Halfway to the door he stops dead, one hand raised, as the facts catch up: It’s the middle of the night, and he’s staying alone in a run-down cottage on a dead man’s island, where everyone has strict instructions not to visit him.
The knocking comes again. Three rhythmic thuds. The bolt rattles in the lock. Then so does the handle. Fear plucks at his skin, and he starts to back away. Maybe the best thing is to go back up into the bedroom, crawl beneath the blankets, and pretend to be asleep. He’s taken a step toward the stairs when a familiar voice snaps, “For fuck’s sake, open the door.”
He sighs. At least it’s not a ghost.
Though, judging by the tone, he might honestly have opted for the haunting.
He pads over, throws the bolt, and pulls the door open, to be confronted by the sight of his boss, standing there in pink pajamas.
“Priscilla!” he says brightly. “What a surprise, to see you at this hour. Come to deliver your manuscript? I must admit, I can’t wait to see how you—”
“Drop the act, Holden,” she snaps, pushing past him. He considers saying, “Holden? Who’s Holden? You must be confused. Holden is the name of my charming and tireless assistant. I’m Rufus Beaumont.”
Back in drama school, he was good at improv, rolling with the punches and the pivots, never breaking character, but the look on Priscilla’s face is cold enough to kill any temptation. He closes the door and lets his head fall back against it, forgetting the damage already done. The ache starts up again.
He pushes his glasses out of the way and rubs at his eyes. “I don’t suppose you brought any Tylenol.”
But she’s not listening.
Priscilla—or rather, Ava Paulson, senior editor at Merriweather Press—briefly eyes the wreckage of the mug, the shallow pool of chamomile leaking like a bloodstain across the stones, before turning on him, eyes cold as ice behind her rose-pink glasses. “You almost ruined everything.”
Chapter Two
Four Weeks Earlier
“ARTHURFLETCH IS DEAD.”
Holden’s head snaps up at the words, pen hovering over the notepad.
He is perched on the stool in the corner of Ava’s office, taking notes, when Eleanor Vandenberg drops the news.
Five minutes earlier, Fletch’s longtime agent swept into Merriweather Press and up to Holden’s desk, declaring she needed to talk to senior editor Ava Paulson. In private. Now. Holden wavered, unsure what to do. Ava had spent the morning in back-to-back meetings, was behind on at least three different authors’ edits, and had just snatched up the sad desk salad he’d gotten her and escaped into her office with the order that for the next hour, she was not to be disturbed, on pain of death.
But death was probably better than denying Eleanor Vandenberg.
Especially since she never trekked across the city when a phone call or a curt email would do. (He’sseenmost of those emails, and she never once used an exclamation point. It’s periods, across the board, and he is pretty sure that is the sign of a modern-day sociopath.) The fact that she was there, in the flesh, meant something was either very right, or very wrong.
Holden stood and knocked, bracing for Ava’s withering look, and it was there, but as soon as she saw Fletch’s agent, it slid right off, replaced by something stiff but welcoming.
“Eleanor, what a surprise!” she said, and Holden mouthedsorryas the industry’s most powerful agent walked right in and took a seat.
“Aveline,” she said, and Holden’s mouth twitched, because he knew for a fact that Avahatedwhen anyone called her that, but Eleanor was one of the few people she wouldn’t correct. Still, she shifted a little in her seat, her expression tightening like a face mask that has started to dry out, and Holden wrote a tiny3in the corner of his legal pad.
Some people had a range of smiles. His boss, Ava Paulson, had a whole spectrum of frowns. Holden had been classifying them since he started working as her assistant, six months before, cataloging each and ranking them from 1 to 10 on a scale that ran from mild disapproval all the way through mental flaying.
(He spent the first two months trying to win his boss over, to no avail, and the next four months trying to avoid looks on the scale of 7 to 9.)
“Close the door, Holden,” Ava ordered. He hesitated, just for a second, unsure which side of the door he should be on when it closed—normally,privatedidn’t include him, but he knew for a fact that his boss was vaguely terrified of Vandenberg, so he entered and tugged the door closed in his wake.
Now he’s on the footstool in the corner, which is so short it makes his knees brush his elbows, and his slacks inch up enough to show his socks, which today are covered in ducks. And for the record, there are two chairs in front of Ava’s desk, but whenever he starts to take one, his boss points to the stool, like a teacher sending a kid to time-out.
Senior editor Ava Paulson seems determined to hate Holden Merriweather, as if it were his fault that he went to Yale, or that when his theater career didn’t pan out, his uncle did what family does and helped him get this job. It’s not like he walked in the door and was given a spot in the C-suite.
It isn’t his fault that his name is on the building. In fact, if anything, he is pretty proud of himself for still taking the job when his uncle made him start as an assistant.
Proud of the fact he’s working his way up, just like Ava did.
He knows it will take time, and he has never complained, even though it’s been six months, and she is still making him dobook reports, like he is back in school, insisting it is part of the job, when he is pretty sure she just doesn’t want him to get ahead.
