Her Christmas Surprise (Silhouette Special Edition)

by Kristin Hardy

  “Bradley started looking for a place?” Keely repeated carefully.

  “A house. He wanted it for the two of you to use once you were married. So you could stay together. I told him you could stay here but he didn’t listen.” The lock went over with a snap and she glanced up triumphantly.

  Only to see them both staring at her.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Bradley bought a house,” Lex said.

  Olivia waved it away. “No, he just looked. Said he couldn’t find anything that was right.”

  “That doesn’t mean he didn’t get one without telling you.” Lex was pacing around the room as he spoke.

  “Are you thinking the same thing I’m thinking?” Keely asked him, an unholy excitement fluttering in her gut.

  He nodded. “A safe house. If he worked it so it stayed off the record, he’d have that nice hidey hole you were talking about earlier.”

  “And if we find it, we might get all the proof we need.” Even as Keely cautioned herself not to get her hopes up, the grin spread over her face.

  “So what do we do now, call the real-estate agent?” Olivia asked, some of their excitement infecting her.

  Keely shrugged. “I doubt she’ll say anything to us. People are pretty gun shy when it comes to violating client privilege.”

  “Eva Jo? She’s practically like a member of the family.” Lex leaned against the desk. “Her face was always staring up at us from those telephone notepads she passed out. With a few additions, of course. Fangs, horns, missing teeth…”

  Keely’s lips twitched. “And I’m sure she felt close to you, too. That said, if she’s not supposed to tell you, she’s not going to tell you. Even if you did give her horns,” she added. “Anyway, there’s no guarantee he even went to her. He might have looked a little bit but if he wanted to buy the place incognito, he probably went to someone who didn’t know him.”

  “Why? It won’t be under his name. It’d probably be under one of the LLCs, wouldn’t it?”

  “Not necessarily. Safe means he’d want to keep it completely disconnected from any of the LLCs so it couldn’t be traced back to him if everything went to hell. It could be under a fake name. It could be under Olivia’s name. That could be where the millions went.”

  Lex stopped pacing and dropped back into his chair. “Wouldn’t the feds know, if that were the case?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “So how do we check it out?”

  Keely started shutting down the computer. “Look through all the files, first. If we don’t find anything then Monday first thing we’ll go down to the town hall and look through the property transfers, see if we can find anything.”

  “And if we do?”

  “Then we figure out a way inside.”

  Chapter Six

  “How can I help you?” The pretty young clerk at the town hall gave them a practiced smile.

  Keely smiled back. “I want to look at property-transfer records for the past two—”

  “We’ve got it all in the computer,” the clerk interrupted, pointing to the terminals. “You just look it up by the name or address.”

  “What if you don’t have the name or address?” Lex asked.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “We don’t have the address.”

  The smile faded. She tapped a tidy, pink varnished nail on the glossy white counter. “You’ve got to have a name or address to use the computer.”

  “Exactly,” Keely said, searching for patience. The contents of the filing cabinet had been a bust. “We don’t have either, so how can we look up transfers?”

  The clerk gave them the frown and sigh reserved for people who refused to cooperate and ask the standard questions. “I don’t see why you wouldn’t have a name or address.”

  Lex leaned in and gave the clerk one of those smiles that could weaken the knees of any woman. Keely knew from personal experience. “Lynette?” he read off the clerk’s badge.

  “That’s right.” Her voice suddenly sounded oddly breathless.

  “Pretty name. Listen, Lynette, is there somewhere we can just look at a list of all real-estate transactions that happened in the past two years?”

  “Well, we have the land record books in the basement,” she told him, eager to please. “They’re listed by alphabetical order.”

  “That’s fine. They have all the transactions for the year, right?” Lex asked.

  “Actually, they’re in groups of ten years,” Lynette chirped.

  Keely’s heart sank.

  The ledger-sized books hit the long table with a thump. “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the land record books for the first decade of the twenty-first century,” Lex announced. “A through L and M through Z. What’s your pleasure?”

  “Funny,” Keely said darkly and dragged the top book over in front of her. It was nearly the thickness of a telephone book, hundreds of pages, each of which would have to be combed through. The real-estate boom had made for busy times in land records.

  They sat, not in a room but in an enormous fireproof vault in the basement of the Chilton Town Hall. The space could easily have accommodated a large dinner party. The air held the dry, bone-deep chill of a climate-controlled space. Overhead, a dying fluorescent light buzzed like an angry hornet, flickering out, only to flicker back on an instant later.

  “M,” Lex siad, and opened the ledger before him.

  The ledgers were large and the type was eye-blurringly tiny, especially after a couple of hours of staring at it. Neither of them had thought to bring rulers or anything to help them keep their places. The worst part was that they hadn’t a clue what they were looking for and only a faint hope they might find it.

  Sixty seconds a page, three hundred and fifty some-odd pages in a book, two of them to cover the decade. “Who knew so much property turned over around here?” Keely muttered.

  “They’re an acquisitive bunch, these New Englanders,” Lex said.

  “Or indecisive, since they buy as much as they sell.”

