If her life was a Facebook relationship status, it would be “it’s complicated.”
“Friends...right.” Nala nodded, her lips twitching with a repressed smile. “And how did you meet?”
“Through someone at work,” Max said, twisting the truth to hide the important details. “I didn’t think we were going to be friends at first.”
“Me, either.” Rose touched her foot to Max’s calf under the table and felt her pulse spike.
Just thinking about all the friendly things they’d done was enough to make her as warm and gooey as chocolate pudding.
“You’re lucky you met Rose,” Nala said. “She’s a good woman and she deserves good friends.”
“Yes, ma’am. She does.”
Nala nodded her approval and disappeared to tend to the other customers in need of caffeine. Her brisk New York twang carried through the coffee shop.
“Nice save,” he said, bringing his coffee cup to his mouth.
She grimaced, folded her arms across her chest and snuggled back against the chair. “And by ‘nice’ I assume you mean awkward as hell.”
“It got the job done.” He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs, coffee cup in his hands, legs spread so that he engulfed the space completely.
“Did you dig up any information at work today?” She forced her attention to the more pressing matter at hand, and away from how much she wanted to jump him in a public area.
He stared at the ground for a moment, his eyes shifting as though he was sorting through files in his head. “We’ve had a few developments, but nothing concrete yet.”
“Can you tell me what those developments are?”
“We know what diamond the thugs are talking about. We also know where it came from...just not where it is now.” He paused. His eyes came up to hers and a chill ran through her.
“Do you have any idea why they think I have it, or who they are?”
“I have an idea, but it’s not confirmed yet.”
His words prickled along her skin like beetles, planting doubt and fear and all the other emotions she hated. She toyed with one of her pencils just to keep her hands occupied.
“Can you share that idea?” So far Max had been open about what he knew, but suddenly he’d clammed up tighter than a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“I want to verify some information before we start looking at these leads. At the moment they’re only possibilities.” He drained his coffee and placed the mug on the table. “We should head back.”
What would be the harm in telling her about the source of the diamond? There could only be one reason Max wasn’t sharing his information with her—because she wouldn’t like the answer.
* * *
MAX PAID FOR their coffees, ignoring the green bill Rose waved at him, and ushered her out of the coffee shop. The city sang in its usual cacophony of traffic and horns, though Brooklyn was far more laid back than Manhattan. Which was exactly why he preferred living on this side of the bridge. Well, that and the fact that he didn’t have a cool two million to blow on an apartment.
But even with Brooklyn’s chilled vibe, he craved peace and quiet. He wanted nothing more than to plant his feet in the sand on Sorrento beach and listen to the waves roll in. Maybe then a solution would come to him.
Rose walked beside him, silent. Head bowed. Her hands were knotted in front of her, knuckles white.
Whatever trust he’d built with her was teetering like a glass on the edge of a table. One wrong move and he wouldn’t be able to put it back together.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” she asked, her eyes staring straight ahead but focusing on nothing.
“I just want to be sure.”
“Why?” She stuffed her hands into the pockets of her trench coat. The sunshine caught the jewels around her neck, making the gold beads sparkle like an angel’s halo.
“That’s the rules.” A lame excuse, they both knew it.
“I don’t care about the rules, Max. What does your gut tell you?”
Her question sucked the air out of his lungs. His gut was telling him to take her home to Australia and get her the hell away from her father.
But what if he was wrong? What if her father wasn’t the man behind all of this and he’d ruined her one opportunity to have a happy family...a happy life? He knew what it felt like to have everything ripped away from you. He wouldn’t do that to her unless he was damn sure her father was involved.
“My gut’s warning that we need to be careful.”
“How can I be careful if I have no idea what’s going on?” She looked up at him, her yellow-green eyes shimmering with hurt. “How can I trust you if you don’t trust me?”
Ryan had said those words to him just before he died.
Trust me.
“Fine. Don’t answer me,” Rose muttered as they rounded the corner to her street.
Nothing appeared out of the ordinary. Max scanned the parked vehicles for anything suspicious, but they were all empty. The path to Rose’s apartment was clear, as were the steps leading up to the apartment above hers. No cigarette butts, nothing disturbed.
After Rose pushed the key in the door, Max stayed close to her until she’d tapped the pin into her security system, shutting down the alarm. He’d noticed that every time she walked through the front door, her shoulders tensed. It killed him that the joy of walking into her home had been taken from her.
She dumped her keys in the crystal dish on the side table in the entrance and hung her coat in the closet. Kicking off her heels, she turned to him.
“I don’t like being kept in the dark. I had to put up with it all through my childhood, right up until Mom died. I’m sick of it.” Her cheeks were spotted with pink, the muscle in her jaw working as she breathed out slowly. “Whatever is going on, I want to know about it. I’m not a child.”
