Ms. Starr’s Most Inconvenient Change of Heart (A Raven's Run Romantic Mystery Book 1)

by Dorothy St. James

  Logan, whose nerves had to be as ragged as shattered glass, drew his gun, which only triggered Thacker’s men do to the same.

  “Whoa!” I threw my hands in the air.

  “Stand down,” Thacker ordered. “Everyone.” He held up a stack of papers that he’d retrieved from the briefcase. “As promised.”

  He held out the papers for me to take.

  “The divorce papers.” My heart dropped into my toes.

  The divorce papers.

  “Logan, you can sign them, and I’ll personally deliver Sam back to her family in New Jersey,” Thacker announced. A smile curled his thin lips.

  Sign the papers? Sign the papers?

  Was I ready for Logan to do that?

  Sure, I was upset with him—or with myself—I wasn’t sure which, for pushing me away after what had almost been the most important night of my life. Who was I kidding? Even if we didn’t actually do the deed, last night had been forever emblazoned on my heart.

  Perhaps one day I’d learn to grow fond of my fiancé, but I’d never love another man like I loved Logan.

  Yes, I loved Logan.

  Always did.

  Always would.

  Knowing that, how could I possibly walk away from Logan for a second time? Was I ready to give up on what had to be the best relationship I’d ever had without fighting for it?

  Without even realizing what I was doing, I groaned. Loudly.

  “Is it hurting bad, honey?” Logan asked sounding all sickly sweet. He rushed to my side and put his arms around me. “Perhaps you should go back to bed.”

  “What—?” What in the world was he talking about? I felt fine. “I’m not—”

  “Find Jason and keep him out of sight,” Logan whispered in my ear before I could argue with him.

  “Oh, right. My stomach. It’s been jumpy ever since we had lunch yesterday.” I grabbed my middle and moaned.

  “She was fine just a minute ago,” Thacker argued, still flinching when he looked my way. What did he see in me that made him so afraid?

  “It comes and goes,” I said and groaned again. “I’d better go lie down.”

  “Yes, go.” Logan nudged me toward the hallway. “Now.”

  Thacker might have protested my departure. I wasn’t really sure what he’d said on my way out. I couldn’t hear anything over the fake groaning sounds I was having far too much fun making.

  Apparently, my inability to lie hadn’t come from a strong moral backbone. It’d simply been borne from a lack of practice.

  THACKER PRESSED QUITE hard for Logan to sign the divorce papers so Sam could travel with him back to New Jersey. None of Logan’s arguments for keeping her with him held water, not even with him. Finally he admitted the truth, “I’m not ready to say goodbye to her. Not yet. I know it’s selfish, but I need another day.”

  “Are you sure that’s the reason?” Thacker asked. Clearly, all trust had been lost between them.

  “Embarrassingly, it is. I-I—” Love her. Logan couldn’t bring himself to admit the last part.

  But Thacker seemed to read the words in his expression. His own expression softened. He placed his hand on Logan’s shoulder like a father would with his son. “I know it’s hard. I’ve been there myself. The best thing you can do both for her and yourself is end it quickly.”

  “Just. One. More. Day,” Logan said, unwilling to budge.

  Thacker nodded. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”

  Hopefully, by then, Logan would be able to let Sam go and would be in a position where he could tell Thacker the truth about Rafe’s involvement in planting the virus. And if he were to dare hope big, the virus would be disabled by then too.

  Now that he’d managed to put off Thacker and managed to keep Sam with him one more day, he had to get back to work. It was time to deal with Rafe.

  His best friend.

  Dammit. He hated torture.

  Chapter 32

  “You’re wrong, Logan. Don’t do this. Please. I’ll talk. I’ll talk. God, don’t—”

  With icy blue eyes, Logan never lifted his gaze from Rafe’s face as he poured the fresh pot of Hawaiian coffee I’d brewed down the drain.

  “Did you have to do that?” I complained from where I stood at the kitchen doorway. “You could’ve simply refused to give him a cup.”

