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Definitelythe Uber.
Bag. Keys. Phone. Go.
I unlock the doors to my car and hop out into the night, phone in hand, ready to double-check the license plate.
I’m almost to the white SUV when it rolls forward again, slow and careful.
Oh,crap.Somebody turning around in the lot. Probably stopped to Google an address. My face heats at mistaking some random person’s car for an Uber, but okay. This happens all the time. People walk toward the wrong car in public parking lots a hundred times a day.
I turn on my heel and put a hand to my forehead.I forgot something in my car, oh no!It’s ridiculous, and my face gets even warmer. It’sdarkout. There are lampposts at either end of the lot, but whoever’s in the SUV won’t be paying attention to me. They’ll be heading onto the street and out of my life forever like that guy who didn’t mug me last year.
“Hope no hot guys are waiting to mug me in this parking lot,” I joke to absolutely no one. Even if they are, they’re screwed. I’m waiting in the car until I get the notification that Angelica is literally knocking on the driver’s side window. “I dare you to—”
A hand clamps over my mouth.
A firm hand to match the powerful arm that wraps around my waist like I’m a box of case files, an inanimatethingthat needs to be whisked off to somewhere else. My feet come off the ground, and we’re moving.
Sweet mother of Margaret Brent.
I’m being kidnapped.
5
JAMESON
Come to find out, Judge Beaufort Hayes’s granddaughterisn’ta kid.
She is, in fact, a woman who wears slacks to leave her house at eleven at night.
Her timing was exquisite.
I’d been watching the house for about five minutes, and I’djustpopped the trunk to set about burning the whole damn thing to the ground when the garage door opened. A light switched on automatically above the vehicles parked inside. I caught her copper-red hair and the curve of her cheek before she hopped inside and spent a minute adjusting her mirrors.
What happened next was the same as looking at a new property for Phoenix and having twenty various numbers pop into my head, one after the other. Usage. Repairs. Projections. Profit.
I wasn’t concerned with the sunk cost, which mainly amounted to what I had in the trunk. Pair of bolt cutters I already owned. A moderate amount of accelerant. A package of a hundred clean, white rags.
Ropes.
In case the judge—
Who knows what the man would’ve tried?
It wasn’t about the money I’d spent. It was about the commitment. I already had a plan, and it’s almost impossible for me to stop once I’ve started. Usually, it’s the cops who tie a neat bow around whatever fuckery I’ve planned, not me.
But I wanted my hands in her hair. That tipped the scales. It made the prospect of abandoning the plan more enticing than going through with itifI could verify a single detail first.
I got out of my SUV and went to stand near an enormous oak tree in the grass by the sidewalk.Judge Beaufort Hayes Cobble Hillwent into a Google search. The results loaded, the screen glitching from dark mode to light as she finished her turn onto the street.
Her car stopped, and I got behind the tree. That was a goddamn triumph of self-control. I wanted the fire to be licking up the ceiling by then, but I also wanted to be…
Notlickinganything. Jesus Christ. The rage hadn’t gone away. The constant background hum of unfairness. It was all still there, but redirected somewhere else. What he did to my family means I need to know more abouthisfamily.
Next second, the judge’s name was on the screen.One granddaughter, Lily Hayes.Another search, fast as I could.Lily Hayes Cobble Hill New York Citybrought up a page full of her photos. She graduated from NYU in May.Will attend Columbia Law School in the fall of…
Didn’t matter. The hair was a match.
It was easy enough to follow her down the street. Easy enough to spot her sitting in her car in the glow from her phone. Easy enough to pull in slow and casual and see if she’d get out.
