Chapters (65)
- Title Page
- Copyright Notice
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty–one
- Twenty–two
- Twenty–three
- Twenty–four
- Twenty–five
- Twenty–six
- Twenty–seven
- Twenty–eight
- Twenty–nine
- Thirty
- Thirty–one
- Thirty–two
- Thirty–three
- Thirty–four
- Thirty–five
- Thirty–six
- Thirty–seven
- Thirty–eight
- Thirty–nine
- Forty
- Forty–one
- Forty–two
- Forty–three
- Forty–four
- Forty–five
- Forty–six
- Forty–seven
- Forty–eight
- Forty–nine
- Fifty
- Fifty–one
- Fifty–two
- Fifty–three
- Fifty–four
- Fifty–five
- Fifty–six
- Fifty–seven
- Author’s Note
- Acknowledgments
- Also by Becky Masterman
- About the Author
- Newsletter Sign-up
I ran off the airplane and paused for one minute on the concourse, wanting to check one more thing. I accessed the Wi-Fi in the terminal, went to YouTube, and searched Humoresque. The even, plodding beat of the melody played on a violin gave me the chills.
Yep, that was what Beaufort was humming at the house when he came for dinner.
I ran down the small concourse, stopping in one of those shops that sell travel-sized everythings along with the supersized packages of Twizzlers and the latest bestsellers. I’d been in enough airports to know where to look and scanned the items hanging against the wall—aspirin … tiny nail files—looking for the right container. Dammit, there were no plastic hair spray bottles, just metal ones with the hair spray sealed inside. I chose a vial containing nasal spray. As I paid, I asked the clerk who was charging me somewhere in the neighborhood of five bucks for it, “Does this look like plastic to you?”
She just narrowed her eyes and said, “Do you want to buy that?”
On the way out to pick up my car from the parking garage I tore off the bit of plastic sealing the vial, popped off the lid, and spilled the solution on the ground without breaking my pace. It would work, but whether I would harm myself with it rather than Beaufort remained to be seen. I hoped there were not different kinds of plastic, with some working and some not. Or things that appeared to be plastic but were not? I was focused on putting one foot in front of the other, and put this out of my mind, figuring that with capsicum it wouldn’t make a difference, Gemma-Kate was just being overly cautious.
I got my car out of hock and drove the twenty minutes to the college dorm, talking to Gemma-Kate all the while on my phone, getting instructions that she would give me again. And again, just to be on the safe side. When I pulled up, she got in the backseat with her backpack slung over her shoulder.
“Go ahead,” she said, “I’m coming with you. I don’t trust you with this.”
I spent a few precious seconds trying to figure out how to get her out of the car. Her father would kill me if Gemma-Kate got hurt.