Then You Hide (24 page)

Hallefreakinlujah . She was at the beach. Moving more slowly, she pushed through the foliage until it cleared at a wide strip of sand and rolling waves. She followed the beach about a quarter of a mile, to a cliffside where a huge cement deck jutted out over the sand, supported by thick, round columns that ran at angles into the side of the cliff.

Nicholas Vex’s house is in St. Barts.

Was it possible? Was that where Bones had been planning to take them…or could the house up there be a refuge? Somewhere she could find a phone and help? What were her options? Wander through the jungle, attempt to swim around the island to safety…

And all the time, Russell Winslow—armed and murderously dangerous—could be ten feet away, looking for her.

She lifted the pistol that weighed her right arm down. She’d learned a little in the last few days; she could hear Wade’s sweet drawl in her ears.
Move slow and smart, not fast and stupid
.

Wade would formulate a plan. Then he’d probably kill whoever got in his way. Right now, that plan made real sense.

Her plan was simply to find out who was up there. Someone she could trust or someone she might need to…shoot?

She scrambled through the brush to the rocky cliff, slipping in her sandals but ascending fairly rapidly, holding the gun in one hand and using her other to pull herself up the rocks until she was about ten feet from the underside of the house. Sweat rolled down her back, and her lungs felt as if they would burst, but she was finally close enough to see some light. And hear the low timbre of a man’s gruff voice.

Russell?

She closed her eyes to listen, the way she’d seen Wade do, her left hand quivering with exhaustion as she gripped a gnarled root.

“Please, please. I had no idea what I was getting into.” The woman’s voice bounced off the concrete and echoed into the night. “I was just trying to find my friend, that’s why I was outside. I swear to God!”

Stella?
Vanessa’s blood rushed from her head, literally making her dizzy.

Stella Feldstein was in this house?

“For the last time,” a man said, “shut up, or I will shoot you.”

Not
a
man. The man. Marcus Razor, sounding as exasperated as he did in a staff meeting. For an instant, Vanessa felt safe, ready to cry out for help. But why would she trust Marcus? He was deeply involved in this. No doubt in partnership with Russell, probably selling stock on EPA insider information for who knows how long.

The fact was, she couldn’t trust anyone.

Except Stella, who was an innocent victim. And Wade, who couldn’t possibly know where she’d been taken.

She inched the gun closer to her face to take a good look at it. How the hell did she work this thing? She ran her fingers along the grip, reading the word on the side.
Ruger.
She’d heard of that kind of gun. It felt like it sounded: chunky and mean.

There was a little latch on the side. A safety? Would it fire if she didn’t switch that? Could she kill herself with it if she did?

“I want to get out of here!” Stella hollered. “I don’t have anything to do with this, and I want to get out of here!”

Yes! Let the poor woman go, or I’ll…

Kill you?

Would she? Could she? She had the means. She had the motive. And if she got lucky, she could make the opportunity. Would that make her a murderer?

Like Eileen Stafford? Like Wade Cordell?

Something scraped the concrete above her, and Vanessa looked up at the patio. She was almost close enough to pull herself under the overhang and hoist herself up. But she needed two free hands—and one of them clutched a gun.

“Helllllp—” Stella’s scream was stopped midway.

Praying she wouldn’t shoot herself, Vanessa gingerly slipped the gun barrel into the waistband of her skirt. She pulled herself up a few feet, grasped a rock, then shimmied closer to the cement, her bare legs scraping stones and dirt. Clenching her jaw so she wouldn’t make a sound, she reached as far as she could.

Using all her strength, she managed to brace herself enough to peer over the edge of the cement. Marcus stood over Stella, who was wild-eyed and tied to a chair. Ready to rock forward and attack, Vanessa froze in mid-move as someone shoved open a sliding glass door and Russell marched onto the patio. Alone.

Oh, God, was Clive dead?

“She’s out there!” he hollered, furious. “That bitch got away, and she’s out there!”

She lowered herself an inch, her mind whirring. She should run. She should hide. She should scoot down the hill twice as fast as she came up it, dive into the ocean, and swim to the next freaking island.

“Please,” Stella whimpered. “Please let me go. I won’t tell anyone anything. I swear. I promise.”

“Did she see you?” Marcus asked.

