Текст книги "Unmaking Marchant"

Автор книги: Ella James

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

10

SURI

When we arrive at the ER, I rip a page out of Lizzy’s book and tell the intake nurse that I’m Marchant’s kin: his cousin, as I have no fake ID.

When I’m allowed into the sick bay, I find Marchant in a half-seated position, under a thick, gray blanket, shivering slightly, looking perturbed.

A pretty blonde nurse is telling him his burns need to be treated, but he shakes his head. “It doesn’t hurt. I’m fine.”

“You’re his…cousin?” the nurse asks me.

I nod, and Marchant arches a skeptical eyebrow.

The nurse shifts her weight, now facing me. “Your cousin has burns on his back and his hands, and he’s refusing treatment.”

I step closer, tentatively taking one of his wrists. His hands are red and blistered. I wince. “That’s got to hurt.”

“I can’t feel it,” he says simply.

“Well it needs treatment anyway.” I look from his petulant face to the nurse’s concerned one. “Why don’t you bandage it or do whatever you would do.”

She blows her breath out. “To do that, we’ll need to give him an injection of numbing medicine.”

“Can you do it without that?”

She frowns. “It would be unethical. Excruciating.”

“And there’s no other option? Nothing you could, say, paint onto his skin or spray on?”

“Not really.”

I look at Marchant’s face. It’s burned deep pink on the forehead and cheeks. His lips are cracked. His eyes are wild. “Are you sure you can’t do needles?”

He nods once, looking as desperate as he did on Hunter’s plane.

I turn back to the nurse. “There’s got to be something else. Some kind of spray.”

“Nothing that would be effective.”

I’m shocked when he climbs out of the bed. He’s still wet, he’s pale as death, and he’s wearing only slacks. His hair drips as he turns to look at me.

“Thanks for your help,” he says. “But you shouldn’t have.”

And then he’s out the door.

* * *

MARCHANT

I hear Suri Dalton scrambling behind me as I stride through the hospital parking lot. She’s calling my name, I think. I can hardly hear her over the rush of blood inside my head.

I pick up the pace, hoping she’ll get the point and turn around. Instead, I hear the patter of her bare feet on the asphalt, and her tiny hand closes around my bicep. “Do you have your wallet?” she asks as I come to a halt. “Marchant, can you even call a cab?”

Careful not to look her in the eye, I point to a hotel across the street. “No cab needed.”

“Do you have any money for a room?”

I inhale deeply. I don’t, of course, but at the moment I don’t care. Maybe I’ll just sleep outside.

“Let me come with you. Let me at least get you a room, and then I’ll leave if you want.”

“Fine.”

I stride ahead of her, because I can’t stand to look her in the face. I’m so fucking embarrassed. That she’s here right now, seeing me like this.

There’s no telling what I might say or do right now. I think I’m nearing the end of this shit—I think I’ve begun to feel the icy fingers of depression work their way into my chest—but I can’t say for sure. I haven’t been this fucked up since college.

I weave between rows of parked cars, and I hear her on my heels. I’m having trouble breathing—my lungs still feel wet, and they’re burned to boot—so I slow down, and I feel her hand on my back.

Humiliation and shame twist through me. “You don’t have to do this.” I turn around to scowl at her. “I don’t need your help.”

“Okay.” She says it slowly, like she’s speaking to a petulant child. “You can pay me back if you like.”

Payback reminds me of Hawkins, which sends a cold wash of guilt over me. Then I remember abruptly that Cientos started the fire—he came for Missy King—and I shot him. Didn’t I? I can hardly remember.

“Where’s Hunter?” I ask, rubbing my forehead. It’s just occurred to me that there were other people in the fire. Almost everyone I know and care about. I turn around to face Dalton. “Are he and Libby okay?”

She nods. “They’re at another hospital with Cross and Meredith.”

“Meredith?”

“She…used to go by Missy.”

I nod slowly. I remember that now. Cars whoosh past us on the road between the hospital and the hotel across the street. “What happened to them?”

