Locked, Loaded, & Lying

by Sarah Andre

  A hesitation and another exhale. “We lived in a double-wide. He wouldn’t let my mother work, so we existed on what money he didn’t drink or gamble away.”

  His breathing grew shallow, and he remained motionless. Softly, but instinctively withholding compassion, he said, “Smudgy, but not dirty enough.”

  More silence. Leo would be home any minute. His whole front side roasted this close to the fire, but he knew if he so much as twitched a muscle the moment would be lost.

  Finally, another soft breath. “My father needed complete control over us. When he thought he didn’t have it he…he used his fists.”

  Lock swung around then, and there she sat, looking for all the world like she was discussing her dad’s brand of toothpaste. Under the cocktail table her left foot tapped steadily.

  “We learned to do exactly what he said. He told us what to wear, what to eat, what to read. He controlled our weight, who we spoke to on the phone, what television shows we watched. We couldn’t socialize, although I had school at least.” She shrugged. “So nowadays I get all squirrelly if I don’t have complete control over my life. I won’t apologize for that.”

  Lock opened his mouth, but his mind was shocked blank. This spitfire with her tiny body and her pathological fear of hospitals. Her bizarre reaction to him carrying her. It was all from abuse she’d suffered as a helpless kid. His imagination tried to picture a home life so awful the only choice left was to shoot your father.

  “And the reason I’ve never told anybody about my childhood,” she continued in a frosty tone, “is because they’d look at me like you are now.”

  He blinked and swallowed. “Sorry. I…go on.”

  She pressed her lips together. “That’s all. Eventually life became intolerable.”

  I know, now trust me enough to tell the truth. “So what did you do?”

  “We left. I already told you that.”

  He had to trip her up. God, he wished he had Leo’s gift for brains.

  “But how could you leave when he had so much control over your actions?”

  The foot tap-tapped. “We waited for a night where he drank more than usual, and the second he was unconscious we took off. Headed for Boston.”

  The second he was unconscious? Lock frowned. Since the end of the story was a pile of horseshit, how much of the rest could he believe? And the fact that she spun the lie without batting an eyelash—it gave him the shivers.

  He re-hooked the poker, choked with regret that she didn’t trust him. He’d spewed his secrets for days. She owed him details of how she really got out from under the hate and abuse. He deserved to know her fears and mistakes. God, she was so teeny, he couldn’t imagine a father…

  “Dirty enough?”

  He glanced over. Besides one raised eyebrow, her expression remained detached, although her eyes burned neon, like when she’d had a fever. Alarm spread through him.

  “Do you need some pain pills?”

  “No,” she said, grimacing. “They make me too sluggish.”

  “But you’re obviously hurting.” Great timing, Roane, squashing her rib right before the Vannini interview. He wanted to apologize again, but couldn’t find a way past the chilly wall she’d erected.

  “I’ll be fine.” She picked up her pen, but seemed at a loss, and he searched for an opening. Aw, hell, just say it.

  “About upstairs…” He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but her face shut down further. He heard the car pulling up the drive and plunged ahead. “I want to apologize. I had no right to kiss you in the hospital or start it up again this morning. We spend so much time together, I guess I mistook your questions and interest in me as attraction, you know? It’s this damn lesson I have to keep relearning.”

  “What lesson?”

  “That it’s only who I am on the outside that interests people. Knowing my celebrity side will boost their career or social life in some way.”

  “I thought I made myself clear, Lock. I don’t like your celebrity side. Your lesson doesn’t apply to me.”

  The wagon’s engine shut off with a prolonged sputter.

  “Bullshit,” he said softly. “You’re using me too, babe, same as everyone else.”

  She tossed her pen down. “Really? So working up a suspect list and interviewing Vannini this afternoon is using you?”

  “You are writing an article to get ahead in your career, right? Either for money or prestige or both?” He smiled thinly. “You may not want to kiss Lock and Load, but you sure want the world to know you’re in a cabin with him. That’s called using me.”

