Replica (24 page)

Nadia looked at her hands again, remembering the stiff way Nate had moved this morning. “I didn’t see any bruises on him, but he was obviously in a lot of pain when I went to see him. He wants to find Bishop still, but I think last night proved to him that he was in over his head. Besides…”

“Yes?”

“Nate still doesn’t believe Bishop killed him, but he did tell me something this morning I thought you might want to know. Something I think makes even Nate have doubts now and then.”

“I’m intrigued. Please, continue.” More skepticism, but Nadia couldn’t allow herself to worry about it.

“Nate keeps a stash of dollars in his apartment. He and Bishop were the only ones who knew where those dollars were. When Nate went to the Basement for the first time, he wanted to take dollars with him, but when he went to get them, they were all gone.”

For the first time, Mosely looked like he really
was
intrigued. Was he drawing the same conclusion Nate had when he’d found the dollars missing? She wasn’t sure exactly what the misdirection would buy them—after all, neither she nor Nate had any idea why Bishop was still in Paxco—but maybe it would at least throw Mosely off the scent for a while.

“Very interesting indeed,” Mosely said.

Now would be a good time to let Mosely draw his own conclusions, but since Nadia was still pretending to be at least a little tipsy, she didn’t think sitting quietly and letting Mosely think was the right thing to do.

“Nate keeps making excuses for why Bishop took the money, but he’s pretty upset about it. He thinks it means Bishop used the dollars to get out of Paxco. He wasn’t going to the Basement because he expected to actually find Bishop there. He was going because he hoped he’d find someone who could help him get in touch with Bishop wherever he’s hiding.

“I know you think Nate is reckless and naive, and you won’t get any argument from me. If he still thought he had a chance of finding Bishop in the Basement and helping him, I’m sure what happened last night wouldn’t stop him from trying again. But under the circumstances…” She let her voice trail off.

Mosely regarded her with those disturbingly cold eyes of his, and she felt like he was mentally taking her apart, peeling away layer after layer as he tried to figure out whether she was telling the truth or lying. Her stomach burbled unhappily, the noise loud enough to make her cheeks heat with a blush. She probably should have eaten a little more solid food to balance out the effects of the liqueur, but her meeting with Nate this morning had stolen her appetite. She hoped the booze was having the desired effect, confusing Mosely’s interpretations of her word choice or body language—or whatever it was that made him so good at figuring out when people were lying to him.

“Did you learn anything last night before the tracker went dead?” she asked, unable to bear the silence and the scrutiny any longer. “You wanted to know who Nate was talking to, and it gave you a clue, right?”

“Indeed. I have issued an arrest warrant for this Angel of Mercy who so mistreated our Chairman Heir last night. Unfortunately, the men I had following him felt they had to deliver their report to me before detaining her, and by the time I issued the warrant, she had made herself scarce.” He leaned forward in his chair, those eyes boring into her again.

“Make no mistake: my men
will
find her. And she
will
talk to me, with the greatest of candor. I want you to think very, very carefully about what you’ve told me this afternoon, Miss Lake, and be assured that if I talk to her and her story of last night’s events doesn’t
exactly
match yours, you will pay a heavy price. With that in mind, is there anything you’d like to add? Or amend?”

If Mosely got his hands on Angel, she’d end up telling him about her connection to Bishop, whatever it was, and Mosely would know Nadia had lied to him during this interview. By keeping this secret, Nadia was risking her entire family’s future. Gerri could go to prison over this, and Corinne and Rory … Everything she had done so far, she’d done to protect those she cared about most, and now she was risking it all. Her sane and sensible side told her to blurt out the truth now, before it was too late.

“Well, Miss Lake?” Mosely prompted.

Coming clean with Mosely was the sensible thing to do. It would mean giving up forever the idea of marrying Nate. But it wasn’t fear of losing her advantageous marriage that kept Nadia silent. It was the boiling cauldron of indignation inside her.