  Sixty seconds a page, three hundred and fifty pages in a book, two of them to cover the decade. Minute ticked into minute. One hour crept into two, two slid into three and Keely found herself at the bottom of a page of dense type with absolutely no recollection of what she’d seen.

  She stopped and rolled her shoulders.

  Lex glanced over. “I know. I keep getting to the bottom of a page and thinking I can’t remember a single name I read.”

  He hadn’t shaved that morning and his darkened jaw and battered leather jacket seemed utterly incongruous with the bookish task of reviewing the ledgers. Still, he’d come of his own volition and had been working without complaint since they’d arrived.

  And if she’d found herself faintly distracted at having him sitting a foot away from her, she’d just have to deal with it.

  “When in doubt, repeat,” Keely said. “The worst thing would be to have it be there and miss it.”

  “Time for a break, then.”

  “Not yet. I want to finish. I’m so close to the end of this book.”

  “It won’t do you any good if you space out and skip something.”

  “I don’t space out,” she grumbled.

  “Far be it from me to suggest it.” Lex rubbed his eyes. “You know,” he added, “we’re assuming he bought here. What if he bought somewhere else?”

  Keely looked at him in horror. “Perish the thought. Anyway, it doesn’t make sense that he’d go somewhere else. He needed someplace easy to get to, someplace he had a plausible reason to visit regularly without arousing suspicion. Chilton is perfect. All he had to do when he was visiting was nip out and stop by on his way to see a friend or go to the store or whatever.”

  “Assuming nobody saw him come and go.”

  She sighed and started again at the top of the page. “Keep looking,” she ordered.

  “Anybody ever tell you you’re bossy?” Lex asked mildly.

  “It’s for the greater g
ood.”

  “That’s me, all about the greater good.”

  “I’m so glad to hear it.”

  “Even if I do wind up blind because of it.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said absently, back to scanning lists of names.

  Silence fell again, broken only by the rustle of turning pages and sound of their breath. Sixty seconds a page, three hundred and fifty pages in a book, two of them to cover the decade. Three hours crept into four, four hours slid into…

  “Holy crap,” Lex said explosively.

  Keely jumped. “What? What did you find? Bradley’s name? Your mother’s?”

  “No,” he said. “I found yours.”

  The road was narrow and winding. In colonial times, it had been a major thoroughfare and stone walls built laboriously by hand still rose on either side. More than two hundred and fifty years had changed things, though. It wasn’t a major highway anymore. It wasn’t even a county road. It was just a withered offshoot well outside of town that went nowhere.

  In summer, with the trees leafed out, it would be green and shady and lovely, Keely thought. Now, in the waning weeks of the year, it was a study in black and gray and dirty white.

  “We’re lucky most of the snow has gone from the nor’easter,” she commented as Lex’s rental Jeep bounced over the ruts. “It doesn’t look like the plows made it up this far.”

  “That’s probably part of what made him pick the place.” Lex seemed at home fighting to keep the vehicle on the narrow ribbon of dirt and eroding asphalt. “It’s a good way to discourage unwelcome guests.”

  They missed it the first time around, forcing Lex to reverse to find the little lane that led to the pale gray house hidden among the trees. At least the builder had thought to put in a horseshoe driveway so that it would be easy to get back to the road. They drove up to the front and stopped.

  “What if Bradley’s here?” Keely asked suddenly. In the first shock of finding the listing and tracking down the property, it hadn’t occurred to her. Now, though…

  “If he’s here then we’ve found him and our problem’s solved.”

  “Only if he suddenly decides to cooperate.”

  “You might be surprised.” Lex turned off the engine. “I don’t imagine living on the run is all it’s cracked up to be. And even if he doesn’t want to cooperate, he’s still cornered.”

  “Then again, cornered animals are the most dangerous.”

  “Are you calling your ex-fiancé an animal?” Lex asked in amusement as they got out.

  That stopped her for a moment. “Well, I—”

  He flicked her a grin. “Relax. Anyway, I don’t think you have to worry. No car in the drive, no smoke from the chimney. I doubt he’s here.”

  “You don’t know that it’s heated with a stove.”

  He pointed to a pile covered in bright blue plastic. “Twenty bucks says that under that tarp is a cord of hard wood. And…” He knocked hard on the front door. Only silence greeted them. “Empty.”

  Keely glowered at him. “Do you get tired of always being right?” she demanded.

  Lex grinned. “Never,” he said. “Want to take a look around your house?”

  Her house. It was a surprise but technically, she supposed, it was true. Her name was on the deed, as far as they could discover—even if she had zero idea where that deed actually was.

  In a month of shocking incidents, few things had been as startling as the sight of her name, resting calmly in the ledger next to dozens of others. How Bradley had managed to do it without her knowledge, without her presence at signing, she had no idea. Then again, with enough money, a willing lawyer and a spare corporation—and God knew he had those—anything was apparently possible, as a mortgage broker had told them.

  Including ending the day with a house she hadn’t known existed, much less belonged to her.

  And which was currently shut up tight. No great surprise there, nor was it a surprise to find all the drapes drawn. There was a rather spectacular picture window at the back that overlooked a clearing Keely imagined was gorgeous in summer.

