CHAPTER NINE

But Friday brought no sign of Bram Cortez. First I read and corrected Quentin’s letter to Marika, then we turned back to the poems of A.E. Housman, dissecting them for meter and meaning. When I was one-and-twenty, I heard a wise man say, “Give crowns and pounds and rubies but not your heart away . . .”

“I like it,” Quentin said, “but it’s too cynical.”

“How so?”

“Basically, the poem says you’re stupid to fall in love. Right? And that seems pretty cynical. I mean, some people fall in love and are happy together.”

“I’d like to think so,” I replied. “I can’t say that I know too many people who are happily married, however.”

“Dennis is happy,” he argued. “With Gregory. And my aunt and uncle have been married for thirty years, and they seem happy.”

“And my mom and dad were together almost that long,” I said. “I suppose the real lesson would be, ‘Choose wisely,’ not ‘Never try at all.’”

Quentin was silent a moment, brooding. The early April sun streamed in through the window, ecstatic and golden, filling his hair and his rough boy’s cheek with leonine shadows. “I don’t think I’m ever going to be married,” he said at last. “Probably won’t even meet a girl to fall in love with.”

He never talked about his doomed future, so my heart squeezed down a little. Was he ready to discuss it now? “Why do you think that?” I asked.

He gestured. “Well, I practically never leave the house! Where would I meet somebody? Unless Francis started bringing in his nieces.”

No; today was not the day he’d talk about it. “Well, let’s see. The weather’s getting better. We could start taking some excursions. I know—on the first nice day, you’ll put on those funny-sounding braces you told me about, and we’ll walk down to the beach. We might not meet any girls, but it would be fun, don’t you think?”

“That would be jazz,” he said, excited. “Ultrajazz.”

“Good. We’ll plan it.”

His attention started to wander after that, as I expected; I never did get more than twenty or thirty solid minutes of concentration from Quentin. He would be distracted by the sight of a bird playing just outside the window, or the chime of a text on his EarFone, or a thought he had while in the middle of a completely different sentence. It was hard for me to keep up and just as hard for me to hold on to my patience.

“You know what?” he asked suddenly, a propos of nothing at all.

“I have no idea.”

“My dad has the biggest gun collection in the Midwest.”

“Is that right?” I cared nothing about guns. In fact, I was pretty sure gun ownership was strictly regulated within city limits, if not forbidden outright, due to gun-control laws passed after much controversy some years ago. But perhaps we were far enough out in the suburbs that the laws didn’t apply here. Or perhaps such laws never applied to someone as wealthy and powerful as Duncan Phillips.

He nodded. “Yeah, you want to see them?”

“You mean they’re not in a vault somewhere?”

“Oh, no. They’re all in his study on the second floor.”

“I’m not really that interested in guns, Quentin.”

“Yeah, but these are stratojestic,” he said pleadingly. “You’ve got to see them.”

I was tempted. Since my first visit here four weeks ago, I’d seen very little of the Phillips mansion—the front foyer, a few hallways, Quentin’s room, the stairs to the back garage. Marika endlessly hounded me for more details and could not believe I had not been offered more chances to look around the estate.

“Your dad probably wouldn’t want me gawking at his private collection,” I said.

“No, he wouldn’t mind! He likes to show off his guns.” He pointed himself toward the door. “Come on. Before Francis or Bram gets here.”

“What?” If we were hiding our activities from the steward and the security officer, I had even worse misgivings. But Quentin was already out the door, and in any case I was about to be left alone in the house. I snatched up my purse and ran after him.

We took the elevator down a single floor, and the doors opened onto a completely unfamiliar vista. Where the third-story hall was pleasant and airy, the second level of the mansion was extravagantly ornate. I stepped out into a hallway that was twice as high as the one we’d just left. The walls were covered with gold-flocked blue paper, the ceiling was delineated by dental crown moulding, and the plush navy carpet was so thick it muffled every footfall.

“Gosh,” I said, wide-eyed as a yokel, “spend any money decorating this part of the house?”

Quentin grinned and pointed. “My dad’s private suites are down there. I never go there. There’s one of the offices where he meets people. There’s the hologallery—hey, we could go there instead.”

Hologallery? I dimly remembered Dennis making some comment about the creepiness of this place. “Is that where he keeps portraits of his old girlfriends?”

“Yeah, you wanna go see?”

“Umm—maybe some other time. In fact, I’m thinking we probably shouldn’t be here at all—”

But he had flicked the forward switch on his chair and was skimming over the blue carpet well ahead of me. “No, really, no one will mind. The study’s right down here.”