  She huffed out a breath. “We’ve been over this a hundred times—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know.” He shoved his fists in his pockets. “You came all the way from Boston for the sole purpose of helping me with my case.”

  A car door slammed.

  Lock glanced down at her scowl, which was so authentically frustrated he suddenly wondered if he was wrong. Maybe she wasn’t using him. Maybe she wasn’t stealthily writing up his secrets for a bestselling biography. After all, she was the sole person outside of his family who saw past Lock and Load.

  Maybe if he worked hard at letting go of his persona, if he dropped the remaining paranoid barriers and tried like hell to trust her, maybe she might trust him with her attempted murder secret.

  The back door opened. Leo shuffled in, paper grocery bags from Sam’s in his arms. Even from across the cabin, the look on his face raised the small hairs on Lock’s neck. Without a word to Jordan, he strode into the mudroom, bracing himself in the doorframe so she couldn’t see his brother’s face. “What’s up?” he asked quietly.

  “A bunch of these were being delivered as I was leaving Sam’s.” His brother held up the front page of Starr News.

  One word, all caps, centered the first third of the page:

  FOUND!

  Below that was a clear picture of him in yesterday’s clothes, rounding Leo’s sofa, captioned: Dramatic Tell-All to Follow!

  He closed his eyes. A fucking tabloid.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Lock roared. “Do you ever stop lying?”

  Jordan folded her arms. The shock of the last five minutes left her with two options: either break down crying, the option her shaking body voted for, or buck up and deal with this as rationally as possible. Clearly, Starr News had just screwed her, so her mother’s safety was completely out of her control. She had no clue how to take on a national tabloid. How would she get her money? She had three days, but what if her father was already at their house waiting for it? She covered her mouth with a trembling hand.

  A call to Rebecca would clear that up. No need to add hysteria to a situation that was already out of hand.

  Lock strode back and forth in front of her like a caged animal, jaw clenched, the tendons in his neck tight with fury. Somewhere in her thundering heartbeat, a part of her was in awe at the control he had over his temper. Her father would have knocked her unconscious by now.

  “Well?” he growled. “Say something.”

  She lifted her chin, dredging up enough courage to go with option two. “Not to sound flippant at a time like this, but I didn’t lie. I withheld information. Like on Wednesday when you found my purse. I never said I wasn’t a—”

  “Oh, cut the bullshit, Jordan!” He shoved a chair, his handsome face contorted in frustration. “Say one thing that’s true. Anything…‘the sky is blue’—just so I know you have it in you.”

  Regret swamped her. She’d destroyed her relationship with two genuinely kind brothers. And to make matters worse, her rib hurt, her heart ached from wanting to finish what Lock had started upstairs, and her beaten spirit at the tabloid’s betrayal made her want to curl into a fetal position until the Prattville authorities arrived. She swallowed hard, hell-bent on not giving in to option one.

  He hooked the leg of the chair he’d shoved and slid it over, the screech deafening in the tense silence. She winced. H
e flung himself in it and folded his brawny arms, waiting.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, looking straight into those frigid, flinty eyes.

  “I don’t think you are. I think you’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

  He was right. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t sorry circumstances were so out of her control she was forced to stoop to tabloid tricks.

  He cocked a brow, clearly expecting her to deny a repeat betrayal if she had a do-over. Instead she rested her arms on the table and assessed him frankly. “Help me understand why you’re this irate about a photo, Lock. Your brother told me your career hinged on not encountering the media, but your hospital interview is all over the nation.”

  Surprise whipped across his face.

  “I asked you about that reporter, remember? You changed the subject. Why didn’t you tell me she filmed you? Why didn’t you tell me you were expelled?”

  He rested his arms on the table an inch from hers. “Because it’s none of your business.”

  His soapy, male scent wafted her way, sparking off the image of nestling in his arms upstairs. Feeling those firm lips slide so erotically across hers.

