by Paula Graves
But he was here as a nanny, not as a Marine. What was he thinking, bringing a weapon into her home without letting her know? It was easily grounds for dismissal, and she doubted he’d bother to argue.
And then what? She’d have to find another nanny. She’d lose days, maybe weeks, of investigation trying to settle her domestic affairs.
Maybe he had a good explanation. Maybe she should wait until he got home to hear what he had to say.
Maybe she didn’t want to believe the man who’d kissed her with such sweet passion just a couple of hours ago could be playing on her emotions for his own purposes.
She heard the sound of a car door closing outside, followed by Katie’s happy, excited chattering. Her first instinct was to jump up and leave Jim’s room to avoid being caught snooping, but she made herself sit still. She left the dresser drawer open, revealing the spoils of her investigation.
“Lacey?” Jim’s voice carried from the front parlor.
“In here,” she answered, waiting for him to reach her.
He stopped in the open doorway, his hand still curled around Katie’s. His gaze moved to the open dresser drawer, then flicked back to meet hers.
What she saw there made her heart sink. He didn’t look offended or outraged by her snooping.
He looked guilty as hell.
She leaned forward, pushing his dresser drawer shut, and pasted on a bright smile for her niece. “Did you have fun at the park, sweet pea?”
“Wings!” Katie responded with a look of rapturous delight lighting up her face.
“She likes to swing,” Jim said.
“Yes. I know.” Lacey picked up her niece and edged past Jim into the hallway. “Let’s get you out of this coat, baby.”
Safely alone with Katie in the nursery, she locked the bedroom door behind her and helped the little girl out of the thick jacket and pants in which Jim had dressed her for their trip to the park, concentrating on keeping her mind free of any thoughts about Jim Mercer or what she planned to do next.
Katie was the priority. She had to be. Lacey was all the family her niece had left in the world, and she took that reality seriously. Which meant that she couldn’t take chances with her own safety or Katie’s.
Was Jim a threat to their safety? If she’d seen anything but guilt on his face, she might believe otherwise.
A few minutes later, there was a light knock on the door. “Lacey?”
She pressed her lips into a thin line, her treacherous mind going directly to those electric moments a few hours earlier when Jim had kissed her in Toby’s office. And she’d let him, without putting up any sort of resistance.
“Not now,” she said.
“You’re just going to spend the rest of the night in there with Katie?” he asked. “She hasn’t had dinner yet. Or a bath.”
“Go the hell away, Jim.”
Katie looked up at her, a look of confusion on her sweet face. Lacey picked her up, cuddling her close.
“It’s okay, baby,” she soothed, carrying Katie to the rocking chair next to the crib. “Everything is going to be okay.”
As Katie settled down, Lacey forced her scattered thoughts into some semblance of order. Should she call the police? On what grounds? Because a former Marine who probably had all his paperwork in perfect order had brought a firearm into her house without telling her?
She wasn’t some wilting flower who couldn’t deal with robust self-defense. She knew how to handle a weapon herself, though she had decided not to carry a weapon of her own. She had no problem with law-abiding citizens exercising their second-amendment rights.
But Jim had kept something from her. More than just the presence of a pistol in her home, if the look of regret and guilt in his expression was anything to go by.
Just what was it that he was really hiding?
“Jim?” Katie queried softly a few moments later.
“We’ll go see Jim in just a minute,” Lacey promised, meaning it. If she really wanted to know what Jim was hiding, she wasn’t going to find out by hiding in Katie’s room.
She gave her niece a quick diaper change, soothing the worried look on the little girl’s face with a few kisses and a quick raspberry blown against her belly, which made Katie giggle madly.
Jim was in the kitchen when she and Katie entered, standing at the sink looking out the window at the backyard, where the last pitiful remains of Marvin the Snowman was giving up the ghost.
He turned at the sound of Lacey’s footsteps. “I’m sorry.”
“Katie might be ready for that snack now,” Lacey suggested, setting the girl down on the floor.
Katie toddled over to Jim and held her arms up. He glanced at Lacey, as if asking for permission.
Lacey gave a slight nod, her heart aching at the pure delighted affection she saw in her niece’s face when Jim swung her up in his arms.
“Want to try those peanut-butter crackers again, Katiebug?”
“Mmm,” Katie said with a grin.
Jim put her in the high chair and went to the cabinet to retrieve the box of crackers and the jar of peanut butter.
Lacey crossed to his side. “Why did you take this job?”
He paused in the middle of opening the jar of peanut butter. “Because I was hired to do so.”
Lacey glanced at Katie and lowered her voice. “By whom?”
“By a company called Campbell Cove Security. I was already being interviewed for a position as an instructor at the company’s civilian-and-law-enforcement academy when the company received a request for a security expert who could double as a nanny.”
“So they sent you?”
He nodded and finished opening the jar of peanut butter. He took a butter knife and started to spread the peanut butter over the first of a small stack of crackers.
“Do you even have experience as a nanny?”
