Black Tangled Heart

by Samantha Young

  Me? I was judging.

  A grin crawled across my face.

  “Whether you agree or disagree with Jane’s methods, you’re pretending to support her in her plans. You might not realize it, Asher, but this lie is causing you a great amount of stress. Considering this latest development, we need to find ways to reduce your stress.”

  I’d stopped listening.

  “Deliberately sabotaging her attempts to find evidence that may incriminate your father is protecting her?”

  “Whether you agree or disagree with Jane’s methods, you’re pretending to support her in her plans.”

  If Asher Steadman meant as much to Jane as I suspected he did, I’d just found something important to rip away from her.

  21

  JANE

  It was almost too easy.

  Well, it would have been if I hadn’t been worried Jamie would find out and blame Ivy.

  Ivy Martin was our building manager and had been for thirty years.

  Her office was across the hall from her apartment on the ground floor, and I had to wait for Jamie to leave his apartment until I could make my move. Standing by the peephole of my apartment door for hours was not a fun way to spend my Sunday afternoon, but I was determined to find some information that would put me ahead of Jamie’s plans.

  He left around three o’clock, about four hours since he’d tormented me in the laundry room, and I waited until I saw him drive his Porsche out of his parking spot before going downstairs.

  Sometimes Ivy wasn’t in her office on Sundays, but I was pleasantly surprised to see the door open and the building manager standing over her desk reading through some papers. Probably notes left by my neighbors on things they wanted fixed. It was an old building—the place kept Ivy busy.

  I rapped my knuckles on the open door and Ivy glanced over at me.

  In her midsixties, Ivy looked like a spry woman in her late forties. She told me it was the California sun, yoga, and drinking plenty of water that kept her looking young. It wasn’t often you came across a female building manager, but Ivy used to work with her dad in construction, so she learned skills across a variety of trades from the age of five. That woman could fix anything.

  Turning her twinkling dark eyes on me, she lifted her chin in greeting.

  “Margot, problem?”

  I moved into the room and gave her a pained smile. “Ivy, I’m so sorry, but I locked myself out of my apartment when I went to the laundry room. Can you let me back in with your spare?”

  “Of course, no problem.” She dropped the papers in her hand and moved to the locked cabinet where she kept the spare keys. I moved around her, so she was the one nearest to the door, and leaned into peer at the photos above her desk. “Is that you?” I pointed to a washed-out photo of a beautiful woman in an old-fashioned bikini, standing in front of a lake with her arms wrapped around a handsome guy in swim shorts. “And Mal?”

  Mal was Ivy’s husband. He’d passed away two months after I moved into the building.

  Ivy gave me a soft smile as she unlocked the cabinet, throwing the doors wide.

  Thank you, Ivy.

  “That’s my Mal. Our fifth anniversary at Lake Tahoe.”

  “Good-looking couple,” I said.

  “Thank you, doll. I was a very lucky woman. My Mal was even more gorgeous on the inside.”

  My heart squeezed, feeling a prickle of envy and a sting of grief for her. I knew what it was like to lose the one you loved. Guilt accompanied those feelings.

  Unfortunately, guilt didn’t stop me. As she unhooked my key off its hook, I jumped, pretending to be startled as I gaped at the open doorway. “Was that a dog?”

  “What?” Ivy turned.

  I snatched the keys next to the empty hook where mine had hung and hid my hand behind my back, the metal biting into my fingers. Sweat dampened my palms. “A dog. I just saw a dog run past.”

  “Are you sure?” Ivy looked back at me.

  “Absolutely.”

  She sighed heavily. There was a strict no-pet policy for this building. “I’ll let you into your apartment and then look for it.” Her eyes trained on the hall outside as she locked the key cabinet.

  I’d gotten away with it.

  I couldn’t believe it.

  “Now you’re sure?” she asked me again as we left her office.

  “I’m positive.”

  “I bet it’s that girl on four,” Ivy muttered under her breath. “First she smuggles in a cat. Now a goddamn dog.”

