* * *
HE WAS a hard-eyed, suspicious-minded federal agent who was only in her life because he was investigating her. He’d made it abundantly clear that he thought she was guilty of something, and the thing about it was, he wasn’t wrong. If he found out the truth, she had no idea what he would do, but her expectations included handcuffs and jail. Maybe a long time in jail.
Turned out that none of that mattered.
In this moment of terrible fear and grief and danger, he was her port in the storm. It had been a long time since she’d allowed herself to depend on anyone, but she was depending on him now.
She felt like she could depend on him. For her, that was huge.
Calling him had been the right choice. Riley was sure of it the instant she saw him step out of his car. Shrouded in thick gray shadows, he looked big and tough and capable, and if she’d been up to running she would have run to him on sight.
Please God please God please keep Emma safe.
He nodded as if it was no more than he had expected when, from the shelter of his arms, she urgently repeated the kidnappers’ warning not to call the FBI or any other authorities and worried aloud that there might be some way they could know.
He said, “The number you called to reach me is untraceable. No one is going to know you got the FBI or any other authorities involved. You did the absolute smartest thing you could have done by calling me.”
Then he wrapped his jacket around her—until then, she hadn’t even realized she was shivering—put her in his car, told her to sit tight, and left her briefly to push the Mazda out of the road. She assumed that’s when he made some calls, because when he got back in the car he told her that a crack team of agents was already looking for Emma and that everything possible was being done to find her. That didn’t make her relax—nothing could—but she believed him, and a tiny portion of the driving fear that had her in its grip eased.
As they pulled away, she glanced back and said, “My car—” because it had occurred to her that she couldn’t simply abandon it.
“A tow truck’s on the way,” Finn replied. “A forensics team will check it for fingerprints—”
“There won’t be any,” she interrupted, too ramped up on adrenaline still to let him finish. “The kidnappers were wearing gloves.”
“They’ll also check for any other evidence. The windows will be repaired, and it’ll be returned to you. Shouldn’t take more than a day or two.”
Any kind of quip about fast or five-star government service was beyond her. Relieved to have the problem of her car solved, Riley simply nodded.
“Emma must be scared out of her mind,” she burst out a moment later. That was the terrible thought she couldn’t escape. It turned her insides to jelly, reduced her brain to mush. Then, because, though she’d been trying not to think about it she couldn’t help herself, she added in a voice that even to her own ears sounded strained, “Do you think they’ll hurt her?”
He glanced at her, shook his head. Another car passed them, traveling in the opposite direction. As its headlights slashed through the Acura she saw that his eyes were hard and his features were set in grim lines. His was the face of a man born to deal with bad guys and mayhem and crises, and she recognized that thankfully.
He said, “They don’t have any reason to hurt her. They’re after money, and they think she’s their ticket to getting it.”
Riley knew that his answer couldn’t be anything other than speculation, that there was no way he could know for sure, and he certainly wouldn’t say anything else anyway because he wouldn’t want to further upset her, but still she felt the slightest lessening of the terrible fear that had her nerves stretched tight as piano wire.
“So you think they’ll let her go, once they get it?”
The compression of his lips was all the reply she needed. Alarm spiked through her, setting her nerves jumping all over again.
“You don’t, do you?” Even she couldn’t miss the edge of panic in her voice.
“If you’re asking me if I think Emma’s going to wind up dead, the answer is no, I don’t.” He glanced at her. His face was unreadable. “We’ll get her back. Trust me.”
— CHAPTER —
EIGHTEEN
The thing about it was, Riley did. Sort of. To put her feelings in a nutshell, she trusted him about this.
“I am,” she told him, meaning trusting him. “I do.”
The look Finn gave her was impossible to read in the dark, but she didn’t miss the tightening of his hands around the steering wheel.
Whether it was designed to distract her or not, Riley didn’t know, given that she’d already told him most of the pertinent facts, but what he said next was, “Tell me everything that happened, from the beginning.”
Riley took a deep breath.
Then, looking unseeingly out through the windshield at the closed-for-the-night strip malls and office complexes and small businesses that surrounded them, she started with Emma’s phone call and told him the whole story, in a flat voice that she doggedly stuck to in an effort to keep herself from getting emotional. She was still talking when he braked and rolled down his window. Blinking at the sudden rush of warm night air, she only realized that they were at a McDonald’s drive-thru as he looked at her and said, “I could use some coffee, and I’m thinking you could, too.”
A second later, a tinny little disembodied voice said, “Welcome to McDonald’s. May I take your order?”
Riley accepted coffee, declined food, and then sipped the strong hot brew gratefully despite the two extra sugars he dumped in hers. The Styrofoam cup felt warm against her cold fingers, and she cradled it. The bracing smell of the coffee was comforting in its familiarity.
“Better?” Finn pulled back out onto the road. It was a six-lane artery that led downtown, busy during the day but nearly deserted now. Riley frowned a little as, for the first time since he’d picked her up, she became aware of her surroundings: they’d passed the expressway entrance that she’d been heading for when Emma was taken sometime back.
Sipping her coffee, she looked at him.