He steered her into the bedroom, out of the way of the bug. She dropped down on the bed and Max inside the doorway, unsure whether he should comfort her and continue to hide his suspicions from her...or put the job first and bring her up to speed.
“I’m only trying to protect you,” he said, raking a hand through his hair.
“By keeping things from me that concern my safety? Explain to me how that works.” Her eyes shot him a look that was as cold as steel and twice as hard.
As he was about to open his mouth, his phone vibrated. “Ridgeway.”
“Hey, man.” Owen’s familiar accent had lost its usual carefree lilt. “I just got back to the office.”
“Did you find him?” Max turned away from Rose’s bedroom and walked through the living area and out into the courtyard.
“Yeah. I found him, and he had a lot to say about Nigel Lawson.”
After their team meeting that morning, Max had done some digging and found a link between Rose’s father and a now-prominent anti-gambling advocate named Martin Taylor. The guy, who regularly lobbied the government as part of his awareness group, was formerly an addict himself.
He’d set up a meeting with Martin, but since Max had been due to meet Rose, Owen had gone in his place.
“Apparently he acted as a sponsor to Nigel several years back, around the time Rose and her mother had left for the UK.” Owen sighed. “But he said Nigel relapsed. Often.”
“Does he know anything about the diamond?”
“When I asked him, he mentioned that Nigel had gotten drunk one night after the girls left. He was ranting about something his wife stole from him and how he’d never be able to get out of the hole.”
“The hole?”
“Gambling hole, I guess? I don’t know, and Martin wasn’t clear on it, either. He said that Nigel never mentioned the diamond specifically, but there was talk in their circle about him taking something majo
r from a...” Owen paused. “Vito Costello. Some shady character, connected to a crime family.”
Max’s stomach sank. “What else did he say?”
“Martin seems to think that Nigel was planning to use a secret stash of money to run away with someone. Not his wife, obviously.”
“Any idea who it might have been?”
“Martin wasn’t sure. There was apparently some redhead who was always hanging around.”
“A redhead...” He thought back to the picture Quinn had found of Nigel Lawson and Lucia Costello. “Vito’s daughter had red hair. I wonder if they worked together to steal the diamond so they could run away together?”
“Maybe. It’s not airtight but I think your girl’s gonna need a shoulder to cry on.”
Max sighed. “You know that’s not my job.”
“Yeah, I do. But I can tell when you’re invested in someone. If this all turns out to be true, she won’t have anyone, will she?”
“No. She won’t.”
He hung up the phone and came back into the house. Why did it have to be her father of all people? Why couldn’t it be some faceless person he could hunt down and hand over to the cops?
“What’s going on?” Rose’s voice caught his attention and he spun around.
She’d changed into battered jeans and an oversize sweater. The loose clothing made her look even smaller and more vulnerable than usual. She might joke and distract them both with her antics, but Rose Lawson wasn’t made of stone.
“Come on.” He guided her back to the bedroom.
At this point he had to put her safety before her feelings. It would kill him to see the look on her face, but he had a job to do, and his feelings for Rose would have to stay the hell out of it.
14
AS ROSE WALKED to the bed and sat down beside Max, she was reminded of the single time she’d been sent to the principal’s office. She’d braced herself for serious reprimand—after all, swearing at a teacher was hardly supposed to win her any gold stars.
But from the moment she’d walked into the principal’s office and met with the formidable Mrs. Jones, all she’d gotten was pity. There’d been no punishment, just the heavy weight of knowing that someone felt sorry for you.
She would have preferred an after-school detention.
“What I’m about to tell you isn’t 100 percent concrete. We’re still missing information and—”
“Spit it out.” Better to get the bad news over with so she could move on to figuring out how to patch up her psyche once again.
“We believe the person orchestrating the break-ins and the threats is your father.”
Blood rushed in her ears like angry waves at high tide, threatening to drown anything that got in their way. She squeezed her eyes shut.
No. No, no, no, no.
“Rose?” Max’s hand came to her knee and she let it rest there, feeling nothing. Seeing nothing. “Look at me.”
She stayed in blackness, hoping that perhaps the earth had yielded to her wish and a great big hole had opened up and sucked her down.
“Look at me.” He grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “We’ll figure this out.”
“How? You think my own father is sending men to hurt me.” She opened her eyes and pushed out the words through heavy breaths. “How can we possibly figure that out?”
And there it was. The same pity she’d seen in her principal’s eyes. They’d all known her family life sucked. Poor little Rosie Lawson, the girl whose parents hated one another.
“How sure are you?” she asked, speaking slowly so her voice wouldn’t betray her.
Max rubbed a hand over his face. “Ninety percent sure.”
“When did you first suspect it was him?” She pressed her lips together, holding the pain in. Packing it down into a neat little block that she could hide away from the world.
But it pulsed inside her, clawing. Angry.
Growing.
“It doesn’t matter, Rose. What matters is what we do next.” He slipped an arm around her shoulder and tried to draw her close to him, but she remained stiff.
