Page 123 of Sterling Heat

Vale’s brows lift. Her eyes wide.

The knife at my side presses harder, poking deeper, but not puncturing my skin. Yet.

“I mean . . . I can do it alone. I got this. I got her.” My voice quivers. I’m in over my head and a terrible actor. I don’t know how to give Vale a signal that I need help.

Adara wails louder.

“Let me call you tomorrow.”

Vale continues staring at me, and I hold her gaze, trying to tell her with my eyes that I’m in trouble.

Her brows pinch. “Maybe call me later.”

I nod once. Vale’s eyes shift to the opposite edge of the door, where a sliver of light might show through or the outline of a man hopefully. She holds still a second, before slowly bringing her focus back to me. She nods once.

“Okay. Tomorrow.” She lifts the bottle of wine and then lowers it to set the container on the porch. She steps back, waiting for me to bend for the item, however, she’s placed it outside of my reach. Too bad, the bottle would be a good weapon.

With a knife at my side and Adara at my chest, I don’t dare risk it.

Instead, I lean back, and the door closes, shutting off Vale from view. Through the door, I hear her quickly turn and skip down the steps like she didn’t notice my strange behavior.

Rodger presses his back to the closed door and tugs me before him. He smells of perspiration and something smoky, skunky even. With Adara at my chest, she’s a barrier between us but I don’t like her this close to him.

He lifts the knife and points it at my face. “You’re a shitty actress.” He cranes his neck to look toward the front window where Vale’s car is backing out of the driveway. “For your sake, you better hope she doesn’t make any calls.”

“Who would she call?”

He looks back at me. “We both know you’re not that dumb.”

“If you mean Sebastian, we broke up the other night,” I lie. While I’d asked him for space, I wasn’t breaking up with him. We needed some time and a little distance to come to terms with all that had happened. I was hoping space would give him perspective. Maybe it had. He hadn’t called or texted, other than a demand to change my lock codes. He didn’t spontaneously stop by or even check on Adara and me. He’d made his decision. He wasn’t going to be part of my family. “He isn’t going to rush to my rescue.”

“You don’t need saving. Not yet.” Rodger narrows his eyes, no longer kind or flirtatious. “But what you do need to do is to find my money. Now where is it?”

Suddenly, it’s his money?

“I don’t know where it is.”

“It’s here somewhere. Buried or invested, and I want it back. If I have to burn this place to the ground to find it, I will. Now tell me where it is.”

“This place already was torn down and rebuilt. The only place untouched was the cellar but there has been extensive shoring up of the foundation. There’s nothing down there but a new furnace, a new hot water heater, and an old dirt—” I catch myself.

Rodger’s eyes widen and he tugs at my hips. With his feet spread and his legs tight, I’m caught between his thighs, and I don’t like it.

“Then you better get rid of Deputy Doolittle out there so we can get digging.”

With my hand on the back of Adara, who is bright red and wailing at ear-piercing decibels, I say, “I can’t do any digging.”

“You can and you will. Now shut that kid up.”

+ + +

It’s impossible to reason with a mad man.

But with a screaming child in the mix, and my warning that if he hurt her or me, he’d never see a dime of his money, even when I don’t know what money he’s referring to, nursing Adara buys me time. I take a seat on my couch in direct view of the street where the sheriff’s vehicle hasn’t moved. Neither has the person inside who is supposed to inspect the perimeter of the house as the night grows darker.

Rodger paces in small, tight circles behind the staircase as Adara feeds and I lose faith. I’m running out of time.

When my phone rings, a warning glare from Rodger tells me not to answer it. Sebastian’s name appears on the screen. It rings three times and goes to voice mail.