Dead End

“Tell me what all this is about.”

The knife slipped across her finger, and Nina cried out.

Wyatt rushed around the island and pulled her to the sink. He ran the cold water gently over her right hand and held her finger there. The liquid washed away the drops of blood and helped numb the pain. Too bad something so simple didn’t work on everything.

He ran his thumb over the tiny cut. “It doesn’t look too bad, but you should put a bandage on it.”

Nina got one from the end cupboard and sat so he’d know she didn’t need his help. She finished the rest of the chopping without speaking, and then pushed the cutting board to his side of the island. He looked up from stirring, evidently content to wait for her to be ready to answer his request.

“My mother was killed, you know that. Parker said it. Her name was Congresswoman Clarissa Holmes.” Nina sucked in a breath. “When I was five years old my parents separated for a while. My mother began having an affair with another man.”

Nina clenched her fingers together in her lap, but it hurt so she let go. “I would see him when the nanny brought me home from the park. His name was Mr. Thomas, and he was very handsome. He would have tea with my mother and me every day, and he would tell me stories about pirates, and fair maidens, about spies and bad guys. I think he was one of them. A spy, I mean.

“Maybe he’s part of the reason I said yes when the CIA wanted to recruit Sienna and me. I looked for him in their databases as much as I could, but never found a single trace of anyone with the first or last name of Thomas who looked like him. Maybe I was wrong about him being a real spy, but that’s what I thought for a long time. Anyway, one day—I was six and a half, I think—we came home from the park and the front door was open.”

Wyatt slid the eggs into two bowls and came over. He sat on the stool beside her, but didn’t say anything.

“She was in the bedroom. There was blood everywhere. The nanny started screaming, so I ran to the study and called 911 from the phone. She fled out the front door and left me there. The police found me, on the stairs. Alone in the house with my dead mother.”

“And the police thought your father did it?”

“It was his letter opener. He’d left it when he moved out, but he hadn’t been there in months. I was sent to live with my grandparents, and they shipped me off to boarding school. I don’t think they were too interested in another child, especially one who had gone through a trauma.

“I went to see my father after I turned eighteen. He said it wasn’t him, and he wasn’t lying. It never seemed right to me that he had just shown up that day and killed her. But the police never believed me about Mr. Thomas.” Nina blew out a breath. “I’ve been thinking it through ever since.”

Wyatt nodded.

“When I told the police about Mr. Thomas they thought I had invented him to cover for my father. They never found the nanny—she just disappeared. No one else knew anything about the man who’d been spending all that time with my mother. They thought he didn’t exist because she hadn’t told anyone—not her friends, or employees—about him. They even tried to get this counselor to say I was making the whole thing up, like I was hysterical or delusional or something. Like I’d made up the idea of another suspect just so they wouldn’t send my father to jail.”

Nina squeezed her eyes shut. “I was the kid in school whose father killed her mother and who made up a story. The crazy child no one wanted their kid to hang around with because my delusion might get them killed, too.”

“Except Sienna.”

“She was as alone as I was, and she didn’t care what anyone else thought.”

Nina had worked for years with her best friend, Sienna. Playing bad guys off against each other, rehashing missions that had gone bad. They had been friends since that first day of third grade at boarding school, and they’d been inseparable ever since.

Except that Sienna had married Parker a couple of months back. Nina didn’t begrudge the happiness Sienna had found with the marshal. Sienna certainly deserved it after she was attacked on a mission and got amnesia. Nina had tried to help her remember where she’d hidden the sensitive information, which had presented a significant breach of national security. Sienna and her husband had cleared all that up, though, and fallen in love in the process.

But Nina couldn’t help feeling like maybe she’d been left behind.

Wyatt returned her smile. “And...now you’re trying to find this Mr. Thomas guy? To prove that your father is innocent and get him out of prison?”

“My father is dead.”

* * *

Wyatt swallowed against the lump in his throat. “I see.”

An innocent man had died in prison? There wasn’t much that Nina would achieve by unearthing something everyone else involved probably considered over and done with. He didn’t like it, but things were what they were. Still, the look on her face pricked his heart.

