Well, hell. “Obviously my prints came back.” What Laurel wouldn’t give for a three fingers of Scotch right about now. She settled instead for gripping the console behind her and holding on for the not-wholly-unexpected ride. “My name is Laurel Scott. It has been for the last five years.” Give or take a few months. Shit! I’m not ready for this conversation yet. This was why she hated dealing with people. They were so damned unpredictable. “Be sure to give Malcolm my compliments. That cover’s held up to FBI and police scrutiny. He’s definitely got mad skills.” So much for Alastair’s assurances he’d provided her a solid, unbreakable cover.
“Your file is genius,” Nathan said with a flicker of admiration in his voice. “Honestly, it’s one of the best covers I’ve seen in over a decade in security work. Deleted files, altered documents, a very thorough job—except for those pesky prints of yours. Nice to know you told me the truth about one thing at least: you’ve definitely been around.”
“I like to travel.” Keep it light, don’t get defensive. That would only show him he had something to worry about.
He leaned forward and flipped open the file. “Rose Hartford, Lilly Elsworth, Pansy Preston. Pansy? Really?”
“I was sixteen.” And no one took a girl named Pansy seriously. She shrugged. “Alliteration fascinates me.”
“And your real name would be?” He looked at her as if he expected her to lie.
“Ivy.” She didn’t hesitate.
“This is going to be a very long night if you can’t even be honest with me about your name.”
“Ivy Doe.” She crossed her arms over her chest as uncertainty descended. “A woman found me abandoned in a thicket of ivy in a park.” She braced herself for the sickening sympathy, the “oh, you poor little thing” tilt of his head.
Instead, all she got was a long silence, a dropping of his gaze and a soft, “You were a foster kid.”
Laurel started then followed his gaze to the photographs of his sister’s foster children.
“That explains the attitude,” he muttered. “And the distrust. You racked up a nice list of charges by the time you were seventeen.”
“Every talent has its learning curve. And there’s nothing illegal about changing your name.”
“There’s plenty illegal about credit card fraud and identity theft.”
“I don’t steal people’s identities,” she snapped. “I just become who I need to in order to achieve the objective.”
“And what’s that exactly? Seduce me? Charm your way into my bed, ingratiate yourself into the family and then—”
“I told you what I’m after.” Laurel swallowed and tried to convince herself of the lie as it spilled out of her lips. “The finder’s fee on the crown is enough to set me up—”
“I’d refrain from using that term for the foreseeable future,” Nathan said. “You work for Alastair, don’t you?”
“Alastair who?” She squeaked and hoped the dim light hid the color draining from her face.
“Son of a . . .” He shook his head as if he couldn’t decide whether he believed her or not. She held her breath, watched as his eyes scanned her face, dipped to the pulse in her neck she knew he couldn’t see in the dim light of the room, but worried he could nonetheless.
But he didn’t elaborate. Instead, he shifted forward in his seat, hands clasped between his knees. His voice, while calm, held a tremble of anger under the surface that set off every alarm inside her. “Did you know the FBI maintains a satellite office here in Lantano Valley? It’s not big, but the new agent overseeing it would probably be very interested in these prints of yours. He could use some goodwill with an insurance agency like TransUnited. I’m sure they’d be grateful to learn who they have working for them. A few cons here and there, cash, jewelry. There’s fraud, of course, given your penchant for stolen credit cards. Glad to see you gave that up, Laurel. If the warning bells aren’t already jangling at Quantico, I bet I could make them chime like the bells at St. Mary’s with one call.”
“Go ahead.” Panic lodged in her chest like an unpopped balloon. “I’m reformed. And I think you underestimate TransUnited’s standards. I can spin my criminal expertise into a benefit of employment with one conversation.” As long as that conversation wasn’t with Nathan. She couldn’t break now; couldn’t let things slip. If she lost her connection to Nathan, to the Tremaynes, there was no telling what Alastair would do—to her or to Nathan.
“Your new identity might be cemented like concrete, but I’d hardly call you reformed.” Nathan said. “Tell you what. If this is all about the money, as you claim.” Judging by the condescension in his voice he didn’t believe that to be the case at all. “I’ll make you an offer. I’ll double your finder’s fee. All in cash, untraceable. All you need to do in exchange is pack up and leave. Disappear. Something I’m sure you know how to do.”
“There it is,” Laurel said with a twist of her lips. “That’s the Tremayne solution to everything, isn’t it? Throw enough money at a problem and it or she will go away. I’m not going anywhere, Nathan. I told you I have a job to do.” But the offer was tempting. That much cash could put a lot of distance between her and Alastair. It could also put a target on her back so huge she’d never outrun him. She couldn’t take that risk, not yet. Not with Joey and Poppy to consider. She needed to stay on Alastair’s good side for as long as possible, if for no other reason than to keep him off guard so when she did make a break for it, he wouldn’t expect it. “My job is to find that crown. Whether you believe me or not doesn’t matter. You’re the one who said we need each other, so like it or not, you’re going to have to trust me.”
