True Lies (7 page)

Chapter 4

E
mma paced to the end of the empty dock and raised the binoculars for what had to be the eighth time in the last hour. She should have spent the morning working on the new prospectus for the fund her group was going to introduce next year, but she hadn’t been able to concentrate. A dull ache throbbed behind her eyes from a sleepless night. Each time she had been about to doze off, she saw Bruce’s face in her mind. Only it wasn’t Bruce’s face. And she heard his voice, but it was deeper and more resonant than she remembered. And he was touching her hand, and the heat that flooded her body had her twisting the sheets until morning.

She kept replaying their parting handshake over and over in her mind. The sense of connection she’d felt with him had been no illusion. Her eyes might have deceived her at first, seeing only what Bruce wanted her to see, letting him use his gestures and his expressions to distract her from his appearance, but her body had known from the moment he had touched her that he was someone...special.

Why did he want to disguise his good looks? Was it really due to his shyness? Was he unaware of his appeal? Or did it all come down to the eye of the beholder?

Frustrated, Emma dropped the binoculars, letting them dangle from the strap around her neck while she rubbed her eyes. Her thoughts were chasing around pointlessly, as they had last night. Bruce was an enigma, a mystery. Yet whatever he was, beneath his puzzling exterior there was a man who was on the verge of reaching past all her defensive barriers. She liked him, she found him attractive, and the lightest brush of his skin against hers made her tremble. Bruce. The klutz.

Only, he wasn’t, was he? Not all the time.

What would have happened if Sheriff Haskin hadn’t interrupted them? But he had. And he had asked about Simon. What was her brother into now?

“I don’t need this,” she muttered. “I really don’t need this.”

The white speck appeared on the northwestern horizon long before any noise from the engine could reach her. Emma checked her watch. Almost 10:30. Simon usually arrived by 9:00. He was always in a frenzy to unload his crates and get them to the assayer’s. She lifted the binoculars back to her eyes and adjusted the focus, following the progress of the aircraft. It roared overhead as it made a circuit of the lake, dipping a wing in a sliding turn before it lined up for its descent. The pontoons bounced from the water twice before the airspeed reduced enough to eliminate the lift. Emma grimaced at the sloppy technique. Simon didn’t share her natural love of flying. To him, a plane was simply a convenient mode of transportation.

The Cessna taxied toward the dock. Simon cut the engine and stepped out of the cockpit to toss her a line as the pontoon collided with the row of tires. Emma winced at the jolt that shuddered through her plane.

Simon leapt to the dock and gave her a grin. He had the easy charm of their father, with his clean-cut features and sparkling green eyes. His brown hair was brushed back stylishly, the auburn streaks lifting in the strong breeze. He was barely an inch taller than her own five foot six, so he was able to duck under the wing of the plane easily as he came toward her. “I'm glad you're here, Emma. I ran into a bad head wind. Be a sweetheart and help me unload my crates, would you?”

She fastened the last of the lines to the heavy rings in the dock boards. “Did you fill up the fuel tanks?”

“No time, I'm running late,” he said, brushing past her at a jog. “I have to be at the assayer’s in less than an hour.”

“Simon!” She straightened up and called after him. “Simon, you promised.”

He gunned the engine of the Wagoneer that he’d parked in her shed and backed it over the rocky hillside to the dock. He jerked it to a stop and jumped down to open the tailgate. “I'll do it next time, honest. But I was running late today, and I really have to get rid of this stuff.”

Well, what had she expected? Did she think he would actually keep a promise to her? She set her jaw as she stepped onto a pontoon and began an inspection of the plane. Her palm glided along the smooth aluminum of the fuselage as she looked for signs of stress.

“Aw, quit worrying about that thing. It’s only a lump of machinery.” Simon ducked through the open door and pulled out a wooden crate. “I thought you were going to help me unload.”

Only a lump of machinery? Hardly. This plane was like an extension of herself. She always cared for it with the attention a horse trainer gave a thoroughbred, or a biker gave his Harley. This was her freedom, her way of escaping from the world from the time she had realized that the world wasn’t always a great place to be. “Simon, I'm not going to let you use this again.”

