“Mind your own business, baby.”
“You’ll pay for that later,” she promised, blowing him a kiss.
Erin let out a gleeful laugh, obviously appreciating her brother being put in his place by his wife.
Cole merely rolled his eyes.
“Hey, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,” Mike told him. “So what happened between you two? Why aren’t you still behaving more like a couple?”
Cole adjusted the frames of his sunglasses and looked over the freshly manicured lawn. “There’s nothing going on between us anymore.”
Mike rocked forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees, staring at Cole like he could see inside his skin. “When my sister’s happy, that makes me happy. So when she convinced me she could get that from you, I backed off. What’s changed?”
Cole didn’t do the buddy-buddy talk thing, but with Mike pressing him, he had no choice. “Once she’s safe, I’m back to work. You tell me if it makes any sense to keep up something that has to end. Especially when she’s admitted she wants more than I can give her. Being with her only hurts her and that’s not something I ever wanted to do, no matter what you might think.”
Mike studied him, assessing him in silence. “How about this,” he finally said. “You play things your way . . . for now. But when you’re losing your mind over losing her and you don’t know which end is up? Call me. I’ll kick your ass the way Sam kicked mine.”
Cole didn’t know what Mike meant, and before he had a chance to ask, both his and Mike’s cell phones rang.
His gut screaming, he answered. Mike did the same. Both men had brief conversations, then, hanging up at the same time, met each other’s gaze.
Mike merely nodded, giving Cole permission, not that he needed it.
Cole turned to the women. “Erin?”
Mid-laughter over something Cara said, Erin turned, her beautiful face void of expression when she looked at him. Intentional, no doubt, he thought, his heart lurching. He ignored the sensation.
“What is it?” she asked.
Though he wished he could handle this without involving her, he knew she’d never forgive him for keeping her in the dark. “Enforced confinement has just come to an end. Sam just arrested a woman lurking outside your back windows.”
Fourteen
Cole and Mike headed to the precinct, leaving an angry Erin behind with Cara. Although she wanted to be there, and Cole respected the desire, both he, Mike, and Cara thought it was a bad idea to put her in the same vicinity as the woman stalking her.
Now, at the precinct and knowing Victoria was a room away, Cole wanted to burst in and question her himself, but Mike refused. “Let us do our jobs. Sam’s in with her now.”
“Then let me watch.”
Silence settled around them in Mike’s office as the other man studied Cole. “You look ready to explode.”
“You’re damn right. But I know how to keep it together.”
Mike inclined his head. “Let’s go, but don’t make me regret this.”
A few minutes later, Cole found himself on the opposite side of the glass, watching Sam and Victoria, knowing she couldn’t see him.
He shoved his hands in the back pockets of his jeans and studied the scene in front of him.
Sam sat with his back to the mirrored window. Victoria stared at him, while Mike studied her. Granted, it had been a while since he’d seen her last, but she looked . . . different.
He braced his arm on the wall and leaned in closer, trying to figure out what was off. “I want to hear.”
“You promise to stay calm?” Mike asked.
Cole nodded.
Mike flipped the switch, turning on the sound.
“Let’s try this again,” Sam said. “What’s your name?”
“Is he kidding?” The muscles in Cole’s arm strained from holding back his anger.
Mike placed a restraining hand on his shoulder. “Listen.”
“How many times do we have to go over this? No matter how often you ask me, the answer’s the same. Nicole Farnsworth.”
“Victoria’s maiden name is Farnsworth. Parents are rich. Disapproved of their daughter getting involved with a known mob guy. She ran off with him anyway,” Cole said.
But why wasn’t she owning up to who she was?
“Did you fingerprint her?” Cole asked.
“I checked when we arrived. She was printed and booked for trespassing as soon as she came in. We’re running her prints.”
Cole set his jaw. “What about the rest of the charges? Attempted murder, stalking . . .”
“We’ll get there. For now, we just need enough to hold her.”
