Caged by His Twisted Love novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Lot 14
A waterfront gala, a dead man bidding on a painting, and a service door that was already blocked.
I killed a man three years ago, and tonight he was bidding on a sailboat painting.
I was working the Harbor Lights gala in a black vest, carrying a tray of champagne flutes through the ballroom.
The auctioneer had just opened Lot 14.
A man in the second row lifted one finger, and the whole room turned to look at him.
I saw the back of his head first.
Black hair, a gray streak at the left temple, shoulders I would have known in the dark.
I had last seen those shoulders going over the rail of Pier 9.
I stopped walking.
The woman behind me said, "Excuse me," and then, "Hey," and then something sharper.
I did not hear it.
The man turned his head to check who was bidding against him.
Cold blue eyes, a straight nose, a mouth that never gave anything away.
Ronan Kavanagh.
The tray left my hands.
Twenty flutes hit the marble in one long crash, and four hundred people in evening clothes went silent.
Nobody looked at the glass.
Everybody looked at me, and so did he.
He did not look surprised.
He looked at me.
"Sorry," I said to nobody, and I ran.
I went through the side door by the bar, past a coat rack, down a hall that smelled like frying oil and floor cleaner.
My heart was hitting my ribs.
He was dead.
Declan had told me he was dead, on the pier, with water still running off my sleeves.
He said the family would handle it, and I should never speak of it, and I had not.
For three years I had not slept a full night.
Every time a car slowed outside my building I had counted the doors.
I hit the service exit with both hands and the alarm bar screamed.
The loading dock was wet from rain.
A black car sat idling at the bottom of the ramp.
I turned for the alley, and a man stepped out of the dark and blocked it.
Not Ronan.
A big man in a dark coat, hands loose at his sides, who simply stood there and let me understand.
I turned back toward the door.
It opened before I reached it.
Ronan Kavanagh came out onto the dock in a black tuxedo, unhurried.
The rain had not reached him yet.
I backed up until the rail hit the back of my knees.
"You're dead," I said.
My voice cracked on it.
"I was told that," he said. "It wasn't true."
His voice was quiet and level, with an edge of Irish worn smooth by years in Boston.
I looked at his chest, and then at his hands.
Both of them were empty, and that frightened me more than a gun would have.
"I saw you go under," I said.
"I know you did."
He came down the steps, one at a time, and stopped an arm's length away.
Close up, he was thinner in the face than I remembered, and the gray streak had not been there before.
"You hit hard," he said. "I've thought about that more than I should."
The rain started, big cold drops on the concrete.
Behind him the ballroom doors thudded as someone tried to see what was happening.
He didn't turn around.
"I can call the police right now," he said.
"A woman who put a man in the harbor with a boat hook has a lot of explaining to do."
"You'd never call the police."
"No," he said. "I have a better idea."
He took his coat off and put it over my shoulders, and I let him, because my hands were shaking too hard to stop it.
It was warm from his body and smelled like cedar and rain.
"Neve Tierney," he said, and it was the first time I had ever heard him say my name.
"You owe me a body."
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