by Lexi Blake
She was confused, but then that seemed to be her perpetual state lately. “What relationship? And why would I be a red flag?”
“For the most part Steven was boring. He went to work and went home. But he did visit your sister on occasion, and that was why we brought in McDonald.” Arthur said every word carefully, as though measuring them and watching for her response.
“He didn’t know my sister.” She’d never heard the two connected in any way.
Except apparently, they’d both known Levi Green. Her sister had been incredibly secretive those last few months. The only reason she’d met “Lewis” had been by accident. She’d popped by her sister’s place on a lark and he’d been there. He’d been the one to introduce himself as a man who dated Katie.
If she’d come a different day, would it have been Tucker who opened that door?
She shook that feeling off.
“He did know your sister,” Arthur said, not unkindly. “I’ve got a file on Steven. I haven’t shared it with the Agency because they haven’t asked. They can be a bit arrogant, I’ve found. I’ll let you read it. I’ve got pictures of him at your sister’s flat two days before he left for Paris. When the investigator asked some of the neighbors about him, they said he frequently visited.”
Tears pulsed behind her eyes, but she wasn’t going to cry. There was an explanation. “My sister was working on a story about McDonald. He and Levi Green were investigating McDonald. Maybe that’s how they met.”
“But Steven never told you he knew her?”
She shook her head. “He was secretive about what he did. I think he was trying to protect me.”
“Or he had another reason.”
She wasn’t going to listen to this. “I should go back to the house.”
“You would have been excellent cover for him, you know.” Arthur stayed right where he was. “You gave him a reason to go to Paris that weekend, and a couple traveling together is much less suspicious than a man traveling alone. I find it interesting that he never asked you to go anywhere with him before that day, the day he was planning on turning over the information he stole.”
He’d kissed her before then. During those last few weeks, he’d carefully spent time with her.
Had he decided she was a good bet as cover if he needed a traveling companion? Now that she looked back, she could see how he’d drawn her in over the course of a few months. He’d stayed away for a long time. He’d only gotten truly close when he’d decided he wanted out. He hadn’t mentioned he knew her sister even when she’d talked about her sister.
But something didn’t make sense. “This information he stole, it was stored at Kronberg. You’re telling me Kronberg didn’t know what McDonald was doing, yet the information was stolen directly from Kronberg.”
“Well, obviously the man they stole the information from knew,” Arthur replied as though it should be evident. “The former CEO has been dealt with, as has his entire staff. But he was a careful man. He kept records of everyone who worked with McDonald, and we want to know who else at Kronberg knew. That’s all we’re doing. Everything will be turned over to our allies, but we need that list in order to clean house.”
“You need that list in order to cover it all up.” She might be naïve about a lot of things, but not this.
“I have to worry about our stock prices,” he allowed. “And I have to worry that the Agency is going to screw us all over. All you have to worry about is whether or not Steven is intending to use you again.” He stood. “I’m going back. I’ll send you the file and you can decide for yourself.”
She didn’t want to see that file. She wasn’t even sure if it mattered. He couldn’t have had a hand in Katie’s death. According to everything she knew, he’d had his mind erased days before Katie had been killed. But what if he’d given Katie up? He couldn’t give her up. They’d already known. But they hadn’t known how much information Katie had gathered. He could have told them everything and that could have led McDonald to kill her.
It was an endless, agonizing loop in her mind. She didn’t even realize when Arthur had walked away.
“Hey, are you okay?” Tucker jogged up to the gazebo, glancing behind him to where Arthur was walking into the house. “Did he do something to you?”
He’d caused her to doubt everything she knew. “No, I’m fine.”
Tucker closed the space between them and his hands cupped her shoulders, eyes shining in the moonlight. “You can’t leave like that. I don’t want you to be alone with that man. We have no idea what he’s capable of.”
“We don’t know anything at all. That’s the real problem.” She stepped back. There was so much between them that hadn’t been there before. A mere half an hour ago they’d been some undefeatable team, and now she wasn’t sure what to do.
Tucker’s face fell. “What’s wrong?”
So much, but she settled for her original worry. “You heard what Lewis…Levi Green said. Somehow I’m responsible for you getting caught. Have you thought about that for two seconds? Have you thought about how you’ll feel if you get concrete proof that I’m the reason you lost your memory?”
“No,” he admitted. “Because it doesn’t matter. Because I just found my brother and that’s way more important than assigning blame, Roni. Come here. I don’t blame you for anything. If you somehow tipped them off, you didn’t mean to.”
He looked so gorgeous in the moonlight, like her every fantasy come to life, and it seemed cruel that he could be taken from her twice. “Kronberg hired a PI to follow you because they were worried you’d raped Rebecca.”
Even in the moonlight she could see the way he paled. “I wouldn’t do that. I didn’t do that. I know I didn’t. Rebecca would have told me. I hurt her. I did, but I did it to save her. McDonald was going to take her to Argentina, and if Rebecca had gone, she wouldn’t have come back. She would have been forced to work for McDonald or she would have been killed.”
