Blood Always Tells, Hilary Davidson [good book club books .txt] 📗

if someone put it there to please her… but that couldn’t be right. Could it? Her face was hot but her thoughts were sending chills down her spine.

“It’s just business,” the man said. “The person I feel sorry for is you.”

“Why?”

“Because, if you get killed, it will be Gary’s fault.”

Chapter 9

He took her back to the room with the ratty brown blanket. “You probably think you can escape out the window,” he said. “You can’t. It’s been sealed so it can’t be opened. You could try knocking out a pane of glass, but the metal is solid and you’re not going to get through it. If you somehow did magically find a way to get through, you find that the roof isn’t solid. You might go through it, or you might get stuck in it. Either way, it’s pretty bad. There’s no hospital around here.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Dominique said. “Having you around is like getting my own private hotel concierge. Any other advice about the neighborhood?”

“You’re funny as hell.” He gave her a tight smile that said she was less amusing than rotting cheese. “If you knock out a pane of glass, you’ll end up freezing. That blanket can only do so much.”

“You promised me a soda for helping with the fridge.”

He gave her a long look. “So I did.” He hovered in the doorway. She could sense that he wanted to talk to her, but his yearning was tinged with reluctance. Was it a mistake to encourage him? She wanted nothing more than to get out of that house, but maybe the best approach to that was to engage with her captor.

She gave him a long look. “What is it?”

“I’m curious. My brother said you had a flip camera with you back at the house. What were you planning to do with it?”

She didn’t see any point in lying. “I brought it along to film Gary.”

“In a compromising position?”

“You mean naked? No, that wasn’t the plan.”

“What then?” he persisted.

Dominique took a breath. It had all seemed so straightforward when she’d talked about it with her friend Sabrina, or with the lawyer. But looking at her scheme in hindsight made her feel incredibly stupid. “Gary had signed a document a few years ago, one he wasn’t supposed to talk about.”

“You mean his agreement with his wife.”

“You’re well-informed.” Of course he knew, Dominique thought. The wife had hired him. “That’s the one. It has a confidentiality clause. Basically, Gary could lose everything for talking about it.”

“And you were going to get him to talk about it.” He nodded to himself. “I get it. But did it never occur to you what Gary would do to you to keep you from releasing it?”

“He wouldn’t do anything to me. He wouldn’t dare.”

“Don’t be so sure. Gary’s a thief, and a con man, and a liar. More than that. Gary is a murderer.”

“No. I don’t believe that,” Dominique said. “Yes, he’s a liar. Maybe a bit of a con man. But the rest… no.”

“Speaking hypothetically, if you loved a man, and you found out he was all of those things, would you still love him?”

“You mean, would I stop loving someone because of things he’d done? No. Definitely not.” Her words made her feel like a hypocrite. Did she love her mother? No. Was that because of what her mother had done? Damn straight. She looked out the window, blinking back a tear and forcing her thoughts in a different direction. You’re not being two-faced, she told herself. Think about your brother. Desmond had been in all kinds of trouble when he was a teenager. She was a decade younger, and too much of a baby back when he ran with a rough crew to remember the details. As an adult, she’d never wanted to learn more about that time. What purpose would that serve? What she knew was enough. Desmond had always been patient and loving and gentle with her. After her father died and her mother went to prison, Desmond changed. He was serious and grave, suddenly bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders, but his innate sweetness was still there. “What about you?” she asked.

“As the old saying goes, ‘Love is evil, you can even fall in love with a goat,’” the man recited.

“What on earth does that mean?”

“It’s Russian. It’s basically like the English saying love is blind,” he explained. “By goat, it really means bastard.”

“Okay. Your turn. You’re working for Gary’s wife, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“Don’t stonewall me. I saw her photo on your phone,” Dominique said.

“Sure. Because one of the kidnappers just happened to leave his phone on the table for you to see.”

His low, insinuating voice set off alarm bells in her mind. It had seemed very convenient that his phone had been on the table for her to view, but the image of Trin’s face had startled her and chased cautious thoughts away.

“You’re saying I was meant to see that?”

“How hard do you think it is to set a phone so that photo comes up when a certain number calls?” the man asked.

That shook her hard. “Who the hell are you really working for?”

“I can’t tell you that. Just be sure to ask Gary about that.”

“Why? What does that mean?”

“It means he knows.”

“He knows what?”

The man just shook his head and stepped back, shutting the door. Dominique heard the key turn. A moment later, she was across the room, rattling the door. It wouldn’t budge.

She went to the corner and picked up the blanket. As the man had promised, it was new and notably free of mildew. Dominique wrapped it around her shoulders like a cape—an awkward process, since her hands were still cuffed—and went to the window. She hit the glass with the heel of her fist, but it didn’t budge. She leaned closer, tracing the outline of each panel with a fingertip, searching for the flaw. There had to be one somewhere, she reasoned. This old house was ready to cave