  Even though Logan had warned me to stay out of the way while he interrogated his partner, who’d been tied to a kitchen chair, I’d padded back into the kitchen to get a coffee refill in time to watch the black gold disappear into the cabin’s septic tank.

  “Her! Her!” Rafe managed to wiggle his arm free from the ropes restraining him to point an accusing finger in my direction. “She’s the one you should be torturing.”

  “I’ll have you know he poured out my coffee too.” I was useless without at least two cups in the morning. And since I hadn’t got even a minute of sleep last night, I figured three cups would be needed to power me through the day.

  “Exactly! If that isn’t torture, I don’t know what—”

  “Stop it! For Heaven’s sake, just stop it!” Logan shouted. “I’m not torturing anyone!”

  “Yeah, right.” Rafe rolled his eyes. “So says the man who drank three cups of what smelled like Shangri La in front of me before dumping the rest. I haven’t had a decent cup of coffee since the police picked me up. If that’s not torture, I don’t know what is.”

  Logan’s expression suddenly tightened. “You know what it is,” he said darkly. “And this isn’t it.”

  Rafe swallowed hard. “Yeah. Sorry.”

  “What are you two talking about?” I demanded before my better sense could stop me.

  “It’s a story for another time,” Rafe said as he rubbed the back of his neck.

  “Right,” Logan said. “We’re running out of time. The virus.”

  “Ask her about it!” Rafe was back to swinging his accusing finger around. “What is she still doing here?” He stabbed his finger at me. “She pops back into your life under mysterious circumstances and stymies your efforts at disabling the virus.”

  “I simply needed him to sign divorce papers.” I eyed Rafe with as much menace as my sleep-deprived self could manage.

  “It’s true.” Logan moved across the room to stand beside me. “Sorry about the coffee, Sam. It was delicious. Don’t know that I’ve ever tasted better.”

  That coaxed a smile to my lips and a blush to my cheeks. “Really?”

  “Oh, get a room already,” Rafe groaned.

  Logan gave me a sexy look that had, oh man, we already got that room and almost enjoyed a wild night of almost sex, written all over it. But he didn’t say it aloud. Instead, he asked, “Where’s Jason?”

  “I left him with Cole at the end of the dock. Jason was so wound up after hiding in the attic while Thacker and his men had searched the cabin, I thought he might snap. Sitting out at the lake had helped settle my nerves, so I asked Cole to get Jason set up with a fishing pole.”

  “I like how you think,” Logan said.

  “So you now believe Jason Billings, the guy who likes to kill both friend and foe. And you believe her?” Rafe shook his head. “But you don’t believe me?”

  “The evidence shows—” Logan began to explain, sounding as if he’d said these words a hundred times already.

  “The evidence also showed how we couldn’t trust Billings!” Rafe shouted.

  “Clearly, Hart Security’s research on him was wrong. He didn’t kill anyone.”

  “Because he told you that?” Rafe countered.

  “Jason proved to me that his cousin was still alive. I questioned him at length. And the other men that were mentioned as missing in our company profile are alive and well.”

  This stalemate wasn’t getting us anywhere. And since Logan was hesitant to do anything harsher than withhold coffee from Rafe, I decided to step in.

  “What if Rafe is telling the truth?” I asked and then quickly added, “Not about me, of course. But
about the virus. What if he truly has been working in tandem with you to disable the code before it goes live?”

  “Yes, Logan, listen to her. I can’t believe I just said that. But, yes, listen to your wife. Haven’t I been telling you exactly the same thing?”

  Logan was silent for several moments. “You didn’t contact me. Not even through the secure system we’d set up. You let me believe you were dead.”

  “The tracker—”

  “That you didn’t tell me existed.” The pain in Logan’s voice was palatable. Rafe’s betrayal had hurt him.

  “I didn’t know it existed until after the police had released me. I’d gone straight from the police station to our secret warehouse. And who shows up a few minutes after me? Our friendly boss Thacker.”

