For the second time that day, I was lying naked in bed when someone knocked on the door.

“Another of your lovers?” Malaika asked.

She was on the floor, dressed only in the shirt I’d discarded earlier, looking through the ledgers and paperwork she’d taken from Truesdale’s desk. She was putting them in stacks, organizing them in a very preliminary way before she began to dig deeper, assessing the many reasons why Truesdale might have hidden them from her. She’d been at it for more than two hours, concentrating so hard that she hadn’t noticed the many longing looks I’d shot in her direction, waiting for her to pay that kind of attention to me.

I couldn’t help myself. I was growing addicted to that perfect body of hers.

“I have no idea,” I said with a heavy sigh. I dropped the television remote in the tangle of the bedclothes and sat up, dragging my hands over my head. I could feel her watching as I slowly pulled on a pair of pants and a t-shirt that had been discarded at some point earlier in the week on a nearby chair. “You leave marks,” I told her as I tugged the shirt into place.

“Do I?”

“Yes. Makes it difficult to hide what we’ve been doing in here.”

“Why would you want to hide it?”

I shook my head, but couldn’t hide the big, shit-eating grin that grew across my face. She just laughed even as she turned her attention back to her stack of papers.

The knock came on the door again as I reached it. I jerked it open, stepping out into the hall all in one smooth motion. Neri Truesdale stood in the center of the hall, her pretty face pale as she looked up at me.

“What are you doing here?”

She glanced down the hall toward a man wheeling a suitcase toward his room. “Is there a place where we can talk?”

I hesitated, then gestured for her to follow me, leading her to a guest balcony that looked down over the quiet city below. Neri stepped outside, moving directly to the railing and leaning over, taking deep breaths of the late summer air.

“What do you want, Neri?”

She glanced at me. “Yesterday you were telling me how beautiful I am, and today you’ve lost your patience.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Your mother demanded I stay away from you just this morning.”

“Yes, well, my mother took off the moment my father lost his job.”

My eyebrows rose. “She did that?”

“She did. She called him a loser, said he couldn’t do anything right if someone spelled out the instructions on a piece of paper.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “It wasn’t his fault.”

“Wasn’t it, though?”

She glared at me. “I know what you’ve done, Quentin Forrester! I know that you were the one in that video with my mother, I know that you probably sent it to everyone my father ever met in his entire life! And then you turned your attention to me.” She pointed at me, jabbing at the air like she was waving around a sword. “Was that what you were planning for me? Taking me to bed and recording it so that you could send it to my father? So you could show him that his innocent daughter wasn’t so innocent anymore?”

“Is that why you’ve come here, Neri? To accuse me of things I have yet to do?”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not even going to deny it?”

“Should I?”

She groaned, turning away from me, hugging herself as she looked down at the city. Her shoulders shook lightly as she succumbed to her tears. I just watched, not without compassion, but aware that the last thing she probably wanted was my touch.

“He’s in trouble,” she finally said, so quietly I had to ask her to repeat herself.

She turned, her eyes red, her cheeks damp. “I know you hate him. I know what he did to your family seems cruel and horrible and…I know it was wrong. He knows it was wrong, too. But it wasn’t his fault.”

“He’s the one who signed the papers, Neri. He’s the one that filed the foreclosure papers with the court.”

“I know. But you don’t understand what’s going on in this town. The church—it’s infiltrated every little piece of our lives! They told him he wasn’t a good Christian if he didn’t do what they said he had to do. They said he wouldn’t ascend to paradise if he didn’t do as they said.”

“Paradise?”

She blushed a little, her eyes dropping to the floor of the balcony. “I know you don’t understand our beliefs, but they mean a lot to us. And my father particularly.”

“You’re telling me the Guardians forced him to foreclose on my family’s ranch?”

“They forced him to do a lot of things that are completely unethical. Some things that he might go to jail for if anyone found out.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because they’ve been calling the house since he left the bank this morning.” She stepped toward me. “I know you work for Stone Security, and everyone in the church knows that Stone has a beef with the Guardians. I need you to help him.”

“You want me to help your father?”

“They’re going to kill him, Quentin! They’ve left these ugly, hateful messages on the machine at home, telling him that he failed the church, that he doesn’t deserve to remain in the fold. Even one of the pastors called and told him they were convening a meeting later to decide whether or not to excommunicate him!” She shuddered just at the thought. “You have no idea what that means to my father. It will literally kill him!”

“Neri, I don’t know what you want me to do about that.”

“It’s not just those threats. There’ve been others, but he won’t let me listen to them.” She touched my arm, tried to draw me in to her. “He’s sitting on the couch with a gun in his lap. He’s scared, Quentin. I’ve never seen him like that before.”

“Does he know you’re here?”

“No.”

