Cross Roads, page 25
He pinched her Achilles’ heel. “How about you forgo cursing me altogether and save yourself the mental drain?”
“Not as fun.”
“But?” he prompted, guiding them back to their conversation.
“A few months before the attack on Neil, I started having nightmares. The disjointed screenshots I mentioned earlier.”
When her hair fell over one side of her face, she smoothed it back with an efficient hand, then draped the thick mass over a shoulder. “Once the nightmares began, I started experiencing this overwhelming need to know more about my mother.”
“Not your father?”
“Yes, of course, but it was my mom’s face that came to me, again and again.”
“What did Neil tell you about her prior to the nightmares?”
“Only that she had died in a head-on collision caused by a young woman under the influence.”
“He stuck to a version of the truth.”
Lena glanced at her bed, where she’d dropped her shoulder bag on the way to her wardrobe. More puzzle pieces clicked into place, and a sick feeling crawled into her stomach.
She jumped up and sprinted across the room. Shoving her purse onto its side, she ran her finger along the bottom.
“What are you doing?” Rohan called.
“I think I understand why Neil kept me.”
She located the tiny seam and started unzipping the secret compartment.
“Lena,” he said, an odd note in his voice as he reached her side.
“What’s the matter?”
“I, uh, need to tell you something.”
“Just a second. Let me show you this first.”
She reached inside to retrieve the cosmetic bag of treasures she’d been carrying since the night she’d left Neil tied to a chair.
55
Rohan’s heart thundered as he watched her pull the bag from its hiding spot.
On their journey back to Atlanta, he’d slipped the items into the hidden pocket of her bag while she had napped in the front seat.
From the moment he’d taken her possessions, guilt had festered in his gut. No matter how he justified his need for knowledge, the feeling had persisted. Returning the items had done nothing to assuage his condition.
He’d decided at the lake to confess his betrayal the next time they were alone. It was one of the many reasons he’d arrived at her loft unannounced.
Lena removed the photo from the plastic bag and held it out to him. “The small metal safe I retrieved from the freezer the night of Neil’s murder contained several keepsakes. Some I recognized, others I didn’t. Until now.”
A couple in their mid-fifties occupied lawn chairs beneath a giant oak tree draped in Spanish moss. Their hands clasped together and their smiles wide. Colorful balloons attached to a pink draped table in the background suggested they had been celebrating a big event, like a birthday or anniversary.
On the grass in front of them, a young woman, wearing a party hat, sat cross-legged with a toddler hellbent on escaping her lap. The scramble for supremacy didn’t dim the delight on the woman’s pretty face.
Above the triangle of happiness stood a blond-haired man. His hands rested on the couple’s opposite shoulders. Unlike the rest of the group, the guy’s impassive features hid from the viewer his state of mind.
Lena pointed to the man behind the couple. “Neil Jones. The man who abducted me.”
Reflexively, Rohan placed his hand on the small of her back. For her support or his, he didn’t know.
“Blond and good-looking wasn’t the image I had of him in my head.”
She glanced up at him. “How did you imagine him?”
Rohan shrugged. “Different. Less like a dad.”
But his ability to blend in, to not draw attention to himself had aided in his avoidance of detection for ten years.
Lena’s finger traced over the woman with the toddler. “I always wondered who the other people were in this photo. From the way they’re positioned, I had imagined the older couple were his parents and the woman was his sister. The child, his nephew or niece.”
“And now?” he asked, though he could guess the answer.
“I still believe the people are his parents. Neil’s resemblance to the man is unmistakable.” She drew in a slow breath. “But I think the other two individuals in the picture were his wife and child.”
“Were? You think they’re dead?”
She nodded. “What if my parents’ car crash triggered his own wound? A fresh one. One he hadn’t come to terms with yet?”
“When he saw you in the backseat, the loss of his own daughter came rushing back.”
“He reacted on instinct, saving me from the burning vehicle.” Tears rimmed her eyes. “I replaced his little girl.”
Setting into motion a series of events that even Neil Jones couldn’t have foreseen. “It would explain why a killer would take on the responsibility of raising a small child—and treating her well.”
While they unraveled the mystery of the picture and Neil’s motivation for upending a little girl’s life, Rohan had been plying soothing circles over her back and shoulders.
She dropped the photo on the bed and turned into his arms. “I think it might be too much,” she whispered against his shoulder.
“I meant what I said earlier.” He kissed the top of her head. “We’ll get through this together.”
“Why is this all coming to light now?”
“Talking about your parents must have dislodged an old memory.”
“Yes, but—” She pushed out of his arms and began pacing. “Why would Izzy even contemplate that Angelena Kamber wasn’t my true identity?”
“Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she stumbled upon the information.” The thought rankled, but it had to be considered.
She made a dismissive gesture. “If a white hat—”
“Ethical hacker,” he corrected.
“If you couldn’t uncover my previous identity, there’s no way Izzy DeCarlo just found the information.”