“That part of my background is entirely true,” he answered quietly. “After my father’s unexpected death, I raised my younger siblings while my mother worked. After I left the Marine Corps, after college, I really did work as a child caregiver for a Kentucky couple before I was contacted by Campbell Cove Security.”
“Who hired Campbell Cove Security to protect me?”
He glanced at her but didn’t answer.
“I know nothing about that security company,” she pressed on. “I very much doubt your boss there would send you as a double agent on his or her own initiative. So who hired you?”
Jim put together the last of the peanut-butter crackers and released a faint sigh. “Your network.”
Of course. She’d said no to their offer of security, so her bosses had taken it upon themselves to give her security anyway.
“I don’t think they should have been deceptive about it,” he added.
“That’s rich, coming from you.”
He looked as if he wanted to argue, but he kept his cool, turning to face her. He lowered his voice to a near whisper, his gaze slanting toward Katie. “You’re in danger. So is Katie. I can help you both.”
She lowered her voice, as well. “So, after your deceptive manner of getting inside my house, I’m supposed to continue paying you to take care of my niece and allow you to moonlight as our bodyguard? Is that what you’re suggesting?”
He gave her a level look. “Pretty much, yeah.”
Clamping her mouth shut, she turned away from him and grabbed a clean sippy cup from the cabinet nearby. She filled it with milk from the refrigerator and turned back to face Jim. “I’m not stupid, you know. I didn’t make the choice to refuse security lightly. I’m trying to keep a low profile here in Cherry Grove. If I were suddenly followed around town by an entourage of armed men, that would draw far more attention to me and my niece than I want.”
“And those s
ecurity guards might impede your investigation into your sister’s murder.”
She met his gaze. “You did pick the lock on my situation room.”
His lips curved slightly at the corners before he brought his expression back under control. “You didn’t make it nearly as easy to figure out what you were up to as I did. All you had to do was open my door and snoop around my bedroom, while I had to pull out the lock-pick tools to get to your secrets.”
“A locked door is an invitation to enter and look around?”
“So, apparently, is an unlocked one.”
It was her turn to fight the urge to smile. Damn him.
“I’m going to let you continue your job here,” she said quietly as she fit the lid on the sippy cup. “Both of them. I’m even willing to consider allowing you to assist me in my investigation, on the condition that you don’t tell your boss or my boss anything else about the investigation.”
“My boss has access to information that might help us.”
“I gave you my condition.”
He didn’t look happy, but he nodded. “Okay.”
She handed the crackers and the cup of milk to Katie, who began consuming both with crumb-flinging eagerness. Turning back to Jim, she leveled her gaze with his. “There’s one more thing.”
His brow furrowed. “What?”
“If you think I’m ever going to trust you again on a personal level, you can forget it. From now on, there’s nothing but business between us.”
Chapter Eleven
“So, you know by now that I’m concentrating on three possible assailants,” Lacey said the next morning as they sat side by side—but carefully not touching—on the steps of the farmhouse’s back porch while they watched Katie run around chasing squirrels that had ventured out that chilly morning to pick up walnuts that had fallen from the two large trees growing in the backyard.
“Yup. The Whittiers, al Adar and J.T. Swain.”
“I assume by now you’ve familiarized yourself with all three?” The dry tone of her voice made him writhe inwardly. She would not be quick to forgive him for his lies of omission. If she ever did.
No matter. He deserved her mistrust.
“I was already familiar with al Adar. I’ve caught up, mostly, on the other two.”
“There may be a few things you don’t know about the Whittier brothers.”
“Maybe not.” He’d risked using the house internet connection to watch the video Alexander Quinn had uploaded to Campbell Cove Security’s cloud storage. A far less careworn Lacey Miles had delved into the details of a Whittier Enterprises real-estate-development deal that was supposed to benefit hundreds of lower-to-middle-class residents of the Bronx. “I know you suspect the Whittiers’ real-estate-development company changed the plans for a housing development near the Bronx in order to facilitate the cover-up of a mysterious death.”
Lacey stared at him. “How the hell could you know that?”
“Because I saw the raw footage of the report you had planned to do.”
Lacey looked away, turning her cool profile to him. Silence extended between them until he was ready to speak just to break the tension. But she spoke first. “Your company was able to get their hands on that footage? It must be better connected than I realized.”
“I think maybe you’re right.”
Katie lost interest in chasing the elusive squirrels and came running over to the porch, launching herself into Jim’s arms. He settled her on his knees, where she beamed at Lacey. “Snowman,” she said firmly.
“I’m afraid Marvin’s almost melted away,” Lacey said with an exaggerated frown.
“Make snowman!” Katie insisted. “Mahbin.”
Lacey glanced at Jim. He shot her a sympathetic look and shrugged one shoulder.
“Make Mahbin!” Katie demanded.
“We’ll have to wait for it to snow again, sweetie.” Lacey reached over to zip up Katie’s jacket just as Jim moved his hands to do the same thing, and her fingers brushed his, setting off sparks. He wasn’t sure if the sensation was the real result of static or just his body’s electric reaction to her touch.
