Uncovered (23 page)

When he pulled away, his hands were still
in my hair, and I refused to let go of him. “Get your closure,” he told me once
more, his breath heavy, his blue eyes darkening. “Get your closure and take
everything that belongs to you.”

But as we sat there mesmerized by each
other, the knots twisting in the pit of my stomach told me that closure meant
losing him completely.

*

When
I walked through the doors at Emerson & Taylor Monday morning, greeting
Carl at the security desk and trying not to stare too hard at the photo of Mom
in the lobby, I knew my days as Lizzie Connelly were gradually coming to a
close. I knew too much now—and the person who’d pushed me into this was also aware
of everything. Now, it was only a matter of time.

And I was ready for that day to come.

As I finished up my lunch shortly after
noon, a knock on my door interrupted me. I rolled my chair over to answer it, but
it opened slowly, and my expression hardened when Stella tiptoed in.

“Can I help you?” I said through a tight
smile.

Her shoulders quaked. “I wanted to come
by and personally say I’m sorry, Lizzie.”

“I understand.” But of course I didn’t.
Since Linc had refused to detail the extent of Stella’s involvement in this
giant charade, I was left in the dark. “If you’ll excuse me, I have—”

My office phone rang. Grateful for the
intrusion, I plucked it off the hook and held it to my ear. “Emerson &
Taylor, Lizzie—”

“Ms. Connelly, I need you in my office
right now,” Margaret snapped, hanging up immediately.

“Of course, I’m on my way right now,” I
said to the dial tone. Standing up, I straightened the hem of my crewneck
sweater. “Sorry, but we’ll have to do this later,” I told Stella, the
irritation in my voice faltering.

Even though I didn’t know her exact role
in Linc’s plans, I couldn’t be cruel to her. Not when there was a possibility
he’d used her too.

“Email me if you want to speak.” She
paused at the door, the regret overflowing on her features punching me in the
stomach. “I really am sorry.”

I watched her walk away, inhaling and
exhaling. Once I gathered my bearings, I marched into Margaret’s office to find
her in the process of loading her briefcase, her motions jerky and quick.

Where the hell was she going?

“Clear out my schedule for the rest of
the afternoon.” She didn’t look up to acknowledge me. “I had a change of plans
and won’t be in the office until much later this evening.”

I wanted to know what changed, but I
moved my head up and down. “I’ll do it right now.”

“Good enough.” Holding her briefcase
tightly against her body, she flicked her blue eyes up to mine and pinched her
lips.  “Feel free to take the rest of the day off.”

“There’s nothing else you need me to do?”

She breezed past me gripping her purse
and briefcase tightly. “No, there isn’t. Be here at nine thirty tomorrow, Ms.
Connelly.”

*

I
worried all the way home over whether or not I’d made a mistake telling Oliver
that Margaret was being investigated. Pen wasn’t around when I stepped into my
apartment, but she’d left a short note on the refrigerator.

Off doing some work for my boss back in
Vegas at the L.A. branch (yeah, I know you’re surprised). I’ll be in late this
evening, so let me know if you want me to bring dinner.

Going to my bedroom, I changed out of my
office clothes, texting Oliver in the process.

What we talked about last night—that was
private, right?

I was shrugging out of my pants and
reaching for a pair of PINK sweats when he responded less than a minute later.

Easton is the only person who knows about
you, but I would never share our private conversations with him. Is something
wrong?

After I told him that everything was
fine, he remained silent. For the next hour, I read over some of the files Pen
had obtained on Finley Scott, searching for anything that might prove our
suspicions right. Every few seconds, I glanced at my phone, hoping Oliver would
message.

When a text finally did come through a
couple hours later, I felt giddy as I checked it, but my excitement immediately
dwindled when Linc’s name showed up on my screen. Apparently, now that he’d
revealed himself, he had no issue messaging my Lizzie phone, which
automatically set my teeth on edge.

Remember when you said you’d help? I’m
ready for you now. Be at this address in an hour.

There was a part of me that wanted to hover
my finger over the delete button and get rid of his message, but I needed this
to be over. I needed the closure Oliver had suggested I get. A few seconds
later Linc texted the address.

