Leon had brought an umbrella, which lasted until he’d reached the door before surrendering to the storm. We have to make a run for it. I eyeball the distance. Maybe fifty feet. I’ll get soaked but, honestly, that’ll probably be the least crappy thing to happen to me tonight.

  The one advantage to the storm is that no one is watching. I’m not even sure anyone could see us, between the driving rain and the pitch black night, lit only by flashes of lightning.

  Leon warned me not to flee on my own. Warned me that I wouldn’t make it.

  I’m not so sure of that now.

  Which means I’m not so sure about him. About his motives.

  But Connolly is in the house, where we’re running. That’s my safety zone. Make it to him, and I’m home free.

  Except Leon is the one who told me Connolly is there . . . And that he conveniently moved Connolly’s car into the garage around back.

  The side door is ahead. A darkened doorway leading to a darkened part of the house.

  I glance to the side. I should make a run for it. No one’s out here. No one’s watching. Follow the driveway to the fence and climb. I can climb it. I know I can.

  I’ll wait until Leon is opening the door. He thinks he’s tricked me, and I’m complying. I just need him distracted—

  “No!” A voice booms from inside. “You listen to me!”

  Connolly. I know that voice, even if I’ve never heard him raise it.

  I hesitate only a moment before I follow Leon in.

  Leon motions me to silence as he shuts the door. I listen for voices, but they’ve gone quiet. Or gone back to normal tones, their voices lost in this huge house.

  “This way,” Leon whispers.

  I have to force myself to follow. I need to allow him to lead me until I can figure out where exactly Connolly is. Then I can decide my next move.

  We’re moving along a dark hallway when Marion’s voice rings clear. “I need you to calm down, Aiden. I don’t know how many times I can tell you she isn’t here.”

  “And I’m telling you I know she is. Did you really think I gave you my actual security code? I’m not that stupid. I gave you a visitor code, and you’re the only one who has it. I check my logs daily. I know when you’ve sent someone into my house. As soon as I found Kennedy gone, I checked. You used your code.”

  “Yes, I’ve already admitted that. I invited her here for a talk. Which we had, and then she left. You’ve spoken to Davey. He says he dropped her off at your house.”

  “I wouldn’t trust Davey to tell me the sky is blue. You did not ‘invite’ Kennedy. You took her. Her phone turned off minutes after my alarm did.”

  “Seems I’m not the only one keeping tabs on her.”

  “I had a tech contact check it after Kennedy disappeared from my house and wasn’t reading my messages. She would understand that.”

  I have no problem with what he did, but I also no longer feel the compulsion to march in there and tell Marion so. Hearing Connolly has calmed my fears. I shouldn’t interfere. Just let Leon take me to Connolly’s car. Wait there. It’ll be safe.

  Marion continues to insist she has no idea where I am and that, yes, perhaps Travis got a little overzealous and confiscated my phone, but I have that back now. Just ask Davey.

  “Is Davey the blond guy?” I ask.

  Leon only rolls his eyes, which I guess means yes. I presume that Cullan had Davey take the fall here for two reasons. One, he didn’t trust Leon—rightly, it seems. Two, if he had Travis lie about returning me, Connolly would be even more suspicious, given the history between them.

  Marion and Connolly are somewhere to my left. We pass near enough to the room that I can hear them even when Connolly lowers his voice. Then we keep going. Leon’s gesturing to a door ahead when there’s a tremendous boom, the entire house shaking with it. Someone screams and an alarm shrieks, drowning out the screams.

  Leon grabs my arm.

  “Hey!” I say, yanking away.

  His grip only tightens. The alarm stops, voices rushing in to fill the void, people shouting.

  “Why the devil isn’t the generator turning on?” Marion says.

  “Come on,” Leon whispers.

  “Did you do this?” I whisper, tugging against his grip.

  “No, but I’m sure as hell taking advantage of it.”

  He pulls at me. I pull back. The power’s out, and the generators aren’t coming on, and something is wrong. I didn’t imagine those screams.

