Taken (38 page)

His name was Joel something. He was here a few months back, doing some research. He used to be a guard at the prison. He said Frankie told him where the money was. I asked him why he wasn’t rich then, and he just smiled.

He said he was working on it. I thought he was an idiot, but I suppose it’s possible he knew something. I think he was just trying to get me to talk, but you never know.”

Charlotte glanced at Kayla and Nick. “Is there anything else you want to ask before we go?”

“Just one question,” Nick said. He held out his hand, opening up his fingers to reveal a shiny gold cuff link.

“Any idea how this got into your secret room?”

Dana stared at the cuff link as if she’d never seen it before. “I have no idea. No one knows about that room.”

“Not even your sons?” Charlotte asked.

“Not even them. I’ve always kept boxes in front of that wall.” She paused. “I’ll walk you out.”

When they got to the car, Kayla asked the question burning in her brain: “What’s with the cuff link, Nick?

Why do you keep staring at it?”

“Because I think it’s mine,” he said, meeting her gaze.

“The only person who could have taken it is Evan, which means he was in that room. How did he know about it?

How did he get in? And why was he there?”

Just once she wished she could answer some of his questions.

Nick was still thinking about the cuff link later that night. He’d made a quick trip home to check, and sure
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enough one of the pair was missing, and the one he’d found at the club was a perfect match. Had Evan already found the coins? Or had Dana told them the truth when she said the room had been empty for years? Maybe Evan had just gone to check it out the way they had.

Kayla flopped down on the couch next to Nick. They were sitting in her grandmother’s living room, having spent most of the day putting the house back to rights and cooking a good dinner. Now Charlotte was upstairs getting ready for bed.

“I told Grandma I was going to sleep down here,” she said. “This couch pulls out into a bed.”

“I hope you told her that
we
were going to sleep down here,” he corrected. “I’m not leaving the two of you alone in this house.”

“I think we’ll be fine,” she said halfheartedly, but her eyes told another story.

“I’m staying,” he said. “Will it bother your grandmother if we sleep together?”

Kayla made a face. “A few weeks ago I would have said yes, but now, knowing what I know . . .” She shook her head.

“What she did is different from what she wants you to do,” Nick said. “You’re her granddaughter. She wants what’s best for you. That hasn’t changed.”

“I know, but what’s best for me is you, and I’m old enough to make that decision on my own.”

He looked into her eyes and saw a truth that scared the hell out of him. They hadn’t talked about what was happening between them. He’d been happy to delay that conversation. In fact, he’d like to put it off even longer.

“It’s okay,” Kayla said softly. “I know it’s too soon.”

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He didn’t want to ask, “Too soon for what?” He was afraid of what she would say.

“And there’s too much to think about,” she added. She smiled again. “The only time you get really nervous, Nick, is when I bring up something personal.”

“I’m not nervous,” he said.

“You promised not to lie to me.”

He looked into her warm brown eyes and knew she was right; he was lying. He
was
nervous, because she was getting to him in ways he’d never imagined. He’d always been able to keep his relationships at a distance, even the intimate ones. There were things he didn’t share, lines he didn’t cross, but Kayla was different. Since he’d met her there had been no lines, no boundaries, and not much distance between them. They’d been living in each other’s pockets.

They’d faced death together. They’d hit all the emotional high points two people could hit, and he couldn’t ignore the fact that he didn’t just want her; he was starting to need her.

That was what scared him the most. He’d never wanted to be part of a couple, a pair, but now he couldn’t seem to tear himself away from her.

Not that he could leave yet, he rationalized. Kayla might be in danger. She wouldn’t be safe until Evan was in jail. Until then, he was sticking by her side, even if she begged him to leave. But she wasn’t asking him to go.

She was looking at him as if she were starving and he were a big T-bone steak. He swallowed hard, trying to think with his brain and not with his body, which was telling him to get her clothes off as fast as possible.

