Page 105 of The Wicked

Wow. That must have been a heck of a conversation. If I’d looked in the mirror, a ripe tomato would have stared back at me.

“Uh, yes?”Please, couch, swallow me now.“Yes, with the right man, those things can be very pleasurable indeed. That’s where the trust comes in.”

“Good to know. So, uh, we’ll never speak of this again, okay?”

“Agreed. Can I interest you in a coffee?”

“I’d love a coffee. And I understand there’s a guy here who customises shoes? Paulo? I have a friend who’d like his number.”

“He’s gay, and he also has a boyfriend.”

Gracie giggled. “Oh, this isn’t a romantic proposition. She made the shoes you ran away from my brother in, and she wants to speak with Paulo about collaborating on a limited edition. I also design shoes, by the way. If he can’t agree on terms with Riya, I’d be interested in poaching him myself.”

“He doesn’t work Wednesdays, but he’ll be here tomorrow. Are you planning to fly back to New York right away?”

“We’re staying at the Peninsula.”

We? The rush of heat was unexpected and unwelcome. “Garrett’s here too?”

“I made him promise to stay out of your way. Tell me if he screws up, won’t you? I’ll kick his ass.”

Out of darkness is born the light.This week, I’d found not one but two new allies. Parker and Gracie, an old acquaintance and a new one.

“We should swap numbers.”

“Definitely. Do you want to get lunch? Not at the Peninsula, obviously. Garrett said the Coffee House serves good food?”

“It does. And lunch sounds great, but I have to be back here by one o’clock. There’s something I need to do this afternoon.”

* * *

“Why do they get power tools while we only get pencils and duct tape?” Gracie asked.

Parker had come through, and the house was empty of Baldwins. An “intermittent electrical fault” at one of the properties rented out by Baldwin Estates meant EJ needed to go investigate, and the twins had driven to Eugene to meet with a friend of Parker’s who’d agreed to pretend she was planning a party. Yes,she. Until today, I didn’t even realise Parkerhadfemale friends.

Luca put a hand on each of our shoulders. “Because you’ll do an excellent job of writing numbers on floorboards, and none of us Neanderthals can count.”

By one o’clock, it had felt as if I’d known Gracie for months rather than hours, and I’d come to another realisation. For over a decade, we’d both been trapped in the same limbo, unable to move on with our lives and afraid of our pasts. This story was as much hers as it was mine, which was why I’d invited her to The Lookout. Whatever my mom had hidden, it could impact both of us. With Gracie’s blessing, I’d explained the barest bones of the situation to the others, and they’d agreed she could come along.

While we were talking, the men had been planning, and I had to admit that despite my organisational expertise, they’d done a better job of it than I would have. Based on Parker’s “third door” theory, we had four rooms to search, six if you counted the en-suites—an empty guest room, Easton the Third’s man cave, a smaller space Marianna had turned into a closet-slash-dressing room, and her old home office. Where to start? Unfortunately, Parker’s recollections didn’t include exactly which rooms had been sans floors at the time of the party.

“Why don’t we tackle the easier rooms first and hope we get lucky?” Deck suggested, and by “easier” he meant “emptier.” Easton didn’t understand the concept of tidying, and Marianna had owned more clothes than one woman could ever need. Too bad she was stuck in an orange jumpsuit now. “You’re sure we don’t know what we’re looking for?”

“Anything that doesn’t belong,” Blue told him. “We’ll know it if we see it.”

In the guest room, the men turned the bed on end and pulled back the carpet, and Gracie and I got to work. She numbered the boards in the order they had to be replaced once we’d checked the cavities, while I taped each set of screws so we didn’t lose any. Blue and Brooke went on ahead and began moving the lighter furniture away from the windows in the old office. I’d made use of Jack Morrow, and he’d call if anyone turned into the driveway. As for Parker, he said he’d rather not know the details—there was that plausible deniability thing again—but he’d stick around to monitor EJ and the twins and warn us if they were going to arrive home early.

Even with all of us working together, it took twenty minutes to remove the boards in front of the windows. There was nothing down there but dust bunnies, dead spiders, and an empty bag that had once contained potato chips. Then we had to put everything back again. Forty minutes gone. We had to be faster.

We shaved off five minutes in the office, but that still left the two untidiest rooms.

“Maybe we should come back another day?” Deck suggested, surveying the dressing room. “Why do all the women in the house share the same closet? Is that normal?”

“These are just Marianna’s clothes,” I told him.

“Sheesh.”

“I’ll make a start on Easton’s room with Gracie.”

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