The Sinner (Notorious 1)

There was a long silent moment and I held my breath. Come on, I thought, just give me something. One thing.

Savannah and Margot tipped back their heads and laughed.

“Yes, termite damage and loads of gems. Makes perfect sense. Did Doug have anything else to say?”

Disheartened, frustrated, I shook my head and pushed the tiller toward the side of the house. I took a few steps before stopping.

I turned, looked Savannah in the eye. “Did Doug ever hurt you?”

Savannah’s mouth fell open slightly before she pressed her lips into a white line. She shook her head, her eyes bleeding blue. “He’s harmless.”

I swallowed, clamped my teeth together and left before I did anything else.

The next morning, it was barely past dawn and I was sweaty and swarmed with bugs. Frustration ate at me, driving me to swing the scythe harder, faster.

No luck.

Four days. Four. Days.

Most of the vines was gone. The wall was totally repaired, a work of art, actually. I’d unearthed the bench and the broken fountain, and the rosebushes were trimmed to within an inch of their lives—I was an architect after all, not a damn gardener.

But that was it.

I’d searched every room except for Savannah’s, Margot’s and the library, which were all locked. This was so highly suspicious, I couldn’t sleep at night thinking about all they might be hiding in those rooms.

But in the rest of the house, no safes.

Or, frankly, any sign of Vanessa.

Savannah was avoiding me like the plague and none of this brought me any closer to knowing where Vanessa or the gems were or why my father had been set up to rot in a jail cell alone.

As I attacked the vines, I became all too aware I had a pair of eyes on me from the cypress tree over my shoulder.

Not Savannah’s—she watched me from the window of her office. And Margot stood sentinel at the kitchen window.

Katie watched me from the tree.

“Hi, Katie,” I said, breaking the silence, my rhythm against the weeds never slowing. “Whatcha doing?”

There was a long, slightly stunned silence.

“I know you’re there,” I said. “No use pretending you’re not.”

An orange peel fell on my shoulder. I smiled and shrugged it off. It landed, a brilliant orange curl, in the pile of deep green weeds.

“I’m watching you,” she finally said.

“Seems you should have better things to do.”

Leaves rustled and there was a thunk as the girl dropped onto the cobblestones behind me.

“I don’t.”

“You bored?”

“Yeah.”

“You want to help?” I asked, stopping long enough to glance over my shoulder.

She wore the top of her red silk pajamas with cutoff shorts, tennis shoes and sweat socks pulled up to her knees.

“No,” she said and wrestled around in her back pocket only to pull out a deck of cards. “Want to play cards?”

I shook my head with a chuckle. Man, these O’Neills were never what I expected. “I’m working.”

“Come on,” she begged, her smile a glittery replica of her mother’s in the surveillance picture I’d stared at far too long. It changed Katie’s awkward features—the prominent nose, the messy hair and freckles—and I got a good solid glimpse of the beauty Katie O’Neill would be. “A card trick. Just one.”

I remembered all too well what that was like, waiting in the car for hours on end while my father “worked” in some backroom card game. I set down the scythe and turned around, wiping off my hands.

“Let’s see what you got.” I expected something along the lines of Go Fish.

With a flourish Katie shuffled and bridged, the cards a blur in her hands.

“You’ve done this before?”

“Watch the queen of hearts,” she said, flashing me the old lady then breaking into a flimflam routine that would have worked on any corner in the city fifty years ago. “You watching?”

“Oh, I’m watching.” But I was watching the nine of clubs, which had been next to the queen.

Katie gave me another glimpse of the queen then tucked her seamlessly behind the nine. “You see her?”

“I know exactly where she is.”

Katie scoffed, her eyes bright, and fanned the cards. “Pick her.”

And I did, right away, tucked behind the nine. Katie’s face fell. “Don’t hide the mark under the closest card. Pick a different card a few spots away.” I took out the queen and moved her behind the three of spades, which was halfway across the deck.

“You play cards?” Katie asked.

“Some.”

“Poker?”

“I’ve played before.”

Her ice-blue eyes narrowed. “You a shark?” she asked.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Katie and I turned to find Savannah bearing down on us from the doorway like a hurricane.

Katie pushed the cards into my hands and I fumbled, dropping most of them.

“He was showing me card tricks, Mom,” Katie said, blinking her blue eyes in an innocent act so bad I nearly groaned. But Savannah bought it. She grabbed her daughter and glared at me as if I were showing her how to play with matches.