Her breath caught each time, like hiccups. Her purse was inside the cabin. Her keys. God, her money. She’d only take what she’d brought with her. Nothing from Safe Haven, never. She’d just dump out her books, put some clothes in the suitcase. Why did it have to end like this? Though, what had she thought? That it would all be a fairy tale?
Her truck was so close, but her hand was sticky with spilled soda. Her things weren’t here. She’d been so hungry, and now her stomach churned.
He knew who she was. He’d known who she was before he’d arrived. Was he a policeman? FBI? Or someone Christian had sent to hurt her?
Good job on that.
Broken bones would have been kinder.
“Annie!”
She winced at his voice and willed him away. The harder she tried to push herself upright, the more her legs shook. Shea. Shea would tell everyone why she left. She’d help. She was nice. Maybe. Maybe no one was nice, ever.
“Annie, please.”
Lesson learned. She’d work. She’d find someplace to sleep. She’d keep to herself. No more talking to people. No more letting anyone in.
He’d lied.
Worse than that, she’d believed him.
Something gripped her wrist, and when she jerked to look, it was his hand, not cuffs.
“Please come with me to the cabin. We need to talk.”
She didn’t pull her hand away. She was afraid she’d fall. “There’s nothing to say.”
“There’s a lot to say. I’m sorry you overheard that. I was going to tell you everything, but not yet. Later. When I’d fixed things.”
She looked at him and it hurt. “Who the hell are you? Who sent you? I don’t know anything about the money. I never did.”
“I believe you.”
Her laughter came out like a bark, like bile. “Liar. You planned it. All of it. The email. Everything. Is your website made up? The foundation? Who do you work for, the D.A., the police?”
“Obviously you didn’t hear the part you needed to,” he said quietly, his expression blank. Unreadable. But then she fooled herself into thinking she’d ever been able to read him.
She did jerk away then, and at the second pull, he let her go. “Was it funny? Did I amuse you, or was it all in a day’s work? Huh? Or maybe just cruelty for the sake of it. That actually makes sense. You slept with me. You seduced me. It wasn’t enough to make me trust you. You had to go the extra mile.”
Closing her eyes so tightly they ached, she held back tears through sheer force of will. “The hell with you, whoever you are.”
“I know you hate me right now, I do, but dammit, there was nothing funny or cruel about any of this. I had no choice.”
“What?”
“You’re in hiding. Living under a false name. You disappeared from the face of the earth.”
He wasn’t touching her, but he leaned toward her, again, his changed expression utterly new to her. Everything until now had been underlined with confidence and strength, but now he looked anxious and frightened. Not that she dared believe him.
“Look,” he said, lowering his voice, as if he were afraid of scaring her. “I’m exactly who I said I was. But I’m also Christian’s brother.”
“Christian Andrews?” She shook her head. No, he couldn’t be. Christian said he had no family. “He’s your brother?”
“Yes. We share the same biological parents, but I was raised by my mother and her second husband. He adopted me.”
“Well, I see lying runs in your family. You can tell your brother that I have no idea what happened to the money. I didn’t steal it. Oh, wait...he knows already, because the thief has to be him.”
“I know,” Tucker said, moving closer to her. “I know.”
She took a quick breath. So what if Tucker sounded sincere? He was a good actor. He’d been fooling her for days. Except the earnestness had reached his eyes, and she couldn’t look there, couldn’t afford to be stupid again. “What do you know?”
“Please. Come back into the house. Let me tell you everything. You need to understand what I did. Why I had to keep certain information from you.”
“Nice way of putting it.”
He stood straighter, frustration clenching his jaw. “What was I supposed to do? I only found you by chance. You couldn’t have made yourself look more guilty if you’d tried.” Tucker sighed, then gentled his voice. “If anyone should understand that sometimes lies are unavoidable, even necessary, it’s you.”
She inhaled and nearly choked on the breath. “The picture. It was that stupid picture from the Sundance, wasn’t it?”
He nodded. “Come inside? Please? I’m not here to hurt you. I swear. I want to help.” He looked down, then shook his head before facing her again. “Whatever you think of me, you need to listen because you could be in real danger. Please, Annie. I’m begging you.”
God, this was so hard and, again, she’d brought this agony on herself. Was this what the rest of her life would be like? One giant mistake after the next? Because when she looked at Tucker, she saw the same man from this morning. From last night. From the bathtub in the Hilton. His eyes were pained, his brow furrowed.
And she wanted to believe him. Again.
All the energy drained out of her. Over two years of fear, of being so careful, of loneliness and regret. She’d lived a shadow life, and when she’d finally dared go into the sun, she’d been burned.
“Fine. We’ll go inside.” She nervously touched her hair, which brought a memory she’d now sooner forget. “I’ll tell you what you want to know, but you’ll be disappointed. Whatever you or Christian were hoping to find out, I don’t have it. I’ve got nothing.”
He walked with her, his hand hovering near the small of her back before he brought it, fisted, to his side. During the short trip to the cabin, he repeated the gesture three times.
