“Thank you! And thank you for your vote,” she called over her shoulder.
A few more people commented, and two stopped to pet Frank, and one actually asked about the traffic problem, but Sadie eventually made it around the square and back home.
She almost stopped in the main house to hit up her grandmother for a latte, but then she remembered it was choir practice morning for Nana, and gardening club at the local hardware store for Boomie, so she headed straight to the guesthouse to feed Demi.
As they neared the door, Frank barked, pulling on the leash excitedly.
“You really like her, don’t you?” she teased. “You do realize that you are actually not the same species, right? Like, you can’t be together in that very special way. Of course, you’re both fixed, so I guess cuddling does the trick for you two.”
He just yanked harder as she fished the house key from her bag.
“You know she’s not going to be quite that excited to see you, don’t you? She’ll pretend to be bored. She’ll let you chase her tail. Then she will…” She finally found the key as Frank put his head down, his tail between his legs, and let out a growl that literally rose the hairs on Sadie’s neck. “What’s the matter—”
He launched at the door the way he did whenever he saw Connor, slamming his front paws at the wood and knocking it wide open.
It wasn’t locked?
She rushed after him and froze at the sight of a man, his back to her as he yanked kitchen cabinets open, pushing dishes around.
“Party’s over, Sadie. Where the goddamn hell is it?”
“Nathan?” She stared at him as her purse slid off her shoulder and hit the floor with a thud. What was he doing here?
When he turned around, her first thought was that he’d never looked that way before. Crazed. Furious. Completely out of control.
Her second thought was…run.
But he lunged at her, close enough to grab her arm. “I mean it!” he shouted in her face. “I’ve tried for too long to get into this place, and there was always a guy or a dog or an old man with a gun. You have got to tell me where the hell it is.”
She tried to free her arm, but he had a good grip, tight enough to leave a mark. The reality of that sent a shot of adrenaline through her body so strong she could taste it in the back of her throat.
“What are you talking about?” she ground out.
Next to her, Frank growled, still cowering in front of a stranger when she so needed him to attack.
“Give it to me,” he ordered.
“What?”
“Give it to me, or I…I…” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I don’t want to hurt you, Sadie.”
“You already are.” She wrested her arm free and shook it, managing to take a half step back. “What the hell is going on?”
“I need that bust, Sadie. You have to give me the bust.”
What? “The Susan B. Anthony bust?” As she said it, she was vaguely aware that Frank had circled the sofa, still growling. Then he let out a loud bark. She stole a glance at him, praying he was about to protect her, but he was looking right up at that corner bookshelf…where the bust was.
Why in God’s name would Nathan want it? She had no idea, but if Frank was looking up there, it was because Demi was next to it, hiding from the intruder in her new favorite place.
“Why do you want it?” Sadie asked. She didn’t plan to tell him where it was since he obviously hadn’t seen it.
“None of your business.”
“Um, Nathan.” She crossed her arms and stared him down. “You’ve broken into my house and admitted that you came here several times to do that. And now you’re demanding to know where something I own is. I’d call it very much my business.”
“Why I want it isn’t your business.” He looked around again, still not seeing the bust as he scanned her kitchen and table and all the papers she’d spread out to prepare speeches and plans for being mayor.
“Yes, it is.”
He took a step closer, all his handsome, commanding, powerful presence suddenly becoming menacing, forcing her back. “Sadie. Just give it to me and call it a day. We’ll leave you alone.”
We. “Is Jane in on this?”
He didn’t answer for a second. Then, he nodded. “Look we tried all kinds of ways to get in here and find it. When I went to your apartment and it was gone, I—”
“What difference does it make?” she demanded, furious that he’d gone to her apartment after she left. Of course, he had a key, but why? “It’s mine. I made it as a kid with my father. Why would you and Jane try ‘all kinds of ways’ to get it?”
“Because…” He looked around again, a little frantic. “Where the hell is it?”