What Mosely was doing was wrong, on so many levels. He was abusing his authority, using blackmail, threats, and even torture to hunt down an innocent man while refusing to even consider the possibility that someone else was behind Nate’s murder. He might say he was doing it all for the good of Paxco, that he was just doing his job, but Nadia would never, ever accept that. Mosely enjoyed the power he wielded, the fear he inspired. There was no way she could see the avaricious gleam in his eyes every time he talked to her without knowing deep in her heart that he was a bully who loved his work. And after everything he’d already bullied her into doing, she was through with letting him win. She was just going to have to hope that Angel was as good as Bishop at staying hidden.

“That’s all I can think of,” she told him, and even the artificial bravery of the alcohol couldn’t keep her from sounding as scared as she felt. “I hope you’ll keep in mind that everything I’m telling you comes to me secondhand. It’s possible Nate is keeping things from me.”

“You’d better hope he isn’t, then. Because if I find out anything you’ve told me is untrue, it’s going to be
you
I hold responsible, not him.” He pulled an envelope out of his pocket and tossed it at Nadia. “There’s another tracker in there. If you’re telling me the truth, then it’s possible you’re right and Nathaniel won’t venture into the Basement again. But if he does, I want to know about it.”

Nadia was forced to unclench her hands to pick up the envelope. Her palms were wet and clammy. “With the locket gone, I don’t know where I can put a tracker. I doubt he takes his wallet when he goes to the Basement.”

Mosely smirked at her. “I guess you’ll just have to be creative.”

He rose to his feet, and if Nadia were being her usual polite self, she would have risen, too, to see him to the door. No matter how much she loathed and despised him. But she honestly wasn’t sure her knees would hold her, and she didn’t want him to see her shaking. So she merely sat on the couch and stared at the envelope containing the new tracker as Mosely saw himself out.

*   *   *

It
wasn’t until after Mosely was gone that Nadia lost the battle against the alcohol she’d imbibed in hopes of fooling him. The booze, the lack of solid food, and her terror whenever she allowed herself to think about what she was risking was enough to send her racing to the bathroom.

Afterward, she took her second shower of the day, not because she needed it, but because she craved the comfort of the hot water. She shivered even in the heat and raised her face to the spray, wishing the water could wash away the obedient, dutiful child inside her who kept panicking over her decision to lie to Mosely. Her parents—even her father, who was less rigid than her mother—would disown her if they ever found out what she’d done. Even if no harm ever came to her family, she had broken the one cardinal rule she’d always been raised to honor: put your family’s needs above all else.

Nadia was surprised to discover that after the gut-twisting panic had run its course, she felt better. The chill faded little by little, and by the time she exited the shower, she felt more like herself again. She had made the decision to lie because her heart told her it was the right thing to do. She’d protected her family as best she could while staying true to the promise she’d made to Nate, as well as the promise she’d made to herself to see Mosely destroyed someday.

Nothing he’d said today was particularly damning, but at least she’d recorded him making vague, ominous threats. Maybe next time she was forced to talk to him, she would try to steer the conversation a bit more in hopes he would say too much—despite her promise to Gerri that she would do no such thing.

Having thoroughly emptied her stomach out, Nadia called to the kitchen requesting some chicken soup and crackers for an afternoon snack. Mrs. Reeves herself delivered the tray, giving Nadia a look of grandmotherly concern.

“Are you feeling sick, miss?” she asked as she set the tray on an end table beside Nadia’s reading chair.

Nadia wondered if Mrs. Reeves was asking because of her pale face and shadowed eyes, or whether it was just the chicken soup and crackers. “My stomach is a little upset,” she admitted, though she felt fine now, and the smell of the broth made her hungry.

“Well, this will be just the thing for you, now won’t it?” Mrs. Reeves said, and she unrolled the napkin to show that it contained nothing but silverware. “I tried to get to the bottom of what happened with your tray this morning. I put it together myself, and the girl who delivered it to you, Missy Hampton, swears up and down that she didn’t put anything in your napkin. I’m afraid I was a little sharp with her when I was asking questions.”

Nadia imagined that being on the receiving end of a rant from Mrs. Reeves was an unpleasant experience, but after what she herself had been through with Mosely, she could scrape up only minimal sympathy. Especially as Hampton now seemed the most likely person to have delivered the note.

