Dangerously Dark (30 page)

“Why? Because I can't afford a bespoke suit? Think again.”

“No.” He gave me a fleeting smile. “Because you don't appreciate Cartorama and the community we've built here. I thought you did. I thought you understood. But you lied.”

“Hold up. I never lied about anything.”

“Just like Declan. He didn't care about Cartorama, either.”

At Tomasz's unnerving tone, I got goose bumps again. “No?”

It was all I could manage. I was too disturbed to say more.

“No,” Tomasz confirmed spitefully. “He brought his real-estate buddies here. He ruined everything. He told me they were supposed to help with Chocolate After Dark. But once they saw the cart pod property, they wanted more. They wanted
my
land.”

“Well, they obviously didn't get it,” I pointed out, realizing he meant the Prodigy Group. “No harm, no foul, right?”

“Not quite.” Tomasz watched me. Coldly. “After that, I knew how Declan
really
felt about Cartorama. He had no loyalty at all. I value loyalty. It's the
only
thing worth having.”

“I'm partial to love and chocolate chip cookies.”

“This isn't funny.” His dire expression sobered me up quickly. “I'm trying to give you a chance, Hayden. You're not making it easy on me. Be easy.
Please
don't be like Declan.”

I assumed he meant,
Don't be dead like Declan.
Uh-oh.

I clutched the strap on my crossbody bag, wondering if I dared to reach inside it for my phone—for my recording app.

Tomasz saw my gesture. He scowled. “Why isn't anybody loyal anymore?” he growled, turning to pace a few steps. “Declan, Carissa, now you. It's getting to where I don't trust anyone. The whole reason I came to Portland was to find people to trust. People who
didn't
just want me for my money. People who
got
me. Did you think I was pretending to be a
bartender
for fun?”

At his scathing tone, I gulped. “Carissa?”

Was
she
who was in back, sick or hurt?

“She came here wanting to be reimbursed for her share of the cacao roaster. She said she needed money to bring her ice-cream cart to L.A.” Tomasz looked angry. “I said no.”

Oh no.
My imagination took flight. Darkly. I imagined my old college friend, alone and hurt, with no one to help her.

“
You
pushed the shelving unit on me,” I guessed too late, envisioning a similar scenario for Carissa.
Poor Carissa.

Tomasz lifted his shoulder in a shrug. “I had to. Everyone kept coming in here to drink and complain about how you were snooping around. You were upsetting people. I couldn't have that. Not in
my
community.” He paused, seeming pained. “Don't you get it? This is the
only
place I've ever felt I belonged. I can't have that ruined—especially not because
you
want to pry.”

I was feeling a little short on sympathy just then.

“Yeah, tough break. It's probably hard to make friends when you're busy trying to cripple them with industrial shelving.”

“I wasn't trying to
cripple
you.” Tomasz flashed a grin. “Just scare you, that's all. So you'd stop overstepping your boundaries. I knew I'd get a chance to explain. Here it is.”

I didn't feel reassured. He was crazy. I didn't doubt it.

“I like you, Hayden,” Tomasz said in a horrible imitation of the flirting we'd done. “But you have to stay in line.”

I raised my chin a notch higher. “And if I don't?”

I felt torn between staying put (for Carissa) and running like mad (for me). But just as I hadn't been able to abandon my friend to her (supposed) grief after her fiancé's death, I found I couldn't leave now. Casually, I eased my hand into my bag.

My fingers touched the smooth surface of my phone.

“If you don't, you'll wind up drinking alone, I'm afraid.”

I didn't understand. My frown probably revealed as much. I wished I'd asked the Portland police detective to put a rush on the fingerprints check on that piece of plastic wrap. Because I now felt certain that evidence would reveal Tomasz's prints.

Now they'd find that damning evidence too late.
For me.

“Nobody likes drinking alone,” I told him lightly, abandoning my quest for my phone. I needed a new strategy. “Why don't you join me?” I glanced at the bar stools. “You can tell me more about Declan. And Carissa.” I smiled. Sort of. It was the best I could do under the circumstances. “I'm a good listener.”

