Conspiracy Girl (24 page)

‘You’ve totally fallen for her, haven’t you?’ Maggie says and the inference in her voice is obvious. ‘I knew you would.’

My foot hovers in mid-air.

‘No. Of course not,’ Finn answers tersely.

‘Finn. Come on. You’re so predictable.’

Finn smothers a laugh. ‘I am not.’

‘Yes, you are.’

‘Look, would you just drop it?’ Finn says with a note of irritation. ‘She’s a witness. In
your
case, I hasten to add. One I’m trying to keep alive as a
favour to you. There’s nothing between us.’

Blood rushes in my ears loud as a waterfall.

‘OK,’ I hear Maggie say. ‘Just so long as we’re clear. You know the rules, Finn.’

A sigh. ‘Listen how many times do I have to tell you I’m not interested in her? At all.’

My feet won’t work and neither will my lungs. Fury does battle with embarrassment, both raging for control inside of me. I manage to take a breath even though my lungs feel shrunken. I
turn around. I need to get out of here.
It’s OK
, I tell myself as I run up the stairs.
It was just a kiss. It didn’t mean anything.

I make it back to the bedroom and switch on the light, looking around desperately for my clothes. I can’t find them. Damn. There’s a wardrobe so I head towards it and throw open the
doors. I’m in luck. Maybe it’s not a vacation rental after all. There’s a shelf of sweaters, a drawer of underwear, and rows and rows of clothes hanging on a rail. I root quickly
through them, grabbing some clean socks from the drawer, some underwear, a pair of jeans, a camisole top and a sweater.

I don’t know why I’m feeling the need for urgency but it’s like I’m suddenly up against a clock. Adrenaline is pumping through my body, mixing in a narcotic rush with the
heat of a humiliation I’ve known before – when Davis let the world know all about the night he took my virginity. I was a fool to think I could trust Finn, to ever think getting close
to anyone was a good idea.

Wincing, I manage to undo the buttons on the shirt, choosing to ignore the shooting pain in my shoulder. I just want to get out of here. A part of my brain tries to argue with me, tells me
I’m being stupid and unreasonable. What did I expect? What was I hoping for? But the bigger part wants to outrun the humiliation. I just want to put space between me and him. And I
don’t want to be tied to him any more.

With a struggle, I pull on the camisole top and a clean pair of underwear and am standing there shaking out the jeans when the door pushes open and Finn appears. He seems surprised to see me out
of bed.

‘Hey,’ he says, pausing in the doorway. He glances at my bare legs then quickly looks up. ‘How are you feeling?’

I stare at him, eyes narrowed. How am I feeling? Let’s start with humiliated, pissed off, angry. Add to that a whole lot of dizzy. ‘Fine,’ I say, snatching for the jeans and
turning my back on him.

I try to shove my foot into the leg but with only one arm working properly it’s tricky and I flail like a fish caught in a net and fall on to the bed. The whole time I’m aware of
Finn standing in the room, watching me struggle.

He walks around the bed and faces me. ‘Can I help?’ he asks.

‘No, it’s fine. I’ve got it.’

‘How’s the head?’ he asks.

I frown at him, my hand flying to my temple. ‘What happened?’ I ask. ‘I don’t remember anything about last night,’ I add.
Hah.

Finn’s mouth opens and then shuts. A small crease appears between his eyes. ‘Um, you fell, hit your head on the side of the basin.’

‘I fell?’

‘Yeah, you fainted.’

Huh. ‘That’s a first,’ I say.

‘Yeah, for me too,’ he answers.

‘So how did I get out of my jeans?’ I ask, struggling to hold his gaze. His blue eyes are impenetrable. He hasn’t shaved, I notice, and his eyes are circled. It gives me pause,
but just for a second.

‘I took them off,’ he tells me matter of factly.

‘You—’

‘I carried you to bed and took your jeans off to make you more comfortable. They were wet through from the snow. And then I left you to sleep. In case you were wondering.’
There’s no trace of humour in his face. He looks concerned that I might have thought he took advantage of me while I was passed out.

‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘I mean, yes, but – I didn’t . . . ’ I break off. My words are getting all mangled. ‘Thanks.’ I finally mumble to the floor,
recalling just then exactly what he said to Maggie about not being interested in me. The emphasis he put on
at all
. But at least now I can claim amnesia from my head injury, saving us both
the embarrassment of having to talk about it.