“Nick,” she murmured, “you’re staring at me. Not that I don’t like it, but is there something on your mind?”

“I’m trying to remember that your grandmother is upstairs and these walls are very thin.”

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“We can be quiet.”

“Can we?” he teased.

She blushed. “I can try.”

“I don’t want you to try. I like it when you let go.”

“That seems to happen a lot where you’re —” She stopped abruptly, her eyes widening as she stared at something over his shoulder.

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s someone there,” she said, pointing to the window.

He turned his head quickly to see the vague image of a man outside the living room window. Jumping to his feet, he ran to the front door, cursing the time as he undid the new locks he’d put on Charlotte’s front door. When he got outside, he saw a dark figure running down the road.

He started down the street, but the man jumped into a car, an old sedan, and drove away. It was too dark to see a license plate, and he hadn’t gotten a good enough look at the man to recognize him, although he didn’t think it was Evan. He’d seemed darker and he’d run with an awkward gait, as if he had a bad knee.

As he turned to go back to the condo, Nick saw something lying on the ground. It was a wig, he realized as he picked it up, but it was too dark to see it clearly. When he returned to the condo, Kayla met him on the steps. “Did you see who it was?”

“No, did you?”

“He looked dark, Italian,” she said. “Older. God, Nick, do you think it was Johnny?”

Nick held up the wig in his hand. “Maybe not.”

“What do you mean?”

He motioned her back inside, shutting the door behind him. Then he took a good look at the wig in his hand. The
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hair was short, black peppered with gray. It was a man’s wig.

“Where did you find that?” Kayla asked.

“On the sidewalk.” He paused. “I don’t think Johnny was here last night. I think it was Evan in disguise.”

Kayla met his gaze. “It would certainly make more sense. I’m not sure I want to tell my grandmother, though. She wants to think Johnny is alive.”

“Let’s leave it alone until we know for sure,” Nick said. “I have to admit the guy running down the street tonight didn’t move like a young man.”

“So what are you thinking?”

“I have no idea,” he said in frustration. “Nothing is adding up. We’re trying to put pieces together, but they don’t fit. The picture coming together is wrong. I feel as if we’re missing something important. I just don’t know what it is.”

Kayla sighed. “I know what you mean. I run into this all the time when I’m trying to restore broken glass. If one piece is off, the whole thing doesn’t work. Sometimes it seems hopeless, but then when I least expect it, I find the right piece and everything fits together perfectly.”

“How long does that usually take?” Nick asked.

“Sometimes weeks,” she admitted.

“We don’t have weeks.”

She made a face at him. “I know that, but we have at least a night.” A sudden gleam came into her eyes. “I have an idea: We lay it out like a puzzle and try to put it together. Instead of trying to figure out what we don’t know, let’s concentrate on what we have.”

Nick followed her into the kitchen, where she pulled out paper, pens, and scissors. She sat down at the dining
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room table and proceeded to divide the paper into a dozen squares. Then she cut out each square and gave him an expectant look.

“Hey, this is your game,” he said.

“
Our
game,” she corrected. “We know there are four watches.” She took out four pieces of paper and wrote the numbers one, two, three, and four on separate pieces of paper. Then she proceeded to write down the owner of each watch and the phrase inscribed on that watch.

Nick sat down across from her and laid out the four pieces of paper in front of him. He wasn’t sure what order the phrases went in, but so far they had
of Heaven Await,
All the Riches,
and
Until the Day.
“I wonder if we put these phrases into the computer what we’d come up with.”

“Good question. Unfortunately, my grandmother doesn’t have a computer. If you want to run back to your house . . .”

As much as he was tempted to do just that, he was reminded that only a few moments earlier someone had been watching the house. “We’ll do it tomorrow,” he said.

“What else have we got?”

“All the people involved — Evan, my grandmother, you, me, Jenny, J.T.” She paused, pen in hand.

