“Thank you so much, Genevieve,” I say. “And again, we’re so sorry for the inconvenience. Have a good rest of your day.”
“You too.”
I let out a sigh of relief, but only a small one, as the address for the property Genevieve’s assistant is staging arrives on my phone.
“I’ll go a bit before we close,” I say, then remember how early it’s been getting dark now. We haven’t had any issues with crime at Virtu in the last few years, but even so, I don’t love the idea of Annie being here alone at night. “Actually, a bit after we close,” I amend. “So you aren’t here by yourself.”
“Yeah, I guess after what happened you’re probably back to not trusting me to handle things.” Her tone is somewhere between standoffish and guilt-riddled, and I feel the need to soothe both of her warring assumptions.
“It’s not that. I just don’t want to leave you here by yourself after dark. For your safety.”
“Oh. That’s considerate of you.” She sounds slightly surprised, which is galling. I may have been a dick to her before, but it’s not like I ever implied I wished her ill. “And then I can go too,” she adds, her tone making it clear it’s not an offer, but a decision.
“You don’t need to,” I assure her.
Her eyebrows raise. “No, but I want to. Even though losing the goose might bemostlyyour fault, it wouldn’t have happened if I’d gone back there to oversee what they were loading. So let me go with you. At the very least, I can help you carry the case back to the car. You know that isn’t a one-person job.”
“Your hand, though,” I try, despite knowing that it won’t convince her to let me handle this on my own.
“All good, thanks.” She holds it up, and my gauze and tape job has been subbed out for a large bandage plastered over her palm. “Better than Monday night for sure, and I helped you then, didn’t I?”
“You did. But only because you sort of forced me to let you.”
“Well, I’m forcing you again,” she says briskly, smiling wide as she brushes past me and heads toward the coat hooks beside the staircase. “And now that you’re back from the bank, I’m going to go out and get myself a little treat. Because I think we’ve forgotten in the midst of our goose whoopsie that I just made this store a fuckton of money. That deserves a cookie or something, I would say.” She grabs her peacoat and shrugs into it as she heads out the front door, her inherent personal brightness becoming one with the sunlight’s.
ELEVEN
Annie
It’s annoying howeasy it is for six-foot-tall Cal to get into his massive SUV compared to me, who at five-three has to ascend strategically like a rock climber. “Why is your vehicle so unnecessarily large?” I ask when I’m finally buckled into the passenger seat. “Overcompensating for something?”
He ignores this provocation and turns the key in the ignition. “I admit it wouldn’t have been my first choice. It isn’t particularly easy to park, especially in a city, and it costs me a fortune in gas. But it’s helpful for smaller local pickups and deliveries, rather than having to work with an outside company.” Cal pulls out of the alley and onto the street, the somewhat dated center display providing directions to the address Genevieve texted him. “It was Graham’s, originally. He left it to me, along with the apartment and his half of Virtu.”
“That was kind of him,” I say.
“Yeah. We were close. Graham and I considered each other family since neither of us had much of it otherwise. He did havea partner—a romantic one, I mean. He and Francis were together for ten years. But Fran has his own car and career and place to live, so Graham decided to bequeath those things to me.”
I wonder, not for the first time, whether Cal wants his entire life to revolve around the antique shop or if it’s something he sort of fell into. Maybe something he feels he owes Graham in exchange for his years of mentorship. But this truce between us is too nascent to ask such personal and probing questions. Besides, the lightness I sensed this morning has disappeared since we discovered the goose missing, and he is understandably all tension and anxiety once again. Thankfully, he’s continued being nice to me, but I’m sure there’s a limit to how much he’s willing to let me poke and prod before he snaps. (Kind of rude leopard and all that.)
We don’t converse much more for the rest of the twentyish-minute drive. I pretend I’m listening intently to the classical music playing on the radio, but in reality, I’m mentally looping the melody of the last piece that played and trying not to let Cal’s proximity get to me. Ever since he helped me with my injury, I’ve become a bit too aware of his physical presence. I blame all the touching involved in first aid. Because if that hadn’t happened, I probably wouldn’t have the knowledge of how warm and strong his hands are. How they’re just a bit rough in a way that makes me wonder how they’d feel elsewhere on my body.
I watch said hands as they grip the steering wheel and wish they were gripping me instead. Which is a problem! Sure, I had a crush on Cal when I got to Virtu, but the reality is that this is all much more complicated than I expected, what with the blackmail and now a lost goose that could get traced back to us any minute and ruin his career. Both of our careers, really, sinceI’m now probably an accomplice to…whatever the hell this is. There’s no room for a dalliance, even if I am starting to find his personality less repulsive than I did before.
The Suburban eventually comes to a stop beside a keypad placed in front of a large metal gate. Cal enters a code, which Genevieve must have provided along with the address, and the gate slowly opens inward, allowing us entrance to the driveway that curves in front of an absolutelymassivemansion. This place looks like it should be a hotel or something, not a single-family home.
Presumably noticing the slightly horrified awe that’s written all over my face, Cal says, “Welcome to the northern suburbs.”
We get out of the car (or rather, I practically fall out as I try to slide off the seat without exposing my entire undercarriage to the world) and approach the oversized wooden front door. Cal presses the doorbell. It takes so long for Makayla to answer that we exchange a concerned look. Is it possible she finished up early and left?
Finally the door swings open. “Hey, sorry, I was on the other side of the house,” Makayla says, slightly out of breath. “Genevieve said I’m supposed to let you come in and look around for some missing item?”
“Yeah, we shouldn’t be long,” Cal says. “As soon as we find it, we’ll be out of your way.”
“Do you want to tell me what it is? I’ve been around the place a few times since the moving guys left. I have a pretty good idea of where everything—”
“No,” Cal interrupts. “No, but thank you.”
“It’s…sensitive,” I stage-whisper. “Something that wasn’t supposed to be there when you picked up the stuff but got mixed in by accident.” I press my lips together hard and raise myeyebrows, trying to communicate to Makayla the only thing that I think might make even a tiny amount of sense that wouldn’t land us in legal trouble: something sexual in nature.
