Chapter Eleven

“I’m not a girl who spends my life in a ball gown.” - Vera Wang

Drea had acted as a lookout exactly once. In seventh grade, her best friend, Ambrelle, had smoked a cigarette in the girl’s bathroom at a school dance. Drea had peered around the door watching for teachers and hated every paranoid minute of it.

Fifteen years later, she still hated it. With her heart in her throat, she stood guard in a hallway again while Cam jiggled flattened pieces of metal inside Fergus’s door knob.

“I still think this is nuts.” The pulley yanking her nerves cranked the tension a little higher. Every creak on the steps leading to the top floor apartment. Every echo from the street below. Every time her pulse pounded in her ears loud enough to make her think it was footsteps coming down the hall.

“The cops will be looking everywhere for us but here,” he said. “It’s the perfect place to be.”

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” She edged closer to his hunched frame.

He didn’t spare her a glance, just kept fiddling. “It’s been a few years, but popping a lock is like riding a bike.”

“That’s comforting in a twisted, it’s-opposite-day kind of way.” She tightened her hands into fists to stop her thumbs from jiggling with her nerves.

“Relax.” A click sounded, and he turned the knob. “We’re in.”

She gave one last glance down the empty hallway, then rushed into the room. Her feet moved as fast as her heartbeat. The door swung closed behind her.

“Holy shit.” He didn’t say the words so much as he exhaled them with a whispered awe.

She peeked around his broad shoulders at the rest of Fergus’s apartment and almost swallowed her tongue. The apartment may have looked like a normal middle-class apartment from the outside, but inside, it was a whole other story.

Everything was high-end. The Sub-Zero refrigerator. The seven-feet-long ultra-definition smart television. The handmade Persian rug in the living room. Modern art covered the walls and created pops of bold color amid the taupes and stainless steel color palate.

“I think our boy Fergus is playing fast and loose with his tax records.” He let loose an admiring whistle. “That TV alone costs ten grand.”

“Yet he doesn’t spend money on an alarm system?” The place didn’t even come close to the luxury of her clients, but it made her small one-bedroom apartment look like something in Destitude Weekly.

“There’s no accounting for some people’s brains.” He shrugged as he scoped out the gleaming kitchen. “The guy is hanging out with Diamond Tommy’s people. That in itself shows he’s not exactly Mensa material. Let’s hurry up and get a good look around before he comes home.”

They’d sat in the cafe across the street for an hour until Fergus left the building. He was carrying three reusable shopping bags and headed toward the neighborhood farmer’s market. If Fergus stayed true to what he’d told her about his weekly trips to the market, he’d be gone for hours.

Still, she couldn’t shake the nerves that lately had become as natural as breathing. “So what does that make us for being here?”

He backed out of the kitchen and headed down the short hallway off the living room. “Desperate for answers.”

As she followed Cam, she looked over her shoulder with every other step, certain Fergus would appear out of thin air. “So where do we find them?”

“Look for a computer. A desk where he’d keep papers. We need a paper trail or anything else that either puts him at the top of our list or scratches him off.” He paused outside a bathroom done up in stark black and white and gave it a quick once over.

She continued on and gave the walk-in linen closet a quick peek, poking inside the stacks of steel gray towels. “How long do we have?”

She heard the unmistakable sound of rattling bottles and jiggling pills as Cam went through a medicine cabinet in the bathroom. He said, “The perimeter monitor I hooked up at the bottom of the stairs will text me a picture of anyone who approaches the lobby elevator or stairs.” He sauntered out of the bathroom and made a beeline to Fergus’s room. “That should give us a two minute window to blaze.”

“Plenty of time.” Her eye-roll was wasted on his muscular back as he prowled down the hallway.

“Less bitching. More looking.” He laughed and disappeared into the bedroom.

Like the rest of the apartment, Fergus’s bedroom felt starched. Crisp white linens. Brown and gray taupes on the walls and curtains. Stark black furniture with sleek, swooping modern lines. It was a one-eighty from what she would have expected of the snarky-humored butler she knew. She was a crappy judge of character. Why this still shocked her, she had no fucking clue. Really, she needed to get a better shit detector installed.