  “Do you think it’s hooked up to town power and water?” she asked, picking her way through the slush as they walked around it.

  Lex crunched along beside her, seeming far more comfortable prowling around what felt like someone else’s property than she was. Then again, given his background, maybe he was more accustomed to it. “Power, maybe. Phone, cable. There was wiring strung along that sorry excuse for a road we were on. I’d put my money on well water and a generator, though.” He pointed to the gray metal box hulking up next to one side of the house. “A place like this, you never know when the power’s going to go out. It pays to be prepared.”

  She pulled up the doormat.

  Lex gave her a sidelong glance. “You really think you’re going to find a key?”

  “No. But wouldn’t we feel like idiots if it was there and we didn’t check?”

  “I guess you’ve got a point.”

  She dropped the mat back down. “Nothing here.” She glanced at Lex. “Under a rock?”

  “A fake one, maybe. Or it could be stuck under a flowerpot somewhere.”

  Or hung on a nail on a fencepost or in the porch light or even on a lintel. They searched all those locations and more without success. Half an hour later, standing in the flower beds beside the raised deck, Lex turned to her.

  “Any more ideas?”

  “Maybe there’s not a key to find,” Keely said thoughtfully. “Maybe he carries it with him.”

  Lex shook his head. “If we’re right and he’s got the goods in there, he’s not going to want to have anything on him that would tie him to the place. Including the key. It’ll be somewhere else, somewhere safe.”

  “Such as?”

  He shrugged. “Not his condo. Maybe your apartment?”

  “If it was there, the cops found it.”

  “Not necessarily. They can’t just come into your house and take whatever they see. It has to be called out on the search warrant,” he said. She wasn’t going to ask how he knew. “To add on a key, they would have had to have known about the house and there wasn’t a word about it. So wherever it is, there’s a pretty good chance it’s still there.”

  “But not here.”

  “No,” he agreed.

  She put her hands on her hips and surveyed the back face of the house doubtfully. “We could break a window.”

  “No way. There could be security. He could have someone watching the place for him. The last thing we want is for the cops to show up or for Bradley to find out what’s going on.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “And it’s winter,” he continued. “You break a window, you’re letting in rain, snow, bugs, small furry animals, large furry animals…Not to mention large hairless animals, also known as teenagers.”

  “All right, already. It was just an idea.” And he’d surprised her yet again. Not that smuggling meant he was accustomed to B&E but she’d always assumed that breaking one set of laws tended to make a person cavalier about the others.

  “It wasn’t a bad idea,” Lex said. “It would have gotten us inside.”

  “Inside doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.” Keely shivered. “I don’t suppose you know how to pick a lock, do you?”

  Shadows loomed over them in the chilling afternoon. Lex glanced up at her from where he’d been picking up rocks, and straightened. There was something rough and reckless and all too compelling about him. She shivered again, but this time from something other than temperature.

  He squinted at her blue leather peacoat. “When are you going to start dressing for the cold? You grew up here. You know what December means.”

  “I’m wearing a sweater and a jacket. That should be enough.”

  He flicked at the open front of her coat. “It is if you button it up.”

  “Anyway,” she continued, ignoring him, “it’s not like you’re one to talk. What is that, a flannel shirt and a bo
mber jacket? You’re wearing less than I am.”

  “I’m wearing layers.” He flipped aside the collar of the flannel shirt to show the Henley beneath. “And I’m used to being uncomfortable.”

  Used to being uncomfortable, used to hanging around the scratchy parts of the world. “So are you really a smuggler?” she blurted.

  “What?” He stared at her.

  “Bradley told me you were a smuggler. He said you worked the black market and that was why you went to all the strange places you do.” Rough, capable, slightly dangerous looking—if he’d been an actor, they’d have cast him for the role.

  Lex gave a short laugh and flung the small stone he held into the woods. “Man, he tagged all the bases, didn’t he?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “How many other people do you think he fed that line of bull? It would explain a lot.”

  “I take it you’re not a smuggler?”

  Lex snorted. “I sold my second pair of jeans one time when I was in China and broke. I think I was all of twenty. Does that count?”

  “What are you doing in all those places, then?”

  “Taking pictures. I’m a photographer.”

  Bradley had just laughed at the photography story. Then again, Bradley had lied and cheated and stolen…“Bradley said you just used that for a cover story.”

  Lex didn’t answer, just made a derisive noise.

  She shook her head. “I don’t understand it. Why lie about everything?”

  “You got me. These days it doesn’t sound like he needs a reason, just an opportunity.” He shrugged and bent to check another rock, his dark hair falling over his forehead. “Brad and I aren’t exactly close. We don’t see things the same way.”

  There was a time when she’d have been sure what that meant. There was a time it had been simple: Bradley was the good brother, Trey—Lex—was the bad one. Only Bradley hadn’t turned out to be so good after all, and Lex was here at her side, helping her out of trouble, making her laugh, looking at her now with those green, green eyes that sent something skittering madly about her stomach, and suddenly she wasn’t thinking any more about Bradley and the trouble she was in. Suddenly all she could think about was Lex’s mouth and his hands and what it would be like to kiss him again.