Lights out

“Yeah,” Alec said. “It’s called hangry for a reason.”

Aly frowned. “So, what do we do until then? Exchange frivolous pleasantries and pretend we’re not all waiting for that conversation to happen?”

Moira clinked her glass against her niece’s. “You catch on fast.”

Aly sent me a frustrated glance.

I took a deep pull of wine to keep from having to say anything. Cowardly? Absolutely, but I knew better than to meddle in other people’s family drama, and I wanted to stay in Nico’s good graces as long as I could. I just hoped no one crossed a line with Aly because my Switzerland status only extended so far.

I also understood my girlfriend’s frustration. Brad was all over the news. A child of mega-rich parents had turned out to be a serial rapist and possible serial killer – so far, only the two bodies in the basement had been found, and you needed three for the “serial” title. He was suspected of killing more, and there were plans to excavate the backyard and search the woods we’d fled through looking for further victims.

Nico had stayed true to his word, and a man who looked an awful lot like Brad had been caught on CCTV withdrawing cash from an ATM close to the Canadian border. The crossings up there were on high alert, and Brad’s passport had been flagged. No additional sightings had been reported, but every night, the local news reminded people there was a killer on the loose, and the entire city was on edge, wondering if he’d really fled or if his family was hiding him somewhere nearby.

His parents were housebound because of the media attention, and their lawyers had been extra busy dodging questions and dragging their feet as they tried to slow the police investigation. It turned out the Bluhm’s initial acquiescence mostly came from shock, and now they were doing everything they could to save face in the public eye and distance themselves from what their spawn had done.

There was so much scrutiny on the case that I hadn’t hacked back into the police system despite how desperate Aly and I were to know what was happening. That left Nico as our only source of information.

He gestured at Aly with his glass. “How’s work been?”

She eyed him. “Has your little mole not been filling you in on my daily life?”

Nico gri

“And what would those be?” Aly asked.

“Janitorial, of course,” Nico answered, looking nonplussed.

Aly glanced around. “Where is he tonight?”

“Busy,” all of her cousins said at once.

Well, that wasn’t suspicious.

Aly honed in on it. “With what?”

Nico’s grin slipped. “Anyone ever tell you you’re not great at small talk?”

“Tell me about the investigation, and I’ll try to improve,” Aly shot back.

I hid my grin behind another sip of wine. She’d lured him right into that trap.

The rest of the pre-di

As uncomfortable as the situation was, I was proud of Aly. The people pleaser in me would have been nice just to put everyone at ease, but she stood firm. We weren’t here because she actually wanted to spend time with her family; we’d been forced. And as fu

It made me wonder how many others they’d disposed of. How many families were out there, broken, searching for a loved one who would never come home? The mob didn’t just “disappear” fellow mobsters and gangsters who pissed them off. They targeted shop owners who didn’t want to pay for the mob’s forced protection. They went after government officials and community organizers who tried to stand up to them. Or they got rid of i

And Nico was the guy who made sure no one ever found them.

The opulence surrounding us had been built on the bones of victims. My father was a monster, but at least he’d never profited from his crimes. He committed them because he was sick, because he’d grown up in a violently abusive household, and had suffered several frontal lobe injuries that altered his brain function. I wasn’t excusing his actions, but there was a reason he was the way he was.

It made me wonder what Nico’s excuse was. Aly’s mom told her they had a strict but stable upbringing. Their parents didn’t hit them. Nico had simply fallen in with a bad crowd. But I wondered if it was more than that. I’d been in therapy so long and researched antisocial personality disorders so much that it was second nature to question charming people like Nico. Was he just naturally magnetic, or did he have sociopathic traits?

“Babe?” Aly asked. “You good?”

I blinked and came back to myself. Everyone was heading into di

She scrunched her nose and dropped her voice. “Sorry about that. I know it must have been awkward.”

I stepped close enough to rub my hand up her arm. “Don’t apologize. You did good. I’m proud of you for holding your ground and not pretending that this is something it isn’t.”

