Harlequin Romantic Suspense December 2020 Box Set

by Addison Fox, Cindy Dees, Justine Davis

  CHAPTER 29

  “Why?” Ash asked, sounding bewildered.

  They’d gone back to the table, in part for the quick coffee access. But also, Brady suspected when Hayley, with help from Cutter—or maybe the other way around—had shepherded them there, because it felt more…official to Ash. More like a meeting to decide what to do rather than just constantly being hit with things she had to absorb and process. So he didn’t protest, just took the chair beside Ash. Which, he noted with a touch of amusement, Cutter seemed to have herded him to.

  “I suppose there are those who just get some twisted, evil need satisfied,” Hayley said as she filled mugs. “But…”

  “Otherwise, follow the money,” Brady said acidly.

  “Usually,” Quinn answered, his tone more mild. But he didn’t have the personal stake in this that Brady had. His future didn’t depend on the outcome.

  And yours does?

  Even as the question rang in his mind, he knew the answer. Because the possibilities were there, glowing in the distance, and it did all depend on what happened, depended on his gut feeling, that instinct he’d had since he’d first looked into frightened but steady green eyes, that Ashley Jordan not only wasn’t mentally ill but was much, much more than she first seemed.

  “But I still don’t understand why he would do this,” Ash said. “I mean, taking extra money for testifying, I sort of get that, that’s simple greed, but what could he possibly get out of…making me believe, and my father believe, we were mentally ill?”

  “Assuming you’re the only ones,” Quinn said.

  Ash’s eyes widened. “You mean he could be doing it to other patients? Making them think…they’re going insane? What a horrible thought.”

  “Indeed,” Hayley agreed.

  “What on earth would he get out of…doing something like that?”

  “That,” Quinn said, sounding just as grim, “would likely be something for Dr. Sebastian to analyze.”

  Brady, who’d fallen silent but had kept pacing, suddenly stopped and looked at Quinn. “Or your Ty.” Quinn gave him a quizzical look. “You said there was money in that offshore account that didn’t correlate to Andler being paid for his court testimony, right?”

  Quinn’s expression went suddenly unreadable. But after a moment he let out a low whistle. “Now that would make him a real piece of work.”

  “Yeah,” Brady muttered.

  “But it would make sense of it.”

  “Yes.” Brady’s voice was beyond grim now, just like he felt.

  “The question is, by who?”

  “The why would be easier to find, I’d think.”

  Quinn nodded. “I’ll get him started.”

  “Someone want to explain to us non–mind readers in the room?” Hayley suggested as the two men finally stopped.

  “Thank you,” Ash muttered.

  Brady grimaced as he looked at them. “You mean those of you who don’t have twisted imaginations?”

  “That, too,” Hayley said, but she smiled at him when she said it.

  Quinn answered. “What Brady wants us to consider is the possibility that Andler isn’t getting paid over and above just for his testimony, but for doing to other patients what he’s done to Ashley and quite possibly her father.”

  Brady saw the horror in Ash’s eyes. They looked more shocked and terrified than when her own life was in danger, when he’d pulled her out of the car on the mountainside. He found that significant, but this was not the time to analyze it.

  Ash whispered. “Why would anybody do that?”

  “Follow the money,” Brady repeated sourly.

  “We are,” Quinn said.

  “You mean people would pay a psychiatrist to convince someone they were crazy?” Ash sounded beyond shocked now.

  “Or convince someone else,” Brady said grimly.

  “You mean…like a court,” Hayley said slowly.

  “Exactly.”

  “Good way to get someone out of the way,” Quinn said.

  “Wait,” Ash said, coming out of her apparent shock enough to think now. “Are you saying someone paid Dr. Andler to do this…to me? Who?”

  Brady thought there was only one obvious answer, but Ash clearly wasn’t there yet. But Quinn was, he noted, seeing the man exchanging a glance with his wife, who then looked at Ash with a world of sympathy in her eyes as she got there, too.

  “Whoever has something to gain,” Brady said bluntly, feeling there was no room for subtlety here, and no amount of careful wording was going to lessen the jolt for her.

  “But—”

  She stopped when Quinn held up a hand. He picked up the laptop and turned it around so Ash could see the screen. “I need you to read that list, see if anything looks even vaguely familiar.”

  “What is it?”

  “Please, Ashley, just read it, then we’ll talk about it.”

  Her brow furrowed, but she began to read. Brady watched her, somewhat cravenly wishing for Quinn to be the one who dropped the final bomb on her, because he didn’t want to do it. He didn’t want her to think of it every time she looked at him.

  There was only one very brief moment when her expression changed, when the furrowed brow cleared and the tiniest smile flickered for an instant. But then she went on, until she reached the end of the page. She looked up at Quinn, slowly shaking her head.

  “I don’t see anything I recognize. What is it?”

  “A list of where the deposits to Dr. Andler’s offshore account came from.”

  Brady let out a low whistle. “I do not want to know how you managed that.”

  “Did he not mention his massively intimidating sister is a financial genius, with contacts all over the world?” Hayley said lightly.

  “And that’s all anyone needs to know,” Quinn put in.

