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They had. But she’d been a fool, and she knew when to change tactics. If she gave this man one more inch, he would take over. She’d seen it with Jamie. One day, she and Jamie had been ordinary teenagers, and the next thing she knew her brother had his own armed escort. He was ostensibly an adult now, but he reported his comings and goings to a team of people who monitored his food, screened his friends, and installed an alarm system in his house that had a habit of going off a three a.m. in irritating bursts of shrieking that no one knew how to stop.
Security guards oversaw Jamie’s whole life. They told him where he could go and when, controlled him, choked him. Ellen couldn’t handle that. Not after Richard.
So she folded her arms over her chest and stood up straighter. Caleb’s gaze locked with hers. Let him try, she told herself. Just let him try.
But he only smiled, his eyes too kind and a bit bewildered. “I’m here to help you. The way I see it, Breckenridge put me under contract, but I work for you.”
“Excellent,” she said. Because it didn’t matter whether he was kind. It only mattered that he would wreak havoc with her life if she let him. “In that case, you’re fired.”
Read on for an excerpt from Ruthie Knox’s
About Last Night
Chapter One
The Pigeon Man was usually here by now. Tuning out her companion’s self-serving story for a moment, Cath double-checked the LED display suspended over the station platform. Ten minutes until the train. In this woman’s company, it would feel like a lifetime.
Resigned to her fate, Cath crossed her legs and relaxed back against the bench. At least she could enjoy the unseasonably cool morning—the first break all week from the miserable July weather that had been tormenting London.
“… and they told me it was the most brilliant way to add a tactile element to protest action they’d ever heard of. I happened to mention you wanted to put the piece in your exhibit, but they didn’t know who you are,” Amanda said, her prep-school English accent turning the statement into an accusation.
Cath perked up. “I’m with the V and A. They know the V and A, right?” She was a small cog, but she worked for a big machine. Surely even Amanda’s hard-core activist cronies had heard of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s world-renowned collection, even if they hadn’t heard of the upcoming exhibit on the history of hand knitting that Cath had been hired to assist with.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Amanda said dismissively, and Cath spotted the sun gleaming off the bald pate of the Pigeon Man as he made his way up the steps. He took his place in front of the map kiosk and fixed his eyes on the ground. Calm today, then. When he didn’t talk, the Pigeon Man could pass for normal. It was when he launched into agitated conversation with a stranger that he began thrusting his head forward in a bird-like manner and his beady eyes and beaky nose took on greater prominence.
He pulled a candy bar out of his pocket, and she remembered it was Friday. He was often late on Fridays, no doubt because he stopped at the newsstand to buy himself some end-of-the-week chocolate.
The thought caught her up short. Shit, did she really know the habits of the train station regulars that well? She did a quick survey of the sparsely populated platform. Emo Boy was wearing his favorite pair of skinny jeans this morning, and Princess had gotten her roots touched up.
Sadly, yes, she did.
“The next person who comes up the steps will be an older lady carrying a purse the size of a bus and a bakery bag with a croissant in it,” Cath said.
“What?”
“It’s a prediction.”
“You’re clairvoyant now?” Amanda asked, her pert nose in the air.
“Sure.” Cath was beginning to see how her pathetic store of knowledge might come in handy. “I know who’s coming up the stairs next, and I know you’re going to do the right thing and give m
e that straitjacket for the exhibit.”
Thinking of the exhibit reminded her that she and her boss, Judith, would be pawing through sweaters from storage this morning. Cath rummaged through her bag for her antihistamines, freed two from their hermetic blisters, and swallowed them with a sip of water. Curatorial work could be sneezy. She’d learned to arrive prepared.
As she slipped her water bottle back into her bag, Bus Purse came into view, right on schedule.
Amanda frowned and straightened up, trying to get a better view of the steps. “You can see down to the high street. That’s how you knew she was coming.”
“You’re closer than I am. Can you see down there?”
The frown deepened. “Well, you must be using a mirror or something. It’s not as if you’re capable of magic.”
“Wanna bet?” Cath answered, warming to the challenge.
Magic had never been her specialty, but she wanted that straitjacket. It had been featured in a widely covered protest demonstration Amanda and her buddies had staged outside the prime minister’s residence a few years ago, and it would look fabulous on display, the perfect visual complement to the story the museum’s exhibit would tell.
Unfortunately, Amanda had a stranglehold on the thing, and Cath had known her long enough to understand she got a kick out of stringing people along.