“Missy’s really bad, they said. I mean, Meredith.”

“Do you know if anyone else was hurt?”

She shakes her head. “Everyone got out, though.”

I feel a swell of guilt about the whole thing, and especially for Missy. I told her she’d be safe with me. I didn’t keep my promise. I wonder if Cientos found her before Cross Carlson did.

“I remember…” I swallow hard, looking down at Suri Dalton’s beautiful bare feet. “I remember the window.”

Suri nods. “Cross and Merri jumped out the window, into the pool. Marchant…” she starts; her eyebrows pull together, all concerned, and I know where she’s going. I know what she’s asking. And I don’t intend to tell her one damn thing.

I turn around and start across the busy street. I don’t give a fuck that I’m not wearing shoes or a shirt. I don’t care that there’s no crosswalk either. As I dash through traffic, I feel confident I’ll be alone when I get to the hotel parking lot.

I clear the curb, and a patch of grass pokes my bare feet. I glance at Dalton, who is one step behind me. I fix her with a ‘fuck off’ look and try to set things right. “Could you go? I’d like to be alone.”

The breeze blows a strand of hair across her rosy cheeks, and I watch her mouth as she bites down on her lower lip. “I’m not going to do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because you almost died tonight, for one.”

I sneer. “What’s two?”

She looks me over, head to toe. Her lips pinch. “Because you’re a raging mess. I think you need me.”

“You fucking wish.”

She’s shivering violently now, wrapping her arms over her chest, where I can see hard nipples through her shirt. Her pretty face is hard; pissed off. Score one for me. “No I don’t, you arrogant ass. I wish I was at home, in my warm bed. But I’m here, with you, because I found you at the bottom of a fucking pool! What’s wrong with you?”

The wind carries her voice across the hotel parking lot, where it dies amidst a line of neatly parked cars and SUVs.

I take a step closer to her, hoping to evoke emotion in myself. But when I look into her hazel eyes, I feel nothing.

“Go the fuck away,” I tell her. I inject a heavy dose of disdain into my voice and add a dismissive wave I hope will piss her off enough to make her disappear.

I can feel the darkness start to gather in me, collecting just below my throat like a weight on my breastbone. I need her to go before things with me get bad again.

She shakes her head. “I’m not leaving.”

 “I don’t need a fucking friend.”

But those big eyes are irrationally kind. Did you do it on purpose? That’s what she’s wondering, but she would never put it into words. Funny, because I almost want her to. I dare her with my eyes, and her gaze drops down to our feet. When she looks back up, her face is sad.

I stuff my hands in my jeans pockets, enjoying the way the denim burns my singed skin as I try it one more time. “I said go the fuck away.”

She tosses her damp hair over her shoulders and gives me a tired sigh. “After I get your room,” she says. “If that’s what you really want.”

We walk in silence past the curbside drop-off and through the automatic doors. She goes to the desk while I pace around by the coffee machines. I can hear her talking in hushed tones to the clerk, and I wonder what the fuck she’s saying. Finally, she turns around, armed with a little paper packet of room cards.

She hands them to me, but she doesn’t leave. When I head to the elevators, she follows me. I don’t look at her. Not when she pushes the “2” button, and not when she gets off the elevator before I do. I don’t look at her as I clench and unclench my hands because I’m feeling so damn edgy.

She gets a card into the door before I can, and pushes it open. As she steps away, those pretty hazel eyes peek up at me. “You sure you want me to go?”

I don’t know what I want. I don’t know anything—except I fucking hate myself.

So I do the worst thing I can do. I grab her shoulders and kiss her.

11

SURI

This is entirely different than the time at the Wynn.

He’s forceful this time—from the moment he grabs my shoulders and spins me around so he can take my mouth. There’s this millisecond when his lips first touch mine where I have a choice. Where I can pull away if I want. But I don’t.

Because I pulled him up from the bottom of a pool but I’m not sure I saved his life. Because he is both cruel and broken, and despite both, my body screams for his.

When his lips touch mine, I can barely keep my knees from giving way.