Tomasz wavered. “It
might
be nice if you understood first.”

First.
I shivered, not wanting to think what he meant. Unfortunately, my overactive imagination had other ideas. I pictured myself shot, stabbed, and smashed over the head with that rare bottle of Macallan whiskey, all in quick succession.

“See, I really liked Declan in the beginning.” Tomasz leaned on the bar, then casually rolled up his shirtsleeves. “He was funny. Not
too
bright. Good-looking enough to play wingman, but not cool enough to compete. You get the picture, right?”

I nodded, appalled by his flippant tone.

“I mean, Declan liked all the same things I did,” Tomasz confided. “Slasher flicks, hot chicks, a nice Syrah, and a good lobster roll. He liked
me.
He liked the community I built here.” He looked around the bar, momentarily distracted, then grabbed a pair of protective gloves. Slowly, he pulled them on. “But then Declan changed. He got engaged to Carissa. He started bringing over his old Seattle property-development buddies for drinks so she could mine them for contacts. You know there's nobody more connected than a real-estate professional, right? Especially those who specialize in commercial development.”

Tomasz stopped, seeming briefly distracted.

I was, too. I was putting together the pieces of how Carissa had manipulated Declan into finding her investors for Churn PDX. Austin had told me that Declan had abandoned his old life in Seattle to woo and win Carissa, but the joke was on Declan. Carissa had only wanted him for his contacts, all along.

“Are you all caught up?” Tomasz inquired politely.

I shook myself and nodded. I had to get out of there.

But first, I had to try to find Carissa and help her.

“The truth is, Declan betrayed me,” Tomasz told me. “Worse than that, he betrayed the pod. He tried to unravel Cartorama, all for a share of the profits. I couldn't allow that.”

I felt chilled again. Tomasz was
definitely
crazy. I hugged myself and looked around for an escape route, then remembered that the bar's locked dead bolt wouldn't open without the key. I was stuck. Stuck with an unbalanced killer.

I kept looking for a way out, hoping to disguise my scouting mission. My gaze lit on a tidy row of keys, hung near the mounted iPad that Muddle + Spade used as a cash register. That's when everything fell completely into place. Tomasz had had
all
the pod's keys.

He could have come and gone anywhere, anytime. He could have rigged Carissa's liquid nitrogen tanks and wrecked their safety mechanisms. He could have wrapped Churn PDX's ventilation system in industrial plastic wrap—which was used plenty in the kitchen area of the bar, I felt sure—and eliminated all of the oxygen in that cramped space. He could have killed Declan.

Who was I kidding? Tomasz
had
killed Declan.

“I know what you're thinking,” he said in a blithe tone.

“I doubt that.” I looked at him, horrified. “Seriously.”

“You're thinking that I overreacted.” Tomasz sighed, then pulled over two bottles of liquor and a mixer. He was making a margarita? “But it had to be done. I had to make sure no one else ever tried to destroy the pod. I had to set a precedent.”

Killing Declan wasn't “a precedent.” It was wrong.

But I couldn't say so. Because that's when I glimpsed the thermos-size Dewar of liquid nitrogen on the bar. That's when I realized what Tomasz intended to do. That's when I remembered Lauren's story about having almost drunk liquid nitrogen.

I didn't want that stuff inside
me,
freezing on contact with my tissues, puncturing internal organs on its way through my system. I didn't want to bleed to death . . . slowly and internally.

“Ah,” Tomasz murmured, watching my undoubtedly petrified expression. “I see you're familiar with the dangers of this stuff. At least your nosiness was useful, right?” He chuckled and grabbed my hands. Before I knew what he meant to do, he'd forced my fingers around the Dewar—undoubtedly leaving fingerprints to help enact his plan. I snatched them away before he could repeat the maneuver on the tequila and mixers.

He grabbed my hands again. Hard. “Cointreau or Grand Marnier?” His tone of polite inquiry was a terrifying sham.

I wrenched away. “This isn't necessary, Tommy.”

