Leanne Banks - Hot Stuff

“That would be uncomfortable,” Pugg said.

Julie had a wet towel pressed to Pugg’s face. “My Uncle Lester got kicked in the nuts one time, and it turned his hair white all over his body. He became one of them albinos,” she said. “I didn’t see him when he got kicked, but I saw him when he was white, and it was something. It was shortly after that he got a job with a chemical plant and fell in a vat of formaldehyde. Lester was one of those people, if they didn’t have bad luck they wouldn’t have any luck at all.”

“What happened to Lester?” Pugg wanted to know.

“Oddly enough he didn’t die,” Julie said. “But he was always strange after that. And the formaldehyde smell never went away. You always knew when Uncle Lester was in the room. It was like being in biology lab when they opened the jars of pickled frogs.”

“That’s a very weird story,” Pugg said.

“Not in my hometown,” Julie said. “We got a bunch of people born downwind of the nuclear power plant and there’s some tales to be told on those folks.”

“Did you get the address on the townhouse on Commonwealth?” Kellen asked Pugg.

“Pugg didn’t… oops!” Pugg clapped his hands over his privates. “Pugg means I! I didn’t get the number, but I know the house. It’s on the block between Gloucester and Hereford. On the side of the street toward Prudential Center. And it’s easy to find because it has a red door.”

Kellen took a step back and looked at the townhouse in front of him. Four stories if you counted the garden level. Classic brownstone. Newly restored. All windows were dark at one o’clock in the morning. The house was on Commonwealth Avenue between Gloucester and Hereford Streets. It had a red door. Kellen reached into his pocket and removed Marty’s key. He plugged it into the big brass lock on the front door, and nothing happened. He turned and looked at Cate and shrugged.

Cate was ten feet back, on the sidewalk, doing lookout for Kellen, and she was thinking he seemed disturbingly comfortable attempting the task of breaking and entering. In fact he was comfortable with a whole bunch of skills Cate ordinarily would find alarming in a man, not the least of which was lying. Kellen McBride-Koster was hands down the best liar Cate had ever met. And yet, Cate was increasingly attracted to him. He was charming and confident and smart. And he was willing to step up and be a hero if a hero was needed.

He was standing in a splash of moonlight, and Cate thought he was flat out sexy in dark jeans and a button-down black shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. Her mother’s words echoed in her head, too easy on the eyes, hard on the heart. And then Julie’s words echoed in her head, take him out for a test drive. Cate chewed on her lower lip. She was leaning toward Julie’s words.

“It’s hard to tell for sure from here, but it looks to me like the house two doors down also has a red door,” Cate softly called to Kellen.

Kellen silently moved from the stoop to Cate’s side and looked down the street. “I guess red is a popular color for doors.”

Kellen had no luck with the second door he tried, but the lock tumbled on the door to the third house. The third red door belonged to one of the smaller houses on the block. The house was in deep shadow, receiving little light from the gaslight-type streetlight at the curb, and only scattered moonlight filtered through the shade tree in the minuscule front yard.

“Okay, so we know this is the house,” Cate said. “Now what?”

“Now we hope he isn’t home,” Kellen said. And he put his finger on the doorbell and pushed. “He doesn’t know me. If he answers the door I can pretend to be drunk and lost. I suggest you hide in the bushes.”

Cate scooted close to the building, crouched behind an azalea, and held her breath.

Kellen rang the bell again. And again.

“Nobody home,” Kellen said. He opened the door and stepped inside, motioning Cate to follow.

Cate scrambled out of the bush and into the house. She stood in the dark foyer and listened to something beeping. “What’s that?” Cate asked.

“Alarm,” Kellen said, taking her hand. “It’s ready to go off. Don’t get scared. It’s going to be noisy.”

The alarm started to wail, and Kellen wrapped his arms around Cate and held her close. He had his mouth to her ear.

“I can feel your heart racing,” he said.

“The police are going to come in and take us to jail.”

“Probably not. They’ll try the front and back doors and find them locked. They’ll shine their flashlights in the windows and see that everything is okay and that there are no signs of forced entry. And they’ll leave. The alarm company will alert someone, most likely Marty, but it’ll be a while before he’ll arrive to check things out. If ever. We’ll be gone by then.”

“You’ve done this before.”

“Nothing I’d admit to.

Somewhere in the house a phone was ringing.