Marchant sweeps the door open and wraps an arm around me, dragging me toward the king-sized bed. He turns me around and urges me down onto my back, with my legs hanging off the side of the mattress. He parts my knees and stands between them, leaning down over me so he can kiss my throat, my chin, my cheeks, and finally—when I can’t stand it anymore—my mouth.

His lips close over mine with a harsh groan, and I sink my hands into his wild hair and pull him down on me. His body is warm and hard. I run my fingers from his biceps down his taut sides, and they leave trails of goosebumps. He’s hard in seconds, pressing himself urgently against me.

I can feel his abs jerk as he breathes between our kisses: ragged breaths that do nothing to slow the fury of his mouth on mine.

His taste is a drug—hot and sweet and just a little salty.

With all thought stalled by the rhythm of our mouths and hands, I notice everything about the way he moves and feels. How when he breathes, his ribcage presses into mine so hard it hurts. Each and every kiss brings him down on me a little heavier. There’s something predatory about the way he grabs my shoulder, yanks my hair, nips at my neck, crawls up on the bed and tosses me back a few feet. He climbs up on top of me, and I’m reminded of a lion.

Rough becomes forceful, almost painful. My mouth feels bruised, yet when he wrenches his away to grab a breath, my hand around his neck pulls him back down for more. Another hit. A feeding frenzy.

We’re both slick with sweat, and salty. Licking, nipping, stroking, pinching. His hands slide down my hips and underneath my ass. He lifts me up and pushes his hips down. The room spins. I need him inside of me.

And then his hands are gone. His mouth is wrenched off mine. He pants above me, looking into my eyes with his wild brown ones.

“Why are you here?”

I remember the sensation of dragging him up from the bottom of the pool. Trying to kick enough for both of us. How heavy he was; how still. Does it count as saving if he didn’t want it? The question expands inside my mouth, but I don’t know how ask it.

I swallow instead and whisper through my sore lips, “Because…I want to feel something.”

His kisses are gentler when he eases back down on me. He lifts my shirt up, then slides one hand down my hip and peels back my yoga pants. As his hand finds me where I’m wet, his eyes widen.

“You’re beautiful, woman. Fucking beautiful.”

He crawls down and his mouth joins his hand, and I come quickly. It’s like the sky being torn in two. He does it again, and again, until I’m quivering and exhausted. Then he lies beside me and kisses my neck.

I palm him through his slacks and find him hard as stone. I fumble with the button of his pants, finally pull them down, then sit up to urge him down onto his back. I stare for a moment at his naked abs and hips and thighs. There’s something beautiful about his shape.

I long to know what the tattoo means, but I don’t dare ask. I don’t even touch it.

Instead, I stroke his hard length up and down, loving the way his thighs tense and his ass tightens and he lifts himself up off the bed to meet my hand. His hands grip my biceps. His eyes squeeze shut. I’m cradling his balls and stroking him a little faster when I decide I’d like to have him in my mouth.

I’m leaning over to do just that when he makes a strangled sound deep in his throat and spurts into my hands.

“Oh Christ,” he murmurs. He turns over on his side and raises an arm to cover his face.

I watch the smooth slab of his side as his lungs expand and then constrict. I watch as he gets up, never looking at me, and half-stumbles into the bathroom, returning a minute later with grave eyes, wearing nothing but his boxer-briefs and a look that jabs me right below the ribs.

He shoves me back down on the bed and climbs over me, nipping at my neck. Kissing me gently near my shoulder. His breath on my skin is soft and warm; his hands threading through my hands feel cool. His voice sounds soft and tired when he says, “You should go now, Beauty.”

I lift my forehead so it’s pressed against his. “I don’t want to.”

I stroke my fingers down his back and feel the goosebumps. I tickle my hand down to the elastic of his boxer-briefs and sneak a finger inside them, where I shock both of us by teasing his crack. He draws a shuddering breath and I can feel his body tense.

“If you don’t go now…you might not like the outcome,” he says against my throat. As if to accentuate the point, he lifts his head. His eyes are wide. “I mean it.”

