Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10)(85)

The worst part of being a survivor: There’s no security blanket anymore. You can’t assume the worst won’t happen, because it did. And none of your screaming changed that. Meaning that just because I don’t want to believe this handsome, smart guy has nefarious intentions doesn’t mean for a second that I’m safe.

“I’ll walk you home,” Keith is saying, climbing awkwardly to his feet.

“No, thank you.”

“At least let me call you a Lyft.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Flora—”

I don’t wait for him. I’m already weaving my way out of the room. In the dark foyer, the greeter, Tony, I guess, snaps to attention. “Nice digs,” I inform him, before pushing through the heavy wooden door.

Keith catches up with me outside. Did he even stop to pay the bill? Maybe elite clubs don’t bother with things as common as money. They just run a tab into perpetuity.

He grabs my arm. I whirl sharply, pepper spray out.

He immediately drops his hand, steps back. “I don’t understand,” he says at last.

“I’m not your puzzle to solve.”

But I can already see in his face that I’m exactly that. His riddle to answer. His trophy to win. His prey to snare.

The look on my face makes him take a second step back.

“I just want to help,” he states carefully.

“Why Jacob Ness?”

“The other missing girls, I already explained …”

“Not really.”

“I. N. Verness. If my intentions were evil, would I have given you that?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because all good predators bait the trap.”

“I’m not—”

“Good night.” Then, before this conversation can drag out any longer, before he can talk me into doing things I know I shouldn’t do, I turn and race up the block. At the last minute, I turn back. I shouldn’t. But I do.

He’s standing exactly where I left him on the sidewalk. Staring straight at me.

He doesn’t look angry. He doesn’t appear frustrated.

He looks … lonely.

It’s too much for me. I take off running again and, this time, keep on trucking.





CHAPTER 28


    EVIE


I KNOW IT’S MORNING WHEN I wake up to the sound of the Cuisinart whirring away downstairs in the kitchen. Probably more green goo supplemented with flaxseed, coconut oil, probiotics, antibiotics, maybe a horse salve or two. All the better to grow the little genius that had better be occupying my womb.

I roll onto my side, already feeling sulky and rebellious. What is it about returning to my mother’s house that immediately turns me into a five-year-old?

The clock next to the bed glows seven A.M. The sky is just beginning to lighten. I don’t know how my mother can do it, knock back so many vodka martinis the night before and still be the first one up in the morning. It occurs to me, there’s a lot of things I don’t know how she does. Such as roll around this huge, empty house, day after day. Like find the energy to decorate each room with its own Christmas theme, when her only family, Conrad and me, hadn’t even committed to coming over for the holidays. We probably would’ve. Arriving late and leaving early and clenching our jaws in between.

I’m going to have to learn this. How to live in a house all by myself. How to get up day after day, just me and my soon-to-be-born child. Does my mom think about my father every day? Does she still picture him in his study, which remains largely untouched? Or lounging in the front parlor, waiting for me to take up position at the piano? Or sitting on the front porch, puffing away on the occasional cigar?

I miss my house. Yet I don’t know if I could’ve continued living there without seeing Conrad in every room. And I don’t know what would’ve hurt more. Memories of Conrad laughing at his first attempt at laying floor tiles, which didn’t go anything like the video showed, or dead Conrad, brains on the wall, gun in his lap in the upstairs office?

What was my husband doing? And what kind of woman marries a man like that?

I imagine I’ll get another visit from the police today, and that as much as anything motivates me to roll out of bed.

I shower, taking my time because I’m in no hurry to face my mother or start the day. I don’t have the answers when it comes to Conrad. Flora Dane met him in a bar. A kidnapping victim and my husband, meeting up in the South. I can’t wrap my mind around it. Crazier, Flora thought he might have been trying to send her a message in Morse code. How did Conrad even know Morse code?

I feel like I’ve spent years trying to unravel the riddle of my husband. If I haven’t figured it out by now, it’s not going to happen. Instead, I have a different target in mind. My father. Maybe the first step to understanding what my life has become is to go backward, to try to solve the question of what happened sixteen years ago, when everything first went so wrong.

My mother gave me names of some of my father’s colleagues from that time. I think it’s time I give them a call.

I complete my shower, getting to use the toiletries I purchased yesterday, my own brands versus my mother’s, and that minor show of strength bolsters me until I open the closet and contemplate the full lineup of brand-new maternity clothes, all in tasteful pale shades and in order from barely pregnant to hot-air balloon.