Nowhere to Turn (23 page)

“It matters to me,” I said. “Tell me.”

“Joey called me,” Nick said.

Joey. Nick's stepbrother. It figured.

“See? There you go,” Nick said. “You always get that same look on your face when I mention Joey. I know you don't like him, Robyn. But he's my brother.” Joey was in prison, but that didn't matter to Nick. Nick would do anything for Joey, no matter what kind of trouble it might land him in. “That's why I didn't want to tell you where I was going. I wanted to see how things worked out first.”

“Okay, I'm sorry,” I said. “What did he want?”

“He said he needed my help.”

I had to struggle to keep that same look off my face. The last time Joey had asked Nick for help, Nick had almost ended up in jail himself.

“He said that the last couple of times he talked to Angie, he got the idea something was wrong, but she wouldn't tell him what.”

Angie is Joey's girlfriend. She'd been pregnant when Joey went to prison. She lived out west with their baby son.

“Joey asked me to go out and check on her. To make sure she was okay. I didn't know how long I'd be gone. I mean, if something was wrong, if Angie needed help...”

“Is she okay?”

“She is now. She finally found a place she could afford. But when I got there, she was living with her sister and this creep brother-in-law who was always giving her a hard time. Always drunk and calling Joey a loser and telling Jack terrible things about him. She didn't want Jack growing up like that. The guy told her to move out if she didn't like it. She wanted to. She was looking. But it takes time, you know? And it's hard with a little baby.”

His hands clenched as he told the story.

“Anyway, I went out there and the sister let me sleep on the couch. But her husband started in right away, giving me a hard time too. I kept my cool—well, much as I could. But I talked back to him one time when Angie and her sister were out and it was just me and Jack and him at the house. He took a swing at me—and ended up with a black eye. I got arrested. He accused me of stuff I didn't do, Robyn. Then I got jammed up because I have a record. They said I could only be released to an adult relative, but I didn't have any out there.”

“What about your aunt? Couldn't she have done something?”

“I didn't tell them about her. She would just have got mad at me. She didn't even know I was gone. I told them the truth, Robyn. I said I lived on my own. Anyway, there was no one to release me to, and they needed to be sure that I'd show up for my court date. So they detained me. They said I could call my family or my lawyer. Anyone else had to be on an approved list, and you weren't. Angie offered to call you for me, but I was afraid you wouldn't understand.”

“Haven't I always believed in you, Nick?”

He bowed his head for a moment.

“Angie told me that you never called. I was afraid maybe you'd already given up on me. Anyway, Angie finally got her brother-in-law to withdraw the charges. I called you as soon as I got out”—the garbled phone message—“and when you didn't call back...” He shrugged. “Anyway, that's all in the past now, huh?”

“What about the girl who gave you that money?” I said.

Nick shook his head in disbelief. “That was weird. I was hitching home, and this guy let me off at a gas station along the highway. I had maybe five dollars in my pocket. And I found this purse. Just sitting there. I looked inside and found a name and a number, so I called. It turned out the purse belonged to this girl who had stopped there only about an hour earlier. She didn't even realize her purse was missing until I called her. She drove back to the gas station.”

I waited for him to explain the thousand dollars in cash.

“Turns out she's a model. You should have seen her. She looked like she belonged in a magazine. She was that pretty.” His cheeks turned pink. “Not as pretty as you, though.”

“Right.”

“Anyway, she was on her way back to town after visiting her mother. She had to catch a plane. She was on her way to Paris for a shoot. And, I don't know, we got to talking. We had a lot in common.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. She had this terrible stepdad. She hated the guy. He'd hit her mom.” Nick's stepfather had beaten his mother—so badly that the last time he did it, she died of her injuries. “Her mom finally left the guy. Sarah said now that she was making all this money, she was going to buy her mom nice things. Then she offered me a lift. When she found out I didn't know where I was going and that I wasn't sure I could get my old job back, she gave me a thousand dollars. Just like that, like it was nothing. She said I could pay her back when I got rich and famous. Crazy, huh?”

Nick was smiling when he finished the story, but then he grew serious again. “Would it have made a difference if you had got my letter?”

If I'd read Nick's letter, I would never have agreed to go out with Ben. But it hadn't worked out that way. And Ben had been so good to me. He'd even been willing to help me help Nick. I couldn't pretend that he didn't exist. I had to consider his feelings—didn't I?

“Probably,” I said. “But—”

“But?”

“What I'm trying to say is—”

“It's okay. It doesn't matter anymore,” Nick said. “You have a real boyfriend now, someone who can give you things I never could.”

Ben was all that, for sure. But in my heart I wondered, Could he give me what I really wanted?

I got up early—well, earlier than Henri. Nick was already awake and was outside in Henri's tiny backyard. He came in for a moment when he saw me.

“Are you sure you're going to be okay?” he said.

“I'm just going to find out what's going on,” I said. “I've got my phone. If anything happens, I'll call 9-1-1.”

“I wish I could go with you,” he said.

“I'll be fine.”

