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“Annalise?” I raise my voice a notch, but nothing.
I let myself in. Groceries cover several surfaces, but she is nowhere in sight. Unease picks at my calm, and suddenly I’m picturing myself telling Tripp something horrible has happened to his little sister.
And then I hear the voices. Annalise’s and some man’s. I’m not making out words from this distance, but neither do I discern sounds of distress.
Still, I have to be sure.
I move quietly down a short hallway and spy around the corner into the oh-so grand foyer that wowed me on that first day.
My dislike for the visitor is instantaneous. My next reaction?I can take him.He’s tall and fit but the kind of fit that comes from a fifty-bucks-a-month gym membership, not any kind of real work. As for fighting, I’m guessing he scrapped with the guys in the locker room of his private school a time or two back in the day, but never on the street where life or death was the only option. This guy is all slick hair and designer labels.
“You shouldn’t have come,” I hear Annalise say.
“But I missed you,” Mr. Designer Labels whines. Yes, whines, another strike against him.
“You sure weren’t missing me two days ago,” she snaps back, but I hear heaps of hurt in her voice.
“Come on now, we’d broken up. You surprised me.”
“Clearly. Just…get out, Kyle.”
Kyle.Even his name grates.Go, Annalise!
But eavesdropping is beneath me—at least when I’m not on the job.
I ease backwards until, “Don’t touch me!”
“Liiisse.”
“I mean it, Kyle!” Her voice is up another octave.
When I look this time, the creep’s hands are on her, his fingers digging into her arm. She tugs, he holds.
Puffing up, I step into the archway. “Everything alright in here?”
I can’t quite discern Annalise’s opinion of my sudden arrival, but Kyle slowly releases her, so my primary objective is already achieved.
Flushed, she backs several steps away from the guy while the louse casts a very ugly assessment at me. I’m in the same tank I wore while walking the shoreline, so my tats are on full display.
“Who are you?” Attitude drips off of him.
“A friend.” Hopefully he catches the on-notice-bud frost in my tone.
He smirks at Annalise, thumbing my way. “You have got to be kidding me?”
Fire lights her features. “He’s. A. Friend.”
“Fine. Then can you call him off for a minute so we can talk?”
Lip pulled in, she skirts me an uncertain glance, then surprises me with her response. “I’d rather you just go, Kyle.”
I brace, and, oh, I pray Annalise does too, when I see a particularly nasty expression overtake his phony-handsome face. What’s coming may require a fist-to-face response.
“Ahh, I see. A friend with benefits. Aw, Lise, and here I thought you were anicegirl.”
I make a decision right at this moment: I will never call herLiseagain.
“You should have warned me I was going to have to get in line.”
