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JACE KNEW HE HAD AT least thirty minutes before Sandi arrived at his house. Once he’d hung up the phone, he dialed Lizzie’s number again on the iPad. He’d been talking to her when Sandi had rung his mobile.
She answered almost immediately. “Hello again!”
“Sorry to call you back,” he said.
“It’s okay. How’s Sandi?”
He stood and walked out onto the deck with the iPad. It was late afternoon, and a couple of small fishing boats were heading back down the inlet, ready to go home with their catch. The sun had turned the water the color of Sandi’s hair, a beautiful deep gold, with a slight touch of red. “She wants to talk to me,” he said.
“Oh. That sounds ominous.”
“It was only a matter of time,” he said softly. “I’m amazed she’s put up with me as long as she has.”
“You have to tell her,” Lizzie said. “You can’t keep it a secret any longer.”
“What if it doesn’t make a difference?” he wanted to know. “She might still end it, and I can’t afford to have someone out there who knows my real identity.”
“You think she’s going to go around telling everyone?”
He looked down at his feet. “No. But she might let it slip at some point.”
“She might. I suppose the question is, are you willing to take that risk to keep her?”
Jace said nothing. He already knew he was going to tell Sandi everything. If he didn’t, he was going to lose her, and he couldn’t bear for that to happen.
“I should have told her it all, right at the beginning.” He cursed himself for being so secretive. “Before we both got in too deep. I’ve screwed everything up. I shouldn’t be talking to you. If someone tells them you’re in contact with me...”
“Nobody knows,” Lizzie said smoothly.
“If anything happened to you and Beth...”
“Stop being such a drama queen. Nothing’s going to happen. Talk to the girl, Jace. Explain why you didn’t tell her everything immediately. If she’s worth her salt, she’ll understand and forgive you.”
Jace thanked her and promised to let her know how it went. Then he hung up, went inside, and poured himself a whisky.
It wasn’t about Sandi being ‘worth her salt’. She’d been through hell, and instead of making allowances for that, he’d done exactly the opposite and forced her to walk all the way through the Underworld again for him. He should have trusted her from the beginning. But he’d spent years trusting no one, keeping secrets in a world where nobody knew who he really was. Telling anyone, even someone so close to his heart, felt impossible.
He went back out onto the deck and sipped his whisky until he heard the scrunch of her tires on the gravel drive. Then he went in and opened the front door. He leaned against the door jamb as she got out. She looked pale, but oh-so-beautiful in jeans and a blue tunic the color of her eyes. Her hair hung past her shoulders in golden waves. He loved her, and he was prepared to drop to his knees and beg her to stay, if it proved necessary.
“Hey,” he said as she walked toward him.
“Hey.” She stopped and slid her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “Thanks for seeing me tonight.”
“Of course.” Normally, he would have made a joke, made her laugh, but he felt tongue-tied with worry, and just stood back to let her pass.
She didn’t stop to kiss him, but walked through into the living room and dropped her bag onto the table.
“Whisky?” he asked. She shook her head. That meant she wasn’t expecting to stay. Instead, he took a Coke Zero out of the fridge and passed it to her. She popped the lid and drank a bit while he sipped his drink for Dutch courage.
They stood facing each other across the coffee table. The sun was setting, filling the room with a honey-gold light. It was hot and humid—he should put on the air con, but he didn’t want to move. Sandi filled his whole vision, and he could only wait now for the storm to pass.
“I know Jace Hart isn’t your real name,” she said simply.
He sipped his whisky, letting it sear down to his stomach.
“I didn’t mean to pry,” she said. “I tried to trust you. And I didn’t go looking for clues. But someone called the name Jason and you turned around. Your wallet has the initials J.D. And then I saw a text from Lizzie, and I knew you were hiding something from me.”
He closed his eyes as pain shot through him. Jesus. She thought he was another Brodie.
“I told the others,” she continued, “or, rather, they wormed it out of me because I was worried. They’re all concerned. So Mac rang Auckland Law School, and they don’t have you listed as an ex-student.”
He opened his eyes, shocked. “That was innovative.”
“I’m sorry for that—it feels underhanded, and I wish we hadn’t done it. But it’s done now.” She frowned, put down the can, and slid her hands back into her pockets. Her shoulders were hunched defensively. “My instinct tells me to trust you. It tells me that you’re not the same as Brodie, and that you wouldn’t hurt me the way he did. But I don’t know whether to trust my instincts. I keep asking myself whether I knew on some subconscious level that Brodie wasn’t all he seemed, and I think maybe I did and just pretended everything was fine, I don’t know. My instincts say you’re a good man. And I know I shouldn’t demand to know your life history. But because of what happened, I’m screwed up inside, and I can’t carry on like this.”
