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Wyatt raced after him into the bedroom. He’d clearly spooked the man, but was it in time to save Nina? The balcony door was open. Air blew back the long curtain with the night breeze. The man glanced over his shoulder, half out of the window.
“US Marshals.”
The man just stared. Long enough for Wyatt to get a good look at his face. Silver hair. Regal nose. The man shoved at the screen and jumped out. Wyatt raced to the window, where he rappelled from a rope attached to the balcony down to the ground floor. Who was this guy?
He called in what had happened to the police and requested roadblocks and a sweep starting where he landed. “Nina?”
“In here,” Sienna yelled.
He ran to the living room, where nearly the whole team had arrived. “You’re here.”
Parker nodded, on his phone.
A socked foot was visible at the far end of the couch, and a broken lamp lay discarded on the floor. Sienna huddled over Nina. Wyatt rounded the couch, stowed his weapon and crouched. Nina was facedown on the floor. New raw red scratches covered her right hand and forearm. He brushed back hair from the side of her face and winced.
“Nina. Can you hear me? Nina?”
She didn’t move.
Sienna grabbed his hand. “Parker’s calling an ambulance.”
* * *
Nina’s head felt like an elephant had sat on it. She blinked against the fluorescent lights of the room and looked around. Not her bed. Not her clothes, a hospital gown.
Beside her, on a chair, Wyatt Ames sat with his head in his hands.
“Hey,” she managed to say.
“You’re awake.” He shot up from the chair and perched on the side of her bed. “How are you feeling?”
Nina tried to swallow against the arid desert in her mouth. Wyatt reached for a cup and held the straw to her. Nina pushed up on the bed. “I can sit up.”
“Okay, but take it easy.”
She took a drink. There was a knock on the door, and two cops entered. Wyatt nodded to them, and then asked, “Want to tell me what happened?”
Nina pushed back the hair that hung over her eyes, the ends tickling her cheek. “Sure.”
One of the officers pulled out a little notepad and a pencil. How could they arrest Mr. Thomas when she—or they—didn’t even know the man’s whole name?
“But I don’t know how much good it’s going to do.”
Wyatt replaced the cup on the table. “Let us worry about that. I gave a statement myself. I saw his face, and I’m going to head to the office after this to look at mug shots and see if I can identify him.”
Nina nodded. It hurt enough to breathe that she wondered if Thomas might have cracked a rib or two. “He was in my condo after you left. He was mad because I wasn’t prepared to go with him. He was going to drug me, but the needle end broke off. I called you and it connected, and I yelled, and it was like he...snapped.”
“He?”
Nina shut her eyes. She could see his enraged face as he stood over her. Fine, if Wyatt needed her to identify the man aloud, she would do it. Nina steeled herself and opened her eyes. “It was Mr. Thomas.”
She caught Wyatt’s surprise before he could cover it. “The man in your condo was the man you believe killed your mother?”
He thought it was someone else? “I know he killed her. He as much as admitted it.”
Wyatt swallowed what he’d been about to say. Had he thought the suited, silver-haired man in her apartment was some kind of thug?
Nina sighed. “I know you don’t believe me. I know you think that I just want to believe it wasn’t my father and that I’m making up a story.”
Wyatt started to shake his head. “That’s not—”
“I’m not asking you to believe something you don’t know, Wyatt. You weren’t there that day, but I was. My father didn’t do it. It had to have been Mr. Thomas. There’s no other explanation.”
She sucked in a breath to control the riot of emotions. Tired and beat-up, she probably wasn’t in any frame of mind to do this. But if Mr. Thomas thought she was going to leave things alone now, he was delirious. There was no way Nina would let this lie. Not after he’d attacked her.
She gritted her teeth. “He found out I’ve been asking questions about my mother’s death, and he came after me because of it. That means he’s guilty.”
She turned to the officers and gave them her mother’s name. The date. If she’d had the file already she’d have given them the FBI’s case number.
