25

Olivia said, “Telling him I’m married is sure to flush them out.”

“And that’s what you want?” Lemuel was reading the translation Christine had worked so hard on. He knew what Olivia was telling him was important to her (and therefore to him) personally, but he was pretty sure the text was even more important. At least in the Midnight universe, and just at this moment.

“I’m tired of this underhand game. I want to know who the players are and who’s backing them.” Olivia was exercising as she talked, and the flexing of her limber body was doing nothing to aid Lemuel’s concentration. Since she’d slept extra during the day, she had cleared a space for stretching in the herd of chairs occupying the pawnshop’s center. Lemuel watched from the high stool behind the counter, the handwritten translation before him.

He tore his gaze from the papers to look at Olivia. “If your father has tracked you down to watch you, he’s done nothing to make you think he will harm you. The Reeds are acting on his behalf? They haven’t raised a finger against you. In the past three years, there’s been many a time they could have acted against you.”

Olivia paused in her squats. “Okay, I concede that.”

“The more serious threat, if I’m understanding you correctly, is that your father’s right-hand man is watching you separately and unknown to your father.”

She nodded vigorously as she began doing lunges. “He was responsible for the man who tried to grab me when I was breaking into the Goldthorpe house.”

“Yes, you heard him say the name over his . . . walkie-talkie?”

“Cell phone. Yes, I did.”

“So he seems bent on capturing you. However, we haven’t seen his agents here.”

“One of them is responsible for the hotel.”

“But which one?”

“My dad owns the company that renovated the hotel. Manfred traced it back, and back, until he got to the source. Of course, he didn’t know that the president of the company was my dad, whose name is Nicholas Wicklow.”

This was the first time that Lemuel had heard her father’s name. “Thanks for trusting me with it,” he said. “I wondered if you would.”

“My real name,” she said, with air of someone doing a very necessary but distasteful task, “is Melanie Horton Wicklow.”

“No, that’s your birth name,” Lemuel said. “Your real name is Olivia Charity.”

She smiled at him, and his heart felt at ease. “Though she always made me call her Mother, my stepmother’s name was Tiffany, and I hope she never rests in peace.”

“What about your real mother—your biological mother, as they say now?”

“I didn’t know her very well. Her name was Cara,” Olivia said. “From the pictures, I look like her. Maybe another reason for Mo— Tiffany to do what she did.”

“But you’re uncertain about your father’s knowledge of her abuse.”

“I waver back and forth,” Olivia said, almost reluctantly. “Now I feel he didn’t know. But I also think you don’t know something like that if you aren’t paying attention.”

“Yes,” Lemuel agreed.

Olivia sat on the floor cross-legged, bent forward, and stood on her hands, her legs still crossed. Lemuel eyed her with admiration and a touch of exasperation. “Woman,” he said, “we have to talk.”

“I thought we were.”

“We have to talk about another topic, as interesting as I find this rare conversation about your family.”

Olivia rolled back into a sitting stance and looked up at him, her eyebrows raised in query. “What is it, Lemuel?”

“We must call the town together,” he said. “I think we are about to be killed.”

Her phone rang.

“Olivia,” said Manfred. “We have to have a town meeting. Sylvester’s forty-eight hours are up.”