I smile a little, caressing the hair that curves around his ear. “You called me Beauty a second ago. Does that make you Beast?”

His mouth tightens. “It’s not a joke.” He lifts off me and tugs me by my wrist. “Go, before I throw you down face first and fuck you like I want to.”

I’m feeling high in this moment. Lust-drunk and powerful. Like I can keep him on this bed as long as I want to, and turn that frown upside down.

So I say, “Do it.”

He grabs me by my hips and spins me, positioning me on hands and knees so my ass is in the air. He yanks my pants all the way off and slams his finger into me, stroking ruthlessly as his mouth covers my asshole.

I open my mouth to protest, but it’s only a breath before I realize it feels good. So good I’m falling forward with my belly pressed against the mattress. My legs can barely keep me up, and then he’s clutching my ass cheek, pumping my cunt, licking me with broad strokes of his tongue, and I’m gasping like I might pass out.

I might pass out.

He gets me close—so close—before he pulls his fingers out and moves his hot mouth off me. I draw my quivering knees in, and he slides his body underneath me so I’m on top. With a dark grin, he reaches down to find my pussy with his fingers again. It’s tighter now, and I’m curled over, desperate. “Don’t stop…”

I stroke my finger down his chest and lean down so my other hand caresses his head. His eyes harden. “Are you on birth control?”

I open my mouth to say it isn’t necessary, but he cuts me off. “Are you on birth control?”

I nod—to simplify things.

“You take it regularly?”

“Yes,” I lie. “But I also have a condom if you want it.”

He nods and I reach past him for my clutch, the only thing in reach when the fire started. I’ve got some fire-engine red, cherry-flavored condoms in it from that night with Adam at the gala.

I turn back around to find him sitting on his knees. His dick juts out ridiculously, and I’m surprised to find myself gasping with eagerness to feel it inside me. His hands, I’ve noticed, look chapped and painful, so I scoot closer and roll the latex over his plump head.

He closes his eyes as I fit it on him. He’s bigger than Adam, so it’s snug. Below his thickness, his balls look taut and heavy.

I’m trembling as he leans closer. The tip of him brushes my thigh as he takes off my front-clasp bra and leans down to kiss my breasts. I shove him away and move my mouth as fast as I can to his dick. I caress those swollen balls as I stroke a shaft. He comes in half a minute, leaning over me and pulling on my hair.

“Oh God,” he groans.

I smile as he stretches out on his back, staring without blinking at the ceiling.

“Can I?” I gesture to his cock, which is somehow still hard and ready. He nods a little. I tug the condom off and find a garbage can. When I return, already wondering if he wants more, I find him on his side, facing the air conditioning unit, with his broad, heat-chapped back to me. His breathing is shallow and fast.

 I sit down behind him, feeling almost ill with concern. “Are you okay?”

“Don’t ask me that.”

“Why not?”

“Because this isn’t that. It’s just a fuck.”

“Okay,” I murmur.

“Is it?” His voice is low. Almost challenging.

“I knew what I was getting into when I came in here with you. I know you’re a drinker and a fighter and—”

“And what?” He turns around to face me, and I swear I think his eyelashes are wet. His face looks hard and angry.

“You’re not always nice.”

“No—I’m not.”

He grabs my wrists and pushes me down on my back, raising my arms above my head and pressing them down into the mattress.

His face twists. “You think you know me?” His eyes are hard—so hard and empty, I find my lips trembling before I whisper, “No.”

“You made a mistake.” His mouth tightens, and he squeezes my wrists harder. Then, for half a second, his eyes soften. He murmurs, “Do you want to go?”

I swallow hard and shake my head.

“If you stay, I’m going to fuck you.” He releases one wrist and runs his fingertips feather lightly down my belly. “Do you want to be fucked, Suri Dalton?”

He spreads my legs and lowers his face over my throbbing cunt.

“Answer me,” he murmurs, tracing a finger down my slit. I’m so wet, he glides between my lips with ease, pausing over my entrance to tease me with his thumb. I press my hips up, desperate to feel his fingers stretching inside of me.