  Heart pattering, she inhaled through her mouth. Much safer. “Nevertheless,” she said, “you lied to me about that reporter.”

  A hard smile appeared. “I didn’t lie, Jordan. I just withheld information.”

  She deserved that, but it still stung, and she pressed her lips to keep the snarky comeback from flying out and making matters worse. Leo quietly stacked cans in cupboards and folded grocery bags, not angry and accusing like his brother, but not leaping to her defense. She tried again.

  “It was only a photograph, Lock. You’re already off the team. The world doesn’t know where you live. Your courtroom strategy wasn’t leaked—”

  “Not yet. When’s your article due?”

  She paused, furious all over again that the picture ran without a call or money from the tabloid. “There’s been a horrible miscommunication with the editor.”

  “Aw, don’t tell me. He agreed to pay, and there’s no sign of the money.”

  Dread stiffened her spine. “Something like that.”

  “This is the tabloid I was telling you about,” Leo murmured to his brother.

  “Oh.” Lock appeared unsurprised, which hurt the most. “The quarter-mil reward. What were you planning to do with all that money?”

  “It’s none of your business,” she parroted. “But I swear I’d never stoop to debase my career unless it was a catastrophic crisis.”

  “You swear,” he scoffed. “Babe, I’m done believing anything that comes out of that pretty little mouth.”

  “Both of us have money,” Leo said. “If you have a crisis, why didn’t you just tell us the truth from the beginning?”

  “I was hoping for some of the money up front if I just sent in the picture.” She clenched her clammy hands together. “And then my…issue would’ve been over. I didn’t need to write an article and get the rest of that dirty mon—”

  “I call bullshit,” Lock snarled, jabbing his finger in her direction. “All those questions you fired at me? Are you for real? You have enough on me to write a bestselling biography. In fact, now that they won’t pony up the dough that’s probably your next plan.”

  That smarted. Even with all her lying, he’d uncovered her real self. If writing a biography would ensure her mother’s safety, she’d be pitching to agents before sundown. In fact, did she have time to negotiate a deal with another magazine? Get an instant advance on a future book deal? It was Friday afternoon on the East Coast already. Damn Starr News!

  “Why wouldn’t they contact me?” she muttered. “Why not just pay for the photo, and this could all be over?”

  Lock laughed, the sound hollow and menacing. “They publish stories about two-headed baby aliens. They get rich off lies. What did you expect?”

  She blushed. How could Lock know the workings of tabloid publishers and she, an experienced journalist, be so gullibly duped?

  “I expect to be compensated,” she said. “Starr News better not think I’ll just walk away from this.”

  Lock scratched through that mane of hair, leaving it a wild, golden mess—a crazy hot look on him. He still hadn’t combed it. She glanced away to keep her focus.

  “Well, good luck taking them to civil court, sweetheart. I’m sure their army of lawyers will drag this out for years.”

  Her stomach cramped in despair. Lawyers? Years? Hell, on Monday she’d be trying to keep her father from hauling her mother off. Her trembling increased, and she hid her clenched hands in her lap.

  “Are you still planning on interviewing Vannini?” Leo asked quietly.

  She forced in a lungful of air. “Yes. I’m still committed to finding Tiffany’s killer, no matter what you both think of me.”

  “Then you guys should probably head out if you want to get to Aspen in time.”

  Honestly, after all this, a four-hour drive alone with Lock would send her right over the edge. She threw Leo a silent plea for mercy. “Please go with us.”

  He shook his head. “I need to do some serious editing.”

  Silence descended. Moments passed. Then Lock smacked the table as he rose. “Leo, you’re coming. It’ll be so damn quiet in that car you’ll think you’re alone. I guarantee it.”

  She stared at the gold dots littering the Formica tabletop as he stormed from the kitchen. Seconds later a drawer in Leo’s office slammed shut and footsteps thundered back. Lock slapped a stack of printed pages atop the gold dots. A headline screamed up at her:

  Statewide Manhunt Underway for Wife and Daughter of Shooting Victim.

