Four Of A Kind

Chapter 99: [3.1] Four Suspects, One Kiss

[VOLUME 3 COVER]

The driver dropped me at the gate with a professional nod and drove the town car back up the cobblestone driveway without a word. My Lexus sat in the guest parking lot exactly where the staff had returned it, keys on the center console, tank full.

I got in.

I sat there for approximately forty-five seconds doing nothing.

Then I drove.

The first ten minutes on the highway were fine. I had the radio off. The windows up. The heater running because September evenings in Long Island get cold faster than you expect, and I was running on a paper bag of teriyaki chicken and the complete collapse of my ability to think in straight lines.

Someone kissed me.

A Valentine sister kissed me.

On the front steps of the estate. In front of a security guard who was absolutely going to tell someone. On the mouth. Deliberately. With intention.

The question was who.

This was the problem. This was the entire problem, wrapped up in burgundy silk and strawberry shampoo and three seconds of contact that had apparently deleted my capacity for rational thought.

I had spent the weekend watching four identical girls, cataloging their differences with the obsessive attention of someone whose continued employment depended on it, and the moment it actually mattered, my identification system had failed me completely.

Harlow smelled like strawberries.

Cassidy also used fruity shampoo. Different brand. Slightly different.

Vivienne wore something floral underneath her main perfume. I had noticed this in the dressing suite when she turned to look at herself in the mirror.

Sabrina smelled like a fruity tea.

The girl on the steps had smelled like strawberries and something floral underneath.

That was three sisters.

And two of the sisters I had the most complicated existing situations with, which was outstanding news for my mental health.

A horn blared behind me.

I checked my speedometer.

Fifty-one miles per hour. On the highway.

The car behind me swerved into the left lane, shot past me at roughly ninety, and the driver gave me a look through the window that communicated everything I deserved to hear.

I pressed the accelerator.

Right. Driving. I was driving.

I was a person who knew how to drive and was currently doing it on a highway that connected Long Island to the rest of civilization, and I needed to focus on that instead of cataloging the exact sensory details of a three-second kiss that I had been the passive participant in and could not reconstruct clearly enough to identify the source.

My sister was right.

I was going to die here.

Not physically. Professionally. Possibly emotionally. The physical death was still a moderate risk if I kept going fifty in a sixty-five zone on the Expressway.

I set my speed to sixty-eight and kept it there.

Okay. Inventory. Let’s be rational about this.

Four sisters. One of them kissed me on the front steps of the Valentine estate on a Sunday evening in front of a member of security staff.

The guard had been pointedly staring at the horizon, which meant he had seen everything and was going to write a very interesting report.

Camille Valentine had eyes in that house. She had known about the midnight ramen. She had known about the dinner.

If she found out one of her daughters had kissed the hired help, my probationary period was going to end in a very specific way.

One favor card situation: Cassidy, Vivienne, Sabrina each had one. Cassidy had the pet bet.

One of them had apparently decided to add a fifth complication to this list without my input or consent.

I appreciated the boldness. In another life, under different circumstances, with fewer financial responsibilities, I would have found the whole thing genuinely funny.

Cassidy. The bet. She was competitive enough to do something like that as a power move. Show up, kiss me, establish dominance, leave. It had her specific energy.

The way she had come down the steps deliberate, the flush on her face that she had been fighting.

She had kissed me and then looked like she wanted to fall through the step she was standing on.

That tracked.

But Harlow had kissed my arm in the theater. Harlow had hugged him in the parking lot.

Harlow’s entire relationship with personal space was more of a suggestion than a boundary, and she had looked at him in The Archive while adjusting his collar like she had surprised herself.

Harlow was capable of this. Harlow was absolutely capable of deciding that the feeling in her chest was worth acting on and then dealing with the consequences afterward.

And Vivienne. Who had fixed my pocket square twice. Who had let her hand linger. Who had told me in her bedroom that if she wanted to make things complicated, I would know.

Maybe she had decided I should know.

And Sabrina. Who watched everything. Who said things like “the first interesting thing to happen in this house in years.”

Who had fallen asleep on my shoulder in the library and stayed there without embarrassment.

Who communicated in implications and then waited for you to catch up.

My phone rang through the car speakers.

I nearly swerved again.

The screen on the dash read: IRI 📱

I accepted the call.

“Are you dead,” Iris said. Not a question. Statement of fact, delivered in the flat tone of someone who had been waiting.

“I’m driving.”

“You sound weird.”

“I sound exactly the same.”

“You sound like you sound when something happened and you’re doing the face where you’re not making a face.” There was shuffling on her end, the sound of her sitting up on the couch. “What happened. Did the mom fire you. Did Cassidy actually murder someone. Is it something bad or something embarrassing because those are different situations and I need to prepare differently.”

“Nothing happened.”

A pause.

“Isaiah.”

“I’m almost to the bridge. What do you want for dinner?”

Another pause. Longer this time. She had inherited this from me, or I had inherited it from her, or we had developed it independently from living in close quarters with someone who also didn’t know how to ask for help directly.

“Gyudon,” she said finally. “From the place on Lehigh.”

“The one that closes at nine.”

“You’ll make it.”

“I’m forty minutes out.”

“Then you better drive faster.”

“I was going fifty on the highway.”

“Isaiah.” The horror in her voice was genuine. “That’s a menace.”

“I know.”

“What is wrong with you.”

I merged left and let the Lexus do what it was built to do, the engine lifting smoothly to seventy-three. The skyline appeared ahead, the city lights against a dark sky, and something in my chest loosened slightly at the sight of it. Manhattan. Then the tunnel. Then Jersey, then the Turnpike, then Philadelphia.

Home.

“Iris.”

“Yeah.”

“Your rules.” I watched the road. “The ones you gave me Friday morning.”

Dead silence.

Then: “Oh my god.”