“Hell, yes,” Russell replied. “She knows everything.”

“You fucking idiot. Go find her,” Marcus ordered. “Find her and…and do whatever you have to do. Hurry up, before you make another mistake.”

Was Marcus ordering her
death
? Her boss? Her mentor? Fury pushed her up again.

Russell looked daggers at Marcus. “The only mistake I made was going into business with you.”

“I’m done now. This is out of control.
You
are out of control. This started as a good scheme, dropping hints about EPA tests on products, then reaping the benefits when the stock fell. But Christ, no one should have
died
. Now look where we are.”

Russell lifted an enormous shoulder. “I’m dead, have a new ID and shitloads of money. I don’t know where you are.”

“Running a company into the ground.”

“Hey, shit happens,” Russell said. “I didn’t think Clive would tell Charlie. He was just supposed to be a conduit to you and take the rap if we got caught. But Charlie was one loose cannon. Nasty little bitch, that one.”

“Well, you took care of her, didn’t you? Took all your miserable anger out on that poor woman.”

Russell’s face reddened. “She shouldn’t have fought me. She shouldn’t have pissed me off.”

“She didn’t even know that much,” Marcus shot back. “She knew a sliver of what was going on, just enough to make her dangerous. And why the fuck did you have to drag Clive into it? God, you slept with the guy. You know he’s not made like that.”

Russell snorted with disgust. “Well, now I’m dead, and I don’t care.”

“How long do you think it’ll take them to figure out that you’re not really dead? They don’t have a body yet, just an ID and a car you rented. You’re leaving a trail of dead bodies a mile long, and someone is going to figure it out.”

“Don’t worry. I know how to get rid of those bodies, how to fly that chopper, and how to get myself lost in Indonesia. I only have to get rid of some evidence—starting with Vanessa Porter.”

“You’re going to kill one person too many,” Marcus spat. “Do whatever you need to do, Winslow. I’ll keep your dirty secret, but I’m out of here.”

He turned and started toward the house, and Russell lifted the gun and aimed at his back.

“No!” Vanessa shouted as the shot exploded. Marcus fell, Stella screamed, and Russell whipped around to where Vanessa hung, the gun aimed directly at her.

She fell a few feet, making a noisy landslide. The gun loosened from her waistband, and she managed to yank it out with one hand and stop her fall by grabbing a branch with the other. She could hear Russell’s footsteps as he bounded over the concrete toward her.

There was no cover, nowhere to hide, so she just leaned back, raised the gun, and prayed to God it would fire. Because the second his face came over the edge, she’d pull the trigger. His head popped over the edge of the patio, looking too high to see her.

Her hand quivering so hard she could hardly aim, she put her finger on the trigger.
This is murder. This is murder
.

He saw her.

She clenched her entire body and squeezed.

And nothing happened. A second later, a bullet whizzed past her ear with a jaw-cracking noise. She threw herself farther under the overhang but was still an easy target.

He aimed again, and she stared at the barrel of the gun and the eyes of the killer behind it. This was it. She was dead.

She closed her eyes…and heard the shot.

But there was no pain, no darkness, no…

Above her, his body thumped. She opened her eyes and saw Russell’s gun tumble as he fell to the edge, blood dribbling out of a small red dot in the back of his head—the apricot.

She dropped her useless weapon, squinting into the darkness of the mountain, disbelieving but knowing exactly who had saved her.

He appeared out of the darkness, the rifle in his hands as natural as a mother carrying a baby. His eyes were trained directly on her, his expression all business.

“Wade!” She reached for him, aching to hold him. He pulled her up, easily supporting her with his free arm, his gun pressed against her as firmly as his body. She lifted her face to plaster him with kisses and gratitude, but he quieted her with one finger to her lips.

“I have to tell you something,” he said.

“Just tell me you love me right now as much as I love you. That’s all that matters.” She kissed his cheeks, his mouth, his wonderful, brilliant, slow, and deliberate self. “Because I do,” she said. “I love you. I
love
you.”

He didn’t smile or react. “You need to listen to me.” His voice was far too ominous for his message to be anything she wanted to hear. “Your father was not a victim of random violence.”

She just blinked at him, her mind blank.

“He was murdered by someone who followed him from the jail where Eileen Stafford is. He was killed because she told him something. Probably the real identity of the killer.”