  Trying not to laugh while feeling bad at the same time made me slightly hysterical. I had to stifle my snorts of guilty amusement as Ivy let me into my apartment. I thanked her, went inside, and hid behind my door, waiting for her to leave.

  As soon as the coast was clear, I shot across the hall to Jamie’s apartment.

  My heart was pounding so fast, I could barely hear anything else over the rushing blood in my ears.

  Hands shaking, I let myself into his unit and closed the door behind me with a soft snick.

  His place was just like mine. Open living and kitchen area, with a large bedroom and bathroom off a narrow hallway at the rear. I’d half expected to find a wall of the living room covered in papers and pictures and timeline arrows. You know, like a stalker wall.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t that straightforward.

  In fact, the apartment was depressingly bare and piled with opened boxes. Rummaging through them, I found a lot of books. Either Jamie hadn’t found time to unpack, or he had no intention of doing so considering this was a temporary situation. To torment me.

  Growling under my breath, I ripped open another box and stilled at what I found inside. Lifting out a pristine hardback, I turned it over in my hand, feeling a rush of longing.

  He had copies of Brent 29.

  Despite all the shit that had happened to him, he’d made his dream come true. He was a published author. Not just any author either, but a huge best seller. There was a small kernel of Jane from the past who was proud of him. The percentage of authors who achieved what he’d achieved was probably less than 1 percent.

  Sighing, I put the copy back.

  “Not why you’re here,” I muttered as I stood and moved toward the desk at the back of the room. The drawers held receipts. That was it.

  I glared at his laptop.

  Everything I wanted to know was probably on there.

  Then my eyes moved to the pile of paper sitting beside the laptop, and my breath caught at the text printed across the middle of the top piece.

  DOE

  A novel by Griffin Stone

  I lifted the top few pages to discover it was a printout of a new manuscript. From the red pen and notes scrawled on the pages, it was obviously copy edits for the book. Considering the title, the urge to read the pages was overwhelming.

  However, I’d never read something Jamie didn’t want me to.

  Even if the title was my surname.

  Ignoring the belly butterflies, I placed the pages back in order and slipped into Jamie’s computer chair to flip open the laptop. The password box appeared. A memory came flooding back from when we lived together. Jamie’s passwords for everything were so complicated that he kept them all written in a little black notebook.

  Pulling open the drawers, I rummaged through them, searching.

  Nothing.

  I moved into the kitchen and raided those drawers.

  No luck.

  The only place left was the bedroom, and I’d really been hoping to avoid it. I nearly walked into a dark red boxing bag that hung from the ceiling.

  Jamie boxed?

  The image of him doing just that made me shiver with longing. Another reason to hate him. Jamie’s smell hit me as I moved around the bag. That new, darker scent of his. Curiosity drew me into the bathroom, and I opened the cabinet above the sink. The bottle of cologne sat on the top shelf; I brought it to my nose.

  Yup.

  That was Jamie’s new scent. Except, not qu
ite. His own personal scent signature changed the cologne slightly, so it was even sexier on him. Jamie never used to wear cologne. Just body wash.

  Putting the bottle back, I returned to the bedroom. There was a bed, bedside cabinets, and a dresser. Remembering Jamie always slept on the right, I targeted that bedside cabinet first.

  Sliding the drawer open, my heart leapt in triumph.

  Bingo. I pulled out the small black notebook and was about to open it when my attention was caught by what had been underneath it.

  An ache scored across my chest as I picked up the small stack of photos.

  Skye and Jamie.

  Jamie, Skye, and Lorna.

  Five photos of them at different stages of their lives.

  It was the final photo that made me slump down on the bed in confusion.

  It was a photo of me on my own, one of a bunch Skye had taken with her phone and printed later. I was sitting down, my elbow on a bench table, my chin resting in my palm, and I was laughing at the person behind the camera—Skye. My eyes were bright, my dimple creased my left cheek, and I looked happy.

  I caressed the image with my fingertips, tears burning in my eyes.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I was that happy.