“Yes. Where are we going?” She’d assumed he was taking her back to Margaret’s house, but if so he was heading in the wrong direction. At the thought of what she would have to do when she got there—tell Margaret about Emma—Riley felt sick. Such horrifying news—she didn’t know how Margaret was going to bear it. At the very least, Margaret would be hysterical. The worst part about it was, she would have every reason to be. Riley felt hysterical. Only for Emma’s sake was she managing to keep a lid on it.
“To my hotel room.”
“Why?” It was a simple question, nothing more. The fact that she wasn’t stiffening up, or protesting, or even thinking about protesting, told her everything she needed to know about their relationship at that moment: in a nutshell, she trusted him enough that she was prepared to do what he said.
“Nothing to do with sex, so you can put that out of your mind.” His voice was dry. “We both need to grab a few hours’ sleep. My hotel room is the best place to do that.”
It said a lot about the state she was in that Riley barely registered his reference to sex. Under the circumstances, and to his credit, she hadn’t thought he was coming on to her. The wasting of time was the part that was bothering her. With a quick, agitated shake of her head, Riley said, “Sleep? Are you serious? With Emma—”
He cut her off. “The people we’ve got looking for Emma are top-notch at their jobs. We can’t add anything to what they’re doing right now. The best thing you can do for Emma is keep yourself functional. You not sleeping, or eating, or doing anything else that keeps you going, doesn’t help her.”
Much as Riley hated to accept it, that made sense. For her to go running around like a chicken with its head cut off could do Emma no earthly good.
He continued, “I need sleep, too, and I can’t sleep if I’m worrying about you. The only way I can know for sure you’re safe is if you’re
with me, so we’re both going back to my hotel room and going to sleep.” He shot a glance at her. “Your ex-husband dead, you attacked, Emma kidnapped—that’s a lot of violence aimed at your family in a short period of time. It’s making me think that maybe something happened to stir the pot. There are a lot of players in this game. The people who grabbed Emma are probably not the same ones who went after you, and it’s possible that neither of them were behind what happened to Jeff. Somebody could come after you again. I don’t have time to worry about you, and do my job, too, so you’re with me for the duration.”
Again, Riley didn’t protest. His assessment of the situation was chilling, but it made sense, and the thought of how she would feel if she wasn’t with him—in a word, terrified—was enough to make her willing to stick to him like Velcro.
“Okay.”
Then another fear arose that made her stomach cramp. “What about Margaret?”
“She’s covered. She’s been put under surveillance. Nobody can get to her. Like I said, if I’m worried about people’s safety, I can’t do my job.”
Riley breathed a little more easily. “What is your job, exactly?”
“Finding the money. Finding out if Jeff and/or any of those other four individuals whose deaths he was interested in were murdered, and who did it. And now, making sure Emma gets home safe and sound.” He glanced at her, and something flickered in his eyes that she was too agitated to even try to identify. “So the kidnappers told you to go see George. Tomorrow, that’s what we’ll do. Assuming George knows where the money is, do you think he’ll tell you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Would he be more likely to tell his wife?”
Okay, Riley told herself, focus. This was where things started to get tricky. This was where she had to keep her cool, be strong, play it smart.
“He and Margaret are estranged. She’d been planning to divorce him even before his arrest, and he knows that. But he loves Emma. If I go to him and tell him what’s happened, I think he might tell me where the money is. Assuming he has it, of course, and knows.”
“Assuming that.” There was no mistaking the faint note of dryness in Finn’s voice.
The thing was, she had no idea how George would react if she showed up demanding he tell her where the money was hidden on pain of Emma’s life, but the other thing was, it didn’t matter. She knew where the money was hidden, and exactly how to access it, and now she thanked God for that. She was prepared to do anything it took to save Emma, even if it meant exposing herself and Margaret completely, and she knew Margaret would agree wholeheartedly.
But she thought there might be a better way.
During the brief period between the time she’d called Finn and when he had actually shown up, she’d come up with a plan that she hoped might save them all. Her first thought had been that she would simply give George’s black book to Finn, pray it was enough to ensure Emma’s safety, and at the same time hope that investigators would believe she and Margaret had only just discovered it themselves, and would likewise fail to notice the ten-million-dollar sliver she’d taken from it. But if investigators didn’t believe it, if they were suspicious (which they were) and eager to send more people to jail (which they seemed to be), and looked into the matter in any depth, they would undoubtedly learn that Margaret and Emma had recently returned from Bermuda, and probe around in the banks there to see what they could find. Riley would have still entertained a fair degree of hope that they would miss the numbered trust account she had created, except for the fact that any investigators worth their salt would look especially hard at new accounts. While she thought the account she’d set up could withstand their scrutiny even then (there was nothing to tie it to the Cowans, after all), they would almost certainly review withdrawals and possibly bank security footage for the dates Margaret had been in Bermuda, which was a tiny island with a limited number of banks. When they did that, they would find the thirty-thousand-dollar withdrawal, and see Margaret making it.
To imagine any other outcome would be foolish.
When that happened, she and Margaret would both look guilty as hell, and the wrath of the law would almost certainly descend on them with a vengeance. Both of them might very well go to jail, and Emma’s life would be shattered once more. Though, again, it was a small price to pay for Emma’s survival.