“Oh, my God.”

“And Vanessa…” His expression softened as he touched her face gently. “There’s more. It’s about…your sister.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE AFTERMATH HAD
taken six endless, miserable days. Six days of interrogations and interviews, meetings with the police and the SEC, briefings with the EPA, depositions with the cruise-line owners who’d inexplicably let Clive and Bones board a ship though they weren’t passengers. Six days of compiling answers to questions Vanessa didn’t even know to ask.

Slowly, the truth emerged, and Vanessa and Wade pieced together what they’d been through. While Bones was trying to send them away from Clive, Marcus and Russell wanted her to find him so that they could, too. As a safety net, Russell started planting clues to make Clive look guilty of the murder. When the scandal broke, Vex figured out enough to fly down to the islands and confront Marcus, but Russell swooped in and ended that meeting before it started.

The packs of hungry reporters who’d descended on St. Barts and Nevis were starved for news about the EPA-Vexell scandal, but the only news Vanessa wanted to hear was about Clive, recuperating in a hospital in San Juan with Gideon Bones, and Marcus Razor, who was paralyzed for life but able to fill in all the holes before he spent the rest of his life in jail. Stella was doing interviews on the cable channels, gaining a million new fans and friends in the process.

But six days of hell also meant six nights in the arms of the only man Vanessa could imagine next to her during this nightmare.

Finally, after the authorities had every morsel of information they could eke out of Vanessa and Wade and had pieced together the scheme of insider trading Marcus and Russell had devised, they were free to leave.

And there was only one place Vanessa could go. After all, she’d made a deal.

After having been searched and interrogated yet again, Vanessa waited on a wooden bench in a windowless room in the bowels of the Camille Griffin Graham Correctional Institute.

Waiting to meet the woman who’d given birth to her.

The guard said she’d be right back to take her to Wade, who presumably endured his own search, along with the man who’d picked them up when the plane landed, Jack Culver.

The door creaked open, and she looked up, expecting the guard.

“Hi. Are you Vanessa?” A woman stepped into the room, the fluorescent lights picking up gold in her long auburn hair and casting a shadow over her delicate features. The eyes that met hers were sky-blue and wide, and the skin glowed with the look of someone happy, healthy, and well loved.

She opened her mouth to speak but just stood instead, slowly taking in every detail and feature, aware that the woman was doing the same.

They exhaled softly at the same time.

“Miranda.” Vanessa took a step forward, the unfamiliar instinct to reach out and hug a perfect stranger actually making her arms ache. But she didn’t.

The woman nodded, as tentative as she, her eyes a little moist. “Yes. I’m Miranda Lang. I’m your sister.”

They both stared, tears and smiles at war. Then Miranda stepped forward with extended arms, and Vanessa returned the embrace with a force Stella would have been proud of.

This was how they were born, Vanessa thought, a lump making it hard for her to swallow. Next to each other.

But something was missing.
Someone
was missing.

Miranda eased back, tears trickling down her cheeks. “It feels incomplete, doesn’t it?”

Vanessa nodded quickly. “Silly, since I didn’t even know you—or she—existed.”

Miranda gave her a squeeze and held tight. “I don’t know if you feel the way I do, but ever since I found out we were triplets, I had this…this fantasy. That the three of us would be reunited, and I don’t know…” She swiped the tears that flowed freely now. “Act like sisters.”

Vanessa smiled. “We
are
sisters. We don’t have to act.”

There was a tap on the door, and Wade’s smile greeted her, next to him a strapping man with the golden eyes of a lion and a mane to match.

“Vanessa,” Wade said. “This is Adrien Fletcher, the man who found Miranda.”

“Pleasure’s mine.” His smile was warm and genuine. “Call me Fletch.”

“Before I go in,” Vanessa said, taking Wade’s hand and instinctively pulling him closer, “I’d like Miranda to see what’s left of the tattoo since I had it lasered off.”

“I’m rather adept at finding them,” Fletch said with a quick smile at Miranda. “Let’s have a look-see.”

She turned her back to them, lifting her hair.

“Here,” Wade said, his familiar fingers slipping into her nape to part her hair.