“I could...make some calls.” He took a breath. “Find the original investigating FBI agent, see if I can maybe get you a copy of the file.”

If she saw the evidence against her father for herself then she would know why he’d been put away. Maybe after that she could be convinced she didn’t need to continue on this fruitless search. Wyatt wasn’t discounting her memories, but she had been a child. Whether her mother had been having an affair or not, her father had been convicted for a reason. The evidence had to have been conclusive, or there would never have been a guilty verdict.

He believed in the justice system, despite its flaws. Wyatt believed if the evidence hadn’t been there, then the wrong person would not have been sent to prison.

“You would do that?” Nina’s look was full of hope, of wonder, that he might be able to help her. “Could you get the file?”

Wyatt nodded. “It’s worth a try.” He had a cousin who was an FBI agent that he could ask. If only to put to rest her questions, and this search she was on, to find a truth that was likely anything but. It’d be worth a call to help her do what he’d had to.

Move on.

Have you, really?

“Thank you.” She jumped up and put her arms around him.

Wyatt was taken aback for a moment, but remembered himself fast enough that he could return the hug before she got embarrassed over what she’d done. When was the last time someone had hugged him to say thank you? He wasn’t sure he could remember.

When they’d eaten, he set the dirty dishes in the sink and wiped his hands on a towel. “I should head back to the office, but I’ll make some calls this afternoon.”

Nina looked up at him from her perch on the stool. Her big blue eyes were full of sadness, and possibilities. It was enough to convince him she was onto something, despite the evidence to the contrary. Her need to prove that things had been the way she remembered them was strong, he got that. He understood why someone would want to preserve their memory of what had been—to prove what she knew to be true. But she was talking about events that happened when she was a young child, and since then she could easily have distorted things in her head.

Children were notoriously bad witnesses when any time had passed. Often they only wanted to tell adults what they wanted to hear—or what they themselves wanted to believe had happened. Was that the case here?

“Thank you, Wyatt.”

He nodded. The wall he could see in the living room caught his eye, so he trailed toward it. Nina jumped up and intercepted him. “Didn’t you just say you had to get back to work?”

Wyatt looked at her.

“There’s nothing interesting in there.”

Except that he thought there were printed pages or even newspaper articles tacked to the portion of the wall he could see. Why didn’t she want him to go in there and look? Nina wasn’t exactly hiding what she was doing. Parker and Sienna obviously knew about her looking into her mother’s murder, and she’d told him without too many qualms.

“If you say so.” But he didn’t believe her.

If she’d tacked pictures and news releases on the wall in her living room, this was clearly worse than he’d thought. It had consumed her daytime hours, which meant it also consumed her nights, too. Parker seemed to think she had to be reminded to eat. The signs were all there.

Nina was obsessed.

He understood why well enough. He’d been there himself even, but he knew what the end would be. If Nina kept going, either she would destroy herself trying to find the answers, or she would reach the end and find not even an ounce of the satisfaction she’d been looking for. She was going to wind up empty and exhausted with no answers.

“I guess I’ll be going then.” He stepped back. “Have a nice rest of your day.”

Wyatt walked to the door. That hadn’t been a great thing to say. Nina didn’t need the brush-off. What she needed was someone who could be compassionate to her situation—and that just wasn’t Wyatt. Sympathy, yes. But he didn’t know how much more he could give her when it would probably be unhelpful.

He turned back to her. “Be careful, and let me know if you need anything.”

But it couldn’t be denied she also needed someone who was going to tell her the truth—her father likely was her mother’s murderer. That the man she thought had done it didn’t have any reason to have killed her mom, not if they were in a relationship. She’d said herself that they had been happy, her mother and this “Mr. Thomas.”

“Goodbye, Wyatt.” Her voice was small, damaged. She didn’t sound anything like the self-assured former CIA agent he’d come to know.

A woman who had nearly died today.

Wyatt pulled out his phone before he hit the elevator. It rang twice and Sergeant Zane answered. “Hey, I need a favor.”

He felt better after he’d ordered regular drive-bys of her building to check for suspicious activity that could be another attack. There wasn’t much else he could do aside from 24-7 protection, but Wyatt still drove away racking his brain for other things that might help. Whoever had tried to kill her with that car would most likely try again.

