the seventy-five-thousand-dollar promissory note I’d tucked in my desk drawer. “How do you know about that?”

Vero dropped her garlic bread, her wide eyes focused on the TV behind me. Her chair screeched as she lunged to the counter for the remote and turned up the sound. My stomach took a nosedive when I turned and saw the familiar faces on the screen.

According to police, an Arlington husband and wife have gone missing in two separate incidents, causing investigators to consider the likelihood of foul play. Patricia Mickler contacted her local sheriff’s office at approximately seven o’clock Wednesday night to report her husband, Harris Mickler, missing, saying she hadn’t heard from him since he’d left work the night before. But when police arrived at her home to take her statement, Mrs. Mickler didn’t answer the door. Police say they grew concerned after they made several attempts to reach her by phone, and more than one unanswered visit to her home. Tonight, police are launching an investigation into the couple’s whereabouts.



The camera cut away to the Micklers’ street, where neighbors all seemed to be saying the same thing. No, they hadn’t noticed anything strange. No, the Micklers were perfectly ordinary, a quiet couple, no children or pets. They both worked long hours at respectable jobs and had never caused any trouble.