“No, I don’t.” Nathan’s declaration nicked her heart. “There’s something else going on here, something you’re not telling me.”
“And you think this was the way to get me to open up? Sneaking into my hotel room to wait for me in the dead of night doesn’t exactly earn my trust, Nathan. I can still report this to the police.”
He tossed his phone on the mattress and grinned, but there was nothing endearing about his expression. “Go ahead. I dare you.”
Laurel’s throat clenched. She might have gone a step too far. “What do you want from me, Nathan?”
“The truth would be nice. But right now, I’ll settle for the same thing I wanted the other night. I want your help finding the crown. Once I have that, if that’s all there is to this”—he added with that dangerous spark in his green eyes—“you can walk away. Malcolm will scrub his computer, I’ll destroy your file and Laurel Scott will cease to exist. In fact.” He seemed to have caught himself off guard. He paused. “I’ll even up my offer. I’ll make you disappear.”
Nausea churned in her belly. “Going to drop my body down a mine shaft? Or drop me over the side of the family yacht?”
“You of all people should know we don’t own a yacht,” Nathan said, jerking his chin toward her wall of stalking evidence. “I can have Malcolm create an all-new identity. New town, new life, new future. Poof.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that. No one would ever find you again. Not unless you wanted them to.”
The flip response she might have thrown at him froze behind her pinched lips. A new life? A safe life? Out from under Alastair’s watch, his control? It didn’t seem possible and yet . . . if anyone could make it happen it was Nathan Tremayne and Malcolm Oliver. If she only had herself to consider she’d have taken the leap and snatched at his offer with both hands, but she had Joey to think about. And Poppy. She couldn’t make any rash decisions without a plan. Still . . . she bit her lip.
“You’re going to have to trust someone at some point, Laurel. And it may as well be me, because from where I’m sitting you don’t have any other options. Don’t test me on this. I’ll give you forty-eight hours to decide.” He got to his feet and straightened his jacket. “And while you’re thinking, keep this in mind. I’m fighting for my family. If you don’t believe anything else I ever say to you, believe this.” He moved forward and loomed over her, the angry heat of his body sinking into her like a threatening promise. He bent down to meet her gaze. She couldn’t break away, no matter how hard she fought the pull of their green depths. “There is nothing,” he whispered, “and I mean nothing, I won’t do to protect them. You will lose when it comes to them, Laurel. Every time. Remember that.” He stepped back. “That’s yours.” He jabbed a finger at the file that remained atop the tumble of sheets and blankets. “I have copies for backup. You can find me at the Tremayne offices. If I don’t hear from you by Friday morning, I’ll assume you’ve left town. In which case you’d best stay gone for good.”
***
Nathan nearly jumped out of his skin when Gage rapped on the passenger window of his Mercedes SUV early Thursday morning. Swearing, Nathan lowered the window and breathed in the rich aroma of fresh brewed coffee from the mug Gage shoved at him.
“Either you’re trying to get up the nerve to finally fill me in on what’s going on with the lot of you or you’re mulling over one spectacular lie.” Gage leaned his arms on the window frame and stared at him.
Given the truth lay somewhere in between, Nathan accepted the mug in silence, his gaze shifting to the bungalow house his sister and her fiancé were systematically moving out of. Gage had bought the house when he’d moved back to Lantano Valley after a disastrous stint with the FBI had nearly gotten him killed. He and Morgan planned to put it on the market after the wedding; after they took complete possession of the house on Tumbleweed Drive. “I must be losing my touch, letting you sneak up on me like that,” Nathan said.
“You must have a lot on your mind.”
“You could say that.” He counted himself lucky he’d gotten any sleep at all last night. His mind had been filled with images of a sullen, striking, silent Laurel as he blackmailed her into compliance last night. He knew she hadn’t told him everything; hell, she’d barely told him anything, but he had to give her credit. She hadn’t cowered and that took courage. Whether she was working for Manville or not—he hadn’t been able to tell if that flash in her eyes at the mention of Alastair’s name had been recognition or ignorance—he couldn’t trust her. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t push her into trusting him. Whatever she was hiding, whatever secrets she had, he’d find a way to work them out of her. If that lead him to Manville, all the better. He shifted in his seat, uncomfortable with the idea that Laurel would do anything to endanger his family. All the more reason to keep her close and show her exactly what was at stake for everyone involved. Or maybe what he needed was a secret weapon. Hmmm . . .
“Earth to Nathan.” Gage snapped his fingers in front of Nathan’s face. “You want to come in?”
“Depends.” Nathan leaned over and looked at the front porch, suddenly understanding how Laurel must have felt under his questioning last night. “You don’t have any loose floorboards in there under which to hide my body, do you?”
“Not at this house.” Gage’s mouth tipped into a smile. “Come on. Might as well get this over with.”
