Nick and Quinn talked quietly, personal murmurs Riley couldn’t hear without concentrating, which would be rude. Beside her in the back seat, Sam jittered his left leg up and down and beat his thumb and fingers against his thigh in an agitated rhythm.
She tilted closer until his ear was only a couple of inches away. “You okay?”
“Fine.” His head fell back against the seat, his eyes closed. His Adam’s apple bobbed with the kind of swallow you make when you’re trying not to throw up. Riley stroked her hand through his hair, fingers rubbing over his scalp. His expression eased, and he leaned into her palm. She laid her other hand on his, and he threaded their fingers, holding tight. She kept half her attention on him and the other half on the road.
A few minutes later, Nick asked, “Spot any tails?”
Riley whipped her head around. She half-expected Nick to be picking on her, but his eyes in the rearview mirror were serious.
“No,” she told him. “The few cars I saw turned off already. I checked the side streets, too,” she added. “I’m pretty sure no one is watching us. Not unless it’s from a distance.”
“Cool.” He spun the wheel to make a sudden left turn, following it with enough lefts and rights to make Riley carsick. After a couple of minutes, they roared up a long, open driveway to a humungous house on a bluff overlooking the sea.
Nick jumped out of the car to punch a code into a box next to one of the three-bay garage doors. Quinn climbed over to drive the car in next to a—Riley’s eyes bugged at the Rolls Royce beside them.
“This is your father’s place?” she asked as they climbed out of the car.
Nick lowered the overhead door. “His family’s. The Rolls is my great-grandfather’s. They show it in parades and stuff.”
Sam helped Nick unload the trunk. “Lucky this was so close.”
Nick shot him a look. “Don’t sound so suspicious. He grew up in Connecticut, and six cousins co-own this place now. Some of them were here for a long weekend, just left yesterday, or we would have stayed here while Quinn rested.” He used a key on the door into the house, and they all followed him into the biggest kitchen Riley had ever seen.
A beeping behind her grew louder and faster. She turned to watch Nick tap the keypad of an alarm system until the beeping stopped and a light flashed green.
Quinn looked around, smiling. “I think I could be comfortable here.”
They fanned out into the house’s open, airy floor plan. Riley couldn’t close her mouth as she passed through the wide arch between the marble-rich kitchen and the pine-floored, combination living and dining area. Two walls of windows gave an incredible view of the ocean. The furniture, arranged to maximize that view, was mostly rattan, with microfiber cushions in sage greens, ocean blues, and satiny white. High ceilings were bordered with crown molding and bisected by skylights that let the sunshine pour in.
Past the front door and a wide staircase to the left, Riley found a den or office and a short hall to a bathroom and a small bedroom that she imagined must be for a housekeeper or something.
She bumped into Quinn when she backed out of the small bedroom. They grinned at each other.
“I could live here,” Riley said.
“Me, too.”
They walked side by side down the hall, Quinn pausing to study a picture of a bunch of kids wearing shit-eating grins. She touched one, and her expression was sad, proud, and loving all at the same time.
Riley assumed the kid was Nick and decided to give Quinn a moment to herself. She returned to the main room, where the guys had already set up a laptop on the massive pine table in the dining area. Cables snaked out of it, connecting equipment Riley didn’t recognize.
Sam flipped a switch. The laptop blinked to a full-screen video feed of Chloe’s driveway.
Riley moved closer. Sam sat in front of the computer and tapped at buttons, moving from shot to shot. The front steps and entry, the main deck, below the house, out on the sand, and in the living room.
“Didn’t have enough cameras.” Nick braced one hand on the back of Sam’s chair, the other knocking Sam off the keyboard to page through the shots himself. “More important to cover the approaches than inside.”
Quinn joined them. “Nice job.” She touched Nick’s back. “John?”
“Yeah.” Nick pulled out his phone and hit several more buttons than necessary to make a call. “Disabled the GPS,” he said as he hit the speaker button and ringing filled the room.
“Yeah, Nick,” John answered.
“We think Tom’s dirty.”
John inhaled. “The hell he is!”
“Riley was ambushed on the road. He’s the only one who could have told anyone where she was.”
“No way in hell. Hold on.” The phone went silent for several minutes. Nick set it on the table and bickered with Sam over the best order to display the angles. Sam set up a main page with all six camera views but got more agitated as he worked, far worse than he’d been in the car.
Quinn sank onto a chaise and rested her head, but Riley couldn’t settle, and she wanted to stay close to Sam. She tried resting her hand on his shoulder, and his muscles relaxed. But this time when her fingers brushed the skin of his neck, he leaped out of the chair and crossed the room, all the way to the front windows. His eyes were wild, and his hands clenched and unclenched. He shook his head at her when she started to go to him, so she stayed near the phone, worrying.
“Nick.” The phone came to life again.
“Yeah.”
“Riley there? She okay?”
“Nice of you to ask, but yeah. She’s safe.”
“I talked to Tom. He claims he got a text from me asking for their location and destination. He only knew the route, not the address, but texted back. He told me Riley spotted a car he didn’t think was a threat, and she was getting upset enough to cause an accident. He was trying to calm her down.”
It sounded plausible, but… “Why didn’t he report in when I dumped him out of the car?” Riley asked.
“Phone smashed. He had to hitch to town and find a store to replace it. Says he’d finished up when my call came through.”
“Is he okay?” If he was telling the truth, Riley didn’t want him to be hurt. She didn’t feel bad for her decision, though. She’d done what she had to do to keep everyone safe. If he was telling the truth.
“Few scrapes, nothing major.”
“So what’s the deal with the text messages?” Nick demanded. “You get hacked or something?”
“Something.” John hesitated. “More than ever, I don’t want to talk about this on the phone.”
“It’s all right,” Nick said. “I think we can figure it out. Keep checking out Tom,” he ordered. “I’m not buying his story. Seems pretty coincidental that he was nearby when we needed a protector. He could have been tracking Riley for someone.”
John didn’t argue, nor did he take issue with being bossed around by his employee. “You all be careful. Things are splintered.” He put emphasis on the last word.
“We will.” Nick disconnected and kept pacing. “So, Numina could have mimicked John’s number to make Tom think the text messages were coming from him.”
“Or they could have planted Tom,” Sam suggested. “Like they planted Anson in college.”
“What did John mean when he said they’re splintered?” Quinn pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them.
“He said things are splintered,” Riley corrected before she thought about it. “But I guess that’s an odd way to say it, isn’t it?”
Quinn propped her chin on her knees. “Maybe the ones who’ve been after Riley and approaching the other goddesses are a splinter of the main organization.”