Page 174 of Brazen Mistakes

I will not let her get caught in Father’s games. She doesn’t even know she’s a predator yet. Prey takes comfort in security. She’d fold herself into a cage again without question, not understanding why she feels like she’s about to explode from her skin.

So no. I’ll do what I have to. I’ll keep her safe. She can’t be caught. No matter what.

Chapter 62

Clara

Trips more closely resembles stone than flesh when the speeches finish and the floor clears for dancing. I wish I could crack his head open and see what has him so on edge, but unable to do that, I try my best not to absorb his mood.

Leading me out to the floor at some signal I don’t catch, his hand lands on the bare skin of my back, and I suppress a shiver from the contact, his nostrils flaring. Then he takes my hand in his, the steps of the dance filtering back to me as he moves us across the floor.

The ice in his eyes is so sharp I know he’s close to snapping. He just set aside his fourth scotch, more than I’ve ever seen him drink before, and now he has nothing to focus on but whatever is going through his head.

The weight of his hand on my skin, the sneaky brush of his thumb against my spine, like he can’t help but touch me despite his hesitancy, it has me so confusedthat the urge to cry comes over me for the umpteenth time tonight, but I jam it back down. He has his reasons for not getting attached. Good ones—most of them in this room—and I won’t fuck this up for him.

But then he looks down, and my breath vanishes as I read what his gaze proclaims, even as his fierce mask stays locked in place.

Possession, so clear my heart stutters. Fear, leaching out, bleeding into the space between us. And resignation, like a man waiting at the gallows.

I hold the message in his eyes, absorbing the weight of what stands between us. There’s nothing else I can do, not in a crowded room of gossips and danger. We breathe through the emotions together, our steps in sync as we spin through the crowd, both of us trusting Trips’ reputation to maintain our solitude.

When he finally looks away, I’m panting, my heart skipping in my chest like I’ve just sprinted the 400-meter hurdles.

With a press of his palm against my spine, his pinky slips under the edge of the dress, sneaking under the waistband of the shapewear I shimmied into earlier, resting there for three breaths before he withdraws the intimacy. Before I can question it, he leads me off the floor and across to his father. Mr. Westerhouse leaves the ballroom, expecting we’ll follow, and the rigidity creeps back into Trips’ frame at the apparent summons.

We trail him, neither of us saying a thing or even risking a shared look. Too much truth vibrates between us right now, and we’re about to have a private meeting with a vulturedisguised as a friendly older man. No weaknesses. No cracks. No fucking feelings.

We wind through a hallway nearly the length of the house before stepping into an office. It’s decorated in the dark woods and leathers of a Victorian gentlemen’s club, but faces a fully modern wall of glass, looking out over the rolling hill down to the lake, the epic outdoor pool that must go with the pool house barely visible on the right.

Archibald Clarence Westerhouse, the second esquire, settles himself into a chair behind a large desk on the right of the room, allowing him to see both the door and the back of the house, then motions to the two seats across from him. Like a principal’s office.

As Trips and I each take a seat, I finally have a moment to inspect the specter that’s been chasing us for months. Trips has his father’s coloring and features, but despite their similarities, their eyes are miles different. Trips’ eyes have more shades of emotion than the superfluous number of hollow calculations in his father’s, the vulture’s gaze crystalline as he takes my measure as well.

He’s smaller than I thought he would be. Still tall, but slim and graceful where Trips is pure power. His pale skin has a slight yellow tinge that makes my stomach roll inexplicably. His hands are heavy, though, rings glinting on multiple fingers.

My imagination can see him raising those hands to Trips, the way the rings would have cut his childish skin, and I struggle to swallow, rage coating my insides. But I try to keep it from my face.

I must show an appropriate reaction because he finally turns away from me and addresses Trips. “She’ll do.”

“She’ll do for what?” He pauses, then at a twitch of his father’s lips, he adds, “Sir.”

Instead of answering, his father bends to the side of his desk, the beep of an electronic lock loud in the quiet room, before pulling out a folder, laying it flat on the desk with a glance at me, pocketing something else without me seeing what it was. The drawer safe closes with another beep.

He flips open the folder, riffling through the papers, picking one to read, pulling glasses from the tray in front of him. “Clara Grace McElroy, twenty years old, salutatorian at a questionable high school, currently maintaining a perfect GPA at the University of Minnesota, contrary to expectations of a girl from that neighborhood. Former track and cross-country runner, slated for a D1 university before an injury destroyed that dream. A criminal justice major, accounting minor, planning to go into law enforcement, which we can use to our advantage. Passably pretty, healthy, comes from long-lived stock, mostly white, and unconnected. Luckily, everybody loves an underdog story. As I said, she’ll do.”

Trips’ fingers dig into the arms of the chair, but he doesn’t repeat his question, and taking my clues from him, I hold my tongue as well.

His father proceeds to pull a series of photos from the folder, laying them across the desk for us to see.

First, a shot from a security camera across the street and down a bit from the Art Institute of Chicago, Trips and I starting our run at the building.

Next, a camera we didn’t even think to look for, showing an image I’d rather forget, the dirty alley in stark black and white, my eerily blank face barely visible behind the brute pressing me against the brick wall.

It’s followed by another image from the first camera, Trips a fuzzy blob in the distance, but the dark lump of a gun still discernible.

He pauses, gauging our reactions before laying a new series of photos over the first three.

A shot of Jansen and me behind the garage of the first house he took me to steal from. With our winter gear, we could be anyone, but somehow, this vulture found it, knew it was us.

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