  “At the warehouse?” Logan spoke slowly as if worried his words might trigger a landmine. “The warehouse only the two of us knew existed? Were you sloppy? Did you let him follow you there?”

  “No. I followed the protocol we’d set up. Took extra precautions, even. No one could have followed me,” Rafe said in a rush.

  “That’s when you suspected a tracking device,” I said.

  “Give the girl a gold star,” Rafe drawled.

  “Still, why didn’t you tell me? Why disappear and let me think you were dead?” He was speaking to Rafe but looking at me. I was the reason he had trouble forming connections. I was the reason he had trouble trusting even those closest to him.

  When I’d left the hospital without an explanation or even a goodbye, I’d abandoned him in a way that had affected his life even all these years later. He’d pushed his family away. He’d kept Thacker at arm’s length, only telling him the bare facts of what he was doing to stop the virus. From what I could tell, he kept his relationships with women shallow and brief.

  In the ensuing years since his recovery, the only person who’d managed to break through the walls Logan had built around himself had been his partner, Rafe.

  And like me, Rafe had abandoned him, betrayed him even.

  The little glimmer of hope of ever winning Logan back, the hope that had kept me from hurrying home and returning to my wedding planning when Thacker had offered, faded. After the emotional blow Rafe had dealt, it’d be years before Logan would ever let anyone close to him again.

  “You want to know why I didn’t contact you? You really don’t know?” Rafe struggled against the ropes that held him to the chair. “Because of her. That’s why.”

  “He’s pointing at me again.” I didn’t like the way he kept accusing me.

  “Stop pointing, Rafe. She’s harmless.”

  “She’s a fox in the hen house. A spy.”

  “You’re crazy,” I said, surprised anyone could think I was a spy. Rafe reminded me of Thacker, a man who also refused to trust me.

  But Rafe was shaking his head. “I had to keep away in order to gather evidence without her tipping off the organization who planted the virus and cunningly made it look as if we were responsible.”

  Logan frowned when he looked at me. “Tell me what you found, Rafe.”

  “How do you know he found anything?” I demanded, feeling suddenly jumpy. I mentally ticked through all the activities I’d undertaken before I’d managed to locate Logan. Had I somehow, unknowingly, become a spy for some nameless, faceless bad guy?

  “He must have found evidence to support his accusation against you.” His frown deepened. “He wouldn’t have followed us to the cabin otherwise.”

  Rafe smiled. “You know me well.”

  “I thought you were planning to kill me,” Logan said.

  “Because you thought I planted the virus,” Rafe countered.

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t he plant the virus?” I demanded. It sure sounded like a confession.

  “No,” Rafe said.

  “No,” Logan agreed.

  “What? No? But just this morning you were convinced all the evidence pointed to Rafe. What changed your mind?” And why did he now suspect me?

  Instead of answering, Logan said to Rafe while untying the ropes holding him. “You should have trusted me. You should have let me know you were alive and following a lead.”

  He even handed his partner a gun.

  “What are you doing? Are you crazy? Why are you letting him go? Why do you suddenly believe him? Why are you arming him? So he can shoot me?” My voice got louder and louder until I was nearly shouting. It was either shout or pull my hair out from the roots. I was that frustrated. “What’s going on? Who planted the virus?”

  “We did,” Rafe said.

  Chapter 33

  I stumbled into the nearest kitchen chair and then realized my choice of seating had put me in the middle of a den of thieves. I jumped back up.

  “I can’t believe I fell for this-this...ruse. You couldn’t let Jason learn of your involvement. That’s why you wanted to make sure he was outside, distracted by your brother. Is Cole in on it too? Or does he think he’s helping you?”

  Logan seemed confused. “Cole is helping me.”

  Great. Great. I am so dead.

  If Logan had wanted to keep me alive, he would have made sure his brother kept me in the dark too. But I was unimportant, just a bit player in his master criminal plan.