“Which is?”
“I get as much evidence as we can and turn it over to the police. In the meantime, I want to get you somewhere safe.” He rubbed his hand up and down her arm as though trying to thaw her out.
“My house isn’t safe?”
“I found a bug in the living room.” He paused. “That’s why I wanted to talk in here.”
“How do you know there isn’t one in here?” She blinked, looking around her room as though it were a foreign place. It felt foreign...unsafe.
“I swept the room while you were sleeping on the couch the other day.”
“Oh.” She nodded, a lump blocking her throat. “I guess he figured you wouldn’t be in my bedroom.”
“Rose...” Max leaned his head against hers, his warmth only showing her how cold her life had become.
Her own father had sent men to ransack her house. A sob caught in her throat, but she tamped it down. She would not cry, and she would not be pitied. Pushing up from the bed she paced the room, her limbs heavy as she forced herself to keep moving.
The tattooed man. She knew where she’d seen him the first time, and it wasn’t in the alleyway or in her home. Her father often had strange men come by the house when she was little, occasionally late at night as her mother was putting her to bed. She’d never liked the men, especially since her mother always rushed her out of the room whenever they turned up.
The man with the tattoo on his neck had been to her house when she was little. He knew her father.
Realization slammed into her like a ferocious wave.
“I realize this is a lot to take in. But I won’t leave you until this is all sorted and I’m sure you’re safe.” The sincerity in Max’s voice stabbed her like a thousand tiny needles.
He wouldn’t leave her until...
“I just want this to be over with.” She stopped in front of the music box on her side table and stared at it.
As she opened the lid the simple tune played and the ballerina turned. Hot tears pricked at the backs of her eyes.
The music box had belonged to her mother as a child and Rose had always admired it on her nightstand. On her twelfth birthday her mother had wrapped it up and snuck into Rose’s room at midnight to give it to her.
When her mother had woken her on that fateful Christmas Eve, she’d already packed their bags. Rose discovered the music box when they unpacked at the other end of their journey. It contained her mother’s pearls.
I want you to have them, her mother had said. They’re no good to me now. Promise me you’ll keep the box and pass it down to your own daughter one day. Promise me...
All the times she’d had to cover her ears to block out the fighting, all the cold nights in the English countryside while they had hidden away from the world. Rose understood now; they must have been hiding from her father.
She slammed the lid down on the music box and threw it on the floor so hard something rattled inside. Curious, she opened the lid to find the ballerina loose. Great, the one thing her mother had given her and she’d broken it. As she tried to fix the ballerina, it came completely free of the box. The stand on which the figuring stood had something sticking out of the bottom.
“Is that what I think it is?” Max came to her and turned over the ballerina. “It’s a key.”
It didn’t look like a key, at least not in the traditional sense. “That’s probably where the figure locks into place so it doesn’t fall over when it rotates.”
“No. I don’t think so.” He held his hand out. “Can I have a look?”
“Knock yourself out,” she said, dropping the ballerina into his hand.
He inspected the music box and trac
ed his finger over the initials on the front. AMF; Aileen Margaret Fitzpatrick. Her mother’s maiden name, the only thing she’d kept from her childhood...along with the music box.
Pressing on the letters, Max bent down to examine it more closely. To Rose’s surprise, the letters slid out of the box to reveal a strange indentation. He fitted the bottom of the ballerina to the box and turned. A compartment, which had been completely hidden by what appeared to be a normal join in the wood, popped open.
Her heart thudded like the racing gait of a horse’s gallop. Max carefully opened the compartment and pulled out its contents: a small velvet pouch.
“Oh, my God.” Rose reached for the pouch and opened the drawstring. Inside was the fattest, most sparkly diamond she’d ever seen.
* * *
MAX SAT IN the waiting room of the NYPD’s 84th Precinct, his whole body buzzing with nervous energy as if he were a live wire. It had been a week since they’d found the diamond and Rose’s world had been tipped upside down.
Her statement had interested the police, and it turned out her father was on their watch list. He’d been linked to a number of crimes, including several illegal gambling rings and an ongoing investigation into an organized crime group connected with underground dog fights.
Security footage from the alley was enough for them to identify the man with the neck tattoo, and it hadn’t taken long for him to agree to testify against Nigel Lawson. Rose’s father had been arrested the next day.
Max had been kept out of the loop as far as the investigation was concerned, which he understood. The police had a job to do and he respected that. But he’d insisted on sticking by Rose in case her father or his cronies tried anything.
From his vantage point in the precinct, he watched as the uniformed officers went about their work. A rookie tried to calm down an elderly woman whose purse had been stolen. Many officers got tired of dealing with that stuff quickly, but the young woman had a look of compassion on her face that made Max smile. She helped the woman to her seat and patted her arm, the gold pin holding her uniform tie down glinting under the bright lighting.
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