Page 90 of The Perfect Deception

Dina lay curled in a ball on her bed, the shades drawn. She’d spent an hour talk­ing to Tracy, or rather, sob­bing to Tracy. Her throat was parched, her eyes were gritty and her limbs felt heavy. She had the “Adam Flu.” And she was pissed.

He was an ass. There was no rea­son for her to feel this bad af­ter clear­ing his name with his fa­ther. The truth was sup­posed to set her free, or some crap like that. It was sup­posed to make her feel bet­ter.

It didn’t.

Maybe if Adam hadn’t shown up. But he did and the sight of him shred­ded her heart.

Her in­ter­com buzzed and she roused her­self enough to stum­ble out to the kitchen. Tracy was a sweet­heart to come over.

“Hello?” Her voice was hoarse.

“Dina, let me in.”

The mas­cu­line voice was not Tracy. For a mil­lisec­ond, she tried to con­vince her­self it was Tracy’s hus­band, but she knew bet­ter.

“Go away, Adam.”

“Dina, I want to talk to you.”

She leaned against the wall. “I don’t want to talk to you. Go away, Adam.”

“Please.”

“No.”

She re­turned to her bed­room and bur­rowed un­der the cov­ers as she lis­tened to the in­ter­com con­tinue to buzz. There was noth­ing to talk about.

Af­ter five min­utes of near con­tin­u­ous buzzing—she could al­most pic­ture him lean­ing against the but­ton like some crazy com­bi­na­tion of debonair movie star and petu­lant tod­dler—the noise ceased. Dina raised her head. The si­lence was dis­turb­ing and a re­lief at the same time. Ex­hal­ing, she made her­self more com­fort­able among the light blue and yel­low throw pil­lows and soft white com­forter.

And then the knock­ing started.

“Oh no,” she said. “Oh no, no, no, no, no!”

She threw back the cov­ers and stormed to her front door. Through the peep­hole, she saw Adam. Which of her neigh­bors was she go­ing to have to kill?

“Go away, Adam!”

“Dina, I need to talk to you. Please let me in.”

“No.”

The knock­ing turned to pound­ing, and as she leaned against the door, the wood vi­brated against her back.

“Dina, come on.”

“Adam, if you don’t stop, I’m call­ing the po­lice.”

Her phone buzzed in her pocket and a text from Tracy ap­peared.

are you okay

adam is here. he wants me to let him in

The knock­ing ceased and Dina waited, sure it would re­sume. But af­ter a few min­utes, she heard his foot­steps re­cede. Her phone buzzed again.

I told him to stop

so did I. how’d you do it?