Hidden (Nicole Jones #1)(32)

‘I grew up in Miami. My father was Daniel Adler.’ There it is, put on the table next to our plates of fish.

Steve’s eyebrows rise slightly. He knows the name. Who wouldn’t?

Before he can ask anything, I say, ‘Yes, that Daniel Adler.’ Financial advisor or, rather, con man. The man who’d bilked millions out of the rich and famous. The man who’d died in federal prison because of what he’d done.

I was fifteen when he went away the first time. Went to prison for insider trading.

‘Clients tell me things.’ I still can practically feel the tickle of his breath as he whispered to me. It was his way of justifying it, as though having clients tell him things meant that it was OK to use that information any way he could.

I had already hacked into his business accounts, but the real hacking didn’t start until he was gone. I didn’t do it to steal anything. I did it just to prove that I could get past the firewalls, through portals, replace source codes and end up in places I shouldn’t be. I did it for kicks. My mother slept until noon, her cocktail glass on the table beside her, the knife she used to cut herself in the drawer. She didn’t know, didn’t care what I did, as long as I left her alone.

Even though my father had done everything he thought he could to keep me out – every software program available to keep people like me out – I always found a way back in. I did it for years before I had to go away, so I knew what he was up to from the beginning. I saw the transactions, the wire transfers. If I’d been around when they caught him at his final game, when his clients had stopped talking to him because they’d lost everything and they discovered he’d taken it all, I could’ve given them even more than they had. It didn’t matter, though. They had enough, and he was locked up for life. They must have been so angry when he died after only ten years.

Steve is waiting for more. Now that I have started, he believes I will continue, but I’m not sure I can. He really doesn’t need me to confess anything else. He can find everything he might want to know online.

Steve clears his throat, realizing that I am not going to say more.

‘When did you meet him?’

I know whom he’s referring to.

‘I was twenty-two.’

‘Where did you meet him?’ It is as if we are now at a cocktail party, asking those first questions you ask of someone you don’t know.

I close my eyes and see him walk through the door at the Rathskeller, his hair tousled, his eyes bright, moving around, looking for somewhere to land. He was the most beautiful man I’d ever laid eyes on. Tall, with broad shoulders, a face perfectly sculpted. But his back was too straight, his movements stiff. He was trying too hard. Trying too hard to look rich. I knew rich boys. They had a casual elegance about them, the way they carried themselves.

He almost walked past me, but I sidled around a couple of people so I was in front of him. He noticed me, smiled, and I felt as though the world had disappeared and it was only the two of us.

‘Hi,’ I said.

‘Hi, yourself,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen you around here before.’

‘It’s my first semester.’ I held out my free hand. ‘Tina Adler.’

A long, slow smile spread across his face as he took my hand, caressing it. ‘Ian Cartwright.’

We spent the whole evening together; he never left my side. He wasn’t like the others, I thought when he kissed me. He didn’t know who I was, who my father was, so he wasn’t just interested in my father’s money.

When I realized I’d been wrong about that, that he had planned to meet me, I was so in love with him that I didn’t care.

I had been so stupid.

‘Nicole?’

I feel drained, as though I have had a three-hour therapy session. I have been remembering what happened after, but what happened before was just as important.

I give Steve a shy smile. ‘I’m sorry. I thought I’d left it all behind me. Miami. I met him at the university.’

‘University of Miami? You went there?’

‘One semester. Wasn’t a good fit.’ Steve didn’t need to know about how I’d hacked into the school’s computers, stolen final exams and sold them. That was one story that wasn’t reported. The university did a good job in covering it up and quietly expelling me.

‘Your father just died.’ Steve says it matter-of-factly. Of course he would have heard. It was in all the papers. On the TV. You don’t steal millions from celebrities without becoming a media sensation yourself, and if you die in prison it’s an even bigger story.

‘Yes.’

‘Is that somehow connected to this man’s visit here?’

Steve is too smart. For a long time, I was the smartest person in the room. A little of that feeling has stayed with me, regardless of my new identity. I chose friends like Veronica and Jeanine, whom I have always felt would never find out about me because they just didn’t have the curiosity or the smarts to do it. Steve, well, I thought I was safe with Steve, too, because our relationship has always been the same. I never thought he’d start challenging me.

Like he’s doing right now.

‘No one knew where I was,’ I say softly.

‘So how did he find you?’

I sigh. ‘I sent a postcard. To my father, when he got sick. He saw it.’ Again, I wonder how did he see it, exactly? I’d sent it to the prison. It’s possible that someone intercepted it there. Carmine’s boss, Tony DeMarco, probably had connections there, so that could have been how they’d seen it. But Ian, I wasn’t so sure.