Fergus’s laptop sat center stage on his dresser. She powered it up, but a password login appeared on the screen. “Problem, Cam.”

He looked up from the closet where he was working his lock pick in and out of a portable fire safe’s tumblers. “What?”

“We need a password.” The clock by the bed read 10:46. “Is there enough time to reach out to Carlos for some code breaking?”

He shook his head and twisted his wrist. A click sounded, and he opened the safe. “Try ferret.”

Her strung tight nerves plunked with annoyance. Fergus was allergic to ferrets. He’d never make it his password. “Quit joking. How do we get ahold of Carlos?”

He retrieved a folder from the safe, opened it, and then started taking photos with the burner phone. “Just try it.” He flipped the page and took another photo. “He volunteers with some ferret rescue group.”

Maybe a group to wipe ferrets from the face of the earth. “No way. He’s super allergic to them.”

That got Cam’s attention. “How do you know?”

“The Orton’s had one for a while, and he broke out in hives the size of softballs, but Natasha wouldn’t get rid of it until it bit Fergus. He threatened to sue for workman’s comp.” He probably should have. The wound had been bloody and gross. “Despite the shitty way she treated everyone in that house—including Fergus—on a daily basis, it was the only time that I know of when he came close to walking out. So what makes you think ferrets?”

“I gotta hunch—something that stood out on his charitable donations.” Cam replaced the folders in the safe, closed the lid and engaged the lock before sliding it back in place at the back of the closet. “Trust me.”

She hesitated, her fingers above the laptop’s keys. Oh, fuck it. F-E-R-R-E-T. A rotating circle on the screen spun for a few seconds before the lock screen faded and revealed a photo of the Sydney Opera House on Fergus’s desktop. She did a quick happy dance in her chair that involved lots of hip shimmying and a little shoulder bopping. Finally, something had gone their way.

“Sylvie was right.” She grinned as she started to randomly click on documents since none were labeled Bad Stuff Here. “There is more to you than a hot bod.”

Fifteen open documents later and annoyance began to creep in. There had to be a better way. She slumped forward with her hand in her chin and stared at the screen. She’d gone through the few items on the desktop and over sixty percent of what was in his documents folder. Part of her wondered if this was a decoy laptop.

“What’ve you got?” Cam asked from directly behind her.

She jumped and nearly tripped over her own feet. For a big man, he moved quietly and quickly. “Not much that I can see.”

“Here let me.” His fingers flew across the keyboard like he’d been snooping in other people’s computers for most of his life, which really, he probably had.

The screen turned dark for a second, then opened up a different desktop with a plain black screen and a single virtual folder.

“What have you got here, Fergus?” He clicked on the folder and opened a spreadsheet labeled “Ferret Rescue Association.” It contained a list of names, each with a dollar amount and date next to them and a set of what looked like random numbers in another column. Bank accounts? Probably.

She read down the list of familiar names. Some of whom were her clients, others who were in the society pages every week. “I know those people.” She pointed to the first name on the list. “The McCann’s are Harbor City old money, so are the Bergers, the Carlsons, the Soffers, and the Kittredges.”

He pulled a flash drive out of his pocket, plugged it into the laptop, and downloaded the file. The transfer finished just as his phone vibrated twice. “Camera’s hooked up to my phone. That’s the signal. Fergus just got on the elevator. Let’s go.”

With the efficiency of a man used to getting out of places fast, he clicked out of the open documents, removed the flash drive, logged out of the laptop, and put it back exactly as they’d found it.

They hustled to the front door and yanked it open. That’s when they heard voices coming from the stairwell—one of which sounded an awful lot like the detective who’d questioned her at the Orton’s house. She froze in the open doorway, unable to go forward and too scared to go back.

“Don’t give up now. We’ve got this.” Cam grabbed her hand, and they backpedaled into Fergus’s apartment and shut the door behind them. “We have to hide.”

