Hidden (Nicole Jones #1)(28)

‘Nicole? Who is Zeke Chapman?’ Steve asks when I don’t answer.

Again I have the urge to tell him everything, to get it all out there, but I cannot do it here. I cannot do it while in the police chief’s office. It would be far too easy to be overheard and thrown in jail, something I have been avoiding successfully all this time.

I sink down in one of the straight-backed chairs behind me, my head in my hands. I have to think – and think fast.

Steve misunderstands and sits next to me, his hand on my back, gently massaging it.

‘Was he impersonating this FBI agent even back then, when you knew him?’ he asks.

This question makes it easier. I look up and smile sadly. ‘It appears so.’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ He truly is, too, and I feel guilty about deceiving him. We had both taken other names back then. It’s how we got to Paris, those fake passports easier to get through Tracker’s contacts than they would be now, after 9/11 and Homeland Security.

As I am remembering, the old irritation surfaces. He used me in so many ways. I was the one with the computer skills and the one with the contacts. I was such a little fool.

I am still a fool now, to get caught up with him again.

He was so good at that, though, making me believe in him. And the attraction had been there from the start, was still there – enough to make me, a grown woman with a real life now, forget about all of it and let him seduce me. Seduce me with a laptop.

I am thinking all of this to keep myself from remembering what happened at the end, why I had to leave.

It would’ve been better if he’d been caught. If he’d been thrown in prison.

If I’d never sent that postcard.

This was all my fault, the mess I found myself in now.

‘I need to go home and clean it all up,’ I say.

‘The police will go over there first,’ Steve warns me. ‘They’ll need to take evidence.’

Fingerprints. A panic rushes through me. They will find my fingerprints, too. I cannot let that happen.

The tears begin again, but this time I have conjured them. ‘I have to be there. I don’t want to know that they’ve gone through my things, too.’

Steve nods, as though he understands. ‘I’ll take you over there, but you have to come home with me. I can’t let you stay there by yourself.’ His words are said matter-of-factly. He has settled it without my OK. But as long as I can get there, I might still be able to do something.

‘I want to go now.’

‘We have to wait for Frank.’

‘I don’t want to. I want to go home.’ I sound like a petulant child. ‘Do you think Frank sent someone over there already?’

Steve opens the door and disappears. I begin to pace, my hands shoved in my pockets, every muscle tense. This is not happening.

Steve comes back with Reggie McCallum. I know Reggie from Club Soda; he’s a good dart player.

‘Nicole, I need to get your prints,’ Reggie says. ‘We need to take prints from your house, but we need to eliminate yours first.’

They can just match my prints up with those in the house. I actually have no idea if my fingerprints are in a federal database. It’s possible that they were taken from a glass or something else I touched at my house. Do they have his prints? He said they didn’t catch him, but they did know where we’d been.

My whole life is unraveling, yet I cannot let anyone know. I force a smile at Reggie and say, ‘What do I need to do?’

He takes Steve and me to a counter in a small room, where he has laid out the equipment: an ink blotter and a small card with spaces for each of my prints. Reggie apologizes as he smears ink on my fingers and rubs them from right to left on the card. When I am done, he hands me a paper towel. The ink smudges on the rough surface, and a shadow of ink lingers on my fingers.

As we leave the room, Frank Cooper is coming toward us, a frown on his face.

‘He’s not there,’ he says.

‘Where did he go?’ Steve asks. I cannot speak. It feels as though a cotton ball is stuck in my throat. ‘Did he get the ferry?’

‘I don’t know. His things are there, but he isn’t. I’ve got a car out looking for him and one at the docks and another at the airport, just in case he’s just dumping his stuff and leaving it here. But as far as I know right now, he’s still on the island somewhere.’

‘He’s probably long gone,’ Steve says, and it makes sense to him. But I am not so sure.

‘I’d like to go back to my house,’ I tell Frank. ‘I want to be there when you take your evidence.’

‘You can’t get in the way,’ he warns, but with sympathy in his eyes. He knows how violated I feel.

I agree, and the three of us leave his office. Steve and I drive together in silence, following Frank in his police cruiser. I stare out the window, the familiar landmarks passing but I barely see them. I can’t keep them from doing what they’re going to do. I should have stayed in the house. I should never have gone out. I should have never gotten into the car with Steve, told him anything. I could have kept all this quiet, just cleaned up and pretended it never happened. Waited for him to come back.

But then I think again about Carmine. How his presence changes everything.

Steve parks behind Frank, and we climb out of the Explorer. Another police officer has already arrived. Frank waits for me to unlock the door and I let them in, standing back so they can pass through. I feel Steve’s hand at the base of my back.