And Wyatt was going to be there when he did.

THREE

The click of the front door echoed through the foyer. Nina’s socks whispered on the floor as she trailed to the living room. The walls were covered with sketches she’d done from memory after she’d learned how to properly execute a suspect drawing, but weren’t useful at all in identifying Mr. Thomas. Articles she’d printed from archived newspapers detailed her mother’s murder all the way through the investigation to the sentencing...and then finally her father’s death in prison.

It was a play-by-play of the worst days of Nina’s life.

She kept them up as a reminder and as a memorial. She couldn’t let anyone in, not without knowing their true motives. Nor was she prepared to open herself up—except to people like Sienna who convinced her otherwise. Not when there were people in the world who would slit a woman’s throat even knowing the woman’s child was on her way home.

Nina turned a full circle to look at the sum of her life now. Her search for the truth would enable her to move on, and the teaching job would begin the next chapter of her life. She just had to find Mr. Thomas before fall semester started.

The floor creaked.

She spun again, half expecting Wyatt to have come back for some forgotten thing. It wasn’t him.

Mr. Thomas stepped into the room.

He wore a suit, much the same as the last time she had seen him, years before. His hair was gray but still stylish, and his tan was highlighted by the pale lines on the sides of his face where he’d been wearing sunglasses.

“Hello, Nina.”

Nina’s feet were frozen to the floor, her muscles solid. “It’s you,” she said. The landline phone was three feet to her right on the end table beside the couch. Could she get there? What did he want?

Mr. Thomas’s cheekbones were high, his lips pursed as he surveyed her. For an old man, he was remarkably handsome. Probably in his seventies, at least, but he could easily pass for someone younger. Nina could almost see how a woman could fall for his charm—not knowing he was a murderer. A murderer who’d come to kill her.

“Why are you here?” The question left her lips before she realized she said it. Did she want to engage him or just run?

His eyes flickered. “You tell me, Little Mouse.”

Lunch turned over in Nina’s stomach. He’d called her that, and she’d forgotten until now. Little Mouse. “Why did you kill her?” She wanted to know. She needed to know why he had murdered her mother. Though no reason on earth could justify what he’d done, she still demanded the reason. “Why?”

She didn’t see a gun, but it could be behind his back. He could be carrying all manner of weapons—just like she had hidden around her condo. Now she just had to make it to the closest one so she could force him to leave...after she got him to admit what he’d done.

It was a shame she couldn’t record his confession.

“I’ll take the first question.” The words rolled from his mouth as sweetly as a frozen treat.

She repeated it. “Why are you here?”

“Curiosity, I must admit. That is the biggest reason.” He halfway grinned. “That my Little Mouse has come back after all these years, scurrying around and trying to dig up information best left buried. For everyone’s sakes.”

“Because you killed my mother.”

“And you won’t let it rest.”

“Why should I?” Nina asked. “Why ever would I let you get away with it when I can get the evidence—”

“There is none to be found.”

“I’ll figure something out.”

“A confession?” He sneered. “Unlikely.”

“Shame I don’t have a recording device.” She shot him a look in return. “But now I know you’re threatened by me digging into the past. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here. And you certainly wouldn’t have tried to run me over earlier.”

“A simple scare tactic. I had considered it beneath me, but I can’t deny there was a certain...rush. It turned out to be quite a pleasant excursion.”

“How nice for you.” She accented the last word and lifted her right arm to show him the road rash she’d acquired to keep from hurting her left thumb any more than it already was. There was no need to let him know she’d been scared out of her wits. “All to warn me off getting my mother’s file?”

“No one will benefit from the past being resurrected, Little Mouse. Some things just need to be laid to rest and left undisturbed.”

“Not when my father was wrongly convicted. Not when he died in prison before he ever got the chance to be exonerated. I’ve spent years trying to find you, trying to bury what happened. But I can’t escape it. I can’t seem to escape you.” Nina sucked in a breath. “And now I suppose you’re here to kill me, too?”