  “I’ll check the utility room,” Connolly says from the other room. “Go see who was screaming. I think it came from the staff quarters.”

  When Leon tries to drag me, I dig in my heels.

  “They’re separated,” I say. “Let me talk to Aiden.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “No, I can—”

  He yanks my arm.

  “Hey!” I say.

  He starts to drag me, and when he throws open a door, it’s pitch black inside, and all I can think of is Cullan opening that door downstairs, forcing me through into that terrible empty room with the painting.

  “No!” I say. “Let me go!”

  “Kennedy?” Connolly’s voice echoes through the halls.

  “Just get in here, and I’ll—” Leon starts.

  I yank harder. “Let me go!” I kick at him, and he swears, but doesn’t release his grip.

  Running footsteps, and a figure rounds the corner we just passed. Connolly sees me and stops short. Then he sees Leon and charges.

  “Wait!” Leon says, backing up fast. “It’s not what you think. I rescued her. I’m on your side, buddy.”

  “On my side?” Connolly says between his teeth. “Do you think I don’t realize you’re the O’Toole family spy?”

  “Fine, yes, but—”

  “Let her go.”

  Leon blinks down at my arm, as if he’d forgotten he’s holding it. He drops it fast and backs up, hands rising.

  “I rescued her.” He waves at the door. “I was putting her in your car.”

  Connolly doesn’t seem to hear him. He holds both my arms gingerly as he looks down at me.

  “Are you—?” He sees my cut arms and sucks in a breath. “What did they do?”

  “I’m fine,” I say. “I just want to go. Please. Let’s get out of here.”

  Connolly’s gaze rises to Leon’s. “If you did this to her—”

  “He didn’t,” I say. “He got me out of where I was being held. Maybe he was rescuing me. Maybe he was taking me to the O’Tooles.”

  “What?” Leon says. “No.”

  “Don’t know. Don’t care. I just want to leave. Please, Aiden.”

  Connolly glowers at Leon one last time, and then bustles me into the garage.

  * * *

  As Leon said, Connolly’s car is in the garage. So maybe he was telling the truth about the rest, but I only care that my ordeal has ended, and I am with Connolly. His parents won’t harm me while he’s here.

  He doesn’t say a word as we get into the car. Just starts it up and drives to the door . . . only to realize the automatic opener doesn’t work during a blackout. He murmurs, “Just a moment,” and it’s a testament to how unsettled I am that I nearly scamper out after him, just to stay close. He heaves open the door. Then he’s back, and it’s a silent drive to the gate, where he needs to do the same thing.

  It’s still storming, a driving rain that has him soaking wet when he climbs back in. I reach into the back seat where there’s a folded blanket from our last picnic. I hand it to him, and he wipes off his face as the car rolls through the gates.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I know that sounds like a ridiculously weak thing to say. My parents kidnapped you.”

  “You mother kidnapped me. Your dad’s the one who held me captive.”

  The words barely leave my lips before I’m wincing. “That came out wrong. I mean, I, uh . . .”

  “You wanted to find a gentler way to break it to me? Let me know that my father is an absolute bastard who set my mother up while he went off golfing? Probably seeing a girlfriend while he’s at it?”

  “Uh . . .”

  A soft, bitter chuckle. “Yes, Kennedy, I know what my father is. The problem is always that I can never quite tell how much my mother knows. It’s too easy a trap to fall into. If I know one of my parents is . . .”

  “A super-villain?”

  The chuckle lightens. “Don’t say that to his face. He’d take it as a compliment. Well, no, he’d grimace and sigh and say you’re misunderstanding, but at heart, he’d be pleased. Yes, if I know one parent is villainous, I cannot help but raise up the other one, even when they are hardly a superhero. It’s easy to see our father as the root of all evil, and our mother as a saint, which she is not and does not pretend to be.”

  He glances over. “You believe my mother didn’t know he was holding you captive?”

  “Ninety-nine percent sure, especially after hearing your conversation with her. She honestly thinks Davey took me home.”

