I say nothing.
“Hey, you know what else is weird? When the kids and I were watching cartoons earlier, I noticed one of the wall speakers wasn’t working.” He points with a long arm. “Must have a short or something.”
My whole body is shaking now, and I am thinking through my next move. Sebastian is far enough away, his back half turned. I could probably make it to the hall, but not without Beatrix, and I would never leave her here. My only move, the only thing I can come up with, is one of defense—to drape my body over hers, sacrifice myself by covering her body with mine, taking her bullet.
Sebastian’s grin is slow and sinister, like he read my mind. “Such a shame. I thought you were smarter than this.”
Are we still talking about the cameras? The kids? Cam? I have no idea, and I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to. This whole conversation feels staged, another one of his sneaky attempts to control and manipulate. These threats he’s lobbing, they’re vague on purpose. Meant to throw me off.
And it’s working.
My cheeks are hot, burning like smoldering coals.
“We’ve met, you know. More than once.”
This surprises me, and it doesn’t. He was in business with Cam, which means at some point our paths would have crossed. Cam parades me by all his staff, especially management and investors, but the problem is there are so many. I’m not like Tanya. It’s impossible for me to remember them all.
“Sorry, but I—”
“And you know what you said, every single time?”
I shake my head.
“You stuck out a hand and said, ‘Hi, I’m Jade Lasky. So nice to meet you.’ Don’t you just hate that? When people you’ve met and talked to multiple times treat you like a total stranger? When they think so little of another human being that they can’t be bothered to remember your face or name?”
Prosopagnosia. It’s a neurological disorder that makes people unable to distinguish between faces. I know because Cam is always teasing me that I have it.
In my defense, I meet a lot of people. People who see me at the restaurants or with Cam at parties, who buddy up to us and act like we’re old friends, but none of it is real. They don’t know me, not really, and I sure as hell don’t know them. It’s part of being a celebrity chef’s wife; I’m lit up with the glow of his stardom.
“I can’t see your face,” I point out instead.
He comes closer, marching across the carpet and around the table until he’s close, standing right in front of me. I try to move back, but there’s nowhere for me to go. My calves are already pressed against the soft leather of the couch. I stare into his eyes and search for something I recognize, something unique in the shape or size or color, but there’s nothing. Hazel and almond-shaped, like half the people on the planet.
“You really don’t know?” He licks his lips. Smiles. “Are you sure about that, Jade? Like, really, really sure?”
The room falls silent, everyone waiting for my answer. Pain shoots through my cheek and I wince, blinking against it. I look him in his unremarkable eyes and force myself to steady my breathing.
“No, but if you take off that mask, I might.”
His pupils go dark, like a tiny man inside his eyeballs flicked off the lights. From ho-hum hazel to stormy black, just like that.
It’s the last thing I notice before he pulls off the mask.
J A D E
6:52 p.m.
It takes me a minute to place him.
Partly because he’s lost weight since the last time I saw him, a good twenty pounds melted off his limbs and torso and hollowing out his cheeks. His hair is different, too. Shorter. Lighter, almost completely gray.
The other part is because it’s been a few months. I haven’t seen him since the spring.
“I remember you. Except your name wasn’t Sebastian. It was something else.”
Though admittedly, that doesn’t explain the other times.
I close my eyes and try to reconstruct the meetings in my mind, but the only one I can come up with with any sort of certainty was this past April. Him, waving at me through the windows as he climbed the front steps. Me, opening the door to invite him in. He introduced himself, but not as Sebastian, as—
“Bas. You joked that your wife refused to call you that, that she preferred the name ‘Bossy.’ I laughed and said she sounded like a smart woman.” I pause, the obvious question rising in my head. “Which one is it?”
“The only one who calls me Bas is my mother, God rest her soul.”