As she drifts back to sleep, she hears something from her dreams.
A woman’s voice.
A woman’s voice, calling for help.
17
THE WIFE
At the Jones build, Olivia shuts the door behind her and walks carefully between the stacks of flooring and paint buckets to the kitchen.
A flash of red. A hoodie, draped over the counter, next to a leaking to-go cup of coffee. The cup is perched atop her unfinished four-inch-thick slab of Statuario marble, and even from here she can see the dark ring that’s formed on the stone’s porous surface.
“No!” she cries, leaping for it, just as a head pops up from behind the island. She screams in surprise and knocks the coffee cup off the slab, where it immediately begins to soak into the subfloor.
“Oh my God, it’s ruined.”
And there goes the budget, and the timeline. They’d ordered this piece directly from the quarry in Italy, had it specially cut striato, so the veining formed a swoosh pattern that ran over the waterfall edge, and waited three months for it to show up, and now some idiot has managed to ruin it by putting his coffee cup on the raw marble? She knew they should have polished and sealed it the moment it arrived. They were waiting for the owners to decide on a finish. Never again.
“Hey, sorry.” The owner of the hoodie—young, bearded, rumpled, sweat-stained—calmly picks up his coffee cup. The stain is dry. He’s been there for a while. “I’m sure we can get that out. I can just buff it up.” He starts for his toolbox, which she notices is perched precariously on the edge of the island, ready to fall and ruin something else.
“No. Stop. Don’t touch it. I’m calling my guy. Who the hell are you, and what are you doing on my job site?”
“Griffin White. I work for Dave.”
“Which Dave? I have three.”
He mutters a last name that sounds like Hartwell, and she narrows her eyes. “Dave Hartwell is a carpenter, not an installer. Plus, he isn’t working this job. Who are you really?”
He doesn’t answer, only stares at her, his brown eyes unfathomable. His voice is cold. “Like I said, I’m Griffin. And I work for Dave Caswell. I’m supposed to be pouring footers for your porch.”
“Then you should be outside, not in here ruining my kitchen. How did you even get the code?”
His dark eyes are flat and assessing, like a snake. Pools of black in a bone-white face. He might be handsome if not for those awful eyes.
She points to the door. “Go. Now. And I’m letting Caswell know you helped yourself to my interior and ruined thirty thousand dollars in marble. You’ll have to pay for the damage. I’ll leave it up to him how to make it right. You better hope his insurance is up to date.”
When he doesn’t move, she waves a hand at him. “Leave. I have work to do.”
He takes his sweet time, gathering up the toolbox and putting on the hoodie. He retrieves the coffee cup from the floor. When she sees his back, she dials her counter guy, Eddie, who answers on the first ring.
“Oh, boy, do we have a problem.”
“Everything is fixable,” he replies. “What happened?”
Olivia hears the back door to the property open and close softly and looks over her shoulder to see the young man who just screwed up her day, her life, her career, staring at her again from outside the glass. The second she deals with this, she is calling Caswell and having the asshole fired. He gives her the creeps, standing there staring. Why the hell has he gone out the back instead of the front?
“Hold on a sec.”
She marches to the door and flicks the dead bolt.
He grins. His lips are chapped, and he licks them, slowly. They stand there a moment, locked in a battle of wills. Her inside, him outside. Both of them pretending he couldn’t just smash a rock through all that glass and put a hand around her throat. He flicks up the hood on his jacket and draws the zipper in exaggerated slowness, all the way to his neck.
“Olivia?” Eddie says through the phone’s speaker, and she breaks eye contact with Griffin White by reflex, glancing down at the black screen of her phone. When she looks up, he’s gone, and she is alone in the massive open space that will eventually be the kitchen and living room for the Jones family.
On impulse, she walks quickly to the front door and bolts it, too, then pops the back off the Kwikset and removes one of the four batteries so no one can use the code to get in. She is never afraid on her builds, and she has protection in the form of pepper spray and, if all else fails, at the bottom of her bag, a nonlethal Byrna that looks like a gun but fires projectiles instead of bullets. But something about this guy gives her the willies.
“Hey, Eddie, come on over, will you?”
There must be a note of concern in her voice because he doesn’t ask any more. “Yeah, I’m at Frothy Monkey. Be there in five.”
She clicks off, a shiver running through her at the idea of more coffee inside her build. An engine turns over, and she sees a decrepit white van with an extension ladder on top pulling away from the site.
What in the world just happened?
She is still asking herself this when Eddie knocks a few minutes later, making her jump.
When did she get so edgy?
Maybe when people you know started getting murdered?
“Why are you locked in here? The code wouldn’t work.”
“Because some idiot decided to come and ruin the slab, and I kicked him out.” She lets Eddie in, shows him the marble, listens to him cluck over the stain.
“I might be able to fix it if it’s not too deep. Want me to try?”
“Might as well.”
“Well, if I can’t get it out, maybe we’ll leather it to match the granite. Or flip it? The veins won’t be the same—”
“And won’t match the waterfall. Maybe we turn both pieces upside down… God, I am so pissed off.”
While he works on the stain, she calls Dave Caswell to rip him a new one for not only letting someone from his crew into the house, but ruining things by being stupid.
But Caswell is confused. “I don’t have anyone by that name on my rolls, Liv. I’ve never heard of him. And we aren’t supposed to pour those footers until Friday.”
“Are you sure you’re not covering up an expensive mistake?”
“I swear. You know me, Liv. I don’t lie. At least not to you.” He laughs a little, and she feels some of the tension leave her. “Honestly, I don’t recognize his description, either. If someone was in the build that none of us know, but he knew you, and lied about working for me? That’s creepy.” A pause. “I think you should call the cops.”
“You think I should? Isn’t that a little extreme?”
“Yeah, I do. I don’t like a stranger using my name, and from what you’re saying, he was trying to intimidate you. Plus, someone gave him the contractor code, or he was watching and got it that way, which means he could come back. Won’t hurt. Change that, too, okay?”
She hangs up and weighs her options. Considering what’s already happened this morning? Caswell is right. She needs to report this. But she feels like an idiot. 911? Some guy was in my build and spilled coffee on the marble.
Hardly a crime.