Julian gathered Angie in his arms and held her while she wept. Though she barely made a sound, her body shuddered in violent bursts. Her breath hissed through clenched teeth. Whatever happened between her and Marion had shredded Angie’s composure. He wanted to let her cry until she ran out of tears, but they needed to hurry and get the hell away from here. Half the people downstairs were criminals, and most of them worked for Lorenzo. All the boss had to do was give the word to make her disappear.
He stroked her shoulder under the gold jacket. “You need to calm down, please calm down. It’s important for us to get to the car.”
“I can’t.” She swabbed at her eyes with the back of her hand, smearing her eye makeup. Pieces of hair had come loose from her topknot and twisted around her face in messy disarray. “Just leave me alone.”
“You can’t stay here.”
“And I can’t go back to the damn party.” With both hands, she shoved against his chest, creating space between them. Grasping one of the sleek chairs on the balcony, she dragged herself away from him. When she tried to stand, her legs crumpled and her shoulders drooped. “I look awful. It’ll take forever to repair my face. People will notice.”
“I have another idea.” He stood. “Take off your shoes.”
Too upset to question or complain, she did as he said. “Now what?”
“I’ve studied every inch of the blueprints for this house.”
“Why?”
“The design and the architecture are fascinating. Anyway, I know this place better than Lorenzo, better than almost anybody.” He took her hand, shocked by how cold she was. Her fingers felt like ice. He pulled her to her feet. “First, you’re going to borrow a pair of Marion’s sneakers. Then we’re going to go down the fire escape.”
“Are you joking?”
“It was installed in the 1950s as a safety feature,” he said, “accessible only from the roof where there are no surveillance cameras.”
“Well, why not?” Shaking her head, she stumbled toward the closet. “With all the amazing stuff in this house, I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me we were going to fly into the forest on a magic carpet.”
If Aladdin’s technology had been available, Lorenzo would have bought it. Julian grabbed Marion’s phone and slipped it into his jacket pocket. “Let’s go. Shoes first, then we’re out the door.”
“We’ve always worn the same size. Since we were twelve, long before we ran away.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.” She tucked her feet into a pair of black-and-white Converse high-tops from a wall of shoes in the walk-in closet.
He led her from the bedroom. At the far end of the corridor, he opened the door to a short hallway. They hurried past boxes stored on shelves and went up a flight of stairs. He paused at a metal door and looked down at her. Her makeup was a mess and her platinum hair looked like a bird’s nest. He saw her innocence and her vulnerability. “Before we go outside, I need to know that you won’t fall apart. Once this door closes, it’s locked. We can’t go back.”
She lifted her chin. “I can do it.”
He had to believe her. Finding another escape route was risky, and he didn’t want to slip up and attract attention.
The door to the roof was stuck—probably hadn’t been used in years—and he had to use his shoulder to get it open. Early October was chilly in the mountains. He took off his jacket and helped her put it on before guiding her across the roof to a ladder that hung over the edge of the parapet.
The front of the house and most of the right side were glass, but these back walls revealed a more utilitarian purpose. The fire escape from the roof was painted light brown. Otherwise, it was similar to something that might be found on an apartment building in Brooklyn.
He stepped over the edge and held on to the railing. “I forgot to ask if you’re afraid of heights.”
“Too late now.” A weak smile flickered across her lips.
“I’ll go first. If you need to stop, just let me know.”
He descended backward, watching her move down the fire escape. The wind rattled around them, but the metal fire escape held firm. There were no direct lights in this area, but the glow from the rest of the house lit the trees and rocks in the forest. The farther they went, the stronger she seemed. By the time they reached the last step and he lowered the ladder, she had recovered much of her strength.
When her foot in the Converse sneaker touched the earth, he felt a whoosh of relief. They just might pull this off. “Here’s the good part. We’re closer to where I parked the car.”
“I’m sorry I fell apart,” she said with a nod. “I almost never cry. It’s not like me.”
“It’s okay. I won’t let you get hurt, I promise.”
He led her around the back of the house, passing the kitchen and heading to the place where he’d parked. Fortunately, no one had pulled in behind his silver SUV and blocked the exit. They could be out of here in minutes.
First, he put through a phone call to Leif asking him to meet at the door where he’d originally dropped him off. When the former Bronco appeared, Julian handed over Marion’s phone. “Make sure she gets it right away.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Angie’s sick. I’m taking her back to Nick’s. Can you get a ride?”
“You bet, and I’ll be real happy to take care of Tamara.”
He drove to the front of the house and exited on the long driveway. As the SUV put miles between them and the Glass Palace, his tension ratcheted down. Not that he was relaxed, far from it.
“I have some questions,” he said. “You had to be eavesdropping on what I said to Lorenzo. How much did you hear?”
“Some,” she admitted. “You said something about chasing the man with the scar into the forest. Are you sure it was him?”
“I’ve been watching him on tape for the past couple of days. When I saw him in the house, he was taunting me, peeking out from under the cap before he made his run to a dirt bike he’d hidden behind a stack of branches. Leif joined me.”
Leif’s unexpected appearance seemed too convenient, maybe even suspicious, but Julian wasn’t about to discuss his feelings with Angie. She owed him multiple explanations. “Another question,” he said, “Why did you go to the third floor private quarters?”
“To see the artwork,” she said.
That was a lie and not a very believable one. She’d been on the opposite side of the art display inside Lorenzo’s bedroom. There must have been something else she went looking for. “Who’s Marigold?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Another obvious fib? She was really off her game, and he wasn’t about to waste time digging through layers of deception. “Might as well tell me.”
“Or what’s going to happen?”
“I’m not going to threaten you.”
“Good, because we both know that never works.”