  Remembering the day it was taken, I choked down building emotion. I was seventeen, and Skye and Lorna and I had spent a girls’ day at Disneyland. I’d had a secret that day.

  Jamie.

  We were seeing each other in secret, and despite our secrecy, I was in heaven. In love. Excited for the future.

  Why did Jamie have this picture? Why did he keep it?

  After he had Lorna deliver his letter to me, she’d packed up his stuff and put it in storage. I’d have thought she would have destroyed all evidence of my existence, but this photo must have escaped her.

  And Jamie had kept it.

  If someone didn’t love you anymore, if someone did, in fact, hate you, why would they hold on to a photograph like this? Why would they keep it close?

  Deciding I didn’t have time to ponder the complex nature of Jamie’s feelings toward me, I shoved the photos back in the drawer and tried to force them out of my mind. Back at his desk, I flipped through his little black book, ignoring a few phone numbers written beside women’s names, until I found his password list.

  There was one password that didn’t have any information next to it, and I guessed this was his main one.

  I guessed correctly.

  Shaking with anticipation and the knowledge that what I was doing was not only very wrong but illegal, I made my way through the folders on his desktop. The curious bookworm in me wanted to read his works in progress, novels and short stories, but if I could refrain from reading Doe, I could refrain from reading those too.

  I groaned at that realization, eyeing the manuscript I wanted to steal but knew I wouldn’t.

  Finally, I came across a folder titled The Count of Monte Cristo. Frowning, I clicked on it and my breath caught.

  Laughing under my breath, I shook my head. “Jamie, you sneaky bastard.”

  It was his revenge folder.

  He’d named it after a famous revenge novel about a guy who was framed for a crime he didn’t commit.

  There were five folders with people’s names on them.

  Foster Steadman.

  Frank Kramer.

  Elena Marshall.

  Ethan Wright.

  Jane Doe.

  Foster: The producer who raped Skye and framed Jamie for armed robbery.

  Frank Kramer: Foster’s right-hand man, and the guy Jamie had deduced was the one behind the setup.

  Elena Marshall: the cashier who lied and identified Jamie as the robber.

  Ethan Wright: the crooked cop working for Foster.

  I clicked on my folder first. Jamie had collected a copy of my legal name-change document, a detailed and correct résumé, my closest friends (pitifully short list of one: Asher), my work colleagues, the films I’d worked on, and my Hollywood connections. He had a list of all the galleries in California who bought and sold my artwork.

  There were photographs of me. They looked like surveillance shots.

  And that’s when I found Jamie’s notes file. This document was written almost like a diary. Every time Jamie found a new piece of information, he wrote it down next to the date and time. I scowled as I read his emotionless descriptions of my relationship with Asher. He questioned why Asher didn’t spend the night with me, and vice versa, and pondered the depths of our connection. He surmised, however, that we spent enough time together to be important to one another.

  I cursed him under my breath when I read his notes on bribing my neighbor Sheila to sublet her apartment to him. He’d told her it was because he’d grown up in the building and wanted to “come home.” In reality, it was so he could get a “better handle on Jane’s personal life and what was important to her.”

  There was a document on Asher, and I realized why when I saw a single file titled “Jane: Most Important.” Written on it were two things: Asher and art career.

  Feeling more than a little sick, I went through the other folders, making my way backwards, starting with Ethan Wright. Each person had the same last file with that “Most Important” list.

  It wasn’t until I got to Frank Kramer’s folder that I realized exactly what Jamie was doing. On Kramer’s Most Important list was one name: Juanita Kramer. His wife. Unbeknownst to me, and obviously Asher because he’d never mentioned it, Frank Kramer had been abusing his wife.

  For years, it seemed.

  Jamie had police reports and photographs of Juanita after Frank had put her in the hospital. The charges never stuck, however, which Jamie attributed to Foster Steadman’s influence. Unlike the other lists, Juanita’s name was crossed off. Reading Jamie’s notes, I knew why. It would seem Jamie had discovered the most important thing in Frank’s life was his wife, Juanita. In fact, Jamie seemed certain that Frank was dangerously obsessed with her. She’d filed several reports against him over the years. Jealous attacks, locking her in a room for five days, and a plethora of other domestic abuse reports. No one had helped her.

