Chapter Two
Three months ago…
The view from her father’s office window was magnificent, the San Francisco Bay darkly powerful as a storm rolled in from the north. Tasha’s brother, Drew, stood by the window, his arms folded over his chest, his face a tense mask as dark as the leaden sky behind him. Five years older than Tasha, Drew had the same black hair they’d inherited from their mother, his cut scrupulously short, executive style, like their father’s.
Seated in front of her father’s dominating oak desk was Eric Whitcomb III, a partner in Lakeside Ventures with her father and Drew. Tasha had been dating Eric for almost a year. He’d bowled her over the day her dad had introduced him—at thirty-nine, he was charming, handsome, and cultured. She felt like a character on Downton Abbey when she was with him. Wined and dined and desired by an English gentleman.
“Sit down, Natasha,” Reggie Summerfield ordered.
He was a loving father, but he was also a man who instantly commanded respect, so she put down her bag and sat on the sofa facing him. Even seated behind his massive desk, her father was an imposing man, with steel-gray hair and eyes so dark they were almost black.
She felt spotlighted in his gaze, the look in his eyes reminding her of all the times as a child that he had called her into his home office—wherever home had been at the time—and told her they had to move again. At least once a year, sometimes more, she’d had to leave her friends, her school, the teachers she loved, whatever clubs she’d joined. Poof—no warning, just gone. She’d lost count of the times she’d started over in a new place.
Her stomach was already clenched with that familiar anxiety as she asked, “Is something wrong?” She wasn’t a kid anymore, so it wasn’t her childhood fears of making new friends that held her in their grip this time. Instead, they were the worries of a daughter with an aging parent, one who meant the world to her. Was her father sick? Was that why Drew and Eric were both here? Could that be the reason her brother looked so grave and sad?
“We’re canceling the venture,” her father said. “You need to lie low for a while.” He hiked his tailor-made slacks and crossed his legs. For a man who never fidgeted, she could swear that was exactly what he was doing. “Take a trip like you’ve always wanted to do.”
Relief washed through her that he hadn’t sprung an illness on her. But what on earth was he talking about? “You’re shutting down Lakeside Ventures? Why would you do that?”
“We need to take down the website too,” he replied in lieu of answering her questions. He twirled a pen on his desk, another uncharacteristic movement. “And it would be best if you shut down your business as well.” He punctuated the words with an ominous drumming of his fingers on the chair arms.
“Shut down my business?” It was unthinkable—what would she tell her clients? She designed interactive websites as well as marketing collateral and had recently entered the field of interactive commercials. A year ago, her father had hired her to do the website for Lakeside Ventures. The enterprise was going to revolutionize timeshares, and she’d been so happy to be a part of it, because everything her father touched turned to gold. But now he wanted her to erase everything she’d worked for since she’d graduated from college five years ago? “Why would I do that? The website is good.” Really good, if she did say so herself.
“The website is fantastic, Tasha.” It was the first thing Drew had said, jumping to her defense. Drew leveled his piercing blue gaze on their father. “Tell her the truth, Dad.”
Seated across from her father, Eric snorted, shaking his head, looking anywhere but at her. He seemed a different man from the one who’d meticulously planned tomorrow night’s Valentine’s dinner, telling her he would be sending a limo to pick her up, promising her a present that would thrill her. She’d been imagining a small velvet box…and had secretly wondered if she was truly ready for everything Eric might offer.
Her father’s next words dashed all her contemplations. “We’re under investigation.”
He couldn’t have stunned her more if he’d dangled her outside the twentieth-floor window by her heels. “Investigation? By whom?” Nothing made sense, not from the moment she’d walked in and found the atmosphere inside her father’s office as dark and stormy as the view outside.
“The government. They say it’s fraud. We just haven’t gotten our funding yet, and a few antsy clients are questioning what we’re doing.”
The first Lakeside resort—to be followed by many more—was in Northern California. Tasha had wanted to visit the building site before now, but her brother had convinced her she was too busy working on the state-of-the-art website—and keeping up with her other client projects—to take time off just yet. Using the photos of the lake and surrounding woods that Drew and her father had supplied, along with the architects’ plans, she’d graphically created what the resort would look like, down to the interiors of the individual condos.
It was impossible that the government could question her father or her brother. It had to be a terrible error.
She would do everything in her power to stop this miscarriage of justice. Her father couldn’t give up everything he’d worked so hard for. And they definitely couldn’t do this to Drew. He’d been so proud when their dad asked him to join the family business after he’d graduated from high school—she still remembered their celebration.
“We can fix this, Dad,” she said, jumping off the couch, passion filling her to right this wrong. “We’ll give the investigators the plans. I’ll walk them through the website, show them how great it’s going to be once you’ve got all the funding. And when you take them up to the site where the condos are going to be built, you’ll be exonerated, and we can get back to building the resort.”
“Grow up, Tasha.” Eric’s harsh voice sliced through her pleas, cutting them to ribbons. “It’s time you faced a few facts.”