Riley had anxiously rubbed at the sore spot on her forehead, commanding herself to think this through.
And then the solution had hit her.
If she went to visit George, had him tell her where he’d hidden information about the secret bank accounts (whether he really did tell her any such thing or not didn’t matter, because she would pretend he did), and then pretend to discover the little black book all over again, she could keep the attention off her and Margaret and on the sudden discovery of so much money. Everything would go down under full view of Finn, so there would be no suspicion whatsoever of any prior knowledge on her or Margaret’s part, and the ten million dollars she’d skimmed would almost certainly go unnoticed under those seemingly straightforward circumstances.
The best part was, once the money had been officially discovered, no one would be looking for it anymore, which meant that the bad guys would all go away along with the government and its agents. Nobody would be at risk of being murdered any longer, Margaret and Emma would have the ten million, which was enough to make them secure, and the three of them could hopefully live in peace for the rest of their lives.
Going over the plan for possible flaws, Riley had come up with a few: her fingerprints, and Margaret’s, would undoubtedly be all over George’s black book; in her first burst of horror in hearing about Emma, Margaret might well blurt out something that revealed their guilty secret; and the information on the illicit bank accounts would have to be discovered in a place that George would have had access to and that did not bear signs of her and Margaret’s recent tampering, which left Emma’s Paris painting out.
All manageable problems, Riley concluded, even as she worked out ways to manage them.
All of a sudden, as the plan scrolled through her brain one more time, a huge problem flashed before her, obvious as a neon sign. How had she missed it the first time around?
“Wait a minute.” She frowned at Finn in sudden stark suspicion as fear once again flooded her heart. “You’re an FBI agent. You work for the government. Even if George does tell me where the money is, even if it is found, you’re not just going to give it to the kidnappers to ransom Emma, are you? What happens to it after that will be up to the government!”
“Whatever happens, saving Emma is my top priority.” Finn looked at her steadily. “I give you my word on that.”
“If I help you find the money, you promise you’ll use it to get Emma back.” Riley gave him a hard look as she sought clarity.
“I promise I will if necessary. What I’m hoping is, she’ll be recovered fast enough that the money won’t need to play into it. But if giving the kidnappers the money is what it takes to save Emma’s life, then that’s what will happen.”
There was enough light now that she could see his expression. Security lights, Riley saw, and realized that they had pulled into a parking lot. His face was hard and set. He looked tired and, with his hair ruffled and his jaw darkened by stubble and his white shirt open at the neck and slightly wrinkled, disheveled. Then he turned his head and looked at her, and in the calm, steady gaze of those blue-gray eyes Riley saw enough to make her believe him.
“Okay,” she said. Then as he cut the engine and she saw the time flash on the dashboard clock as it died—it was 3:17—she added, “Margaret gets up at eight on Saturdays. I need to be home by then. I have to tell her what happened.”
The thought made her nauseous, but that was the very longest she felt she could wait. The only reason she hadn’t already insisted that she needed to rush instantly to Margaret’s side was that telling her wouldn’t change a thing. And jolting the poor woman out of what little
sleep she was managing to get these days to relay the horrible news wouldn’t exactly be a help, either.
“Fair enough.”
Finn got out, and Riley followed. A glance told her that it was a chain hotel, eight stories, inexpensive. The parking lot was dimly lit, deserted, no attendant. The darkness beyond the parking lot was enough to make her shiver. Overhead, the moon barely lit the sky. Even the stars looked muted and cold.
Her legs felt rubbery, but Riley managed to walk across the parking lot and through the lobby unaided. They didn’t talk, but she was aware of him looking at her as they rode up the elevator. His room was on the sixth floor; the hall was quiet, deserted.
When he opened the door to his room, she walked inside, glanced around. A typical hotel room: ugly green carpet, nondescript wallpaper, a chest with a flat-screen TV on top of it, a chair. Under any other circumstances, the single king-sized bed would have made her eyes narrow. But she merely glanced at it in passing, then looked at him as he closed the door and turned to face her.
The room suddenly seemed much smaller with him in it.
“Bathroom’s all yours,” he said.
— CHAPTER —
NINETEEN
Riley nodded, and started walking toward the bathroom that was just off the room’s door, bringing her closer to Finn.
He stood in the small, corridor-like part of the room just inside the door, his hand still on the light switch, facing her. The bathroom was to his left.
His eyes narrowed as he watched her coming toward him.
“Hang on, I’ll get you something to sleep in.” He opened the closet door next to the bathroom, and crouched. As she reached him she saw two more dark suits and a couple of white shirts on hangers, and that he was rummaging in a small black suitcase on the floor of the closet.
Of course, it wasn’t the kind of hotel that would offer guests the use of complimentary bathrobes. But her dress was covered with grime from the car and the road. Her stockings were ripped and dirty. Unless she wanted to sleep in her undies—a silky pink bra and matching panties, expensive like almost all her clothes because they’d been bought before the world had gone to hell and she hadn’t had the money to buy anything since—she needed something of his.
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