Page 44 of No Control
Right for Henry.
“You can hang it there,” Henry gestures to a hook beside the door as he pats Duke’s head. I turn to the small, black u- shaped hook. I don’t know if it was there before. It probably was.
I swallow hard as I do as I’m told, feeling his eyes on me. I really should’ve taken a moment to at least look in the mirror before I walked out of the room.
“Here.” Henry extends the mug. “Let me know if it needs anything.”
Slowly, I walk close enough to him to take it from his hands. “Thanks.”
Ugh, I tell him that a lot.
“Yeah, no problem.”
“I’m sorry if I woke you up this morning,” I tell him, taking a sip of the warm liquid. It’s got just enough creamer to sweeten it, but not enough to take away the bite of the coffee itself.
“Don’t apologize to me.” Henry’s jaw ticks beneath a light shadow of facial hair. It’s just enough to draw out my urge to run my fingers across it, distracting me from the strange demand.
“Sorr—”
He stops me with a look. “Your existence is not an apology, Lydia. Stop it.”
“Okay,” I nearly whisper. I rock to my heels, feeling a tension fill the room that wasn’t there before. I’m reminded once again as to why I chose not to take the job. Henry has warm, friendly moments. And then moments like this—that I don’t understand.
“Here’s the list I promised you.” He slides a folded-up piece of paper across the white granite countertop. “I came up with it on the go.”
I nod, taking it from him. “I’ll take a look at it and then get started on a general plot. I’ll go over that with you, and then we’ll go from there?”
His lip curls upward. “We’ll rendezvous around nightfall. I have some work to get done until then.”
I swallow the knot in my throat. The husky words roll through my body like a flame to gasoline, and my heart struggles to keep up with the sensation, beating wildly in my chest. Does he know he’s this alluring?
He gives me a light smile as he heads for the garage, whipping open the door and disappearing down the steps. I stand there like an idiot, blinking my eyes until I hear the start of an engine. No matter how terrifying he might be, my attraction is strengthening.
And I’m either falling into temptation or recklessness.
…Or both.
But either way, I need to get him out of my head.
seventeen
Henry
“He’s a basket case,” I tell Jude the moment I step into the cave upstairs. It’s lined with monitors, hard drives, filing cabinets—the whole fucking works. No one comes up here except for my partner. It’s like the room in the castle where the beast keeps the wilting rose. Only I don’t have a dying flower, just a bunch of evidence of deceased people.
Probably equally as frightening.
But there aren’t any physical bodies here, so that counts for something.
“I’m aware.”
“He travels around town without actually stopping anywhere,” I huff, plopping down in the chair. “It was literally three hours of playing car chase—only he had no idea I was chasing him.”
Jude scrolls through something on his dual screen monitor. “Yeah, but he hasn’t seen anyone for mental health problems. He act paranoid?” His hazel eyes pull from the screen to me.
I shake my head. “More like erratic.”
“I didn’t catch any drug use on the cameras,” Jude says with a sigh. “And as far as I can tell, I don’t think the guy has any kind of social media presence.”
