Authors: Mae McCall
What seemed like seconds later, the door opened and she
stepped out of the bathroom. She had pulled her wet hair back into a tight bun.
Jackson had never known a woman who could get ready so fast, but here she
was, dressed, makeup on, shoes in hand. He watched her brace one arm against
the doorway while she stepped into the heels, and took great satisfaction in
how well everything seemed to fit. He was just thinking about how nice she
looked in the dress, when she turned to go back into the bathroom.
Holy shit
was all that his poor brain could manage when he saw how sexy the dress was
from the side and back views. Cleo was oblivious as she put on diamond teardrop
earrings that she had found floating in the depths of her makeup bag.
“Shall we?” she asked imperiously as she gestured to the
bedroom door. Jackson recovered and gallantly offered his arm to escort her
downstairs.
***
The guests were gathered in a room that held dozens of
paintings, randomly placed on the walls all the way to the ceiling. An amber
blown glass chandelier blazed brilliantly above a long slate slab table with a
row of short floral arrangements down its center and dark wooden chairs on
either side. Two men and a woman were chatting with one another, drinks in
hand, as Jackson and Cleo entered the room. Cleo found it interesting that
everyone seemed to know Jackson already. As he took her across the room for
introductions, she began mentally stockpiling information in order to sort the
guests into Jackson’s categories. At that moment, Diego (she would always think
of him as Larry) entered the room and invited everyone to sit.
“So, Larry, where’s our gracious host?” Cleo asked,
delighted by the fact that the poor man couldn’t seem to look directly at her.
Before he could answer, a man spoke from the rear of the room. “I am here, Miss
St. James.”
He was around sixty-five, with a short gray ponytail and
horn-rimmed glasses. His sharply tailored black suit had a yellow flower on the
lapel, identical to the one that Cleo had put behind her ear during her garden
walk earlier that day. “I am Marco. May I call you Cleo, or do you prefer Miss
St. James?” he said as he strolled to the armchair at the head of the table.
“Cleo is fine,” she said, returning his smile. He nodded and
sat, gesturing over his shoulder for Diego to bring in the servers. They
started with fried green plantains and a spicy corn chowder. The next round of
platters held grilled fish and tamales and huge piles of fluffy rice. Marco
held royal court, guiding the conversation and making sure that everyone was
included. Cleo found him to be charming, and he seemed to feel the same about
her, often asking her questions and laughing with delight at her blunt answers.
Finally, as the staff cleared the table, Marco stood,
dabbing his mouth with a napkin before addressing the group. “We will have
dessert on the terrace, if you please,” he said, leading the way through yet
another set of French doors. Outside, there was a table laden with bowls of
fresh and candied fruits, coconut balls, tres leches cake, and pitchers of
margaritas. A coffee station was manned by one of Marco’s staff, prepared to
make espressos and cappuccinos on demand. A white canopy fluttered above them
with the night breeze, and somewhere in the darkness, monkeys chatted with one
another. It had gotten a little cooler once sunset had passed, and Cleo
shivered just a little. Of course, it had nothing to do with the light pressure
of Jackson’s hand in the small of her back as he escorted her behind the group.
“Have you figured everyone out yet?” he whispered as they crossed
the stone patio together.
“Aren’t we missing somebody?” she answered. “You listed five
people, but we’ve only got four, including Marco.”
He chuckled softly. “Nope. Everyone’s here. I never said
that the same answer couldn’t be used more than once.”
She was going to have to ask some pointed questions. Before
she could approach the first victim, Marco spoke up. “So, Cleo, have you
labeled us all yet?”
It figured that everyone would be in on the joke except for
her. But, Cleo was never one to back down from a challenge. She considered the
three guests with a calculating look. “Mostly,” she said. “I definitely know
that she’s the pop star,” she said, pointing to the woman, who had been
introduced as Maria.
“What—just because I’m the only woman in the group, that
automatically makes me a musical diva?” shot back Maria indignantly. “Are you
so sure that I am not a diplomat? Just because I’m a woman, I cannot be in
politics?”
