“Dammit,” my shoulders fell in defeat. I’d have to find another way to get into his office.
19
Mari
The rest of the day passed quickly after we found it impossible to get into Pierce’s office. The only other way was through a door on his balcony at the back end of the house, but that would require me to scale a brick building using only a rain gutter and my nonexistent Spider Man abilities.
My video screen on the laptop crackled, froze for a second, but then picked back up as Betty, an older woman with graying hair who devoted her life to the cause and third-world countries came back into focus in our video chat.
“Do you plan to see your parents before you return to Guatemala?” she asked. I hadn’t given Betty the truth about why I was staying in Pelican Bay for the next six months. It wasn’t a lie… mostly. I did my best to explain the funding needed and how Pierce asked me to stay and look into it, but I suspected she knew something else was going on. She just has no clue what.
Definitely not what was actually happening. No one would ever expect Pierce hinged his donation on me pretending to be his fake fiancée. Betty probably assumed I was homesick and wanted to spend time with my parents and friends before I returned to Guatemala, if she expected me to come back at all.
I certainly never told her the details of what happened between my family and me before I ran off to Guatemala in the first place. I didn’t want to appear a rich girl sentenced to manual labor in Central America, even if it was almost the truth.
“Hmmm. Probably not.” Honestly, I hadn’t considered stopping in to see my parents. I had no desire to be anywhere near San Francisco and my mother hadn’t contacted me since her initial phone call after she’d heard the news about Pierce and my engagement.
I assumed she’d fly in for the wedding, but other than that, she didn’t think to concern herself with what I was doing in the states. My aunt, on the other hand, was another story. She began calling incessantly and wanting to know every detail for the wedding. Aunt Dorothy was a hound dog when she sniffed out something she didn’t agree with or found fishy.
My aunt might be the only family member to love me. She didn’t disown me when my parents did, but she also knew me well and was growing suspicious. I never gave her any specifics about my impending nuptials and if I didn’t start laying out the goods soon, I worried she’d show up to find out what was happening on her own. She’d drag me back with her if she didn’t approve of Pierce. So far she’d only hinted at her displeasure with me marrying into one of the wealthiest families on the East Coast, but who knew how long that lasted. She and my mother were opposites.
Betty’s video cut out again, but my attention went to something behind me rather than waiting for her to pop back up. What the heck?
An amplified voice broke through the closed window.
“Just a second, Betty,” I said when she came back.
I left the chair I was using at the small desk in my guest suite and peeked out the window. A blonde-haired woman holding a megaphone stood on top of a chair outside the edge of the mansion. She and fifteen or twenty other people circled the sidewalk back and forth making sure not to step on the grass. Their toes lined up at the start of the grass.
“Keep Pelican Bay original!” Came from the megaphone and a cheer sounded from the crowd.
I rushed to my chair trying to hide my expression so as not to alarm Betty. “I’ll call you back tomorrow,” I promised her before hastily hanging up the call.
With my phone out I snuck back to the window and peeked out the glass again keeping my eye on the protesters. They shuffled around and a new person picked up the megaphone, an older woman with graying hair that reminded me in ways of Betty. Someone helped her stand on the folding chair as it wobbled back and forth, making me cringe and hope it wouldn’t fall over.
When she was safely in place, she heaved the megaphone up to her mouth. I stepped back and sent Pierce a quick message.
Mari: There are protesters outside your house.
His response came quickly.
Pierce: Stay inside and set the alarm.
It wasn’t exactly the promise of safety I expected in his reply, but it made sense. From a man who said this happened often, he’d probably grown accustomed to having demonstrators on his lawn. For me it was a first-time experience.
And a little exciting.
I snuck down the stairs like a ninja, ducking below every window so no one outside would see me pass and realize I was home. The nearest alarm panel was in the kitchen at the back door and I made my way past the fridge into the laundry room set off to one side to set the code Pierce forced me to memorize on my first day.
A scream broke free of my lips, and I stumbled back into the kitchen as the blonde woman fell undignified through a window on top of the washing machine. With a hand to my chest and breath heavy I got ready to hit the panic alarm when her head popped up and I recognized Katy.
“What are you doing?” I asked as she repositioned herself on the washer and then jumped to the ground.
“Sorry, the door was locked.”
She said it so matter-of-factly, as if it was no big deal and any time you found a locked door in Pelican Bay you just went through a window. “Yes, I’m home alone and didn’t want any intruders surprising me.” I locked it after Pierce left and the dead bolt was so stiff I wondered if I was the first person to ever do so.
It’s a reasonable response to me, but Katy shook her head as if that rule didn’t apply to her. “Is Pierce here?”
