“Yeah.” Kenzo shoves his hands in his pockets. “I’ve got a few ideas.”
“I don’t suppose you want to share?” asks Sienna, lifting the glass to her lips before she realizes that it’s empty.
“I would,” says Kenzo with a crooked smile, “but then... well, you know...”
“You’d have to kill me?”
“Right. And I’d really rather not.”
Kenzo looks like he’s about to say something else when Malcolm comes sweeping in.
“There you are!” he says, apparently addressing the entire room, but he heads for Sienna, wraps an arm around her waist, pulling her in as he says through gritted teeth, “Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Because,” she hisses back, putting her mouth right up against his ear, “I’m not a fucking alarm clock.”
“Aw, couple goals!” chirps Millie. “I love when writers are married to each other.” Sienna swears she actually looks at Jaxon as she says it. “I mean, no one else can really understand what it’s like, can they?” Her gaze flicks back to Sienna and Malcolm. “You’resolucky.”
“We really are,” says Malcolm, tightening his fingers in a way Sienna knows too well as shorthand forPlay along. “I couldn’t ask for a better partner in crime.”
To Sienna’s delight, no one laughs this time around.
Conversation turns to dinner, and after quite a lengthy debate, they agree on vegetarian chili. Jaxon grabs a pot from the wall, and Kenzo starts pulling onions from the cupboard.
Sienna slips free of her soon-to-be-ex-husband’s arm and wipes her hands. “What can I help with? Chopping vegetables?”
Now that Malcolm’s here, she has the urge to get her hands on a knife.
The Horror Writer
THE KNIFE SLIDES IN.
It parts the flesh with ease and bites deep into the meat, a shallow pool of red leaking from the wound as he cuts, and cuts, and—
“Kenzo, how are those tomatoes coming?”
He looks up from the butcher block.
“Right here,” he says, dumping the diced beefsteaks into the pot where Priscilla has the onions and other veg already simmering.
Beyond the marble counter, Millie and Cate are setting the table. Thereisa proper dining room, he knows, on the other side of the house—he found it earlier when he needed a break from reading and took himself on an impromptu tour—but the kitchen is large, and welcoming, and by some unspoken agreement they’ve decided to eat here.
Malcolm has appointed himself master of drinks, and is opening more wine, while Sienna ferries silverware and plates between the kitchen and the table.
And then there’s Jaxon, who has a tea towel slung over his shoulder and is giving orders like the head chef in a restaurant during busy service.
“You gotta cut the pieces smaller,” he nags as Kenzo chops a bell pepper.
Kenzo looks down at the knife in his hand, flexing his fingers on the polished wooden grip. He’s spent a lot of time around weapons, par for the course, between his day job and his night one. At one point, he even considered culinary school. But he quickly discovered he wasn’t a fan of being ordered around.
Especially when he was holding something sharp.
“Like this?” he says, attacking the pepper. He could have shown off his skills instead—he even knows a few tricks—but Jaxon strikes him as the type to turn it into a contest, and as far as he can tell, there’s no hospital on the island. So instead, he hacks at the pepper as if he’s wielding a cleaver and not a santoku. Priscilla’s mouth twitches in a smirk. But Jaxon gapes in genuine horror. Which more than justifies the massacre.
Kenzo adds the peppers to the pot, then blocks Jaxon’s way when he approaches, wielding cumin.
“Stop,” he says. “That doesn’t go into Brooklyn chili.”
“What the fuck isBrooklynchili?” demands Jaxon. “I’ve never even heard of it.”
