“Spit it out, Thad.”
“They feel his interest in you isn’t entirely honest. There’s something behind it,” he finished, his gaze running over her face.
“Who thinks that?” Alice demanded, her voice trembling with emotion. She took an aggressive step toward him. “Who is thinking about Dylan and me at all? You never did tell me how you even found out we were involved. No one is supposed to know about us!”
Thad grimaced. “It’s a reliable source, Alice. This person is concerned about Fall taking advantage of you.”
“Because I’m so far out of his league?” she asked, her voice shaking uncontrollably.
She was on high boil all of a sudden, and she hadn’t even realized she was growing hot. Everything in front of her eyes seemed to be cast in a red haze. “Because no one can figure out why he’d be interested in a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, a girl who comes from the wrong family, and the wrong school. The wrong fucking life,” she grated out between bared teeth. “Well, maybe Dylan knows more about my life than you think, Thad.”
He looked shocked by her sudden flare of temper. She wasn’t surprised. Alice herself was a little shocked.
“Jesus, Alice, I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to imply that you aren’t in Fall’s league. You know how I feel about you. If anything, I think the opposite.” He reached out and grasped her elbow, his expression fierce. “Fall doesn’t deserve you.”
She whipped her arm out, throwing Thad’s hold off her. “I don’t deserve this,” she hissed, only vaguely aware of what she meant. “I never thought I’d say this in a million years, but sometimes I wish my life could just go back to what it was before I ever set foot in this damn place.”
“Alice, what the hell—”
“Just leave me alone, Thad.”
She turned and made a beeline for the grand staircase.
WHEN Dylan stepped into the entry hall, the only person he saw standing there was Thad Schaefer, his back turned to him.
“Where’s Alice?”
Schaefer spun at his sharp question. The hair on the back of Dylan’s neck stood on end when he took in Schaefer’s stunned expression.
“What did you say to her?” he ground out, stepping toward him rapidly. Schaefer blanched beneath his tan.
“Nothing! I mean . . . I don’t know what I said,” Schaefer said, clearly at a loss. “She just got upset all of a sudden and told me off.”
“All of a sudden?” He suppressed a nearly overwhelming urge to wring the kid’s neck until his pretty-boy face turned beet red. “Where’d she go?” he demanded instead.
Thad pointed at the grand staircase. “She looked desperate. Like she was—”
“What?”
“Running from me, or from something. I don’t know what I said that upset her so much.”
“You made this mess, you can help clean it up. This is a big house. Come on,” Dylan ordered, his rapid stride fueled by rising alarm. Distantly, Dylan realized he’d been waiting for some kind of explosion on Alice’s part. He was afraid it had just occurred outside of his watch. From the edge of his attention, he noticed that Thad Schaefer was even further surprised by Dylan’s terse command to join him. But he came after a pause, jogging up the steps behind him.
“You continue up to the third floor and look for her,” Dylan said when they reached the second level. He started to stride down the hallway but paused. “Check every room. Come and find me the second—and I mean the second—you locate her. If you finish looking before I do and come up short, then go up to the fourth floor and start searching for her there. And keep your voice down,” he bit out quietly over his shoulder. Surely the kid wasn’t so insensitive or stupid that he’d send up an alarm with all these people in the house. “Let’s keep this simple, don’t talk at all unless you’ve found Alice and are calling out to me. Got it?”
Schaefer’s mouth slanted irritably, but he nodded.
Dylan’s own bedroom suite was empty. Skipping all the bedrooms in between, Dylan headed straight for the suite where he’d found Alice the other night: Addie Durand’s former one.
It, too, stood hushed and devoid of life.
“Alice,” he called out when he was in the hallway again, torn between wanting to bellow her name so that he could be heard in every corner of the mansion and muting his shout to prevent being overheard by someone at the cocktail party downstairs.
“Alice?” he called out a moment later, switching on a light. He stood at the entrance of Alan Durand’s suite. It had once been Alan and Lynn’s, before Lynn had passed. Dylan hadn’t been in the room since Alan had finally succumbed to cancer seven years ago. Most of the furniture was covered in dustcloths. It struck Dylan as empty as a tomb, and yet filled with memories: dead and alive at once.
He entered the room farther and stood stock still in the middle of it, listening. After a moment, he turned and shut off the light, closing the door behind him.
Part of Dylan still existed in that room, the memories of Alan Durand kept alive forever inside of him. Alice, however, wasn’t there. He’d bet his life on it. But being in that room reminded him of something Alan had told him in passing a few times.