We passed a few closed doors and then entered a room on the far end of the hall. I supposed the dark velvet curtains and the heavy, baroque furniture were supposed to give it the clubby look of a rich man’s den, but the high ceilings and wide proportions made the room seem anything but cozy to me. That, and the array of weapons covering the walls.

I pirouetted with my mouth hanging open. When Quentin had referred to a gun collection, I had expected a few glass-enclosed cases of antique muskets, maybe a service weapon or two. But Duncan Phillips seemed to have gathered the entire chronicle of American firearms into this one room, and laid them out, item by item, in rows that reached from the chair rail at the mid-point of the wall almost to the ceiling.

“A lot of these are historical,” Quentin said. “See, there’s a flintlock musket from the American Revolution. And there’s a Colt revolver from the Wild West. And there’s a Tommy gun that belonged to Al Capone.”

He made a quarter-turn and pointed at a different wall. “There’s a Glock 9mm, and there’s one of the early stun guns—but it doesn’t work. And there’s the prototype laser gun that the soldiers used in the China wars. And this is a Trellin-X modern laser, but it’s been outlawed, so you won’t find one like it except if you hang out with mercenaries or revolutionaries.”

“Who taught you so much about guns? Bram Cortez?”

“Dennis.”

“Dennis? Likes guns?”

“Sure. He and Bram go down to the range and practice together sometimes. Dennis says Bram’s better than he is with a projectile weapon, but that he’s better with a laser. He comes in here with me all the time and tells me stories about each of the models.”

As he spoke, he reached up to take a tiny, elegant weapon from its mount on the wall. It was smaller than the palm of my hand, encased in silver-colored steel or some other alloy, and looked to weigh about as much as a light bulb.

“Quentin! Put that back!”

He looked over at me with the devil in his eyes. “Why? I won’t hurt anything.”

“What if it’s loaded?”

“Of course it’s loaded,” he said scornfully. “They’re all loaded.” He held the delicate little piece up to his eye and sighted down its tiny barrel. Fortunately, he was aiming at the window, not me.

I felt faint. I glanced around the room again, imagining all sorts of natural disasters knocking the guns to the floor, causing them to fire their bullets and their infrared beams at any hapless visitor who had the bad luck to be standing there. “They’re all loaded?” I repeated stupidly. “How dangerous is that?”

Quentin turned to look at me, the gun still held up to his eye. “It’s only dangerous if someone doesn’t know what he’s doing,” he said.

I made my voice as cold as I could. “Put. That. Back. Right this minute.”

He lowered it from his eye, but presented it to me like an offering. “Why don’t you try it?” he said. “Just hold it a minute to get the feel of it. You’ll like it. Dennis says this is a lady’s weapon. I think my dad’s last girlfriend gave it to him.”

“I don’t want to hold it—”

“Just for a sec,” he wheedled.

He scooted closer, hand still outstretched. The gun lay in his palm, harmless as a napping kitten. Even I could tell which part was the barrel and where the dangerous trigger fit into the grip. “Fine,” I said under my breath, and picked it up as gingerly as possible.

“No, you’re not holding it right,” Quentin said. “You have to—”

I marched straight over to the wall where it had been displayed. “Here? Is this where it goes?” I hung it from the nearly invisible pegs inserted into the wall. “Like that?”

“Taylor, you didn’t even—hey, why don’t you try the Glock instead?”

“You touch another of these guns while I’m in the room, and I’m walking out of this house and never coming back,” I said, enunciating each word with absolute clarity.

“Oh, Taylor, don’t be mad,” he said, rolling over and placing a hand on my arm. I was shaking; I’m sure he could feel it. “I know how to handle a weapon. I wouldn’t have hurt you!”

“Guns are little death machines,” I said in a quiet voice. “I’m sure Dennis and Bram think they’re fun, but don’t you know why guns were invented? To kill people. They’re not toys, Quentin. If you’re going to handle one, don’t do it around me. Do it around someone who knows how to use one. Or don’t do it at all.”

“Okay, okay, we won’t come back here,” he said in a pacifying voice. “Let’s just leave right now, okay? Come on, Taylor.”

And he headed out the door as I followed close behind. I saw him glance at some of the other closed rooms as we made our way back to the elevator, and I was pretty sure that he wanted us to explore the taxidermy lab or the torture chamber or some other equally gruesome spot, but that he had realized this would be it for me today.

