Toy Soldiers (Helford #1)

(24) Watching

Marci slid into the seat across from me at the table, and I knew from the moment I saw her that meeting her was a big mistake. Her eyes were guarded and she was playing a part, one I had seen her play so many times before—cold, ruthless. Herself.

“I don’t know why you called me here,” she told me simply, leaning back in her seat. She offered me a mockery of a smile before she said, “There isn’t much left to say.”

“I think you know something,” I handed my thoughts to her on a silver plate, raising one of my eyebrows challengingly as I smirked. “I want to see if you’re going to answer some of my questions.”

“I don’t know what I know,” she told me slowly, shrugging. “Care to be more specific?”

“Not until you stop acting like a total bitch.”

She smiled.

Marci had a lot of different faces, possibly even more than I had. The one she wore the best and most of the time was the one that was goofy, carefree. She smiled a lot and giggled and absolutely never stopped talking. She was the bubbly kind of girl that most people loved being around because she was kind and optimistic, and everything she wasn’t in reality. The face I knew as hers as the one that she was using when she looked at me now, letting nothing show but the cold chill of her eyes, glaring at me icily with hostility pouring out of her. I remembered the last time we had spoke and thought that the one-eighty of her personality was actually a little humorous.

Marci could look at me all day like she was above me, like she was aloof in any way. And it wouldn’t bother me. I just didn’t like the way she had looked when I had last seen her, the way she had immediately turned into a walking Helford lesson when I uttered a word of doubt to her in confidence. The thought of them controlling her like a pawn on a chess board made me nervous for some reason.

They had done the same thing to me for years and I had never had a care in the world. But with Marci, I knew something was wrong.

I knew there was something she wasn’t telling me.

And if the look that was in her eyes right now was any consolation, she wouldn’t be telling me anytime soon, either. But there was no way I was going to give up that easily.

Marci stared down at her perfected nails, the perfect sign of boredom. “So how’s your little boy toy?”

“Jonathon is wonderful,” I told her briskly, without many emotions. I didn’t want her to read me, so I was playing this game twice as hard as she was. I had more to fight for, and we both knew it.

She looked up at me, startled, looking me straight in the eye. She stared at me for enough moments for me to count the seconds in my head before she burst out laughing, shaking her head.

“Shawn was right,” she giggled. “You really are blind.”

I didn’t know what unnerved me more: That Shawn was telling Marci all of his dirty little secrets, or that she had known Rian’s feelings before I had even thought about looking out for them.

I scowled.

“Aw, come on, Caitie; don’t give me that face.” She was grinning. “It’s not my fault.”

“It’s not my fault, either,” I snapped back, annoyance itching underneath of my skin. “We are in a loveless business.”

“It’s shocking, the things you can find in places they shouldn’t be,” she told me, and for some reason I wondered what we were talking about anymore. And then she blinked and her eyes were on me again, and there were so many hateful emotions dancing through her eyes that I truly began to wonder what I had done to hurt her, that it couldn’t have been challenging our company. I wondered if loyalty could really run that deep, and if so, why she didn’t feel the same kind of loyalty toward me.