She needed to know either way. The not knowing was making her antsy, and then she would say something to attempt to end this and wind up making it worse. Nina prayed she hadn’t just done that anyway.

“Perhaps.”

Nina rushed to the phone, snapped it up and pressed the button. He hadn’t moved or made any attempt to come after her. When she listened and heard no dial tone, he laughed. “Nice try.”

Nina threw the phone handset and the base at him. The cord snapped taut and it landed on the couch. The closest weapon was in the kitchen, as was her cell. There was pepper spray in the hutch and a baton under the couch, but one was too far and the other she had to crouch low for.

Nina looked around for what else she could throw at him. The lamp, maybe?

He drew something long and thin from his pocket. Did she even want to know what was in that needle? Nina reached for something to say that would divert his attention. “So you’ve been keeping tabs on the case all this time?”

“My work is to be appreciated. Of course I stay connected.”

“And you tried to run me over because I was asking about my mother?” They’d already been over this point, but misdirection involved confusion. She needed to make him wonder if she was the one misinterpreting their conversation, or if he was.

“Nice dive, by the way.”

“The truth has to come out.”

Mr. Thomas frowned. “Not the right choice.” His face had reddened, and the vein on his neck puckered. “I’m afraid I can’t let that happen, Little Mouse. That’s why you’re coming with me.”

“You’re the one barking up the wrong tree, Thomas.”

“That’s Mister Thomas,” he hissed.

Nina stood straighter. At the first chance, she had to run for her phone. She couldn’t let him best her, couldn’t let him take her where he’d be able to kill her and bury her. Not when no one would ever know what had happened. She would be the victim. Yet another mysterious death, with only herself to blame.

He came forward then. “Come quietly, Little Mouse. It will be better for both of us.”

She shook her head. “No way.”

He lunged. Nina ducked and kicked out with her leg. The close proximity of the couch meant she didn’t get as much momentum as she wanted, but she slammed his knee as hard as she was able.

Thomas grunted. He swung out with the needle and she slammed her forearm into his. They grasped each other’s free hands and grappled. Strength for strength matched in a battle for her life.

Nina gritted her teeth and struggled. He was older, but muscled. She had training.

Eyes locked with his, she kicked out again.

As though expecting it, he countered the move. Pain burst in her shin and Nina’s grip loosened. She pushed back against his hands hard enough to shove him two steps back, then turned and ran the couple of steps to the end table, and the lamp.

She whipped it around at the same moment she felt a sting in the back of her shoulder. Nina rotated and slammed him on the side of the head with the lamp. The needle end broke off, still stuck in her shoulder.

Thomas cried out.

Nina ran for the kitchen. She cleared the doorway far enough ahead of him to pick up her cell phone. Her fingers were slick, but she’d preprogrammed a quick-dial setting while Wyatt was cooking lunch.

“Nina?”

A hand grabbed her hair and yanked.

Nina dropped the phone and screamed as she was dragged backward. The phone cracked on the tile floor as he pulled her across the threshold into the hall.

* * *

Wyatt pushed open the door of Nina’s building to the sound of sirens from approaching police cars. He hit the button for the elevator and tapped his foot as the car ascended to the twenty-second floor. “I’m sure she’s okay.” He muttered the words into the empty car, not because he was actually convinced. More like trying to fool himself into believing it.

Wyatt just wanted to get up there. He’d called Nina back after she screamed, and then he’d called Parker. Neither he nor his partner had gotten through on either her landline or her cell phone during the ten minutes since her call, until now.

He drew his weapon as the elevator slid open to reveal the building’s security guard outside the door to Nina’s condo. “She isn’t answering, but there’s thumping. Like I said on the phone, sounds like someone is in there with her,” the guard reported.

Wyatt nodded. “You did good, waiting for me.”

The couple of minutes had probably felt like a lifetime. Still, Wyatt didn’t want an old security guard getting hurt. Wyatt turned away, lifted his foot, and kicked the door open. He swung around, gun up, and started a room-by-room search.

“Nina?”

Kitchen was clear. Her phone was broken on the floor, a path through the debris like something had been swept through it. The hall looked exactly the same as when he’d left not long ago.

A dark figure crossed the hall at a dead run.

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.”