Key Lime Pie (35 page)

“I thought you were going to wait in the bushes,” he whispered, looking around even as he unsnapped his case and opened his pick set. The tools really did look like glorified bobby pins.

“You were wrong,” Sadie said, also looking around to be sure they weren’t being watched.

Eric made a huffing sound and then turned back to the door, extracting one of his picks and handing the case to Sadie. After wriggling the pick into the lock, he paused, then wiggled it some more, then held it in place with one hand while reaching for another pick from the case Sadie held out to him. He chose a second pick while Sadie continued to serve as the lookout, increasingly uncomfortable. Within seconds, she heard the final click, and Eric pushed the door open.

“Eric,” she said as he stepped forward, “isn’t this breaking and entering?”

Eric looked at her but said nothing, simply walking through the door.

Sadie paused only a moment before slipping in behind him and moving to the side so he could shut the door.

She didn’t know if she was okay with this and yet, she was here. They were here. Did Larry’s criminal involvement justify them breaking the law just a little? She didn’t think so, and now she regretted agreeing to Eric’s plan.

Eric pulled a penlight from his front pocket and turned it on before scanning the room as he crept forward. It wasn’t dark, but evening had deepened the shadows and made it hard to see the details of the apartment. The penlight helped, but not very much. Sadie watched him for a minute, then saw a light switch and flipped it.

“Hey,” he said, spinning around to face her. He still had the two picks in his hand, and she held the kit out to him. “Low profile, remember?”

“Like his neighbors keep track of when he is and isn’t here,” Sadie said. She knew she was being a little snappy and wondered if it was because of the stress that had been building all day or because she was frustrated by both the kiss itself and the fact that Eric had been able to blow it off completely. “We’re breaking the law. We need to hurry and get this over with.”

Eric looked as though he might argue, but finally took the case she offered and returned his tools inside before clipping it back on his belt. Without a word he turned back to the apartment.

They were standing in the entryway but could see into the living room that ended with French doors on the other end. Through an arched doorway to the left was the kitchen, and perhaps a dining room beyond that. On the right was a wall that separated the living room from a hallway, off of which there were two recessed doorways—bedrooms, Sadie assumed.

“I’ll start in here,” he said, turning toward the living room and, more specifically, a computer desk.

Sadie glanced at the front door. For all her self-assurance, she was terrified of Larry coming back and finding them here. She’d been caught where she didn’t belong enough times to know exactly how scary those situations could be, but she turned her attention to the search at hand, trying not to freak herself out too much.

Larry took more after Layla than Eric in regard to cleanliness, and Sadie appreciated his sense of organization—a place for everything and everything in its place. Sadie took note of the furniture. It wasn’t elaborate, but neither did it scream economy—much like Larry’s car and clothing. She headed toward the hallway, specifically the first door, which was open but dark inside.

She flipped on the light and found her eyes immediately drawn to the open drawers, the stack of clothing on the bed, and the two suitcases half filled on the floor. The obvious signs of packing confirmed what Larry had told Max—he was leaving. She moved into the room, scanning it for anything obvious, like more of those envelopes he’d taken to Tia.

Her phone chimed, indicating she’d received a text message, and she pulled it out of her pocket. It was from Pete.

Alejandro Montez Rosado

Alex was a nickname for Alejandro. Sadie pictured the tattoo she’d seen on the back of Megan’s neck. Alex
was
her husband. So how did Joe, a.k.a. Hugo, factor in?

“I wonder where he’s going,” Eric said from behind her, and she startled, having not heard him approach.

She put the phone in her pocket and returned to the task at hand, which was pulling open drawers. She didn’t want to talk about Megan with Eric right now. She still felt horrible for being part of her escape, and she sensed that Eric hadn’t quite come to terms with it either. She might have expected the kiss to soften things, but then it hadn’t been much of a kiss so it made sense that she wouldn’t get optimal results.

“Me too,” she said, sliding open the closet door and fingering through the hangers. Eric joined her, and eventually she stepped back, since he seemed intent to be the one searching the closet. She was also uncomfortable being so close to him. Had the kiss changed everything or had it sped up the process of her realizing that Eric wasn’t everything she may have thought he was? Not that he wasn’t a good guy, she just wasn’t sure he was the
right
guy.

“I’m going to check the other room,” Sadie said when she finished with the drawers, leaving Eric to fumble through the closet. She headed for the other door she’d seen farther down the hall.

She opened the door to the second bedroom and turned on the light, instantly disappointed to find a guest room. There was a double bed placed against the middle wall and a simple white dresser next to it with an artificial flower arrangement. It was only the black leather rolling office chair at the end of the bed that seemed out of place. It was a strange piece of furniture for a guest room, especially since the chair faced the closet. There was also a smell in the room that didn’t fit either. Metallic but also dry—crisp somehow. She turned around to see all three-hundred-and-sixty degrees of the room but couldn’t see anything she could attribute the smell to. It reminded her of the copy room at the school where she used to teach.

Her eyes landed on the closet with two sets of sliding doors that filled one entire wall of the room. It was a big closet for a guest room—bigger than the one in the master bedroom, even. She approached it and attempted to pull the door open by pushing it along the track. It was stuck. She pushed harder, but it still didn’t move. Luckily, Sadie could be flexible. She didn’t have to open
this
door. She moved to the other door and pulled on it. It was also stuck. She felt a rush of heat travel through her chest. Two stuck closet doors. What a coincidence.

“Eric,” she said, a little louder than she intended. But hadn’t she been the one who said they needed to hurry more than they needed to prowl?

He came into the room a few seconds later. “What?” he asked, and she looked up at his sharp tone. “Sorry,” he quickly said. “I guess things are getting to me.”

