for example—was the other part. She had thought she was marrying a prince charming but quickly discovered that there was something deadly beneath that charm. Something dangerous and controlling.
And intimidating.
A Dr. Jekyll who had quickly morphed into Mr. Hyde.
But Lisa had never been turned on by bad boys. She had too much self-respect for that. And where she had once felt warmth, she now felt trepidation whenever she encountered him. An uneasiness that wormed its way into her gut every time she saw him.
As much as she hated to admit it, however, Oliver had been right about the gun. And despite the punk’s young age, confronting him without a weapon would be foolhardy.
She didn’t have to use it, of course. Merely wave it at him to scare him away. Get to her cell phone and call the cops.
So that was the plan.
One she desperately hoped wouldn’t go awry.
Sucking in a deep breath, she moved to her bedroom door and opened it a crack, peering out into the dark stillness of the second-floor hallway.
Empty.
Steeling herself, she stepped into that stillness and quickly made her way to Chloe’s bedroom. She wasn’t about to confront anyone without first checking to see that her little girl was safe.
She carefully turned the knob and pushed the door open. To her relief, Chloe was wrapped in her blankets, her tiny figure illuminated by the moonlight from the window, her shallow chest rising and falling.
Despite her trepidation, Lisa felt a sudden warmth spread inside her. The sight of Chloe sleeping always had that effect on her. It had been a lousy couple of years, yet Chloe had been the one constant, the one shining star, in Lisa’s universe.
Reassured that her daughter was safe, she clicked the lock button, then pulled the door shut. She didn’t like the idea of locking Chloe in, but didn’t want to take any chances, either.
Turning now, she headed back down the hallway toward the stairs, stopping at the narrow closet on the left side of the landing.
Checking the darkness at the bottom of the stairs, she quietly opened the closet door, reached to the overhead shelf and found the wooden box where Oliver had left it, almost a year ago. It was secured by a small lock with a combination that was easy enough to remember: Chloe’s birth date.
Dialing it in, Lisa unfastened the lock, opened the box, then carefully removed the loaded pistol. She didn’t feel comfortable hefting it, but what choice did she have?
“Just point it and shoot,” Oliver had told her during one of his more generous moments. “That’s all you have to remember.”
Easier said than done, she thought.
Returning the box to the shelf, she closed the closet door and turned again toward the mouth of the stairs, listening for more sounds from below.
It was eerily silent now.
No rummaging noises, no whispering voices—assuming there was more than one intruder—no footsteps.
Nothing.
Lisa had all but come to the conclusion that the burglar had left when she heard it: the faint, almost imperceptible clink of a glass and the sound of pouring liquid.
Someone was still down there all right—but whoever it was wasn’t ransacking her house. He was helping himself to a drink from the wet bar.
What the heck?
Lowering the pistol to her side, Lisa started down the stairs, her heart thumping with every step. She was barefoot, but like the stairways in many old St. Louis homes, this one was made of wood and was full of creaks and groans, the carpet covering it doing little to muffle the sound of her descent. She may as well have announced her entrance with the trill of trumpets.
As she reached the living room, clutching the gun tightly at her side, a lamp next to the sofa came to life, startling her. She was about to swing the gun upward when she stopped herself, realizing who it was.
Oliver. Drunk or stoned, as usual, sitting on the sofa with his feet up on the coffee table, a glass of vodka in hand.
“You’ve gotta work on your stealth skills, babe. I could hear you at the top of the stairs.”
As her heartbeat slowed, anger rose in Lisa’s chest, crowding out the fear she was already feeling. “I almost shot you, Oliver. What the heck are you doing here?”
She glanced around the room and saw what had made the noise that got her out of bed: a picture frame lay on the polished wooden floorboards, its glass shattered. The photo inside was one she had always loved—she and Chloe in front of the lake house, Chloe squirming happily in her arms. It had been taken at a better time in her marriage, nearly two years ago, before Oliver had released Mr. Hyde from his cage.
She had no idea if he had purposely knocked it from the end table or had merely stumbled into it. Whatever the cause, she’d now have to clean up the mess and replace the frame. Another black mark in a string of them as far as Oliver was concerned.
He didn’t answer her question immediately. Instead, he took a sip of his vodka and gave her a long, slow smile.
“What’s the matter, Leese, you don’t like me darkening your doorstep? This is, after all, my house.”
“Tell that to my attorney.”
“Ah,” he said, “your attorney. I’ll bet you’d love to have a reason to give him a call. Real movie-star material, that guy.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“Uh-huh. Sure. The two of you probably had this planned from the very beginning.”
“Had what planned? What are you talking about?”
Oliver smirked, but there was a coldness in his eyes that frightened her. How could she not have known that he was a sociopath when she met him? How could she have let him seduce her into believing he was her man on a white horse?
“I’ve been thinking about this ever since you tricked me into the divorce,” he said.
“Tricked you?”
“What else would you call it?”
“Surviving,” she said, then sighed. “It’s been nearly a year, Oliver. Time to move on.”
“You and your pretty-boy lawyer planned this, didn’t you? You knew I was a rich, successful businessman and you targeted me, roped me in, used that cute little rear of yours to break me down, take advantage of me. Started snooping around behind my back, sticking your nose in things you had no right getting into.”
She thought about Harvey, her handsome but overly earnest attorney who was nearly twice her age, married and had three kids. Their relationship had always been strictly professional.
“You’re insane.”
“Am I?
