Martin Maxwell III was not what I’d expected from the pictures. No sir.

I’d expected a man who moved with grace. Who was tall, with slightly thinning hair that had a bit of salt and peppering at the temple. I’d expected, believe it or not, a man that was clean-shaven, who seemed to care as much about his appearance as a Hollywood actress, who knew how to control his investors’ perception of him through his careful preening. I’d expected a man who wouldn’t have been caught dead outside of a perfectly tailored suit. And, even when he was finally caught dead, he’d be laid to rest in a coffin in an impeccably tailored suit as the elite members of the financial world gathered to pay their respects to the indomitable elemental force that was Martin Maxwell III.

What I got instead looked like a homeless trapper.

One thing he still had down, though, was his timing. I glanced at my phone, and he was two minutes early.

He came up from the back of the property, likely through the same cuts in the chain link that the cartel thugs had used the afternoon before. He drifted through the woods like a specter, his graying hair pulled out in tufts around his head.

“Is that…is that Father?” Ashley asked as we saw him coming, gingerly stepping through the underbrush as he came down the hill, a colorful secondhand scarf halfheartedly wrapped around his neck. He reached up and scraped a wrinkled hand through his graying beard.

“Think so, babe.” I looked down at her. “Think so.”

His tan Carhartt jacket looked as out of place on him as an Armani suit coat on a scarecrow. And the flannel shirt and oversized jeans he had belted on for dear life didn’t do much for the effect. He came tramping onto the deck, his heavy clodhopper boots booming with each step on the hardwood. He crossed the patio and threw open the back door like it belonged to him.

Which, I guess it still did.

“Ashley?” he called, his voice more gravelly than I’d pictured as he came in and looked at us, his eyes falling accusingly on us both as we stood there, still holding one another.

His daughter dropped her hands from mine and pulled apart from me. “Father?” she asked, but didn’t go to his side.

Maxwell’s eyes softened. “God, it’s good to see you, dear. So good.”

I sized him up. His words seemed so at odds with the way he presented himself. But, like I thought before, it just went to show how this man knew that appearances mattered. If I’d seen him walking down the side of the road, I’d never have looked twice. If I saw him in his suit, though, I’d wonder why he was so out of season. Why he was down here in the fall, and not during the winter. This way, he could blend in, almost like a local, in total and clear plain sight. Damn, this guy was a manipulative dick.

His eyes shifted to mine. “And who’s this? Getting familiar with the help?” Hell, that almost sounded like a joke. But I could tell from the delivery that he was making anything but a joke. Ashley looked down at her arm around me, almost as if she realizing it for the first time. She gave me a quick bit of pressure, a half-hug, before pulling away.

“Frank is my…friend.”

That was fair. I didn’t know what we were, either. At least officially. I knew I loved her, I’d reject my boss’s orders for her, break from my pack for her. Even die for her, if I had to. But we weren’t official.

His eyes, narrowed and tight, traveled up and down my form. “Yes. Friend. I see.” He turned and carefully shut the back door.

I grunted.

“Oh, it speaks.” He quirked a smile that never even tried to reach his eyes. “How utterly pleasant.” He looked around the cabin. “Did you hire a new interior decorator for the place while I was away, dear?”

She swallowed dryly. “What are we doing, Father? What are you doing?”

“First,” he said. “I’m grabbing a drink. I haven’t had a good scotch in days.” He turned on his chunky heels and headed into the dining room for the wet bar.

Wow. Not even an attempt at a hug. Talk about a loving family. “What the fuck is this shit?” I breathed as he left the room.

She made a face. “Father’s an asshole. He thinks only people with money are worth a shit.”

“He does realize he was just born with all this, right?”

She sighed, made a face. “You know, I don’t think so. I think he genuinely believes he’s the reason for all of this, and not my grandfather.”

I grit my teeth and ground them together.

Glass clinked on glass. “Are you almost ready?” Maxwell called from the dining room. “To leave, I mean? Oh, and don’t worry about your passport, I have one for you already. And pack light, we’ll be able to buy you new clothes when we arrive at our destination.”

I shook my head at Ashley. No. This was all wrong.

“But I have mine, Father.”

“As I said, dear, you’re not to worry. You won’t need it.”

“No,” I mouthed at Ashley, shaking my head.

Maxwell came wandering back in, glass of scotch in hand. He stopped, one hand in his pocket like he was relaxing after a long day at the office, and took a gulp of his drink.

“Father, I think we should talk.”

It was then that I realized how much Ashley’s voice and tone had changed. Ever since Maxwell had arrived on the scene, she’d begun to affect some sort of stereotypical east coast lilt to her voice.

“About what, my dear?”

“About where you’ve been for the last two weeks.”

“Well, here, of course. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

She shook her head. “No, I mean besides here. Why you ran.”

“I didn’t run, dear. No, no. I got out ahead of things, the way a good businessman does. I saw the trend was changing, and so I moved to assess that trend and to use it to my own advantage.” He walked out into the middle of the room, surveyed the destruction again as he took another, much smaller this time, sip of scotch. “What would you have had me do? Stick around in New York and open myself up to all the liabilities?”

She took a step away from him. She lifted her chin and set her shoulders back.

I grinned. Here it came. Now we were past the niceties.

“I would have preferred, Father, that you told me the truth!”