Nathan climbed out of the car and followed a jeans-and-T-shirt-clad Gage into the house that served as home base, office, and decompression chamber for his sister and her fiancé. Frank Lloyd Wright inspired, with geometric stained-glass windows interspersed with mission-style handmade furniture—Gage’s coping mechanism—this house was a home despite how little time they spent here. His recent foray into flipping homes was proving successful despite the still-fragile housing market. Of course, anything looked amazing compared to Nathan’s sparsely furnished town house located in the heart of the business district downtown. The last thing Nathan would call his living quarters was a home.
This place, however, fit Gage to perfection, and while his sister had grown up surrounded by custom design just shy of opulence, she was a practical woman.
“So what’s the bad news?” Gage called from the kitchen as Nathan walked down the hall to join him.
“I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’d like to take the kids to Disneyland for the next couple of weeks?”
“Hmmm. Let’s think on that.” Gage poured himself a fresh mug of coffee from the coffeemaker on the butcher block countertop. “That would mean packing up four kids under ten, one attitude-filled teenager, and an overanxious fiancée who would only be thinking about all the work she’d left behind. I’d rather not.”
“You could always bring your mother to help chaperone?”
“Why do you hate me?”
Nathan grinned at the green-tinged expression that floated over Gage’s face whenever his over-attentive mother was brought into a conversation. He took a seat on the bar stool at the end of the counter.
“Enough hedging, Nathan. Out with it already.”
All the time he’d spent finding the right words had been wasted. There were no right words. “Have you noticed anyone hanging around the house? Following you? Has Morgan mentioned anyone taking pictures of her and the kids?” Nathan couldn’t remember ever talking so fast in his life, but all he wanted to do was get it out and let the chips fall.
Gage considered him over the rim of his mug and Nathan felt the overwhelming urge to shiver. “As I haven’t been arrested for murder we can assume the answer is no.”
The imaginary band that had been squeezing Nathan’s insides for the past few days loosened. “Well, either that’s good news and they’ve moved on or—”
“Or someone’s good enough that an ex-cop hasn’t noticed he was being followed. What the fuck, Nathan?” Gage slammed his coffee down and sent it sloshing. “Stop dancing around and man up. Out with it already.”
Guilt nudged at him as he dodged the verbal bullets. “Some events in Dad’s past have come up again. He’s—we—are afraid it may, okay, has”—he corrected at Gage’s back-of-the-throat growl—“has put the rest of the family under some scrutiny.”
“Police scrutiny or psycho scrutiny?”
“Do you really think I’d be here if I was worried about the police?”
“Shit.” Gage looked around as if trying to find something to punch. “What in the hell have you all been playing at? Who is it? Or they? And how dangerous—”
“I don’t want to think whoever is behind this would hurt any of the kids.” Nathan tried to get ahead of the reaction he’d anticipated. “But I can’t take the chance. Which is why I’m here. We just have to be careful since there are certain secrets we’d prefer not be brought to light.”
“I’m betting it’s not just Jackson you’re worried about.” Gage braced his hands on the edge of the counter. “Be honest with me, Nathan. Can you handle this or do I need to call in some favors?”
“I’m handling it,” Nathan admitted. For now. “Gage, I need you to listen to me, okay? I need you to believe me when I tell you that while I’ve taken a lot of chances in my life, I’m not about to take them with the people I care about. Any of them. Nobody is going to get hurt because of this. I promise.”
“No offense,” Gage said, and once again Nathan was reminded of how intimidating it must have been for anyone to be interrogated by his future brother-in-law, “but I’m not convinced I can trust you, Nathan. Clearly whatever you and my soon-to-be father-in-law have been up to has put a target on the Tremayne family, and by extension mine.”
“We realize that.” He’d let himself fall into the trap—that being a part of Nemesis had been fun, exciting. It had paid off in spades . . . until the price climbed too high to pay. “I’m going to fix this, Gage. Whatever I have to do, I will fix this.”
“Explain to me how.”
“Well—” Nathan began, only to have the phone ring and cut him off.
“Hold that thought,” Gage ordered with a look that had Nathan remaining where he was. “Morgan?” Watching Gage’s expression shift from cool detachment to concern to outright fear tied impossible knots in Nathan’s gut. “Yeah, no. I’ll head down right now.” He glanced at his watch. “Traffic’s going to be a bitch, but I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Lydia?” Nathan asked, following Gage to the front door where he was shoving his feet into shoes. “Didn’t Morgan take her down to Los Angeles to see a new specialist?”
“She had a massive seizure during the CT scan.” Gage patted his pockets, glancing around the narrow entryway. Nathan plucked the keys out of the bowl near the door, tossed them to his friend. “Dammit, we’re just coming out of losing Brandon.” Gage stared down at the keys in his palm as if he didn’t know what to do with them even as he took deep breaths. “I don’t know how Morgan does this, time after time.”
“We’ll get through.” Nathan laid a hand on Gage’s shoulder. “Whatever happens, we’ll get through.” Because that’s what Tremaynes did. “Come on. I’ll drive.”