Page 3 of Hidden While In Sight

Ashford had finally looked up, and the boy froze. It wasn’t the boy he was looking at.

“That’s enough,” Ashford said, the words a burst of sound in the quiet room. They hit the members of his family like gunshots, making them flinch.

Hannah set down her fork without a word.

Diego’s eyebrows pulled together as he took in her plate. For the first time that week, more than half of the food that had been on it was gone. He’d noticed the second day that she stopped at exactly half. Her habit had a symmetry that appealed to his logical brain, but it also confused the hell out of him. Her plate hadn’t been full in the first place.

Ashford reached for his red wine, taking a sip before focusing back on his phone. “You know better,” he said.

His wife’s hand inched off the table before falling to her lap.

Well, shit. No wonder she was so fucking skinny.

The boy reached for his water, gulping it down to swallow the second pea he’d managed to eat.

Chapter 3

Diego had lost sight of the wife. His eyes flicked from monitor to monitor. The kids were still in the playroom with the nanny. Sometimes the wife huddled outside the room, but she never went in. He tapped that hallway’s monitor, but it was empty.

He stood, stretching his hands over his head to iron out the kinks from sitting so long. The pull-up bar was calling, but first he needed to check on his suspicion.

The slap of his feet echoed in the empty house even though he wasn’t rushing. No, he dragged each step because he was pretty sure he knew where she was. He hadn’t put any cameras out back on purpose, not with the pool there.

Diego fucking hated water.

The waves from her strokes confirmed she was there. After her workouts, Hannah would sometimes cool off in the pool. There was no reason not to, what with her having so little to do. And she swam like a fucking fish, turning underwater and skimming back like some type of Olympic swimmer or some shit. He couldn’t watch.

Not that she gave him much to look at. Ashford liked twigs, based on the food restrictions Diego continued to observe at their dinners.

Diego had expected her to wear some skimpy bikini, so he was surprised, as he peered out the back window, to find she wore the complete opposite. The bright blue bodysuit wasn’t appealing at all. It only made her skinniness more pronounced, clinging to the hollows of her hips and thighs. She even wore the most ridiculous swim cap. She wasn’t out to enjoy the sun and the water. Swimming was just another form of exercise for her.

That was all she seemed to do.

The lapping water drew his gaze as she flipped yet again, making his stomach clench as the waves tried to remind him of the past.

He turned where he stood, letting the back of his head thump lightly against the glass as he closed his eyes. He could almost hear the splashes as he struggled against the man’s grip, the one holding him underwater, with air only inches from his lips. The inches he never reached. There was no getting away from the man. Not when he was so angry.

And he had always been angry. Especially with Diego.

Diego opened his eyes, letting the memory fade. It was one of his first ones. He couldn’t remember his mother’s face or his own last name. But the water. The water remained. Drowning was a type of death he never wanted to face again.

He needed to bury that scared little boy who’d once been a part of him.

His phone vibrated in his pocket.

Diego fished it out, holding it to his ear like a lifeline. There was only one person it could be. He didn’t bother saying a word.

“The client called,” Ramiro said.

Diego waited as he stared at the white wall across from the glass doors he leaned against.

“They’re impatient.”

Diego’s lips twisted. “It hasn’t been that long.”

“They want the situation escalated. You’re next door for a reason.”

Diego held in his sigh. He hated messy, but the client came first. “I’ll let them see me. If Ashford is into the shit they think, seeing someone like me in his neighborhood should give him the message.”

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