“I want to help you,” he said. “Just trust me. Who is Marigold?”
“Someone I never thought I’d see again.” She stared through the windshield, concentrating intently on a vision he couldn’t see. Was she examining her own past? “I don’t like to talk about what happened to me when I was growing up. Too much sadness. Too many people who failed me. For me, foster care was horrible, but it’s not like that for everybody. I was a behavior problem.”
Not a surprise. “Earlier tonight, you opened up.”
“Which is not like me,” she said. “Usually, if somebody asks about my past, I’ll make up something about winning a surfing contest in Hawaii or stealing a Van Gogh from a heartless billionaire.”
“You’ll lie,” he said.
“It’s easier, and people tend to believe me.”
“You’re a good liar.”
“Damn right, but not tonight. When we were all telling secrets, I talked about a girl who was my closest friend. We were in the same foster homes, starting when we were twelve. We ran away from a foster home in Utah together and came to Denver. Our first job was at a strip joint.”
“What else?”
“I was fifteen, and she was almost seventeen but looked younger than me, except for her breasts. She developed early. Her name was Marigold.”
Julian’s pause was just a second too long, but she noticed. “Don’t feel sorry for me. My mistakes when I was with Marigold were motivation for turning my life around.”
A picture began to form inside his head. “You said you’d lost touch with her.”
“She was taken away from me. The guy who ran the strip joint took her and a couple of others to a private party. I’m guessing the event was similar to the one we just attended with a lot of booze and shiny surfaces to hide the decadence.”
“Decadent? Zapata’s birthday party seemed innocent.”
“Now who’s lying?” she scoffed. “We both know that the real excitement doesn’t start until after midnight. That’s when they bring in the pretty girls to dress the place up.”
Julian didn’t usually stick around for the late-night lap dances. Being sober brought out the ugliness. “Your friend Marigold was selected but not you. Why not?”
“I wasn’t a party girl. I was a gawky fifteen-year-old, flat-chested with dull brown hair and scraggly teeth in need of braces. I didn’t know how to dress, didn’t know how to put on makeup. I wasn’t pretty.” She lifted her chin and looked down her nose. “Make no mistake, Julian. It takes a lot of effort to look the way I usually do.”
“What happened to Marigold?”
“She hooked up with the big boss, and I bet you already know that his name was Nick Lorenzo. Marigold came back to me a couple of times and showed me jewelry he bought for her. She thought it was love, that he was her prince. I couldn’t blame her for turning her back on me.”
“She wasn’t eighteen,” he said. “It was rape.”
“That was what I tried to tell the cops. All that got me was a big, fat nothing. I got shipped back to the foster home in Utah.”
The pieces of her story were falling into place. His instincts about her were correct; she had underlying motives. Starting a new job with Lorenzo was only part of the reason she’d come to Colorado. Needing to give her his full attention, he took advantage of the solitude on this curving mountain road by driving onto a wide space on the shoulder and turning off the headlights. As night settled around them, he turned to her.
“Let me see if I’ve got this right,” he said. “Marigold is the real reason you took this job. You wanted to find out what had happened to her.”
“I need to know. Marigold was my dearest friend, and she vanished without a trace. It was like her existence had been erased. I did a ton of computer research and even came to Denver twice to look for her. Nothing!”
“And you thought if you infiltrated Lorenzo’s organization, you’d figure it out.”
“Do you know what it’s like?” she asked. “To lose someone you love hurts, but to never know what happened to them makes it worse.”
Threads of anger wove through her voice. Having already spent the tears and sadness of grief, she’d moved on to rage. Her tangled hair and smeared makeup gave him a hint of the gawky teenager she once had been—the young woman who had been abandoned by Marigold. Gently, he held her hand and waited until she was ready to continue.
“I blamed Lorenzo,” she said, “and I hated him. I thought he’d funneled Marigold into some kind of trafficking operation, turning her into a high-priced escort or a sex slave. I even thought he might have had her killed.”
“What was your plan tonight? Did you go to the third floor to confront him?”
“That’s a hard no. Guys like him never confess.”
“Why were you there?”
“Investigating,” she said. “I’d done a computer search of my own, looking for Marigold, but I thought I might learn something different if I could download the hard drive from Lorenzo’s personal computer.”
“A long shot,” he said.
“And I didn’t follow through. I saw his laptop but didn’t snatch it.”
“Why not?”
“I never expected to walk through that door and see her standing there.” Angie’s fingers twisted in his grasp as though her hands had a life of their own. “When we were kids...she chose to stay with him. She wanted that life.”
“And now?”
“She says she’s ready to leave Lorenzo, and I’ve got to believe her. Marigold is done with him. She promised to meet with me on Monday night. Then we’ll figure out what to do.”
He knew that her escape wasn’t a simple matter of walking away. In her role as Lorenzo’s mistress, Marigold had been privy to the inner workings of the organization. “She’s been with him for eleven years.”
“I know.” Angie nodded sadly. “Think of everything she’s witnessed. Her testimony could probably put Lorenzo, Zapata and a dozen other guys in prison.”
He hated the idea of Angie meeting with this woman. “Marigold isn’t the teenager you remember. How do you know you can trust her?”
“I don’t.”
“It might be smart for you to step aside and leave it to the cops to rescue her. The only way she can be safe is if she’s a protected witness.”
“She’ll never go for that.” Angie wrung her hands. “Protective custody is just another type of prison. She needs to be free.”
He suspected Angie was correct. His acquaintance with the woman who had been with Lorenzo for years and went by the name of Marion was limited, but she didn’t strike him as someone who would quietly fade away. She was trouble, and he wouldn’t let that danger spill onto Angie. She deserved better.