“You want to go back up and play chess?” he asked when the elevator door yawned open.

I had yet to play chess with him, and he asked every day. As soon as he played a single game with me, he would lose interest; I figured the excitement of the unknown would be worth more to him than the tedium of the reality. Besides, I’d reached my limit this afternoon.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I’m just going home.”

“I’ll ride down to the lobby with you.”

“Okay.” I stepped in beside him and he chattered happily for the next minute about some online friend he’d made. We hadn’t gone two feet down the marble foyer before Francis appeared from nowhere.

“Quentin. Ms. Kendall. I was looking for you to escort you out,” he said with his usual regal calm.

“I was just showing her some of the house,” Quentin said.

“I hope that’s all right,” I added quickly.

Francis nodded. “Perfectly fine, as long as someone’s with you. We wouldn’t want you to get lost.”

I tousled Quentin’s hair. “See ya next week, kid. Be good.”

“Bye, Taylor! Bye!”

I stepped into the teleport gate and disappeared. The minute I was back on my own street, I was already calling Marika.

*

I passed a quiet weekend and was pleased when Monday and Tuesday were relatively serene, both at home and at Sefton. Nancy told me Evan was out of the health clinic, though he wasn’t in class, and she promised to give him the reading assignment for the week. Caroline called the most boring staff meeting imaginable to discuss new requirements for pass/fail courses and updated procedures for students wanting to drop or add classes after the posted deadline. I was not the only one yawning before the hour was over.

And then it was back to Chicago and Duncan Phillips’ house, where once again I did not see Bram Cortez.

Quentin was in high spirits, which meant hard to teach, so I resorted to the strategy I sometimes use in unruly classes. “Pop quiz!” I announced, after the first fifteen minutes were utterly wasted. “Quick! The more answers you get right in the shortest period of time, the higher your score. Who wrote Romeo and Juliet ?”

Anything rapid-fire had an intrinsic appeal for Quentin. His eyes lit with excitement, and he yelled, “Shakespeare!”

“What’s the name of the main character in Game of Thrones ?”

“Jon Snow.”

“Who killed the navigator in Dream of Nortook ?”

He thought a moment. “Wes Drachney.”

I had to think even faster than he did and tailor my questions to the books I knew he had read, so this was actually more tiring for me than for Quentin. I kept it up as long as I could, and he only missed three questions. By the end of the session, I was exhausted, and he was as energized as a street kid on amphetamines.

“Hey, that was fun,” he bubbled as I subsided into my chair and tried to catch my breath. “Do I pass? Do I get an A?”

“You passed brilliantly. A-plus.”

“Ask me some more questions.”

“I can’t think of any,” I replied honestly. “I’ll put together another quiz for next week—how’s that? Only this time you have to do some research on your own.”

“Why? What kind of quiz?”

“You have to read—let’s see, one book—before next Tuesday. That gives you a week. I’ll have a quiz ready for you and we’ll see how much you absorbed.”

“I might need more than a week.”

“The Friday after that? That would be ten days.”

“Maybe. What book? Is it long?”

“I’ll give you a choice.”

We spent the rest of the hour compiling a list of possible novels, with me giving him a little background on each one. He ultimately decided on Ticket to Terrazone , Devante Ross’ favorite book, which suited me just fine. I figured I’d give Devante the chance to earn extra credit by having him write the quiz. Win-win.

“How come I never get to ask you questions?” Quentin wanted to know.

“You ask me questions constantly.”

“Yeah, but I mean, like on a test.”

“You want to make up a quiz for me? That’s terrific. What’s it going to be on?”

He considered. “Aspirations of Kudzu. Their second release.”

“I don’t know their stuff very well.”

He raised his eyebrows in a supercilious expression that I had never seen him wear before. “Well, you’ve got ten days to learn it, then, don’t you?”

I couldn’t help smiling. “Okay. Friday and Tuesday, we’ll do our regular lessons. Then next Friday, I quiz you, you quiz me. I expect a real test, though. At least twenty questions written out in advance.”

“I can do that,” he said. “That’ll be fun.”

Probably I should have had him test me on the collected works of a respectable poet instead. Billy Collins and Mary Oliver, for instance, are pretty accessible for someone trying to sift through the lines on their own—or maybe I could have tried him on Louise Bogan if I wanted to make sure he was reading verses with a clear entry point but a more formal structure. Certainly he wouldn’t learn as much from “You’re my sweet fantasy, my one reality” as he would from any of those three or a hundred others. Then again, I was pretty sure he’d make it through a dozen song lyrics, when he might give up after a single traditional poem.