Finn is watching me half warily, half confused.

‘Did you speak to Maggie?’ I ask, testing him.

He pauses before answering. ‘Yes,’ he finally admits.

‘And?’ I ask.

‘No intel,’ he says quietly, a look as dark as thunder crossing his face.

I laugh under my breath. No intel, but a warning. And what did she mean when she called him
predictable
? Is that what he does? Have relationships with witnesses? Sleep with them? Is
that what he got kicked off the FBI intern programme for? I’d lay money on it. It probably wasn’t anything to do with what he told me about the judge.

Finn sits down heavily on the bed beside me. ‘But she did have some news about Hugo,’ he says.

My eyes fly instantly to his face. He swallows, fights to hold my gaze and not look away.

‘I’m sorry,’ he finally says.

I shake my head, trying to cut him off because I can see from the look in his eye what he’s going to say next. ‘No.’

Sorrow passes across his face and when he speaks his voice is soft. ‘He died last night.’

‘How?’ I ask numbly, still shaking my head, still not ready to believe.

‘He never recovered consciousness. He slipped into a coma and then passed away in his sleep.’

My fingers clutch at the bed covers. ‘No. No. No. Stop it.’ I’m shaking my head so fast that my vision blurs. Through it I see a curtain of red, the walls pressing in on me.
Next thing I know I’m on my feet, throwing myself against something, kicking hard and punching harder, screaming and yelling and sobbing at the same time, but then my arms are pinned against
my body and my feet lift off the floor. A part of me realises that it’s Finn, that he has his arms around me and is holding me from behind.

I try to scream, ‘Get off me!’ But it comes out as a sob.

‘Shh . . . shh . . . ’ he whispers in my ear, his arms a vice around my torso.

I put up a struggle, kicking out with my legs and connecting sharply with his shin. He grunts but doesn’t let me go, and then the fight evaporates out of me as fast as it arrived and I
sink to the floor sobbing.

Finn drops with me, his arms still wrapped around me, my back pressed to his chest. My head falls forwards and with one hand Finn sweeps my hair out of my face and holds me while I cry, rocking
me back and forth.

‘What can I do?’ he asks after a few minutes when I’ve calmed a little.

I lift my head, my skull throbbing. My throat is stripped and raw and my body aches all over.

‘Nic . . . ’ he says, and the way he says my name, the anguish in his voice, makes me stop crying instantly. I tilt my head backwards against his shoulder. My hair falls in front of
my face and Finn brushes it away again, his palm resting against my cheek. My focus falls to his lips.

I remember what he just said to Maggie, how he isn’t interested in me, but the pain inside my chest feels overwhelming, like a dozen crossbow bolts have been shot through me, and I want it
to go away. I want to forget. For just a moment, preferably longer, I don’t want to be in my head. I want to be in his arms where despite not wanting to, I feel safest. Before he can do or
say anything more I lean forwards and kiss him, pressing my lips to his with a desperation that surprises me, and from the way he tenses, I guess surprises him too. But he doesn’t pull
away.

I wrench my arm free of Finn’s embrace and twist so I’m sitting on his lap, then I lace my fingers around his neck and tug him closer.

He doesn’t kiss me back at first and I almost give up, but then I hear him sigh. His arms snake around my waist and he pulls me tight against his chest, and the kiss becomes frantic,
breathless, all consuming.

I’ve never known a desperate hunger like the one that overtakes me. It cancels out everything: the memories, the pain in my shoulder, the thoughts slamming themselves around my skull. It
turns the volume down on my mother’s screams. All I can feel, all I know, is Finn.

My hands slide beneath his T-shirt again, running over the hard slabs of muscle, feeling the ridges of his scar and following it down inside his jeans with absolutely no hesitation. It’s
as if my body is acting independently of my mind, purely on instinct. Finn groans even as he kisses me harder, his teeth biting down on my lower lip. I tilt my head back and he kisses along my
jaw.

I rip his T-shirt off over his head. I bury my lips against his neck and inhale deeply, the scent of him filling my lungs, making me cling to him even more. Then I realise Finn has stopped
kissing me.

Slowly, very slowly, Finn peels my arms from around his neck and taking a deep breath, he picks me up and sets me down on the bed. I sit there, staring up at him, shaking. He can barely look me
in the eye. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbles, ‘I can’t do this.’ He reaches for his shirt on the floor, snatches it up, and backs off towards the door as though
he’s running away from an unexploded bomb.

