Hadley & Grace(13)
Finally, with a deep breath, she lowers the window an inch and eases from the car. She locks it, scans around her one more time, then walks to the door and lets herself in.
The contract for Jerry’s lot is still on Frank’s desk. She tucks it in the empty diaper bag slung over her shoulder. If Frank wants to make a deal with Jerry, he can make it himself.
She opens the door that connects Frank’s office with the hall leading to the common areas of the building—the storage room, lockers, restrooms, and employee lounge. It clicks closed behind her, and she squints to adjust her eyes to the darkness, the only light borrowed from the thin halo of moonlight that shines through the window in the door that leads to the back parking lot and a sliver of fluorescence glowing beneath the storage room door because someone forgot to turn off the light.
Though her heart pounds, she is not scared. For the past three months, she’s spent more time inside these walls than she has her own home.
She reaches for the light switch when a noise freezes her. Her face snaps to the storage room door, and her eyes fix on the strip of light beneath it. She stares so long and hard her eyes buzz but, after a long moment and nothing, wonders if she’s only imagined it.
With a deep sigh, she reaches again for the switch, her fingers finding it at the exact moment a shadow crosses the sliver of light.
Her heart lurches into her throat, and she falls back and spins. She fumbles with the keys and, finding the right one, jams it into the lock. It sticks, and she wrenches it free with too much force, and the ring flies from her hands and sails over her head to land impossibly loudly on the ground somewhere behind her.
9
HADLEY
There’s a noise. In the hallway. The sound of metal clanging. Hadley stands stock still, a box of paper towels in her hands. Perhaps the building has a security system and she’s triggered the alarm. Though, if that’s the case, the response time is horribly slow. She’s been here nearly an hour and has been through every room in the building twice.
Her ears strain, listening for more. After several seconds, she sighs and slides the box back onto the shelf.
She leans against the rack and closes her eyes. She is not made for this—deceit and deception, plotting and lies. She was so sure she had this part figured out. She knows Frank hides money, and she was certain this is where he stashes it. He paid for his truck with cash, and he paid the contractors who worked on the yard under the table. Before he bought the truck, he stopped at the office. On the days he paid the contractors, he came straight from work. He has mentioned a safe, so she knows there is one, but she’s combed every inch of this place and can’t find it. All her search has yielded is a petty cash drawer in Frank’s desk with less than a hundred dollars in it.
Something moves in the hall, and she opens her eyes, the sound very slight, more like a shifting than a noise, but Hadley’s hearing has always been exceptional.
She listens closer, then pushes off the rack, nudges open the door, and pokes her head out. She looks left toward the back door, then right. At the end of the corridor, a shadow crouches, petite, with a wild head of hair.
“Grace?” she says, squinting into the darkness, confirming that she is, in fact, looking at Frank’s assistant.
The figure bolts upright. “Mrs. Torelli?” Grace says.
Both look at each other curiously. Hadley last saw Grace this morning when she was dropping Frank off so she could use his truck. Grace was heading into the office wearing the same outfit she has on now, a plain white blouse and baggy gray slacks, loose on her thin frame.
“What are you doing here?” they say in unison, both their voices pitched high.
Hadley holds Grace’s stare. After all, she is Frank’s wife, and that gives her the right to be here. There are a dozen reasons she might have needed to stop by the office. Frank left something he needs. She’s taking some of the commercial cleaner for her driveway. Frank asked her to stop by and pick up traffic cones for one of the lots.
Meanwhile, she can’t think of a single reason why Frank’s assistant would be skulking around the office on a Friday night in the dark.
She looks at the light switch to Grace’s right, easily within reach, then thinks of the gap in time between the first sound and the second.
“Why are you here?” she repeats.
“I wanted to check on the uniforms,” Grace says. “I think the order might have been shorted.”
Hadley looks at her watch. “At ten o’clock on a Friday?”
Grace shifts her weight, and that’s when Hadley notices the bag over her shoulder, a large striped thing, deflated and frayed.
She cocks her head; then a smile spreads across her face. “You’re here to steal from Frank.”
10
GRACE
Frank’s wife is smiling and accusing Grace of being a thief.
The two options of how to respond tick quickly through her brain: Deny it and make up a more viable lie, or Make a break for it.
The first is impossible. Mrs. Torelli is not going to believe anything Grace says. She can think of absolutely no plausible explanation for why she’s here. The second is equally impossible. The keys are still lost somewhere on the floor, and Miles is locked in the car. All this processes lightning fast as Mrs. Torelli continues to look at her with that bizarre grin.