by LENA DIAZ,
She loved him. She’d realized that weeks ago during one of their many whispered talks in his hospital room, talks about everything from where they’d gone to kindergarten to their hopes and dreams. They hadn’t talked about love yet, and she wasn’t sure what the future held for them or if he felt about her the way she felt about him. The last month had focused more on recovery, and on wrapping up the case.
Which was why she was here. Chris had asked her to meet him at the station to discuss some new findings. She just wanted the case to be over and hoped this discussion meant that it finally was.
The door opened, and Chris stepped in, smiling as he crossed to the chair beside her.
“Hey, you,” he said.
“Hey, yourself.”
“Thanks for coming in,” he said. “The chief will be here in just a minute.”
“I can’t believe you’re already back at work. You aren’t fully recovered yet. You should be home resting.”
He shifted in his chair, the tension lines in his face telling her she was right, that he was in pain, and had no business being here.
“I’m going to tell the chief to send you home. This is ridiculous. You need more time to heal.” She started to push her chair back, but he stopped her with a hand on her arm.
“Julie, I’m not back at work, not full-time. I’ve only been working over the phone with the chief and the others trying to tie up the loose ends on your case. And we just got some crucial information that I believe is going to help us wrap this up once and for all.”
She slowly settled back against her chair. “You know who’s behind everything? Who sent the hitmen after me?”
“Not exactly.”
She was about to ask him to explain what he meant when the chief stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.
He nodded in greeting. “Mrs. Webb. Thanks for coming in.” He sat at the end of the small table.
“Okay,” she said. “The suspense is killing me. And, although I really appreciate that you’ve got Colby playing bodyguard, I’d love to be able to walk down the street without having a policeman shadowing my every move. Is it Kathy? You’ve found evidence to prove she’s behind everything?”
Chris took one of her hands in his. “We don’t have definitive proof yet. But I’ve got an idea of how to get it. And it’s based on information the team has pulled together over the past few weeks, plus some surveillance photos they’ve taken of Kathy Nelson. It all starts with your cousin, Harry Abbott.”
Julie frowned. “I don’t understand. It starts with him?”
“He’s the key to this whole thing and how your husband was able to begin receiving payments from the trust without you ever knowing about it. Harry Abbott was a small-time lawyer. He worked for the law firm that your grandmother hired to handle the trust. Apparently your grandmother was very ill shortly before Naomi got sick. I don’t know if that made your grandmother more aware of her mortality, or what. But that’s when she sent Harry Abbott to try to locate her daughter and find out if there were any grandchildren. By the time she got information back, your family was gone. So she created the trust for you. It was supposed to start payments upon either college graduation or marriage.”
“Seriously?” Julie said. “So if I didn’t get enough education, or decided my life was perfectly fine without a man in it, she wouldn’t have deemed me worthy of receiving any money?”
He shrugged. “She’s old-fashioned. What can I say?”
“She sure is. Go on.”
“Your grandmother said she hired that particular law firm to handle the trust because of your cousin. He was family and she preferred to keep things like that in the family.”
“You’ve actually spoken to her?”
He nodded. “On the phone, yes. Once we got through the layers of assistants and bureaucracy to get to her, she was quite forthcoming. Like I said, Harry was assigned the task of tracking down your grandmother’s American relatives on behalf of the trust. But the temptation of all that money was too much. He resented that his side of the family wasn’t in the direct line to inherit, and he planned on getting his hands on that money, probably felt he deserved it. Once he located your family, he looked around for someone as diabolical as he was, and found Alan. They made a pact—that if Alan could marry into the family and help Harry provide proof to the trust regarding the heir, then they could share the monthly proceeds.”
“How do you know all of this? Harry’s dead.”
The chief tapped the table to get her attention. “Extensive research and interviews with people who’d interacted with Harry when he was in the States. I don’t like unsolved puzzles, and I’m not about to let some ADA abuse the trust of her constituents and give police a bad name without paying her debt to society. I threw half my police force at this. And we got results.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I sincerely appreciate it. But I’m even more confused than ever. I thought we were talking about my cousin. Now we’re back to Kathy?”
Chris looked to the chief, who nodded, as if giving him permission to take up the story again.
“I’ll try to get to the point,” Chris said. “Harry colluded with Alan. But Alan wasn’t having much luck with your family. Naomi didn’t like him, so he decided you were his best chance. After eliminating your family, he apparently tried flirting with you but you were too distraught to notice. You did, however, have a friend you associated with—Kathy.”
“So they did know each other before I met Alan,” Julie said.
“Yes. The meeting at the football game was a setup. Alan and Harry were getting desperate so they brought her in as a way for Alan to get your attention. We believe, and it’s backed up by financial records of Harry’s accounts, that the monthly payments were split into thirds.”
“Harry’s accounts? Not Kathy’s?”
