Crash & Burn (Tessa Leoni, #3)(99)

Suddenly, in the midst of the rain and the mud and the smell of churned-up earth.

The smell of smoke. The heat of fire.

I sit, fastened into my Audi in the middle of an empty, rain-swept road. I stare at my husband, and I can almost see the flames dancing around him.

I remember.

In that moment, I remember everything.

And he knows I know.

My husband reaches across my lap. My husband puts my vehicle in neutral. My husband steps back, closes the door, shuts me in. And I realize, belatedly, what he’s about to do next.

His lips moving in the rain.

“Do you trust me?” Thomas says again. He’s standing right in front of me. So close I can feel the heat of his body, the bulky softness of his overcoat.

“You tried to kill me.”

“I love you.”

I shake my head. Order myself not to listen to his words, but focus on his actions. “Something happened back then. Worse than Vero OD’ing, worse than being buried alive. What can be worse than being buried alive, Thomas? What did you do?”

“I love you,” he says again.

I realize then that I’m doomed, for I can already hear the undertone. But it won’t save you in the end. Vero had tried to warn me. Maybe it wasn’t my past I was trying to escape, but the man I married.

“I am not Veronica Sellers,” I hear myself say. I need the words out. Thomas’s fingerprint trick had briefly disoriented me, my own confused state and guilty conscience making me that much more vulnerable. But Vero is Vero, and I am me, and I owe it to both of us to get it right.

“I know.”

“My name is Chelsea Robbins. My mother sold me to Madame Sade when I was ten. And I hated her for that and I loved her for that because the house was nicer, the food better, and at least Madame Sade pretended we were family. Then Vero came along and kicked me out of the tower bedroom and I hated her for that, but I loved her for that because she became the sister I never had and spun our world into a fairy tale.”

I look at him. “And I met you, the boy I watched in the distance, walking free about the property. And I hated you for that and I loved you for that, but mostly . . .” My voice breaks. “I loved you. From the very beginning, I’ve loved you and I’ve never forgiven myself for it.”

Thomas smiles. I think it’s the saddest expression I’ve ever seen on a man’s face.

“It’s time,” he says simply. “She’s waited long enough.”

He holds out his hand. This time, I take it, following him across the parking lot. Because there is nothing else to do. There is nothing else to say.

Thomas had been right: I never should’ve returned to New Hampshire; I never should’ve hired an investigative agency; I never should’ve tried so hard to discover the memories I’d worked even harder to forget.

But what is done is done.

And now, twenty-two years later, for both of us, for all of us, there is no going back.





Chapter 34




MY CAR KEYS are gone,” Tessa reported ten minutes later. She and Wyatt had snapped on the lights, giving the room a cursory glance, before tearing outside to the parking lot. With no sign of Nicky inside or out, they’d returned to the room and summarily ripped it apart. Senseless, really, given they were looking for a full-size female, which wasn’t exactly something you could lose beneath a sofa cushion.

“She doesn’t have wheels of her own,” Wyatt commented.

“But where would she go? She doesn’t have a house of her own either.”

Wyatt nodded. He straightened, took in the wreck of the hotel room and finally exhaled in defeat. “All right. Time to regroup. We’re reacting. This whole damn case, frankly, has been one reaction after another, and it’s not getting us anywhere. From the top, what do we know?”

“Nicky Frank is missing,” Tessa supplied sourly. She’d stripped the covers from both beds. Now she was on her hands and knees, peering under the first, then the second, as if locating a missing witness was no different from finding a lost pair of shoes.

“Nicky Frank who is not Veronica Sellers,” Wyatt emphasized, “the girl who went missing thirty years ago.”

“Meaning she’s probably not running to Marlene Bilek’s house,” Tessa muttered, still crawling on the floor. “Her only contact in the area remains her husband, Thomas.”

“Who most likely engineered her car accident and set things up for her to be falsely identified as Vero.”

Tessa finally paused, sat back on her heels. “Could they be in this together? A joint ruse to pass Nicky off as a missing girl? Maybe as part of that, Thomas and Nicky set a predetermined rendezvous point for if things got too dicey, and that’s where Nicky’s headed now?”

Wyatt grimaced. “Except what is this ruse? What could Nicky possibly gain as Marlene’s long-lost daughter that would justify the risk of a major auto accident, let alone Thomas burning down their home?”

Tessa had to think about it: “Revenge? Marlene failed her daughter, maybe was even part of Vero’s abduction? Nicky wants payback, and what better way to get it than masquerading as the lost child?”

“I think Thomas is behind it.”

“Okay.” Tessa resumed her search, slipping a hand beneath the box spring and top mattress of the bed closest to the door.