Cole studied the woman carefully. Same dark hair, longer than he remembered, but again, time had passed. She dressed differently than Victoria. More casual. Victoria was always well-groomed, to perfection, in fact. Full face of makeup, dark lipstick, hair teased. This Victoria was . . . softer.
That was the word he’d been searching for. Softer. More gentle. And she said her name was Nicole.
Cole narrowed his gaze, then pulled out his cell and dialed. “I need information on Victoria Maroni’s siblings. ASAP,” Cole said into the phone, then hung up without waiting for a response.
“You think she’s telling the truth?” Mike asked.
Cole nodded, hating what that meant. “The woman in there with Sam? She couldn’t spend five minutes with Vincent Maroni and not get eaten alive.”
Mike swore. Cole understood, because it meant Victoria was still out there. At least Erin was with Cara, a trained police officer, which soothed him—just barely.
Mike picked up the phone in the room and dialed. “Put a rush on those prints.”
“Let’s go with my gut on this and assume she’s telling the truth. I can get more out of her than Sam, so will you let me in there now?” Cole asked.
“You can’t interrogate her like a cop.”
“I am a cop,” he reminded the other man.
“Out of your jurisdiction. But I agree. Your personal stake in this might get her talking—assuming she feels bad when she finds out what her sister’s done.”
Cole nodded. “Let’s go.”
Before they could walk in, an out-of-breath rookie burst into the room. “Prints you requested, boss.” He handed a file to Mike, who opened the folder, scanned the results, and nodded at Cole.
“Let’s do this thing.” Mike opened the door.
Sam and the woman across from him turned their way, as Mike, followed by Cole, stepped into the small room. A table, the two chairs, dingy walls, and not much else.
“What’s up?” Sam asked, rising from his chair.
“Seems she’s telling the truth.” He slapped the folder onto the table.
The other woman jumped at the loud sound. Cole would have felt sorry for her if this mess weren’t so serious.
“I told you I’m not Victoria,” she said, pinning Sam with a triumphant look that had her cheeks flushed pink with victory. The other man actually squirmed.
She surprised them by rising from her seat.
Mike stepped in front of the door. “Where do you think you’re going?”
She blinked, startled that the answer wasn’t obvious to them. “I’m not the person you’re looking for, so I’m leaving.”
The hell she was. “Not so fast.” Cole braced his hands on the table. “You were still found trespassing, and we have questions about your sister, so sit. Down.” His voice rose and the woman flinched.
Cole realized his initial impression was right. She was nothing like her sister.
Before he could moderate his tone, Sam jumped from his seat so fast his chair hit the wall behind him.
“Back off,” the younger Marsden snapped at Cole. “This isn’t your interrogation.” The easier brother was suddenly every inch the defender, the in-charge cop Cole knew him to be.
“Everyone calm down.” Mike stepped to the table as Sam righted his chair. “Miss Farnswor
th? This is Detective Cole Sanders. He’s NYPD and he has a—”
“You’re Cole? The same Cole my sister’s gone crazy over?” Her light blue eyes settled on his.
“What do you know?” Cole asked, controlling his frustration with her lack of answers. Sam was right. Scaring her wouldn’t accomplish his goal of getting her to talk.
“Why don’t you sit back down?” Sam asked, gesturing to her chair.
She lowered herself into her seat.
“Drink?” Sam asked.
Mike whipped his head around to stare at his brother.
“No, thank you. I’m fine.” She shot Sam a grateful look before glancing at Cole. “Before I answer your questions, I want to know what my sister’s been up to. You tell me that, and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
Cole glanced at Mike, then Sam. “You don’t know? You haven’t been in touch with her?”
She folded her arms across her chest and waited. Apparently she was serious. They answered her first. Maybe there was more steel in Nicole’s spine than Cole had previously thought.
Knowing whose jurisdiction he was in, Cole deferred to Mike. “Well?”
