Twisted Fate (Dark Heart 2)

“I’m not planning to stay long,” he tells me as I hit the button to close my driveway gate. The party is happening at another home in Kings Point, so we’re only driving four blocks. “You really don’t mind?” he asks.

“C’mon. When have you known me to say ‘no’ to a party?”

He lifts an eyebrow. “All the time?”

“I’m all about the party.”

He rolls his eyes and then gets lost in his phone. He’s still got anxiety, and I think he uses his phone to keep it at bay—especially headed into something social.

As I drive slowly down the quiet street, past gold-ringed street lamps and beneath the leafless trees, I think of the camera, nestled in the branches of a tree just outside the gate that frames my lawn. I would have never noticed it—and didn’t—but each month, Soren sweeps my property for bugs and such. He came over around dinnertime tonight, did the sweep while I whipped up spaghetti—mom’s old recipe—and hacked the camera from his laptop while I showered.

I can’t help a quick grin as I think of Elise not even having the data sent to a shielded IP. She has no clue what she’s doing—which is a big clue she’s not doing this for work. Her office would have people on the payroll who would do a clean job. There are ways to disguise cameras that are sending wireless data. Whoever she hired to put the camera in my tree didn’t even do that. I’m surprised my security people didn’t catch a strange car at the end of the driveway. Guess that’s something I’ll need to look into.

I occupy myself the last block or two to the house wondering about tomorrow: Saturday. Last weekend, she didn’t run in Central Park. First weekend in almost a year that she didn’t run either day, despite advocating for us to run together sometimes. I guess she’s taking my advice. Still—disappointing. Even as I know it’s fucking reckless to engage with her again, it bothered me she didn’t go. I felt pretty sure it was a sign she’d washed her hands of me. But then this camera.

Soren’s engaged friend, a tech type dude who makes apps, comes from money, and his cousin owns this house we’re going to. Seven thousand square feet, Tudor-style, with lots of weird-ass, harsh, square hedges.

“Is this a maze?” I ask as we creep down the driveway line.

“You know, it kind of looks like it is. She likes you,” Soren adds as we approach the valet tent.

I give a hearty snort. “Likes me behind bars.”

“You know I track your data,” he says simply, and my mouth opens a little as I realize he must know about our weekend at the cabins.

“Well, fuck.”

He chuckles, but his eyes are wide as he looks at me. “What’re you doing?”

“Fucking up, Sor. Fucking the fuck up, and being too emotional.”

“Not a bad thing to be in the good graces of the D.A.”

I blow a breath out, rub my temples, and then we’re out of the car. Soren mutters something about having to sweep the car for “gizmos”—as he calls bugs and tracers—after we leave; it’s true there’s always a risk anyone could tamper with my car when valet takes it, since almost everyone in Brooklyn knows who I am.

We’re offered a ride on a golf cart, but we start the two hundred yard trek across the lawn instead.

“You know you love the gizmos,” I say.

He gives me a weak smile as we approach a gratuitous, oval-shaped fountain.

“You should be careful,” he says quietly, casting his gaze toward the nude man spewing fountain water out of his stone mouth.

“Careful is as careful does.”

He frowns before we start up the steps. “What does that mean?”

I laugh. “Just making shit up.”

I feel his eyes on me, but there’s no time for talking. We’re at the door; we’re being ushered in. I’m surprised, not for the first time, at the overlap in social circles. I know lots of people here—I’m never the social pariah I would have thought a mob guy would be—and, evidently, so does Soren.

He walks off with someone in black dress pants and a striped button-up, and I’m hung up for a long time talking to Todd, this guy I know from Columbia. It’s kind of funny, because I’m not sure he knows what I do for work. We talk about taxes, and he asks about my accountant, and it’s confirmed: he doesn’t. Then he frowns, tilts his head, and says, “You’re in trading, right?”

I do this little nod thing—not a real nod; fuck me—and there’s a swell of sound from over to our right. He looks over into the sitting room across the hall. I look, too, and there’s Elise. I’m so astonished to see her, I think my mouth lolls open as I drink her in. She’s got on a deep green gown, and she looks like a goddamn queen.