Page 68 of A Thin Line

It wasn’t until I had found the right key and turned the knob, the door squeaking as it opened, that I heard a sound other than the noises I’d been making.

Footsteps downstairs.

Oh, shit.

Was Edna back already? I’d expected her to be gone far longer. And I wasn’t sure what to do. Had she heard the door squeak? The way all the sounds often echoed through the vast antechamber and main hallway made me suspect she might have.

So what should I do? Should I go downstairs and confess to being a curious cat—or should I try hiding here until I thought the coast was clear, returning the keys and heading back downstairs? Now that the dungeon stairs were fixed on the east side, I could maybe do it without being caught. But what if Edna had already checked for me and discovered I wasn’t down there? Could I pretend I’d been using the bathroom or something?

My heart pounding in my chest made it almost impossible to think—but I decided I needed to control the outcome as much as possible. So I tried to quietly pull the door shut as slowly as I could and, even though that helped, it still whined as it closed.

Damn it. I hadn’t locked the door. Should I risk opening it again to lock it from the inside or should I fumble with the keys to lock it that way? As I began feeling for the keys, I thought I heard footsteps coming closer.

Up the stairs.

That meant only one thing: I would be caught here in the east wing red handed.

For a split second, I again considered sneaking in that bedroom and maybe even trying to find a place in there to hide, but I mentally calculated the trouble I would be in. If I claimed I hadn’t been in any rooms, maybe the punishment would be less than if I’d said I’d only entered the hallway.

But I had been in three rooms and had opened a fourth—and I didn’t think I had a poker face. So, not bothering to lock the room, I began walking toward the wing exit as my stomach churned, ready to confess to Edna that my curiosity had gotten the best of me. I knew her loyalty was with Sinclair and she would tell him, but maybe her words could soften the blow.

Regardless, I’d been caught.

As I exited the wing, though, Edna wasn’t the person who’d caught me red-handed.

It was Sinclair…and I’d never seen him look as angry as he did at that moment.

Chapter 24

When I saw the fury in Sinclair’s fiery blue eyes, I wanted to blurt out, I can explain! But, of course, I couldn’t. At least, not in a way that he would have found acceptable or forgivable.

Before I could say a word, though, he said, “What are you doing?” His voice was unusually calm, especially in light of the way his face looked—and I found that even more frightening than if he’d begun yelling out of the gate.

“I, uh…”

Then he spotted the key ring in my hand. “Where did you get those?”

Again, my mouth refused to work. Anything I said could and would be used against me like a criminal in a court of law. I was guilty, caught doing something I’d agreed in writing not to do. “Um…” I handed the keys over, as if that would absolve me of my crime.

“You have expressly violated multiple terms of our contract. That you have nothing to say merely underscores that fact. Come with me.”

I didn’t want to. When he was like this, he was scary—and, even though I still found him to be undeniably attractive, I was afraid of what was going to happen next. So I would follow him…for now.

He walked down the stairs and headed straight for his office. When I followed him, I didn’t go all the way inside, instead remaining close to the door. He set the ring of keys on his desk and then looked at me, his eyes poised like weapons. “Have a seat.”

I’m doing this for dad. I’m doing this for dad. I repeated the mantra in my head several times to give me courage and strength—and then I walked over to the desk and sat across from him.

Only after I was seated did he do the same. He opened a drawer and pulled out a thin file, extracting papers from it. I recognized them, because I had my own copy upstairs in my room. After flipping through a few pages, he rotated them, shoving them across the desk. “Is that your signature?”

Why did I laugh? Out of every reaction I could have had, laughing was the very worst thing I could do—and that was clear based on how Sinclair’s face contorted. But the comedy of the situation, dire though it was, struck me. He was interrogating me like a cop or a lawyer—but we both knew that was my signature…and I’d apparently been expecting a much different question.

This time, he raised his voice so much that I felt like it shook me like a rag doll. “What do you think is so funny?” He hadn’t been this loud since the first week I’d been here—but I realized I wasn’t as scared as I had been back then. The initial fear had dissipated…and what was left was something I hadn’t ever experienced before outside of this mansion—it was the spirit to fight.

“You know and I know that’s my signature. You were asking an obvious question. That’s funny.”

“You should be taking this much more seriously, Ms. Miller. You have violated multiple conditions of the contract,” he shouted, snatching back the contract and flipping to the first page. “‘The Employee agrees to abide by the following rules: a) The Employee will show up on time and work a full shift.’ You were clearly not working.”

“Actually, I could argue that I was. Some of what I’ve found downstairs—”

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