“Answer me!”

“YES!” I half-sob.

He glides his fingertip over my clit, and I try to lift my hips to him. My legs are almost useless. I’m trembling so hard I can barely move.

“Wait here,” he tells me. “Do not move.”

He grabs another condom from my bag and quickly rolls it over himself.

Then he gathers both my arms in his big hand, holding them firmly over my head, and moves his hips so he’s teasing me.

“Come on, Marchant… Please!”

He slams inside me—hard and fast, and I scream.

When he leaves me panting in the shower several hours later, I’m not sure if I feel broken or empowered. All I know for certain is I want more.

12

MARCHANT

“Right this way, Mr. Radcliffe.”

I follow the nurse down a long, white hall, and force my legs to stay steady as she slides an ID through a card reader beside a stainless steel door. It makes a soft clicking sound, and she pushes it open, revealing a small, white room dominated by a wide hospital bed and several large machines.

“We’ve spoken with your regular psychiatrist.” She motions to the bed, and I climb onto it. I’m so exhausted I can hardly see straight, so it’s an effort to keep the damn gown shut. “She said you’ve experienced a lengthy manic phase that’s likely winding down. Are you sure you want this?”

I shake my head. “I need this. I’m sure.”

I think about the day I flushed my Lithium down the toilet. March 15. I think about March 15, 2007, and I’m sure.

She nods. “Okay. Just try to relax. I’ll be back soon.”

I lie back on the bed and close my eyes. I see a golden casket. I feel the cool leather of the squad car seat behind my back. My memory thrusts me back in time, several hours earlier, that day, and I remember breaking the arms of another man in a white coat.

“I’m gonna fucking kill you, you motherfucking murderer!”

I remember, hours before that, the phone call from Marissa. Telling me what had happened. Telling me what she’d done. Sobbing.

“You told me to! You told me to do it Marchant!”

I squeeze my eyes more tightly shut, and I try to remember the words I said that changed the course of both our lives. But I never can. Because I was manic. Because I was possessed.

I’m tired of being manic.

I’m tired of being me.

I’m tired.

When the nurse returns, she’s got a couple of other nurses, and two doctors, with her. The doctor in charge hands me the paperwork, and I skim over the risks and side-effects.

Memory loss. I pray for that. I pray for that as I sign consent and they begin to prep me.

“You’ll do several treatments. We’ll decide on an exact number based on how you respond to this first one.”

I nod.

One of the nurses grabs my arm, and I have to struggle to keep breathing regularly.

“I’ll make the injection fast, okay?”

I nod again. Then I shut my eyes, relax my arm. Force myself to look straight ahead, rather than into the nurse’s face.

The needle sinks into my arm, and darkness claims me. The last thing I imagine before the curtain falls on everything is Suri Dalton.

* * *

“You should have told me sooner.”

I nod. I want to say, “I know,” but I can’t get my mouth to work. I guess this is how it is, getting back on my meds. I’m also taking something new they gave me at the hospital.

I lie down on my bed and stare at the ceiling. Somewhere far away, I’m aware that Rachelle has walked into the kitchen. I’m alone in my room, for the first time since I ran from my garden house toward the fire.

I still kind of want to die, but it’s not as bad anymore.

Probably because I just don’t have the energy.

Sometime later, I hear Rachelle say something to me and I turn my head toward her. She’s standing by my bed, holding a tray bearing a bowl of soup and a sleeve of Ritz crackers. I blink a few times at her. Make enough circuits fire to say, “Thank you.”

I’m hoping she will go now, but she doesn’t. She lies on the bed beside me and shares my pillow. I can smell her perfume: Stella. Her head nudges my shoulder, and I feel her eyes on me. “You okay, M? Really?”

I nod.

“I’ve got your pills, okay? Libby will be back in two days. She told me in the meantime, we can cut way back on Diazepam. You seem pretty out of it.”

I nod. It’s for the best that I’m sedated.