Cleo smiled indulgently. “No, sweetie. I know you’re the pop
star because there is no diplomat in the world who has a tramp stamp,
and
a navel piercing,
and
a scripty French wrist tattoo that grammatically
makes no sense.”
“It says ‘what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger’!” snapped
the woman.
“No, honey. No it doesn’t,” replied Cleo before turning to a
man in a navy pinstripe suit. “And you are definitely a drug dealer,” she said
point-blank.
He looked surprised. “What would make you say that?” he
asked.
“You smell like diesel fuel. I don’t know how you run your drugs,
but you shouldn’t get so close to the vehicles,” she responded, before turning
to the other gentleman, a quiet man with a hint of a British accent. “Which
makes you an ambassador,” she told him. He smiled and nodded in response.
“What I haven’t figured out yet is the other ambassador, and
the thief,” she said, crossing over to the table to pick up a wedge of mango.
She considered them all while she chewed the fruit. Jackson looked supremely
amused, and also a little bit proud. This boosted her confidence more than she
would have expected it to.
She wrinkled her nose at Maria, who still looked pissed.
Examining the two male guests, she decided that since it wasn’t possible for
the same person to be both ambassadors on the guest list, by default, the drug
lord must be the other diplomat. Raising both eyebrows in surprise, she
addressed him. “So, you’re into politics and drugs, huh?” she asked. He winked
and replied, “You’d be surprised how helpful certain substances can be in
maintaining friendly relations.”
She took another piece of fruit. “So that means, that the
thief is…” she narrowed her eyes at the soft-spoken man, and then again
directed her gaze at the diva. They both seemed like unlikely candidates, one
from an intelligence perspective, and the other from a personality perspective.
“Ah, that would be me,” said Marco, stepping forward
smoothly and holding out one of Cleo’s diamond earrings. She immediately
pinched her earlobe, shocked that she hadn’t noticed anything was missing.
He took her hand and dropped the earring into it, an
apologetic expression on his face. “Well done, dear. Very well done!”
As he and the other guests crowded around the dessert table,
Cleo stood frozen, clutching the earring and staring at the back of Marco’s
head. Suddenly, Jackson was at her side, gently prying open her hand. “Please
tell me you don’t have the knife on you,” he said softly. “You look like you’re
ready to kill somebody,” he added as he carefully threaded the wire through her
earlobe, adjusting the diamond teardrop so that it was once again secure. She
remained like a statue throughout this process, finally turning to look Jackson
in the eye. “Why did you bring me here?” she whispered.
“We’ll talk about it later,” he said cryptically as he once
again put his hand in the small of her back and forced her to rejoin the party.
***
Once they disbanded to go to their rooms, Cleo made it a
point to slip away from Jackson and find her own way. This time, she locked the
bedroom door before she slipped out of the dress and shoes and went back to the
bathroom to dig through her suitcase for something to sleep in. Annoyingly,
someone had anticipated her need. Neatly folded on top of her suitcase, she
found her purple robe, a pair of fur-lined slippers, and a long black cashmere
night shirt. She slipped on the shirt, grabbed a pair of gym shorts that were
completely hidden by the nightshirt’s length, and stuck her lock picks in one
pocket and the switchblade in the other. Heading back into the main bedroom,
she noticed a package on the edge of her bed. Cautiously unwrapping it, she
revealed a mottled black and white notebook, a tortoiseshell fountain pen, and
a note:
C—
So you don’t forget the details.
J.
She hadn’t even realized that she had forgotten to pack a
notebook. Sticking her tongue out at the note, she wadded it up and tossed it
in the waste basket. Then, she turned off all the lights and waited for the
rest of the household to go to bed.
