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“As long as it doesn’t threaten the rest of us,” Aunt Mabel said, twisting her napkin in her hands.
“Right,” Carter put in. “I’m just saying we should be careful.”
Threatenthem? Be careful? They were talking like I was some kind of danger to them.
Did they know more about me than I’d realized? But the second that thought passed through my mind, I shook it away. If they’d realized I was a killer for hire, I’d have expected much harsher words than what I’d just heard. Hell, I’d have expected them to already have called the National Guard on me.
“We’ll see,” my mother repeated, and then, to my frustration, changed the subject. “Mabel, how was that convention last weekend?”
As Mabel loosened up and started gushing about some event she’d attended about “data retention” or some other concept that related to her job, my gaze drifted through the room from where I was crouched. It snagged on a movement only just visible through the family room doorway.
Margaret had appeared in the hall—next to a door that she nudged back toward the wall with a very deliberate motion. And the second it’d slid back into place… suddenly I couldn’t see the edge of it anymore. The striped wallpaper behind her looked as impenetrable as if no one had ever passed through it.
I stared for several seconds before yanking myself down below the window ledge as she headed toward the family room, where she’d have been facing the window. My heart was suddenly beating faster.
That spot in the hall—it was where I’d noticed the faint wear in the carpet when I’d investigated the house before, wasn’t it? The signs that I’d thought pointed to furniture that’d once been placed there.
But if my eyes hadn’t just deceived me, I’d been correct in my first impressions. The wear had been caused by a door, just one that was concealed so well you couldn’t find it or open it unless you knew the secret.
What kind of family needed an entirely secret entrance within their own home? And where the hell did it lead? No one had mentioned it during their tours of the house, so it obviously wasn’t a fun quirk but something they purposefully kept hidden.
Did it have something to do with the rituals Carter had been talking about?
I rubbed my hands over my face. The more I searched for answers, the more questions I seemed to get instead. How did all the pieces I’d been seeing and hearing fit together? Were the Maliks hiding even more?
Was this what the Hunter had been warning me about?
The second that question crossed my mind, I grimaced. I was all tangled up because of the way he’d been egging me on when I hadn’t noticed anything more than mildly awkward before—and that was mostly my own awkwardness. There could be totally innocent explanations for all of this. The Maliks were in a position with a lot of scrutiny because of my dad’s political standing. Of course they’d keep some things private.
Thatprivate, though?
I stifled a groan. Was I getting played by a man I’d never met, or were these secrets just as important and dangerous as the Hunter had claimed?
The one thing I knew for sure was that I needed to see what was in that secret room.
