The badge on his uniform pricks the yarn of Mallory’s long-sleeved sweater as he draws back to look into her eyes. “It’s Grayson, MallieMoo. He’s—”
“Don’t say it.” She stifles a sob, and somehow, one of the worst parts of all this is knowing she’s letting her father down.
“I know, sweetheart, I know.” He keeps one hand cupped and runs the palm of his other back and forth over his cropped hair. “No matter how many times I’ve done this, it doesn’t get any easier. We’ll get through this. I already called Officer Middlebury. She’ll be here any minute.”
It’s over. Everything’s over.
“She has a lead. Something found at Mr. Fields’s home. She wasn’t sure what it meant, but now... I found something similar.” Mallory’s father opens his closed hand. In it is a silver charm in the shape of Texas with the single wordhome. Just like the one Mallory had seen on Noreen’s key chain at Grayson’s penthouse. When Mallory retrieved the keys that Aubrey hadaccidentally dropped into her mom’s freezer, they’d snagged on the way out. This must be why.
Ilena and Aubrey. Mallory has to keep them out of this. She can’t let them get hurt. No matter what, she has to protect them.
Her father rubs his head. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but I’m starting to think this involves one of your employees. Oh, MallieMoo, not just an employee, your assistant—that girl who you really seemed to like, the one who has access to your office, your home, my goodness, your house keys, which meansourhouse keys.”
What? What, what, what?
“That day, she offered you her car, didn’t she?” her father says. “She knew you were coming home with the serum and insisted you use it? It wasn’t to be nice. She had an ulterior motive. To cover her tracks in case anyone recognized the car.”
“I—I don’t understand.”
“I don’t either. Not fully. Not yet. But this...” He holds up his phone. “She was here. Your mom turned off the alerts for our doorbell camera a couple of weeks ago. That beast of a cat the neighbors let hunt the garbage rats kept setting it off. I just went on now and checked the history. The cat’s there. But so is a young woman. She was cupping her hands to look through the window on the front door. She had a set of keys in her hand with charms just like these.”
A woman? What woman?
Her father is looking straight at her and can’t see who she really is.
“The mood-enhancing serum you were storing in here is gone. It’s been replaced by something else.” His hand clenches into a fist. “She’s setting you up. Noreen Parra is framing you for murder. I’d bet anything.”
38
Mallory
Harvard University
Twenty-One YearsBeforethe Outing
Dead presidents weighed down Mallory’s pocket. Ones, fives, tens, even a fifty.Suckers.Drawn in by Mallory’s smokey eyes, round breasts, and knowledge of how to use them. Drawn in by Ilena’s everything.
In their new room on the top floor of Straus, Mallory counted their winnings. The story of a boy duct-taped to a wall had spread fast. And opened wallets. More bets had been made—these of the cold, hard, glorious cash variety. The longer the duct tape held and the more freshmen who’d found out, the higher the bets went on if the duct tape would last longer than the pompous kid. He’d made it to dinnertime before he begged to be ripped free.
At his side was the roommate forced to carry their stuff. Even under that tightly drawn hoodie, Mallory could feel his contempt, especially when the resident adviser he’d appealed to agreed to let the results of the bet stand.Ingenious, he’d said.Just what Harvard was looking for.
Though, honestly, what he’d been lookingathadn’t hurt.Christ, Ilena was gorgeous. Lush black hair as thick as wool but smooth as silk, a slender frame curved in exactly the right places, and peacock blue eyes that challenged you, that made you want to prove you were worthy of her looking at you.
Mallory had hated her instantly. Ilena had rolled that stiff new suitcase of hers into their dorm room as if it were a judgment of Mallory’s black duffel and cardboard box. She’d smiled deferentially, clutching that anemic white lamp and offering Mallory her choice of bunk as if Mallory arriving first didn’t shut that shit down. She was a fucking tourist. Mallory had laughed at them her whole life as they passed through the Yard, rubbingJohn Harvard’s bronze toe for luck, duped that it was some student tradition. Mallory had shoplifted lip gloss and NyQuil from the drugstore across from the circular newsstand. Mallory had reached her first orgasm in the Radcliffe boathouse when she was sixteen. Mallory owned this. Mallory wasowedthis. Eighteen years living with the grind and screech of the Lechmere trolley to living across from Urban Outfitters. She wasn’t going to let some chick who lucked out in the DNA department ruin her freshman year.
And then she’d said it. “Did you know Straus was William S. Burroughs’s dorm?”
Mallory had stared at her.
“Oh, sorry, William S. Burroughs is a famous writer from the beat generation—”
“I know who Burroughs is.” (She didn’t.)
“Of course.” Ilena gently rested her tony tush on her suitcase. “Supreme Court Justice David Souter too. And Darren Aronofsky, you know that movie,Requiem for a Dream?”
“Are you a tour guide?”
“No, I just like to be informed. They all have one thing in common.”
