Her nose woke her up, rich earthy scents winding deep into her brain as she drifted from sleep to wakefulness. The lilac bush in bloom under her window, the scent of the dew on freshly mown grass, the dark layers of mulch laid over all the flower beds and around the trees, cool, crisp morning air that held the promise of warmth.
It was Riva’s favorite way to wake up, called out of sleep by nature’s smells and sounds, anchoring her consciousness to the life she’d built with her own two hands. The day she woke up and resented what she smelled was the day she put the farm up for sale. But under the scents carried in by the morning breeze was something more primitive, wired to her back brain: the scent of Ian’s soap and skin coming from the pillow under her head.
She had a vague memory of turning to him in the middle of the night, blindly seeking the heat his body gave off, and another memory of him tucking a pillow under her head before he eased out of bed. Indulging in a great big yawn, she smoothed her hair back from her face. A stretch made her body hum with residual pleasure, a low, vibrating resonance that softened her joints.
Oh, she was home, asleep in her own bed, which smelled deliciously, sinfully of Ian Hawthorn, which meant what she thought were memories of the last few days were only a dream, an awful dream. Somehow, she couldn’t remember exactly how, they’d gotten past their history and were together.
Then she opened her eyes. Guest room. Fireplace, still with the fire unlit. The door to the bathroom was open, the light off; no sounds came from Ian’s bedroom.
Wrong dream.
Memory steamrolled her pleasant fantasy, spiking her adrenaline and sending her scrambling out of bed. Where was he? With his ribs as battered as they were she doubted he’d gone for a run. He could be with her dad, doing God only knew what in an effort to worm his way into her dad’s confidence. He could be downstairs, reading the paper and drinking coffee. Only one way to find out.
She dressed quickly in clothes suited for a day of work—jeans, a blue V-neck T-shirt, and her Converse sneakers—and trotted down the stairs. The front rooms were empty, silent, dust hanging in the still air. The light was on over the stove in the kitchen, but otherwise, no signs of life or movement. No half-empty coffeepot, no dishes in the sink. He’d basically vanished.
A foot thudded against the back porch, making Riva jump. Ian crossed the veranda and opened the back door. He wore loose shorts and a faded T-shirt advertising a 10K cancer fundraising race back in 2012.
“You went running?” she asked, incredulous.
“Walking. Slowly walking,” he said as he closed the door behind him. “Movement’s good for sore muscles. Where’s your dad?”
“Who knows?”
“Text him and find out if he’s at the warehouse today or not. We’re going out to pick up the ingredients for the party, right?”
“Yes,” Riva said absently as she pulled her phone from her back pocket. Hi! Are you at the warehouse or on a route today?
“What else is on the schedule?”
“Um, the rental company is bringing over the chairs and tables today. The forecast is perfect, so we’ll set up in the backyard, then cover everything with drop cloths.”
“How long until your mom wakes up?”
“I’ll get her up after we get back from the grocery run,” Riva said. “There’s no point in her being awake and fretting over the china or the centerpieces.”
“I want to search the house and the warehouse again. I haven’t been able to search the third floor because she’s been sleeping so much. His laptop has to be here.”
“We don’t know that,” Riva said. “He has breakfast most mornings at a coffee shop about a mile from here. Maybe the owner keeps it there for him.”
Ian shook his head. “He wouldn’t let it out of his immediate control for the same reason he wouldn’t keep it at the boxing gym. It would have to be a place that’s safe, secured, where he’s confident no one else will get their hands on it. Would he back his data up to the cloud?”
“I can’t see him doing that,” Riva said. “He wouldn’t run the risk of an accidental hack.”
“House or warehouse.” His words were decisive and blunt. There would be no talking about what happened last night, much less about their emotions. For all she knew, he didn’t have any emotions, much less feelings for her. They couldn’t act on them anyway. “I’ll start down here.”
“I need to get organized,” she said. “Are you up to lifting and carrying today?”
He nodded, his face already distant.
“What’s up?” she asked, keeping her voice low.