Over the past five minutes, more than one surprise had been tossed Tasha’s way. But the biggest one of all was the change in the man she’d been dating. Gone was the smooth, British accent, the cultured Eric-Whitcomb-the-Third façade now replaced by a flat American tone. Gone were the handsome features, erased by a hard mouth curled in an ugly sneer. “Your dad wants you to lie low, so just do what he says and get the hell out of town until this blows over.”
She stared at him, stunned. Eric had seemed so perfect, always so nice, so solicitous. But she remembered that he’d only once told her the name of his family’s so-called estate. And hadn’t they always gone out with her friends, rather than any of his?
It all made sense now. He wasn’t who he’d said he was. And he’d obviously duped her father and brother into some sort of disreputable scheme.
She came at him, ready to pounce, desperate to avenge her family. “What have you suckered my family into?”
Eric laughed, a cruel, grating sound. Which wouldn’t have stopped her from coming after him, had he not followed it up with, “Honey, your father brought me into the deal. We’ve worked a couple of cons together before—I’ve always been brilliant at playing the charming front man.” He smiled wide, like a shark, once more affecting his cultured British accent. “Downright convincing, if I do say so myself.”
Her brother cut across the animosity brimming between the two of them. “Shut up, Eric.”
Eric snarled like an angry jungle cat. “Then tell her she’d better get the hell out of Dodge before we’re all arrested. I don’t want her talking to anyone.”
“Leave.” Her father’s voice snapped Eric’s words in half. “Now.”
“Fine. I’ll go. Just take care of this little—”
She’d never know what contemptuous name Eric was going to call her, because Drew was suddenly there, his hand around Eric’s biceps, dragging him from the chair. He tossed Eric out of the office, slamming the door behind him.
Tasha waited for her father to deny everything. She waited for Drew to do the same.
But there were no denials.
Instead, all her father said was, “It would be better if you disappeared for a while.”
Disappeared. As though she’d done something wrong.
Oh God. All those times they’d moved…
Was this the reason?
“Is it really true?” She couldn’t make her voice rise above a whisper. Couldn’t stop her limbs from shaking. “Was the resort just a big scam?”
Her father started to get up from his chair. “Sweetheart—”
She cringed. Then she looked at Drew, who still stood immobile by the door.
“I’m sorry, Tash.”
Turning on her father, she lashed out. “You used my website to con people?”
The higher her voice rose, the lower her father’s fell. “On the books, you were just a contractor. You’ll be fine, sweetheart.”
She wanted to scream at him never to use that endearment again.
Drew reached for her hand, but stopped himself before he actually touched her. “That’s why we never wanted you to go to the building site. So no one could point a finger at you. And I made sure that you could never track—” He stopped, shut down by the look their father flashed him.
But she could barely hear what he was saying as her brain went round and round with what she’d just learned. Was this why her father had encouraged her college degree in web design and development? He must have seen the potential of her skills to bilk money out of unsuspecting victims and had just been biding his time until the perfect opportunity came along.
The perfect con.
It was monstrous.
“I’m so sorry, Tash,” her brother said again in an anguished voice. “I never meant to let you get hurt.”
But he’d been a part of it all. They’d both lied to her. Used her. She needed to think straight, needed to figure out how long this had been going on. “What did Eric mean, that he knew you and Dad from other cons?”
Her father spoke before Drew could. “We’ve worked with Eric before, that’s all. No big deal.”
She couldn’t believe he was trying to blow her off like she didn’t have ears to hear with or a head to think with. But maybe, it suddenly occurred to her, she didn’t. Otherwise, wouldn’t she have spotted the lies? Lies that must have started way back, when she was just a little girl? Before that, even.
“He used the word con,” she said, her voice getting stronger now. Harder. “Not job. And he said I could be arrested.”
In typical evasive fashion, her father said, “No one’s going to arrest you. We’ve already explained that.”
Growing up, she’d never questioned how her father paid for their fancy apartments and luxury cars, or the five-star vacations and her private school. All she’d known was that he was in “investments” like so many of her girlfriends’ fathers. She’d never let herself wonder too hard about why they’d so frequently had to pack up at a moment’s notice, always leaving so much behind.
But now, with the blindfold ripped from her eyes, she realized that in every single instance, her father must have been running away from whatever shady deal he’d had going.
How could she have been so blind?
“Are you a con man?” She needed to hear him say it.
He waved his hands. “That’s such a misnomer.”
Before she could reply to that ridiculous statement, Drew added, “We liberate money from people who are too stupid to make good use of it.”
She turned her head just enough to stare at her brother. He sounded like a parrot, repeating a phrase someone had taught him. A phrase their father had taught him.
“We never go after old people or the vulnerable,” Drew continued in what she was sure he thought must be a reasonable tone. “Only people who don’t deserve the kind of money they have. People who inherited a big chunk of money they didn’t work for, or cash they came by nefariously.”
