Dead End. Lisa Phillips
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her phone just to send a message?
Next time I won’t miss.
She had to talk to Sienna. She’d know what to do. This man whom Nina knew as a friend only, despite the unwanted feelings she had for him, didn’t want all of her baggage. No one actually wanted to know what another person’s damage was. Every time she’d tried to tell a man she was attracted to about her past, he’d run away in response. She didn’t need that all over again. But Sienna was different, best girlfriends were always different.
So Nina kept the text message to herself. Meanwhile Wyatt didn’t look like he believed her that it was nothing, but thankfully didn’t say anything.
The drive to her building took two minutes, but it was full of awkward silence nonetheless. Nina waved to the doorman and Wyatt did the leading thing again, with his hand on her back. It probably meant nothing. He probably did it with suspects and witnesses all the time. He probably didn’t feel the same awareness she did.
They took the elevator to the twenty-second floor. He’d never been to her condo. And why would he have? They’d only hung out at Parker and Sienna’s house. What was he going to think? Nina sighed, trying to dispel her ridiculous thoughts. Why did she even care what Wyatt thought? It wasn’t like she was looking for a relationship. He was only here because Parker had told him to bring her home.
Nina unlocked her front door. The steady beep of her security system chimed, and she entered the code to silence the alarm. Wyatt was still by her door, eyes wide as he stared at the expanse of her foyer.
“Come in.” There were a few boxes she still hadn’t unpacked. But the place wasn’t unlivable.
Wyatt shook off whatever had stalled him and shut the front door. “Nice place.”
“Doesn’t have a lot of character, but it’ll do for now.”
“You’re not staying?” He stuck his hands in the front pockets of his jeans, which pulled his shirt taut over his arm muscles.
Nina looked away. “I thought about buying a house, but who wants to mow a yard? If I want to have a country experience I’ll go to Sienna and Parker’s house in the sticks.”
Wyatt eyed her. “Some people like that kind of thing.” He glanced around. “So this is home?”
Home. There was a concept Nina didn’t know all that much about, unless he was talking about her friendship with Sienna. They’d been each other’s family for years. Instead of answering, Nina went to the kitchen and pressed the button on the side of her coffeepot, where it heated water. After the morning she’d had, she needed hot chocolate, stat. Maybe even marshmallows.
“Do you want coffee?”
He was looking at her like she was a puzzle he hadn’t realized was five thousand pieces and not six simple ones easily slotted together. “Sure. Parker said something about lunch.” He sauntered to her fridge and pulled it open. “How about eggs?”
“Sure.”
She made the drinks while he pulled ingredients from the fridge. “Where’s the sausage?” His eyes narrowed. “The fancy cheese I get, but you eat meat, right?”
Nina smiled. “Bottom drawer.”
Wyatt muttered “thank you” and stuck his head back in the fridge. Nina chuckled as she circled the center island, where the burners were. Her side was a counter on which he set a chopping board, an onion and a handful of mushrooms, then slid over a knife.
“You’re on chopping duty.”
Nina smiled. “I’ll make you proud.”
She got to work cutting veggies as best she could with her right hand while Wyatt’s strong hands cracked each egg with ease—though who would eat all of this food was anyone’s guess. But even with the easiness of their friendship, the weight of the day washed back like the incoming tide. It always did, and Nina wasn’t sure she’d know what to do if one day she no longer had to worry about it.
“Tell me what all this is about.”
The knife slipped across her finger, and Nina cried out.
Wyatt rushed around the island and pulled her to the sink. He ran the cold water gently over her right hand and held her finger there. The liquid washed away the drops of blood and helped numb the pain. Too bad something so simple didn’t work on everything.
He ran his thumb over the tiny cut. “It doesn’t look too bad, but you should put a bandage on it.”
Nina got one from the end cupboard and sat so he’d know she didn’t need his help. She finished the rest of the chopping without speaking, and then pushed the cutting board to his side of the island. He looked up from stirring, evidently content to wait for her to be ready to answer his request.
“My mother was killed, you know that. Parker said it. Her name was Congresswoman Clarissa Holmes.” Nina sucked in a breath. “When I was five years old my parents separated for a while. My mother began having an affair with another man.”
Nina clenched her fingers together in her lap, but it hurt so she let go. “I would see him when the nanny brought me home from the park. His name was Mr. Thomas, and he was very handsome. He would have tea with my mother and me every day, and he would tell me stories about pirates, and fair maidens, about spies and bad guys. I think he was one of them. A spy, I mean.
“Maybe he’s part of the reason I said yes when the CIA wanted to recruit Sienna and me. I looked for him in their databases as much as I could, but never found a single trace of anyone with the first or last name of Thomas who looked like him. Maybe I was wrong about him being a real spy, but that’s what I thought for a long time. Anyway, one day—I was six and a half, I think—we came home from the park and the front door was open.”
Wyatt slid the eggs into two bowls and came over. He sat on the stool beside her, but didn’t say anything.
“She was in the bedroom. There was blood everywhere. The nanny started screaming, so I ran to the study and called 911 from the phone. She fled out the front door and left me there. The police found me, on the stairs. Alone in the house with my dead mother.”
“And the police thought your father did it?”
“It was his letter opener. He’d left it when he moved out, but he hadn’t been there in months. I was sent to live with my grandparents, and they shipped me off to boarding school. I don’t think they were too interested in another child, especially one who had gone through a trauma.
“I went to see my father after I turned eighteen. He said it wasn’t him, and he wasn’t lying. It never seemed right to me that he had just shown up that day and killed her. But the police never believed me about Mr. Thomas.” Nina blew out a breath. “I’ve been thinking it through ever since.”
Wyatt nodded.
“When I told the police about Mr. Thomas they thought I had invented him to cover for my father. They never found the nanny—she just disappeared. No one else knew anything about the man who’d been spending all that time with my mother. They thought he didn’t exist because she hadn’t told anyone—not her friends, or employees—about him. They even tried to get this counselor to say I was making the whole thing up, like I was hysterical or delusional or something. Like I’d made up the idea of another suspect just so they wouldn’t send my father to jail.”
Nina squeezed her eyes shut. “I was the kid in school whose father killed her mother and who made up a story. The crazy child no one wanted their kid to hang around with because my delusion might get them killed, too.”
“Except Sienna.”
“She was as alone as I was, and she didn’t care what anyone else thought.”
Nina had worked for years with her best friend, Sienna. Playing bad guys off against each other, rehashing missions that had gone bad. They had been friends since that first day of third grade