Page 68 of Hell Bent

“Fuck.”

She was looking at a huge wrought iron gate set into a high wall covered in ivy. She couldn’t see much beyond it except for the slope of a hill dense with trees and a gravel driveway disappearing into the evening gloom.

She scanned the wall and the gate for cameras. Nothing obvious, but that didn’t mean much. Maybe people in Old Greenwich didn’t think they needed protection. Or maybe they were just more discreet about it. If Alex got caught here, she was definitely getting arrested, and then Anselm and the board wouldn’t bother with talk of second chances. They’d just toss her out of Lethe. Professor Walsh-Whiteley would probably throw a party. Or at least host a wine-and-cheese hour. But what choice did she have? She couldn’t just say, Oops! I rang the bell, but no one was home.

Alex sat, undecided behind the wheel. She didn’t see any Grays lurking around, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to head up the hill without knowing she had backup. This guy could have a whole staff of goons on call like Eitan. But she also wasn’t sure she was ready to let another Gray in, not after what had happened with the old man at Black Elm and that kid she’d used for the Oddman job. The connections were too powerful, too intimate. And there was always the chance one of them would get inside her and refuse to leave.

She reached into her coat pockets and felt the comforting weight of the brass knuckles she’d stolen from the Lethe House armory. “It’s not really stealing,” she murmured. “I’m Dante after all.” Virgil.

Except she wasn’t either right now. She was just Alex Stern and she had a job to do. She parked the Mercedes a few blocks away and looked up the satellite view of the property while she waited for full dark. The house was enormous, and it had to be at least a quarter of a mile up the long driveway. Behind it, she saw the blue lozenge of a swimming pool and some kind of guesthouse or pavilion.

At least beating up a rich guy would be a novelty.

She locked the car and gave it a pat for luck, then strolled to the eastern corner of the wall, grateful for the widely placed streetlamps. She’d seen no one on the road yet, except a slender woman jogging behind a double stroller. Alex slipped the brass knuckles over her fingers. They were actually solid gold and rough where the strands of Samson’s hair had supposedly been woven through. She didn’t know if that was myth or reality, but as long as they let her punch through walls, she didn’t much care. “My heels are fetter’d, but my fist is free,” she whispered to no one. Or to Darlington, she supposed. Samson Agonistes. But he wasn’t there to be impressed by her Milton.

The metal on her knuckles made her grip awkward, but the extra surge of strength in her hands let her pull herself over the wall with ease. Even so, she hesitated before dropping down onto the other side. She was in her black Converse, and all she needed was to break an ankle and freeze to death waiting for Dawes to come get her.

She counted to three and made herself jump. Thankfully the trees had already started to lose their leaves and the ground was soft with them. She jogged toward the house, paralleling the driveway, wondering if she was about to see flashlights or hear the shouts of security guards. Or maybe Linus Reiter had a hungry bunch of Dobermans to sic on her. But there was no sound except her footsteps in the mulch, the wind shaking the pines, and her own labored breathing. Darlington would have been laughing. Twenty minutes a day on the treadmill, Stern. Sound body, sound mind.

“Yeah, well, you’re the one stuck doing naked yoga.” She paused to catch her breath. She could see the hulking shadow of the house through the trees up ahead, but no lights on. Maybe Reiter really wasn’t home. God, the thought was beautiful. Even so … 5 percent of $50,000. That would be more money than she’d ever had in her life. Eitan had suckered her into this work by threatening her mother, and she’d been too stupid to botch the first job, too used to falling in line. But maybe she’d gotten comfortable. Violence was easy. It was her first language, natural to slip back into, ready on her tongue. And she couldn’t pretend that the little nest egg she’d started to build wasn’t a kind of hedge, something to fall back on if Yale and Lethe and all of their promises fell apart.

When she finally arrived at the top of the hill, she paused at the tree line. The house was nothing like she’d expected. She’d imagined it would be all old brick and ivy like Black Elm, but it was an expansive, airy white thing, a pile of architectural meringue formed into a steeply tilted roof, striped awnings over the countless windows, a grand terrace perfect for lawn parties. She had no idea how she was going to get in. Maybe she should have glamoured herself, but she hadn’t had time to plan.

Alex figured she was already guilty of breaking and entering, but the thought of smashing a window made her jittery—and that made her mad. So much for the cannonball. She wouldn’t have hesitated if she’d been back in Oddman’s neighborhood. It was Linus Reiter’s wealth that frightened her. And for very good reason. This wasn’t some bottom-of-the-pecking-order New Haven drug dealer, and Eitan wasn’t going to pay her bail if this all went sideways.

“Fuck me,” she muttered.

“Maybe a drink first.”

Alex choked back a scream and whirled, her feet tangling. A man stood behind her in a spotless white suit. She checked herself, nearly toppling. She couldn’t make out his face in the darkness.

“Did you come up here on a dare?” he asked pleasantly. “You’re older than the kids who usually ring my doorbell and knock over my flowerpots.”

“I…” Alex searched for a lie, but what was there to lie about? Instead she sent her mind seeking through the town. There were no Grays around the house or its grounds, and it wasn’t until she reached a sprawling middle school building that she found that blur, that crinkle in her consciousness that signaled the presence of a Gray. Just knowing she could call on one was a comfort. “Eitan sent me.”

“Eitan Harel?” he asked, his surprise clear.

“You owe fifty large,” she said, feeling ridiculous. The estate looked impeccably kept, and from what she could see, Linus Reiter did too.

“So he sends a little girl to collect the debt?” Reiter’s voice was bemused. “Interesting. Would you like to come in?”

“No.” She had no reason to, and if she’d learned anything in her short and thorny life, you didn’t walk into a stranger’s house unless you had an escape plan ready. That went double for rich strangers.

“Suit yourself,” he said. “It’s getting chilly.”

He strolled right past her and up the steps to the terrace.

“I need to collect tonight.”

“That won’t be possible,” he called back.

Of course it couldn’t be easy. Alex gave a tug on the schoolteacher, drawing her closer to the mansion, along the streets of Old Greenwich. But the Gray would be a last resort.

She followed Linus Reiter up the steps.

“So what’s with the Gatsby act?” she asked as she followed him into a vast living room decorated with cream-colored couches and blue chinoiserie. White candles glowed on the mantel, the big glass coffee table, and the bar in the corner, illuminating shelves of expensive bottles that gleamed like buried treasure, amber, green, and ruby red. Billowing clouds of white hydrangeas were arranged in heavy vases. It was all very glamorous and grandmotherly at the same time.

“I was aiming for Tom Wolfe,” said her host, heading behind the bar. “But I’ll take what I can get. What can I offer you…?”