“She’s too clever for that. We think she’s hiding her money offshore. She’s slick. Hard to pin anything on her. But she’s the only person who makes sense as a surviving partner who has something to lose if her role is exposed, thus the hitmen. Plus, now that we know the full requirements of the trust—including a clause about your twenty-fifth birthday that your grandmother amended four months before your birthday—we have a theory about what Kathy is trying to do to get that final lump sum.”
“Four months before my birthday? Wait, that’s when things in my marriage took a nosedive, got really bad.”
He nodded. “I know. I think that’s when Harry broke the news to Alan.”
She looked back and forth, from the chief to Chris. “What news?”
“That the payments would stop on your birthday unless you personally traveled to England to visit your grandmother, and that you bring the Abbott necklace with you—the one your mother gave to Naomi that used to belong to your grandmother. I’m pretty sure that’s what Alan was looking for when he attacked you. He wanted the key to the safe so he could destroy the documents he had at your house. But he also wanted you to tell him where you had Naomi’s things so he could get that necklace.”
She held her hands up. “Wait. So not only did I have to finish college or get married in order to inherit, I also had to hold on to a necklace? What if I’d sold it, or lost it? I’d be out of luck?”
“Looks that way. Your grandmother is...a bit strict, uptight I guess. She really seems to value family and loyalty. I guess that’s why it hurt her so much when your mother ran off with your father. It felt like a betrayal to her. And putting that stipulation about the necklace in the trust was her way of rewarding her heir only if they valued the history and legacy that necklace represented.”
“You almost sound like you admire her,” Julie accused.
“She’s from a different generation, a different country, with a unique upbringing I could never understand. Let’s just say that I’m try
ing to keep an open mind and see it from her perspective. Regardless, you can imagine Alan’s reaction when he found out those details from Harry.”
“He was probably furious. He couldn’t take me to England, not without revealing what he’d been doing all this time. And, the necklace? No wonder he kept badgering me about my family’s things. He needed to get the necklace without making me suspicious by specifically asking for it. Wait. It wouldn’t do him any good without me though.” She shook her head. “Did he think he could force me to lie to my grandmother? To not admit that Alan had been receiving the payments all along?”
Chris shot another look at the chief, then took both her hands in his this time. The concern on his face put her on edge.
“You’re scaring me, Chris.”
“I don’t mean to. But the questions you’re asking are exactly what I asked. And I don’t believe for one minute that you would have meekly gone along with Alan’s plan if that’s what he wanted you to do. That’s why Alan and his co-conspirators came up with a new plan. Alan was supposed to get the necklace from you. I think he was trying to get you to tell him where you kept your family’s things without making you suspicious enough to kick him out or anything. Then, when you never revealed that information and you turned twenty-five—”
“He got desperate. Planned to kidnap me to force me to tell him.”
“Right,” Chris said. “But you foiled the first attack. I foiled the second. He never got a chance to get the necklace.”
“Where does that leave us?” she asked.
The chief pulled a photograph from his suit jacket pocket. Chris let Julie’s hands go and took the picture, placing it face down on the table in front of her.
“Hypothetically, if Alan could have gotten the necklace, then there was only one more thing he’d need after that—to take you to England with him. But he knew that wasn’t an option, that you wouldn’t go. So he and his co-conspirators had to make plans months ago in anticipation of your twenty-fifth birthday, for another way to fool your grandmother. Remember I said that the chief had someone performing surveillance on Kathy?”
She nodded, a sick feeling settling in her stomach. “Yes.”
“She rented a house out in the country about three and a half months shy of your twenty-fifth birthday, two weeks after your grandmother changed the conditions of the trust. Apparently Kathy rented it for another woman, someone whom neighbors said was recovering from some kind of trauma, based on the bandages and the fact that nurses used to stop by every few days. She’s fully recovered now. And this is what she looks like.”
He flipped the picture over.
Julie pressed her hands against her mouth.
The woman in the picture looked exactly like Julie.
* * *
A WEEK LATER, Julie opened the front door of her Nashville home to admit her visitor. “Thank you for meeting me here. So many things have happened in the past few months and I’ve only been back in Nashville for a couple of days. It’s good to see a familiar face.” Julie stepped back, pulling the front door open for Kathy Nelson.
“Of course, of course.” Kathy stepped inside. “I’m just so relieved that everything is settled. No more looking over your shoulder and wondering if someone is out to hurt you. I still can’t believe Alan was after your money all along, and willing to kill you for it. I’m so very sorry that the men Alan recommended to me as assistants ended up being such horrible people, hitmen of all things. Of course I had no idea.”
Julie forced a smile. “Yes. How could you have known? The whole thing is so hard to believe. I didn’t even realize you and Alan had kept in touch over the years.”
Kathy’s eyes narrowed a moment, then she seemed to realize what she was doing and her face smoothed out, her eyes widening innocently. “We didn’t, not really. But he is, was, an important businessman in town. When he saw that the ADA’s office was looking for help, he reached out to offer a suggestion. I don’t know who was more surprised when he found out I was the ADA and when I found out that he was the one calling.”
Nodding, as if she bought the rather thin story, Julie absently played with the gold chain around her neck, partially lifting it from beneath her shirt so some of the distinctive jewels showed.