“She won’t admit putting the note in your napkin, and she says she had no idea it was there. But when I pressed her, she admitted she had a little mishap on her way to your room. She tripped on the edge of the carpet in the hall and dropped the vase I’d put on your tray.”

Nadia tried to picture the tray in her mind, and, sure enough, she couldn’t remember there being a vase on it. Mrs. Reeves never sent a tray out of the kitchen without a flower on it.

“She put down the tray to pick up the broken pieces and left it unattended while she threw the glass away. She says when she came back, she saw someone nip out the other end of the hall in a hurry. She only saw the back of his head, but she thought it might be your father’s new assistant.” Mrs. Reeves’s frown said she didn’t quite buy the story, that she thought the maid was trying to cover for her own guilt.

“My father’s assistant?” Nadia asked. “You mean Dante?”

“That’s the one,” Mrs. Reeves confirmed. “Hampton says she didn’t think anything of it at the time, but he might have had enough time to tamper with your tray.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Reeves,” Nadia said as she turned over this new information in her head. “You’ve been very helpful.”

Mrs. Reeves looked doubtful. “I don’t know about that. I’d want to hear what your father’s assistant has to say about it, but it wouldn’t be my place to question him.”

Nadia smiled and patted Mrs. Reeves’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about him, Mrs. Reeves. I’ll ask him about it myself.”

“And you’ll let me know if Hampton was telling me the truth? If she lied to me, then she doesn’t belong in this household.”

Nadia didn’t want anyone to get fired over this, especially not some hapless maid who probably thought it was some harmless gossip. But if Missy Hampton concocted a cover story blaming someone else for what she’d done, then she deserved to be fired.

“I’ll let you know,” Nadia promised.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Nadia
didn’t know what to make of Mrs. Reeves’s revelation. Maybe Hampton was making the whole encounter with Dante up, just to have someone else to point the finger at. Or maybe everything had happened exactly the way Hampton said, but it hadn’t been Dante she’d seen. Even if it
was
Dante, that could easily be coincidence. After all, there were plenty of legitimate reasons he might be in the hallway of their apartment. And of course, he could have been sneaking around on some errand of Mosely’s.

Logistically, it was fairly easy to imagine Dante having had access to her tray, without anything in his actions seeming particularly daring or out of place. What
didn’t
make sense was for him to be conveying messages to her from
Bishop,
of all people. If he were truly working for Dirk Mosely, then he was the enemy—no matter how friendly he seemed—and there was no way he had any contact with Bishop. Of course, it was possible, maybe even
likely,
that Bishop had used an intermediary of some kind. Maybe Dante had no idea he was delivering a message from the man who’d supposedly murdered the Chairman Heir.

The only way she’d find out would be to question Dante, but the idea frightened her. If she let on that she’d had contact with Bishop, and if Dante relayed that message to Mosely …

The old, painfully cautious Nadia would have measured the risks against the potential rewards and decided not to pursue this. But Nate had put his life on the line trying to find Bishop, and, thanks to the note, Nadia might now be able to help him, or at least point him in the right direction.

At two o’clock, she headed down to the schoolroom for her classes, praying that Jewel and Blair would be absent. Surely they wouldn’t show up
three
days in a row. She let out a breath of relief when there was no sign of either one of them. Chloe was still keeping her distance as well, and Nadia suspected her former friend would soon formally withdraw from the class. Nadia wasn’t sure if it was because of the lingering taint on her reputation, or because Chloe knew their friendship could never recover from the awkwardness.

Whatever the reason, Nadia was Mr. Guthrie’s sole pupil—unless you counted Dante, who was openly listening now that Jewel wasn’t around to harass him about it.

No matter how much Nadia usually enjoyed Mr. Guthrie’s lectures, this time she could barely focus enough to keep up with him. She found herself constantly watching Dante out of the corner of her eye, searching for any clue to who he really was, what he really wanted. Trying to discern whether he was a danger to her, a possible ally, or just a coincidental bystander. Once or twice, Dante caught her looking, and Nadia hastily glanced away.