Page 25 of Devious Secrets

“I have nothing to steal.” She picks up the couch cushions and tosses them back onto the couch.

“Where did you have the letter?” I pull us back to the task at hand.

She looks up at me from where she’s sitting on the couch, surveying the mess of her apartment.

“The letter?”

“Yes. The letter you got from your secret boss.” I gesture toward the bedroom. “Did you hide it somewhere or leave it out?”

“It’s in my bedroom. I’ll get it.” She pushes back up to her feet.

While she’s in her room, I head to the kitchen and turn the table back onto its legs. The fridge has a calendar with notes scribbled on the dates when bills are due, a coupon for the pizza place I saw down the street, and a picture of her standing with I assume her parents when she was younger. She’s wearing Disney ears and grinning as though she really was standing in the happiest place on earth.

I stand there, mesmerized momentarily by the brightness of her smile. Pure organic happiness that only exists among the innocent shines in her eyes. As much as I loved the little noises she made for me in the tower room, I wonder what she sounds like when pure joy hits her.

No. Not going there. I head to her room when she’s been gone for too long.

“Did you find it yet?” I call out to her.

I find her sitting on her bed, cradling a broken picture frame in her hands. The glass is webbed across the photograph. She slides her fingertips across it, hissing when the sharp edge cuts her.

“Be careful.” I grab her wrist, bringing her hand up to my mouth. I lick off the beads of blood and gently suck her finger.

“It’s just a little cut,” she says softly when I release her finger but continue to stare at her hands.

The nail on her middle finger is broken down below the skin line, and there are scrapes all on the side of her hand. All that clawing in the tower room has damaged her hands.

“You’re dangerous to yourself.” I drop her hand with a sigh and take the frame from her. Another photo of her family when she was younger.

“The photo is scratched,” she says, getting up from the bed. “I think the note is over here.”

She moves to the dresser where there is a stack of books and journals. Pushing them aside, she looks beneath them, then opens the top book.

She retrieves the folded-up paper and brings it to me.

There’s a phone number with a cryptic message about the debt being paid upon delivery.

“What does that mean?” I ask. “What debt?”

“The usual kind.” She picks up a drawer from the floor and wiggles it back into the dresser while I read the note again.

The number goes nowhere when I try it on my cell.

“Yeah, it wasn’t working after I contacted them the first time.”

“Explain what that note means. What debt?”

“Credit cards, loans, you know, the usual. They would have paid all of it for me.”

“Why would you do that?”

She looks around the room and laughs. “I don’t know, maybe someone who doesn’t live in a five-thousand-square-foot mansion might want to improve where they live?”

“You want me to believe you put yourself in danger so you could get a nicer apartment?” No way.

She’s impulsive, I can sense that, but not for that reason. A new job, more pay, that would get her into a nicer place.

Sneaking into Obsidian for serious money was for a different reason.

---