At my use of that nickname, he paused. I felt heartened. Also, grateful to Lauren for her constant use of it. It looked as though she inadvertently might have given me a playbook to use with Tomasz—one that took advantage of his weakness.

I didn't think he'd been lying when he'd said he'd had a bad breakup. As far as I could tell, Tomasz had been ruined by rejection—ruled by his fear that it would happen to him again. Again and again and again. Not just with women, either. With everyone in his life. Including the people at Cartorama—the only “family” he seemed to have known or cared about.

“Don't you think I want to belong, too?” I asked. I looked away, pretending to be overcome with emotion. Really, I couldn't bear to meet his chilling gaze. “I'm gun shy, that's all. Geez.” I forced a laugh. “Give a globe-trotting girl a break, will ya?”

He looked skeptical. “That was all a front? Just now?”

I chuckled. “Well, I wasn't like that before, now was I? We were getting along. But I had to be sure about you.” I made myself step closer. “I mean, I had to know how far you'd
really
go to make sure I'd be okay here. I've been hurt, too, you know.” I remembered how on edge he'd seemed while asking me out. “Just like you. I was involved with someone who let me down.”

I heaved in a shuddering breath, pretending to be secretly heartbroken. In the process, I managed to catch sight of Carissa. She lay in a frightening heap just inside the bar's back room, almost as if she'd tried to run out the back door and had been overcome before she could. She moved, but just barely.

“I'll go all the way to protect you,” Tomasz swore. His gaze locked on mine, his blue eyes searching. “I'll protect you, just the way I protected Cartorama. I've done it once—”

“When you killed Declan?”

He nodded vehemently. “Yes. I'll do it again, if I have to.”

There it was.
A confession. Proof that Tomasz had been the one who'd killed Declan—cold-bloodedly and without remorse. All because his new buddy had tried to break up Cartorama.

“You can be safe here,” Tomasz coaxed. His eyes begged me to agree. If I hadn't known better, I might have fallen for it. That's just how sincere he seemed. “Safe with all of us.”

His words put a new and chilling spin on the cart pod's close-knit community. I wondered if anyone else knew that Tomasz would kill to protect his “family”—had
already
killed to protect them. I wondered if I'd ever get out alive to warn them.

“Or,” he went on in a resigned tone, “you can drink this margarita I'm about to make for you and stop worrying about it. Nobody will guess the truth. Just like with Declan, they'll all think it was an accident—even your friend Danny. I think he's a bad influence on you, by the way. I recognize the type.”

I almost choked on bitter laughter. “Thanks for your concern,” I said on a tidal wave of fear. “But I'm okay.”

At that moment, I was anything but
okay.
I felt hysterical. Especially as I heard another pain-filled groan from Carissa.

Tomasz heard it, too. He rolled his eyes. “Austin and Janel will corroborate your ‘drinking problem,'” he said soberly. “I know they'll be genuinely sad. If Janel makes it, of course.”

I widened my eyes. “Did you—were you the one who—”

“No.” He waved away my guess. “That was an accident.”

I figured I might as well believe him—about all of it.

He intended to kill me. What was I going to do?

“I'll be sad, too.” Tomasz cast a mournful glance at the monogrammed key fob he'd taken from me. “I'll always regret having given that key to you. That's what I'll tell the police.” He shrugged again. “But I couldn't have known you'd let yourself in here before opening time. I couldn't have known you'd try to mix yourself a frozen margarita”—his gaze shot to the Dewar of liquid nitrogen “—all unaware of its dangers. It's going to be
so
tragic.” He paused. “You know, I think this will bring the whole community together. That will be a good thing for us.”

I gaped at him, newly aware of how long he'd been hedging his bets. Tomasz had given me that key days ago. He'd been willing to kill me—if necessary—almost from the moment we'd met.

Well, this (unfortunately) wasn't the first time that I'd faced down a murderer. I remembered everything that had happened at Maison Lemaître and tried to draw strength from it. I'd made it out of San Francisco alive. I could survive this, too.