My Darling Husband(16)

I gesture to the snacks spread across the bar. “Aren’t y’all going to eat?”

“My husband will be home soon,” she says, ignoring the food, my question. “He’s home for dinner every night. Take whatever you want and leave, and I’ll forget you were ever here.”

I lean an elbow on the bar, gesturing with the gun. “And here we were doing so well just now. Your husband doesn’t come home for dinner, ever. Don’t lie to me. Your children understand this. Why can’t you?”

She presses her lips into a straight line, and I squint, studying her face. Does she recognize me?

I’m pretty sure the answer is no, though it’s not for lack of trying. Her eyes have followed me since the second she saw me in the garage. I’ve seen the way she’s examined my build, clocking the shape of my eyes and my lips and skin and whatever else she can see of my face. I saw her ticking off my features one by one, searching her memory banks for a match. Jade’s one of those people whose every thought plays out on her face, which means that so far, she hasn’t made the connection.

I straighten, and my gaze sweeps the windows on the back side of the house, checking the view onto the driveway and fenced-in backyard—both deserted. Nothing out there but some squirrels and that big-ass pool, the water like shimmering black glass. It’s the front of the house I have to worry about—a solid wall of windows and glass doors.

“Now come on. We need to get our asses upstairs.”

Jade frowns, her pretty forehead crumpling. “Why...why do you want to go upstairs?”

“What do you think your neighbors will say when they see a guy in a ski mask marching through your living room? We’re okay here, but the rest of this place is like a fish tank.”

That’s what a couple million bucks in this town will get you—a palace high on a hill where every space winds into the next through mammoth, open doorways. Only three rooms on this level provide any sort of privacy: the master on the back end, the TV room behind Jade and the kids, and the kitchen I’ve parked us in. Other than that, it’s a straight shot for anyone outside looking in, up the yard and through the windows into the library, the dining room, the foyer and living room beyond. Fifty solid feet of unobstructed visibility from the street.

And I’ve cased this house often enough to know who’s out there. Bikers. Runners. Neighbors walking their prissy dogs.

I point to the ceiling. “What’s up there, bedrooms?”

I know what’s up there. I’m not an idiot. I wouldn’t be here without having done my homework. Three giant bedrooms, three full baths lined with marble and tile, ten times more closet space than I ever had even in my nicest house, and along the entire back side of the house, a mack daddy home theater stocked with toys. Blackout curtains, reclinable theater seating, soundproofing in the floor and walls and ceiling. That’s where we’re going.

At the last word—bedrooms—Jade’s eyes go big and wide, darting from her kids to the stairs on the other side of the wall. She can’t stop touching the kids—shielding them with an arm, hugging them to her chest. “Why...why do you want to take us upstairs?”

I roll my eyes, curl my lips in exaggerated disgust just so we’re clear. Jade may be easy on the eyes, but she’s not my type, and only a real sicko would touch a child that way. “Get your mind out of the gutter, lady, and answer the question.”

“The kids’ rooms are upstairs. A guest room. The media and playroom.” Her voice is thin and shaky, her muscles twitching under her skin like a horse, flicking away flies. She doesn’t understand what’s happening here—not yet. But she will.

“Any alarm pads up there?”

She shakes her head. “I just told you there are only two, both downstairs.”

Staring down a gun and she can still summon up some sass. Any other time I might appreciate Jade’s spunk, but not today. Today I can’t get distracted by anything trivial.

“And cameras?”

She points to her cell phone, black against the bright white marble. “You already saw the camera feeds on my phone. All six of them.”

“Answer the question.” I slow down my words, wrap my lips and tongue around them and let them fly like poison darts. “Are there. Any more. Cameras?”

Will she lie? Tell the truth? Her answer is essential to my plan, as are the cameras.

“No.” She shakes her head, swallows. “No, there aren’t any more cameras.”

I sigh. Give her a full five seconds to amend, confess, recant, but she stays quiet. She stares me straight in the face, and she doesn’t say a word. Daring me with those blue eyes, as if I don’t have full access to her phone, like it wouldn’t occur to me to pick it up right now and check.

I pick up her phone, hold it in the palm of a hand. She doesn’t so much as squirm on her chair. Impressive.

Game on.

I shift my focus to the lump on her lap. “Yo, Baxter, buddy, I need your help with something.”

His body gives a mighty jerk, almost launching himself off Jade’s lap, but her arm tightens around him like a safety bar, the kind on roller coaster cars so you don’t fly out of the corkscrew curve. She’s the type of mother who wouldn’t think twice about offering herself up for her children. The kind who would take a bullet for her kids, who would shove them onto the shoulder only to end up crushed by the oncoming truck herself. A lioness, her protectiveness as instinctive as breathing. It’s an admirable trait. Not every parent is built that way.