Releasing a sigh of defeat, I gathered
the Finley paperwork and took it back to my bedroom where I returned it to the
nightstand drawer overflowing with information. Then I re-dressed.

*

“Is
this your surveillance room,” I asked Linc an hour later when he let me into
the hotel room just around the corner from Emerson & Taylor. “I always
thought you all did that in a van.”

“We do have a van,” Linc said, none of
the emotion he’d displayed at the end of last week present in his voice because
some of his colleagues were around. “But for right now, we’re going to brief
you here.”

“What do you need me to do?”

 “Margaret is leaving in a couple days.”
This was a surprise to me, but I nodded nonetheless. “She’ll be in her office
tonight. It’s time for us to finish this.”

“I’m ready,” I said. “Just tell me how to
do this.”

“I’m
still pissed at you,” I informed Linc as the technician ran a test on the watch
they’d placed on my wrist. “I looked up to you like you were my brother, and
you used me. You used Stella, too, but I doubt she realizes that.”

Pinching the bridge of his nose, he moved
his head to either side. “Gemma, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

The technician motioned for me to move
around the hotel room, and I complied, keeping my scathing focus on Linc the
entire time. “Let’s just get this over with. You already have enough, so what exactly
do you need
me
to do?”

“Make sure she admits to the
embezzlement.”

  Releasing a frustrated cry, I spun
around to face him. “Because I can just walk in and she’ll lay all her shit out
on the table.”

“No.” Linc gave me a pleading look, and
for a moment, I felt horrible for giving him such a hard time about this. He wanted
Margaret put away just as much as I did, but did he have to completely hoodwink
me to accomplish the task? “What you’re going to do is walk in there and tell
her what you know. Tell her you’re prepared to offer your silence in exchange
for—”

My breath caught, and I felt a scarlet
flush dance across my skin. “So go in and be a gold-digging whore?”

“Gemma—”

“Don’t worry,” I cut him off sharply. “I’m
all over it.”

*

“You’re
working late,” I said with a tight smile as I sauntered into Margaret’s office a
few hours later. I prayed that my movements were smooth—that the tremor I felt
in my muscles wasn’t present in my voice. “Getting caught up for the holidays?”

She was on the phone, and she looked up
from the paperwork on her desk. “Oliver, I’ll have to call you back.” Regarding
me, Margaret stretched her mouth into a thin line. “Did you leave something in
the office when I sent you home for the day?”

“I did.” Reaching inside my purse, the
watch on my wrist clacked against my delicate bones when I withdrew the damning
documents Linc had instructed me to give her. I shoved them across the desk
until they wrinkled under her palm.

“What is this?”

“Just read it.”

Lifting the pages close to her face, she
studied them carefully, her back gradually stiffening with silent rage.  “What
do you think you’re doing, Ms. Connelly?”

“I know what you’ve been doing with the
charity and company funds,” I stated confidently as I took the seat across from
her, sat back, and crossed my legs. “If you can afford to give Michael Scott
millions, you can afford my price. Unless, of course, you want me to go public
with this.”

She flashed clenched porcelain veneers at
me. “You little—”

“I’d prefer not to be called names,” I told
her sharply. I pulled another piece of paper—a much smaller note—from my bag
and tossed it in her direction. It fluttered to rest by her keyboard. Unfolding
it, she glared down at the sum and the banking information. “Five million is a
drop in the bucket for you.”

“You came to my company to spy on and
extort me?” Her voice was low and dangerous, and I bit the inside of my lip.

Uncover, expose, and get the hell out of
here,
I reminded myself,
ignoring the desire to get up and leave right then and there.

“I came here because I loved fashion. And
then I found out that you’ve turned an amazing brand into a pit of lies and
corruption.” I pointed to the smaller paper. “
Now
I want you to pay me
to keep those lies and corruption all to myself.”

Breathing heavily, she flicked her thumb
over the edge of the post-it. I held my breath as she considered her options.
Eventually, she waved her hand almost dismissively; reminding me of all the
times she’d waved me out of her office. “Done.”