“I’m going to fourth it tonight, okay? You’ll be left with just your Lithium. I think you’ll be fine. There’s nothing in this house that should bother you. I took care of it.”

She means the knives and guns. And tempt me, not bother me. “I’m sorry, Rachelle.” My voice sounds thick. Not like mine.

Good. I don’t want to be me anymore.

“This isn’t your fault, Marchant. None of it is. Maria has OCD, remember? I understand how these things work.” Maria is Rachelle’s partner.

I nod again.

“Do you remember what happened with Jesus Cientos?”

I shake my head. I know I shot him, but I don’t really remember it.

“You did a lot of people a service.”

I blink a few times. I don’t have the energy to think of that.

“Good,” I say. And then, “I want to start rebuilding.”

Rachelle, who’s lying on her side now with her head propped on her palm, is frowning at me. “You already found a contractor. Before you left the hospital. You offered to pay them double if they finished fast.”

I nod. I don’t remember, and I wish I hadn’t promised double the money, but, “Good. I want the same floor plan. But I think I want to change up everything else.”

“We need to hire someone for the aesthetics, obviously.”

I stare up at my ceiling and say the name that’s always on my lips these days. “Suri Dalton.”

Rachelle hesitates only a second—I don’t look at her, but I know she’s giving me a look. “You want me to set up a consult?”

“No.” I’m not going to ask her.

“Okay. Just keep me posted.” Rachelle gets up. I think she says some other stuff, but it’s hard to make myself listen. So much easier to just lie here.

Eventually she says, “Should I show myself out?”

“Sure.”

She groans. “Come on now, March. Sit up and eat your soup.” I sit up slowly, and under her watchful eye shove a spoonful into my mouth.

She waves her cell phone. “Call me if you need me.”

I nod. “Thanks.”

Sometime later, I blink down at my uneaten soup and swing off the bed. I should lock the door behind her.

I’m walking back to my bed when I get the text: Hope the insurance money comes in soon.

It’s from an unknown number, but I know who it is. Hawkins.

Maybe the fire wasn’t for Missy King after all.

* * *

SURI

When Cross, Lizzy, and I were in high school, we climbed a barbed wire fence around a few hundred acres of valley vineyard belonging to a former Hollywood stuntman named Bonnie McFarland. Word was, Bonnie had suffered one too many concussions and had gone a little crazy. We knew for sure that he had a pack of Dobermans. But Cross had made a bet with a guy in the grade above us about who could steal the flag Bonnie flew above his wine cellar first—so over the fence we went.

Lizzy had a trash bag full of meat and eggs to distract the Dobermans, and I had a can of mace, but the moment my feet hit the ground on the McFarland side of the fence, I heard the Dobermans snarl and I seriously thought I might stroke out.

That’s how I feel right now, as I park my rented silver Jeep Grand Cherokee beside the charred ruins of what was the largest of the Love Inc. buildings.

I’m doing something risky—something that scares me. I’m here to look for Marchant Radcliffe. Because I want to have sex with him again. Scratch that. I want to fuck him again. Because that’s what we did. We fucked. It was dirty. It was rough. And…I liked it. A lot.

But it’s not just sex. Since he left me in the bathroom that night, I can’t stop thinking about him. The person. I wonder, over and over, what happened to put him in the bottom of a pool. I wonder what the tattooed date means.

It’s stupid. Yes. I know. Maybe he isn’t worth my attention, but I’m intrigued, and for once, I’m single. Free. The risks are low. I’m not chained to him like I was Adam. If something goes wrong, there aren’t any messy details to deal with: I just walk. If things went well…maybe I could find out who he really is.

So before I fly back home tomorrow, I decided to drive to the ranch and see if I run into him. If I do, I’m giving myself permission to do something crazy. Something stupid. I’m in charge. I can handle it. If I don’t, I’ll go back to L.A. feeling just a little freer.

My cover story is that I’m here to find my grandma’s ring, but that’s not true. I’ve already hired of team of experts to pick this place apart tomorrow.

I’ll give a cursory look, but the truth is, I want to end up in Marchant’s bed.

