by Sylvie Kurtz
“I couldn’t risk everything my father had spent a lifetime building,” she said defensively and poured her tea. “I figured if I held him off long enough, then the contract would come through and Dad would buy Rafe’s share of the company. Everything would go back to normal.”
“Except it didn’t.”
Still refusing to look straight at him, she stirred honey into the hot tea. “He was trying to put the pressure on Dad for a marriage merger. That way he could have everything.”
“And when your father refused, Rafe killed him.”
Swallowing hard, she nodded. “After Daddy died, the scandal exploded, making it look as if he was the one selling classified information about Steeltex, not Rafe.”
Tears pooled in her eyes. “The police found Dad’s body in the pond at the mill. He had incriminating evidence in his pocket. The water had washed away all forensics. They said he’d killed himself in remorse.”
Gray got up, yanked a tissue from the brass holder on the bedside table and dabbed at her tears. His fingers brushed the soft skin of her cheek and his libido soared higher than a rocket. Trying not to think of kissing her, of soothing her, of loving her, when she was so close and so sad, was like trying to ignore a blue elephant in the middle of the room.
He handed her the tissue, scooted back to his end of the table and chugged down his iced tea as if that was what he desperately needed. The ice cubes clinked against the glass when he set it back down. “What happened to put Rafe behind bars?”
The tissue became confetti in her lap. “After I took the picture, I ran. I was afraid he’d kill me, too. Bryn convinced me to go to the police. That photo helped persuade them that Dad was innocent. At least of suicide. They’re still not convinced he wasn’t involved with the treason.”
Elliot Holbrook and treason simply didn’t add up. If something illegal was going on at the mill, Gray had no doubt Vanderveer was behind it. “We’ll find all the proof you need. Who’s running the mill now?”
“Right now? The creditors are. They’ve appointed an interim chief operating officer. But Rafe wants control back. And I’ve instructed Dad’s lawyers to do everything they can so he won’t get it.”
“Do you want to run the mill yourself?” She’d be good at it, and it would deepen her bond with Echo Falls. Why would the thought sink through him like an anchor?
She gathered the tissue confetti in the palm of one hand, then shook the pieces onto her plate. “I don’t know. All I know is that it’s a real mess and the employees are caught in the middle.”
As much as he hated getting close to her, he crouched by her chair and held her hands. It was like holding a sparkler. His skin prickled and heated. “Abbie, I’m going to have to call the office. We need to get someone inside the mill.”
She shook her head. “U.S. Army personnel have been through every inch of the mill. They took away truck-loads of paperwork. Production’s been stopped and there’s only a skeleton crew working right now. If there was anything incriminating Rafe, the Army would have found it.”
“Not necessarily.”
“My evidence put him in jail for murder. My testimony could keep him there for the rest of his life. He didn’t leave anything behind that would hurt his case.”
Nor could Vanderveer afford to leave Abbie alive either.
Gray dug his hands into his pockets to stop them from reaching for the spun silk of her hair. She wasn’t his girlfriend. They’d burned that particular bridge thirteen years ago. She was his job. Keep your head screwed on right. Don’t screw up. “Someone like Rafe has to keep records. It’s the only way to prove how great he is—even if it’s just to himself.”
“Brynna can help.”
“What?”
“Brynna—you know, your sister.”
“I know who Brynna is.” He strode back to his own chair. He knew who Brynna was all right. She was the sister he’d spent his childhood watching over and protecting. Not that she’d appreciated it. He dug into his chowder. It could’ve been talc for all he tasted. “What about her?”
“We should ask her to look into Phil’s bank account.”
“I have an electronic guru I can consult.”
“Someone at Seekers?” Her hands pressed against the table as if she were about to bolt.
“Kingsley. Joanna’s brother.”
Abbie’s chin cranked up a notch and her voice took on the uppity tone of a mistress displeased with her servant’s attitude. “He’s still at Seekers and he has access to every scrap of information that goes through there.”
