The room smelled like Jeremiah’s overpowering cologne. Red, white, and blue posters that said TOM MARIN, PA SENATOR lined the walls. Someone had left a half-eaten Italian sub in one of the cubicles, and a copy of the Philadelphia Sentinel lay facedown on one of the black leather couches in the corner.
Hanna tiptoed to her father’s separate quarters. The green banker’s lamp was still on. Next to a phone was a Tiffany-framed picture from Mr. Marin and Isabel’s wedding. Kate stood in front of the newlyweds, and Hanna stood slightly off to the side, like they hadn’t intended for her to be in the photo. She wasn’t even looking directly at the camera.
Looking around frantically, she spied a small, gray safe wedged in the corner by the window. She knew she’d seen it the night of the screening; it had to be where Jeremiah deposited the petty cash funds. She darted toward it and crouched down. The safe was the kind used in hotel rooms where you had to punch a four-digit code into a keypad. Looking around, she grabbed a tissue from a box on her dad’s desk so she wouldn’t leave prints. First, she tried November 4th, the date of next year’s election, but two big angry red lights blinked in her face. What about 1-2-3-4? More angry red lights. 1-7-7-6, to be patriotic and Founding Father–esque? Nothing.
Creak. Hanna shot up, staring crazily at the door. Was it Jeremiah, back for his money clip? There were no shadows through the frosted glass, though. Another creak sounded from the opposite direction. She whipped around and stared at her reflection in the darkened window. Her eyes were wide and huge, and her face was pale.
“H-hello?” she called out. “I-is someone here?”
Snow fell lightly on the sidewalk out the window. Across the street, a parked car idled, its headlights blazing. A figure sat in shadows in the driver’s seat. Was Hanna crazy, or was the person’s head arced up toward her father’s office, staring right at her?
Taking a deep breath, she crouched down and assessed the safe again. The combination had to be something she knew. The photo from the wedding on her dad’s desk caught her eye again. With shaking hands, she punched Isabel’s birthday. Red lights. Gulping hard, she typed in her own birthday, December 23. Red lights. She glared at Kate’s smiling photo once more, then keyed 0-6-1-9—June 19, Kate’s birthday.
Click.
The lights turned green. The barrel released and the door swung open. Hanna was filled with a moment of horrible hurt—of course he’d set the combination to Kate’s birthday—but she forgot about it when she saw the piles of bills stacked in tall, neat piles. She pulled out a wad and counted it. Three more wads made it ten thousand exactly. There was so much more money in the safe; she wondered if her father would even miss it.
She shoved the cash in her bag and pushed the safe door closed. Then, as the final coup de grace, she dropped Jeremiah’s money clip a few inches away.
Her head spun as she stood. The money felt like it weighed a thousand pounds in her bag. She peered out the window again. The car still idled there, the driver motionless in the front seat. Did the person see her? Was it A?
A moment later, the engine revved. And then, noiselessly, the car pulled away, the tire tracks making crisp indents in the otherwise pure dusting of snow.
Chapter 24
Every guy’s fantasy
A waitress set a mug of hot chocolate on the table in front of Aria and clucked her tongue. “Wow. You look cold.”
“You think?” Aria muttered sarcastically, pressing her hands to the warm mug and willing the waitress to go away. Coldness was exactly why Aria was sitting as close to the fire inside the ski lodge as she could—in fact, she’d climb into the fire if she could. Outside, as the snow swirled past the huge overhead lights, tons of skiers zoomed down the slopes, not looking chilly in the slightest. Guys slalomed without hats on. Girls snowboarded in Fair Isle sweaters and jeans. Then again, they probably hadn’t spent hours on their butt, the cold snow soaking through their supposedly high-tech ski gear straight to their sensitive, non-skier skin. Aria was pretty sure even her eyelids were frostbitten.
The evening had been miserable. After Klaudia took off up the lift without Aria, Noel shrugged. “Maybe you’re better off getting a lesson from a real instructor anyway.” Then he deposited Aria at the Ski School and disappeared up the same black diamond slope himself.
Honestly, Aria wasn’t sure why she hadn’t just called it a day right then and there, but she’d somehow had this notion that skiing might be easy; maybe she could quickly learn and join Noel on the hill. Right. The beginner lesson was filled with seven- and eight-year-old children. The instructor, a good-natured Australian guy named Connor who kept assuming Aria was one of the kids’ nannies, led them to the bunny slope and taught them how to snowplow. Needless to say, every single one of the kids mastered it way before Aria did. The only time she made it down the bunny slope was when she’d slid down on her butt. Occasionally, she saw Noel and Klaudia swooping by, kicking up lots of snow when they stopped at the bottom of the hill. Neither of them looked in the direction of the bunny slope. Why would they? Why would they want to check to see how the peikko was doing?
“There you are!”
Aria looked up just as Noel clomped into the lodge, snow and ice caked on his jacket and ski pants. Klaudia followed him, her cheeks pink and her blond hair still perfectly styled. They both looked breathless and happily exhausted, like they’d just had tons of sex. Aria quickly bit the inside of her cheek and turned away.
Noel’s two brothers, Eric and Christopher, staggered in behind them. “You were amazing out there, Klaudia!” Eric cried when he saw her. “How long have you been skiing?”