It’s been six days since I last saw him. In the six days since, Lizzy told Hunter about the pregnancy, and he hauled her off to Napa, where he thinks she should rest. Cross has gone there, too, so he can re-open the motorcycle shop he shut down after his wreck. Merri’s going to help him while she gets her life sorted out. They’ve hired a body guard to keep her safe, but she also has an FBI handler.

Just two days ago, I found out Adam is moving back to Napa…and in with Brina. It’s weird, but I can’t say I’m jealous. Adam and I were never meant to be together. Still, the thought of him with Brina is…unnerving. But I guess that’s another reason to hook-up with Marchant: so I don’t have to go back home quite yet.

It’s five-thirty on a Thursday, but there’s a big cement truck parked just in front of me, and I see a surprising number of workers milling around the beginnings of the new building. I don’t know who else is here, or if anybody is.

According to Lizzy, Hunter hasn’t been able to track Marchant down since the night of the fire. The most he could get out of Rachelle was that Marchant went on some sort of “vacation,” but she wouldn’t say when he would be back.

Hunter suspects he went to rehab. I’ve wondered for days now if it’s true. For some reason, I have a difficult time imagining Marchant in rehab. I guess I just can’t see him taking orders from anyone. Then again, I have trouble imagining Marchant doing drugs—despite the many signs he likely does.

After a few minutes checking my hair and make-up in the visor mirror, I get out of the Jeep and face the ruins. It’s really bad. Everything has been knocked to the ground, where it’s a big pile of basically…trash, to the left of the pool. In front of the pool, poured over charred ground that looks as big as half a football field—or maybe even bigger—is a cement foundation. And over the cement, the plywood scaffolding of a new building. I hope it gets finished soon. Not because I’m a fan of what goes on here, but because no one deserves to lose their business.

I pull my rented metal detector out of the back of the Jeep, turn it on, and start around the cement truck. The workers wave at me, and I wave back. I hold my breath when I near the pool and walk quickly past it. I don’t want to remember that part of my night with Marchant. I’ve metal-detected my way almost to the pond when I notice, in the low light of dusk, one of the girls waving at me from near the maze. I squint and see it’s the nicest one, Loveless.

I wave back, and she jogs over, meeting me in the soft, shin-length grass surrounding the pond. “Hi. How’s it going?” I ask her as we meet beside the sunset-streaked water.

“March gave us the week off, but I wanted to check on him before I left.” She smiles. “And I hear we have you to thank for his continued existence. You’re a hero.”

I shake my head. “It was fortune, I think. I had lost my grandmother’s ring, so I was hanging around trying to find it.”

She nods at the long wand in my hands. “Still looking?”

“Yep. And I wanted to see your maze again. I do interior design, but I’ve got a client on the books in May who is interested in a formal garden. I figured I might walk through it another time.”

“That thing makes me nervous.”

“Nervous?”

She laughs. “Have you ever seen ‘The Shining’?”

I nod. “I guess I see how it could be creepy.” I look in that direction, seeing the cottages beyond the maze. “So is the brothel shut down? There’s another one in town, right?”

Loveless nods. “A few of the girls are taking clients out of the cottages, but it’s mostly shut down. We don’t do business in town. It’s a different place.” A less exclusive one, from what I’ve heard. “I’m going to visit my Dad, now that everything’s more settled here.” She glances at the cottages and bites her pretty, glossed lip. Then her eyes meet mine. “I’m sorry to be nosey, but do you know Marchant very well?”

I shake my head.

She shrugs. “He keeps to himself, but he’s a good boss. I feel sorry for him, losing so much. He’s worked hard to make this place what it is. You want to walk with me to his cottage?”

“I think I’ll do a little more searching before it gets to dark.”

I do, but I don’t find the ring. Not that I ever stood a chance. If it was in the house, it’s under tons of rubble. I put the metal detector up and wonder if I should go. I had hoped—stupidly, I guess—that I’d bump into Marchant, but since I didn’t, I’ve got to decide if I feel brave enough to knock on his door.