I swallowed the fear in my throat. “That
simple?”

“Yes.” Her voice showed no sign of worry,
and it pissed me off that she was this calm about what she and Michael Scott
had done. “I have absolutely no patience when it comes to dealing with whores
who march into my office with demands. If you had put half as much effort into
your job, Ms. Connelly, you could have done great things with this company.”

“If you didn’t drive it into the ground
before I got a chance.” At her icy stare, I leaned forward. “I want that money
in my account tonight.”

“As I said before,
done
. Then you
leave town, and you never mention my name again.”

“Deal.” I pulled my purse onto my
shoulder. “I want to know one more thing before I go.”

Waiting for me to speak, she shifted her
eyebrows. “What would that be?”

“When you and Michael Scott forged your
late husband’s will—what made you think nobody would ever find out?”

Finally, an emotion other than anger
crossed her features. She was afraid. Her nostrils flaring, she held my
gaze—her blue eyes at war with my dark eyes. I knew that Linc was probably
freaking out right now, but I didn’t care.

I’d done what he asked me to do, and
now—now I was doing something for myself.

“Who the hell are you?” she demanded, shoving
away from her desk. She stalked around to me, seething. “Just who the hell do
you think you are?”

Although I stood to block her blows, her
fingers dug into my shirt, jerking me to her. She grabbed my wrist, and slowly,
realization dawned on her face. She closed her hand around the watch. “Who are
you?”

“Get off!” I shoved her away, causing her
to stumble into the desk, but not before she ripped the jewelry from my arm.
She hurled it across the room, where it slammed into the wall and shattered
into dozens of pieces.

“You were recording me,” she stated in a
dull voice. “You’re not here for money at all.”

I shook my head, following her movements
as she walked to the window. She was probably looking for the agents that were
bound to show up at any minute now that she’d broken the wire.

“Gregory Emerson was my father,” I said.

“Gemma.” Both syllables dripped with
scorn. “Gemma Emerson.”

“Yes. And I want to know why you changed
my father’s will.”

When she finally spoke, her words chilled
my blood. “Because he was a sorry son-of-a-bitch who deserved everything that
happened to him.”

 I took a step backward, my hands flying
to my throat. “Margaret … did you kill him?”

Suddenly, the call from Linc crept into
my thoughts.
"My
father died of a heart attack, and he left everything to his wife,"
I’d told him. But now, with her silence
and what she’d said just a moment ago, I was almost one hundred percent sure
I’d found another terrifying layer to the truth I’d been so desperate to
uncover.

“You killed him,” I said again—this time my
words a statement, the harsh reality of it slamming into me one damning blow at
a time. Her comment echoed through my mind.

Your father deserved everything that
happened to him.

She dropped her blond head against the window.
Although her back was turned to me, I knew that if I could see her face right
now, the expression I’d witness wouldn’t be one of denial. It would be disgust.
Her thin shoulders shaking inside her immaculate designer dress, she curled her
fingers on the glass. In spite of the brutal pulses pounding my ears, I heard
her quiet weeping, but still there was no doubt in my mind she had murdered my
dad.

Taking a shaky step away from her, I
wrapped my arms over my stomach. “You
killed
him, and then you took
everything
from me.”

“He had it coming,” she muttered. Every
muscle, every vein, in my body felt like it was slowly shutting down. Was it
possible Linc was getting any of this? Or had I lost him when Margaret had
ripped the watch off my wrist?

“Do you know what kind of man your father
was, Gemma?” she questioned.

From everything I’d heard from Margaret
and had discovered on my own over the past couple months, I did. My father had
been a womanizer. He’d cheated on my mother and Margaret and probably his first
wife too. But God, he hadn’t deserved to go before his time.

I took another step back and then a
couple more. I couldn’t stand close to her. I
wouldn’t
.  Because the
nearer I was to Margaret, the more likely I was to do something erratic before
Linc burst through the French doors.

“How did you do it?” I rubbed my palm
harshly over my chest, like the motion would somehow force the words to break
through the painful lump that had formed in my windpipe. “How was it possible
for you to get away with murder and still win everything?”

