Incriminated (8 page)

“I can't believe you thought I told Maya that your father was on death row for murdering Tyson Drew.”

Grace answered John-Michael with a measure of defensiveness. “It was honestly for, like, only ten seconds.”

John-Michael rounded the corner, into the living room area of the giant IKEA store. Six rooms had been mocked up, three on either side of a winding pathway. He kept his focus on the furnishings and away from Grace. Her assumption, even if had been momentary, was surprisingly hurtful.

He wandered into a room that felt similar to their own living area: a maple wood floor, beech shelving units, and white, colonial-style wooden folding tables. The space was dominated by a stylish three-seater sofa in pewter gray. He stood back from it for a moment and then looked at Grace.

“Gray?” she said with a doubtful frown. “We don't have to replace the couch with an exact copy.” Grace turned slowly, staring off at other examples. She pointed at
a traditional red sofa. “How about that one?”

They made their way over to the other room setup. The entire design consisted of three colors: red, white, and black. A black-stained wood veneer floor, tubular metallic shelving with white shelves, and a large red sofa resting on a white, faux sheepskin rug.

Grace tossed aside two silver-white chenille throw cushions and dropped herself onto the sofa. He could see her watching him, long enough to notice the tension that he almost certainly showed on his face. She pouted. “C'mon, John-Michael. Don't be mad at me.”

John-Michael shook his head very slightly. He was angry, but not about Grace thinking he'd spilled her secret. It was just that Grace seemed to have forgotten
his
problem, the gravity of what he'd told her about his father. And that anger was much harder to deal with.

I killed my father. I smothered him to death. He asked me to do it. He was checking out of life. But I'm the one who remembers what it felt like to have him struggle beneath a pillow held over his head, and then give up the fight.

He sighed and sat down at the other end, testing the sofa. It felt fine. In his current mood, one couch was as good as another.

Not a day went by when John-Michael didn't think about his father's death. Grace knew what he'd done—he'd confided in her after they'd driven to San Quentin to visit her father in prison. If she told anyone, he was finished.
How could she think he would tell
her
secrets? What planet was she on?

“Do you like the sofa?” she asked.

John-Michael settled back into the thick, textured upholstery. “It's fine.” He leaned over, tugging at the price tag. “Six-ninety-nine.”

“Perfect, it's within the budget.”

They were both quiet for a moment. John-Michael picked up a catalog from a small pile on the nearby folding table and began to flip through it. Grace stood and strolled over to the shelving unit, pulling out a drawer. Then, as if a thought had just occurred to her, she said, “Do you think Lucy would ever come forward and talk to the cops?”

“After all this time? Doubtful. Also, we still don't know for sure that Lucy saw anything that night at the pool.”

“My dad thinks she did. But who even cares what he says?” Grace ran a hand through her hair, clenching a fist in her tresses. “Only Lucy knows if she actually saw something.”

He heard the frustration in her voice. “If Alex Vesper was my dad, I'd be putting maximum pressure on Lucy to talk,” he said bluntly.

“Easy for you to say.”

He sighed. Grace had a point. She'd lived with her secret for a long time. Whereas he'd only found out that her father was on death row a month ago. When they'd visited Grace's father, John-Michael had confronted his worst
fear—the inside of a maximum-security prison. Exactly the kind of place where he could end up, if anyone ever managed to make charges stick about his own father.

“For what it's worth, Lucy and I have always been close—ever since rock camp,” he said. “We can talk about all kinds of stuff. But in all that time, she's
never
even hinted that she saw anything like what you're suggesting.”

“I'm not saying Lucy even knows what she saw. Maybe she has post-traumatic stress.”

“That's a possibility.” John-Michael's eyelashes flickered. “I mean she does have all the signs.”

Grace nodded in agreement. “She needed rehab for a reason.”

“I always assumed her drug problem was standard child-star stuff. I feel guilty I never realized there could be more to it than that.”

“You shouldn't beat yourself up about it. The thing is, Lucasta Jordan-Long has been a huge deal for me, most of my life. All the child actors at that party the night of the murder—I've followed their careers. When we came to live here in Venice, I sort of expected some of you to remember that she'd been on TV.” She looked at him expectantly.

“Well, I knew.”

“Yes, John-Michael, and when it all came out about Lucy and
Jelly and Pie
, you admitted it right away. Maya didn't.”

He paused. “You think she knew all along?”

“Maya's very good at hoarding information.”

“She's not the only one,” he said. “Honestly, Grace, take a look in the mirror.”

Her sapphire-blue eyes flashed with sudden sharpness. “But
you
know why I'm being secretive. I've admitted everything to you. The question is, what is Maya hiding?”