I wondered, every once in a while, what Duncan Phillips might think of my unorthodox style of teaching.

I was putting everything back in my briefcase when there was a knock on the door a moment before it was pushed open. I turned quickly, but Dennis was the only one who strolled through. He was dressed in a white poet’s shirt and tight-fitting black jeans, both enhancing his soulful Mediterranean good looks. His dark curly hair looked freshly combed, and his face was deeply tanned. The picture of health and beauty.

“Hey, pet. Hi, sweetie” was his greeting. “Class all over?”

I covered my disappointment with a smile. “Who’s pet and who’s sweetie?” I wanted to know.

“You can be either. Both.” He waved an indifferent hand. “I express my affection for the universe at large.” Dennis approached Quentin and ruffled his hair with idle fondness. “So how did learning go today?”

“It was great,” Quentin said enthusiastically. “I get to make up a test for Taylor.”

Dennis smiled at me. “Isn’t that like Quin helping me learn to swim?”

“You know what they say,” I replied. “Best way to learn something is to teach it.”

“Then I should be teaching marital bliss,” Dennis said.

I glanced at Quentin, who had already slipped out from under Dennis’ casual hand and was at his computer, looking something up. “Troubles at home?” I asked.

He hunched a shoulder, smiled slightly, and changed the subject. “I understand you went cruising through the gun exhibit the other day.”

I couldn’t suppress a shudder. “And I understand you’re the expert who’s explained all the models to our young friend here.”

“One of my many manly traits. A love for weaponry,” he said. “I could teach you to shoot, if you’d care to learn.”

“I don’t think so,” I answered. “The only reason I was glad to see the room was so I could tell my friend Marika about it. She lives for tidbits of gossip on Duncan Phillips, and so far I haven’t been able to supply very many.”

“Was she impressed?”

“No! She was annoyed. She thought I should have been begging for admission to the hologallery instead.”

Quentin looked up from his monitor. “Hey, yeah! Let’s go!”

Dennis rolled his eyes. “I can’t stand the place. But you really should see it at least once, if you haven’t. Otherwise, you simply haven’t had the complete Phillips Mansion Decadence Tour.”

Quentin had joined the two of us where we stood just inside the doorway. “C’mon, Dennis, take us to the hologallery,” he pleaded. “I know Taylor really wants to see it.”

“I don’t,” I protested. “Marika wants me to see it.”

Dennis shrugged. “Reason enough.”

“Anyway, Dennis has to take us,” Quentin informed me. “He knows how to break the code.”

“He what?” I demanded. “You mean, security code?” The full implication suddenly became plain. “You mean, the door’s locked and we’re not supposed to go in, and only Dennis knows how to break in?”

“Don’t be modest,” Dennis said to Quentin. “I taught you how to do it, too.”

Quentin looked abashed. “I tried the other day and I didn’t get it right. Bram came down and asked what I was doing.”

“Wait,” I said. “Hold on. What exactly is required for us to get into this room?”

Dennis looked at me with a smile so mischievous that for a moment he reminded me of my brother. “Duncan Phillips doesn’t care to have people know the room exists. Door’s locked, and it’s monitored by one of Bram Cortez’s security cameras. You’ve got to turn off the camera, then break into the room. Simple, really.”

So many things wrong with that explanation it was hard to know where to begin. “But if the cameras suddenly go down, won’t that instantly alert Cortez and the other security personnel that someone’s messing around with the system? Won’t they come looking for us? And wouldn’t that be embarrassing?”

“Glitches happen all the time with the monitors. If we cut the camera in just the right spot and we only stay in the room in a few minutes—” Dennis shrugged again. “I think we can be in and out before anyone comes investigating. Don’t you?”

See, this was my problem. I had no interest in the hologallery. I didn’t care if I never had a chance to satisfy Marika’s raging curiosity about the room. But a challenge to my ability to defeat the system—that I found hard to resist. This was my brother’s legacy to me, that I would ruin my good name just to prove that I wasn’t afraid to try something stupid.

“And if we get caught?” I said.

“So you’ve come to Bram’s attention,” Dennis drawled. “Is that so very bad?”

I felt myself blush, and I wanted to kill him. Fortunately, the always impatient Quentin was already tired of talking. “Can I cut the camera, Dennis?” he asked, sending his chair in little jerky motions to the left and then the right. “Can I? I think I know what I did wrong. I want you to show me, but I want to do it. Can I?”