  Brady shelved his curiosity and turned back to Ash. “If you don’t recognize any of these people or entities, what did you react to? You almost smiled there for a second.”

  She looked surprised. That she’d shown a reaction, or that he’d noticed? “I… It was just one of the things listed here is the Amalfi Group, like the Amalfi Coast in Italy.”

  “And that’s significant?”

  “Not to this,” she said. “It’s just that’s my mother’s favorite place. I think her family’s from there, way back. Alexander was originally Alessandro, I think.”

  And here they were. A glance at Quinn told him the other man had reached the same conclusion. He understood why Ash didn’t see it, however. What he suspected was the truth was horrible. He tried to imagine finding out the same thing himself, but couldn’t. He supposed she felt the same way. And he was not looking forward to the moment when she realized.

  But he was dreading the possibility of having to tell her.

  “Let’s look at this from a different angle,” Hayley said, her voice taking on such a gentle tone Brady thought she must be thinking the same thing. “All we truly care about right now is you, so let’s focus on that.”

  Ash gave her a fleeting smile. “Thank you for that.” She glanced at Quinn, who had retrieved the computer and was typing something, then settled on Brady with that vivid green gaze. “All of you.”

  He put a hand over hers where it rested on the table. He felt the little snap he always felt when he touched her but tried to ignore it. It wasn’t easy, not when she looked at him as if she’d felt the same thing.

  “I know this whole thing is terrible, but you need to think, Ash. Who would have something to gain by you being declared incompetent?”

  “You mean financially? No one. I mean, there’s a trust I’ll get access to when I turn thirty, but it’s not huge. Certainly not worth the kind of machinations you’re talking about.”

  “There’s a trust?”

  She nodded. “My father set i
t up. There was a bit of family money.”

  “You didn’t think to mention this before?” Brady asked, his voice tense.

  Her brow furrowed. “Why would I? It has nothing to do with…anything.”

  Was she really that naive? Or was it just so foreign to her nature that it would never occur to her the lengths people would go to to get their hands on a chunk of change? He guessed it was the latter. Because he knew, down deep, that at her core Ashley Jordan was that basic building block of civilization—a decent human being.

  “Just how big is it?”

  “I…haven’t looked at it in a long time, but a couple hundred thousand or so, I think.”

  So a lot, but as she’d said, not a multimillion-dollar prize. “Who’s in charge of that trust until you turn thirty?” he asked.

  “My mother, of course. She makes the investment decisions, and she’s good at it. Why?”

  Brady took a deep breath, then said what had to be said. “And who gets the money in that trust if something happens to you?”

  “I… She’s my beneficiary, so…” He saw by her expression that she had at least gotten the implication, but he could also see that she was a long way from accepting it as fact. “No. No, Brady. She wouldn’t.”

  “I get it, Ash. She’s your mother. But—”

  “She may not be the warm, comfortable, homebody sort of mother, but she loves me. Ask anyone. She’s always made that clear.”

  “I’m sure she has,” he muttered.

  It was Hayley, still in that gentle voice that told Brady she knew exactly what they were doing to Ash and how much it was going to hurt, who said, “That’s very often part of the gaslighting process, Ashley. The front of being loving, caring, so that no one will believe what they’re really doing.”

  “But…she’s always looked out for me, worried about me.”

  “And told others how worried she is about you?” Brady suggested. “Afraid that perhaps you’ll go the way your father did?”

  He saw by her expression he’d hit home. So he pushed harder. “Those texts. There was something…off about them.”

  Hayley nodded. “I showed them to Dr. Sebastian. She said they were nearly classic gaslighting, telling you she’s the only one who really cares about you, that you have no friends, nowhere else to turn, belittling you.”

  “Does this trust have a name?” It was the first time Quinn had spoken since he’d taken the laptop back, and he did it in that businesslike tone that seemed to pull Ash out of the murk. She gave the man a smile that looked half sad, half almost embarrassed.

  “The Murphy Trust. He named it after our dog at the time.”

  “Ah,” Quinn said. “That explains why it didn’t come up in our initial searching.”

  Quinn typed in something else, as if he were telling someone—probably the redoubtable Ty, or maybe the genius sister—what she’d said. Silence descended around the table as they waited. Brady belatedly realized he was still holding Ashley’s hand. And again had to corral his mind, which wanted more than anything to shout that the barrier between them was gone. But this wasn’t the time any more than it had been before.

  But he didn’t let go of her hand.

  After a few silent minutes, Quinn looked up from the screen. There was more, Brady could sense it. Could see it in the way the man was looking at Ash, as if deciding how to say it.

  “Just do it,” Brady muttered.

  Quinn grimaced, but apparently agreed. “My sister, Charlie, happens to be in our headquarters office today, so she’s made some calls. When, exactly, was the last time you looked at that trust?”

  Ash seemed embarrassed. “A very long time ago. I tried to ignore it, partly because it hurt to think about my dad, and partly because I didn’t want to be…one of those trust-fund kids who knew they didn’t really have to earn a living.”

  Brady smiled. “Good for you.”

  She smiled back, then said, “Besides, I knew it was in good hands, so I didn’t bother about it, since it would be years before it would be mine. Foolish, huh?”

