ELOISE
Seconds later, a heavy knock comes on the back door and the knob jiggles. “Eloise, open up!” Tony yells. “We need to talk about what you saw. Let me explain.”
Heart threatening to explode out my ribcage, I race to the other end of the house, initially rounding the newel post to head upstairs. I stop short when I hear a noise like a key slipping into the back lock. Fuck! As far as I know, Tony doesn't have a key, but I wouldn’t put it past him to have made one when he had access to the house. I've left my phone upstairs, but my bedroom will be the first place he'll check. I spin around and slip back into the art studio. My eyes lock on the window behind the easel where I'd been painting. If I slip out, maybe I can get to my car.
Fiddling with the latch, I brace my hands on the edge of the panel and push. It doesn't budge. A cursory inspection shows me why. It’s painted shut.Shit.
“I always suspected your mother was a freak, but I wasn't sure until now.” I spin around to find Tony smilingat me from beside my mother's knife sculpture, a bottle of rosé in one hand and a pair of glasses in the other. I recognize both as coming from my kitchen.
“What are you doing here?” My blood runs cold. He looks congenial enough, but I know better. I brace myself as I would if I'd awakened a sleeping rattlesnake.
“I followed you. I thought we should celebrate our new partnership in the operation you witnessed.” He points at the floor. “It's long past time we shared a drink and talked. I heard Grams passed. We can start by sharing a toast to her.” He holds up the wine. “I always liked the old broad.”
I watch him easily uncork the bottle with his teeth and fill two glasses.What the fuck are you up to, Tony? That bottle of wine is from my kitchen. It wasn’t open. Which means he opened it there, recorked it, and opened it again here.
My eyes dart toward the window. The sun is sinking but not fast enough. I glance at my watch. At least an hour until sunset. Damien will come. He promised to kill Tony. He'll protect me. All I have to do is survive until dark. I hold up one hand. “I don't drink anymore. Health reasons.”
“You'll make an exception this time. I insist.” His dark gaze rakes over me, and his voice is eerily soft as he adds. “Take your coat off. Stay awhile.”
Instantly, I know three things: one, Tony tried to kill me last night; two, he knows I've seen his secret operation under my home; and three: he wants me to drink the wine. Conclusion, the wine is drugged or poisoned. I'd have to be stupid to think anything else.
I glance at the window again and the sun beyond. If I can just delay him...
“Take your coat off, Eloise,” Tony commands again. “Let's share a drink. You owe me that much for giving you thisplace.”
Owe him? I bite my tongue and slide my jacket off.
His smile fades. He sets the bottle down on the large, paint-splattered table at the center of the room and moves toward me with the two full glasses in his hands. He thrusts one my way. “Drink the wine.”
I take the glass but don't drink. “Why are you really here, Tony?” I ask, adding a flirtatious smile. “You're not second-guessing the divorce, are you? It'll all be over in a matter of days. Like ripping off a Band-Aid.”
He rolls his eyes toward the ceiling and shakes his head. “You are one giant pain in the ass, you know that? Just drink the fucking wine, and this will all be over.”
“What will be over?”
Darkness passes behind his eyes, turning his gaze as cold and dead as a shark's. I've seen that look before, last night in the eyes of the man who tried to kill me. Tony has come to finish the job. “You didn't think I'd let you keep it, did you?”
The words send a shiver through me, and I look down into my glass. “I'm not strong enough to fight you.”
“No, you're not.” He snort-laughs at the thought.
Keep him talking. “We both know how this is going to end, but first, tell me what I saw down there. It's been driving me crazy. Is that why you wanted this place so badly?”
He smirks. “You fucking Harcourts never did understand what you have in this place.”
I bristle but keep my face completely impassive. “What do we have?”
“Your estate is on the Rappahannock River, sweetheart —the only privately owned land that ends at the cliffs. The rest is tribal property. The real secret of this place is the caverns.”
“Is that what I saw?” As if there were any other explanation.
“Caves in the side of your cliff lead from the river to an underground network of caverns perfect for conducting delicate business. Oh, and these are special caves. Unbelievably unique. They make the bat cave look common. Unless you know what you're looking for, you might not even see the opening from the river. But you better believe that you can drive a boat right into the cliff and park it safely in a space the size of a warehouse. My family invested a lot of money to make it work like a warehouse too.”
My stomach twists as I put two and two together. “The sinkhole.”
“Nothing gets past you.” He chuckles wickedly. “Yeah, there was no sinkhole. While we were renting the Anderson's, we ran everything from the farmhouse, and the series of caverns under it. But when the Andersons canceled our lease, we needed to move more of the operation underground. I put the crack in your foundation while you two were getting your grandmother's nails done, then paid the inspector to tell her it was a sinkhole. All those workers we paid for? They fixed more than her house. The operation we have down there now is state of the art.”
“We?”