“Delores Ricci,” he continued. “Unknown assailant in Reno, Lisa Palmer, whoever cut our brakes.”

“My grandmother’s friends — the girls in the dance club.”

The tiny squares of paper were soon filled with writing. Nick moved them around and around, but the words just made his head spin. “I don’t think this is helping,” he said a moment later. “It just makes me realize how much we don’t know.”

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Kayla sat back with a yawn. “Then I guess we’ll have to go with plan B — sleep on it.”

“You go ahead,” I said. “I’ll study this a bit more. Besides, I want to make sure our intruder doesn’t come back.”

“I can stay up with you,” she offered.

He saw the shadows under her eyes and knew the stress of the past few days was taking its toll. She looked wiped out. He felt much the same way, yet there was so much adrenaline in his bloodstream, so much anger and frustration, he didn’t think he could relax long enough to sleep. “Go to sleep, Kayla. We’ll figure this out in the morning.”

“Or you’ll figure it out tonight,” she said with a confident smile.

“You have too much faith in me.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” she said with a seriousness that made his heart catch.

He didn’t want to let her down. He didn’t want to let himself down. But as he stared at the puzzle pieces, he knew he had no idea how to put them together.

21

Kayla’s dreams were filled with images from the past few days. Evan’s mocking smile kept popping up. Then she’d feel an arm coming around her neck, threatening to choke off her breath, hear that deep, husky voice demanding to know where the watch was. As soon as she tried to rid that image from her head, another one replaced it. She was driving down the mountain with Nick, and the car was going faster and faster. She could hear herself screaming as they ran off the road.

She tossed and turned, trying not to think about anything. But she couldn’t get comfortable on her grandmother’s sofa bed, and every time she reached for Nick, he wasn’t there.

It was shocking to realize how close they’d gotten. He was the first person she wanted to talk to in the morning and the last person at night, and every time something happened, she had to know what he thought. He was as essential to her as the air she breathed, and it worried her that they’d become so entwined in such a short time.

She didn’t want to be a fool for love again. Not that she was in love, she told herself. But the denial sounded
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weak. Nick might think she was casual about sex, but she knew she wasn’t. Her emotions had been involved from the start, from the very first kiss. Oh, sure, maybe she had kissed him in the beginning to get back at Evan, but the second their lips had touched, her motives had changed.

She wasn’t as sure about Nick’s motives. She knew he was physically attracted to her, and that was probably all he’d needed to make love to her. Would he be able to leave her bed as quickly and as easily as he’d gotten into it? She was afraid the answer would be yes. She told herself not to think about it. There were other, more pressing matters that should be in her brain, not her personal relationship with Nick.

She just needed to sleep, rest, regroup. Sometime in the night she must have drifted off. When she woke up, the sun was streaming through the downstairs blinds, and Nick was asleep at the dining room table, his head on his arms, the puzzle pieces still spread out around him. She got up, showered, dressed, and made coffee, and still he slept. She hated to wake him, but she had to get her grandmother to a follow-up appointment with her personal physician.

“Nick,” she said gently, putting her hand on his shoulder. “Time to wake up.”

He awoke with a start, his eyes wild, his muscles tensed as if he were ready to jump into the middle of a fight. Nick was certainly not a man to sit on the sidelines.

His gaze slowly focused on her face. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, it’s morning. I have to take my grandmother to the doctor.”

“Right.” He ran a hand through his tousled hair. “Let me just use the bathroom, splash some water on my face, and I’ll be right back.”

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“You don’t have to go with us. I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

He shot her a look that told her she was wasting her breath and then disappeared into the downstairs bathroom.

“What’s all this?” Charlotte asked, entering the room and coming over to the table.

“We were trying to piece together all the information we have.”

“Any luck?”

Kayla stared down at the puzzle, in particular the piece of paper that said
Frankie’s watch.
It was the only one still missing. It had to be the key. “I don’t think so.”

“You’ll figure it out,” Charlotte said.