He guffawed. “You’re not going anywhere looking like that.”
I followed him down the hall, arguing in vain as he opened a closet, took two towels from the shelf, and dropped them in my arms, nearly spilling my coffee.
“You can use my shower to clean yourself up before we go.” He turned back for the kitchen before I could protest. But there was nothing I could say. I couldn’t take the kids out of state without his consent. And there was already a warrant for Vero’s arrest in the state of Maryland, after she’d been accused by her former sorority sisters of stealing a large sum of money from their treasury account and fleeing the state. The last thing we needed was an arrest warrant in Virginia for me. We would just have to find a way to meet up with Marco without Steven knowing what we were up to. That, and keep Vero and my ex-husband from murdering each other on the way.
I slung the towels over my shoulder and carried Vero’s coffee up the stairs, following the sounds of the children’s voices. She had stripped Zach out of his pajamas and was fastening him into a pair of overalls over a long-sleeved onesie in his bedroom while Delia got herself dressed in the bedroom across the hall. It was the first time I’d seen the home Steven had moved into after he and his ex-fiancée, Theresa, had broken up last fall.
I had to admit, the old farmhouse was quaint, nothing like Theresa’s luxury townhome a few blocks from my house. This place was cozy, old enough to feel both lived in and solid, the soft creaks in the wood floors and fine settlement cracks in the walls giving it a sense of permanence and character. I peeked my head inside both children’s rooms. They’d been sparsely furnished—a bed and a chest of drawers for Delia, with pink gauzy curtains around the window overlooking the neighboring farm, the Barbie DreamHouse Steven had bought her for Christmas set up below it. A race car–shaped toddler bed filled most of Zach’s room, with the exception of a dresser that doubled as a changing table, and the land mines of toys that had been dumped across the floor.
Vero fastened Zach’s last buckle and set him loose. He tore off into his sister’s room, making Delia howl in protest as he made a beeline for her dolls.
Vero rose to her feet and dusted her hands on her pants, though given the filthy state of her clothes, I doubted her fingers were any cleaner now. “Ready to roll?” she asked when she saw me standing in the hallway.
“There’s been a small change in plans.”
The color drained from her cheeks. “What do you mean?”
“We’re going to shower and change first,” I said, holding out her coffee. “You can use the kids’ bathroom, and you still have some clean clothes in my suitcase.” We’d transferred most of Vero’s clothes into my luggage before we’d left the citizen’s police academy in order to make room for a boatload of cash in hers, all of which had been paid to us and then subsequently taken from us by a very angry Feliks Zhirov—or more accurately, one of his very scary associates.
“We don’t have time to clean up, Finn! We have to get to Atlantic City right now! Javi’s—”
“Alive,” I reminded her, dropping a towel in the crook of her arm and setting the coffee mug in her hand. “One more hour won’t kill him, but we can’t show up to Marco’s hotel looking like this. They’ll never let us in.” I nudged her into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. “Give me your clothes,” I called through it. “I’ll run them through a quick wash in Steven’s machine.” The door cracked open and Vero shoved a smelly, soot-stained bundle at me. I took it, lingering in the hall until I heard her turn on the faucet and step under the spray. “Oh, and there’s one more tiny change in our plans. Steven’s coming with us.”
That’s when Vero screamed.
CHAPTER 2
It took an act of will to drag myself out of Steven’s shower. I’d scrubbed until the last of the smoke-gray water swirled down the drain, wrapped myself in a towel, and opened the bathroom door to his room. Vero was already there, wearing a pair of yoga pants and my last clean T-shirt, her damp hair perched in a towel on her head as she dumped out the remaining contents of our suitcase onto Steven’s bed, searching for a pair of socks.
I found a fresh set of underwear and a pair of clean sweatpants in the pile, and I eagerly dragged them on. “You couldn’t have left me a shirt?” I asked, my hair still dripping as I held the towel around my chest. All the mud-caked, sweat-soured clothes Vero and I had worn through our week of citizen’s police academy were still tumbling in Steven’s dryer down the hall.
Vero waved a sock toward Steven’s open closet. “Why don’t you borrow one from Captain Buzzkill.”
I took one of Steven’s flannel shirts off its hanger and shrugged it on. As I pushed up the sleeves and fastened the buttons, I paused, my gaze sliding to the row of moving boxes on the shelf.
Two days ago, Steven had admitted to me that he’d been snooping in my house, in Vero’s closet, all too eager to uncover her secrets. But since then, I’d learned Steven was keeping a few of his own.
I reached above my head, turning the boxes sideways to read the moving labels.
“What are you doing?” Vero asked, peeking in the closet.
“Looking for evidence.”
“Of what?”
“WhateverEasyCleanuncovered.”EasyCleanhad vetted my ex-husband before taking the job. And right before the contract killer had been whisked away in handcuffs, he’d told me that Steven was hiding some skeletons in his closet. What better place to look than right here?
“We don’t have time for this,” Vero said. “As soon as that dryer’s done, we need to hit the road and start looking for Javi.”
“Steven’s coming with us,” I reminded her. “And so are the kids.”
Vero sighed and squeezed into the closet with me, stretching up onto her toes to study the labels on the boxes. “This is all the same stuff he had in the basement when he lived with you. None of these look like they’ve been opened since.”
I thought back to my conversation with Steven two days ago. Vero’s closet wasn’t the only place he’d gone snooping. Apparently, he’d also checked the nightstand beside my bed, which I only knew because he’d opined about the Costco-sized stash of batteries and the vibrator he’d found hidden in it.
I crossed the room to Steven’s nightstand and opened the single drawer. Vero leaned over my shoulder as I rifled through the contents.
“Oh, isn’t that cute?” she cooed, holding up an unopened box of condoms. “He’s an optimist.”