33
A little after 3am, when she was fairly certain that all
human inhabitants of the house were asleep, Cleo eased open the door of her
bedroom and listened for thirty full seconds before venturing out into the
hall. The stone was cold beneath her bare feet, and she almost went back for
socks, but decided instead to suck it up and deal with it. Her eyes had
adjusted by this point, and she could make out the doorways of three other
bedrooms to the right of hers on the curved landing of the second floor. There
was one door to her right. She tiptoed down the stairs to the first floor and
tried to get her bearings, finally locating the dining room where they had
eaten their meal. Moonlight drifted through the French doors, enough to
illuminate some of the paintings hanging on the walls. Cleo spent some time
really looking at the artwork this time, locating three Diego Riveras, a couple
of Gaugin’s works, and a lot of pieces by people that she didn’t recognize, but
that, based on the quality, were probably famous. There was even a small Monet
tucked in right above the rosewood buffet.
Now she was intensely curious about Marco. How many of these
had he stolen? Or was he even that kind of thief? Perhaps he was an embezzler,
and he had bought the artwork with his stolen millions. Spying a door in the
far corner of the room, Cleo decided to explore further. The hallway on the
other side held six locked doors, four on the left and two on the right.
Listening at each one to make sure that the coast was clear, Cleo quietly
picked the locks and poked her head in. Three of the rooms were uninteresting,
holding only extra chairs and tables for large dining parties. The fourth room
was an office that contained a simple desk with one drawer, a computer, a fax
machine, and a telephone. The remaining two doors both led to the same room, a
large library complete with curved iron staircases ladders on wheels to give
access to the floor-to-ceiling built-in bookshelves. Soft leather chairs and
loveseats were arranged throughout the room.
Again, Cleo wandered in the moonlight, running her
fingertips down the spines of leather bound first editions, trying to get a
read (pun intended) on her host. Sighing, she dropped down into a wing chair
and sat with her chin propped on her fist, thinking about her life over the
last three days. Well, mainly thinking about Jackson.
What was going on? She hadn’t seen him since she was ten
years old. Now, at nineteen, she had settled on her own, and suddenly here was Jackson, annoying as ever, saving her ass even though she didn’t need him to. Or maybe she
did, which was a disturbing thought. Cleo had never needed anyone before. Not
really.
And there was the incredibly annoying way that he always
anticipated her needs. Like breakfast and pain pills when he knew she’d have a
hangover. Like a dress and heels for a strange dinner party. A night shirt and
slippers. A notebook and pen. Even the switchblade and hat, all those years
ago, had been exactly what she needed to get over him leaving. The way that she
sometimes thought he looked at her now, even though she knew it had to be
nothing. A big brother, he had said. And then he had to go and make her
nervous. She scowled into the darkness. He probably did it on purpose. She
didn’t know what his end game was, but it was clear that Jackson was playing
her for some reason.
Suddenly, she was bugged by something. The room seemed
too…short. There were two doors leading into this room. One of them had at
least fifteen feet of wall extending beyond it. The other one, the first one,
was flush with a corner. And yet…there was quite a bit of hallway between that
door and the dining room. She went back out to make sure. Yep. The wall of the
library was here, and the wall of the dining room was another fifteen feet
away. That made no sense.
Cleo went back into the library and looked at the wall,
sometimes standing close enough to touch her nose to it, sometimes backing away
to look at it from across the room. Finally, it struck her—all of the books on
that wall were the exact same height. All of them except for one. She walked
back toward the shelves and bent down, angling her body so that enough
moonlight shone over her shoulder to illuminate the title.
The Third Door
it read, the gold-embossed green leather spine a good two inches shorter than
its companions. She didn’t know whether to laugh or roll her eyes. “Really?”
she whispered to the empty room as she pulled on the book and stepped back to
allow part of the bookcase to swing out. Crouching a little to let the
moonlight shine beyond the opening, Cleo recognized…Marilyn Monroe? In shades of
pink and yellow, Marilyn stared back at her with a mixture of seduction and
humor. Cleo stepped through the doorway, and the lights came on.