“Where?” If a whisper could scream, that single word would have done it. They were trapped.

The footsteps in the hallway grew louder. The elevator dinged, announcing its arrival.

She clamped her jaw tight, sucked in a deep breath, pushed the panic to the background.

Fergus’s too-cheery voice slithered in under the door.

It was the detective who’d questioned her. The one Cam knew. The one who wanted to arrest her.

What the hell was he doing here with Fergus?

“I’d like a moment of your time,” the detective said.

How could they escape? The front closet was a no. Too obvious. Her gaze bounced from one potential hiding spot to another as her heart banged against her ribs like a runaway freight train.

“Of course,” Fergus said. “Here, let me put down these bags and get my keys. I always tell myself I’m going to only get what I need at the farmer’s market, but who can turn down jalapeño jelly?”

Cam grabbed Drea’s hand and yanked her down the short hallway.

Even as she sprinted in reverse, she couldn’t look away from the front door. The deadbolt turned counterclockwise. Fear squeezed her lungs tight.

Cam pulled open the linen closet door and pushed her inside. Half a second later, he shut the door and the world turned to blackness so thick she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face.

She closed her eyes more out of habit than necessity, then took in a deep breath and rolled her shoulders before the urge to hyperventilate took over.

Muffled voices made their way into the closet. Fergus and the detective. She held her hand out in front of her and took a cautious step toward the door, determined not to miss a word.

She made it a step and a half before running into a wall of hard muscle. Cam. She rested her palm against his soft cotton T-shirt and inched forward until they stood squished together, side-by-side in front of the closed door.

“Mr. Fergus, sorry for barging in on you like this,” the detective said.

“Not at all,” Fergus responded.

“I’m not sure if you’ve seen the news yet today but we’ve issued a warrant for Drea Sanford’s arrest.”

The words sent her pulse into overdrive again and jump started the urge to burst out of the closet and make a run for it—as stupid as it sounded to the logical part of her brain.

“Terrible news.” Fergus made some sort of sad tsk-tsk noise. “I still find it hard to believe. She didn’t seem the type.”

“How did she seem to you?” The detective made his request in a neutral tone, but she had no doubt about what he thought. He wouldn’t be trying to arrest her if he didn’t think so.

“Overworked. Tired of her clients’ shitty attitudes—at least that’s what she always talked to me about—but I figured it was just grousing. I didn’t think she’d actually do anything.”

Cam pressed a button on his phone, and its soft glow ate away at the darkness.

“I understand Mr. Orton had quite the fish collection.”

She pulled up on her tiptoes to better see what he was typing: ‘LOS! HIT THE SYSTEM NOW.

“Yes,” Fergus agreed. “He did.”

“Do you know what happened to it?” the detective asked.

Cam’s phone vibrated in his large hand as a text came in: ANY SECOND NOW.

“Mrs. Orton ordered all the fish removed. That was…” Fergus paused, “three weeks ago.”

“Do you know where the fish went?” the detective asked.

The apartment building’s fire alarm blared to life and drowned out whatever Fergus said next. In between pulses, she heard the front door shut.

They waited a few minutes as the wailing of fire trucks grew closer, then Cam cautiously opened the door and peeked through the small crack. A second later, he opened the door.

He poked his head out. “They’re gone.”

She pushed her way past his bulk and into the hallway. She’d never been claustrophobic, but she’d spent just about all the time in the cramped closet as she could stand. She took a right turn and headed toward the bedroom. “Fire escape?”

He grinned. “Seems appropriate.”

Trust him to make a joke out of almost getting caught. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

They sprinted to the bedroom and out the window. Once they were on the metal landing, the warm summer wind whipped at her hair. The building’s residents mingled on the sidewalk around the corner. A few looked up at the four-story brownstone, but most searched the distance for the first sign of Harbor City Fire Department. She held tight to the railing and quick stepped it down the fire escape and away from immediate danger, even if the larger threat still remained.