He closed the distance between then and bent to murmur in her ear. “Jo says there’s something big going down in Lancaster. Soon. She’s going to call me as soon as she’s got details.”
“Okay,” she said. She started a pot of coffee while Ian laboriously climbed the stairs to the second floor and returned a minute later wearing a pair of black latex gloves.
While she examined recipes and blocked out the timing to prepare, assemble, and then make different components, backing into the schedule from the moment when everyone sat down to lunch, Ian methodically went through the first and second floors of their house. He pulled up rugs, tested floorboards, removed light switch plates, shook out pillows, and looked in every single pot, pan, and drawer in the kitchen. In the office just off the kitchen, he lifted pictures off the wall and ran his hand over it.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Looking for seams,” he said.
The whole scene had a surreal feel, windows open to the fresh spring day while a black-gloved, beat-up cop methodically took apart her family home. “Want more coffee?”
“Yes, please.”
By the time he reappeared, she had a schedule blocked out down to the minute and a to-do list that covered the front and back of a single sheet of paper.
“Nothing?” she asked.
He’d changed while he was upstairs, and now wore jeans, boots, and a button-down shirt. “Not yet.” He stripped off the gloves and tucked them in his jeans pocket. “The third floor makes sense. Your mother’s not going to have any idea what he’s doing while he’s on the laptop.”
“I need to pick up the ingredients,” she said.
“I’ll search the rest of the house when we get back.”
She looked at her phone. “Dad says he’s running a route today.” She handed him the sheet of paper. “That’s what we’re doing today.”
He did a double take. “Okay. Let’s get moving. I want to search the warehouse while he’s out.”
It was funny how easily she and Ian settled into that most mundane of tasks, running errands. They stopped at the upscale party supply shop and picked up the place cards and menu cards, then went to the florist. She’d half suspected Ian would brood in the truck, but to her surprise, he stayed by her side the whole time, carrying bags and boxes of floral arrangements without complaint.
“Thanks,” she said after he secured the florist’s boxes in the truck’s bed.
“For what?” he said, surprised.
“For helping,” she said quietly. “With everything.”
She had so much more to say, but the day had taken on a surreal quality, fresh green leaves dancing in the sunshine and soft breeze while she ran errands with Ian for a garden party and Ian plotted how to root out drugs and corruption and keep them safe.
“You’re welcome,” he said, just as quietly.
She was once again left with the feeling that everything about them was too big, too explosive, too charged to fit into a day-to-day life. They had baggage, history, friction, and then something like this happened, the kaleidoscope shifted and the fragments were just colored beads, bit of glass, nothing more. They were just Ian and Riva, running errands. Like normal people. Like a couple. Like a normal couple.
He looked at her to-do list. “All we have left is to pick up the ingredients from Urban Canopy and Growing Home,” he said. “And hit the warehouse.”
“Let’s do the warehouse first,” she said. “I don’t want to leave the ingredients out in the hot sun.”
“Fair enough.”
“Stop here.”
Riva’s truck wasn’t visible through the office window or door. The site was quiet, no one coming or going. She peered out the windshield, then at Ian, who was doing some cop-radar-listening thing. “Why?”
“I don’t want to just rock up to the door and find him there.”
“Why not?”
“We have no reason to be there.”
“Sure we do.”
“We do?”
“I want candy for the party tomorrow,” Riva said. “I’m making dirt cakes for dessert.”
“You’re making what?” Ian asked.
“Dirt cakes. They’re a refrigerated pudding cake. You use crumbled cookies as the ‘dirt’ and get gummy worms and fake flowers for decorations.”
He gaped at her. “Really?”
“No. But I told Dad it was a way to promote Henneman Candy and Vending. A boost for business. That kind of thing. He believed that. I already texted and asked if I could grab some packages of cookies and gummy worms.”
“Nice,” he said. “What are you going to do tomorrow when you serve those chocolate bomb cake things?”
“I’ll tell him I got worried about being too cute, or the worms didn’t go with the napkins, or I couldn’t find any unglazed flower pots. You can’t make them in glazed pots.”