“Hahaha, she’s just as good as you said she would be,” said
Marco, stepping out of a corner. He clapped his hands together and beamed at
her. “Well done, Cleo.” He came over and squeezed her shoulder. “This is going
to be exciting,” he said as he edged past her. “We’ll start tomorrow, Jackson,” were his last words before he wandered out of the library.
Jackson was casually leaning in the corner of the room,
which was approximately fifteen feet deep and twenty or twenty-five feet wide.
The Andy Warhol portrait of Marilyn was just one of around thirty paintings
hanging around the room. Cleo said nothing as Jackson lazily peeled himself off
of the wall and walked toward her with a grin. He was barefoot and wearing a
white t-shirt and black cashmere sweatpants, the most dressed-down she had ever
seen him.
“What the fuck is going on, Jackson?” she asked angrily. Her
entire body was trembling, as though it couldn’t decide whether she should kill
somebody or run away.
“This is why I brought you here, Cleo,” he said, stopping a
short distance in front of her. He exhaled slowly and a wave of peppermint
washed over her.
Yep. She was going to kill him. “You brought me here to find
a creepy guy’s creepy secret room? Which you already knew about, considering
the fact that you’re standing in it? Or maybe you brought me here to have a
laugh with your buddy Marco.” Cleo was furious.
“You’re amazing when you’re angry,” he said, laughing
softly. “But seriously, you’re not here to be laughed at. You’re here to be
trained.”
She let that sink in. “Trained?” she said angrily. “Trained
for what? What kind of lesson has the Almighty Jackson decided that little Cleo
needs to learn?”
He took two steps toward her, until he stood no more than a
few inches from her. “Marco’s going to teach you how to be a better thief,” he
whispered, reaching out to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear before slipping
past her and out the secret door.
What. The. Hell. Cleo stood in the hidden room under
Marilyn’s watchful eye and tried to figure out what she was feeling. The best
she could get was that it was a mixture of rage, embarrassment, curiosity, excitement,
and a little more rage. Who did Jackson think he was?
***
She left the lights on, mainly because she didn’t feel like
looking for the switch, and tugged the bookcase closed as she left the library
and numbly went back to her room. “Peppermint?” asked Jackson as she let
herself in. She nearly jumped out of her skin. He was lying on her bed, his
bare feet propped on a throw pillow and his hands clasped behind his head. When
she glared at him, he bit the candy between his front teeth and laughed.
“Get off my bed, asshole,” she growled as she walked into
the bathroom, where she quickly divested herself of the lock picks and
switchblade, splashed water on her face, and brushed her teeth. He was still
stretched out like a cat when she came out, so she tried again. “Get. Out,” she
enunciated as she reached under the long shirt and pulled off her gym shorts,
tossing them to one side.
“Come here. Let’s talk,” he said, patting the bed beside
him.
She flipped him the bird. “There is no fucking way I’m
getting in that bed with you,” she snapped.
He rolled his eyes. “Jesus, Cleo, it’s a king sized bed. I’m
not going to touch you. I just want to have a conversation. Which we can do
with at least three feet of space between us, if you’re that nervous about
being around me with no shorts on,” he said, grinning devilishly at the end.
Sighing wearily, Cleo muttered, “Whatever,” and climbed into
bed, although she did get in underneath the covers, thereby causing her stellar
legs to disappear. Jackson hid his disappointment well.
“So, talk,” she said, the irritation clear in her voice. She
refused to look at him.
“You like to break into places,” he said. “Marco has made a
career of that very thing, except Marco, unlike you, has never gotten caught.”
He grinned at her scowl. “You’re great with locks and hidden doors, but crap when
it comes to security systems and anything not involving doors. So, Marco
offered to show you the ropes, provided you showed a certain degree of talent.”
“So, you and your buddy Marco have been talking about me
behind my back for how long?” she asked sleepily, trying to suppress a yawn.
The bed was so soft, it was getting harder to stay mad.
He didn’t answer for several seconds. “I’ve known Marco for
around eleven years,” he said, not actually answering her question.