  My face felt hot with anger as I marched as fast as my legs could carry me to the living room. Where was my purse? On the sofa. I dug through it. Where was my stupid phone? I’d left it in my purse before going with Logan across the lake to meet up with his accomplice. It wasn’t there.

  Logan silently followed me into the room.

  “I can’t believe I called off the wedding for you.” I spewed the words at him as if they were acid in my mouth.

  “For me? I don’t think so. Besides, you only called it off until your mother talked you out of it,” Logan reminded me.

  He was right, but I didn’t want to listen to him. “What did you do with my phone?”

  He calmly took the purse from me and without seemingly any effort produced my phone and handed it to me.

  My fingers shook from the fury boiling within me as I started to punch the phone’s screen.

  “Before you call the cops, hear me out. It’s not what you’re thinking,” Logan said as I continued to push numbers, not sure who I planned to call.

  “Yeah, right, buster.” How could I be so stupid? How could I have believed that Logan was any different from any man in the world? Men lied. Men cheated. Men stole.

  Men broke your heart.

  Logan cupped my cheeks in his big warm hands. “Sam. I’m sorry your father left you when you needed him the most. I wish to God I could fix that for you. I wish to God I could erase every hurt inflicted on you by the undeserving jerks who you’ve loved over the years.”

  “Don’t you dare make this about me,” I rasped.

  “But it is about you. Rafe was about to tell us what he’d learned and before he could, you jumped to the conclusion that I’m no better than your heartless father.”

  “He wasn’t heartless. He just couldn’t—”

  “I’m not like your father.” He drew a long, slow breath. “I’m also not a criminal. And I’m still as determined as ever to stop that damned virus.”

  “And Rafe?”

  “I know Rafe. I know he’s telling the truth.” His words came slowly as if they were carefully chosen.

  “But he left you to face Thacker and Jason alone. He left you.” I don’t know why tears sprang to my eyes while I said that.

  “Sam, listen to me. No matter what happens, no matter what you think of me, I’m never going to abandon you. Never. Now that I know you’re alive, if you ever need me I’ll be there for you.”

  “This—this isn’t about me.”

  “Yes, it is. That’s why you’re upset. We were torn apart as children. And it left scars. Deep scars. I thought I was the only one who’d been left hurting when your mother took you from the hospital. But it had to be worse for you. You not only lost your fat
her, you lost your faith in love.”

  “I didn’t lose anyth—”

  “You are lovable. You deserve to be loved,” he pressed.

  I don’t know why, but frustrated tears flooded my eyes.

  “Listen to me, Sam.”

  I shook my head, unable to listen to what he was telling me.

  “You are lovable,” he repeated. “And although the men in your life have let you down, that’s not a reason to give up. It’s time you stopped running. It’s time we both stopped running from those who love us.”

  “Can I come in?” Rafe asked from the doorway between the kitchen and the living room.

  Logan looked as if he wanted to send his partner away. But he dropped his hands from my face and straightened. “Yeah, get in here. We have work to do.”

  THE HURT ETCHED IN Sam’s expression tore at Logan’s heart. If he had the time, he’d lock himself in a room with her for a week and prove to her over and over how a good man would treat her, prove how she deserved to be treated. But although he was going to have to change some things in his life—like how he treated his family—he wasn’t in a position where he could offer her the lifetime of love she should demand from any man lucky enough to win her. Because of his work, he didn’t have time for serious relationships.

  There was a virus that needed to be dismantled. And they were running out of time.

  “Whoever set us up,” Rafe said, “knows both Global Tech and Hart Security’s systems inside out. The virus came from Hart Security.”

  “I know,” Logan said. “Jason showed me the trace data.”

  “Do you also know the virus came in when we installed our customized tracing program at the beginning of the security scan?”

  That took Logan by surprise. “I wrote that program.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s my personal program.”

  “I know.”

  Damn.

  “Someone must have tampered with it, someone close to you. Like a wife?”

  “Before a few days ago, I didn’t even know Logan was alive, much less working in computer security,” Sam said.