Ian didn’t seem interested in this detail. “What if he’s got the laptop with him?”
“We still need to do the search. You never know what we might find.”
They pulled up to the gate. Riva keyed in the code and drove through the gate when it opened. She parked in front of the building and looked around.
“What?” Ian asked.
“Dad’s car isn’t here.”
“So?”
“He said he’s running a route. If that’s the case, he’d leave his car here.”
“Maybe he changed his mind,” Ian said. “Do the drivers ever come back for something they forgot?”
She shook her head. “Unless there’s some special request, they usually just fill the machine with what they’ve got.”
“Still. I don’t want to be here any longer than I have to.”
They quickly searched the warehouse to make sure they were alone, then Ian went to work again, this time pulling at the carpet to make sure it didn’t roll back. They stood in the warehouse and looked at the wall-to-wall shelving holding hundreds of boxes.
“High or low?” Ian said.
“Low,” she replied.
He grabbed a couple of boxes of snack-package Oreos and the gummy worms. Keeping an ear cocked for movement in the office, she pushed over the rolling ladder and went to work, shaking boxes to gauge their weight, riffling through packages of candy. They worked quickly, thoroughly, and found nothing at all.
Ian appeared unfazed. “Had to be done,” he said.
She stripped off her gloves and rubbed her eyes. “Let’s get going. The rental delivery people will be there around four.”
She felt like she was racing the clock in every way possible, her mother’s luncheon, getting her dad’s laptop, and her time with Ian. They made stops at Growing Home and Urban Canopy for the luncheon ingredients, then pulled up alongside the house just as the delivery truck was backing into the driveway. “Can you unload the perishables?” she asked. “If you run out of room up here, there’s a fridge in the basement. I’ll deal with it later.”
“I’ve got it,” Ian said.
She directed the rental company in setting up the tables and chairs, counted the linens and drop cloths to protect the furniture, signed for everything, and then headed into the house. The truck started with a rumble, and she sent them off with a wave. In the kitchen Ian had unloaded everything, neatly sorting things into their projected uses.
“Why doesn’t this surprise me?” She set the linens on the table next to the place cards and menus.
He surveyed the piles. “You’re going to have to sort it eventually. Might as well do it when you’re unloading it. What next?”
“I’ll go upstairs and see what Mom’s doing,” she said. “I don’t think she’s been out of bed all day, and that’s not like her.”
His eyebrows rose. “I’ll wait in my room and head up when you get her downstairs.”
She climbed the steps to the second floor, then walked through the unused spare room to what looked like a closet door, opened it, and climbed the steps to the third-floor master suite. Her mother and the architect had worked out a way to remove the original walls sectioning the space into two rooms and a bath in between; now the small landing at the top of the stairs opened on her parents’ bedroom to her left which flowed into a sitting area cuddled around a deep window seat that overlooked the backyard. The bath and closet were discreetly tucked away to her right.
Her mother was sitting in the window seat, a hazelnut cashmere throw draped over her lap. Her blond hair hung lank around her face. Riva crossed the gleaming maple hardwood floor and sat down at the opposite end of the window seat.
“Hi, Mom,” she said. “I didn’t know you were up.”
“My head hurt.” A faded smile, a pause. “Is everything coming together?”
“We’re on schedule.” She reached for her mother’s hand, chafed the limp, cold fingers between her own. Her hand was far too cold for someone sitting in the sunshine under a wool blanket. “How are you feeling?”
Another pause. “Fine.”
“Mom.” Her voice was a little sharper. She turned her mother, as unresisting as a small child, away from the sunlight and peered into her eyes. The pupils didn’t move, even though she was facing the darker room. “Did you take something today?”
“Your father gave me some pills before he left. He said I should take them if I wanted to be his good girl.”
Warning bells went off in Riva’s head. “Where does he keep the pills, Mom?”
