Hidden (Nicole Jones #1)(70)

He shakes his head slowly, the gun moving closer to my chest. ‘You loved him, didn’t you?’

‘No. I never loved him. And when I knew he knew, I left with you. Not with him.’

‘But he found us. How did he find us, Tina? You never made mistakes.’

I am astonished he can say it with a straight face, that he can seem so genuinely perplexed as to how Zeke knew where we were. I shake my head slowly. ‘I didn’t tell him anything, Ian. It wasn’t me, and you know it.’ And then I tell him what I have known all these years. The reason why I left that night, took all the money I could and never said goodbye.

‘It was you.’





THIRTY-FOUR


I knew as soon as Zeke told me he was going to leave his wife that I needed to put our escape plan into action.

‘He was looking at my laptop,’ I told Ian when I called him from a pay phone on Brickell Avenue.

‘Did he see anything?’

‘Of course not. But he suspects.’

‘Then why did he tell his wife he’s leaving her for you?’

‘He’s going to try to protect me.’ As I said it, I knew it was true. Zeke wasn’t just willing to leave his wife. He was willing to put his job on the line for me. Even though I had told him I didn’t love him, I did care for him. I couldn’t let him do that.

‘Then let him.’

‘I’ve got the documents and the airline reservations. We leave tomorrow night.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘We can’t take any chances.’

‘It’s been a month. Don’t you think if he suspected you, he would’ve already arrested you? I mean, he is FBI.’

I couldn’t understand why Ian was fighting me like this. We’d talked about having to leave at some point. He was the one who came up with our new names. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘Are we going to be able to get to the money over there?’

‘Absolutely. Don’t you trust me?’ From the hesitation, it was clear that he didn’t. ‘OK, fine. I’ll go by myself. You can stay.’

‘You’re not going without me.’ He really didn’t trust me. He thought that if I left, the money would go with me. What had happened to us? Two months ago we were in love, we still couldn’t keep our hands off each other, then Zeke showed up and everything changed.

‘Then meet me at the airport tomorrow. The flight leaves at eight. We’ll be in Paris in time for breakfast.’ We’d agreed that Paris was a good choice, since I was fluent in French. I’d also arranged a place for us to live, but Ian didn’t know about the houseboat yet. I’d wanted to surprise him, but the way he was acting, I wasn’t so sure I should. I shrugged off my doubts. ‘OK?’

‘OK.’ He hung up, and I stared at the phone for a few seconds, wondering if I was doing the right thing. Ironic, since I had already stolen ten million dollars for him.

We were happy, though, those days in Paris – at least, that’s what I’d thought. The houseboat rocked gently on the Seine as we sat outside in blue-and-white striped chairs, drinking coffee, flowers in pots surrounding us, the Eiffel Tower towering nearby. In all the time I had spent in France when I was a child with my grandmother, I had rarely come to this city, and we spent our days discovering its treasures and secrets. It was as though the last months had never happened. It was stolen kisses and holding hands as we wandered the cobblestone streets, buying cheese and bread and chocolates. It was Ian again; it had always been Ian.

Until Zeke came out of the shadows as I left the café that night and followed me home.

‘You called his office. Zeke’s office. You didn’t tell him who you were but you told him where I was.’ The old familiar anger rises in my chest and I force it back down. I can’t afford to let it out. Not yet.

Ian snorts. ‘You’re crazy.’

‘Am I? You set me up.’ I give him a sad smile. ‘You didn’t know how much Zeke loved me. Not really.’ I close my eyes for a second and see it all again, then open them quickly so I can push it away.

‘You’re one to talk,’ Ian says, anger curling around each word. ‘You’re the reason the account was frozen, aren’t you? You told him. You told him where the money was.’

So here it is. The showdown.

He was wrong. Zeke knew about everything a month before he showed up that day at my house. It was the server raid. That’s how he ended up with me, after his people traced my IP address through the maze I’d left behind.

I think about what I am about to do, transferring money out of Paul Michaels’s accounts. ‘Who is Paul Michaels, Ian?’

Ian takes a deep breath. ‘He’s no one, Tina. No one at all.’

I still can’t figure out, and I’m trying to, when another possibility slams into my head. ‘It’s Tony DeMarco, isn’t it? It’s a dummy account set up to launder money, isn’t it? You’re getting back at him, for everything he’s made you do in the last fifteen years.’

‘It’s not like he’ll miss it.’ Ian shakes his head. ‘I never knew you to do something so stupid, Tina. Why did you do it? Did you think you were finally safe here?’

He is talking about the postcard. I told myself that sending my father a little piece of the peace I’d found would help him die. But it was never about him. It was all about me. I sent that postcard thinking I’d gotten away, and I was going to show everyone up. Instead, it was the beginning of the end of everything.