Page 32

Ugh. My tongue felt fuzzy. Actually fuzzy, like it had grown a sweater overnight.

Squinting against the light leaking through my lashes, I registered a ceiling. White. Unfamiliar. A ceiling fan rotated lazily above me, its blades made of dark wood instead of the cheap beige plastic that hung over the bed at home.

That was not my ceiling fan.

My heart gave a slow, dreadful thump. Beneath me, the mattress felt wrong too. Softer. The sheets smelled like cedar and clean laundry instead of the lavender fabric softener Ben insisted upon because “a house should smell intentional, Phineas.”

Very carefully, I turned my head. The pillow beside mine was untouched, still plump and creased down the middle like it had never met a human skull. The room around me was simple. A dresser, a window with the curtains half drawn, and a chair in the corner with my shoes sitting neatly beneath it.

Okay. Okay, okay, okay. Where the hell am I?

The last clear memory I could dredge up involved a bar, a spider, and something cheesy. After that, everything went smeary, like someone had dragged a wet thumb across the film of my night.

My brain, helpful organ that it was, immediately offered explanations.

I had been kidnapped by a rural crime syndicate that trafficked in insurance analysts. They needed someone to cook their books, and my spreadsheet skills had finally made me a target. Any minute now, a man named Vito would walk in with a laptop and a threatening expression.

No. Too dramatic. The truth was probably worse. I had joined a cult. Drunk me had signed something. Drunk me had absolutely signed something, and now I belonged to a commune in the mountains where everyone wore linen and worshipped a charismatic beekeeper. This bedroom was my initiation chamber. The honey ceremonies would begin at dawn.

I pressed both palms against my eye sockets and groaned again.

Or, third option, I had been abducted by the government because I’d witnessed something at Jawbones. The spider. Aleister Crawly hadn’t been a spider at all but a sophisticated surveillance drone, and I’d blown its cover in front of civilians, and now I was in a safe house awaiting debriefing. Men in suits would arrive shortly to explain that Phineas no longer existed and my new name was Gary.

Each theory was stupider than the last, and yet my anxious little heart entertained every single one of them with complete sincerity, because the alternative was admitting I’d gotten blackout drunk in a bar and gone home with a stranger.

Except…

A smell drifted under the door. Butter. Bacon. Something bready and golden. My traitorous stomach growled loudly enough to echo, and my spiraling thoughts scattered like startled pigeons.

Cults probably don’t make bacon. Kidnappers definitely don’t.

Moving slowly, I sat up. The room tilted once then steadied. My clothes were still on, T-shirt and sweats both accounted for, wrinkled but intact. Only my shoes and socks had been removed, and someone had placed a glass of water and two aspirin on the nightstand like a small shrine to responsible hangover management.

I stared at the aspirin for a long moment. Kidnappers didn’t leave aspirin either.

After swallowing the pills and draining the entire glass, I eased my feet to the floor and crept toward the bedroom door. Halfway there, I spotted a pillow lying on the hardwood near the wall, dented in the middle, with a folded blanket beside it.

Someone had slept on the floor. In here. Near the door, like a guard dog.

An odd, tender ache bloomed behind my ribs. Whoever had brought me here hadn’t shared the bed. Hadn’t even taken the couch, wherever the couch was. They had slept on the hard floor of their own bedroom so I wouldn’t wake up with them in bed with me.

There was really only one person it could be, and my fuzzy memory finally coughed up a fragment. A leather cut. A deep laugh. Beautiful hands.

Oh no. Oh no, no, no. What did I say to him?

Pieces surfaced like debris after a shipwreck. Something about the Declaration of Independence. Something about kissing. My face went nuclear.

Pressing my ear to the door accomplished nothing, so I eased it open an inch and peeked out. A long hallway stretched in both directions, lined with doors, all closed. Directly ahead, at the far end, sliding glass doors framed a view of a wooden deck and pale morning light. The smell of coffee rolled down the hall toward me, rich and dark and irresistible, and my feet made an executive decision without consulting the rest of me.

Step by careful step, I moved down the hallway. The floorboards were warm under my bare feet, and the walls held a few framed photos I didn’t let myself study too closely. At the end of the hall, the space opened up, and a kitchen appeared on my right.

The kitchen was gorgeous. Modern, all clean lines and dark countertops, with a gas range and open shelving stacked with mugs in mismatched colors. A cast-iron skillet popped and hissed on the stove.

And standing in front of it, with his back to me, was Drift.

He wore gray sweatpants and a soft white T-shirt that stretched across those horizontal shoulders my drunk self had apparently admired out loud. His feet were bare. His dark hair was pulled back, shorn on both sides, clearly uncombed, and he was humming. Softly, absently, some low tune I didn’t recognize, moving a spatula through the skillet with easy, unhurried motions.

Rooted to the spot at the mouth of the hallway, I just watched him.