She swayed backward, none of it making sense and all of it so incredibly…wrong. But in her peripheral vision, she saw Frank jump in the air, making them turn. A soft hiss came from the shelf, the sound of a confused and scared cat who had to ward off trouble.
Nathan didn’t hear it, though. He wasn’t tuned to the cry of a hidden cat he didn’t even know she owned.
He looked away as if the dog was nothing but a bother, still not seeing the bust tucked in the corner of the shelf. “I thought he was some kind of guard dog.”
“Or you would have broken in sooner,” Sadie said. “To get a piece of my life that has no value to you. What is going on, Nathan?”
This time, Frank’s bark and jump were serious and furious, aimed at the shelf where Demi was. The bookshelf wobbled and scared the cat. As she leaped out of her hiding place, her tail knocked over a book, and that shook the shelf again. Frank launched one more time, maybe at Demi, maybe at the shelf, but it was enough to topple the clay bust.
Sadie sucked in a breath, watching Aunt Sue sway with instability on her uneven base, then crash to the floor with the hollow shattering sound of hard clay.
“Oh my God!” She lunged toward it, but Nathan grabbed her arm with frightening force.
“I’ll get it!” Nathan insisted, pushing her away. “It’s mine, Sadie. They’re mine.”
“It’s bro—” She froze in shock as she looked at the six or seven large chunks of clay on the ground, but there was something more. Very small and shimmery somethings. A dozen, maybe two, teeny tiny pieces of glass…
Oh no. They weren’t glass.
“Nathan,” she whispered as everything suddenly made some kind of sense. “You hid diamonds in there?”
Before he could answer, Frank dived for them. He grabbed a mouthful and then another as Nathan practically sprang to get to him.
“No!”
Frank gobbled some more, turning to Nathan with wild eyes like he might just take a bite out of his face.
“No, Frank!” Sadie flew at the dog. “Don’t eat those!”
“Stop it!” Nathan tried to grab him, but Frank managed one more lick and cleaned up what was left, bolting away to a corner to cower and…
“He swallowed!” Nathan shrieked. “He ate my goddamn diamonds!”
Sadie stood in frozen shock, her hands on her cheeks, her mind whirring with what Connor had told her. Might not be fatal…might need an X-ray…sharp edges cause internal bleeding.
Oh God. She had to get Frank to a vet. Now.
Nathan grabbed both her arms and whipped her around with more force than she thought he had. “I’m taking him. And you can’t stop me.”
Like hell she couldn’t. On instinct, she jammed her knee up, narrowly missing his crotch as he managed to avoid it. His eyes got as wild as Frank’s as he yanked her across the room.
“Frank, help me!”
But the dog, chastised, had flattened in shame.
“In there!” Nathan shoved her toward the bathroom and pushed her inside, pulling the door to slam it shut.
Was he an idiot? It didn’t lock from the outside. Then she heard a chair scrape across the wood floor, and she vaulted at the doorknob. She twisted, but it was too late.
Son of a bitch! He’d jammed the d
oor closed with the back of a kitchen chair.
“Nathan!” she screamed, but the only response was Frank’s desperate bark.
“Shut up, you stupid beast!”
He did, of course, no doubt falling to the floor again in abject self-pity.
Her heart cracked like that damn clay sculpture as she thought about poor Frank out there with that maniac. She grabbed the knob and shook it again, trying to break it off, cursing herself for dropping her purse with her phone in it when she walked in the door.
“Open your mouth!” Nathan demanded. “Ouch! Don’t bite me!”
Yes, Frank. Bite him. Take a finger or two from that slimy thief.
“Out we go, monster. I can lift you.”
He could…no! He couldn’t take Frank! Panic rolled over her in waves, paralyzing her as she imagined what he might do to that sweet dog. Not race him to a vet like she would.
Would Nathan hurt a dog? She had no idea. She certainly hadn’t thought he was capable of…this. But obviously she didn’t really know him—or Jane—at all.