“Kingsley’s solid.” Gray would trust Kingsley over Bryn any day of the week. Kingsley had no agenda. Brynna always did.
“But what Kingsley works on might not be. You don’t know who’s working for Rafe there. Who could be watching over his shoulder.”
Gray hooked an arm around the chair’s back. Keep cool. “Using that logic, you shouldn’t trust Brynna either. Vanderveer didn’t have anything good to say about her in his letter.”
“Brynna has problems, but she’d never side with Rafe. He’s never going to let me go. She gets that.”
Implying he didn’t. I get it, Abbie. What he didn’t get was her running from sure safety into the open, where she was one trigger squeeze away from eternal sleep. “Bryn doesn’t want to have anything to do with me.”
“She’s hurt.”
“I couldn’t take her with me.” He forced his hand to relax. How many times was he going to have to explain himself? He was barely eighteen when he’d left. What was he supposed to do with a sixteen-year-old brat who couldn’t stand him while he was at sea? She’d have hated being alone and away from everything she knew.
Abbie cocked her head. “Do you know what happened to her?”
“How can I when she won’t talk to me?” But he knew. Had always suspected. Nothing he could do about the roller-coaster dive his stomach took, except ride it out. “I was the resident butt everybody kicked, especially Mom. When I left, the position became vacant.”
Though Abbie couldn’t see his eyes, he silently pleaded for understanding. He’d had to leave. He couldn’t have stayed where he wasn’t wanted, where every day he had been told he was a loser just like his father, where he’d been expected to turn bad and end up in jail. I sent money home so she wouldn’t have to work for food the way I did. I offered to pay for college for her. I did everything I could for her. “I didn’t think Mom would turn around and do the same to Bryn. Mom always treated Bryn right.”
“It goes deeper than that.”
He tossed his hands up. “Like what?”
“It’s not my place to say.”
“You started the conversation.” And he’d give anything to stop it from going any further. He was sweating like a racehorse, and the finish line still seemed a mile away. I couldn’t stay. I barely escaped in time. He’d known it was time to leave when he’d found himself shoplifting a package of beef jerky to fill his belly because his mother had pilfered the paycheck he’d cashed and hidden in his room, and she’d spent it on booze. Jail wasn’t where he saw himself, not even for three squares.
“We need Bryn’s help. We need to find out about Phil. We need to find out if someone inside Seekers is working for Rafe. If someone is, then we can’t trust anything anyone at Seekers says. And we can’t do this alone.”
She was right, of course. Kingsley was an electronics wizard and had resources Bryn didn’t, but until Seekers was cleared, they were better off using outside help. And for all Bryn’s anger at him, she would do her best to help Abbie. “All right.”
Abbie bounced to her feet, reached for the leather bag on the desk and turned for the door. “Let’s go.”
“Whoa, not so fast.” He held her back with a hand and ordered his thumb not to rub at the soft skin of her arm. After all she’d gone through today, the subtle scent of almonds and honey still perfumed her skin. “We can’t go there. Too predictable. One of Vanderveer’s flunkies is likely parked close
and watching the house.”
“She won’t leave.”
“What do you mean she won’t leave?”
Abbie subtly moved out of his grasp and pawed through her leather bag as if the answer to the puzzle of the universe lay somewhere at the bottom. “It’s complicated, Gray. Just trust me on this. We need to go to her.”
“What’s wrong?”
Holding a tube of peppermint lip balm between her fingers, Abbie hesitated. “Agoraphobia.”
Gray swore. He should’ve tried harder to get Bryn out of there, to take her with him.
The sense of suffocating terror squeezing at his chest existed only in his head. His lungs were fine, strong, healthy. He could run a mile in less than four and a half minutes. Faster than the rest of the team. He could handle a return trip to the old homestead with its halls full of painful ghosts and impaling guilt if it helped him keep Abbie safe. Hell, he’d survived both for years and he was still walking among the living.