  His hands tighten on the wheel. “And what really happened?”

  I don’t answer.

  “Kennedy?”

  “Can we talk about this later? Please? I’m fine, and I just want to forget it for a while.”

  He relaxes his grip. “Of course. I’m sorry. I’m just . . .” He glances over. “I know you’re not fine, but are you okay? I see cuts. Do you need to go to a hospital? Or see a doctor? I know someone I could take you to, even at this hour.”

  “They’re paper cuts. From another Costa painting. I will tell you everything later, but for now, yes, I’m not ‘fine’ but I am okay. I’ll be even more okay when we’re far from here.”

  “All right. If you need anything . . .”

  “If you could find me a burger, I would totally take that.”

  “I will. Then I presume you’d like to go home?”

  “If that’s okay.”

  “It’s absolutely okay.”

  We reach the end of a quiet road. The lights of Boston shine to one side, but he turns the other way to bypass the city. When we see the neon glow of a fast-food place, he says, “Is that one okay?”

  “Right now, any one is okay.”

  He turns into the drive-thru. I place my order, and he doubles it. When it comes, he passes the bag my way. I start to hand him his burger, but he shakes his head.

  “It’s all yours. I don’t feel much like eating.”

  “I felt the same way a few hours ago. Now I think I could eat both burgers from the sheer adrenaline rush of relief.” I pause as he tenses. “I’m kidding. It wasn’t that bad.”

  He looks over. “You’re not kidding. It was that bad. You don’t need to minimize it for me, Kennedy. I already do that too much when it’s me or Rian in my father’s crosshairs. At least, I know I won’t do that with you.” He grips the wheel. “Which I should have thought when it was my younger brother bearing the brunt of it.”

  “Growing up in a dysfunctional family means you can’t see the dysfunction. It feels like normalcy. You trust your parents to do the right thing.”

  He slants me a glance. “Because you know all about family dysfunction.”

  I lick ketchup off my fingers. “I have a college friend who took a bottle of pills. I found her in time. She’s been in therapy for years and is just beginning to realize that she’s not as worthless as her parents said she was.”

  He flinches. “That was presumptuous of me.”

  I shrug. “My family is awesome. That makes it easy to think I don’t know anything about non-awesome ones. The truth is that I don’t—not from personal experience. I’m just saying that from where I stand, the mistakes you made with Rian were understandable. Also, you aren’t your brother’s keeper and he doesn’t want you to be. From what I’ve heard, you did a lot to protect him. Still do.”

  “Maybe, but I do so with a jumbo-sized side order of exasperation. I need to stop that.”

  “Nah, just downsize to kiddie-sized. Rian still needs a little big-brother exasperation.”

  I had him a fry, and he takes it.

  “So to totally change the subject, how did cocktails with Theodora go?”

  He tenses again and then rolls it off. “Unfortunately, that’s doesn’t change the subject as much as you hoped. I think she set me up. Set us up. Before I went over, I said I was with you, and I couldn’t stay long because you’d be waiting back at my house.”

  “Damn.”

  “Yes. I agreed to join her for cocktails, and while I was gone, you were kidnapped from my house. Either my mother asked Theodora to lure me out or Theodora let my mother know you were alone at my house. I’d said you were with me in hopes she would extend the invitation to include you. The fact she didn’t makes me all the more certain she set us up.”

  I want to protest. To say I’m sure it’s a coincidence. Yeah, defend Theodora based on a fifteen-minute acquaintance, during which she swore she was on Aiden’s side and not my enemy.

  I remember what Cullan said.

  Has she told you that? Clever girl, our Theodora.

  “I didn’t expect this of her,” he says. “Which just goes to prove that I am a terrible judge of character.”

  “I liked her, too. This doesn’t mean she’s evil. Just more ambitious than we’ve given her credit for. If she did set us up, it was with your mother, whose plan seemed to be just talking to me.”

  I take a bite of my burger and then hold out another fry. He accepts it and nibbles the end, after which it disappears, as if dropped into the door pocket.