“You couldn’t tell her why? You couldn’t warn her? You had to torture her. Do you know how insane that sounds?” Anger was building because they were right back to where they’d been before. He’d kept secrets and it had cost everyone around him.
Tucker stared for a moment as though that had been the very last thing he’d thought she would say. “I don’t know what my thinking was at the time. I can’t remember, but I know I’m sorry for hurting her. I had to have thought it was for the best.”
She knew it was the only excuse he could give, but she couldn’t handle it right now. “How about my sister? Was it for the best that you didn’t bother to tell me you knew her?”
His eyes flared in obvious surprise. “What? I thought you said Levi knew her. Are you saying you saw me with her? Sweetheart, I can’t remember. I’m starting to get some of that time back, but I certainly don’t remember your sister.”
“That’s an awfully convenient excuse.”
“It’s not an excuse and I assure you it’s not convenient.” The words that came from his mouth were practically arctic. He took a deep breath. “Look, it’s been a long day. Why don’t we go inside, open a bottle of wine, and talk about this? Whatever this is.”
She would be in his arms before she’d emptied the glass. She wanted to be in his arms right now. She wanted nothing more than to believe everything he said and write Arthur off completely. But why would he send her a file if he didn’t have proof? “I don’t know that’s a good idea. It seems to me we’ve both jumped into this relationship without thinking about it.”
It had taken him exactly a week to have her madly in love with him again. Even after everything she’d gone through the first time. Even as she’d been separated from her daughter, she’d wanted to be with him.
His stare threatened to burn through her. “I think about it all the time. I think about you all the time. Roni, what is this really about?”
It was about the fact that he was too good to be true. It was about the fact that she wasn’t at all sure she could tr
ust that anything positive could happen to her. “How can I trust you when we don’t know what happened?”
“What do you think happened?”
She didn’t want to go there, but they had to talk about Katie. “You were involved with Levi Green. Levi Green was involved with Katie. Arthur claims he has a private investigator’s report that puts you at my sister’s apartment a few days before you disappeared. Why would you have gone there? Why wouldn’t you have told me?”
He shook his head. “Maybe I didn’t know she was your sister.”
“I showed you pictures of her.” He might not remember but she did. “During the last two weeks before McDonald took you, we had a couple of dates. Always away from the office. I had to meet you at the restaurants we went to. I showed you pictures of my sister and my mom one night when we were having dinner at a place in the Marienplatz. You looked at her for a long time and pointed out all the ways we looked like sisters. You even told me you didn’t think your brother looked like you at all. We had a long talk about genetics.”
It had been a nice night. She’d enjoyed talking about their families and the long discussion about how DNA worked. He’d been so smart, but not in a way that made her feel dumb. He’d listened to her.
He’d lied to her. If Arthur was right and Tucker had known Katie, he’d stared at that picture and not mentioned a word to her.
He seemed to think about it for a while before he finally sighed. “I don’t know why I would do that, but I had a good reason.”
“How do you know?”
“Because just a few days ago you made me believe in myself,” he replied in a fervent tone. “You told me a whole lot about how I’m good now and that meant I had to be good then. Are you telling me one conversation with a man who is known to lie and is probably here to fuck us all over and suddenly all the sweet faith in me is gone?”
She didn’t want to think like this, but she also had a hard time wrapping her head around all of it. “She was my sister.”
“Yes, and Robert is my brother and I gave up everything to find him. Everything, Roni.” He put his hands on her shoulders, squeezing gently as if he was afraid she would disappear if he let her go. “I was working at Mass General. That means my degree is probably from Harvard. I was a kid from small-town Wyoming and I had to have gone to an Ivy League school to have earned that residency. You know how much work that had to have been. I wanted to find my brother so much I was willing to erase my existence to do it. And I’m standing here telling you I don’t care if you’re the one who got me caught.”
She couldn’t help the tears that fell now because she felt the loss of her sister so deeply in that moment. That horrible emptiness made her reckless, and she didn’t think about a thing she was saying. It was all there in her head and it spat out like a noxious poison. “And your brother is alive. My sister is dead. I won’t ever see her again. My mother is missing a part of her soul and Violet won’t ever know her aunt. I’m having a hard time believing that it didn’t have something to do with the files you stole. You knew her. You spent time in her apartment.”
He backed away, his hands coming off her like she was too hot to touch. “Have you even seen this evidence?”
She hadn’t. In a lot of ways she was talking out loud, going through all the worst possible scenarios because that was what she did. She usually didn’t do it with the very person she was feeling threatened by. “No. But Arthur said he was sending it to me.”
His gaze sharpened and she wondered if she’d made a mistake telling him. “Yeah, he’s sending it to you. Did he ask for your email?”
She shook her head.
“He doesn’t have to because he’s had you under surveillance for years. He works for the company that let Hope McDonald ruin lives. But he sends you some evidence that I’m a…what? I would love to know exactly what I’m being accused of.”
She’d been hasty and she knew it, but she couldn’t back down. “You lied to me.”