He fished the piece of paper Joanna had given him out of his pocket and dialed the number.
Alarm rippled in her voice as she gripped his arm. “Who are you calling?”
“Joanna. We need transportation that nobody can trace back to us. I can’t use a credit card to rent, and we don’t have enough money between us to buy one.”
Joanna promised to make arrangements and have a car waiting for him in the morning. Just as he replaced the receiver on the cradle, ending his call with Joanna, his cell phone—in Abbie’s vest pocket—rang, making her jump.
“REED,” GRAY SAID INTO THE cell phone, bracing himself for a verbal flaying. The rules at Seekers were loose, but Falconer still expected a certain protocol—for everybody’s safety.
“Where are you?” Falconer’s voice had a sharp edge of impatience to it.
“We ran into some trouble.” A common enough excuse not to warrant too much attention.
“What’s your ETA?”
“Seven days,” Gray said and tried to make it sound like seven hours.
A long silence stewed between them.
“Bring Ms. Holbrook in. Tonight.”
“No can do.” No one was going to get to his golden girl if he could help it.
“Do I have to remind you what’s at stake?”
Life. Her life. The lives of witnesses who helped the Marshals Service put scum in jail. The lives of soldiers battling for peace on foreign soil. “I understand. She understands. But there’s also the small matter of surviving until the trial.”
“We’re equipped to protect her.”
Falconer saw the Aerie as an impenetrable bunker. Gray saw Abbie’s sanity-gnawing fear.
“You have a mole.”
Silence became a black hole. “Not here.”
“Give me a day to prove you right,” Gray said.
“It’s not time to play the hero.”
“I’m no hero.” Welcome back to Echo Falls, coward. “I’m protecting your asset.”
“Twenty-four hours, then I’m sending in Mercer.”
Gray cut off communications before Falconer could have Kingsley pinpoint their position. He pulled the battery out of the phone, effectively rendering the locator chip mute. He’d have to ditch it. He’d get a few hours of sleep, then they’d have to disappear from both Vanderveer’s assassin and the Seekers team that had become his family.
THE NEXT MORNING, BEFORE dawn even thought about cracking, Gray woke up Abbie. She’d sat up for most of the night. Looking as zoned out as a drug addict in the grips of a chemical high, she’d watched a marathon of old Elvis musicals with the sound down low. She stumbled to the bathroom to dress. When she emerged, they left the room.
At the registration desk a perfectly groomed woman in a burgundy suit greeted them. With her black hair swept up, she looked almost as regal as Joanna and was much too perky for the early hour. “What can I do for you?”
“You should have a message for me.” He smiled at her and she smiled back, interest glinting above simple politeness. “Mr. Franklin in nine-thirteen.”
A quick check of the computer told her where to find the message. She reached under the desk, then handed him a fat envelope with the King’s Arms logo. “Here you go. You have two.”
He frowned. His fingers splayed the envelopes apart. Two? “Thanks.”
He recognized Joanna’s bold script on the top envelope. As he tore open the envelope, keys dropped into his hand. The promised rental car was sitting in the parking garage, second level, spot B-27. The second envelope bore the perfect penmanship of a grade school teacher and sent a snake of dread slithering in his gut. “Who left this?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know. It was already there when I came on shift.”
The note read, “You had your chance. She turned you down. You can’t win. She’s mine. Ask her about our love child.”
Chapter Seven
Abbie stood beside Gray as the descending elevator taking them to the parking garage hummed. The stark light of the small carriage emphasized the brows straightened into fierce lines above Gray’s sunglasses. The taut set of his face could cower the biggest, baddest of bouncers into submission. A pulse throbbed at his neck above the collar of his silver polo shirt. Why? Where was the sudden burst of anger coming from? Joanna’s note?
“You’re going to blow a gasket unless you let out some of the steam raising your blood pressure. What did the note say to upset you?”
