Lies I Told(52)

I scrolled down, looking for a picture. There wasn’t one, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Letting someone quote me was sloppy, even if it was unintentional, but without a picture, there was no way to prove I was the same Grace Rollins quoted in the article.

Still, Rachel hadn’t said anything, which meant she either hadn’t found it when she’d done her own snooping or she knew she didn’t have enough to force a confrontation. I just needed to play it cool. Not let my paranoia throw me further off my game.

“Hey, beautiful. Come here often?”

I followed the sound of the voice and realized Logan had pulled up in front of me, the BMW sporting its glossy new paint job.

I laughed. “Not really. Today’s just your lucky day.”

I slid into the passenger seat and shut the door. My heart stuttered a little when he leaned over to kiss me. His lips lingered on mine as his hand slid gently down my neck.

The spell was broken when someone honked behind us. We smiled, our lips still touching.

“You’re quite the distraction, Grace Fontaine,” Logan murmured.

I was momentarily disoriented by the sound of my last name. Fontaine, not Rollins. Grace Fontaine.

We talked about school as we headed to Logan’s house to set up for the PHCT fund-raiser that weekend. My mom hadn’t been kidding; it was a big deal. There would be a silent auction, a live band, catered dinner service, and an open bar.

Leslie and Warren were in meetings, finishing up a few last-minute details, and I had offered to help Logan prepare the house for the onslaught of wealthy locals, all of whom were spending a pretty penny for the opportunity to bid on vacations to Fiji, rare bottles of wine, and private plane charters.

But it wasn’t the party that made me nervous. It was what I had to do.

The Fairchild con was a big one. It was expected that it might take a little longer to get everything we needed to make our move. But I had feelings for Logan. Real ones. I was past the point of deluding myself that I could escape with my heart intact. I didn’t know when it had happened: maybe on the Ferris wheel, at the top of the world. Maybe in the parking lot when he’d let Parker go. Maybe even that first night on the beach, when it had seemed like we were the only two people in the world.

But I had fallen for him. Hard. It was too late to keep my distance. I could only hope to get out with enough of my soul intact to scrape myself back together again when it was over. And that meant getting the job done fast.

We pulled up to the gates in front of Logan’s house, and he entered the pass code before continuing up the drive. I tried to slow my breathing, focus on what needed to be done.

Get the pass code to the alarm.

Find the gold.

Logan took my hand as we headed up the walkway to the front door. His touch was like a brand, marking me for what I was.

A traitor. A liar.

Slipping one hand in my pocket, I reached for my cell phone, waiting for Logan to deactivate the alarm. I’d given up trying to see the code over his shoulder. He was too tall. I might never get a clear view of the keypad.

Instead, I’d decided to record it. The keypad in the Fairchild house was exactly like the one Allied had installed in our rental on Camino Jardin. If I couldn’t see the pass code, I might be able to re-create it by matching the beeps each button made when they were pressed.

Logan shut the front door and reached for the keypad, his shoulders blocking it from my view like always. I opened my phone and pressed the button for Record, hoping I’d gotten it right, that all the times I’d practiced working my phone blind would pay off.

A second later Logan turned toward me with a smile. “You sure you don’t mind helping today?”

I mustered a smile as I pressed Stop on the phone in my pocket. “Not at all.”

The caterer was in the kitchen with a couple of people, scoping out the fridge and planning countertop prep space in advance of Saturday’s party. Logan and I went to work, setting up tables and chairs on the massive lawn at the back of the house and hanging the garlands, glossy lemon leaves woven with white peonies, for decoration. We would wait to put the tablecloths on until the day of the event, but I could already see that the total effect would be simple and elegant.

Logan was in the carriage house, pulling out some ironstone buckets his mother wanted to use for flower arrangements, when I finally got a few minutes to myself in the house. I’d offered to help him, but he’d given me a giant stack of linen napkins to fold instead, and I’d planted myself at the coffee table in the living room and waited for him to leave.

As soon as he was out of sight, I hurried upstairs. I needed to find the gold, and I hadn’t had a single opportunity to be alone in the house since Logan’s party a few weeks before.

I checked my phone so I could mark the time and started with the rooms I’d missed on the second floor. My face burned with shame, my heart thudding wildly in my chest as I searched the master bedroom. I hated going through Leslie and Warren’s things. Hated opening their dresser drawers, moving their clothes, searching their closet.

And in the end, it was all for nothing. The gold wasn’t there.

I hurried to the other rooms, making sure to rule them out before moving on to the ground floor. It didn’t take me long to search it. There was the living room, three powder rooms, a laundry and mud room, and the kitchen. Most of the rooms didn’t have a likely hiding place for a panic room or safe big enough to hide Warren Fairchild’s gold. I concentrated on the enormous living room, glancing over my shoulder as I moved books and knickknacks, focusing on the walls, looking for a hidden panel or doorway.