“Maybe she didn't out Lucy for being a child star because she didn't want to make her feel uncomfortable? She's cautious about our feelings.”

Grace regarded him cynically. “Seriously? Maya's not cautious, John-Michael. You know what Maya told me at the party the other night? She told me—no
begged
me—to tell Lucy and Candace about my dad.”

John-Michael shifted on the sofa. So Maya
had
been talking—that explained Grace's unusually petulant attitude. Another couple had entered the mocked-up living room and were trying not to stare at them. He stood up and offered a hand to Grace.

As they made their way through the store toward the exit, Grace admitted, “The thing is, I saw her eyes. She's scared, John-Michael. I need to know why.” She broke off, reaching for the cell phone that had just started to buzz with activity in her purse.

John-Michael watched her look at the caller's name, then take the call, holding up a single digit to him as if to say “one minute.” He watched her listen, saying nothing. Her expression went from quiet shock to breathless horror within seconds. By the time she finally nodded and managed to croak out, “I understand” in a tiny voice, Grace
was trembling. The phone slipped from her fingers. John-Michael bent swiftly to retrieve it. Just before the screen faded to black he saw the caller's name:
Mom
.

They'd stalled next to a table of kitchen implements and she was leaning against it for support. He took Grace's right hand in his. “Gracie, did you get bad news? I promise, we'll all be there for you. Is someone sick?”

Grace took a shaky breath and slowly pulled her hand away from John-Michael's. She straightened up and shook her head steadily, as though trying to summon up some resolve.

“No. It's something I've been expecting to hear. It's just that . . .” She gave a sudden, rueful laugh. “Just that actually hearing it is so much harder than I expected.”

To his astonishment, he saw a shiny film of tears appear in her eyes. Softly, John-Michael said, “What is it?”

Grace's lips pulled tight. She spoke in a forced, hesitant manner. “My dad. The execution. They set a date. July fourteenth. Four weeks, John-Michael. Four weeks from now, they kill my father.”

Jack Cato was waiting with Grace at the bottom of the spiral staircase. Maya could guess why she hadn't invited him inside the house. The smell of smoke from the couch fire still hung over the ground floor. Without the replacement, which was due to be delivered the following day, the living space looked sparse. Or as Candace preferred, “minimalist.”

“Morning,” Jack said, beaming. “Beautiful day, isn't it?”

Maya grinned. “It is on the outside. Inside, it's kind of smoky.”

He looked puzzled. “Did something happen?”

“A fire,” Grace commented. “RIP sofa. So, you're taking Maya to a business brunch?”

“It's more of an entrepreneurs' breakfast,” Jack said with a chuckle that brought an instant smile to Maya's lips. “But broadly speaking, yes.”

“Jack was a finalist in some big-deal entrepreneur
competition for schoolkids in England,” Maya told Grace. “And he got to meet lots of famous people and investors who started successful companies. He found out how all that stuff works, so he's taking me along to this thing at Caltech.”

“We're just having a go at rustling up some interest,” Jack said with self-effacing modesty. Maya doubted that he could be more adorable if he tried.

Three hours later, Maya was collapsing against the wall at the conference center at Caltech. On the other side of the wall was a room full of rich geeks, some barely out of college, who'd just witnessed her first-ever tech presentation. Her heart was still pounding loudly and steady in her own ears as it had throughout the longest five minutes of her life.

“That was bloody brilliant!” Jack said, breathless. She felt his hand, tentatively reaching for her shoulder and then pulling back at the last moment.

Maya couldn't stop a radiant smile.

“I can't believe it!” she said. He was gazing at her so intently that she wanted to look away but she couldn't seem to do it. “Two of them!
Two
of those guys want to invest in my app! Actual backers. This is unreal.”

“You did it, champ,” he said, straining to sound humorous. He gave her a playful punch on the shoulder. Their eyes caught for a second and she sensed an undercurrent of tension. This was either more adorable British reticence or he really, really wanted to touch her and didn't know how.

The whole event had been pretty casual, like an
open-mike type thing. Jack had put Maya forward to do a five-minute “bit” about her new Promisr
app, and Maya had stood there pitching her social-bartering app in front of everyone, her voice shaking a little bit. It was like some terrifying kind of entrepreneur comedy club.

Halfway through, she'd decided the best thing was simply to demonstrate her app. A cluster of potential investors had gathered the instant she'd finished; all of them young men, none older than thirty.

“I've never seen investors jump like that,” Jack marveled, running one hand through his unruly fair hair as he struggled to absorb what had just happened. “You don't get it! Mostly they're kind of bored, actually. You really made those nerds light up!”