  The injustice of it made my blood boil.

  According to Jamie’s entries and via talks with her family, they’d tried to help Juanita run away, but Frank always found her. Jamie was determined to help Juanita get away. Reading between the lines, he’d used his own connections from prison to help her disappear. He admitted in writing what he might not have admitted to me. Yes, it served him that he wanted to take away the thing Frank coveted most, but Jamie was also glad he could assist in Juanita’s escape.

  His latest notes detailed that Frank was searching for her, but he wasn’t even close to finding her.

  Closing his file, I felt a complicated mix of emotions. As much as I was pissed at Jamie—unforgiving, hurt, and furious, and worried just how far prison and injustice had pushed him—I was also proud of him for helping Juanita Kramer. It gave me hope that he hadn’t completely lost touch with the Jamie I’d loved.

  Reading these files, I realized what Jamie’s goal was. In order not to incriminate himself, he’d researched his targets to discover what was most important in their lives. And he’d decided to take it away.

  “Because that’s what they did to you,” I muttered.

  I still didn’t understand my part in all this, other than that Jamie thought I was sleeping with Asher.

  As for Ethan Wright, Jamie suspected the cop was taking bribes. However, he didn’t have evidence. Wright had no personal ties either, so Jamie deduced his career—and the power trip he got from it—was the most important thing in his life. Take away his career, and he had nothing.

  Elena Marshall, the cashier, had no deep, dark secrets. Jamie had searched her financial records, her personal life, and there was nothing on her. Yet, her daughter had a criminal record a mile long. Jamie had the daughter written on Elena’s list, but there was a question mark next to her name.

  I nar
rowed my eyes on the screen.

  Don’t you dare, Jamie McKenna.

  I would not let him drag an innocent person into this mess.

  Finally, I clicked on Foster Steadman’s file.

  There were photographs and videos in that file I wished I could unsee. I was right: Jamie had sent this stuff to Rita Steadman. Her name was crossed off Foster’s Most Important list.

  The last two on the list weren’t: Asher Steadman. Career.

  I didn’t know how Jamie intended to take those things away from Foster Steadman, but there was no way I’d let him hurt a hair on Asher’s head.

  The lock turning in the door made my heart jolt.

  Shit.

  Before I could think how to react, Jamie strode into the room and came to an abrupt halt when he saw me sitting at his desk. Giving nothing away, he pushed against the door and it slammed so loudly, I flinched.

  Then he turned the lock.

  Sweat collected beneath my arms as I stood. My knees shook.

  This is Jamie, I reminded myself. He won’t really hurt me.

  Will he?

  His eyes flicked to the laptop as he moved toward me, throwing his keys in a bowl on a side table. He dumped the brown paper bag of groceries on the couch. Heart thundering, I found I couldn’t move as he strode casually across the living room and stopped by my side. His gaze shifted to me as he reached out and closed the laptop.

  “You have a key to this apartment,” he murmured, his tone calm.

  That tone was a dangerous lie.

  I knew it.

  I nodded, not wanting to get Ivy in trouble. “I used to water Sheila’s plants.”

  “Did Sheila have plants?” Jamie mused, cocking his head to the side. “I don’t remember that.”

  “She had plants.” I lifted my chin stubbornly. Staring up into those familiar ocean eyes, one of the foremost emotions I’d felt as I pored through Jamie’s research hit me like a punch to the gut.

  Fear.

  Not for myself.

  But for Jamie.

  If Foster Steadman realized that Jamie was taking down the people involved in his wrongful incarceration, he’d come after him, and this time I worried he’d shut Jamie up for good. If Jamie’s plans were to hurt innocents, I was way past concerned for him. No matter what he wanted to believe, I knew him. I knew his heart.