Her mother lifted a hand in the direction of the bathroom. Riva hurried through the door and flung open drawers and doors to the vanity. She counted over a dozen bottles rattling in the second drawer, with more in the third. Riva stared at the bottles, too many for her to hold in her hands. How on earth had he gotten a doctor to prescribe all of these for her mother?
Then she sprinted back down the stairs and found Ian on the landing to the third floor. “What’s going on?”
“Come look in the drawers in the bathroom. There’s enough medication in there to drop a herd of elephants!” She clutched her hair in her hands. “He’s been drugging her. He’s gotten her addicted to Percocet and OxyContin! How could I have done this? How could I leave her here for so long?”
Ian grabbed her shoulders and turned her to face him. “Riva. You’ve been on a plane, right?”
She stared at him, so solid and true and real. “What? Of course I have.”
“Remember the safety check? If the cabin loses oxygen, you put on your own mask before helping your child or anyone else. Remember.”
His warm, firm hands helped her focus. The little yellow margarine cups, the stretchy elastic bands, the smiling cabin attendants. “Yes. I remember.”
“You were putting on your own mask. That’s all. We’re here now. We’re going to fix it now. We will end this. I swear to you, we will end this.”
She stared at him, torn between fear and despair and a wild hope because he kept saying we. We’re here now. We’ll fix this, end this. We.
They were a we.
* * *
“Go sit with your mom and keep an eye out for your dad,” Ian said urgently. His heart soared at the delight in Riva’s eyes when he said “we,” but first he had to get them all as far away from Rory as possible. “He could be home any minute.”
They took the stairs in a rush, Riva hurrying over to her mother while Ian turned and strode to the bathroom. Riva was right. The drawers in the vanity contained several thousand dollars’ worth of antipsychotics and painkillers. The OxyContin alone was worth over a thousand bucks on the street. Unfortunately, neither the vanity nor the wardrobe nor the shelves and drawers cunningly tucked into the eaves and window seat nor the mattress and box spring nor the nightstands contained Rory’s laptop or any other incriminating notebooks, index cards, tablets. Nothing.
Ian stripped off his gloves and shoved them in his back pocket. His search had turned up nothing more interesting than a stash of porn tucked behind Rory’s nightstand, a finding he would not be sharing with Riva, who, while he searched, had gently enticed her mother down the stairs with tempting offers of coffee and biscotti.
His phone vibrated in his pocket. Dad’s on his way upstairs.
He hustled down the narrow stairwell and crossed the floor to look out the windows at the street below. Rory walked into the little library.
“Hey, Rory,” Ian said, striving for friendly. “I was just enjoying the view.”
“It’s a really prime piece of real estate,” Rory said easily. “Have fun today?”
Ian took a chance. “Yeah,” he said, allowing just a hint of reluctance to creep into his tone. “To be honest, it’s not all I thought it would be.”
“Really? You’re ready to go back to the IT department?”
“No way,” Ian said. Determined, this time. “I still want to be my own boss, but I want something a little more exciting than farm-fresh fruits and vegetables.”
Rory looked Ian right in the eye for a long minute. “Exciting.”
“You know.” Ian huffed like he was irritated with himself. “I’m tired of being a good guy all the time. All the same guys competing for all the same promotions or projects. It’s all so … boring. I don’t give a shit if I get the next promotion, because it’s all the same bullshit anyway. Once I started boxing, started reading up on the street fighters, met some guys, my horizons expanded, you know what I’m saying?”
He made like he’d said too much. “Look, I’m not saying Trev’s like that. But in Lancaster, there’s all kinds of interesting deals being made at the boxing gyms, with the guys the boxers know. Trev’s pretty serious. He wouldn’t get into that. But they’re talking about the kind of business, and money, that’s not playing for forty K a year and benefits.”
“Lancaster’s been a possible expansion zone for me for a while.”
Adrenaline dumped into Ian’s bloodstream. Yes. Finally. This was it.
“I’m looking for someone to work for me. I’d hoped that someone could be Riva, but she’s proved … not up to the task.”
“In the vending machine business,” Ian said, sounding dubious. “That’s … interesting.”