Sadie nodded toward the closet doors. “They’re stuck,” she said. “But do you smell that?” She sniffed again, and Eric did the same thing.

“I don’t smell anything,” he said, but moved toward the closets anyway, almost as though he were humoring her.

“You don’t smell anything?” she repeated, surprised. “Bedrooms are supposed to smell like fabric softener or lavender, maybe musty if they aren’t aired out. This one smells like a . . . a print shop.”

That was the smell—ink, electronics, paper. She looked at the closet doors, moving her eyes around the edges. “I’ll bet the closet is full of equipment—printers and whatever else Larry used to make those documents he took to Tia.”

Eric pulled on the door, paused, and then pulled again before stepping back and moving his head as he scanned the doors. “They’re locked,” he said.

“How can sliding doors be locked?”

Eric didn’t answer, instead he continued scanning, his eyebrows pulled together, before he moved forward and bent down, running his fingers along the interior panel of the door.

Sadie watched him, not sure what he was feeling for, when suddenly he stopped. Sadie moved so she could get a better view as Eric pulled back a six-inch portion of wood paneling on the edge of the door. She crouched down to get a better look at the keyhole hidden beneath the piece that seemed to fit into place like a tongue-and-groove wooden floor.

Without a word, Eric snapped his tool kit off his belt and flipped it open, choosing a smaller bobby pin than the one he’d used on the front door. Sadie watched in fascination as he wiggled the pin into the lock. She was going to learn how to pick locks some day; it was such a useful skill. Almost immediately the lock clicked. Eric slid the door back, and Sadie moved around him so she could see what had been so expertly hidden.

“Wow,” she breathed as she scanned the floor-to-ceiling equipment built into the closet. She recognized several printers of different sizes as well as a computer, but there were half a dozen machines that she didn’t recognize at all. She looked at a pile of papers sitting on top of the computer keyboard. Larry’s current work in progress, perhaps? Or maybe his own ID that would take him away from all this.

“I’m no expert,” she said, cocking her head to get a better look at the papers without having to touch them. “But this looks like a birth certificate to me.” The top sheet had the state seal of Delaware on the top.

Eric stood beside her and picked up a square piece of plastic that had been sitting next to the keyboard—perhaps on the only empty space on the built-in countertop. Sadie wasn’t sure getting his fingerprints all over it was such a good idea, but Eric didn’t look to be in the mood for advice. He turned the plastic over, and Sadie realized that it was printed with the back of a driver’s license. The front was blank.

“I can’t believe this,” Eric said softly under his breath, shaking his head. Sadie watched Eric’s face as the details of the betrayal sank in. He turned the plastic over in his hand, from the blank side to the printed side and back again. “Larry,” he said, as though it were a sigh.

“What?” said a voice from the doorway.

Both of them whipped their heads around to see Larry standing there, looking very much like an office employee at the Speedway and nothing like the identity broker they’d just realized he really was.

Sadie sucked in a breath.

Eric lifted his chin defiantly.

Larry just stared at them. He held a grocery sack in one hand; Sadie didn’t know what was inside it, but it explained his leaving the house. They’d thought he was going to the track to help with the event, instead he’d just gone around the corner. Despite having struck what Sadie assumed was supposed to be a casual pose, leaning against the door frame the way he was, Larry looked uncomfortable—a mix between the insecure man from the police station and the confident one from Max’s porch. She wondered now, though, if part of his discomfort at the station had been due to his “extracurricular” activities. If he’d made the ID from the wallet found with the body, did he worry the police would somehow trace it back to him? Was that why he was leaving now?

“What did you do with Megan?” Eric finally said, his voice low enough that it sounded like a growl, which was probably a pretty good description of how he felt.

“I did what she wanted.” There was resignation in Larry’s voice, as though he’d avoided this conversation for a long time, but could tell he had little choice but to admit to what he’d done now that he’d been asked a direct question.

Eric did growl this time, deep in his throat. His jaw tightened, and Sadie sensed the rest of him following suit. She put a hand on his arm, hoping it would calm him. He pulled away, and she let her hand fall to her side.

“I don’t believe that,” Eric said.

“You think I somehow
forced
her to take on a new identity and start a new life?”

Eric clenched his jaw but didn’t answer. Sadie was surprised he didn’t have a comeback.

“She wanted a new life,” Larry said when Eric simply continued to glare. “You saw it, Eric. You saw her stuck inside Layla’s world—it was killing her.”

Eric shook his head. “She was doing fine.”

“No, Eric, she wasn’t,” Larry said, an edge to his tone.

Sadie took a step back. With about fifteen feet between the two men, she didn’t want to be caught in the crosshairs of an altercation if it came to that, and, gauging Eric’s tension, it might just come to that.

“So you sold her off? Pulled her out from under me, sent her on her way, and let me live without knowing the truth all these years?”

“She’d wanted it for a long time, and I finally ran out of excuses not to help her.”

“What do you mean?” Sadie asked, trying to collect important information before Eric lost his temper.

Larry’s eyes settled on Sadie. “Megan knew I was dealing in documents.” He waved toward the equipment staring back at them from the closet. “She was fourteen, and staying with Layla and me for the weekend, when she came across some papers.” He glanced at Eric. “You were spending a week in Atlantic City with, what was her name, Rita?”

Sadie looked up at Eric, whose neck reddened as he held Larry’s eyes. He said nothing. After a few seconds, Sadie couldn’t take it. “Who’s Rita?”

“Just an old girlfriend,” Eric said, insinuating with his tone that it wasn’t important. And it wasn’t. Sadie had dated, was even engaged six months ago, and dating someone else up until two days earlier. It was the defensiveness in Eric’s words that caught her attention and gave her pause.