The front door slammed. No. No. No!
She spun in a circle, trying to be calm and think. There wasn’t a window in here, but… Her gaze dropped to the two-foot-square plastic-covered dog door. Could she squeeze through there?
She dropped to her knees and stuck her head through, then pushed farther, the metal edges digging into her shoulders. She might make it. Or she might get stuck there until someone found her.
And by then, what would have happened to Frank?
* * *
Tash opted for no siren, at least while they were in town, but she still drove the ambulance like a life depended on it, flying down a surprisingly empty Ambrose Avenue for that time of the morning.
“Second time this month,” Tasheema muttered as she passed a car on the left. “One of these times, Miss Clara Dee really is going to be having a heart attack.”
“I hope not,” Connor replied with a smile. “I really kind of like when she takes my hands and says, ‘But it is broken, young man. It broke when Henry died.’”
His EMT partner shot him a look. “Listen to you, Mahoney. All romantic and shit. What a difference love makes. Goin’ all soft on me now.”
“I’m not soft.” Nothing on him had been that morning when he left Sadie, that was for sure.
“But you are in love.”
He picked up the radio, trying to concentrate on dispatch.
“Connor?” She dragged out his name on a laugh. “Are you in love?”
“I’m in something,” he admitted. “At the moment, it’s an ambulance on the way to a call, so can it, Tash.”
“Why? Everyone knows it. If you can’t see for yourself, let me tell you what’s what, m’dear. You are in love.”
“Who knows what love is?” But if it felt like his happiness, well-being, and possibly next breath depended on knowing he’d be with Sadie far into the future and maybe beyond…then yes. That’s what he felt.
The doubts from the night before were long gone. He’d made the decision when he walked out this morning to kick his worries about her rebounding to the curb. She was done with that guy, that life, and that city.
“You know who knows what love is?” Tash pulled him from his thoughts. “Miss Clara Dee. You can ask her how it felt when she met Henry. Nothin’ she likes to talk about more.”
He smiled, knowing it was true. How did someone know when they had something like Clara and Henry? Or…his mind skimmed over all the weddings and engagements there’d been in his family over the past few years. Was this…
“Oh, I see some traffic up there,” Tash said. “Hang on, takin’ the back route.”
Tash whipped around the bend, and Connor smiled, knowing this would take them right past Sadie’s grandparents’ house and, of course, the guesthouse. Would she have made the walk of shame yet?
He liked thinking of her traipsing through town with his dog, wearing his shirt and that satisfied smile from all they’d shared the night before.
As they came up to the corner where the house was, he noticed a black Buick SUV right outside the gate. Was someone visiting? If that—
Just then, he saw Sadie tearing ass from the back of the guesthouse, running like a crazed woman toward the fence. She screamed something, but he couldn’t hear it with the windows up. Had Frank gotten out? Demi?
He almost asked Tash to stop, but knew he couldn’t possibly do that, not on their way to a call. As they got closer, he cracked his window, his heart kicking up as he saw her hair flying as she ran like a life depended on it.
He opened his mouth just as he heard her scream, “Nathan! Nathan!”
The SUV started up at the very minute she reached the fence, which she vaulted like a track star. She lunged at the passenger door. “You are not leaving without me! Don’t do this!”
She banged on the window so hard he could hear her fist hit the glass.
“You’re right, I need you! Please come back! Please, please don’t do this. I need to go with you. Please, Nathan, I’m begging you to take me with you!”
Connor’s blood turned to ice with every word, and bile rose in his throat. With each strangled breath, he stared at the whole thing, getting one last glimpse as Tash sped the ambulance past the scene. He had just enough time to see Sadie yank the passenger door open and throw herself into the SUV as it took off, leaving him to stare at the Washington, DC, license plate.
“Whoa,” Tash whispered. “What the hell was that all about?”
“I have no idea.”
Except he did have an idea. And it meant…he’d lost.
