3

Mason woke up early, his body still on prison time. He got up, went outside, stood at the rail, and looked down at the quiet park and the sun rising low on the water. He looked up at the nearest security camera. That unblinking eye, watching him.

He went back into the bedroom suite, then into the bathroom. The shower was tiled floor to ceiling with natural lakeshore stones. He cranked the water, got in, and stood under the spray. For the first time in five years, there was no limit to the hot water. There was no limit to how long he could stand there. He could let it blast him until his skin was red and he couldn’t see anything in the billows of steam. He felt the knots in his muscles going loose. Until one more prison reflex came to him and broke the spell. The sudden uneasy feeling, something he could never imagine leaving him—the instinct to always watch your back, even in the shower.

Especially in the shower.

He turned off the water and stood there, dripping. He opened the glass door and felt his way through the steam for a towel.

“You’ll be wanting this,” a voice said. It was a woman, looking away from him and holding out a towel.

Mason grabbed the towel and wrapped it around his waist. The woman was Mason’s age, tall and lithe, dressed in a black business suit with a shirt the color of coral. Her dark hair was pinned up. She didn’t wear much makeup. Nick’s first impression was that she didn’t need to.

Nick shook the water from his hair. “Who are you?”

“My name is Diana Rivelli. Nobody told you about me?”

“No.”

She shook her head as she reached over to turn on the ceiling vent. “That figures.”

“The room at the end of the hallway,” Nick said. “The one that was locked.”

“Yes,” she said, looking a little unhappy with the thought of him trying her door. “That’s my room.”

I have a roommate, Mason said to himself.

“The clothes on the bed,” he said. “You bought those for me. You didn’t have to do that.”

“Actually, I did. But you’re welcome, anyway.”

Mason had more questions, but she was already walking out of the room. He dried off and got dressed, trying on some of the new clothes. Jeans and a simple white dress shirt.

When he came out into the kitchen, he took another look around and found the walk-in pantry. At the back of it was yet another door. He felt the temperature drop as he opened it and stepped inside. He turned on the light and saw the wooden latticework along the wall, with a bottle of wine in each opening. There had to be at least three hundred bottles in here, with another dozen champagne bottles in a small glass-doored refrigerator on the table, next to the openers and decanters.

Mason’s first cell mate made prison wine with fruit smuggled out from his kitchen job, some sugar, some toast, all mashed up in a plastic bag and kept warm for a week. From that world to this one in just twenty-four hours. Mason shook his head, turned off the light, and went back out to the kitchen.

He found a frying pan in the cabinet below the kitchen island, got some eggs and cheese from the refrigerator, then cut up some onions and peppers. Diana came back down the stairs.

“You want an omelet?” he asked.

She sat down on the other side of the island and looked around at the mess. “That’s the wrong pan. If you’re making an omelet, you use the omelet pan. And you’ve got it way too hot.”

Mason worked the spatula around the edge of the omelet and saw that it was already burning. “It’s been a while.”

She looked away and tucked a stray hair behind her ear.

“Where do you work?” he said.

“I manage a restaurant on Rush Street. Antonia’s. Come by tonight, have dinner, see where you’ll be working.”

Mason stopped dead. “Where I’ll be working?”

“You’re an assistant manager,” she said. “Take the omelet out of the pan...or the scrambled eggs...whatever you’d call that.”

Mason scooped it onto a plate.

“You won’t be cooking,” she said. “No offense.”

“Cook, assistant manager, like it even fucking matters. What do I know about restaurants?”

Eddie would be able to fake his way through this, he thought. He’d always been the great improviser ever since they were kids. How many times had they done jobs together, Eddie acting like he really belonged somewhere, and getting away with it?

“You’ll get a pay stub in case somebody needs to see it. The IRS, whoever else. Other than that, your official job description as assistant manager will be to stay the hell out of everybody else’s way.”

Mason took a bite of his omelet. “What can you tell me about Quintero?”

“I don’t think we’ve ever spent more than a minute in the same room. I wouldn’t mind keeping it that way.”

Mason looked her over. He couldn’t figure out how she could be so matter-of-fact about this, a convict released yesterday and today standing in her kitchen.

I wonder if I’m the first one, he thought. Maybe they come through here like a regular changing of the guard.

“What’s your story?” he said. “Why are you here?”

“I told you, I run a restaurant.”

“Does Cole own it?”

She hesitated. “Not officially. Not on paper.”

“How long have you known him?”

She hesitated again. Maybe she’s another devoted follower of my rule number seven, Mason thought. Keep your personal life and your professional life separate. As separate as enriched uranium and those mullahs over in Iran.

“I’ve known Darius a long time,” she finally said. “My father was one of his first business partners. It was my father’s restaurant.”

“Where is he now?”

“He’s dead,” she said, looking away from him. “He said the wrong thing to the wrong person. Darius dealt with that person. And everyone else who was involved.”

Mason studied her carefully. She was talking about something else, something that went beyond the restaurant business or buying him clothes. She lived in Cole’s town house and obviously had a history with the man. She called him by his first name.

“You’ve been living here,” he said to her, not even a question, “ever since he went to Terre Haute.”

This was a classy woman, Mason thought. Smart enough to know how attractive she was, smart enough to know that with her body and brains, she could do and have pretty much anything or anyone she wanted.

But she stayed here.

Her eyes met his. “We don’t need to talk about that,” she said. “I need to get to work.”

Mason could understand this need to compartmentalize. To set everything else aside so you could focus on the one thing you had to do. For Mason, it was stealing a car, or knocking over a drug dealer, or, eventually, breaking into a building and drilling open a safe. But then he’d come home when it was done and he’d leave that work behind him. He’d have money, he’d have time, he’d have a way to keep living until it was time to work again.

He could see the same thing in Diana. That same need to focus on her job, to keep everything else separate. Her father is killed and Cole “deals” with it. She lives here with him and then stays here, for years, after he’s gone. She gets up every morning and goes to work.

She does her job.

Now if Mason only knew what his job would be.

“What can you tell me about what I’ll be doing here?” Mason said. “Besides staying out of your way at the restaurant.”

“That’s between you and Darius,” she said.

“I hated prison, but at least you knew what to expect there. Right down to the minute. Here, I’ve got no idea what’s going to happen next.”

Mason thought about the twenty-year “contract” he had signed with Cole and how Cole was the only man who really knew what was written in it.

“When the time comes,” Diana said, “just do exactly what you’re told. Nothing more, nothing less. Trust me, that’s the only way to play this.”

“Those cameras outside,” Mason said, nodding toward the pool. “Don’t they bother you?”

She looked outside and shrugged. “I don’t even think about them anymore.”

“He could have put me anywhere,” Mason said. “Why here? So you can keep an eye on me? Is that part of your job?”

“Maybe it’s part of your job to keep an eye on me .” She gathered up her purse, took out her keys, and went down the stairs.