The Notorious Pagan Jones. Nina Berry
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guess.” Devin slapped the paper back up and continued reading.
Pagan stared at his Italian leather shoes on the coffee table. “Speaking of it being late, isn’t it time you went back to your own lair?”
“This is my lair, for tonight,” he said from behind the paper. “I’m in the guest room.”
She found herself on her feet, her face flushing against all her efforts at control. “You can’t stay here!”
He laid the paper on his lap and folded his hands over it. “Oh, but I can. I’m your new court-appointed guardian.”
“But…” She didn’t like how this information was agitating her. “You’re a kid! You’re too young to be anybody’s guardian.”
“Not according to Judge Tennison.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” She rounded the edge of the couch, rattled down to her bones. “I just met you today. You’ve got no connection to my family, no history of trust or…of anything!”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “There’s no need to get flustered. I won’t be lurking in your closet all night. Or sharing your bed.”
Heat shot up her spine. He was goading her now, and she wasn’t about to cooperate. She calmed her voice down to a level of rational concern. “What if the tabloid magazines found out that you and I spent the whole night alone in my house?”
He appeared unworried at the prospect. “They won’t.”
“What if Linda, Helen, or Carol sell that information to a journalist?”
That thought seemed to entertain him. “They won’t.”
“What if I sold that information?”
His eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t.”
“Why not?” She smiled. “It’s not as if I have a reputation to protect. Think of the delicious headlines—Killer Starlet Shacks Up with Her Blackmailer.”
“I offered you an opportunity—” he began.
“So you’d get an opportunity with me?” she finished.
“Don’t flatter yourself.” He put the paper back up and ran his eyes over the print, but she knew he wasn’t reading a word.
“And in Berlin?” she pressed. “How are you going to keep your court-appointed guardian eye on me there?”
“You’ll have your own room at the Hilton,” he said.
“But you’ll be in the room next door.”
He smiled, confirming her guess. “It’s new, but the Hilton’s already the best hotel in town. They have a restaurant on the roof with a great band that plays on fine summer nights.”
“Good,” she said, and walked decisively toward the door. “The music will cover your scream when I shove you over the edge.”
He laughed as she ran up the stairs to her room. She slammed the door, taking fierce pleasure in the wall-shaking crash. Oh, he was irritating. But that would only make her focus more on how to get around him. He had to sleep some time.
She brushed her teeth and got in her fluffy white bed at 10:00 p.m., then turned out the light, wide-awake and determined to stay that way. She rolled from one side of the huge bed to the other, punching the pillows piled around her. Back in Lighthouse, Miss Edwards had confiscated her only pillow, a pathetic, paper-thin affair half filled with feathers from anemic birds. So Pagan had spent the past nine months sleeping without one. She’d dreamed about having all her pillows back. But now their lift and softness crowded oddly around her head. Quietly, she shoved one after the other onto the floor then lay back flat, listening for Devin’s footsteps.
She snapped awake at midnight at the sound of a lock clicking into place. She sat up. It sounded like a lock on her door. But it couldn’t be. She’d already locked her own door, from the inside. Fully awake, she tiptoed over to her door, listening as Devin’s steps faded down the hall and vanished into the guest room. She unlocked her door, turned the knob, and gently tugged.
It didn’t budge.
She pulled harder, fumbling for the key to make sure it was really unlocked. Her fingers met a smooth plate of metal above the doorknob. What the hell was that?
She flicked the light on her bedside table to life and stared at a brass plate she’d never seen before, newly installed over the doorknob. Someone had installed a dead bolt on the exterior of her bedroom door.
Not someone. Devin Black. He’d locked her in.
Towering, head-clearing rage surged from her heart and out of every pore.
She wasn’t a criminal. Well, if she was, she’d served her time. This was her house now, and she had every right to come and go as she pleased. How dare Devin treat her like his own personal prisoner? Guardian or no, he’d gone too far.
He thought he’d boxed her in, giving her no choice. Well, he’d learn soon enough. If you were willing to go far enough, to think hard enough, there was always a choice.
She donned a pair of pants and hoisted up the largest window overlooking the oak tree outside, glad to note the window was still well oiled and silent. She’d used it this way many times over the years, usually to sneak out to see Nicky.
The tree branch looked farther away than she remembered, but she’d been drinking back then. If she could bridge the distance between window and branch after chugging vodka, she could sure as shooting do it sober. She grabbed the house keys, shoved several pins into her hair, and lifted herself onto the sill.
In a blink she was straddling the branch and climbing down the tree, finding all the old handholds like good friends, waiting. As soon as her feet hit the ground, she sped down the side yard and entered the house again through the back door using her own key, careful to lock it again behind her.
Sit on that, Devin Black. She padded through the kitchen and down the hall to Daddy’s office door. Using the bigger bobby pin as a tension wrench, Pagan slid it into the lock the way Mercedes had taught her.
Two minutes later, the last pin clicked into place and Pagan turned the lock. The aroma of her father’s cigars hit her like a blow. It lingered, but Daddy was gone.
She clenched her fists, her newly pink nails biting into her palms. Focus. She had more important things to do here tonight than wallow in self-pity.
She made herself walk right up to her father’s leather chair and sit down in it. Daddy had opened the safe in front of her many times. She pulled aside the fake wainscoting on the lower part of the wall that concealed it and put her fingers on the dial.
Eleven and a turn left, then six, then two turns to the right, then forty-four. Pagan’s birthday. It was a stupid, sentimental number to use for a family safe, but her father had been that kind of man. How he and her hardheaded mother had ever fallen in love remained a mystery to Pagan.
The safe clicked open. She angled the desk lamp to shine into it and began piling file folders onto her lap. After the car crash, life had been too scary and hectic for Pagan to think about going through her father’s papers. Mister Shevitz had handled what needed to be done. But if there was anything to be found on Mama, Daddy would have put it in here.
Her hand hit the metal floor, and she stuck her head down to make sure she’d gotten everything. A lumpy rectangle threw a shadow near the back wall. She leaned in to pull it out.
There were two bundles. The first was wrapped in plastic and secured with rubber bands. Green glinted under the wrapping. A large stack of one hundred dollar bills.
Bless Daddy for keeping an emergency stash of cash.
The second bundle was an envelope full of folded paper, bound together with an older, nearly rotted rubber band. When she slid her index finger under