  “That trust has grown,” Quinn said. “By a factor of about twenty-five.”

  Ash blinked, clearly shocked. “It’s worth millions?”

  “Five, at the moment.”

  Brady drew back slightly. When he’d said follow the money, he hadn’t expected it to be quite that much. But he had no time to dwell on it, because Quinn was continuing, and his voice was ominously grim.

  “And those investments you mentioned? One of them is more than an investment, it’s wholly owned.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The trust—and the administrator of it—controls it completely.”

  “You mean the trust owns a business? What kind of business?”

  “Ty hasn’t got down into it enough yet to determine the details. But Charlie has a name.” Quinn’s voice turned nearly as gentle as his wife’s had been. “It’s the Amalfi Group.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Ashley felt a chill envelop her, oddly from the inside out. Was aware of the cold sweat and the touch of queasiness, but as if from a distance, as if she were observing, not feeling.

  And then Brady spoke, and his voice was so full of barely suppressed fury it broke through her shock.

  “The perfect solution,” he bit out, “if you draw your twisted line at murdering your own daughter. Just have her declared incompetent and committed to a psychiatric facility.”

  She registered his tone. Once more he was angry on her behalf. And she clung to that, as if it were a physical thing she could touch. As if it were an anchor keeping her from flying apart.

  “This is…guesswork, right?” she asked Quinn, desperately.

  Brady grabbed both her hands. She shifted her gaze to his face, saw the wrath in his vivid blue eyes, in the set of his jaw. “Ash, it’s a trail lit with freaking neon lights, and it leads straight to her.”

  “But…my mother?”

  She saw and heard him suck in a breath. His voice was gentler then, as if he’d reined in the anger. “I know it’s hell to process, that your own mother would do this to you, and for money.”

  “For any reason,” she said, still shaking her head in disbelief.

  “But Ash, don’t forget the good news.” His voice was almost urgent. “You’re not mentally ill. Not crazy. Not going crazy. Not losing it. None of that was real.”

  A tiny spark of joy kindled within her. But it was not enough to lighten the burden they had just dropped upon her. At least, not yet. She stood up suddenly. Brady rose the minute she did. He looked ready to fight. Someone, or something, although there was nothing he could do. Still, he was ready to, and that meant so much, and in a strange way added to the pressure she was feeling.

  “I…need a minute alone,” she said. “No, several minutes. I have to think and I can’t. I need…”

  What she needed was for all of this to go away. But it wouldn’t. And if she didn’t get some room to breathe in the next instant, she just might burst.

  “There are lots of decisions to make,” Quinn said. “But none that have to be made this instant.”

  “Go outside,” Brady said. “But put your jacket on, it’s snowing again.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, that’s what I need.”

  “Take Cutter. Or rather,” Hayley amended, “don’t fight him going with you, since he’s already made up his mind.”

  She glanced down to see the dog at her feet, looking up at her determinedly. She wasn’t certain that, even with his uncanny ability to comfort, the animal could help her with this, but he certainly couldn’t hurt. Nor would he expect her to talk, to make sensible thoughts out of the bedlam in her mind. And she marveled for a detached moment at how sanity could possibly seem more chaotic than her mind had been for the last few months.

  But it wasn’t. Not rea
lly. Because one key element was missing. She was shocked, possibly in shock. She was reeling from possibility of the worst imaginable betrayal. She was feeling crushed by the weight of it all. And the thought of those decisions Quinn had mentioned was far beyond daunting.

  But she wasn’t afraid. Not anymore.

  * * *

  “None of this will stand up in court, will it.” It wasn’t really a question, because Brady already knew the answer.

  He was pacing again, pausing at one end of his established track to glance outside and make sure Ash was all right.

  “Cutter will see to her,” Hayley had assured him. “And make her come back inside if she gets too cold.” At Brady’s look, she had laughed. “He knows what shivering means.”

  “Some will,” Quinn said in answer Brady’s observation. “Methods won’t.”

  Brady rubbed the back of his neck. “I never liked the mayor much, but this…”

  “Is beyond the pale? Unnatural?” Hayley suggested, her tone overflowing with revulsion.

  “I was heading for perverted,” Brady said with a grimace. He turned on his heel to head back across the room and found Quinn in front of him.

  “I need your opinion. Of all of us, except maybe Cutter, you’ve got the best read on Ashley.”

  He blinked. “I do?”

  One corner of the other man’s mouth quirked. “You do. For reasons you will eventually understand. But I need to know how much you think she can take.”

  Brady drew back slightly. “Hasn’t she taken enough already?”

  “More than anyone should have to, yes. But what I need to know is if the relief of learning she’s not descending into a mental hell is enough to counterbalance what we suspect about her mother.”

  Brady’s brow furrowed as he studied the man who apparently had more expert resources at his fingertips than Brady had known existed. “To what end?” he finally asked. “Those decisions you mentioned?”

  Quinn nodded. “If she wants to take legal action, we need to go one way. If she doesn’t, then some things become not a concern, and the goals change.”

  Brady considered that for a moment. “You’re saying it’s her decision.”