“Oh, it’s more than that,” he said, bitterness dripping from every word. “We all know I was a liar. Let’s get to the real problem. You think that if I knew your sister, then I probably slept with her. Even though from everything I’ve learned, I didn’t have that reputation. I wasn’t known as a playboy around the office. But you immediately go there. I think what you’re really wondering is if I killed her.”
She shook her head. “I know you didn’t plant the bomb. You were in Argentina.”
“Was I? Maybe I wasn’t. Maybe Mother kept me somewhere closer so she could program me to kill your sister. Mother loved to play those games. She loved to pit us against one another, to show us how much control she had.” He swore under his breath and turned away. “McDonald. I don’t fucking call her Mother anymore.”
What was she doing? She hadn’t meant to take him back to that place. “I’m sorry. Arthur was pretty convincing. He makes sense. You were working with Levi and he had a relationship with my sister. We know that Kronberg probably hired me as leverage against her investigation. Why wouldn’t you know her?”
“Knowing her and fucking her are two different things. And it’s obvious you’re questioning whether or not I got her killed. I don’t even know how to defend myself. I can’t defend myself because I don’t remember. He could show you pictures and I can’t answer them.”
“This is crazy. We should take a step back and think about this.” She hated the way his shoulders slumped.
“Is there anything to think about?” He took a deep breath and straightened up. “You should go and find Arthur and get the truth about me. Maybe you can write up a report and let me know how much I fucked up your life.”
Tears began to fall. “That’s not fair.”
“None of this is fair. None of my life has been fair since the day my brother got sold out.” He turned away from her. “I meant what I said. I could have found out you turned me over personally to McDonald and I would have known you thought it was best at the time. I would have believed you. The fact that you can’t do the same for me merely lets me know we don’t feel the same way about each other.”
It had all gone so wrong. She hadn’t meant for it to go this way. “Can I not have a few minutes to think this through?”
He didn’t bother to turn around. “You can have all the minutes you want, Veronica. The truth is I could get my memories back and lie about them. I could tell you anything at this point and there would always be a question in the back of your head. If I had anything to do with Katie, you’ll wonder if I had something to do with why she died. I don’t come back from that with you, and I definitely don’t with your mom.”
Her fists clenched at her sides. “I just want to know what happened.”
“And I can’t tell you.” He turned and there was resignation in his eyes. “Since the moment I realized I was Dr. Razor I’ve had this sick feeling in the pit of my gut that I wasn’t worthy of anything I’ve gotten since I was rescued. Until a few nights ago. You made me believe in myself. Like most things in my life it wasn’t real, but I’m going to hold on to it.”
“Damn it, I’m not trying to…I don’t know what I’m doing, Tucker.”
“But you do.” His hands were on his hips and he was staring at her like he’d never seen her before. “You’re going to look at that evidence and you think you’re going to make a decision about our relationship. The truth is you’ve already done that. You did it the minute you asked yourself if I was the kind of man who could sleep with your sister and then make a baby with you. You said you knew my soul. You won’t be with a man like that. Suspicion is an insidious thing, and there will be a whole lot of it in the next few weeks. They’ll come at us from all angles and we won’t be strong enough to withstand it. Maybe if we’d had more time, but we didn’t.”
What exactly was he saying? He was blurry in front of her, tears affecting her vision, and she worried maybe he’d always been that way, a vague dream of something she’d missed out on. “I don’t understand.�
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“But I do. It will always be there in the back of your mind.” He turned away again and was down the steps before he spoke. “I’ll sleep somewhere else tonight. You should be careful around Arthur. And Levi. They’ve both got their own agendas and you are merely a pawn to them. When this is done, no matter how you feel about me, no matter what you decide I’ve done, I’m not giving up my daughter. You should understand that. I understand that you might think I’m not good for her, but she’s mine, too. I have no intention of giving her up, and tell Sandra if she thinks she can hide Violet from me or scare me off, she’s wrong. After all, you know how far I’ll go for my family.”
“Tucker.” She wasn’t sure how it had gone so wrong. She hadn’t meant to break up with him. When she’d first walked out, she’d been terrified that he would be upset with her. How had she ended up here?
She didn’t want him gone. She only wanted to understand what had happened.
“Tucker,” she called out.
But he didn’t turn around. She was left alone with her doubt and the aching pain in her chest that she’d lost something she could never get back.
Chapter Thirteen
“Okay, bud, how about you tell me what the hell is going on with you and Roni.” Robert placed a beer in front of Tucker and sat down on the bench overlooking the front drive.
It was a long, unpaved road that led to the highway. He couldn’t see it from here even if it had been light enough to see much of anything at all. The road to the country house wound through the woods. They were isolated, and it was easy to imagine a time when carriages and horses would have been the main forms of transportation. A simpler time when no one erased minds and when a man could force the woman he loved to stay at his side since she would be dependent on her husband. Yeah. Men had it good then. No one forced drugs on them, and their wives and daughters were property who couldn’t change their minds because some asshole planted a seed of doubt. Hell, back then maybe he could have simply shot Arthur Dwyer and gotten away with it. No pesky CSI-types or tons of security cameras always waiting and watching and stopping a guy from having fun.
