Page 16 of Edge of Secrets

“You looked scared when you were hailing those cabs.”

His sharp perception made me feel naked. “Ah, wow. I didn’t ... I’m not … that is to say, I’m surprised you noticed that. I had no idea it was so obvious.”

“Only to me,” he said. “Why would you be surprised at me noticing?”

Yikes. Now he might think I was criticizing him, and only thirty minutes after hiring me. “It’s just an unexpected observation,” I hedged. “I think I cover pretty well, all things considered. Most people wouldn’t see it. And … well, it’s very intuitive of you. I wouldn’t have thought you were the type to notice.”

He glanced at me with a puzzled frown. “What type? Why not?”

“I don’t know,” I said, helplessly. “You never noticed anything in your field of vision at the restaurant. You never made eye contact with me, or anyone else, for that matter. You always order the same thing. You seem to have an extremely narrow range of focus. Intuition requires ... well, openness. So that the data can go in.”

His laugh had a touch of bitterness to it. “Hah. You and my family. That’s Duncan for you. Thick as a brick wall.”

“Not at all! I don’t think anything of the kind,” I protested. “Just very focused. More than most people could ever dream of being. I’m sure it’s a sort of superpower. And like most superpowers, it’s probably a double-edged sword. I have a few of those myself.”

He was silent for an unnervingly long time. “It’s true,” he said finally. “I do have a narrow range of focus, when I’m in work mode. But there’s a flip side. Whatever is inside that narrow range of focus? Oh God, do I see it. Every last goddamn detail of it.”

I felt my face heat up. “Well, thank you, I guess, for noticing all these subtle and intimate details about me. I appreciate your intense interest, but?—”

“But you still haven’t answered my question. What are you afraid of?”

My chest jerked with nervous laughter. “Good God. You’re like a dog with a bone!”

“Yeah. I’m like a pit bull, my family tells me,” he agreed easily.

I shot him a nervous glance. “Family? So you’re, ah?—”

“Married? No. Absolutely not. I’m talking my mother, brother, and sister. I am one hundred percent single. So? Let’s have an answer.”

My loaded question and his matter-of-fact answer made my face burn hotter. It was impossible to sidestep a man this blunt and insistent. Not without being rude and brusque, and I did not have the stomach for that while cuddled up in the yielding leather seat of his Mercedes, feeling so warm and dry and safe. At least for the next half hour.

There was no reason not to tell him the truth. God knows, there was nothing to be ashamed of. But still, it was a dark, flesh-creeping tale, still frighteningly unresolved, and this guy had just become my new employer. I wouldn’t want a person on my payroll with the kind of problems I currently had. No one needed that kind of trouble.

Plus, it was none of his damn business. But he clearly did not care.

He waited patiently. I could feel his relentless insistence in the silence. He just sat there, motor idling, in no hurry at all. Waiting for me to snap.

“It’s a long, complicated story,” I said warily.

“So what? We’re stuck in traffic. Entertain me.”

True enough. They were motionless in a gridlocked snarl. But still.

“It’s not entertaining, unfortunately,” I went on. “It’s awful. Sad, ugly, violent, scary. You might be better off not knowing. I wish I didn’t have to.”

He glanced over at me, one eyebrow up. “I’ll take that chance. Tell me, or I will literally die from curiosity right now. And you will be the one who killed me.”

I let out a snort of laughter, pressing my hand against my belly. That sour ache, my constant companion, was still there, but it was less than before. It was therapeutic to sit in the dark, in a warm, luxurious car with Duncan Burke, with windshield wipers swooshing soothingly over the glass in that hypnotic rhythm.

“It started a few weeks ago,” I began, my voice halting. “When my mother died. In a home invasion.”

He shot me a startled glance. “Oh God. I am sorry to hear that. My condolences.”

I acknowledged that with a nod. Then I told him the whole tale, as simply and sequentially as I could. The burglar, the necklaces Lucia had commissioned for us, the mysterious letters. The elderly clotheshorse the cops had found at the landfill, the luckless jeweler and his family being murdered, the attack in the stairwell, and finally, my sister Nancy almost getting abducted in that hotel in Boston. My long, winding, improbable tale—and Duncan’s quiet, probing questions—got us all the way across the Williamsburg Bridge and all the way to my apartment.

He double-parked as I concluded, telling him about Nancy getting together with Liam, the only good thing to come out of this shitshow so far. At least Nancy wasn’t all alone in the void, like Vivi and me. In the thoughtful silence that followed, I was intensely uncomfortable. He must think I was a paranoid, attention-mongering nutcase.

“So, anyway,” I said. “That’s it. That’s why I’m scared. Me and my sisters. Whatever we do, it feels like the wrong thing. The stupid, boneheaded thing that’s going to get us tortured and murdered. So, let’s have it. Do you want to fire me now?”

---