“I thought we were here for business,” she mumbled.
He looked down at her. “Marco acquired something for me. I
came to pay him for it, and also to visit. It’s been a while. And I wanted to
do something for you. I figured you would enjoy an experience like this. So, I
called Marco, and he arranged a few little tests, like the thing at dinner. I
told him you’d sneak around after everyone went to bed, so we waited for you to
leave your room, and then we followed your progress.”
“You’re always following me,” she mumbled petulantly as
sleep claimed her.
“Yeah,” whispered Jackson, trying not to think too much
about it. He was just looking out for her. She was the most interesting person
of his acquaintance, and she had risked herself to get him out of a
life-or-death bind, and she deserved to be taken care of. That was it.
***
Big brother. Big brother. Big brother.
As a mantra,
it left much to be desired, especially since Jackson’s thoughts were far from
brotherly. He had dozed off in Cleo’s bed, only to wake up with her snuggled in
the crook of his arm, breathing softly against his chest. She was under the
blanket, and he was on top, but he still felt her warmth pressed against his
side. Sometime in his sleep, he had put an arm around her to hold her close.
He had vowed not to think deep thoughts about his feelings
for Cleo. It was just too complicated. However, his current thoughts were not
at all deep. This was also a problem. He should have left. Instead, he
remembered the way she had looked in that dress. He smelled her hair and
thought,
Well, shit.
Cleo woke up with her nose in Jackson’s armpit. He was so
still, she thought he was asleep, but when she lifted her head, there were
those blue eyes, watching her. “Morning, Cleopatra,” he said, his voice much
calmer than his brain was at that moment.
“My name’s not fucking Cleopatra,” she mumbled, squinting
and sitting up. “What time is it?”
“A little after 9am,” he said, smoothly sitting up and
scooting off the bed to put a little distance between them. “Marco wants to see
you at eleven, so you can sleep a little longer if you want.” He didn’t have to
say it twice. She heaved a sigh of relief and flopped back on the pillow,
falling asleep almost immediately.
Jackson watched her for a minute or two before beating a
hasty retreat to his room, where he spent the next two hours trying
not
to think about Cleo—the first time he saw her in San Francisco; the first night
that he followed her through dark streets; watching her in nightclubs; that
entire night, seventy-two hours ago in her apartment, from her pulling the
switchblade, to the way she looked in that t-shirt, to him carrying her to bed
after she had passed out on the sofa. Even just the last thirty-six of those
hours—haughty Cleo on the plane; Cleo in a robe; Cleo in that blue dress; Cleo
asleep on his chest.
He knew that at some point he was going to have to really
reflect on his motivations where she was concerned. Why had he really kept tabs
on her? Why had he followed her? Why had he gone to her apartment when she
wasn’t home? Why had he decided, without hesitation, to insert himself in her
life three days ago? Take care of her? Flirt with her? Goad her? Argue with
her? But today was not that day, he decided, heading for the shower to get rid
of the scent of her shampoo on his skin.
Meanwhile, Cleo was waking up with her face buried in a
pillow that smelled like peppermint and…guy. It was disconcerting to feel
well-rested and incredibly cranky at the same time. Thinking back, she
remembered waking up in bed with Jackson. She had to rewind a little to make
sure nothing weird had happened (it hadn’t, she decided). Unless you count the
fact that she woke up snuggling Jackson, which hadn’t felt weird at the time,
but the more she thought about it, the weirder she felt. Officially deciding
not
to think about it, she rolled out of bed to brush her teeth and get dressed.
***
He was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs, looking
dashing, as always, in a suit and tie. She wondered if he even owned a pair of
jeans, or, God forbid, a t-shirt with a hole in it. She was bothered by the
fact that his smile didn’t reach his eyes when he nodded in greeting. In fact,
he looked pissed about something. This worried her for the fraction of a second
that passed before she remembered that she was definitely not thinking about Jackson
as a human being today. So, she nodded back, and breezed right past him.