“That’s the alarm company,” Kellen said. “When no one answers they’ll send the police.” He opened the coat closet door and pushed Cate in. “Stay here and keep the door closed until I come for you. I can go through the house faster if I’m alone.”

There were two coats hanging in the closet, and Cate recognized Marty’s cologne on them. This was his house, and they’d broken into it. Okay, so they had a key, but they’d sort of stolen the key. She slipped behind the coats and tried to stay calm. Her heart was still banging in her chest. I’m not cut out for this, she thought. I never wanted to be James Bond. I always wanted to be Mr. Rogers. The phone was no longer ringing, but the alarm continued to wail. It was pitch-black in the closet. Too dark for Cate to read the dial on her watch. And then the alarm stopped and the silence was crushing.

Cate took shallow breaths and listened. She could hear someone try the front door. Her heart was stuck in her throat. She was going to throw up and faint, she thought. And when she regained consciousness she was never going to talk to Kellen again. What the heck was he thinking? Normal people just didn’t do this stuff. This was burglar stuff. This was crazy.

The door rattling stopped and Cate stayed statue still. She felt her pulse normalize a little, and she slumped against the closet wall and waited. And then without warning the alarm came back on. She heard footsteps on the stairs, the closet door was yanked open, and Kellen reached in for her.

“We’re leaving,” Kellen said. “We’re going to use the kitchen door. It’ll let us out into the alley behind the house.”

“It’s totally black in here. How can you see?”

“Penlight,” Kellen said, flicking his hand.

Cate looked down and saw the point of light on the floor. She was so scared she hadn’t picked it up on her own.

Kellen tugged her down the center hall, quickly moving her through the house. They were in the kitchen, out the kitchen door, crossing a small enclosed patio, out the patio door, and standing in a one-lane, very dark alley that ran behind all the houses. They were two houses from Gloucester Street. Cate could see the streetlight at the end of the alley. Kellen still had her hand, pulling her along. He broke into a run. They were in sneakers, and they made almost no noise as they ran for Gloucester. They crossed the street at Gloucester and headed for Prudential Center and, beyond that, the South End.

They’d just reached Boylston when Cate saw the police cruiser. It was moving toward them fast, lights flashing, no siren. Kellen stepped into the shadow of a doorway and pulled Cate hard against him. He kissed her, and the cruiser slowed but didn’t stop as it rolled past. Not the world’s most romantic kiss, both of them with eyes wide open, watching the cruiser.

“I’d like to stay and do a better job of kissing you,” Kellen said, “but we need to keep moving.”

“What happened back there?”

Kellen silently cursed himself for not being more careful and endangering Cate. “The alarm reset itself, and I tripped the motion sensors. It would have been nice to have a little more time, but I found out what I needed to know.”

They were walking down Boylston, holding hands and talking, looking like a couple on their way home from a late date. They turned at Dartmouth and walked toward Columbus and Tremont, and Cate finally began to relax.

“Marty has been using the house,” Kellen said, “but I think it’s a stopover, as opposed to a second home. I didn’t see any expensive artwork, and the furniture doesn’t reflect Marty’s taste. He has some clothes there, but not a lot. Bare essentials in the bathroom. No condoms that I could see, so I’m guessing he doesn’t use the house for fun. It didn’t seem like he shared it with anyone. Nothing in the refrigerator. There was a wall safe upstairs, but it was open and empty. He had a suitcase on the bed. It was partially unpacked. I think Marty was snatched, and so far hasn’t been returned.”

“Snatched by Kitty Bergman?”

“That’s my best guess. And I bet when I check the tax records I find Bergman owns that townhouse.”

“I don’t get it. I don’t understand any of this. What on earth is Kitty Bergman’s involvement? She’s rich, and she’s a social powerhouse. I knew she and Marty were friends, but I thought they just shopped for dresses together.”

“Maybe charity is boring.”

“Do you think we should try to rescue Marty?”

“I’m not in rescue. I’m in retrieval. Marty’s on his own… at least for tonight.”

Kellen was hands on hips in an oversized gray T-shirt and navy boxers. The boxers looked new and had little green-and-yellow palm trees on them. “What the heck are you wearing?” he asked Cate. “You look like you’re ready for Alaska.”

They were standing beside Cate’s bed, and Cate was wearing socks and sweatpants and a hooded sweatshirt. The twenty-first-century equivalent to a chastity belt.