Tuesday, July 27. 1:42 p.m. Seatoun, Wellington, New Zealand.

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Pressed up hard against the side of John Grace’s house, Daniel had watched Ana’s approach. Nerves or not, her lopsided gait looked convincingly real. From a distance anyway.

He’d caught a break when a chainsaw started. Edging away from the corner, he’d backed up to the side stairs. Daniel had lunged, caught the handrail with one hand, and used the momentum to run his feet up the supporting posts and flip light-footedly on the small landing. He couldn’t risk one of the stair treads making a sound and alerting anyone inside.

From this height he had a clear view of Ana. He twisted the door handle. Locked. He blew out a breath; a locked door wasn’t unexpected, just irritating. He needed to get in fast before Ana got too close. Breaking the glass in the door or kicking it down would draw unwanted attention.

His eyes flicked left and right. There—a window left open in the room Ana had indicated was a spare bedroom. It was an old-fashioned double hung one; the bottom section slid up to allow fresh air inside. A six-foot gap stretched between where he stood and the opening. Doable. The hard part would be taking his eyes off Ana and making the jump without sounding as if a herd of rhinos had rammed into the side of the house.

Ana calling out snagged his attention back to the road. She stopped at the edge of the driveway, a slight smile on her face. Give his woman an Oscar. She must be out of her mind with terror, but she had the casual inquiring look down pat.

Then Ana’s smile slashed open into a startled O, her gaze locked on something in front of her, out of his line of sight. Even before she lurched forward, Daniel knew she was going in.

Goddammit, woman. He balanced precariously on the handrail and hurled himself at the open window.

Ana had expected the inside of her dad’s house to be like a dark, dank cave, complete with a comic-book villain lurking in the shadows. Instead, when she stepped through the front door, bright sunshine streamed speckled patterns over the carpet and the tang of pine-scented cleaner permeated the air.

Her gaze whipped to the right, where the bulky outline of a man stood behind her son. She registered Theo’s wide, impossibly bulging eyes, the tremble in his lower lip, and his arms straining behind his back.

The man spoke.

“Shut the door.”

His perfectly modulated voice reminded her of a smooth-talking radio deejay. She nudged the door closed behind her and looked up at the man holding her son.

She blinked.

In all her imaginings of Harrison Burbank in the last few hours, she kept returning to the image of a skinny little boy in a stained T-shirt and grubby jeans, watching her over his shoulder as his mother dragged him away. Her mental picture of him as an adult had transformed him from a boy into a stony-eyed thug with an ugly snarl twisting his mouth.

But there was nothing ugly about the man in front of her. Tall, muscles sleek and hard beneath a spotlessly white button-down shirt, twinkling hazel eyes, and a winsome smile, he could’ve auditioned for a major Hollywood production. If she’d spotted him on the street with a group of friends as a younger woman, she would’ve nudged them and whispered, “Eye candy at twelve o’clock.”

His attractiveness repelled her.

She preferred her imagination’s concoction. There was something much more chilling about evil when it came packaged in a pretty wrapper.

Get your game face on, she thought. If you panic or show weakness, you’re history. Be composed. In control. She straightened to her full height, fisted her hands on her hips, arched a haughty eyebrow, and ignored the rampaging of her pulse.

“Let my son go—”

Ana bit back his name at the last second. She had to step cautiously. Had to decide what information to reveal and what to keep hidden. She had to distract him with careful questions and keep him talking.

It was like being a criminal lawyer all over again.

Questioning a witness or expert on the stand was a complicated dance. You always knew when they intended to slide to the left, because if you had done your homework, you knew which direction they would move in. An experienced defense lawyer never asked a question she didn’t already know the answer to. But people were unpredictable and sometimes the answer you were expecting wasn’t the one given.

So pull on those lawyer shoes, honey. This is the trial of your life.

“I don’t think so, Ms. Grace.” He rotated the tip of the blade under Theo’s chin and a red pearl welled up, spilling across the shiny steel surface. “Do you know who I am?”

Theo arched his neck away and whimpered.

Ana swallowed and forced herself not to reach for her son. “No. Why don’t you explain it to me since I’ve no idea who you are or why you’re holding a knife to the throat of an innocent boy?” That statement was for Daniel’s benefit and she prayed he was close enough to hear it.