The other man shrugged. “Tell her what she wants to know.”
Cole did. From the shooting to disabling Erin’s security, breaking into her home and destroying her clothes, he ran down a laundry list of what they believed Victoria had done to Erin.
Nicole Farnsworth’s face paled. “It’s worse than I thought,” she said, more to herself than to him.
“Now will you tell us what’s going on with your sister? When you last spoke to her, what you know, and why you were at Erin Marsden’s, looking into her side window?” Sam asked, his voice gentler than Cole had ever heard him.
Cole shook his head, hoping the other man knew what he was doing.
“First drop the charges against me,” she said, taking all three of them by surprise.
Cole stiffened. “That wasn’t the agreement. You asked what your sister had done and we told you.”
“Well, forgive me for not thinking about everything important all at once. It’s not like I’ve been arrested before! Cuffed, printed, humiliated—” She scowled at Sam. “I’ll tell you this. I was trying to find out what was going on with my sister, if she’d gone looking for this Erin. And I was going to warn Erin, if I saw her.”
“By lurking at her windows and scaring her?” Cole asked in disbelief.
“If I rang the doorbell and either one of you saw my face, would you have let me in for conversation and coffee?” she asked, her sarcasm thick.
Sam let out an unexpected chuckle. “She’s got a point.”
“Shut up,” Cole muttered.
“Drop the charges or I want my lawyer.” Ignoring Cole and Mike, Nicole’s gaze settled on Sam, as if she’d already figured out he was the key to getting what she wanted.
Or she was just responding to the same mental deficiency that had hit Sam.
Mike groaned. “I’ll take care of it. Meanwhile, you.” He pointed to Nicole. “Talk. This is my sister’s life we’re talking about.” Mike stormed out and slammed the door without looking back.
Silence surrounded them, until Sam cleared his throat. “We’ve all got a personal interest in this case. Erin’s my sister too. We need whatever information you can give us about your sister and her plans. Start from the last time you heard from her.”
Nicole ran a shaking hand through her hair. “It’s not that simple. Vicky’s always been . . . unstable is the best word I can give you. She has emotional issues.” She hesitated, as if debating how much to reveal.
Cole decided to let her do this her own way in the hope of slowly gaining her trust, and with it, more details.
“To start with, she’s always been needy, and transferred that need from man to man.”
“Her husband treated her like dirt,” Cole said bluntly.
Nicole swallowed hard. “Well, she didn’t get much attention from our parents, but going out with Vincent got them to notice her enough to forbid the relationship. She ran off with him anyway. I didn’t hear from her often over the years, but after the raid and Vincent’s death, we had the first long talk we’d had in ages.”
“What did she say?” Sam asked.
Nicole clasped her hands tightly together on the table. “She called against orders, I’m guessing, to tell me she was going into Witness Protection because she had to testify in a federal case against some of Vincent’s business associates. But once it was over, she was going after the one man who really loved her and treated her like a queen.” Her blue eyes leveled Cole with an icy glare. “I’m not saying she’s rational, but if you led her on in any way, so help me—”
Damn, Cole was tired of that accusation. “I was nice to her,” he said through gritted teeth. “I talked to her like she was a lady, something she didn’t find much in her husband’s crowd. I felt sorry for her, if you want to know the truth, but no sane person would mistake my behavior for anything more than simple human kindness or friendship. And once she learned I was there undercover, it should have been perfectly obvious why I befriended her in any way.”
“You needed information from her.” She scowled.
“That, and frankly, once I realized she wasn’t in on anything within the organization, I thought I could protect her when things went down. That’s it.” Cole spread his hands wide, indicating he’d done what he could to help her sister.
She stared at her intertwined hands for a while. Finally she looked up at Cole, but let her gaze settle on Sam when she spoke next. “He just said no sane person would mistake his behavior as genuine interest. Well, Vicky’s bipolar.” She choked over the word.