“It’s not quite in the center,” she said, tapping a little to the left. “There’s no pigment where the tattoo was. According to the dermatologist, she used India ink. I could have had the skin removed completely, and there wouldn’t have been a scar, but…I didn’t.”

“Look at that,” Miranda said. “Totally different from mine.”

“Like two little squiggles, right?” Her mother had told her when she was young that it was the mark of an adopted child, and she’d always hated it.

“It’s hard to tell,” Fletch said, “but it looks like two sixes or curled ribbons.”

“Here, look at mine.” Miranda stepped around and turned her back to Vanessa.

“Hi,” Vanessa read as Fletch revealed the spot. “Someone with a very strange sense of humor.”

The door opened, and Jack stepped in. “Ladies. We can go see Eileen now. But they’ll only let three people in.”

“I’m sure Vanessa would like to go with Wade and her sister,” Fletch suggested.

The term curled through Vanessa, foreign and scary and a little wonderful, too. “I’d like that.” She reached for Miranda’s hand and smiled. She still had issues with Eileen Stafford but not with Miranda.

Wade kept his arm around her as they walked down a hallway, went outside, and followed a concrete path to the medical eval unit.

“Ready?” he asked, tightening his arm protectively.

She nodded, and the three of them entered, and followed one more hallway, stopping outside an open door.

“I know she’s in a coma,” Miranda said, taking Vanessa’s hand in her slender fingers. “But I think she can hear us. So you can talk to her.”

Vanessa nodded, squared her shoulders, and stepped into the room. One bed was empty, and for a moment, she thought the other was, too. Then she saw a bald, shriveled woman with IVs connected to her arms and an oxygen tube up her nose. She was as pale as the sheets and impossibly small.

Miranda’s grip tightened in empathy with the emotional waterfall cascading through Vanessa.

“Eileen,” Miranda said loudly as though a slightly deaf but wide-awake old woman lay in the bed. “This is Vanessa Porter. Your other daughter.”

Not the slightest response.

Vanessa’s throat went bone-dry, and her palms did the opposite.

“Go ahead,” Miranda said with the tiniest nudge. “Talk to her.”

“Hello, Eileen,” she said, clearing her voice. “I…we…”

Miranda smiled encouragingly, as though she expected Vanessa to shed tears and fall to her knees and somehow thank the fates for bringing them all together. But all she wanted to do was run.

She took one step closer, memorized Eileen’s face, and nodded. “All right. I’ve met her. Do the blood test, and let me out of here.”

She turned and walked out of the room.

When Vanessa heard the soft vibration of Wade’s cell phone on the nightstand, she opened her eyes to look at the clock. No good news got delivered at 4:07 a.m. Instinctively, she tightened her legs around him and held his arm where her face pressed against his shoulder. But he sat straight up.

She propped herself up on her elbow as he lifted the phone from next to his gun.

“It’s Jack,” he said as he flipped it open. “Yeah?” He was still for a moment, then reached to touch her bare shoulder, running his hand slowly down her arm and closing his fingers over hers.

Eileen was dead—Vanessa just knew it. She never came out of the coma, so she couldn’t get the transplant of Vanessa’s bone marrow, and she was dead.

“She’s awake,” he whispered. “She’s awake, talking, and getting the transplant procedure later today.”

Vanessa fell back onto the pillows with a thud. Confusion, the only word she could use to describe her emotions where Eileen Stafford was concerned, burned her gut.

“What?” Wade asked, his voice as sharp as the look he gave Vanessa. “No. That’s ridiculous. She’s not going up there, and she’s not going to South Carolina.” He listened, then said, “She doesn’t need to explain it to you, Jack. She’s talked to Miranda, and frankly, that’s the only person in the mix who matters.”

Well, Eileen mattered. Vanessa pushed that thought away, concentrating on how beautifully Wade defended her position.

“That’s not good enough,” Wade said in response to something that obviously riled a man who didn’t rile easily. “She’s given plenty to your cause, Jack. Bone-marrow cells, for one thing. Good—” He hesitated, narrowing his eyes. “Are you
kidding
me?”

Vanessa sat up. “What?” she asked.

He held up a finger for her to wait. “Listen,” he said, his voice softer now. “I’ll tell her, but don’t hold your breath.” He shut the phone, put it back, then settled down next to her, maddeningly silent.