“That’s only one part of the business.” Rory’s eyes were heavy lidded. “I’m looking for the right guy to run that expansion, and a couple of other sideline jobs.”
Ian perked right up at that. “A chance to go into business with you? Let’s talk.”
Rory smiled, almost fondly. “Now?”
Was he laying it on too thick? Too obvious? That was the trouble with sociopaths. They were impossible to read. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”
“What about Riva and the party?”
He put a little mocking into his half laugh. Rory wouldn’t want a potential business partner to be more devoted to Riva than him. He’d love to see Ian ditch Riva for him. “She’s got it under control.”
“Let’s go.”
* * *
They drove through the spring sunlight, the golden glow to the world almost unreal. Rory didn’t say much, and Ian found the silence a little unnerving. Unsettling. His radar was going off like crazy, something was wrong, something was very, very wrong, but he didn’t know what. He was trained to stay with that feeling, deal with it, and do his job.
He got a text and hit the button on his phone to read it.
From Jo: Get out of there.
“Everything ok?” Rory said.
“Fine. I just need to call a coworker about a problem they can’t fix without me. Look, it’s really not a good time right now,” he said when Jo picked up.
She kept her voice down. “According to McCormick, Kenny said their Chicago connection was taking a dog to get neutered. That’s code for getting rid of a rival, or a snitch. Get out, Ian. Get out now.”
It felt hinky, as Jo liked to say. The bones at the base of his skull were vibrating. He wasn’t in any danger, and if he backed out now, Rory wouldn’t let him in again. Which left Riva vulnerable to her father’s devastating form of manipulation and cruelty. He had his chance, right now, and he wasn’t going to throw it away and hope for a better one to show up at some random moment in the future.
He went for a hint of impatience. “I’m on my way to a really important meeting. I don’t have my computer with me. I’ll look at this when I get home.”
He hung up on Jo’s hissed goddammit, Ian. “Database issues,” he said. “I swear to God no one can run the nightly file imports without me.”
“They’re going to have to learn,” Rory said genially.
Was he going to take Ian to some warehouse and shoot him in the head? Ian knew the streets they were driving. They were headed straight to Sweet Science. No big deal. When they got to the gym, they walked through the front door. Micah knelt on the floor of the boxing ring, hands secured behind his back with a zip tie. Trev stood over him, his face blank as the cabinet fronts in Rory’s kitchen.
Ian slowed his step. Jo and McCormick had it wrong. Ian’s cover wasn’t blown. Micah’s was.
“Isn’t that the guy from that meeting we went to a couple of days ago?”
“The HR guy?” Rory ducked under the ropes. Ian followed him in, hoping he seemed eager, intentionally staying close to do what he could to deflect attention from Micah. “It is, and it isn’t. He’s actually a cop.”
Micah wasn’t looking at him. He stared straight at the floor, head down. Ian let out a low whistle. “No way. Um, I don’t want to tell you how to run your business, but isn’t assaulting a cop a pretty risky thing to do? Like, they don’t stop searching until they find you?”
“I’m not going to assault him,” Rory said, still smiling genially. “You’re going to do it.”
Just like that, the spot where his skull met his spinal cord started to hum. That was the trick, the evil, the danger. Because no one knew where he was. Jo wouldn’t stop with the phone calls, but it would take time for her to get in touch with the right people at the CPD, and even then, they’d be searching for a Lancaster cop. If they didn’t know about Micah, she might not get them moving in time to stop whatever was going to happen.
Whatever Ian was going to have to do.
Get out of this. Get out now, call 911, get an immediate, coordinated response that would be like the fist of God landing on this building. He held up his hands and started backing away, trying to stay in character. “Look, I know I said I was interested in going into business together, but this is way out of my league.”
A click. Trev held a gun to the base of Micah’s skull. Micah flinched. “Whoa, whoa!” Ian shouted.
“Did you think this was going to be like kids playing cops and robbers?” Rory laughed, an evil delight in his eyes. “You either get in the ring and deal with him, or Trev blows his brains out. Then he’ll blow yours out.”
