Heroes Are My Weakness(25)

I’d punch him for you, Peter said uneasily. But he’s awfully big.

He studied her Kia, then dismounted and tied Dancer to a branch on the other side of the road. “A car like this is useless around here. You should know that.”

“I’ll buy another one right away.”

He gave her a long look, then opened the car door and slid in. “Give it a push.”

“Me?”

“It’s your car.”

Jerkoff. She wasn’t strong enough to do the job, as he very well knew, but he kept her shoving away at the rear end as he called out orders. Only when she began to cough did he relinquish his spot behind the wheel and push her car out on his first try.

Her clothes were a mess, her face smudged, but he’d barely gotten his hands dirty. On the bright side, he hadn’t dragged her into the trees and slit her throat, so she had no reason to complain.


SHE WAS STILL THINKING ABOUT her encounter with Theo the next day as she hung her coat and backpack on the hooks by the back door of Harp House and exchanged her boots for sneakers. Just because he hadn’t tried to harm her physically didn’t mean he wouldn’t do it. For all she knew, he’d left her unharmed only because he didn’t want the inconvenience of a potential police visit caused by a dead female body washing up on the beach.

Just like Regan . . . She shoved the thought aside. Regan was the only person Theo had ever cared about.

She rounded the corner into the kitchen and saw Jaycie sitting motionless at the table. She wore her customary jeans and sweatshirt—all Annie had seen her in—but those casual clothes never looked quite right on her. Jaycie should be wearing flirty summer dresses and big sunglasses as she drove a red convertible down an Alabama road.

Annie set her laptop on the kitchen table. Jaycie didn’t look at her but said wearily, “It’s over.” She rested her elbows on the table and rubbed her temples. “He sent me a text this morning after he got back from his ride. He said he had to drive into town, and when he got back, we needed to talk about making another arrangement.”

Annie suppressed the urge to launch into a diatribe. “That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s going to fire you.” That was exactly what it meant.

Jaycie finally looked at her, a long piece of blond hair falling over her pale cheek. “We both know he’s going to. I can stay with Lisa for a couple of days, but what do I do after that? My baby . . .” Her face crumpled. “Livia’s already been through so much.”

“I’ll talk to him.” It was the last thing Annie wanted to do, but she couldn’t think of any other way to offer Jaycie comfort. “He’s . . . still in town?”

Jaycie nodded. “He took the recycling in because I couldn’t do it. I can’t blame him for wanting to get rid of me. It’s impossible for me to do what I was hired to do.”

Annie could blame him, and she didn’t like the wistful softening in Jaycie’s eyes. Was being attracted to cruel men her pattern?

Jaycie pushed herself up from the table and reached for her crutches. “I need to check on Livia.”

Annie wanted to hurt him. Now, while he was away from the house. Send him back to the mainland. She grabbed a bottle from the refrigerator and went upstairs, entering the turret through the door at the end of the hallway. She made her way to the turret’s only bathroom, where a damp towel hung next to the shower stall.

The sink looked as though it had been wiped clean since his morning shave. She turned the ketchup bottle she’d brought with her upside down and squirted a few drips in her hand. Not a lot. Only a trace. Spreading her fingers, she ran them down the bottom left corner of the mirror leaving the faintest red smudge behind. Nothing too obvious. Something that might or might not look like a bloody handprint. Something so faint he’d have to wonder if he’d overlooked it that morning or, if he hadn’t, what had happened since then to put it there.

It would be so much more satisfying to leave a knife plunged into his bed pillow, but if she went too far, he’d stop suspecting ghosts and start suspecting her. She wanted to make him question his sanity, not look for a perpetrator, exactly what she hoped she’d accomplished when she’d sabotaged his grandmother’s clock last week.

She’d made the trek back to Harp House in the dead of night, a treacherous trip she’d had to talk herself into. But her trepidation had been more than worth it. Earlier that day she’d checked the hinges on the turret’s outside door to make sure they wouldn’t squeak. They hadn’t, and nothing had given her away when she’d let herself in shortly before two in the morning. It had been a simple task to creep into the living room while Theo slept upstairs. She’d pulled the clock just far enough away from the wall to slip in the fresh battery she’d brought to replace the dead one she’d removed earlier. Once that was done, she reset the time so the clock would chime midnight, but only after she was safely back at the cottage. Pure genius.

But the memory didn’t cheer her. After everything he’d done, these pranks felt more juvenile than menacing. She needed to up her game, but she couldn’t figure out how to do that without getting caught.

She heard a noise from behind. Sucking in her breath, she spun around.

It was the black cat.

“Oh, my god . . .” She fell to her knees. The cat stared at her out of golden eyes. “How did you get in here? Did he lure you in? You have to stay away from him. You can’t come in here.”