Watching the brass door as if at any second an army of aliens would try to zap their way through it, he ignored her. The B-level light came on with a bing and the carriage settled.
As the doors slid open, Gray said, “You’ll be thirty next year. How come you’re not married?”
Without waiting for her answer, he walked out and started on his panther-on-the-prowl maneuvers. Her jaw dropped as she trotted to catch up to him. “What brought this on?”
“Isn’t your biological clock ticking like mad?”
Reflexively she moved her leather bag across her stomach. His tone of voice was definitely ticking her off. “Not particularly.”
“Why not?” His voice and the discordant slap of their soles echoed in the concrete forest of pillars and dividers in the garage. Under the shield of his glasses, she suspected his eyes kept roving, searching for anything out of place.
“I have other things on my mind.” She’d had one long-term relationship in college and another after. She’d failed miserably at both. Some people weren’t meant for marriage, and she fell into that category. Through the eye of her camera she’d stumbled upon what she’d unconsciously searched for—a sense of truth, a deep connection, a peaceful calm. Something she hadn’t found in either of those failed relationships.
“Why didn’t you mention you were pregnant with Vanderveer’s child?”
Her step faltered. How did Gray know? The note, of course. Rafe. Had to be. Rafe would use that weakness against her. “Because it wasn’t important.”
“You had his child.”
Something in her heart contracted. “I miscarried after Dad died.”
She’d barely known she was pregnant before she’d lost the baby. How could something that was too small to feel have caused such a thick catalog of emotion to flip through her in such a short span?
Pure hatred. At Rafe for manipulating her into a position she’d wanted to avoid.
Pure love. For the tiny seed that would grow into a baby—her baby.
Cold emptiness and deep longing. For that lost chance at motherhood. Her only chance?
Her chest heaved and she muscled the rising sob back to the empty cradle of her womb. It didn’t matter. Really. What had made her think she could raise a child on her own? It was better this way. She could never take her hatred of the father out on the innocent child.
“Did he…?” Gray’s steel-hard voice penetrated the bumper of pain surrounding her like a bruise. She hadn’t realized they’d stopped. He searched the maroon sedan in the stall marked B-27 as if he expected to
find a bomb, going as far as sliding under the car to look at its underbelly and flashing a penlight at hard-to-reach spots.
“Rape me?” She shook her head and held her bag tightly to her belly. “No.”
“Then you…?”
Averting her gaze, she reached for the passenger door handle. “It’s really none of your business.”
“You’re right.”
Holding her car door open, he looked down at her expectantly. Not knowing what to do with the humiliation squirming through her body, she wrapped and rewrapped the strap of her bag around her hands. Silence pressed around her, becoming a vacuum that demanded filling.
“I was at one of those interminable business things with Dad.” Her tongue was so tied, the words folded thickly in her mouth. “I drank too much and one thing led to another.” She shrugged a shoulder carelessly, trying to dislodge the lingering stain of shame. “I don’t even remember what happened, really, except that I woke up in his bed.” With Rafe’s face hovering above hers and his body possessively pinning her under him. You’re mine now. And the smile he’d beamed had frightened her to the core.
“You don’t remember?” The curl of Gray’s hands around the top of the car door tightened and his voice was as cutting as glass. “Did it ever occur to you that he might have drugged you?”
A time or two. But she hadn’t felt drugged, just hung-over. And she did remember drinking way over her quota. She rubbed circles on her temples with the tips of her fingers. The echo of a headache pounded through her brain. “I never said no.”
“But did you say yes?” Gray’s hand palmed away the wetness on her cheek, and the tenderness in his voice brought on a fresh wave of sadness. “Abbie—”
“It’s ancient history. The baby doesn’t exist.” She’d lost it in a strange city, among strangers, and hadn’t had time to mourn her loss before the WITSEC inspector had dragged her to another town and left her to fend for herself. That raw feeling of being torn apart threatened to overwhelm her once again. She reached for the handle to close the door. “We have more important things to worry about.”