Another bulky crate hit the dock with a thud. Simon pushed it aside and swung down another. “Look, I'm sorry, Emma, but I'm really trying hard to do well at this prospecting. I thought you wanted me to succeed.”

He was trying to manipulate her again. God, why was it so difficult to take a stand against him? “Of course, I want you to succeed. I'm very proud of the way you're sticking with this venture, but you have to learn the importance of—” She caught her breath on a gasp. Bending down quickly, she looked at the ugly scar on the pontoon.

The metal had been dented for a span of more than a foot. Two rivets had been sheared off at the head, and a rust red scrape mark extended to the waterline. Anger tightened her hands into fists as she stepped carefully back onto the dock. “What the hell is that from?” she said, her voice dangerously low.

Simon glanced around, then quickly hefted a box and carried it to the back of the Wagoneer. “Oh, sorry about that, Emma. The water was a bit rough where I tied up, and the chain I was using sort of slipped.”

“That’s it,” she stated. “That’s the very last time.”

He maneuvered the rest of his samples to his vehicle and came back to take her hands in his. “I'm sorry, sis,” he said, his green eyes glowing with sincerity. “You're so terrific to put up with me. And I haven’t even thanked you yet.” He leaned forward, aiming a kiss for her cheek.

Glaring at him, she yanked her hands loose. “No, Simon. This plane is now off-limits to you. Permanently.”

“Aw, you don’t mean that. I'll fix that damage and—”

“No.” She looked at the scrape mark again, outrage giving her the strength that she’d lacked before. “No more. I've given everything I could to you for ten years, but no more.”

For the first time, his face lost its charming smile. He looked worried. “Emma, I apologized. I'll get it fixed. But I really need to use it again this week. I've made commitments.”

She shook her head from side to side in a slow negative. “Make some other arrangements for your prospecting. I'm through letting you use me this way.”

“You don’t know what you're saying. I have to make one more run, that’s all. Then I'll be finished.”

“Run?”

“Emma.” He grabbed her hands, squeezing painfully. “Listen to me. When I say I've made commitments, I mean real, serious commitments. This isn’t just a job, this is life or death.”

“How can looking for a copper mine be a matter of life or death?”

“I'm in debt, Emma,” he said desperately. “Real, serious debt. I'm doing this to work it off, but if I stop now, they'll kill me.”

“What?”

“I had a bad streak at cards. It was only supposed to be a friendly poker game, and I kept thinking my luck would turn. I didn’t know what kind of people they were. Oh, Emma, you've got to help me. Let me do this last run and then I'll have paid it off.”

A coldness crept over her, a familiar coldness replacing her anger. They’d been through this before, so many times. She thought he had changed. “You're not prospecting. You never were.”

“I really do want you to be proud of me, Emma. I tried—”

“What are you into this time, Simon? What are you doing? Why do you keep calling it a run?”

“These people I owe money to, they need to bring their product into the country without attracting any attention, so I pick it up at night in the St. Lawrence and bring it—”

She grasped his arms and shook him. “Simon, what have you done?”

“I haven’t touched the stuff. I just take it to their warehouse in these sample crates and—”

“Simon!”

He inhaled shakily, hanging his head. “It’s cocaine, Emma.”

As quickly as she had seized him, she released her grip and stepped backward. Revulsion slithered through her body. “My plane? You were using my plane, and my dock and my property to bring that...that filth into the country?” Her stomach turned over. She battled the urge to be sick. “No. Oh, dear God, no.”

“Just one more time, Emma. Then I'll quit. I promise.”

She turned her head to look at the open tailgate of the Wagoneer, then ran forward and ripped the lid off the nearest crate. She didn’t want to believe it. Digging desperately through the broken rocks on the surface, she kept going until her fingers touched something smooth. It was a rectangular package the length of her forearm, wrapped tightly in thick brown paper. She sank her nails into the end and tore it open. There was plastic under the paper. And white powder under the plastic.