I watch him with my heart pounding in my mouth, barely able to breathe. It feels like I have razor-sharp claws embedded in my side and that they are inch by dreadful inch slicing their way
through me, tearing me apart. I want to scream and cry and throw things at the wall but the pain makes it impossible to move. My face burns, my lips throb, tears well up in my eyes.

Finn backs through the door and disappears, leaving me alone.

As I close the door behind me I curse myself, fighting every instinct to turn back. I want to rush back inside. I imagine laying her down on the bed, kissing her again, taking
my time over it, showing her how much she means to me, how much I want her. But I don’t. I take a deep breath and walk towards the stairs.

Halfway down, I stop by the window. Resting my palm against the cool glass, I stare out at the icy lake, imagining diving into it. That cools me off, though it takes a minute. What did I just
do? Why did I kiss her? I promised myself I wouldn’t touch her again. She’s a witness. And she’s vulnerable. She needed a friend, not some dickhead guy to take advantage of
her.

I run a hand through my hair.
What are you doing, Finn Carter?
I feel like yelling at myself. Didn’t I learn my lesson with Eleanor? How could I make the same mistake again?

Eleanor Ricci was a witness on a case I worked when I was on the FBI internship programme. She was the twenty-two-year-old stepdaughter of a mid-level mafia fixer. She had watched him murder her
mother in cold blood. Her eye-witness testimony would finally put behind bars a man that the FBI had been trying to bring in for two decades.

I was only put on the case because the week before the trial Eleanor was getting skittish and having second thoughts about testifying. She knew the mafia would try to silence her before it came
to trial and, even though we had her in a safe house, she was rightly nervous. She would have to enter the witness protection programme as soon as the trial was over, which meant giving up all her
friends and her family and taking on a whole new identity. I had been shadowing Maggie and she could see that Eleanor and I had a rapport going, so she put me on duty in the safe house to keep an
eye on her and try to calm her down.

One thing led to another. I crossed the line. We wound up in bed together. I’m not proud of my actions and I know that to claim she threw herself on me isn’t gentlemanly but . . .
she threw herself on me. And I was nineteen.

That same night Eleanor ran from the safe house. She waited until I stepped into the bathroom, stole my car keys and my wallet from my suit jacket which was lying on the floor and fled. The
trial collapsed, the guy walked free, and a little over a month later Eleanor was found in a motel in Denver. She’d been shot once through the head. The mafia had got to her before the FBI
could.

Maggie covered for me at the time, but a month later when I leaked the details of that judge, she couldn’t bail me out again. She was right then just as she’s right now. Eleanor
Ricci died because of me. If I hadn’t allowed lust to fog my brain, she would never have walked out of that safe house with my car keys and wallet in hand. A murderer would have been jailed.
I can’t risk anything happening to Nic because I didn’t learn my lesson. Even if what I feel for Nic is infinitely deeper and more real than anything I felt for Eleanor.

‘Hellooooo,’ someone calls out just then, making me spin around.

‘Hellooo, anybody home?’

I pull on my T-shirt and jog down the rest of the stairs. Shit. My mind instantly starts making calculations. I’ve left my computer on the kitchen table, my bag and the gun beside it.
I’m a fricking idiot.

‘Hellooooo?’ the person calls once more. By her tone I’m guessing it’s not the police. Maybe a neighbour who saw me standing by the damn window gazing out like some
love-lost fool? Plastering on a smile, I yank open the door. There’s only one thing for it.

A woman with carefully coiffured blonde hair that’s been sprayed into a rock-solid-looking helmet, is standing in the hallway. She’s wearing an Hermès scarf, a jacket and
expensive-looking leather gloves. She glances up and, seeing me, steps backwards.

‘Hi,’ I say. ‘Can I help you?’

She purses her lipstick-pink lips and I can see the cogs turning. She’s wanting to ask who I am but manners dictate otherwise. She’s well-bred, something I guessed from her voice. I
can use that to my advantage. I alter my posture and my own accent to match hers.

‘I’m Dana Fischer,’ she says, immediately flustered. ‘I live next door.’ She points vaguely over her shoulder. ‘I thought I saw someone and that I should come
and investigate,’ she purrs. ‘I didn’t know Maureen and Bob had house guests.’