Dennis turned from me to get the door for Quentin. “You bet. You have the necessary tools?”

Quentin held up a keyring of small screwdrivers, thin metal wires, and infrared beam blockers. “All ready.”

Dennis paused to give me a limpid look. “Birthday present from me last year,” he explained. He followed Quentin into the hall. “Let’s go, buddy.”

I couldn’t help but follow.

We took the elevator down to the second floor and were once more enveloped in its plush navy luxury. I thought I knew which door led to the hologallery, but Quentin and Dennis made their way casually past it, so I trucked along behind them, keeping what I hoped was an innocent expression on my face. In case anyone happened upon us in the hall.

A moment later, the two of them came to a stop and Dennis nodded at Quentin. He hitched himself closer to the wall, aimed one of the beam blockers at an inconspicuous plastic square set right above the baseboard, and then began using one of the slim screwdrivers to pry the cover loose.

“Why this particular outlet?” I asked Dennis in a low voice.

He pointed toward a spot on the crown moulding back down the hallway. “Camera in the wall right there, faces the elevator doors. No camera trained on us here.”

“And once the feed is cut, how much time will we have before someone notices?”

Dennis grinned. “Kind of depends on who’s on duty. And if anyone’s monitoring the cameras at the moment—which often, during the day, they’re not. If it’s Bram, we have about three minutes before he figures out where we are. If it’s one of his baby cops, lots longer.”

“Bram Cortez seems fairly efficient,” I said.

“Entirely.”

“Dennis!” came Quentin’s excited whisper. “This is the part I messed up last time. Help me.”

Dennis leaned over and began giving him calm, detailed instructions. I watched (you never know when you might need to disable a security system) but couldn’t really figure out which key turned off what mechanism. Even I, however, could tell when the steady green standby light blinked off. “Camera’s down,” Dennis said. “Door.”

Quentin shot his chair down the hall and had the door opened before Dennis and I had taken the ten paces needed to get there. “Good job,” Dennis approved. “You make me proud.”

I had no comment to offer, either praising or criticizing Quentin’s grasp of lock-picking techniques, because I had stepped across the threshold and could only stare.

The hologallery was a high-ceilinged room about three times as long as it was wide. I assumed there was hidden track lighting, which had sprung on as soon as we entered, but the room gave the impression of existing in almost total darkness, velvety and lush. This then created the setting for the artwork on display. Each separate piece created its own light, or seemed to.

I took a few involuntary steps forward and felt my mouth fall open. Marching down the narrow length of the gallery was a parade of women sculpted in light. They were irregularly placed, but there appeared to be three rows of women with twelve or fifteen figures in each row—thirty or forty sculptures in all. Every woman was semi-nude, and each had been meticulously recreated in an amazingly three-dimensional form, so that a visitor could instantly perceive the variety in the form, height, voluptuousness, and skin texture of Duncan Phillips’ mistresses.

And each sculpture appeared, Pygmalion-like, to have been brought to life by its creator, for each one moved. This one bent to retrieve some object fallen to the floor, this one turned her head as if to glance at someone over her shoulder. Another folded and unfolded her fringed shawl across her chest—first concealing, then revealing, her small, delicate breasts. Another lifted her leg in a sexy chorus-line kick, then flung back her head as if to laugh.

Every single woman wore a mask or a scarf or a hat that covered her face in such a way that her features were wholly obscured.

I took a few slow steps deeper into the gallery, my mind reeling, my mouth still gaping. Here, a hooded woman brought both hands to her mouth, kissed them, then tossed that kiss out to an unseen watcher. Beyond her, another glowing statue offered a small opalescent apple to her incandescent sisters, then brought it back to cradle it against her cheek; her eyes peered out knowingly from a winking, feathered mask. A third woman put her hands to her veil as though to lift it, then instead tightened its folds around her face and gazed out with shadowed, hollow eyes.

I turned to look back at my companions. Quentin was near the doorway, perhaps studying some lock combination that I had not noticed upon my entrance. He seemed to have very little interest in his father’s array of radiant lovers. Dennis was right behind me, watching me with a faint smile.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” I said.

“Extraordinary, isn’t it?”

I gestured at the shifting, posturing herd of discarded lovers. “How does he—why would they—I mean, do they pose for him? Do they know they’re going to be put in this—this zoo?”

“Well, as you might guess, I’ve never actually been there when he asked them to model for him,” Dennis said, and even his suavity seemed a bit shaken by the mercilessly sybaritic exhibit. “But what I suppose is that he asks the women to pose, and they think it’s romantic or something. They don’t realize he’s just going to add them to this electronic harem. They think it’s unique and exciting.”