  The windshield wipers fill the silence. The rain seems to be letting up, and the wipers slow. Connolly turns onto an even quieter backroad.

  “I need to ask you something,” I say. “And I need an honest answer.”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s about my insurance claim.”

  There’s a beat pause, and my heart clenches, but when I look over, he’s only frowning at the change of subject.

  “What would you like to know?” he says.

  “Did the insurance company reject it?”

  Another pause, one that now has my heart speeding up.

  “Aiden?”

  He sighs. “Yes, they rejected the initial claim. I didn’t mention it because you were worried enough already, and I could handle it.”

  “How did you handle it?”

  “I strode into their office and insisted—demanded—that they accept your claim.” His lips twitch as he glances over. “That sounds so much more impressive than the truth. I accessed policy documents from their firm and discovered they were rejecting you based on a misapplication of a clause that didn’t appear in other policies. Which meant, first, that they were wrong to deny your claim, but second, that they’d taken advantage of a young business owner, a fact they would not want publicized when they promote themselves as an entrepreneur-friendly firm. The first part meant they had to pay you, and the second part encouraged them to do so expediently.”

  “Your mother has a copy of the original rejection. She thinks you paid my claim.”

  “Certainly not.” The GPS warns him to turn ahead, and he eases off the gas. “If I couldn’t resolve it, I would have positioned myself as a potential investor in your business, but that proved unnecessary.” He glances over. “Did you think I’d snuck the money into your account?”

  “I hoped not.” I fold away my empty bag. “However, I am waiting for my ten grand a month sugar-daddy payment.”

  “Then I fear you will be waiting a long time, as I should hope I’m not old enough to qualify for the role.” He turns the corner. “Dare I ask what that’s about?”

  “Your mom has a letter, signed by you, directing your lawyers to wire me ten grand a month from your trust fund.”

  His shoulders slump. “So either she forged it herself or my father did, and she believes it despite the fact that, were I to do such a thing, I would certainly be more discreet. Also, it’s not my trust fund until I marry, and anything I take from it is a loan, which is added to my debt.”

  “You should make sure no one is funneling ten grand a month off your trust fund.”

  “And by ‘no one’ you mean my father. Yes, I’m sure he is. Partly because my mother would have checked to be sure the withdrawals were occurring, and partly because it’s ten thousand a month he can keep off the family books. Probably to pay his girlfriends. I’ll make a call in the morning—”

  The car jolts with a cough I know well. Connolly snaps up, looking in his rear-view mirror as if expecting we’ve been hit. The car jerks again.

  “Tell me you aren’t out of gas,” I say.

  “Impossible. I never let it drop below half—” Another heave, and he steers it to the shoulder of the road. Then he taps the gas gauge, as if it isn’t digital.

  “Out of gas?” I say.

  “Not according to this.” He turns off the car. When he restarts it, the gauge plummets and warning lights flash, complete with beeps.

  “Seems you should have taken her to the shop after all,” I say. “She’s glitching.”

  “I suspect this particular problem began an hour ago.”

  “You think someone sabotaged your car at the house?” I pause. “Wow. I still managed to sound shocked at that.”

  He only grumbles, turns off the car and then restarts it, as if that will help.

  “It’s not a computer, Aiden. We’re definitely out of gas. I know the symptoms, having coasted home on fumes so I wouldn’t need to fill the family car.”

  Connolly reaches for his phone. Then he taps his pocket.

  “You left your phone behind?”

  “No. That isn’t possible.” He keeps tapping. “I didn’t take it out . . .”

  When he trails off, I say, “You did take it out, right? Probably to show your mom something? And then between the blackout and finding me, you forgot it. Well, this is retro. Stranded on a deserted road without any cell phones. At least you have your wallet.”

  “Hmm.”

  I peer out the side window. “The rain has stopped, and we can’t be far from a gas station. Did you see any back the way we came?”

  He shakes his head. “I should have stayed on the highway.”