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“What’s that?”’
“Just lunch receipts and stuff for tax time. I’m going to take it so we don’t look like weirdos,” I say.
We walk to the car, and he opens the door for me. “You’re worried about looking weird? And how do you know what it is?”
“I do some basic office stuff for Dad. I’ve seen files like this on his desk. I’ll put it there so he knows where it is.”
He takes it from me again and starts flipping through it.
“Malone, what?—”
“You’re going home.” He hands the file back to me. “To wait. And I’m going to visit your uncle and get that list.”
“And if he doesn’t have it?”
His smile is tight, hard, and scary. “Then we’ll fucking sit there until he remembers every last goddamn client and writes it down.”
“I should come with you.”
He gives me a dark look. “No, you shouldn’t.”
The rest of the ride is deafeningly silent as Malone answers texts. The phone rings once and he just says, “Thanks.”
“Who was that, Malone?”
“My office. Nothing much.”
And it’s then that I know he’s lying.
After he makes sure I get inside, he takes his gun and leaves.
I try to bake but I keep screwing up. My happy place isn’t working right now. What I should do is call Lacey, but she’ll manage to drag all the details out of me, and the next thing I know, she’ll have the police involved.
It’s too far gone now for the cops.
Breathing in and out slowly to calm myself down, I check my phone for what feels like the millionth time, willing a message from Malone to appear on my screen. But time crawls slowly and he doesn’t reach out.
I try to focus on one of the awful coffee table books I have, but it’s mainly boring pictures of expensive furniture. The type of book someone would buy to dress up a place or buy thinking it would make them look sophisticated.
I’m almost positive Malone’s never cracked open the cover.
Shit, he probably never picked it out, either.
I rub my hand over my wrist, raising my arms and pressing my hands together as I lean back on the sofa.
It’s too close to the feeling of when he folded my arms behind me, when he bound them here, when he bound them last night.
I drop my arms and jump up, grabbing my phone and going out to the outdoor space to pace around. The breeze and noise from the city below are good distractions; they make me feel connected a little to the world. Even if I’m above the streets, I can still hear them.
But my mind keeps drifting back to last night and all those people watching us.
I swallow, the guilt hitting me again. Why am I taking pleasurable moments when Amelia’s been kidnapped? I look at my phone. Maybe I should go out there, and… what? Look? Where? Should I run to Uncle Grant’s?
But panic isn’t getting me anywhere. “Malone asked you to wait and trust him, so do it.”
Instead, I clean the kitchen and make the bed. Then I sit on the sofa with the file I took and make piles of the receipts. There are some that shouldn’t be here. They’re too old, but considering where I took the file from, no doubt people have been just shoving them in. Lunches and supplies. All the sundries. I organize them by month, and then put the ones from last year in a separate pile. Some are even handwritten notes. Dad can locate the original receipts that’ll be at the main office or his house. I put those in a new pile, too.
When I’m done, I don’t know what to do with myself anymore. I should have heard from Malone by now, right?