Chapter Twenty-four
Sadie wasn’t the least bit surprised to see Jane at the wheel. She was, however, stunned to see that Frank had bitten Nathan, who was swearing up a storm while Frank rolled into a ball as far away as he could get from everyone.
The poor baby had to be completely freaked out. All the work, all the training, all the progress…undone in a morning by this idiot.
“I’m coming back there,” Sadie announced, not waiting for permission to crawl over the console to the back seat. Frank was pushed into the corner behind the passenger seat, his head down, but his eyes were filled with nothing but sorrow. And maybe pain, though he didn’t whimper.
“Oh, sweet boy.” She wrapped her arms around his neck. “I’m going to help you.”
“You better help us.” Nathan practically spat the words at her. “Because this stupid mutt just ate about two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of lab-grown diamonds.”
“All of them?” Jane choked from the driver’s seat.
“I snagged a few he missed,” Nathan said. “But what the hell kind of dog eats rocks?”
Sadie whipped around to him. “What the hell kind of person steals from his client and hides the booty in an innocent person’s apartment?”
Her words bounced around the lush interior of the luxury SUV, and the silence that followed was like an echo.
“I’m right?” she asked with a mirthless laugh. “That’s what you’re doing? Stealing manmade diamonds from the association that trusts you to represent them?” Disgust roiled through her.
Jane and Nathan exchanged a look in the rearview mirror, silent.
“They track those things when you take them out to show lawmakers how real they are, you know,” she reminded him. He couldn’t be that stupid. He had to know that. “You can’t simply help yourself to whatever you want.”
He closed his eyes. “How many times have you heard me say they grow money, Sadie? Trust me when I say that they don’t care about a few stones they grow for PR. No one is going to miss them if they’re taken in small amounts.”
She drew back, her jaw unhinged. Had she known he was this greedy? How did she miss that?
“Then what about you?” She leaned forward to direct the question to Jane. “Miss Ethics Above All?” She slathered the question with all the repugnance that ricocheted through her body in that moment. “You
would risk your reputation and job and, God, jail time to split a few hundred grand with Nathan? What is wrong with you?”
Again, they exchanged a look that spoke volumes Sadie didn’t understand, with Jane’s right hand on the wheel tapping with that nervous twitch. Of course she was nervous. She was a criminal.
“I thought you two broke up. You both…wanted me back so bad.” The words tasted bitter because they had been such a lie.
“We wanted in your house,” Jane said. “We tried every tack we could think of, and if you thought we were still together, we knew we’d never get anywhere. We peered in every window and couldn’t see the damn thing. Nathan tried to get in while I did that interview, and I went there while you had a drink, but there was always a dog, a boyfriend, or a man with a gun.”
“Thank God for all of them.”
“But we’re out of time now.” Her hand trembled so hard she dropped it on her lap, giving Sadie a measure of satisfaction knowing that this hurt Jane, too.
No wonder Nathan had been horrified when he’d seen Sadie’s ring. He wasn’t jealous; he probably thought she’d found the diamonds and made herself a ring. As if.
Sadie just shook her head and turned her attention back to Frank, who seemed remarkably fine, considering he’d just eaten a handful of crystallized carbon.
“How do you feel, Franko?” She stroked his head and coaxed his mouth open, looking for any signs of blood. Or diamonds. She lifted his lips to see his gums were pink. That was good. If they weren’t, she’d be terrified he was bleeding internally.
He nuzzled into her hand, clearly grateful for the familiar face and affection.
“The closest vet is in town,” Sadie said. “Or we could go to Waterford Farm, which would mean taking the next right.”
Silent, Jane turned left.
“You are taking him to a vet?” Sadie didn’t mean it to come out as a question, because there was no choice in the matter.
“He can go to a vet after he…gets rid of them.” Jane made a face. “It’ll be unpleasant, but we’ll deal.”
They’d deal? “Why?”
Nathan waved his hand to quiet her.
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