Chapter 10: The Lead In The Glass
Lily's words were still hanging in the air when I looked back toward the doors.
She'd told me how her mom had put her in the back seat and said if anything happened to go to the big house with the wood doors. Elena had driven her there herself two nights ago, after Vic had shown up at their apartment. That meant Elena had planned this. She'd known.
I felt the weight of it settle in my chest. This wasn't a kid wandering off. This was a mother buying her daughter time.
Lily was tucked against my side, her head resting on my forearm, her breathing finally evening out. I kept my hand on her back, my other arm braced on the arm of the chair. The study was quiet except for the low tick of the heat and the faint hum of the SUV idling outside.
I glanced toward the arched doors without meaning to, and the light had shifted just enough that the leaded glass wasn't transparent anymore. It was a mirror.
And Vic was not by the SUV.
He was standing on the stone step, maybe three feet from the glass, perfectly still. His hands were in his pockets. His face was turned straight toward the interior, and his eyes were not on me or Lily. They were fixed on the desk.
On the open drawer where I'd slipped Elena's phone.
The reflection was fractured by the diamond pattern, broken into a dozen little panes, but there was no mistaking it. He was watching the desk. Not the room. The desk.
A cold line ran down the back of my neck. He couldn't have seen me put it there from the driveway. Which meant he'd been watching for longer than I'd thought.
Lily didn't see him. She was looking down at her hands, picking at a loose thread on her tights.
I shifted my weight, turning my shoulder just enough to block his line of sight to that drawer. At the same moment, the right-side door opened without a knock.
Cold air cut in, sharp enough that Lily flinched.
"Sorry, boss," Vic said. He didn't sound sorry. He stepped inside and pulled the door closed behind him, but not all the way. He left it cracked an inch. "It's freezing out there. Wind came up. Didn't want to keep the engine running on your dime."
He rubbed his hands together and gave me that easy, familiar smile. The one he'd worn every morning for two years when he brought the car around. But his eyes went straight back to the desk.
Lily went rigid against me. Her fingers dug into my shirt.
Vic took two steps further into the study, past the stone threshold and onto the rug. Closer to the desk. Closer to us.
"Thought I'd wait inside if that's okay," he said. "Until you needed me."
He moved like he was trying to be casual, drifting toward the heat vent near the bookcase, which also happened to put him within arm's reach of the desk's edge. His gaze dropped to the gap where the drawer sat open a half inch. I could see the calculation happening.
I stood up. Lily clung, so I lifted her with me, one arm under her, her legs wrapping around my waist. My left hand, the one with the ink and the watch, stayed on her back.
I put myself between Vic and the desk. Not fast. Deliberate. I took one step, then another, until the wood edge was at my hip and Vic would have to go through me to reach it.
"Vic," I said.
He stopped.
My voice had come out different than I intended. Lower. No pleasantries in it. For two years I'd talked to him like a colleague, like a friend who drove me to meetings. That was gone.
"Wait in the SUV," I said.
He blinked. The smile stayed, but it thinned.
"Boss?"
"You heard me," I said. I kept my tone even, but I let the edge show this time. "Engine on. Heat on. I don't care about the gas. You wait in the SUV until I call you. That's an order."
The room went very quiet. Lily's breathing was shallow against my neck. I could feel her little heart hammering.
Vic looked at me, then at Lily, then back at the desk behind my hip. Something flickered behind his eyes. He realized I wasn't just being cold. I was keeping him away from something. And he realized I knew he wanted it.
He took a half step back. His hands went back into his pockets.
"Sure," he said after a beat. "Yeah, of course. Whatever you need."
He didn't move right away. He held my stare for a second too long, long enough that it stopped being an employee backing down and became a man taking measure of another man.
May you like
Then he nodded once, turned, and pulled the door open. The cold came back in. He stepped out onto the stone and pulled the doors shut behind him, but I watched through the glass as he didn't go back to the driver's side. He stood there, just outside, his reflection staring back in at me through the diamonds.
The standoff wasn't outside anymore. It was here, in the study, with the locked drawer at my back and my daughter's daughter in my arms.