This couldn’t be her brother, whom she’d loved and looked up to since she was a kid. Drew’s biggest goal in life had been to join their father’s company and make their dad proud of him. But he’d clearly been brainwashed by the great Reggie Summerfield into thinking that stealing was okay as long as you stole from people who didn’t “deserve” the money.
All so that her father could turn his son into a criminal.
Anger roiled, bubbling up to overwhelm her as she rounded on her father. “I can’t believe you did this to Drew. I can’t believe you gave me a commission to make a website so that you could bamboozle unsuspecting people into giving you money for nothing.” Perhaps that should have been the worst of it, but it was his more personal crimes against her that made the bile rise higher in her throat. “And that you would do something so disgusting as encouraging me to date your partner in crime!”
She was about to be sick all over the expensive hardwood floors…paid for with stolen money.
“Sweetheart. It’s not as bad as you think.” Her father’s tone was conciliatory, cajoling, as though he could bring her around with pretty words.
“I trusted you.” Because they were family, and family was never supposed to hurt you.
How could she ever trust anyone again when she couldn’t even believe in her own flesh and blood? The worst was losing Drew. That was so much harder than losing Eric. No wonder she hadn’t known how she’d react to the idea of a little velvet box and a marriage proposal. Somewhere down deep, she must have known her boyfriend couldn’t possibly be for real.
But she’d never suspected her own father and brother weren’t for real either.
“There’s no way anything can come back on you,” her father said. Still no apologies. No remorse. “But it would be better for you to get out of town before the investigators come to question you.”
That was all Tasha could take. She couldn’t bear to listen to one more excuse or horrible truth.
With one last look at her brother—and not one glance to spare for her father—Tasha ran.
* * *
She kept on running until she found seclusion in the mountains of South Lake Tahoe, then bought the run-down cabin super cheap, hoping the work to fix it up would occupy her mind to the exclusion of everything else.
During the last three months, she’d installed a shower, toilet, and bathroom sink. She had electricity, running water, and mounted a wood-burning stove so she wouldn’t freeze. She would have turned off the Internet to further isolate herself from the rest of the world, but when her fixer-upper needed way more work than she’d anticipated, she needed her computer to watch how-to videos on carpentry, plumbing, electrical, and cement work. But apart from watching DIY videos, she’d scrubbed her existence from email, Facebook, and all other social media, and spent no additional time online.
Since leaving San Francisco, she’d returned to the city only once for a handful of days to meet with the investigators. She’d not only given back her commission for building the Lakeside Ventures website—she would never keep ill-gotten gains—she’d also told the investigators what she knew about the resort scam, which wasn’t much, given that she had no idea where her father or brother had gone; they’d disappeared like wisps of fog in the sun. Thankfully, the authorities had managed to freeze the business accounts, with most of the money intact, so that the bulk of the bilked investors would receive reparations.
In the end, the investigators had let her go, believing she hadn’t known the true nature of the resort con. In her heart, though, she still felt corrupted, not only by this scam, but by all the times she hadn’t asked questions about the other ones.
During her final days in the city, she’d finished up the last of her website contracts, then shut down her business. She missed brainstorming with her clients, helping them bring their visions to life, building something that could potentially change their lives for the better. After losing her father, her brother, and her boyfriend, throwing her business into the gutter had damn near broken the last piece of her heart. But she couldn’t allow herself to keep any lifeline to the real world.
Especially when it hadn’t been real at all.
These past months, she’d desperately missed conversation, missed shooting the breeze with someone, anyone. Apart from hello and how are you with the clerks at the grocery and hardware stores, she hadn’t had a meaningful conversation with a single person since she’d come to Tahoe. She hadn’t called any of her friends before she went underground, simply sent a group email to say she’d been overworking and needed a break so she’d be gone awhile—like forever. Then she’d ditched her phone so she wouldn’t be tempted to call anyone.
She missed her friends terribly. But if she reached out to any of them, how could she ever tell them what an idiot she’d been? And, far worse, how could she ever atone for the lives that had been ruined because she hadn’t woken up earlier to the con that was her life?
Loneliness was what she deserved. Loneliness was her punishment.
All she had was this cabin. This was her home now, the only home she could truly say was hers after how rootless her father’s existence had kept them all. She had the clean air and the cool lake. In time, she might deserve more, but for now, she’d exiled herself to this little corner of the world until she could learn how to judge people’s motives correctly. Until she could remember never to take anything at face value. Until she could figure out what was so wrong with her that she made excuses for people rather than face the truth.
She’d thought she had such a great life, a fabulous boyfriend, a loving family. But it had all been a sham. Even the good memories couldn’t be trusted. They were just illusions. Only this lake, this cabin, this clean crisp air, and the birds chattering loudly in the trees above were real.
As real as the terror shooting through her as she tumbled toward the edge of the roof—and a fall that was certain to do as much damage to her body as her family had done to her heart.