He perched on a side chair, close as he could to the door. He needed to go.
It wasn’t the cops’ fault that they’d let Thorley loose. Peter Hardesty had barreled in, all law books and legal threats, demanding his innocent client be released. Jake looked forward to confronting this guy. Finding out how he slept, knowing what he’d done.
What he’d done?
Jake listened to the rain, realized what brought them to this turning point in the story. He tried to stop thinking of it, but there was no ignoring it.
If Gordon Thorley killed someone else-strangled her, Bing had said-that innocent victim could be the proof Thorley was the Lilac Sunday killer.
But how did they get that proof? The cops had let Thorley go.
Jake had let him go.
They might catch a murderer. But to do that, the police had allowed someone else to be killed.
“Where were you, Lizzie? I was worrying about you.”
Lizzie looked up from her spreadsheet, saw Aaron silhouetted in her office doorway. Where was Stephanie? Weren’t people supposed to make appointments? Aaron took up the whole doorway, one hand braced against each side, suit jacket flapping open, blocking her view of the reception area.
“When?” She didn’t stand, it was all she could do to stop herself. But this was her territory. As long as she stayed in her desk chair, she was in control.
“This morning. Up till half an hour ago.” He didn’t move either.
“Why?”
“Because of last night.” This time, Aaron took a step closer.
Lizzie could see-what, contrition? On his face.
She had had practiced, mentally, for this moment. “What about it?”
“It was your fault.”
“My fault?”
Aaron took another step into her office. Reached behind him. Put his hand on the doorknob. Pulled.
Lizzie heard the hiss of the door closing over the thick pile carpet, heard the click of the latch.
“Your fault for being irresistible,” he said.
Another step. Another. He faced her across her desk, his palms flat on the surface. She saw his blue college ring, his white cuffs under the navy blazer, his yellow tie touching a file on her desk as he leaned toward her.
“Your fault,” he said. “Your fault for being fabulous.”
She sat back, put her fingertips on the desk. With the toe of one foot, inched her chair away.
“Your fault for being-”
A rear wheel of her chair hit a stack of files on the floor. She couldn’t get any farther away from him.
“Your fault for being here. In my life.”
He couldn’t possibly mean this. He was such a-could he?
“Aaron, I-”
“Lizzie, I’m a jerk. I am. Can you give me another chance? Everyone deserves another chance, right?”
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, but it didn’t stay there.
Another chance? Well, they did, of course. Of course they did. No one was perfect. She certainly wasn’t. A real person had faults, and who was she to judge? “Another chance” was what she gave her clients every day. Maybe this would be not only a second chance for Aaron, but a second chance for herself. For her future.
“If you put it that way…,” she began.
“I’ve never met anyone like you.” He still leaned on her desk. She could smell the citrus and musk and whatever he wore, masculine and leathery and unfair.
Lizzie tried to figure out what to say. Could he be sincere? How could anyone ever tell? Numbers were easy for her. Words, not so much. People, not at all.
“Can we try again?” Aaron asked. “Tonight?”
“I… guess so,” she said. She didn’t like to guess, wasn’t a good guesser, but unlike her precise numbers, sometimes life was unpredictable. It suddenly made her feel, what, free? To think so. Take a risk, she thought. For once.
“Tonight?” Aaron was saying. “Lizzie?”
“Sure,” she said.
Aaron pulled out his cell phone, seemed to check something. “By the way…” His voice trailed off, his eyes on the cell phone screen.
“Yes?”
He clicked off his phone, closed his eyes for a fleeting second. “Lizzie? I’ll make it up to you. I will. But do you have my keys?”
The keys. The keys he’d, well, maybe he’d actually dropped them. By mistake. In disappointment.
Maybe.
The keys that had sent her to Maddie Kate the college student. And the not-empty house.
Aaron’s phone beeped, a text signal, and he pulled it out again.
The keys. They were in her purse, under her desk, and now felt like they emitted a radioactive glow, some sort of unmistakable signal she was hiding exactly what he wanted.
How was she supposed to react? If she returned the keys, she could please him. That was never bad. His one-liners were pitiful, but was she being picky again? It wasn’t like she had other plans.
“Yes,” she said. “I do. Have them.”
There was something in Aaron’s face that let her know she’d done the right thing. But she had one more thing she had to check on-sorry, Aaron, but she did.
“They’re at my house,” she lied. “I can get them for you later today, but-”
“Tonight then?” Aaron was texting and talking at the same time. Shouldn’t he be paying attention to her? She tried not to change her mind, now that she’d said yes. But he wasn’t helping. Or was that picky?
“Your place?” Aaron was saying as his thumbs moved across the keys. “We can text about what time.”
“Okay.” Lizzie drew out the word, knowing when she finished saying it, it was decided. Maybe a lot more than tonight was decided. “Okay.”
24
“Keep a secret about what?” Jane tried to predict what Peter was really asking her. He certainly knew she’d lost her Boston TV job by keeping a secret, a heartbreaking lesson about terrible bosses and television’s terror of lawsuits. She’d protected a source-as she had promised. Done nothing wrong. After the jury’s defamation decision, she’d been fired from Channel 11, right when she was making a name for herself in television. That disaster changed her life, but not her devotion to journalism and the sanctity of secrets. Every story had a secret at its core. “Of course I can keep a secret.”
They stood in the Register’s postage-stamp “visitor” parking lot, on the way to-somewhere. Peter said he’d explain as they drove. Jane was also struggling to jettison her envy over Chrystal Peralta’s plum assignment, and focus on her own work. “You’re too competitive,” her mother always told her. Was there such a thing?
“Sorry to be so circumspect,” Peter was saying. He smiled. “It’s a lawyer thing, right? I’m trying to gauge what I can tell you without breaking the privilege. So let’s just go, and then-”
“Go from there?” Jane said. Lawyers. Sometimes you had to be patient.
“Exactly.” He pointed Jane to the passenger side of his silver Jeep, then hopped into the driver’s seat, tossing his briefcase in the back. Jane saw a sleek tennis racket, two of them, on the backseat, next to a battered canvas Adidas bag. Two yellow tennis balls rolled onto the floor, landing on a pile of grimy Boston Registers and a wadded-up towel. “Sorry for the car.” Peter waved at the chaos. “You’re not allergic to dogs, I hope?”
Jane put her iced coffee in the cup holder, clicked on her seat belt, tucked her tote bag at her feet. “Dogs?”
“Dog. At home, luckily for you.” Peter eased the Jeep out of the parking lot, the metal barrier arm creaking up. “Black lab. Named Harley. He’d be trying to sit on your lap if he were here.”