“I think cheating on you would make Henry Thornhill an idiot.”
That grate in his voice was back, like the sound of teeth scraping against skin. I recrossed my legs, and my silk skirt dragged up my thighs. Henry’s eyes stayed glued to mine, but his fingers tightened where they gripped the desk.
“You’re absolutely right,” I replied. “That would make him an idiot.”
The night of the stakeout had shown me there was a hard, muscular body beneath his tailored suits. The feel of his chest pressed to my back as we balanced precariously in the woods had seared me. For days, the skin between my shoulder blades had glowed like a brand.
“So no marital discord,” he managed. “Victoria will fall in love with our impulsive, whirlwind romance.”
“Do you think we had a honeymoon? I forgot all about that.”
“A passionate elopement would naturally lead to an exotic honeymoon, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “This is all new territory to me. I’ve never had a boyfriend in real life do anything passionate for me.”
The words spilled out carelessly—a side effect of the late hour, my weariness, the confidential darkness of the solitary lamplight.
This time, Henry’s eyes did drop to my exposed legs. I felt it, as surely as if he’d smoothed his palm from ankle to thigh. “That makes them idiots as well, Delilah.”
“Paris, right?” I rushed to say. “It’s the kind of city Victoria would respect. Married in Ireland at the spur of the moment. Then you whisked me to Paris for a weekend in the most expensive hotel in the city. View of the Eiffel Tower. Pricy room service. Champagne.”
Twisted bedsheets. My thrift-store wedding dress shoved over my hips. My legs spread. Our fingers entwined.
Henry hadn’t even responded, but I was already standing up, seeking distance. “That sounds good. And you should rest,” I repeated, my tone sharper than I intended. “We both need to sleep, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied.
But as I moved around the office, gathering my things, he remained, staring at the pages of the Copernicus with such intimacy I wanted to blush. His fingers, tracing the orbits, the path toward the sun.
Another symptom of becoming a detective I recognized—even at the limits of exhaustion, your brain will continue to search for clues. I didn’t want to disturb his process, but he called to me as I was about to leave. When I turned, he was framed in the doorway, hands in his pockets.
“Were you fired from the police department, Delilah?” he asked.
The question knocked me back a step. I contemplated lying. It wasn’t something I necessarily wanted a new partner to know.
I opened my mouth to spin some half-truth—but it sent my nerves jangling.
I trust you, Abe had said. Now you need to trust each other.
“Yes,” I finally answered. “I was fired. How did you know?” There were still a few articles online with my name in them. The thought of Henry reading them made me vaguely nauseous. “You didn’t—”
“Look you up?” he asked. “No, I wouldn’t do that. It’s your body language when I’ve asked you about it. Everything says walls up.”
“You’re becoming a real detective now.”
“I’m learning from the best,” he replied.
“Why do you even want to know though?” I asked. Stalling for time.
“You said it the other day,” he said. “How can we be partners if we don’t know anything about each other? Especially since we need to convince our target we’re madly in love?”
I was so fucking grateful for the curtains of darkness that surrounded us.
“That’s why I thought I’d ask.”
“I don’t really like talking about it,” I said. Every time I believed myself to be over it, a swell of anger or embarrassment would startle me from my dreams, hurtling me right back to the moment my world fell apart.
His posture softened, conceded. “Forget I—”
And for the first time in ages, it made me want to share.
“I trusted a man,” I said, steeling my tone. “I trusted a man that I shouldn’t have. My boss. I was younger than him and—” I hated saying it. “Younger and stupid.”
“I doubt very much you’ve ever been stupid, Delilah.”
“Not all of us have advanced degrees,” I countered. “Anyway, I was actually just a pawn for him to climb the career ladder. Something to manipulate, move around, do with as he wished. A body to use. Not a person.”
Even from across the room, I felt a charged jolt from Henry: anger.
“I’m sorry.”
I shrugged, even as my fists curled at my sides. “It’s not your fault. And it’s ancient history now.”
I sensed he wanted to say more so I waited.
“Abe told you why I came here, right?”
I nodded. “Bernard.”
“I trusted him too. For ten years. I looked up to that man as much as I looked up to my parents. I modeled my career after his, mirrored his every move, sought his approval constantly. The night I’d walked to his flat to confront him, I’d almost convinced myself I was wrong—even with the evidence staring me right in the face.”
I knew this feeling as deeply as any other.
“I think all of us believe we are immune to people’s manipulations,” I said. “It hurts the ego, realizing that you’re the same as everyone else. That a sociopath can come along, charm the shit out of you, and leave you fucked up and confused. Like realizing you’re wearing blinders—but you have no memory of ever putting them on.”
“Yes,” he said, taking a step forward. “That’s what I’ve been feeling.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” I said. “You’re only human.”
“And so are you, Delilah Barrett,” he replied softly.
The darkness concealed my smile.
I glanced at my phone: 1:27 am. “Not anymore. I am now officially Delilah Thornhill.”
He stepped back into his office, lips in a grim line. “Promise not to yell at me when I come home late, wife?”
I shivered again.
Wife.
“I promise,” I said. “And get some sleep for real, Henry. It all begins now.”
14
Henry
“Delilah?” I said, knocking on her office door. “It’s almost time for us to go.”
“One second,” she called back, voice muffled.
Abe was on the phone with Francisco, and Freya was hunched over her laptop, fingers moving in a flash.
“Okay, Mr. Thornhill,” she said, pulling a pencil from her hair and scribbling something down, “if Victoria feels absolutely compelled to do some digging on you, you now have a website.”
She turned it around with a look of pride. It was a real website for my fake consultant business—I was a traveling librarian, available for hire.
“You think she’ll really dig?”
“If she doesn’t, that security team will,” Freya said. I hadn’t even thought about that—the ease with which your identity could be traced online now. “I’ve also created fake Facebook profiles for both of you.” She scrolled and I blinked in amazement—she must have grabbed photos from our actual pages, but cropped them, added links and posts that made these forged profiles look active when they really weren’t. "And finally, Delilah now has a website for her family foundation. I gave her a cool, sexy maiden name." One last click and a website for the Delilah Gatsby Family Foundation appeared, advertising local grant awards for Philadelphia charities.