Page 43 of Undercover
Alec. My chest clenched, a miserable icy feeling taking over. I’dknownhe wasn’t totally on the up-and-up, and I’d ignored it, as usual. He knew about wine and how to tie a bow tie, but claimed to be an unemployed construction worker.
And okay, that sounded snobby as hell, but still. It didn’t fit.
For fuck’s sake, he hadn’t told me hislast nameuntil he’d needed to give it to my dad when I tried to introduce him. I knew he had a sister, with kids. I knew he had parents—and what a shock, considering he was a mammal and couldn’t have hatched out of an egg, after all.
He’d accosted me in a park and somehow I’d ended up falling for him without knowing a fucking thing about him.
Because no matter how often I told myself I deserved better, somewhere down deep—and not even down that deep, because it sure surfaced and fucked with me often enough—I didn’t believe it.
That sensation of my internal organs freezing solid intensified. Last night had been one of the best of my life. I knew Alec had felt the same. And what could he possibly want from me? I’d swear he didn’t give a fuck about my money, or my family’s money.
God, too much at once, too much, and I had that whirring, numb-faced feeling like everything was going too fast and I couldn’t focus.
I snatched up my phone and fired off a text to Alec:
Going to the factory to see Dave. Called me all worked up. He didn’t tell you about me getting kicked out. Why did you lie? Call me ASAP.
I thought of calling my dad to see if he knew whether Dave had had a psychotic break, but trying to explain the conversation I’d just had to my father made me want to bash my head against the wall until my brains leaked out—the probable result of talking to Dad about this, anyway. I set the phone down again and grabbed the socks I’d finally unearthed from under a pile of sort-of clean t-shirts.
Shoes. What’d I done with them? By the door, shit, of course. I snatched up my keys and wallet, slammed out of the condo, and clattered down the stairs.
The roads were pretty empty; apparently there weren’t any big events going on this weekend.
So I’d already made it halfway along Shelburne Point before I realized I’d left my phone on my bed, right where I’d tossed it after texting Alec.
Fuck. I nearly beat my head against the steering wheel. I’d eased off the gas and started to look for a place to turn around before I sat up straight, mentally firmed my spine, and sternly told myself to deal with it.
I didn’t need to have my phone glued to me all the time. I wasn’t a twenty-something stereotype, dammit. Besides, it might do Alec good to stew without a response for a while.
Even though it was just about killing me not to know what he’d had to say. Or if he hadn’t replied yet.
Dave. I’d deal with Dave first, and Alec would have to wait.
I parked right by the front door, next to Dave’s car. One other car sat a few spaces down, but I didn’t recognize it. A nice one, though, a new BMW. Unlikely that it belonged to the part-time janitor who was around on weekends, unless my dad had started paying him a lot more than he used to. I thought Dave had been talking to someone else.
A little belatedly, I wondered if I should’ve swallowed my pride and anger and called Alec after all, and asked him to come with me. This whole situation had my hackles up.
Hesitating wasn’t going to get me anywhere, literally. I didn’t have my phone. Dave was right inside, and the sooner I went in, the sooner I’d be able to figure this out.
I got out of the car. My footsteps sounded too loud on the paved walkway to the front door, like that scene in a horror movie right before everything went wrong.
The front door pushed open. Okay, that shouldn’t be making me feel so creeped out. Shelburne Point wasn’t exactly Manhattan, or even downtown Burlington. Of course Dave had left the door unlocked when he went in.
Except that Dave always locked things. I’d gotten locked out of the house more times than I could count as a kid because of my brother’s OCD door habits.
Wronger and wronger. Shit, I really, really wished I had my phone.
The remnants of the party still littered the huge central room: cocktail tables and the broken-down bar leaned against a wall, a few trash bags full of linens waiting to be taken away, a couple of boxes of empty wine bottles.
No Dave.
I cocked my head and listened. For just a second, I heard a man’s voice raised in almost a shout from the back, and then it cut off abruptly.
I ran toward it, like every stupid horror movie hero in history. What if my brother was having some kind of mental episode? What if the stress of working for our dad day-in and day-out had finally made him crack? I’d have lost it years before, I’d been in his shoes.
My footsteps pounded on the rental flooring, echoing between the boards and the concrete beneath. “Dave? Dave, where are you?” I called out. “I’m here, okay? Everything’s fine!”
The back of the room opened up completely with hangar-style doors, to allow half-built yachts to be moved in and out, but that was shut and locked. A normal person-sized metal door next to it stood propped open with a doorstop, and I shoved it the rest of the way open and then skidded to a panting halt, nearly tripping over a pile of rolled-up neon-colored yoga mats that lay across the doorway.