“To answer your first question, let’s just say I’m yo’ brotha from anudda motha,” he said in a flawlessly mimicked gangster accent.

A nuclear blast of heat scaled through her then drained away, leaving an icy pit in the bottom of her stomach. Her mind whipped through possible translations of such an unexpected statement. Harrison thought he was her brother? Thought that he was the result of John Grace raping his mother? Oh. Shit. The tenuous situation just got a million times worse.

“You’re mistaken.” Her voice remained remarkably steady considering the speed of blood thrumming past her vocal chords. “I don’t have a brother.”

“Into the living room, bitch lawyer. We’ll discuss it there.”

Harrison tucked Theo into a headlock and dragged him backward down the short hallway, her son’s body twisting enough to the side that she spotted his bound wrists. She followed, trying to convey love and strength to Theo with only eye contact.

A huge blue tarpaulin stretched across most of the living room’s broken picture window and cast an eerie blue light over the familiar furnishings, making them look otherworldly. A soft breeze outside buffeted the tarp, filling the silence with restless snaps and pops. Slumped awkwardly on one of the two-seater sofas, his arms also pinned behind him, sprawled her father. A purple bruise spread along his sagging jawline. He turned his face up to her as she entered the room, exposing a blackened eye nearly swollen shut.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

“Feisty old fella, our daddy,” Harrison said with a chuckle. “Took a few pops to subdue him, but he settled down. Eventually.”

“Hitting an elderly man and overpowering a kid proves beyond a doubt in my mind that we’re not related.” Her teeth clenched together.

“Au contraire, you snotty bitch—or shall I call you Ana? That’s friendlier, isn’t it?” He cocked his head and his grin widened. “Theo here has been learning all about his family tree, haven’t you, my little nephew?”

“Mum,” Theo croaked, his eyes straining to look down at the knife that had reappeared at his throat.

“Yeah, it was quite the lesson, wasn’t it? Finding out that your granddad was a filthy rapist who abandoned his kid—” Harrison flicked his gaze back to her. “—and that would be me, Ana, sweetheart—and left the woman he violated to wallow in alcohol and depression while she screwed up that said kid.”

Ana slid a glance toward her dad, who solemnly met her stare with an intensity she knew meant he was silently trying to communicate. She didn’t dare nod, but she got it. Her dad hadn’t corrected the sick bastard waving a knife around. Hadn’t told him there was no possible way they were biologically related, since he’d had a vasectomy when Ana was a girl, seven years before he and Patricia had even started working together.

“I remember you now,” she said, keeping her voice gentle. Trying to keep him calm but thinking—oh God, the knife, the knife. “I saw you with your mother when you were a little boy. Your name is Harrison.”

His smile slipped a notch. “You remember that, huh? You and your mum have a nice day shopping? Nice girlie time together? You want to know what I got from my mother that day? A black eye. Because I had the nerve to ask her, since that was my father’s wife, why couldn’t I go and live with them.”

Underneath the raw fury in his voice she sensed a delicate thread of longing. She met his gaze, a battle taking place in her own mind to not look away. “I’m sorry your mother hurt you and that no one stepped in to help. We didn’t even know about you.”

The knife wavered an inch away from Theo’s throat. “Ma said hell would freeze over before she asked for child support from my father.”

Likely because the woman knew Harrison wasn’t John’s child. She spied a flash of movement behind Harrison’s shoulder, back in the gloom of the hallway leading to the bedroom and kitchen. Thank God, Daniel was in the house. She deliberately kept her gaze steady on Harrison’s face.

“She disappeared up north and I never heard from her again. I didn’t know she was pregnant.” John tried to sit up straighter on the sofa, but his tied arms prevented it.

Ana longed to help him, but couldn’t risk it.

“I keep telling you, son,” John continued tiredly. “I made a terrible mistake getting involved with Patricia, and I know I infuriated her by breaking off the affair because I wouldn’t leave my wife—and she took it out on you, and I’m sorry for that.”

Harrison said nothing but his grip on Theo loosened and the knife retreated an inch from her son’s throat.

“Isn’t this all about family?” she asked. “The sense of belonging, being supported and loved no matter what you’ve done or where you’ve come from? I know it’s too late to change what happened in your childhood, and I can’t imagine how devastating your mother’s suicide must have been, but—”

The moment the words spilled out in her passionate appeal, she knew she’d made an error of monumental proportions.