He wasn’t sure it mattered.
Lacey dropped her hand quickly, flicking a swift glance Jim’s way before she settled her gaze on Katie. “I bet you’re hungry, aren’t you, baby?”
Distracted by the demands of her stomach, Katie nodded.
“I’ll get her settled in her high chair if you’ll heat up some chicken-noodle soup for her,” Lacey said, reaching out to take Katie from his arms.
Katie didn’t fuss when Lacey took her inside, though she did shoot Jim a questioning look, as if she didn’t understand why he wasn’t the one carrying her through the mudroom door.
While Lacey helped Katie shed her snowsuit, Jim heated leftover chicken-noodle soup and poured it into one of Katie’s favorite bowls. He set it in front of her and took a step back, pretending to watch Katie dig into the soup while he secretly took every chance he could get to look at Lacey.
To say she was still angry with him was an understatement. But at least they were talking. It was a start.
“How much of the footage was your company able to get their hands on?” Lacey asked a few minutes later when she joined him near the refrigerator. She pulled apple juice from the refrigerator and poured a cup for Katie.
“I think maybe all of it.”
She slanted a quick look at him before she handed Katie the drink and sat in the chair to her right.
Jim took a seat across from Lacey. “I can show you.”
She shook her head. “I’ve seen it, remember. I’m the one who put it together.”
“Why didn’t the network let you air it?”
“Because the Whittiers threatened to take the whole network down if we did. It went all the way up to the network suits, who capitulated.”
“I thought the press was supposed to be the ones who spoke truth to power and all that.”
“I can’t prove this, but I think someone in the Whittier clan applied a little leverage to someone pretty damned high up in the network.”
Jim frowned. “You mean blackmail?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.” Lacey grabbed a paper towel from the roll hanging on the wall and crossed to Katie to mop up the soupy mess the little girl was making. “I can’t think of any other reason the network would have put a stop to my report.”
“Any idea who? Or what?”
She shook her head. “I may be an investigative reporter, but I learned a long time ago that indulging in behind-the-scenes gossip is a great way to lose your job. I’ve always steered clear of that sort of thing, and all my coworkers know it. They don’t even bother to whisper anything anymore.”
“But it’s a case now, isn’t it? You could approach it as if it’s something you’re investigating, not gossip.”
“I have to work with those people. I can’t start digging around in their personal lives and pasts just because I’m sort of suspicious about why my investigation was shut down. If they’re being blackmailed, it’s probably about something in their lives I don’t want or need to know about. I’ll find another way to get to the truth about the Whittiers. Whatever it is. And when I do, not even the network is going to be able to stop me from revealing it.”
Which explained why the Whittiers might want to put her out of action for good, Jim thought. “Okay. So let’s change gears. J.T. Swain. What if I told you I could get you a meeting with someone who probably knows more about Swain and his history than anyone else in the world?”
She gave him a skeptical look. “The person who knows the most about Swain is a former FBI agent who knew him as a kid and also went undercover with Swain’s organization for a while. Ben Scanlon. But, believe me, I tried to talk to Scanlon and his wife,
who’s the next best expert on Swain, when I was doing my investigation into his disappearance. Neither of them would talk to me.”
“They’ll talk to you now. I already have a meeting set up.”
She stared at him, disbelieving. “I spent months trying to get an interview with them. How did you manage it?”
“My boss at Campbell Cove Security has a knack for making the impossible happen.”
“When will they meet me? And where?”
“Us,” Jim corrected. “They’ll meet us.”
The scowl that creased Lacey’s forehead was impressive, but Jim waited for her to figure out the reality: if she wanted to talk to the Scanlons, she was going to have to accept Jim as a partner in the investigation.
Her lips finally pressed into a thin line. “Fine. When and where?”
“They’re going to be in the area later this week. I’m supposed to call and set it up.”
“The sooner, the better,” she said firmly.
“Yeah, I figured that.”
Now finished with her soup, Katie had turned the bowl upside down and was using her spoon to bang on the bottom of the bowl. Jim gently extricated her makeshift drum from her hands, earning a scowl nearly as intimidating as her aunt’s.
“I’ll call as soon as I get Katiebug cleaned up and settled for her nap.”
Lacey stood. “Go make the call. I’ll take care of Katie.”
“You sure?”
She nodded. “Go. The sooner the better, remember.”
Jim deposited the bowl in the sink for a rinse, then pulled out his cell phone and retreated to the front parlor to make his call. He reached Ben Scanlon on the first ring.
“I’ve been expecting your call.” Scanlon’s voice was deep, his words edged with a twang that reminded Jim of a gunnery sergeant he’d known in the Marine Corps, a Texan through and through. “Isabel and I will be in Washington for a seminar on domestic terrorism this weekend, but we thought we’d drive rather than fly. Make a road trip out of it. We’ll be overnighting in Strasburg on Wednesday. I’ve been taking a look at the map—we could take a detour on our way into DC and meet up with you in Leesburg Thursday around noon.”
