Free Masks (Out of the Box Book 9) by Robert J. Crane

turned those back fairly quickly, and fortunately she’d been out of there after wasting only the entire day.
    This was the shit she had to deal with now, she thought as she walked toward the front door in her bare feet, Manolos over her shoulder, one with a broken heel, the sound of the cab squealing away behind her. She was living under a cloud of suspicion until this all went away, and it was suffocating her, dulling her mind and turning her attention away from what she ought to be doing—making money.
    Then there was the other thing. That stupid Gravity cow and her insufferable snideness. Nadine was still burning from that, and it had been hours. She’d seen the replays while waiting to leave the precinct. The news was having a field day with the superheroine telling off the fallen Queen of Wall Street, lecturing her on virtue, like some sort of mother scolding her child in the middle of a supermarket. Nadine recognized the stunned look on her face in the playbacks; she was sitting there silently, horrified, like her FBI interrogations had been made public.
    They hadn’t, fortunately, but it was probably just a matter of time before she’d have to deal with that humiliation, too.
    She fumbled with the keys while unlocking the front door, checking the bushes to make sure nobody was ready to leap out at her. That had happened recently, and the dumbass had gotten a key right to the face before he ran off into the night. She opened the tall, heavy front door and slipped through, shutting it and locking the deadbolt behind her.
    She drew a few quiet breaths in the darkness, just listening. She wouldn’t put it past some lunatic parasite to break into her mansion and wait, after all. This was what the crazies did, followed people like her, trying to attach themselves to the nearest luminous object like moths.
    She waited a minute in the dark, then two. She heard nothing, smelled nothing out of the ordinary, and finally turned on the light to find the room exactly as she’d left it—tastefully appointed with fine wood furnishings, a grand piano in the corner (she didn’t even play), and not a soul to greet her. The cook and the gardener had been fired when her assets had been seized. She didn’t really miss their presence, but she did miss ready access to warm meals and a plush, perfectly manicured lawn.
    Nadine dragged herself into the kitchen, looking carefully around as she walked. Someone could still be hiding here, after all, though it was a lot more likely that the FBI was listening to her as she made her way through her home. She hadn’t seen a van on the street, but then, she hadn’t cared to look either, and the street was separated from her estate by a ten-foot-high wall. Her estate backed onto Long Island Sound, though there was a decent amount of real estate between her and the water. Enough that she couldn’t hear the water clearly at night, but she still had the view.
    She browsed the fridge with disinterest, mentally counting the minutes. She was almost positive the FBI didn’t have video surveillance on her in her house, but it still gave her pause. They’d searched the place relentlessly when they’d first arrested her, and while her lawyers had seen the warrant, they’d told her it was entirely possible that the FBI had another that allowed for wiretapping and video surveillance, so she was extra wary when she knew she was stepping outside the law.
    She tossed her heels and walked across the tile floors toward the master suite. She ignored the messy bed, though it drove her a little crazy, avoided kicking the clothes and shoes she’d left on the floor—Manuela, who used to pick up after her once she’d left for the day, was gone now—and walked into her bathroom, leaving the light off.
    She stood in front of the mirror in the darkness, letting her eyes adjust. If they had an infrared camera in here, she was done for no matter what. But if they did, they hadn’t tipped their hand to it yet,