She wasn’t sure if she should laugh or cry. Mostly because she had no idea what it meant. Her instinct, still, was to trust him. Maybe it was some kind of reaction to his family. She’d never been attracted to Christian, not like she was with Tucker, but she’d foolishly trusted him. Christian had been clever and a smooth talker. Though they hadn’t even discussed being more than business associates.
Thank God. One was more than enough.
The cabin smelled like matzo balls and chicken soup. She wanted to throw it all out, clear the air of any traces that reminded her of their night in Kalispell. Instead, she pulled out one of the wooden chairs and sat down, her hands folded on the tabletop. “What did you come here to do?”
He got out a couple of sodas and opened the cans, putting one in front of Annie. He sat close enough to see her well, probably so he could look into her eyes and figure out when she was lying. She wouldn’t tell him anything but the truth, though. She was done with the secrets and lies. They’d caused her enough pain.
“I came to see for myself if you were Leanna Warner,” he said. “The website photo was a bit fuzzy, and you were turned away from the camera.”
“You must have confirmed it was me five minutes in. Why didn’t you call the authorities?”
He shifted in his chair, drank some soda. “You didn’t make sense. I was expecting someone else, even after I realized you were the woman Christian claimed ruined his life.”
She blinked at the slightly disdainful way he said his brother’s name. And he’d used the word claimed. It was nothing for her to be pleased about.... “What does that mean?”
“I was looking for an embezzler. Someone who would steal money from charities. I thought I had managed to make some pieces fit when I took into account that you’d only skimmed the profits. What kind of thief leaves the original investments? That part was confusing before I left Dallas. Meeting you, some pieces fit. But not enough.”
“Maybe because I didn’t embezzle anything.”
“I know that now,” he said, and couldn’t be more matter-of-fact. “Hell, I knew before now.”
“When?”
&
nbsp; “Did I know you weren’t guilty? The first day.”
She shook her head. It hadn’t been a trick question, but it told her that he wasn’t being entirely truthful. The first day? Did he think she was that stupid? Well, yeah, he probably did, because that’s how she’d played things.
“I didn’t say I thought you were innocent.” His brows lifted, his gaze steady. “Not guilty is different.”
Annie thought for a moment. “You believed I knew something and kept quiet.”
“Actually, after I met you, my theory was that you did embezzle the money, but you were coerced.”
“That’s still stealing.”
“Yes, but with mitigating circumstances.”
She broke down and picked up the can of soda he’d brought her. Her hand still shook, but her mouth was dry and she needed the liquid. Maybe he was telling the truth. He could’ve given her a fluffy answer.
“Look, I’ve had someone working on what happened to that money. He’s good at what he does, and he’s thorough.”
“And?”
Tucker took in a deep breath, wiped his face with his hand before he let it out. “I’ll tell you everything, but first, I have to understand something. Why did you run?”
Her face filled with an all too familiar heat. More than any one thing that kept her awake at night, her skipping town was the worst of it. “I didn’t even know anything was wrong until I got word I was going to be subpoenaed by the district attorney. I thought it was a joke, until I checked the accounts. All the investment interest, dividends, were gone. I’d made a client’s deposit the week before, and the account had been in perfect order.
“I freaked. I had raised all the original funds and made promises about the rate of returns. So I went to an attorney, an old college friend. I told him what had happened, that I had no idea how the money had been taken or by whom.”
“Did you ask Christian?”
She stared at Tucker. “Of course I did. He was more freaked out than me. He told me he was calling the Securities and Exchange Commission, the trade commission, the CEO of the brokerage. He swore he’d get to the bottom of this, no matter what.”
Tucker nodded slowly. “Sorry, go on.”
She drank more soda and realized she wanted water, but she couldn’t seem to move. “My attorney made some phone calls. Because I hadn’t been served yet, or accused of any crime, he didn’t have to report me. Anyway, he told me that the D.A.’s office was out for blood because it was charity money missing. The embezzlement had even hit the papers, although it seemed everyone’s attention was on Christian. He was the most logical suspect, but they didn’t have an obvious paper trail.
“There was no question I would be included in the investigation. My lawyer didn’t think it would matter that I had nothing to give the D.A.”
“What does that mean?”
“He said that in the end, someone would go down for the crime, and if it wasn’t Christian, it would be me.”
“But there was no paper trail leading to you, either.”
“I had no way of knowing that. By then, I was completely shut out. Christian wasn’t returning my phone calls, and when I finally did get through using a friend’s cell, he hung up on me. I had no access to the computers or the accounts. It was a nightmare.”
Annie stood, able to move at last. Never had she hated the size of the room more. It felt too much like a cage. “It was my own fault, though.”
“Wait—”
“No, let me finish.” The anger in her voice surprised her. “I’d been riding high for months, doing the best work of my life. Getting into the right parties, taking meetings with people who really mattered. I should have asked more questions, been more careful. I got cocky. When the world came crashing down around me, I had no idea who had the kind of power necessary to do the job so smoothly. I couldn’t go home...I couldn’t bring this kind of insanity into my parents’ lives. So I bolted. I cleared out my savings and took off.”
“Your parents wouldn’t have helped you?”