“What is it?” she demanded again. “She’s awake. She’s getting the transplant. What else did he say, Wade?”

He repositioned himself on the pillow, then tugged her down to his chest, even though she resisted the pull.

“Don’t go all Southern slow on me, dammit! I want to know what the
hell
that call was about.”

“He wants you to go up to Lucy’s today and let him examine your tattoo scar again.”

“Oh, please. Take a picture, and e-mail it to him.”

“That would probably work.”

“Why does he need it?”

“Because,” he said, drawing the word out, “when Eileen learned that two of her three daughters had been located, she said the tattoos had the answer Jack wants. The killer.”

Vanessa practically choked. “Why is she being so damn coy about it? Why has she sat in jail for thirty years if she knows who the killer is? This is just
bullshit
!” She punched the pillow with the last exclamation, but he grabbed her wrist and pulled her to him.

“What if there is a connection to your father’s death? And your sister’s?”

She was silent.

“Lucy’s calling an all-staff meeting for the Bullet Catchers who are in driving distance today. That’s very rare; it means the assignment is massive and urgent.”

“Are you going up?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “I told her I’d come up this week anyway and make a decision on her offer. I might as well make it today.”

“Have you made a decision?”

He turned to her, his eyes clear and blue and cutting right through her. “I’ve thought about it.”

“And what do you think?”

“That it could take me away from you. A lot.”

She released the breath she didn’t know she was holding. “Work takes me away from you a lot,” she said. “Especially now that Clive is back and we’re starting this firm together. Anyway,” she said, forcing the words out, “you shouldn’t make lifelong decisions based on your feelings for someone you’ve known for a month.”

His laugh was dry. “Says the woman who moves like a bullet out of a forty-five.”

“Not about love.”

He blew out a breath. “I need to know where you stand, Vanessa. I need to know if you love me.”

“I told you—up on that mountain in St. Barts. I told you I loved you then.”

“I’d just saved your life. It doesn’t count. You’ve never said it since.”

She reached for him, pulled him toward her bare body, and curled a leg around his. “I’ll
make love
to you, how’s that?”

He resisted the kiss. “That’s not what I mean.”

“C’mon, Wade. This is good enough, isn’t it? We’re together. We’re a team. We do the good thing and have fun.” She added a deep kiss, reaching down to stroke the erection he always had when he awoke. “We’ll do it your way, Billy Wade. Slow and sweet and easy.”

His hands closed over her breasts as he returned the kiss, sliding on top of her in that familiar, exciting, perfect place. She spread her legs, closing her eyes to block out everything but his achingly hard body and the pleasure of him inside her.

But he didn’t go inside her. Instead, he lifted his body and looked down with something tough in his eyes.

“Come on, Wade,” she urged gently.

“No.” He flipped off her, stealing her heaven and all that warmth and hardness. “I can’t.”

She circled the smooth head of his manhood, certain she could distract him from this conversation, the way she had a hundred times already. “Feels like you can.”

He faced the ceiling and closed his eyes. “I won’t. How’s that?”

Vanessa shot up. “Why? Because I don’t want you to make lifelong decisions based on a sexual relationship?”

He snorted softly, then faced her, his eyes fierce. “I can’t, because until you give up all that hate you carry around, Vanessa, you
can’t
make love. You can’t
love
. You can fuck, and you can play, and you can have ‘a sexual relationship.’ But you can’t make love. And call me an old-fashioned Southern boy, but that’s what I want.”

He whipped himself out of bed and strode into the bathroom, closed the door, and turned on the shower.

She wanted to follow him. Wanted to climb into that shower and show him just how well she’d learned to…love. But she closed her eyes and finally gave in to the tears she’d waited a month to shed.

Bitter, hot tears of anger and regret and grief. They flowed as long as his shower did, feeling like a lifetime of crying, probably because it was.

When he came out of the bathroom, she reached for her glasses to hide her tear-reddened eyes but stopped. Instead, she hooked her hair behind her ears and looked right at him. “Are you going up to Lucy’s?”

“Yes. You wanna come with me? Just for the ride?”

She sighed. “I have to work. The new offices are still a wreck, and Clive needs me to be there.”

“Of course he does.”

Her heart tumbled. “When will you be back?”