She stopped and bit her lip. Christ, the courage it must have taken her to stand there and say all this. “Sandi...” he said helplessly.
“I should go,” she whispered, obviously overcome with emotion. “I’m sorry, I should never have agreed to carry on seeing you. It wasn’t fair to either of us.” She turned to pick up her purse.
“Sandi.” He moved to block her way out. “Wait.”
She tried to go around him. “I can’t. I need to go—”
Fuck it. He had to do something or she was going to leave.
“I’m in the witness protection program,” he blurted out. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone.”
She froze and stared at him. “Seriously?” The pulse raced in her neck. She swayed, and for a moment he thought she might faint, but she swallowed hard, apparently determined to stay strong.
A wave of affection washed over him, but he knew he couldn’t just throw his arms around her. He had to put things right first.
“I’ll tell you everything, I swear.” He gestured to the armchair behind her. “Will you sit down?”
She looked at the chair for a moment, then slowly sank into it. Thankful she hadn’t refused, he perched on the edge of the sofa and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, the whisky glass dangling from one hand.
“My real name is Jason Dartnell,” he said. “I was born in Dunedin.” The city was in the south of the South Island, seven hundred miles from Kerikeri.
Her eyebrows rose. “So how did you end up here?”
“One thing at a time,” he said. “It’s a complicated story.” He finished off his whisky and put the glass on the table. Now he’d started, he might as well tell her everything. “My father ran a series of shops. Like two-dollar shops, you know, cheap stuff, a lot of it knock-off. From what I understand, there were shady deals going on right from the beginning, but I wasn’t aware of it when I was young. It was only as I went into my teens that I started to realize the business was far from legitimate.”
She was still now, although her pulse continued to race in her neck. “Do you have any siblings?”
“Two brothers. Craig and Stephen, both older than me. As soon as they were old enough, they started working for Dad in the shops.”
“What about your mum?”
Even now, years after the event, anger still flared inside him at the thought of what had transpired. “She knew what was going on, but she turned a blind eye to it all. She didn’t care what Dad did, as long as there was food on the table and she had a new outfit for the weekend.” He didn’t bother to stop the bitterness that had crept into his voice.
Sandi observed him for a moment, and he knew everything he was thinking must be showing on his face.
“Did you join the family business?” she asked eventually.
He shook his head. “I was never interested in working in the shops. Right from when I was young, I’d wanted to be a lawyer. They used to laugh at me and take the piss because while they were out doing dodgy deals and getting drunk, I was at home doing my homework.”
A smile flickered on her lips before fading away. “So what happened?”
He leaned back on the sofa and blew out a breath. “From what I understand, around the time I was in late high school, they started doing business with another family, the Martins. We had a couple of warehouses by then, and Craig and Dad used them occasionally to store stuff for the Martins.”
“What kind of stuff?” Sandi asked.
“Drugs,” Jace said. “Some marijuana, and some pills, but mainly cocaine.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah.” His jaw was knotted so tight it was making his teeth hurt. “Craig was using by then, too. I think it was him who convinced Dad to go in with the Martins. I don’t know. I kept out of it as much as I could.”
“But you knew what was going on?”
He hesitated and looked out of the window. “Not directly. I heard rumors. But I didn’t want to get involved. I’m ashamed of that. I wish I had said something, not that it would have done any good as they wouldn’t have listened to me. I went to uni, and I was hardly ever home.”
“But you didn’t... use drugs yourself?”
“Fuck no, come on, Sandi, you know me better than that. I smoked some weed at a party once or twice. That was it. I never took hard drugs. My body is a temple.”
She didn’t smile—he hadn’t won her over yet. “What happened then?”
“I graduated and got a position in a law firm in the city. I didn’t go home much. I saw Lizzie occasionally, and she kept me up to speed with what was going on with the family.”
“Lizzie?”
“Stephen’s wife,” he said softly, and smiled. “We went to uni together, and she met him through me.”
Sandi stared at him for a long while. He saw some of her tension dissolve, and watched her spine relax as she exhaled a long sigh of relief. She really had thought Lizzie was someone special to him romantically. The poor girl—he wished she’d just spoken to him when she’d seen the text.
She sat back in the armchair, kicking off her sandals and curling her legs beneath her. “So what happened next?”
“From what I can gather, tensions were building between the two families,” he continued. “The Martins were pushing us to store more of their stuff. Unbeknown to Stephen, Dad and Craig had progressed to selling the drugs too. Stephen was always a bit warier, so they kept him out of some of the dodgier deals. But he found out, and he told Lizzie he was worried about them encroaching on the Martins’ territory. So she told me, because she was starting to get frightened.”