Annie’s throat tightened and she couldn’t breathe for a moment as she remembered the last conversation with her mom. “Yes, they would have. And it would have killed them. I knew I was the weak link. The patsy. I assumed Christian was behind everything, and if that were true, I didn’t stand a chance. He had me completely fooled from the beginning.”
“They couldn’t convict you with no evidence.”
She looked at him. “Seriously?”
Tucker waved away his comment. “Never mind.”
“Anyway, if it started looking too bad for Christian, who’s to say he wouldn’t have created a paper trail leading to me?” She expected more reaction from Tucker. That perhaps he would leap to his brother’s defense, but no. Nothing. “It wouldn’t have mattered if I was convicted or not. The key to successful fundraising is credibility and integrity. No one would hire me or work with me again after they discovered the money was taken under my watch. And frankly, I was mortified. For myself and my family. I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing anyone I knew. I’d been just hungry enough that no one would ever believe I was innocent.”
“And what about your family? Any contact?”
“I left them a letter, and sent a few hard-to-trace postcards. I haven’t spoken to them since I walked away.”
Tucker’s fingers touched hers as she passed his chair, making her jump. Her face flamed again, her eyes filled with tears no amount of willpower could hold back any longer. “I screwed up everything,” she said. “Every part, except for one.”
Now it was her hand around his wrist. As tight as she could hold on. “No matter what happens to me, you need to promise that you won’t let Safe Haven suffer. I’ve got the rest of the twenty thousand to return to you, and I can cancel the tractor engine. But the animals, they really need this place. It’s terrible here in winter. You don’t know.”
“I’m not taking any money back,” he said, standing to face her. “Annie, I’m not here to bring you trouble. I want to help you. We can find a way to clear your name. Together. You’ve done wonders here. I meant what I said about the foundation. Which is real, by the way.”
She sat back down in her chair, pulling her hands away from him and into her lap. “I still don’t understand. Why would you want to clear my name? What about Christian? I haven’t heard a single word about him since I left.”
“He’s in Bali.”
“Bali?”
Tucker nodded. “He left the country after he discovered I’d found you.”
“What?”
“He used a fake passport.”
So he knew his brother was guilty. Yet he still wanted to help her? Her pulse raced out of control. “Has he been hiding the money all this time?”
Tucker shrugged. “I don’t know. The private detective has uncovered some issues with gambling. Up till the day the theft was reported, he’d done well with the investments. He would have made a number of great connections, considering your donors. It doesn’t make a lot of sense for a man who was trying to build a career to decide stealing would be a better plan. Especially when you consider the amount.”
Thinking back, Annie shook her head. “Wait. You said real danger. What did you mean?”
* * *
DESPITE THE REASONABLE TONE of Annie’s voice and the fact that she wasn’t shaking nearly so hard, Tucker found it physically painful not to comfort her. He wanted so much to pull her close, to kiss her, tell her not to be afraid. It killed him that he was causing her fear.
He returned to his chair, determined to tell her every detail. He explained about the bookies, repeating his conversation with George. Especially the part where nothing pointed at her complicity in the embezzlement.
“Then I should call the district attorney’s office now,” she said, no longer looking at him. Her gaze had lost its sharpness as she stared at the table. “No, tomorrow morning. They won’t be there now. The sooner I let them know where I am, the better.”
That got her attention again. God, this had to be so difficult. She’d been living in a cave, for all intents and purposes. Making her life as small as she possibly could. He remembered every word her friends had said about her. How she dedicated herself exclusively to the sanctuary. Now he understood that every selfless act had been one of contrition. Atonement for sins she’d never committed.
He’d pulled her out into the spotlight, unprepared, lulled into feeling safe by his attention. He wished he’d done everything differently, although for the life of him, he couldn’t see what he could have done instead. “These men... These bookies have been known to go after family, after associates.”
“But if Christian took the money from the accounts, why didn’t he use it to pay them off?”
“For all I know, he did. He’s been borrowing a lot from my mother.”
“A lot.”
Tucker nodded. “I can’t be sure, but I think it’s in the hundreds of thousands. Maybe I’m wrong. God, I don’t want to be right because, as it is, he’s broken my mother’s heart by leaving the country. She thinks he’s on vacation.”
“Could he be?”
Tucker’s gut tightened as he stared at her. Still so trusting, so ready to believe better of Christian. “I doubt it, considering his timing and the fact that he used a fake passport. I never knew he had a gambling problem until yesterday. I didn’t understand the severity of the situation until the conversation you partially overheard.”
She sat with that for a while, the quiet only broken by a nicker from outside, the chirping of birds still out at the end of the day. “Even if he’s still in trouble with the bookies, why would they think I would be useful to them? I’ve been gone for years.”
“That’s the point. You need to stay gone. Until we can figure out how to take care of this mess. I know for a fact the New York police have tried and failed to get at these bastards. No one will testify. They have people terrified. Until we know what made Christian run, I can’t risk you like that.”
“You can’t risk me.”
He hadn’t meant to say it like that, but he wasn’t about to take it back. “You’re too important to me, Annie. I’ll do whatever’s necessary to protect you.”
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