“Agreed.” He sat on the edge of her bed. “Why does she hate you so much?”
She emitted a noise that sounded like a hard drive on the fritz. “Evidently, she viewed us—Izzy, Xander, and I—as a sort of modern-day Three Musketeers. She was pissed that I broke up the Knights of the Round Table by getting involved with Xander.”
“Chevaliers.”
“Pardon?”
“The Knights of the Round Table were English. The Three Musketeers were French.”
She blinked. “How many terabytes of data live inside that brain of yours?”
“More than some, less than others.” His smile faded. “Because you stole some happiness for yourself, she orchestrated an elaborate scheme to destroy your reputation?”
She shrugged. “These days, people kill for a lot less.”
With his hands braced on the edge of the bed, he drummed his fingers against the side.
“I can hear your internal processor churning from here.”
Rohan blinked and refocused on her. “I can’t put my finger on it. But my gut tells me there’s more at play here.” He considered her for a long moment. “Can you think of anything you did out of the ordinary leading up to the burglary or before you got the sense of being watched?”
“No,” she insisted. “I eat, paint, sleep. Repeat. My life is one big predictable—” She broke off and her eyes widened.
“Tell me.”
“A couple weeks ago, I took a break and walked to Barron’s Park. I passed a man on the trail who reminded me of Neil. Which led me to realize his birthday was the very next day. I thought about him all the way home. When I got there, I—”
Rohan’s breaths clogged in his chest while he waited for her to finish her tale. When she didn’t, he demanded, “You what?”
“I did an Internet search on his name.”
56
From Rohan’s expression, Lena got that her search on Neil’s name might have set some things in motion. Terrible things.
But how, exactly, she didn’t know.
“What did I do?” she asked, when he continued to stare at her. Scratch that. Stare through her. She was getting good at identifying his Think Mode.
“Whoever ordered your parents’ deaths is still out there.”
“That, I’m loud and clear on. What am I missing?”
“We’ve already established they likely have significant resources at their disposal.”
“Yes, yes.” She motioned for him to get to the point. Rude, but she couldn’t stand the gaping hole in her knowledge. “And?”
“They likely have trigger words in place.”
“Trigger words?”
“When someone enters a series of words or phrases into a search engine, they’re alerted.”
“People can get access to that kind of data?”
“If they’re clever enough or have money to buy friends in crucial places, yes.”
“But wouldn’t that be an enormous amount of data to mine?”
“A good program would weed out most of it.”
“If my search triggered someone’s super algorithm, why haven’t they attempted to kill me yet?”
“A good question.”
Another thought struck her. “Why hasn’t the APD tracked me down yet? My fingerprints were all over Xander’s studio.”
“Not if whoever killed him wiped down the place.”
“If we’re talking about Izzy, why would she have Desmond undo what he did? She made it clear today that I would pay with my life. I thought she meant to kill me, but what better way to make me suffer than spending the rest of my days in jail for a crime I didn’t commit?”
“What if Izzy’s pet wasn’t the one who murdered Byrne?”
Izzy had been livid about the police declaring his death a suicide. For his sake? Or because death by his own hand would’ve screwed up Izzy’s plan to ruin Lena’s life?
Lena cupped her hands over her nose and mouth as she recalled the moment she broke the news to Izzy about Xander’s death. Izzy had always been a superb actress, but she’d never been able to fool Lena. Izzy’s shocked reaction to the news had been real.
“If not Desmond, who?”
Neither of them spoke for a long while. The weight of the situation seemed too heavy, too complex to decipher.
“It’s been a long day,” she said. “My bed is calling.”
“Agreed.” He brushed a hand over his whiskered face. “I’ll take the couch.”
“The independent side of me wants to tell you I don’t need a babysitter.” She strode toward him, stopping an arm’s length away. “But my practical side—the side that’s kept me alive all these years—would be thankful for your company.”
He reached for her hand, brushed his fingers over each of her knuckles before kissing the back of her hand. His eyes met hers. Waited for her decision.
“Survival always floats to the top.”
The corners of his eyes tilted upward, yet something in his gaze—a sadness or maybe regret—made her heart stutter to a halt.
“What’s wrong?”
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
The heaviness in his voice told her it wouldn’t be something they could talk through in five minutes. Call her a coward, but all she wanted to do at that moment was to sink into the sheets and let Rohan drive away the pain of the last twenty-four hours.
Stepping between his legs, she framed his face with her hands. “Later.” She pressed her lips against his, exploring them with gentle nips and evocative scrapes of her teeth.
While responding in kind, his hands surrounded her hips, drew her closer.
Lena’s fingers pushed into his hair, cradled his head, and deepened the kiss. When she leaned in to rub her aching breasts against his chest, he broke free of their kiss.
“Lena, please,” he panted against her throat. “I need to confess—”
She lifted his chin. “Tomorrow.”
“But—”
“Tomorrow, we can discuss your lack of boundaries with my personal possessions.”
