Nope.
Not thinking about my stepfamily. They can suck the stinging end of a jellyfish for the rest of eternity.
“Rhys O’Malley,” I wheeze out. Gonna have a cast-iron-shaped bruise on my torso tomorrow. “Decker offered the cabin. Needed a getaway. Start a job here next week.”
“His name’s Rhys O’Malley,” the woman reports.
She’s somewhere in the room close enough now that I can hear Lucky burst out laughing on the other end of the phone. “No shit? Rhys is there?”
“That’s who he says he is.”
“Ask him how his fiancée’s doing.”
“Tell Lucky to suck my nutsack,” I rasp.
“Yep, that’s him,” Lucky’s tinny voice reports. “Sorry about this, Margie. I’m texting Decker, but he’s not answering. Because he’s an asshole. I know Rhys. You can trust…”
The rest of what he’s saying fades away, but the lights flip on.
And my cohabiter of this cabin—Margie Johnson, she says her name is—mutters a thanks, and then?—
“Oh, fuck.”
It’s reverently whispered, like she knows she’s created a massive problem, but she’s also impressed with herself.
That makes two of us, Margie.
That makes two of us.
2
PURPLE DYE AND RED EYES
Margot Merriweather-Brown, aka a billionaire heiress undercover on a secret mission to destroy her father to avenge her disinherited sister
English is the worst language.
We don’t have specific words for grief bacon, and we don’t have specific words for I’m simultaneously proud of myself for not freaking out and calling my security agent immediately and also horrified at the carnage in this cabin and also holy fuck, that dude is big, and I took him down all by myself, and I’m a badass, or I will be once the adrenaline leaves my system and I can take a deep breath without wanting to cry, and oh my god, do I want to cry right now, and I never cry.
Maybe I’ll just call itFriday night.
That’ll do.
For the rest of my life, whenever I thinkFriday night, that’s what it will mean.
And maybe my heart will try to beat out of my chest the same way it did when I was woken out of a dead sleep when the alarmstarted squawking, and the way it’s still thumping too fast right now.
I thought I was being overly paranoid when I rigged the homemade burglar alarm.
That I’d wake up in the morning and call Daphne, my sister, and tell her how ridiculous I was, and we’d both laugh about what might’ve happened if someone had walked under the bag of hair dye and gotten flour all over their face.
But instead, the fucking thing went off, and nothing about this is funny.
Someone broke into the cabin in the middle of the night, on the first night of my entire life without a security team within a hundred yards, and as I stare at the man hunched over and still coughing softly, I need a paper bag to breathe into and a place to go have a panic attack, which is what I’m pretty sure this is.
Rhys O’Malley’s identity will be verified for me shortly, because I texted my head of security his picture and name and told Cyril to look into him.
But right now, Rhys is blinking at me as I hang up with Lucky, the only one of the triplets I’ve spoken with so far. Lucky’s confirmed that Rhys is a family friend and that this isn’t the first time Decker’s messed up the cabin’s calendar.