“Why me? I’m not going to tell anyone. I promise,” Ian babbled, staying in character.
Rory gave him the shark’s grin. “Remember what I said about killer instinct? Let’s see if you’ve got it.”
Beat him up or he dies. The command was so crazy it took Ian a moment to process it. Rory was ordering him to beat Micah with his bare hands. It was the product of an insane mind, a brutal death for Micah. Landing a single punch would permanently scar Ian to his soul. He’d boxed at the gym. He’d participated in the department’s tournament. But that was with gloves, against men and women he knew were trained to fight, and in the ring by choice. Micah, if he remembered correctly, had never even played contact sports in high school. He was a state champion gymnast.
Micah looked up at Ian, a desperate challenge in his eyes. Ian climbed in the ring, and nodded at the zip tie. “Cut those off him.”
“What?”
“The plastic thing,” he said, trying hard not to sound like a cop, gesturing at the restraints. He threw a quick glance at the front windows. Not a single scrape in the paint covering the glass. No one would have any idea what was going on in here. “Cut it off him. He gets a chance.”
“Fine,” Rory said, lifting a finger toward Trev, “but if you lose to him, you both die. I guarantee the Chicago Police Department gave him some hand-to-hand-combat training.”
Trev leaned over and used a bowie knife to cut the zip tie off Micah’s wrists. Micah rubbed them, rolled his shoulders back and forward, trying to regain circulation. Ian stepped into the ring. “Gloves?”
“Bare knuckles,” Rory said. “Get to it.”
Micah was no idiot. His gaze flickered all over Ian’s body, studying stance and hips and shoulders, raised hands. He’d know a little bit about punching—every guy did—but Ian was most concerned about showing him how to block.
“Come on, you stupid motherfucker,” Micah said. “If I’m going down, you’re going down with me.”
Ian almost smiled. Instead he hit him, feinting with his left before landing a sharp jab with his right. He pulled the punch as much as he dared, but Rory and Trev would both know a real punch from a pulled one. Micah’s head snapped to the side and he staggered a couple of steps. Blood streamed from the cut Ian’s knuckles opened over his left eye. He touched his face, then looked at Ian, incredulous.
Then he turned and barreled right at Ian. It was an all-out brawl, rolling on the ground, grunting and cursing, Ian howling at punches Micah landed, theatrically swinging his fists and landing in spots that wouldn’t do much damage. Micah’s shoulder rather than his face, his hip rather than his kidney. But every time they drew back, panting, Micah was bleeding from a new spot, a cut lip, his nose. Try as he might, Ian hadn’t been able to avoid landing body blows, gut, ribs, low back. The line between a real fight and a partially faked one still meant two out of three hits landed. They landed softer, or they landed in less sensitive places, but they still landed.
Micah bulled in close again. Ian aimed for his chest but Micah pulled back reflexively at the last second and Ian’s fist caught him right in the chin. His head snapped back with a sickening crack and he slumped to the floor, unconscious. His breathing started to gurgle. Ian used his foot to turn his head to the side so he wouldn’t choke on his own blood.
“I need a minute,” he said to Rory, not having to fake his rough breathing. He looked at Trev. “Get me some water.”
Trev looked at Rory. Rory waited a beat, then nodded.
Ian swiped at the sweat and blood on his face. “You’ve seen enough.”
“So has he,” Rory said. “He’ll remember your face, and mine. Kill him.”
“Fine, but not like this,” Ian said. “I’m sore and I’m fucking tired after the beating your boy gave me yesterday. I’m not going to punch him to death in here. There’s no way you’ll get the DNA out of the ring. Don’t you watch CSI?”
Rory laughed. Trev came back with a bottle of water and chucked it at Ian. “What are you proposing?”
“Give me the gun and I’ll drive him somewhere and finish him.”
Rory used another one of those minimalist hand gestures to indicate Trev should climb into the ring. “With the money I’m going to make on this deal, I can buy another boxing ring. Kill him. You, watch.”