“You can’t see their faces,” I said.

He nodded. “That’s what I find most disturbing, too. Like he’s obliterated their individuality. They’re merely bodies to be counted up.”

“How much time does he spend in here? Does he bring other people here? Marika says this room has been whispered of for years but that no one’s ever seen it.”

Dennis spread his hands. “Again, not questions I can answer from experience. I’ve never been invited here. I have to think some of his cronies have had a chance to walk down the line and get their jollies. But maybe it’s just all for him.”

“I think I’m going to throw up.”

“Well, not in here,” he said. “Let’s go.”

But I turned back to get one more look, still not quite believing what I was seeing. Here, a dancer pirouetted, one hand above her head; there, a girl appeared to be painting her fingernails with golden polish. But I noticed an odd thing (though what could count as odd in this setting was hard to fathom). Each mistress had been decorated with an identical gem, a round plum-sized crystal that she wore on a chain around her neck, or on a belt around her waist, or in a tiara tucked into the veil that wrapped her head.

“They all have the same jewelry,” I said. “Does he make them pose with that, too?”

Dennis glanced over at the statuary and back at me. “Parting gift,” he said. “Flawless opal shaped like a sphere. They don’t seem to know it’s a goodbye present, though—legend has it each woman is delighted to receive it. Then the portrait, then the dump. You could hardly get more romantic.”

“I am going to be sick.”

“Well,” he said, “at least now you know. If you ever start dating Duncan Phillips, be prepared to run when he starts showering you with the really big jewels.”

I gave him a look of unspeakable revulsion, but before I could come up with a suitably crushing reply, Quentin came gliding over. “What do you think, Taylor?” he asked. “Pretty weird, huh?”

You’re nineteen, and your father keeps a gallery of life-sized holographic mistresses in his house. Exactly what kind of neurosis is that going to give rise to in later life? Except, of course, Quentin wasn’t going to have much of a later life. I couldn’t keep myself from reaching out to ruffle his hair.

“Pretty weird,” I agreed in a casual voice. “What do you think about it?”

He wrinkled his nose and looked briefly over at the gesturing sculptures of light. “Well, I like looking at naked women,” he said, “but it’s not as much fun once they’ve been your dad’s girlfriends.”

I choked back a laugh. “Yeah, that is kind of the gross part,” I said. “Now if they were lingerie models, or something—”

He laughed. “Yeah! That would be pretty jazz!”

“So, if all of us have had our fill—” Dennis said, letting the sentence trail off with a questioning lilt.

“I’m out of here,” I said and headed straight for the door without looking back. The others followed, and Dennis locked the door behind us.

“Now, you,” Dennis said, pointing to Quentin and the little box on the wall. “Turn the cameras back on, and we have safely completed our little exercise in B and E 101.”

I watched Quentin carefully do his burgling in reverse, wondering why he never was quite so meticulous with any of the projects he completed for me. Maybe it was the lawlessness that appealed to him; perhaps if I asked him to plagiarize, he would attack the assignment with zest.

“How many cameras are there in the house?” I asked Dennis. “Every hallway? Every room? Is there a camera in Quentin’s suite? Do they watch me teaching?”

He grinned. “And would there be something wrong with that? Are you doing anything inappropriate?”

I slugged him on the arm exactly as I would have slugged Jason or Domenic. “No, it’s just—you know—someone watching me all the time. Yuck. I don’t like it.”

“As far as I know, there are only cameras in the public areas. The whole first floor. All the hallways. The office where Phillips meets with business associates. I don’t think there are cameras in the bedrooms and private living areas.” He grinned. “Although—Duncan Phillips—a camera in the bedroom might be just the toy he likes best.”

I flicked a warning look at Quentin, who had just joined us. “All done,” he said breathlessly.

Dennis looked at his watch. “Good timing,” he approved. “Good job all around. Now it’s time to go work out.”

“And it’s time for me to go,” I said. “I must say, a most educational afternoon.”

Dennis leaned forward to kiss me on the cheek. He’d never done it before, but it seemed entirely natural. “See you next week,” he said. “Don’t get lost on your way to the door.”

But no chance of that. Francis met me as soon as the elevator doors opened, making me wonder how unobserved our escapade had really been, and escorted me to the teleport pad. I wasn’t rude to him, but I have to say, this was one day when I was more than eager to get free of the Phillips mansion and all its inhabitants.