  While Emmett Claire underwent a second surgery yesterday to remove two bullets lodged… The print blurred.

  Lock leaned down, his breath hot in her ear. “I know you shot your father, Jesselynn. I know you’re still running from the law. I’ve known for days. Did I leak it?” He straightened and tapped the top page. “You better damn sure think twice about betraying me again, honey. I have no problem telling the police where to find you.”

  He brushed by her. Seconds later she heard the zip of a jacket in the mudroom.

  The brave front she’d erected these last few minutes drained away. She felt too weak to stand and follow. Lock knew her secret, and she had no doubt his threat of revenge was real.

  She stared at her clenched hands. Everything she’d tried these last few days had failed. Spectacularly. Her life couldn’t possibly get any worse. Oh wait. She still had to survive a four-hour car ride with Lock. Unshed tears thickened her throat, and she bit her lip hard enough to taste blood. If she cried, her humiliation would be complete.

  Leo touched her shoulder. “I told him when you were in the hospital. Before you asked me to keep it a secret.”

  She acknowledged his words with a faint nod. Having him believe in her suddenly became imperative. “I didn’t betray him, Leo. It’s a photo, and he’s already off the team.”

  “What don’t you get, Jordan? It isn’t a photo or an article or who triggered his expulsion. He. Hates. Liars.”

  “Let’s go!” Lock hollered from the mudroom, and Leo helped her stand.

  “When you’re ready, Jordan, we’re here to help. All you have to do is ask.”

  Ask what? For two hundred thousand dollars after all this lying? Ask for help in forcing Starr News to pay a portion of the reward? She had no intention of involving either brother. If only she had time to think.

  She almost laughed. Hell, she was about to be mashed up against a hot-blooded male who’d stolen her heart. The only way to survive four hours of his fury and her guilt was to spend it brainstorming ways to stop Emmett Claire from beating her mom to death.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  During the first half of the trip, the tension among the silent passengers and Lock’s seething fury worked to constrict the muscles up his neck until a sharp pain throbbed in his right temple. He consciously tried to relax his shou
lders, tried to ignore Jordan squashed next to him, and some rational part of his brain tried to make sense of the intensity of his anger. So she’d lied to him again, so what? She was a reporter, they all did.

  The tabloid trick shouldn’t be such a bombshell, so why was it? The photo was harmless, his defense remained intact, but the fact that she’d flung that reasoning at him made him see red.

  And what catastrophic crisis needed so much money—or was that a lie too?

  Peripherally, he saw she sat stiffly, holding a water bottle with both hands and staring out the windshield. The grim set of her mouth and stubborn tilt of her jaw made her look suspiciously like she was the injured party, and his blood heated further.

  He hated that with each inhale her woodsy scent affected every molecule in his body. He’d only known her since Tuesday, for fuck’s sake. Why let her get to him this much?

  Leo, usually uncomfortable with conflict of any kind, sat on her other side, completely absorbed in his thick manuscript. In deference to him agreeing to go all the way to Aspen needlessly, Lock kept the radio off so the only sounds in the car were the occasional page turn or scribbling pen as his brother jotted notes in margins.

  Jordan’s cell phone rang, and she dug it out of her pocket. Lock caught the Private ID again just before she palmed the device and turned it off. Who was that? And why did she keep avoiding those calls? Was that part of her catastrophic crisis?

  Aw hell, she’d been quiet for almost three hours, what would it hurt to begin talking again? He didn’t need to be her friend or show any interest in her responses. He just needed to end this silence where thoughts about other stuff bored him stupid and thoughts about her drove him batshit crazy.

  He opened his mouth, fully intending on talking about something mind-numbingly dull. “So why’d you shoot your father?”

  He blinked in surprise just as her torso stiffened fast enough to cause whiplash. The water bottle crackled under her clenching fists, the sound as loud as a gunshot from the hours of tomb-like silence. Leo’s pen froze in the margin, but he didn’t glance up.