“No,” she repeated, as if saying it enough times would make what she was seeing untrue. He had lied to her all his life. Why couldn’t he have lied about this, too? The trouble he’d gotten into as a kid, the vandalism, the joyriding, the petty theft, all that she’d been able to smooth over for him. But
this?
What could she do this time? With a sob, she wrestled the crate into her arms.

“Emma,” Simon said, hurrying to her side. “What are you doing?”

Clenching her jaw, she carried the crate to the end of the dock.

“Oh, my God, no!” he cried, catching up to her just before she could heave the box into the lake. “No, don’t destroy it. They'll kill me. Emma, please!”

She hadn’t known she could feel such rage. It rose like a red mist in her brain. “Drugs! After our mother killed herself with drugs. After I ruined what was left of my reputation to give you another chance. After I moved here for some peace, you bring this to my very door!”

“Help me, Emma. Please. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to get out of this. Can’t you see that I have to do what they say?” He struggled to pull the crate out of her grasp. “Please, Emma. I'm in too deep to stop now.”

“You have to stop. You have to turn yourself in.”

“Go the police? Trust them? If the mob doesn’t kill me, prison will. Don’t you remember what happened to our father? He was a broken man by the time he got out. He couldn’t survive. Don’t do the same thing to me.”

At the painful memories his words evoked, her arms went slack. She released her grip on the crate.

Simon carried it away and stored it with the rest, then closed the tailgate and got in the driver’s seat, slamming the door shut.

The noise made her whip around. She strode forward and clutched the driver’s door at the open window. “No more, Simon. it stops now. You tell them that.”

He inhaled shakily. Tears glistened in his eyes. “I'm so scared, Emma. And ashamed. Please, can you ever forgive me?”

She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Emotions had thickened her throat.

“Emma. Please.” He wiped his eyes with the backs of his knuckles, the same way he used to as a child. “I'm begging you. Don’t send me to prison. I couldn’t survive it. We're all that’s left of the family, don’t turn in your own brother.”

What else could she do? Oh, Lord, what could she do?

This was her brother, the child she had coddled and sheltered. The people who owned those drugs would kill him if he didn’t deliver. They would probably kill him if he sought help from the police. Or if they didn’t, then prison would finish the job, just as it had with their father. She had to decide, to choose between her brother and the law.

The law. Since when had she felt any obligation to the law? But how could she make him stop this unthinkable thing he was doing without betraying him?

Simon’s chin trembled. “I owe them a lot of money, Emma.”

“And I've got a lot of money. I'll bail you out. As always. I'll pay your debt to get you out of this, but it stops now. You tell them to find someone else, because you're not doing this again, for any reason.”

“But how—”

“It stops now,” she repeated. “Call me after you tell them. I'll arrange to get them the money.”

He reached through the open window and squeezed her hand. “I love you, sis.”

Right now, she couldn’t bear the thought of him touching her. She raised her palms and backed away. “Get off my property. Just get out of my sight before I change my mind.”

Simon knew he had pushed her beyond her limit. He didn’t say another word. He started his engine and drove over the hill.

She watched him disappear along with his obscene cargo, then stood with her fists clenched in frustration for long, agonizing minutes while she wished she could have thrown every one of those crates into the lake. She would pay Simon’s debt, and get him out of this situation. But then she would make sure the police knew exactly where to find and destroy those drugs. Not for the sake of the law, but for the sake of the victims.

Numbly, she turned to walk back to her plane. Kneeling on the edge of the dock, she stretched out to touch the scraped pontoon. It was scarred, now. Tainted. It would never be the same. This lake and this cabin would never be the same, either. And she had thought she had achieved a measure of peace.

It was her fault. She was the one who had formed Simon into the man he was. Where had she gone wrong? What could she have done differently? Was she wrong to have let Simon go? Should she have made him face up to what he had done and take the consequences? Was her coddling responsible for the way he had turned out?

Water lapped against the dock. A gull screeched overhead and a squirrel launched into a raucous, chattering scold. The familiar noises seemed cruelly magnified, scraping across her raw nerves. She pulled her hand back from the plane and drew her knees to her chest, feeling the urge to scream.

“Emma?” The voice was soft and deep, moving over her like a gentle caress.