Page 15 of Blind Luck

Not even close. “His teammates are worried. Kelsey isn’t like the other girls—she travels a lot for work, and she’s real quiet. Secretive. She skips most of the social activities, she leaves the room to take calls, and last month, my buddy Hendrix swears he saw her eating lunch with a man who wasn’t Silas.”

“Did anyone ask her about it?”

“Lamar’s girlfriend did, and she said she was working the whole day.”

“So maybe it was a work meeting?”

“The other girls think it’s weird that she works at all.”

“Heaven forbid a woman has a career.”

“Could be nothing, but nobody wants to see Silas screw up his life. She spends most of her time in New York, and Silas has started talking about moving to the Big Apple. Asking for a trade. He’s one of the best defensemen in the sport, and nobody in Richmond wants to lose him, especially if the relationship isn’t going to last.”

“So Kelsey’s working in Vegas this week, and you volunteered to follow her around?”

“Not volunteered, exactly. The Raiders made it to the playoffs, so nobody else could come.”

“Has she hooked up with any other men?”

“I don’t know. I overheard her on the phone at breakfast this morning”—Rusty glanced at his watch—“yesterday morning, I guess, and she arranged to meet someone in the Library bar at eight p.m. But she walked in as I was escorting Erin out, and I didn’t see anyone accompanying her. Whoever it was probably arrived after we left.”

“You have a picture of Kelsey?”

“Yes.”

“Send it to me, and we’ll keep an eye out.”

“You will?”

“We’ll be working surveillance in the area anyway. So, about that ride home tonight? Going to McNeil is no problem.”

“If you’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

CHAPTER 5

ERIN

In the Promised Land, women learned the important things and nothing more—namely how to cook, clean, and please the men in their lives.Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husband, as unto the Lord. Ephesians 5:22.At least I’d only had to do a fifth of the work. Weird how so many people thought polygyny always benefited the man. Sleeping alone four nights out of five had definitely been a plus for me. One of my friends was married to another of the Prophet’s brothers—he had seven of them—and even though her dearly beloved was a total pig, I still felt a little jealous because he had eleven wives and spent most of his time working.

We did learn to read, though. How else could we study the Bible and the Prophet’s addendums? He swore he was a conduit of God and therefore qualified to write the extra bits. Believe it or not, that had all seemed perfectly normal as I was growing up.

Kai was the one who’d asked questions. He used to work on one of the construction crews that made People’s Promise a small—and untaxable—fortune. He saw slivers of the world as I was stuck in isolation. One day, he’dbrought me a phone. Not one that I could actually phone people with because it wasn’t hooked up to a network, but I could plug in the headphones and listen to music. Some of the lyrics had been real eye-opening.

Anyhow, I’d learned to read, and I’d learned faster than any of the other girls my age. I memorised chunks of the Bible so I didn’t have to keep reading it. Back then, nobody told me that reading something once and remembering it wasn’t normal; they just told me off for staring out the window in class.

It was only when I moved to Florida that I found out the truth. One of my roommates was a biology student, and he let me borrow his textbooks as long as I took care of them—boy, were the chapters on reproduction a shock—and apparently, it was “weird” and “creepy” to recite paragraphs three days after I’d read them.

The words didn’t stay in my head forever, not unless it was the Bible because I’d read that book a million times, but they lingered for months and then gradually faded away. Faces, I wasn’t so good at, but words stuck. And maps.

Which was why, as Ari drove us through McNeil in her silver SUV—well, it was actually a company SUV with great AC and plenty of cupholders, courtesy of Digby Rennick—I counted the houses. And when Rusty said, “It’s that place with the white wall,” I knew we were pretty much dead behind Cole’s recently inherited home. Ari glanced across at me, and I nodded. I’d confided in her about the memory thing, and she said I was special, which was nicer than being weird.

I couldn’t see the house hidden away behind the high walls, but I recalled from the satellite photos that it was a sprawling building with a large terrace and a swimming pool out back.

“Nice digs,” Ari said, and I wondered how she wasgoing to approach this. Because I knew exactly what was running through her mind. “Airbnb?”

“No, it belongs to a friend. He’s on vacation.”

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