After a year, Avery wouldn’t have remembered the space where she’d parked. The injury and trauma had caused some memory loss. But now things were starting to come back to her. And the police report she’d read over and over had spelled it out. Space 16B was currently occupied by a compact Toyota. Not the car she’d been driving.
She’d been digging through her purse when something hit her. She closed her eyes and willed her mind to let the image in. A deep breath through her nose repeated the smell of asphalt. Only it wasn’t asphalt, but oil and grime. She moved to the front of the car. There was a little more space in front of 16B than the others in the garage since a support pillar shared the space with the wall. Enough room to dump a woman left for dead where she would not immediately be seen.
Avery ran her hand along the wall and knelt closer to the ground. The smell of tires and oil . . . that’s where she’d gotten asphalt.
Lights flickered above her head.
She looked up, flinched, and fell back on her butt, which had been only a few inches off the ground.
“Don’t look at me. Jesus, don’t look at me.”
He wore a worn-out sweatshirt with a hood. Most of it covering his face. But not all.
With shaky hands, Avery removed her cell phone from her zippered pocket and opened a voice recording app.
“White. Not too tall, average. Stubble. Lack of shave. Strong chin. Tired eyes.” She closed hers. “What color?” Nothing came.
She rewound the tape in her head.
I’m walking through the garage with my head in my purse. How fucking stupid could I be? She shook away her stupidity. Avery wasn’t that girl any longer.
He hits me, like a body slam to the ground. I see the boot coming and close my eyes. I open them briefly and see brown pants. Big and loose and too short. Avery lifted her phone to her lips. “His pants don’t fit him. They’re too loose and too short. Like you’d see on a homeless guy. Only he’s fast. And fidgeting. He kicks me a lot. I keep my eyes closed until he starts to drag me.” She looked at the ground in front of the car. “I feel my head hit the concrete car stop. He dropped me and that’s when I see him. He’s cussing and telling me not to look at him. He kicks my face again. His boots are brand-new. There’s a plastic tag on the bottom that hasn’t worn off yet.” Avery went on describing everything she remembered about her assailant until there was nothing left to tell.
Footsteps broke her blank stare and prompted her to her feet.
Twenty feet away, a security guard had a hand on his flashlight. “Whatcha doin’ over there?” His accent was pure Jersey.
Avery brushed at her butt. “I was here last week. I lost an earring. Thought maybe it fell out when I was taking my jacket off.” She pretended to look around the cars.
“Expensive?”
She shrugged. “Sentimental.” A few more passes around the car and she lifted her arms in the air. “Guess I’m outta luck.”
The guard relaxed. “You can give me ya number. I’ll call if I find somethin’.”
“It’s okay. Chances are if it is here, it’s unusable now.” She turned and walked away. “Thanks anyway.”
“No problem.”
He was definitely watching her ass as she left the garage.
Avery grabbed a taxi and returned to the West Village.
She walked into the coffee shop and sat down. “I need another drawing.”
“She’s avoiding me. I pushed things and she’s bowing out. I can feel it.”
“You don’t know that. She’s working. You zone out for days at a time when you’re knee-deep in a new project.” Michelle huddled over coffee with him first thing Friday morning.
“Things were going so well. Her friends like me. Getting your friends on the same page with a new relationship is gold, right?”
Michelle nodded.
“For all I know she’s back in town and hasn’t bothered to call.”
“Go to her place.”
“I’m not going to stalk her.”
“Yeah, but you’re not ready to walk away. Maybe she has some emotional baggage she’s dealing with. She’s divorced, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Did she talk about her ex?”
Liam shrugged. “Not much.” Only to say she married him for his money. Which Liam still had a hard time believing.
“You’re supposed to see her tonight, right?”
It was krav night. “Yeah. But she could blow that off.”
“But she can’t blow off work. Maybe drop by this house she’s working on. If she’s there, you know she’s avoiding you, and you take it from there. I’m a big one for not jumping to conclusions. Talk to her. Ask her point-blank if she’s avoiding you. And face-to-face . . . none of those damn phone conversations or, God forbid, texting.”
At noon, Liam detoured to Brentwood. He meandered up the established neighborhood, asking himself if just showing up was a good idea. As he turned into the driveway and didn’t see her car, he realized all his worry was for nothing. She wasn’t there. Unless she turned her Aston in for a Volvo, which he highly doubted.
He stepped out of his truck and looked around.
The door wasn’t open like it had been every other time he’d been there. Safe to say if she was there, the place would be “airing out,” as she put it.
“Can I help you?”
Liam turned to the male voice.
“I’m looking for Avery.”
“Aren’t we all? She isn’t here.” Strange response.
Liam took the guy in and heard Avery’s voice in his head. “You must be Sheldon Lankford.”
“I am. You are?”
Liam took a few steps toward the man and reached out a hand. “Liam Holt. Avery’s contractor.”
“Right.” The man’s handshake wasn’t all that firm. He held on the right amount of time, but he looked above Liam’s head instead of in his eye. “I was hoping you’d call . . . or stop by, as it seems. I appreciate you taking the time to look over the place and give me your feedback.”
“No problem.”
Sheldon motioned him inside. “Avery said you’re a busy guy and you weren’t sure you’d be available to do the job.”
“All true.” Half-true. But blowing off the man’s work right now, with his relationship with Avery tilting off the ledge . . . yeah, he didn’t want to do that quite yet.
“When did you want to get started?” Liam asked, as if interested in the job.
“As soon as possible. I realize that might not be reasonable. A good contractor probably isn’t sitting around waiting for jobs to fall in their laps.”
Liam looked around the space. It didn’t look a whole lot different from the last time he’d been there. “I was going to talk to Avery about when she’d be done with her portion.”
“Originally she said at the end of next week. But apparently her aunt is sick and she had to fly to Seattle to help her out.”
Liam’s step faltered. Sick aunt? Did Avery have an aunt?
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry about the aunt, but it’s better than her abandoning the job.”
Liam narrowed his eyes. “Abandoning the job. Why would she do that?” Did the guy in front of him make a pass at her? If so, he’d probably be nursing a bruise.
“I swung by on Monday and found her coming down from the attic. A baby tarantula was in her hair. She freaked after I got it off her, and she ran out.”
Liam wanted to shake. He’d be less than okay if a big spider was on his head.
Sheldon looked at him. “Women.”
Forging a smile, Liam agreed. “Yeah, women.”
Twenty minutes later, Liam was back on the road. So either Avery lied to him about work or to Sheldon about an aunt. A white lie to the person paying you he understood. Calling in sick on a day you wanted to hit the beach was a norm. But a full week?
The rest of the day, Avery slipped into his head anytime his mind was silent.
Damn, he missed her. Hearing her voice. Teasing her about their not-date dates.
But it wasn’t until he and Brenda were sitting at the studio, thirty minutes past Avery’s appointment time, that Liam was done sitting back.
Blowing off work.
Blowing off Brenda.
And blowing off him.
None of it felt right. Phones were in every pocket, and there certainly would be one at the hotel in Seattle.
Something tasted funny about the whole thing.
He walked into Avery’s complex and was greeted by James. “Mr. Holt. Nice to see you again.”
“Thank you.”
“If you’re here to see Ms. Grant, she’s not home.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know. She told me.” That confirmed that. “I was dropping by to see Lori and Reed Barnum.”
“Are they expecting you?”
“No.”
James walked him over to the desk and picked up the phone.
“Good evening, Mrs. Barnum. Liam Holt would like to come up.”
“Of course.”
James smiled. “You know where the elevators are.”
Liam took two steps. “Wait, what number are they again?”
James told him and he disappeared around the corner.