Kathy went still, her gaze riveted on the jewelry. She cleared her throat and smiled stiffly. “My, what a lovely necklace you’re wearing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it.”
Julie pulled it the rest of the way out from under her shirt. “It was passed down through my mother’s side of the family. I kept it in a safe-deposit box for years along with other family mementos. But after everything that’s happened, well, I just want to feel closer to her.” She undid the chain and pulled off the necklace. “Then again, I’m told the gems are real. I probably should put it back in the bank to keep it safe.”
She crossed to the desk in the front hallway and placed the necklace in the top drawer. “I’ll do it tomorrow.” She turned around. “Where are my manners? I asked you here for lunch. I doubt a busy attorney like you has a lot of time on her hands. I’ve got soup and salad waiting in the dining room. Let’s enjoy a nice meal and catch up, shall we?”
Kathy took both of Julie’s hands in hers. “It really is good to see you again. I’m so glad you’re back. And you’re right, I’m starving, and don’t have a lot of time. Let’s eat.”
Julie tugged her hands free, forcing another smile as she led Kathy to the dining room.
Less than an hour later, she stood on the front stoop, waving as Kathy drove away. Then she stepped inside, and into Chris’s arms.
“You’re shivering.” He pulled her close.
“You have no idea how hard it was to sit across from that woman making small talk, knowing all along that she conspired with my husband and my cousin against me. Either way, she had her tracks covered. If Alan had been able to get the necklace, she’d have used that poor woman she’d bribed to have plastic surgery to look like me. Then what? Kill her? Probably. And then kill me of course. Imagine how elated she must feel now, patting herself on the back for keeping my look-a-like alive just in case she could figure out how to use her to get the money, even without the necklace. It must feel like Christmas to her now, seeing me wear that piece of jewelry.”
He pulled her back and smiled down at her. “You’ve baited the trap,” he said. “Now, all we have to do is wait.”
“There’s still so much that could go wrong. That poor woman trusts Kathy. She doesn’t know that Kathy will probably kill her as soon as she gets the lump-sum payment.”
“We’re not going to let that happen. You have to trust me.”
She slid her arms up behind his neck. “I do. I trust you. I always have.”
He grinned. “Always? Really?”
“Well, okay, maybe not always. It took a few hours.”
She kissed him, but all too soon the kiss was over.
“Speaking of a few hours, we don’t know how long it will take Kathy to make her move. Go upstairs like we agreed. We’ll take it from here.”
“Okay. Be careful, Chris. Promise?”
“Promise.”
She headed up the winding staircase.
* * *
THE BREAK-IN, WHEN it came, was done so swiftly and professionally that the alarm didn’t even go off. But Chris and his men were waiting, and watching. And when the burglar handed Julie’s necklace through the open limousine window, they followed at a discreet distance.
Assistant district attorney Kathy Nelson was apprehended at the airport, along with a woman who bore an uncanny resemblance to Julie Webb. Chris was astonished at just how alike the two appeared. But the imposter’s eyes gave her away. They were dull, a window to a dead soul inside, a woman who’d seen the worst of what life had to offer and had been broken down many years ago and ex
pected nothing better for herself.
After talking to Julie, the woman agreed to take a plea deal and testify against Kathy. In return, she would go under the knife again to get her old face back. That was something that Julie insisted upon. In addition, she’d get the therapy that she needed. And Julie would help her get an apartment and a job, plus provide her a small nest egg to help her start a new life.
The chief thought Julie was crazy to do all of that for a woman who, because she was going to pretend to be Julie, had given Alan, Kathy and her cousin the ability to complete their master plan and then kill Julie to cover their tracks. But Chris understood. Julie was too kindhearted not to help someone who’d been willing to give up her own identity out of desperation for a new life. It was the girl’s background that had convinced Julie that she wasn’t the hardened criminal the chief thought her to be. The girl was a runaway, had sold herself on the streets just to survive. Julie felt the imposter deserved another chance.
Chris loved that about Julie, that she saw the good in people. That she put others’ happiness above her own. She was the kindest woman he’d ever met, and he was deeply in love with her. And that’s what made this so damn hard.
He was about to let her go.
As she entered the coffee shop a block from her Nashville home, she looked around for him. She thought he was here to say a temporary goodbye now that the court case was over and he didn’t have to testify again. They hadn’t talked about long-term plans yet, even though she’d tried to bring it up several times. He’d kept dodging the conversation, knowing she would agree in a heartbeat to move back to Destiny with him. After all, her grandmother was funding Naomi’s Hope Foundation now and there was nothing else keeping her here in Nashville.
That had been another surprise to some, that Julie would want to continue the Foundation even though the eventual exhumation had proved that Naomi didn’t have an orphan disease. But it didn’t surprise Chris. Finding cures for orphan diseases was a cause Julie believed in and she couldn’t turn her back on those in need. Apparently, her grandmother agreed. She’d been more than willing to fund the charity.