“I did, didn't I?” Maya said, equally dazed. “It's incredible to think that some people can just drop that kind of money after a five-minute presentation.”

“Well, they did get to grill you for a good hour or so afterward. They can drop a lot more, too. They
will
drop a lot more. You'll see. A hundred K is nothing to these guys. It's not just the tech, it's you. Maya, you wowed them.”

“But why?” she asked, bemused.

“Because you're young, brilliant, gorgeous, and, as a girl, you stand out! These guys are dreaming of the day that your photo is on the cover of
Wired
magazine. Or even
Time
!”

Maya beamed, and then shoved him lightly in the chest. “Oh, please. Now you're exaggerating.”

Jack caught both her hands in his. She could feel her knees buckling slightly, unable to concentrate on anything but the sensation of his fingers intertwining with hers.

“Are you okay?” he said as she closed her eyes, suddenly leaning against him for support.

Maya was experiencing an exhilarating jumble of emotions. Relief and excitement, but also fear. “Jack, what if I screw this up? I can write code, but what do I know about running a business of any kind?”

“Oh, you shouldn't worry about that. They're counting on you to write the code. You're the brains, the creativity. The business side of things, that's their end.”

Her eyes fluttered open. Now she really did feel scared. “You think—you think there's any chance I could get ripped off? It happens.”

He raised a finger to her cheek and stroked her skin lightly. “Hey,” he said very softly. “I'm the one who got you into this. You think I'd stand by and watch you get ripped off?”

She felt an overwhelming surge of gratitude toward him. “If it wasn't for you, I'd still be fixing bugs in Cheetr, just watching downloads mount up. This is a whole other league. It's major.”

“What nonsense,” he murmured, his fingers still caressing her cheek. “You'd already started work on Promisr when you first talked to me.”

They were standing very close now, enough that she could feel the whisper of his breath, which smelled sweet,
of orange juice. She shivered in anticipation of more but instead he pulled away a little, before letting his hand fall to his side. Maya realized with a start that she'd been willing him to kiss her. She released a held breath when he turned away.

“Um, so we'd better get back in time for the next round of presentations. It'd look rude to miss them,” he said with obvious effort.

Why won't he kiss me?

Maya thought Jack was cute the first time she saw him but now it was as though some kind of filter had lifted away and she could finally see him. The longer she stared, the sexier he became.

“Jack,” she said quietly, not moving from where he'd left her, by the wall. Jack stalled on his way to the door and turned. Frustration clouded his expression.

In that moment, Jack stopped being her tutor, a chemistry genius, a business coach. All Maya could think about was a cute guy with the sexiest accent ever, and everything he'd done for her. At that moment, all
she
wanted to do was kiss
him.

Maya strode across to Jack and grabbed him by the arms.

She drew him closer, until he was no more than a slight lean of her head away. She sensed that he was still waiting for her to make the first move. A feeling of euphoria went through her and her skin buzzed all over. Then Maya leaned in, no tentativeness now, pushing herself against
him, challenging him to resist. The softness of his lips surprised her, something that she'd think about many hours later when the shock of the initial contact had passed.

This time, he didn't hold still. Their mouths seemed to melt together and she reached her arms around his neck, clinging on to him while they kissed.

“Good Lord,” he murmured faintly, pulling away.

Maya released her fingers from his hair and stepped away. “Your first kiss?” she said, trying to sound innocent. Who was she kidding? She'd never kissed a boy like that.

“Might as well be,” he said with a nervous laugh. “Look, Maya, I . . .”

“Is it because you're my tutor?”

“No! I mean, yeah, a bit, but that wouldn't stop me. I mean if that were an issue I'd ask them to find you another . . . it's just that . . .” His lips twisted in a grimace. “Clarissa,” he concluded bitterly.

“Your ex-girlfriend?” Maya could barely contain her disappointment. “You told me it was over. I thought she'd gone back to England.”

“And it is, but she's going to be here a bit longer, as it turns out,” he said, more than a little guiltily. “She's found some wretched course she wants to do at UCLA. Now she's waiting to see if her uni will let her onto an exchange program.”

“Okay but—what's that to you?”

“Maya, I'm the only person she knows in LA. I can't just abandon her. Clarissa is from a tiny village in Suffolk.
LA is bloody terrifying to a girl like her.”

Maya couldn't speak. A hundred arguments and insults lined up in her mind.

“Hey,” she said, drawing herself up with effort. “It was only a thank-you kiss. If you want to keep this strictly business, then just say so.”

“I didn't say that, Maya,” Jack said unhappily. But she'd already turned to leave.