He stilled. “What specifically do you mean by personal possessions?”
“The ones in my purse’s secret compartment.”
“You knew I’d taken them?”
“I had my suspicions the moment I emerged from the hotel bathroom.” She gave him a stern look. “But the torn pages from the Bible fooled my initial inspection.”
“I should probably apologize, but it would lack full sincerity.”
“Oh?”
“For one, I found a device in your purse.”
“What sort of device?”
“My guess is GPS. I pitched it into the motel parking lot.”
Lena recalled him flicking something as they fled from their room. The confirmation of someone keeping tabs on her whereabouts made her queasy.
“And another thing,” he sent her an aggrieved look, “those items helped me piece some things together.” His expression shifted again. It wasn’t quite contrite, but a close cousin. “But I didn’t like betraying your trust. I would prefer to never have a reason to do it again.”
“Is that your bizarre way of telling me I need to be more upfront with information?”
A hint of a smile. “It would save us both a lot of trouble.”
He clasped a hand around the side of her neck and brushed his thumb over her cheek. “Despite my extreme measures to unravel this mystery, you can trust me. I swear it.”
She covered his hand with hers and turned to press her lips to his palm, then looked him in the eye. “I know. Why else would I allow you to keep priceless fragments of my life?”
His hard swallow was audible. He exerted pressure until her forehead touched his. “I’m sorry, Lena.”
“You put them back, as I had hoped.”
He gave her an appreciative smile. “Leaving your bag in the back of the van on our return trip to Steele Ridge wasn’t an accident, I take it.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Lena—”
She placed a finger over his lips. “Save the groveling for tomorrow.”
He smiled and lifted his head. “Only if you promise to explain why you lied to me about the Frida Kahlo’s provenance.”
Lena’s heart sank. “Omission isn’t a lie.” When he opened his mouth to disagree, she stopped him with a kiss. Savored the slick glide of his tongue against hers.
He pulled away. “Trying to distract me?”
“Not working?”
“Let’s say, at the moment, I have a more powerful need to hear a bedtime story. One about how you came into possession of the original Self-Portrait with Braided Hair.”
Lena sat on the edge of the bed, and Rohan joined her, twining his fingers with hers. She soaked in his warmth, knowing it would be the last time he offered her comfort.
“Several years ago, Simon and I had a good-natured argument about whether or not I could create a reproduction that could fool the most discerning auction houses in New York City. My forgeries had already fooled our local art museums and private collectors, so I was feeling a bit full of myself.”
Rohan smiled. “I can relate.”
“I didn’t think much about it until a few weeks later when Simon brought me a high-quality print of Braided Hair and another painting from the same era.”
“What did you do with the other painting?”
“I stripped the paint off and reused the canvas and backing materials.” She braced herself for his judgment.
“To lend authenticity to the Kahlo?”
She nodded, even as a vise tightened around her chest.
“As an artist, you must have felt the impact of that down to the bone.”
Surprised he would understand, she stared at him, speechless.
“I know you, Lena. You wouldn’t have taken pleasure in the destruction of another’s art.”
“It wasn’t the first time, nor was it the last.”
“You met his challenge?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I put everything of myself into that reproduction.” She stared at the Kahlo propped against her red chair. “A week later, Simon came back with letters of authenticity from three separate authenticators. One of them from Sotheby’s.”
“Quite an accomplishment.”
“One of the best moments of my life. Only capped by Simon’s decision not to go through with the auction house sale. Instead, he hung the piece in his office.”
“When did you learn he’d switched your copy with the original at the Asheville Museum?”
“After he died. I found the provenance in his safe.”
“Did you never think to notify the museum of your discovery?”
She shook her head, knowing her story had killed any budding feelings he had for her. His family had built their business on returning stolen objects to their rightful owners. He’d become a hacker to right other’s wrongs.
Lena was the epitome of everything he must despise.
“I—I liked the idea of my work hanging in a museum. Pathetic, huh?”
“I imagine it’s every artist’s dream to view their work on a museum’s wall, much like it’s every author’s wish to see their book on a shelf in a bookstore.”
It was true. Even more so for someone like her who couldn’t seem to paint an original concept. “If you’ve changed your mind about keeping me company, I understand.”
“I haven’t.”
She glanced down at their clasped hands. “Rohan, I want you to know that I’m not proud of the work I did for Simon. Or rather, I’m not happy about the people we hurt. I wanted out, wanted to stop, but painting was all I knew. All I cared about.”
“Why did you never try to paint your own originals?”
Embarrassment squeezed her heart. “I tried after Simon died. But I had nothing. Still have nothing. It’s as if copying others’ work for so many years has stripped me of my creativity.” She smiled. Or tried to. “A just punishment for my sins.”
“You survived the best way you knew how. At the first opportunity, you set up a legitimate business and used your talent to bring joy into peoples’ homes.” He brushed a lock of hair away from her face. “Give yourself some grace.”
