Secrets Read online

  She sat back on her heels. “I can’t find it,” she said. “Do you think that Charles found it and had the board nailed down?”

  When Jeff didn’t answer, she turned to look at him. He was sitting on the bed, his hands poised over the BlackBerry keyboard, but they weren’t moving. Instead, his eyes were staring at her, and they had an odd, glazed look.

  There are some things that are as ancient as time, and knowing when a man desires you is one of those. It took Cassie a moment to think about what had caused that look on Jeff’s face. She thought of how she’d just been on her hands and knees with her backside in the air.

  She had to work to hide her smile. Althea had said that Cassie had been a fool when she lived in Jeff’s house. She’d made no effort to turn him on sexually. Instead, Cassie had dressed in heavy clothes that were much too big for her, and she’d done her best to play down the sexual aspect of their nonrelationship. At the moment, now that she was seeing Jeff’s face—and the beads of sweat on his forehead—she couldn’t remember why she’d done that. Why hadn’t she done what Skylar did and parade before Jeff in next to nothing?

  “Are you all right?” Cassie asked, feigning innocence. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “What the hell have you done to yourself?”

  “Nothing much. Althea sent me to a personal trainer who was a sadist. The man nearly killed me, but it worked.” Blinking her eyelashes, she turned a bit and put her hand on her backside. “Firmed this up rather a lot, don’t you think?”

  “Cassie,” Jeff said in a hoarse voice. “When we get out of here—”

  “Yes?” she asked, still blinking at him.

  He didn’t answer but got off the bed, went to the wardrobe, and pulled out his suitcase. He pulled the lining out and there was an entire set of household tools neatly fitted into the back. He took out a screwdriver and went to the floorboards. Three minutes later, he had pried a board up and exposed an empty place beneath it.

  “Sixty years of waxing the floor probably sealed it,” he said, then took his BlackBerry and went to the far side of the room to sit in a big armchair.

  Cassie looked into the space in the floor and saw nothing but dust and some dead bugs. She was reluctant to put her hand inside the space. She turned on the lamp on the bedside table, picked it up, removed the shade, and shined it into the hole. She thought she saw something under the dirt.

  Jeff had left his screwdriver on the table so she used it to stir the dust about. In the bottom was a little red envelope that she recognized right away. It was the kind of envelope that held a safe-deposit key. She got tissues from the box on the table and withdrew the envelope.

  When she glanced at Jeff she saw that he was watching her intently. So much for not being interested, she thought. She wiped the hanging dirt off the envelope, then opened it. As she’d thought, inside was the key to a safe-deposit box, impressed with a number. The envelope was stamped withHINTON BANK ,HINTON ,TEXAS .

  “What have you found?” Jeff asked.

  She went to him, sat on the arm of the chair, and showed it to him.

  “Useless,” he said, handing it back to her.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Unless the rent is paid on a safe-deposit box, it’s opened. Who could have paid the rent on this for sixty-plus years?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, feeling disappointed. “Does that thing hook to the Internet?” She nodded at his BlackBerry.

  “I could program a satellite with this one.”

  “Oh, right, how could I forget? You’re a big-deal CIA agent.” She got up from the chair. “You think I have time to take a shower before your people arrive?”

  “Sure.” He nodded toward the open door to the bathroom. “Just leave the door open so I can make sure no one tries to harm you.”

  “Funny. I was thinking of going to my own room where I have my own clothes.”

  “I rather like that thing you have on. Beats your usual sweats.”

  “Althea does have good taste, doesn’t she? Look, I really would like to take a shower.”

  He looked at her in speculation, as though he knew she was lying. “I take it you brought your laptop and it has a wireless connection.”

  She couldn’t hide her smile. Since he’d found her in that cabin, hiding in the closet, he no longer assumed that her motives were what they appeared to be. “Yes and yes.”

  “All right,” he said, “what do you want me to look up?”

  She sat back on the arm of the chair. “Hinton, Texas.”

  He typed in the name and came up with nothing. “Doesn’t exist.”

  “Hmm,” Cassie said, getting up and walking across the room. “I bet Hinton was born there and took the name of his hometown for his stage name. It’s my guess that after he was arrested for murder, they changed the name of the town.”

  “Makes sense,” Jeff said, looking down at the tiny keyboard again. “All those old-time stars changed their names. You know what Althea’s real name is?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Susie Pickens.”

  Cassie sat down on the end of the bed. “Really,” she said and felt deflated. It was a long way from Susie Pickens to Althea Fairmont. “What about her life story about her mother and how she stole everything from Althea?”

  “A lie,” Jeff said, not looking up from the keyboard. “She was born to a nice, middle-class family in a small town outside L.A. Her father was a banker. When Susie was four she decided she was going to be a movie star and bullied her poor mother into taking her to the sets.”

  “But what about her mother spending all her money?” Cassie asked, feeling as though a childhood illusion was being shattered.

  “You’ve met Althea. Do you think she’d let anyone take what was hers?”

  “But she was a child.”

  Jeff looked up at her. “As far as I can tell, Althea was never a child.”

  “Oh,” Cassie said, sighing, and thinking of all Althea had told her. But the story of being a misfit was still the same. “But what about—” She didn’t say any more because they heard the unmistakable sound of a helicopter outside.

  “Dad,” Jeff said, jumping up.

  “He couldn’t get here from Virginia that fast,” Cassie said. “Unless the CIA now has an atomic transporter.”

  Jeff didn’t laugh. “No, I have a suspicious father. He didn’t trust Althea with this weekend so he drove to Delray. He’s never been far away.”

  Cassie didn’t move off the bed. “No one is who I thought they were,” she said. “You, your father, Althea. The next thing you’ll tell me is that Elsbeth is a junior agent.”

  Jeff was looking out the window, and when he didn’t say anything, Cassie looked at him. “Does your five-year-old daughter know what you do for a living? I mean, really do, not the bridges that you don’t build.”

  “Actually, I’m a teacher,” he said.

  She started to ask him more questions but halted when he reached behind the headboard and withdrew a shoulder holster and a gun. “A teacher?” she asked, and her voice squeaked. “Just a teacher?”

  Jeff checked the gun to see if it was loaded, then he strapped on the holster. “After Lillian was murdered, I—”

  “Murdered?” Cassie asked in a high-pitched voice.

  “Yeah, murdered,” Jeff said, anger in his voice. “Murdered because of me. I was involved in something big, and when I turned in the criminals, their friends decided to teach me a lesson by murdering my wife.”

  Cassie put her hand to her throat. “What happened to the men?” she whispered.

  “They’re all dead now. Every one of them. Would you get my jacket out of the closet?”

  “Your gray one?”

  “Yeah,” he said with a half smile. “The one you gave me for Christmas last year.”

  She got the jacket out and held it for a moment. “I didn’t mean for it to be used to cover a gun.”

  “Listen, Cass, I want