Page 19 of Clever Deceit

He didn't like that I was back in town. He didn't like that I knew what he'd done to run me out of town in the first place. And he definitely meant to do something about it.

Maybe if I'd accepted Tony's olive branch in the first place, it would have protected me. Maybe I would have gone back under the McCarthy umbrella and been able to shelter there. Get my feet under me and figure out how I was going to handle being back in the same town as them. But instead, I'd essentially told Tony he could shove it and that I was never giving him the time of day again.

I mean, I hadn't been lying. But looking back on it now, I wondered if that had been the smartest move. After all, it would have been a lot more comfortable to let him think that I was his friend. It might at least have offered me some protection.

Instead, he'd been coming after me night after night, busting into my house and then busting my windshield. Setting the cops after me... and setting Warren's house on fire. And now Mark was telling me that we needed to be careful.

I believed him.

I just didn't know what to do about it.

I flipped the page I'd just turned back so that I was at the start of the chapter... and tried to focus on actually reading. Mom was on her way into town to see a friend for lunch before she left for her next operation, and Warren was out running errands. I had the house to myself for a short period of time. I was bound and determined to take advantage of it to try to relax a little bit.

If only I could get my mind to shut up for five seconds.

I'd just settled down to reading the first line of the chapter again, forcing myself to focus on it, when there was a pounding at the door.

I jumped up and whirled around to look at the doorway that led from the living room into the foyer, my heart pounding in my ears and my breath suddenly short. Who the hell was knocking on the door? It wasn't my mom, I knew that much. This was her house, and she never knocked. And it wasn't Warren. His knock was soft and tickling, like he was trying to be gentle with the wood, and he was living here now, too. He'd only knock if he needed help carrying something in.

Or if he needed help.

What if he was out there hurt and I was sitting here with my head spinning off my neck trying to figure out who was knocking on the door? The memory of Mark warning me that my boyfriend needed to calm down screamed through my head, and I was heading for the door before I even realized I'd given my feet the order to move. What if something had happened to him? What if they'd gotten to him while he was out there and defenseless against them? I'd told him what Mark had said but hadn't given him the full extent of my worries, so if he'd been caught unawares because I didn't tell him the whole truth...

I got to the door and jerked it open, then squinted against the bright sunshine outside. Damn, it was sunny out here. The house was so dim I'd forgotten it was still midday outside, and now that I had the door open, I was blinded by the amount of light pouring in. I put my hand up to shield my eyes and breathed, my eyes still half-closed. I could barely see through the door, but if I just waited a moment longer, my eyes would adjust.

When they did, I saw that there wasn't anyone at the door.

There wasn't anyone in the driveway, either. There were no cars that didn't belong there. Not even a bike.

The driveway was deserted.

What in the...?

I looked down at the step, wondering whether someone had delivered a package or left a note, and saw a bouquet of bright red and yellow sunflowers.

My favorites.

I grinned and dropped down, scooping the flowers up to my chest and looking out into the driveway again. They must be from Warren. He knew how stressed I'd been lately and must have thought he'd bring flowers home to me to make me feel better. He knew how much sunflowers cheered me up. It felt like it would be impossible to look at them without feeling better about everything in life.

I still didn't see him in the driveway, though, and I cocked my head. What had he done, dropped them off and hidden? Had he paid someone else to deliver them as some sort of surprise for me?

I mean, if he had, that was incredibly sweet.

But something felt off here.

I stepped back slowly, my eyes still on the lack of cars in the driveway, and closed the door in front of me. It wasn't like Warren to play games—even the kind that he thought might make me smile. The man was incredibly straightforward, and though we hadn't really talked about his childhood, I got the idea that someone had played too many games with him when he was young. He wasn't about to replicate the process.

So where had these flowers come from?

I walked into the kitchen, where the afternoon sun was streaming through the windows, and set the bouquet down on the counter, frowning at it. They were my favorite flowers, and that made them feel personal, but now that I was thinking about it, pretty much everyone I'd ever met knew that sunflowers were my favorites. I'd been wearing them in my hair ever since I was a kid and had decorated my childhood bedroom with the design. This was a small enough town that most people would have known that I liked them.

But who would have sent them to me?

And why?

I reached out, got the scissors from a drawer, and cut the plastic wrapping from the flowers, thinking that I needed to get them into some water. I might not know who sent them, and they might feel strangely dangerous, but that wasn't their fault. They didn't deserve to stay thirsty just because I didn't know who'd sent them.

The moment the plastic fell away, I saw that the flowers had come with a card.