And there it was, Cole thought as he leaned against the wall. Finally they’d gotten the truth. Now to find out whether, beyond wanting to help her sister, Nicole would be willing to help them too.
“Thank you for that,” Sam said, his hand covering hers. “Is she on medication?”
Nicole swallowed hard. “Supposed to be. But she has a history of stopping when she’s feeling good, of refusing to believe she needs to live on them in order to function in the same world as the rest of us.”
So they were dealing with a sick woman. Cole hoped that was better than her being purely delusional. Maybe there were threads of humanity in there that they could work with.
“Did she tell you where she was going when she left the program?” Cole asked.
Nicole shook her head. “I asked, and she said that Cole was meant to be hers and she was going after him. That’s when I knew she was probably off her medication and I tried to keep closer tabs on her, but she never answered her phone, and her contact was sporadic.” She twisted her hands together in a way that had to be painful. “Then, a few days ago, she called in the middle of the night, hysterical. She was rambling about how this Erin Marsden was ruining all her plans. She said something about watching Cole, waiting for the right time to approach him, but Erin was in the way.”
“That’s another thing that doesn’t make sense. Why didn’t she just come find me right away?” Cole asked.
“From what I could understand of her rambling, when she first came to town, she watched. She wanted to get an idea of your life. And she saw Erin leaving your apartment.”
“That was over four months ago!” Cole’s head nearly exploded.
“I know. Like I said . . . bipolar. She’s always spent more time plotting and planning than doing. But when she makes a move, it’s big.”
“Like running away with Vincent,” Sam said.
Nicole nodded.
“When did you hear from her again?”
“The day she saw Cole and Erin talking at some coffee shop. She went ballistic. I guess that’s when she started targeting Erin specifically, but I didn’t know she’d hired someone to shoot her! I didn’t think she was violent.” Nicole lay her head in her hands and moaned. “I don’t know what to say.” She lifted her pain-filled eyes to Sam’s.<
br />
The way she kept focusing on Sam and not Cole, despite Cole’s connection to her sister, he knew he hadn’t imagined the connection there. Interesting.
“Do you know where she’s hiding out? Because this is a small enough town that we’d have had a sighting by now if she was living here,” Sam said gently.
Her eyes shimmered with tears. “I don’t even know how to tell you this.”
Cole’s nerves jangled. “What is it?”
“Last time Vicky called me, it was right before the weekend. She was hysterical because she’d been setting up a special place for the two of you to live and she found out Erin was pregnant.”
“Where is this place?” Cole asked.
Nicole spread her hands wide. “I don’t know.”
“Who would?” Cole asked.
She shrugged, looking helplessly at Sam.
Sam cleared his throat. “We just need you to think. You said she’s setting up a special place. Would she use a Realtor? Does she have any friends she’d confide in?”
She pressed her fingers against her forehead. “Umm . . .”
“Anyone you can think of,” he encouraged her.
“No friends. She’s not good at keeping them,” she muttered.
“Real estate agent?” Cole asked.
She shook her head.
“Decorator?” Sam said, obviously grasping. “Someone who’d have the address for deliveries.”
“Well . . . there’s this antiques dealer she’s used for unique items in the one apartment she had on her own and both houses Victor owned.”
Cole exhaled a long breath. “Call him.”
“I don’t remember his name and I certainly don’t have his phone number memorized. I need to think, and I can’t do that with all of you pressuring me.”
Cole nodded and took a step toward the door. “Fine. I’ll go.” This woman represented the only shot they had at finding Victoria before she went after Erin again. She wouldn’t cooperate if he suffocated her. “Just answer one question for me?”
She turned in her seat. “What is it?”
“How dangerous do you think your sister is? How big a threat?”
She bit down on her lower lip. “Truth? I’ve never heard her so out of control before. That’s why I came here. To find her and try to make her see that she’s behaving this way because she’s off her meds. And to warn Erin.”
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