I grabbed one of Henri's oatmeal-raisin muffins to eat on the way and left the house.

CHAPTER
TWENTY

E

lliot answered the door. He was holding a piece of paper in one hand. His eyes kept skipping to it as he asked me what I was doing there.

“I know you think I lied to you,” I said. “And I know you don't want me around. But I am a friend of your father's—that part's true—and someone has to walk Orion. You can come with me if you don't trust me. Or Isobel can. But it's not fair to keep Orion locked up in the basement because of something you think I did.”

“The dog isn't here,” Elliot said.

“What do you mean? You didn't send him to a shelter, did you?”

Isobel appeared at the door behind her father. “Someone kidnapped Orion,” she said.

“What? When?”

“Elliot, close the door,” said Claudia in a loud, shrill voice. “It's freezing in here.”

To my surprise, Elliot didn't slam the door in my face. Instead, he stood aside to let me into the front hall. Claudia was framed in the doorway to the kitchen. Connor was on the stairs, looking down at me.

“It was that friend of yours, wasn't it?” Claudia said. “He took the dog.”

“Nick?” I said. “Why would he do that?”

“Out of spite,” Claudia said. “Because Elliot fired him. Because Elliot told the police where to find him.”

I turned back to Elliot. “When did it happen?”

“Last night.”

“You didn't hear anything?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Elliot said. “That dog barks so much I don't pay attention anymore.”

“Have you called the police?”

Elliot held the sheet of paper in front of me. It was a ransom note.

“It says no police,” he said. “The kidnapper wants the coins. If he doesn't get them, he'll kill the dog. If I call the police, he'll kill the dog. Do you have any idea what it would do to my father if someone hurt that dog? And you can bet that I'd be held responsible.”

“Why would Nick kidnap Orion and demand the coins as ransom?” I said slowly. “Are you saying that you don't think that Nick stole the coins?”

“He stole them all right,” Connor said. “He was caught with them in his backpack.”

“Why would anyone think we know where the coins are?” Elliot said. “They were stolen from us.”

“From Grandpa,” Isobel said quietly.

“You should call the police,” I said.

“Robyn's right,” Isobel said.

Elliot wheeled around to her. “Are you insane?” he said. “Do you have any idea what the police would think if they saw this note?”

Isobel's voice trembled a little when she said, “They'd think that someone took Orion.”

“They'd think that someone in this house knows where those coins are,” Elliot said angrily. That's exactly what had gone through my mind after I was attacked—if I said anything to the police, they would think that Nick knew where the coins were. “They'd think that someone must have done something that made these people think they could blackmail us by taking the dog and demanding the coins as ransom.” He waved the note in her face. She jumped back, startled. “And what do you think would happen when the police reported that to the insurance company? They'd think that I took the coins and filed a false claim. They'd think I was trying to defraud them. We'd never get the money.”

“You mean, Grandpa would never get the money,” Isobel said.

Elliot wheeled back around to me. “Maybe some other lowlife heard about the theft and decided to take advantage of the situation. Maybe they found out how much your boyfriend cares about the dog, but they don't know how to contact him, so they left this note here. Why don't you tell him what happened? Tell him if he doesn't hand over the coins, the dog will die.”

“Daddy!” Isobel looked shocked.

“I need that dog back,” Elliot said desperately. He let out a long shuddery sigh. “My father already thinks I hate the animal. He thinks I want to get rid of it. He's been mad at me for years. Sometimes I think he's been mad at me my whole life. I came here to help him out, and the first thing that happens is that his coin collection gets stolen. And then, because I tried to protect it by getting it insured, the insurance company gets suspicious. Now his dog has vanished while it was in my care.”

He seemed genuinely upset. That was enough to convince me that I was finally on the right track.

“At first I thought you were the one who got someone to threaten me,” I said.

“Threaten you?” Elliot said, stunned. “What are you talking about?”

“Someone hurt Robyn,” Isobel said.

I told Elliot what had happened.

“The man wanted me to tell Nick to hand over the coins. He said if he didn't, someone would get hurt. He shoved me around to show he was serious. My arm got broken.”

“Good Lord,” Elliot said. “And you thought I was responsible for that?”

“Well, if I'd reported the attack, the police would have told the insurance company, and they would have believed the coins had been stolen. And that Nick did it.”

“My dad would never do anything like that,” Isobel said.

“I was attacked two blocks from here, right after I left this house on Friday,” I said, focusing on Elliot. “Whoever attacked me knew exactly where to find me. How could he have known that? He wanted me to give a message to Nick. How did he even know that I knew Nick?”

Elliot stared mutely at me.

“But you
did
know,” I said. “Connor found out. And Isobel knew that I used to go out with Nick. So someone in this house must have attacked me or arranged for me to be attacked. I thought it could only be you.”

“Why me?” Elliot said.

“Because I thought you staged the robbery and hid the coins.”

“That's ridiculous—he's my father!”

“First,” I said, “because you were the one who pushed your father to insure his coins as soon as you found out how valuable they were.”