I shook my head, peeling her fingers from my arm. “I can’t help you.”

“Quentin, please!” She reached for me again, trying to keep me from leaving the balcony. “I’ll do whatever you want! I’ll let you do to me what you did to my mother. I’ll be your…jezebel! Please, I just…he’s my father. He’s all I have left.”

I paused in the doorway, thinking about my own family all the way in Yuma. Guilt instantly lowered itself onto my shoulders as I stood there, actually considering helping the man who had destroyed my family.

“Would he be willing to give us information on the Guardians?”

“What?”

“Would he help us figure out who’s behind it all, the man who’s running everything from behind the scenes?”

She was quiet for a long moment. “I don’t know.”

I turned and looked at her, going to her and taking her arms in my hands, shaking her a little. “We know that there’s someone financing the Guardians, someone who’s pulling the strings from somewhere outside of the city. We need to know who that is, Neri. If your father will help us identify him, I’ll help you.”

The tears began to flow again. “Really?”

“Yes. Call him. Tell him what you’re planning.”

“I can’t do that. If I do, he’ll never agree.”

I groaned, aware of the frustration on her face, but also filled with my own. I started to pull away, fumbling for a cellphone that wasn’t in my pocket, when Malaika suddenly burst through the doors, a book in her hand.

“There you are!” she cried.

“Malaika—”

“Look at these ledgers, Quentin. I think these might hold the answers we’re both looking for!”

I grabbed the ledger she was holding up, meaning to keep Neri from seeing it. But it was too late.

“That’s my dad’s!”

Malaika let her eyes move slowly over the younger girl, then she dismissed her like an insect that didn’t matter.

“It’s all coded,” she told me. “If I can figure out the code—”

“Would it help if we could get Truesdale to give it to you?”

Her eyes brightened. “How do you plan on doing that?”

I turned her around and pushed her back into the corridor. “Go get dressed and you’ll see.” I turned to Neri. “I’m taking the two of you somewhere safe, then I’ll go get your dad.”

“Thank you, Quentin!”

Neri jumped into my arms and kissed me full on the lips. I kissed her back for a long second, then pulled away, realizing a second too late that she wasn’t the woman I really wanted to be kissing. Malaika had somehow wormed her way so deep into my thoughts that another woman’s kiss just didn’t feel right.

“Come inside. The quicker we get you out of here, the better.”

 

 

Jack was waiting for us on the front porch of his modest rental house. Rumor around the office had it that he planned to build a house for his bride, but, in the meantime, they were playing house in this three bedroom ranch he’d found miraculously quickly after their return from Memphis.

Crispin was standing beside him.

I was grateful for that.

We pulled into the drive, and I slid my hand over Malaika’s knee. “Keep the ledgers with you. Don’t feel the need to show anyone.”

She nodded, her eyes telling me she knew exactly what I was trying to say. Neri leaned forward a second later, her anxious face filling the rearview mirror.

“Who are those people?”

“Get out, and I’ll introduce you.”

Jack was polite, quickly showing both women into the house where his wife was waiting with hot coffee and sweet cakes. Ruth had always been something of a throwback to a long-gone era, even when we were in high school.

“What exactly is going on?” Crispin asked me as we stepped inside to the living room.

“Truesdale, down at the bank, has been participating in some financial maneuvering the Guardians have asked him to do. Neri’s his daughter, and she thinks they might come after him.”

“Why?”

“He was fired this morning.”

Crispin glanced at Jack as he joined us. “You’re going after him?”

I nodded. “Neri seems to think he’ll be willing to help us identify this boss guy everyone’s been hinting at. Malaika thinks it’s possible this person is behind the stuff that’s been going on at the bank. If Truesdale can help identify him, it could be worth saving him from whatever’s coming.”

Jack nodded. “Definitely.”

“If we could put an end to all this, once and for all…” Crispin nodded. “We can’t keep fighting these guys if they’re just going to keep multiplying and coming back at us.”

“Agreed.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” Crispin asked.

“No. I think it’d be better if it were just me.”

Jack’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Are you sure he’ll want to come with you? I mean, you’re kind of the last person he probably wants to see tonight.”

Crispin glanced between the two of us, clearly confused by Jack’s statement. I was, too, just a little. I hadn’t realized Jack was aware of my campaign against Truesdale.

“That’s exactly why it should be me,” I assured him. “Because he’ll understand how important this is to us.”

Jack seemed to agree.

I left them a moment later and slipped into the kitchen, watching from a short distance as Ruth discussed wallpaper and flooring with Neri. Malaika looked up, her eyes moving over my face with concern. I lowered my head slightly, satisfied with just seeing her face. Then I turned away and headed out, not sure what I was about to get myself into. Not sure I wanted to get into it.

But, I supposed, it was time to do the right thing.