Nina turned to Wyatt. “Did you call the FBI and ask them about the file?”
He shook his head. “Not yet, but I will.”
It hadn’t been long since he’d made lunch in her kitchen. She hoped he really would do that. She had a serious problem with anyone who said they were going to do something and then didn’t, and she had ever since her life had been consumed with warring parents who made outlandish promises to her just to one-up each other. They had never found it necessary to keep their promises. Then one day both of them were gone.
Wyatt frowned. “We should let you rest. Not that they think any of the tranquilizer in that needle got into you. It’s being tested for fingerprints. But still...”
Nina lay back in bed. Her shoulder was sore where the needle had broken off inside her. But fingerprints? She didn’t think he’d been that careless. Had he been wearing gloves? “It was Mr. Thomas who tried to run me over this morning. It was him who pretended to be a clerk at the federal courthouse in Baltimore to keep me from getting the file.”
What else was she forgetting to tell him?
Wyatt shook his head. “I just don’t want you to worry yourself. You should worry about resting until you’re healed.”
Nina shot him a look. Wyatt opened his mouth to argue with her, but the door swung open.
“She’s awake?” Sienna rushed in, Parker right behind her. She virtually shoved Wyatt out of the way and hopped up on the bed.
The two officers slipped out before the door shut. Wyatt got up, and he and Parker huddled in the corner to converse quietly about who knew what. Probably the imaginary man who had killed her mother and how she could have dreamed up him being in her condo—and attacking her.
Okay, so she was making assumptions. He had said that he saw Mr. Thomas himself. Maybe Wyatt was starting to believe her.
Nina found herself enveloped in a hug. She blinked back tears, and her friend leaned back with Nina still in her embrace. Sienna tipped her head to one side. “He found you, and now he’s trying to kill you?”
“Looks that way.”
“So now we have to find him and catch him first?”
“You’re married. Why would you want to be traipsing around after someone who no one thinks exists when you could be at home doing...I don’t know what. Dusting?”
Sienna blinked. “You think I dust?”
“Okay, maybe not.” Her best friend hired a cleaner. Sienna had always hated cleaning toilets, and basically every other part of housekeeping except baking. “But seriously...” Nina shifted her eyes toward Parker, and then back at her friend.
“Parker will help. He does that.” Sienna smiled.
For years it had been the two of them. Did Nina have to actually like the fact that Parker was around all the time now? Sienna didn’t have to rub her face in it.
“You’re not smiling. You have grumpy face.” Sienna paused. “Does it hurt that bad?”
Nina shrugged.
“While you were on the floor of your condo, Wyatt chased Mr. Thomas out your bedroom window. I heard him giving the description to the cops. He saw him.”
Nina slumped back on the bed. Wyatt, chasing a man like Mr. Thomas from her place. Then he sat there like it was no big deal to her, and just asked questions. As though she was some witness he had to get information out of. “I’m tired and sore.”
“Maybe so, but you’re also mad. I’ll make some calls and we’ll find out who this Mr. Thomas guy was. Is.” Sienna’s eyes were narrow. “Then he’ll know why it’s a bad idea to try and do in my best friend.”
Nina rolled her eyes, though she didn’t doubt her friend’s skills. She had been keeping Sienna updated on her lack of progress, but that didn’t mean her friend was going to be involved in clearing Nina’s father. If Mr. Thomas was going to show up and do things like this, Nina wasn’t going to let the outcome ripple outward and hit people she cared about. Innocent people.
“Just let me know what you find,” Nina said. “I’ll figure out what to do about it.”
Sienna didn’t look impressed.
“She’s right.” Parker set his hand on her shoulder. “And yes, Nina, we’ll pass you and Wyatt whatever we find out.”
Wyatt? Why did Parker think his partner was involved in her business? Lunch had been Parker’s idea, and she might have called him, but that didn’t mean there was anything between them.
“That’s our cue to go.” Parker escorted Sienna to the door, but not before she gave Nina one last light squeeze.
