All the Secrets We Keep (Quarry Book 2) Read online

  Niko shook his head. “It could be.”

  Could it, Ilya wondered when he and his brother had hugged it out and Niko went on home to do whatever he planned to do with the woman Ilya had once called his wife. Could it be that easy, really? To let it all go?

  “Another of these,” he said to Kelly with a tap on his empty whiskey glass and a smile that set her back a step or so before she returned it. “Keep ’em coming.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Theresa’s phone buzzed from its place in the center console of her car. She’d plugged it in to charge but had turned off the car engine so that she wasn’t wasting gas. The night air in April could still dip low enough to be considered chilly, but under the weight of a few blankets and wearing fleecy pj bottoms and a heavy sweatshirt, she wasn’t worried about being too cold. With the inflatable car mattress in the backseat, she wasn’t even particularly uncomfortable.

  She fumbled for the phone to glance at the screen, assuming it was her father. He had a way of forgetting what time of day or night it was, his messages rarely urgent and never frequent, but generally inconvenient. At first, the name on the screen confused her, and Theresa had to rub at her eyes to make sure she was seeing it correctly. Then she sat up in the backseat of her car, the blankets tangling around her feet, to hold the phone closer to her face. Another text buzzed through as she looked.

  With a sigh, she thumbed her screen to pull up the message and hit the “Call” button. It rang several times before, finally, a familiar voice answered. From the background noise, she could guess where he was.

  “Hey,” Ilya said, “Niko left without me. Do you think you could come get me?”

  Theresa stifled a yawn and looked at the time. It wasn’t terribly late, at least not by bar standards. Far from last call, anyway. She’d only fallen asleep maybe half an hour before. And, frankly, she was already in the car.

  “You’re at Dooley’s?”

  “How’d you know?” He sounded joking, lighthearted. Not slurring his words or anything.

  Still, she still had a question for him. “Why me?”

  “You did it for me the last time.”

  “I was with you the last time.” She was already crawling over the center console and into the front seat.

  “Because,” Ilya said after a second, “I know you’ll do it without expecting something in return.”

  “I don’t know about that part. See you in twenty minutes.” She disconnected the call and deflated the mattress, an act she’d managed to get down to a science. She started the car, taking a moment to pull her hair into a high ponytail and check her face in the visor mirror for signs of sleep. She didn’t bother to change her clothes. Hey, if people could go discount-store shopping in their pajamas, she could drive to a bar parking lot to pick up her . . . whatever Ilya was to her.

  It took her a few minutes longer than she’d expected to get to Dooley’s. She spotted him immediately, pacing outside the front doors. A tall man wearing a pair of faded jeans and a black Henley that clung to his lean frame. His dark, shaggy hair, the color of expensive black licorice, glistened a little from the misty rain that had started falling. Theresa flicked on her windshield wipers, watching him as she pulled up.

  “Hey,” she called, when it looked like he hadn’t seen her. “Get in.”

  Ilya bent to look in the window. “My mom told me never to go with strange ladies.”

  “I have candy,” Theresa replied at once, easily, laughing.

  He’d earned all the gossip, she thought as Ilya went around the front of her car to the passenger side. He was charming, but effortlessly, so that you couldn’t help but respond even when you knew you shouldn’t. He’d always been like that, she remembered, but as a boy he’d sometimes stuttered in the execution of his charisma. As a man, Ilya Stern worked it, and hard.

  “Thanks for coming to get me.” He slid into the passenger seat and closed the door. He shivered dramatically and shook his head, flinging water everywhere.

  “Hey!”

  He grinned at her. His hair hung in wet strands over his forehead. Drops of water slid down over his skin, and with a swift motion, he licked a few off his lips. The motion mesmerized her. He smelled like springtime rain and the promise of flowers ready to bloom.

  He was definitely no longer the boy she’d known.

  Theresa forced herself to look away from him. Her fingers gripped the steering wheel tighter than she needed to; she made herself loosen her grasp. “Let me get you home.”

  “Not home.”

  Frowning, she glanced at him. “Huh? Why not? Did you and Niko have a fight or something? Is that why he ditched you?”

  “We didn’t have a fight. He left me because he wanted to get home to Alicia, and I told him to go.”

  “Is that why you don’t want to go home?” she asked quietly.

  “I don’t want to go home yet because I’m starving. Let’s go to the diner. My treat. Consider it my pickup fee.” Ilya gave her one of those deliberately seductive grins that he probably used on everyone, although when she didn’t return it immediately, his faded a little. “Unless you have somewhere to be.”

  She was hungry. It seemed like she always was, even when she’d just eaten. Somehow being unsure of where she was getting her next meal had kept her appetite at a constant simmer. “It’s very late. Where would I have to be?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you were on a date.” His glance fell to her pajama bottoms, her hoodie, then up to her messy ponytail. “Or not.”

  “I was not on a date.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  She gave him a hard side-eye, not sure what he was trying to get at but not trusting his motives. “I was trying to sleep.”

  “Sure, that’s what all the good boys and girls should be doing this time of night.”

  “Clearly that leaves you out.” Theresa put the car in drive, turning left instead of right out of the parking lot. Heading to the diner. From beside her, she heard Ilya’s soft chuckle.

  “But you came to get me, anyway? Aw, thanks. I owe you.”

  She glanced at him again. “Definitely. Put your seat belt on.”

  He did without protest. They drove for a minute or so in silence, sliced into even pieces by the whoosh-whoosh of the wiper blades and the thrum of the tires on the damp streets. Ilya leaned forward to look out through the windshield, and alternating bands of light and shadow from the street lamps cut across his face before he settled back into his seat.

  “If it’s going to rain, it should just rain,” he muttered. “Thunder, lightning, that whole business. Not this soft little excuse for a storm.”

  “Is it supposed to storm?” She slowed, for a moment uncertain which road to turn on to get to the diner but following Ilya’s lead when he pointed at the cross street in front of them. She felt him look at her but kept her gaze on the street ahead.

  “I don’t know. I just wish it would.”

  In another few minutes they were pulling into the diner’s parking lot. The restaurant had a name—Zimmerman’s—but nobody ever called it that. It had always been, and would always be, simply the diner. Open twenty-four hours. Breakfast all day.

  “I haven’t been here in years,” Theresa said as she found an empty parking spot and turned off the ignition. She twisted a little to look at him. “I think the last time I ate here was with you and Niko, actually. We came here after the musical Alicia was in. Jenni worked here. She brought us extra fries and pudding for dessert.”

  On the roof above them, a spatter of harder rain made them both look up. From far off came the slow, rolling rumble of thunder, though she hadn’t seen any flash of lightning. Ilya grinned. After a second, so did she.

  When he opened his car door to get out, though, she hesitated. “Wait.”

  “Huh? Don’t tell me you changed your mind. I need coffee and eggs. Bad.”

  “I can’t go in there like this.” She ran her hands over the thighs of her soft pajama pants.