Margaret turned to me slowly, the corners
of her cornflower blue eyes glistening with tears. “I. Didn’t. Win.” She
stalked to her desk, bending over the massive structure of glass with her head
down and her hair falling over her flushed face. “You think because you lost, I
won? How incredibly selfish of you, child.”

 Ignoring her jab, I clutched the white
sculpture in the center of the office, holding on to it for support. All I had
to do was keep her talking until Linc arrived. Screw with her head while every
little word she said killed a piece of me.

“Why did you kill him?” I glanced at the remnants
of the watch and tremulous cry of frustration ripped from the back of my
throat. “There’s nothing stopping you from telling me the truth now, so you
might as well get it out.”

Casting her own gaze down at the broken
wire, a smile trembled her thin lips. “Then why does it matter if you can’t
prove a damn thing I say at this point?”

She was right, it didn’t matter if I
could prove whether or not she played a role in my dad’s death, but I wanted to
sleep at night. I wanted to sleep knowing that every piece of this awful,
heart-ripping puzzle had been shoved into place.

I dug my fingers into a jagged edge of
the abstract sculpture and held my head high. “I’ve proven enough,” I sneered.
“And if that sends your ass away for ten, fifteen years, that’s good enough for
me. I can prove what you did to
me
. I can prove—”

Quicker than I could blink, my stepmother
jerked open the top drawer of her desk, reaching inside. A flinch jerked
through my body when the barrel of a pistol stared back at me. The triumphant
twist of her mouth sent my pulse racing at an excruciating speed.  

She had a gun.

She had a gun, and she was pointing it
right at me like she didn’t care that the FBI would burst in at any moment to
take her down for everything she and Michael Scott had done over the last
several years. I wanted to believe she wouldn’t use it—God, I wanted to believe
that—but she was a captive animal right now, and that made her a terrifyingly
dangerous force.

Placing her other hand on the pistol, she
started around her desk, each tap of her heels on the onyx floor challenging
the deafening thunder of my heartbeat.  “You broke into my business—” she
began, sounding like she was trying to give herself permission to shoot me.

“It’s my company, Margaret,” I blurted
out stupidly, letting go of the sculpture. Out the corner of my eye, I looked
at the door, willing it to open. Linc had to know I was in trouble, right? He
had to be on his way.

She inched closer until she was leaning
against the front of her desk, her head cocked to one side. “You broke into my
business, and you threatened me. You threatened my employees.
You
blackmailed me.”

I looked back at the door again, but
Margaret’s soft warning eradicated any notion I had of making a run for it. “I
promise I’ll shoot you, Gemma.” She jabbed the gun to the chair a couple feet
from where she stood, indicating she wanted me to use it. When I didn’t rush to
do her bidding, she seethed. “Sit down.”

Dizzy, I complied, and the moment my butt
touched the seat, she grabbed her bag from the middle of the desk and headed
toward the door. As she moved, I felt the harsh glare of the gun positioned on
my back. I clutched the armrests with clammy hands. 

If she ran, how far would she get before
they found her? Would she win again?

Hell, would I even live to find out?

“Are you going to shoot me?” I breathed.
At the sound of her throat hitching, I worked up the nerve to turn slightly and
look at her. She stood just a few inches from the door with tears streaming
down her cheeks. “Or are you going to figure out a way to give me a heart
attack too?”

“I don’t want to hurt you.” She sniffed
loudly and slumped her shoulders. “I didn’t want to hurt him, but he couldn’t—”
She lowered one of her hands from the gun. “Your father was a horrible man. He
couldn’t keep it in his pants to save his life and that’s what killed him. Not
me.”

“That’s not true.” At her silence, I
marched on tentatively. “How’d you do it?”

“Your father loved his coke just as much
as he loved his whores. I just helped him along.”

It hurt. I wasn’t even going to deny that
processing those words through my brain hurt so much I nearly crumpled in my
seat, but I stiffened my posture and completely let go of those childish
fantasies that my dad had been a hero.