She beamed at me. “Thank you.”

The urge to tell her I loved her was almost too strong to resist, but this was neither the time nor the place. I’d almost blurted it out yesterday over breakfast and the day before that when I caught Aly singing off-key Mariah Carey in the shower, but as much as a large part of me thought she was right there with me, a smaller part second-guessed it, keeping the words in check. It wasn’t that I didn’t think I was worthy of love; I just couldn’t believe I’d gotten so lucky that she was the one who loved me.

Di

I sat back in my chair afterward, unable to eat another bite, feeling warm and sleepy and sated. No wonder they waited until di

Aly set her napkin beside her plate and turned to where Nico lorded over us from the head of the table. “Now?”

He sighed. “Yes, fine.”

Moira placed a hand over his. “Coffee?”

His expression softened when he looked at her, and I started questioning myself about the sociopath thing when I saw the warm affection in his eyes. “Yes, please.” He turned toward us. “Would you like any?”

Remembering what Junior said about Nico’s barista-related vanity, I nodded. “I’ll never say no to one of those macchiatos.”

He gri

Their sons let out a collective groan and started excusing themselves from the table, taking their plates with them to the kitchen.

Moira, however, looked thrilled. “He can be taught,” she said, leaning in to kiss her husband’s cheek.

Fifteen minutes later, Aly and I joined Nico and Junior in Nico’s office with our coffees. It was the one space in the house I felt like I could relax. The walls were paneled in dark wood. Soft lighting filtered down from a black chandelier. Beneath our feet, a well-worn Persian rug covered most of the slate-gray tile floor. Nico’s desk took up the center of the room, but the two leather chairs facing it looked as comfortable as the dark couch against the far wall, and I decided I’d be happy sitting wherever Aly chose. Leather meant that even if I accidentally slopped a little coffee over the side of my mug, it could easily get wiped up.

Aly decided on the couch, and I settled down beside her as Nico and Junior turned the chairs to face us.

Once he was seated, Nico took a sip of his espresso before lifting his gaze to Aly. “They didn’t find any trace of you or our guys in the house.”

Relief hit me so hard that I had to set my cup on my knee to keep from spilling it.

Aly reached out and gripped my shoulder, and I knew she must have been just as emotional as I was from how hard she squeezed me. “What about the van?”

Junior gri

“What about all the footprints everyone must have left behind?” Aly pressed.

“What footprints?” Junior said. “The guys swept the snow as they were leaving.”

I forced my fingers to relax around my mug. “So that just left ours?”

Nico nodded. “Remember how we had you wear shoes a size too small?”

“Yes,” I said. “I assumed it was so there wouldn’t be a match to my real size.” I’d pulled a similar deception the first night I broke into Aly’s.

Nico nodded. “The size you wore was also Brad’s.”

You could have knocked me over with a feather.

My mind worked on overdrive as I thought back to all the other instructions I’d received that night, how they’d wanted me to hack into Brad’s machine but make it look like it was him who’d logged on, and the order to unencrypt anything that the cops might struggle with, like his secret hard drive.

Aly released my shoulder and sat forward. “Are you saying the cops think it was Brad inside the study that night?”

Nico nodded. “And an accomplice. That’s why the police bulletin says to be on the lookout for two men. Lucky for us, you have big feet for a woman.”

Aly grimaced. “Thanks for the underhanded compliment?”

Nico waved her off. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

I frowned. “What about Brad’s phone? Did the cops find it?”

“Ah, that,” Nico said, pausing to drain the rest of his espresso. “Yes, they found it. Brad did some rudimentary searching for Aly on it shortly after being released from the hospital, but she wasn’t the only one he looked for. Most of his digging revolved around another nurse named Erica Willet.”

Aly let out a shaky breath.

I gripped her knee. “Was that your co-worker who fit his profile?”

Her expression was troubled as she turned to me. “Yeah.”