He stood and walked into the kitchen and poured himself another whisky. Taking a chance, he held the bottle up to Sandi. To his surprise, she nodded.
“I can always get a taxi,” she said. A ghost of a smile hovered on her lips.
He gave her a wry smile back and poured her a shot over ice, then brought them back.
“When Lizzie contacted me,” he continued, sitting back down, “I confronted my family and demanded to know what was going on. Stephen and Craig were there, and we all had an almighty row. Stephen said Dad and Craig were stealing from the Martins. They denied it, but I knew he was right—I just knew it. I told them they were crazy—no way would the Martins let them get away with that. But they told me I’d lost the right to comment when I refused to get involved.”
He took a large mouthful of the whisky. “I tried to bring Mum into the conversation to talk some sense into Dad and Craig, but she said it was none of her business. I was so angry that I ended up walking out. But I kept thinking about it, and a couple of weeks later, when Lizzie told me the Martins had requested a meeting with Dad and the others, I was so worried that I decided I’d follow them there. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do—maybe try to intercede, be the big lawyer, you know...”
He ran his hand through his hair. The light was fading, casting the room into shadows. Sandi’s gaze was fixed on him, her face pale.
“Lizzie told me the meeting was at eight p.m., at our offices. I was waiting around the corner when Stephen picked up Craig and Dad from home, and I followed them in the car to the office. Halfway there, a truck came out of a side road and barreled into Stephen’s car.”
Sandi brought her hand up to cover her mouth. “Oh, Jace.”
“The car skidded across the road and rolled into a ditch. I pulled up behind them and tried to drag them out. Stephen was already dead. I couldn’t get Craig out, and he was dead by the time the ambulance turned up. I managed to get Dad out, but he died on the way to the hospital.”
Sandi’s eyes were glistening. “That’s so awful. What happened to the truck?”
“It vanished,” Jace said. “But not before I got the number on the license plate.”
Her mouth formed an O. “Did you tell the police?”
“Yes. It took them a while to track it down, but they eventually discovered it was registered to a sub-company of the Martins.”
“Oh Jesus.”
“The case came to court, and one of the major pieces of evidence was the fact that I’d witnessed the accident and seen the license plate. The morning of the trial, I had a visit from two of the Martin brothers.” He looked away, going cold at the memory, even though over two years had passed. “They told me that if I gave evidence, they’d take me out too.”
“What did you do?”
“Gave evidence anyway,” he said. “I wasn’t going to be bullied out of it. Martin senior and two of the brothers were put away, but the oldest brother had gone into hiding, and the police haven’t been able to track him down. I had to go into witness protection. He would have killed me, I don’t have any doubt about that. I had to leave, and promise not to contact my mother or Lizzie, or her new baby girl. I haven’t spoken to my mother since I left, but I have spoken to Lizzie, just to make sure she’s all right. I feel I owe Stephen that.”
“Couldn’t she have come up with you?” Sandi whispered.
“The Martins weren’t interested in her, and she didn’t want to leave—she has her friends and her own family around her. She’ll be fine.”
“And your mother?”
He placed the glass on the table with slightly more force than was necessary. “At the funeral, Philip Martin—the oldest brother—sent a wreath in the shape of a car.”
“Jesus, that’s cruel.”
“Mum lost it completely. She told me she blamed me for not stopping them going to the meeting. She said I’d known it was going to end badly, and I should have made more of an effort to intervene. She said I was a coward because I hadn’t been with them, and that I always thought I was better than them because I didn’t want a part in the family business. She told me she never wanted to see me again. So I left, and I haven’t spoken to her since.”
“Oh, Jace.”
“Lizzie tried to get me to talk to her the other day,” he admitted, “but I couldn’t. I know she was burying her husband and her two sons, and she wasn’t in her right mind, but the things she said to me...” Tears pricked his eyes, and he massaged the bridge of his nose. “You can’t ever forget things like that. Those words were branded onto my brain, and I don’t think they’ll ever go.”
Despair swept over him. He’d lost his family, and now he’d lost Sandi, because he’d been stupid enough not to trust her. He didn’t deserve her. It would serve him right if she got up now and just walked out the door.
She put her feet to the floor and stood. He kept his head down, too tired and dispirited to argue with her to stay. He waited for her to collect her purse and walk past him.
But she stopped before him. Climbed on top of him, straddling his thighs. And put her arms around him.
More shocked than he cared to admit, he slid his arms around her waist and rested his cheek on her chest. She smelled heavenly, of the warm evening and jasmine, reminding him of Sam and Ginger’s wedding, and dancing with her under the stars.
She wasn’t leaving. She’d forgiven him.
Tempted to bawl like a toddler, he managed to keep it in, and let her soft kisses on his face take away his pain.