Wyatt stepped over to her, but she didn’t look up.
“What’s with the face?”
Nina ignored Wyatt’s question and hit the button for assistance. As soon as a nurse or doctor came in she’d find out how long she had to stay here. Then she could continue her search. Because now that she knew for sure Mr. Thomas had killed her mother, there was nothing to stop Nina from figuring out who he really was.
But first she had to deal with Wyatt. “I actually have a question.”
Wyatt sat on the end of the bed. “Shoot.”
“Why are you still here?” Did he feel guilty he hadn’t been there when Mr. Thomas came in, or that he hadn’t checked out her condo before he left? That wasn’t something he needed to take upon himself. She was a trained former CIA agent. She didn’t want him to stick around if that was the reason.
“A bad thing happened to you today.” His face was neutral, unreadable. “I rode in the ambulance with you, and I wanted to see that you were okay.”
“You did.”
Doubt flashed across his face. “Do you want me to leave?”
Usually he acted like he couldn’t wait to leave her presence. Not today after lunch, but previously when they’d hung out as a group.
Nina sighed. She couldn’t deny it was nice to not be alone. Plus she kind of thought Wyatt felt guilty for the fact that Mr. Thomas had gotten away.
“Maybe you could...stay until the doctor comes.”
“I could do that.” His eyes flashed, but he sobered fast. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there when Mr. Thomas came in.”
“He wouldn’t have come if you had been, and you couldn’t have stayed forever. You didn’t know.”
“But you did, and I didn’t believe you. And now a killer is loose.” He pulled a phone from his back pocket. Her phone. He swiped the screen and then held it up.
The text message. That was the thing she’d forgotten to tell him, the text from Mr. Thomas now obscured by the shattered glass of her phone’s screen and the edges of the clear tape he’d covered it with.
“You want to tell me why you didn’t mention earlier that this killer threatened you?”
FOUR (#ulink_63de7d65-4663-5063-a69b-6a6126553250)
Wyatt set his mug on the coffee table and sat, still in his pajamas. Sleep had been a pipe dream, especially after Nina shut down and refused to tell him anything more when he’d confronted her over the text. She hadn’t shared it with him. She hadn’t trusted him. If she’d told him about it Wyatt would never have left her alone at her condo.
Nina had been admitted to the hospital overnight, and when the doctor mentioned it she’d looked relieved. It made no sense to him why anyone would choose the hospital over home, but she had to be monitored for a possible concussion. So here he was, just before six in the morning, on his couch.
He held the phone to his ear and listened to it ring. He needed a sounding board, and who better than his cousin, the FBI agent?
Geoff’s voice was chipper, as always. “Up early, aren’t you, coz?”
Wyatt smiled and relaxed back into the corduroy cushions. “Whereas you probably didn’t even go home last night.” His cousin lived on the East Coast where the FBI was headquartered, and he refused to lose. Ever.
“Actually I went to the gym at four after the debriefing wrapped up, and then I went home to take a shower and came back to work. For the record.”
Wyatt snorted. “Overachiever.” Neither of them had slept, then. Wyatt probably looked a whole lot rougher. He certainly felt it.
“So what’s up with my favorite Oregon cousin this morning?”
“Nothing your very-special-agent, East Coast self can’t help me with. So get your Fed fingers moving across that keyboard and find me whatever you can on the murder of Congresswoman Clarissa Holmes.”
A choking sound erupted on Geoff’s end of the phone. “Congresswoman who?”
“It happened thirty years ago.”
“Thank goodness. I thought you’d stumbled on something big. I would have owed you.” Geoff made a shuddering noise.
“I didn’t say I hadn’t,” Wyatt said. “Now type.”
“Congresswoman Clarissa Holmes?”
Wyatt rattled off the date of the murder, which he’d gleaned from the crime lab’s sweep of Nina’s apartment and the array of documentation she had detailing her mother’s life—and her death.
Geoff made a negative buzzer noise. “Nada. Next question.”
“Nothing?”
