True Vision (7 page)

“I should have told you, instead of trying to shield you from the worry,” her father said. “I just never thought you’d . . .” Shaking his head, he opened the center drawer of the desk to withdraw a roll of Rolaids. He popped two antacids into his mouth, and the crunch of them between his teeth vibrated inside Charlie’s head.

How many jobs? How many
people
were screwed? “I’m sorry,” she whispered. So inadequate, so lame. So stupid. Why hadn’t this occurred to her? “I’m so sorry.”

“Everything’s gone,” he said, still chewing. “The pension fund, everyone’s retirement funds. Everything. I thought I could put it all back before anyone missed it. Ironic, isn’t it? You’re so much like me. Idealistic to the point of being foolish.”

Her head started to spin. “There’s nothing left? For anyone? Not even their own money?”

“We probably won’t be able to make Friday’s payroll.”

She sat forward, refusing to let this happen. She’d fix it, take away his reason to drink during the day. “Fire me. Make it public. I’ll apologize to Dick’s, in front of the whole town. I’ll take the story back, say I made it up. You can say I had a psychotic break or something. Whatever it takes.”

His eyes met hers, cool and dark and sad. “You didn’t make it up.”

“But isn’t the livelihood of everyone who works at the
LAG
more important than a few screwed customers at Dick’s? Those people should really be carefully reading what they’re signing. They’re idiots.”

A bitter smile curved his lips. “The good of the many outweighs the good of the few?”

“Yes,” she said emphatically. “Yes.”

“Now you’re thinking like me, and that’s what got us right where we are.”

“Dad, come on. Don’t give up.”

He pushed up out of the chair and turned to stare outside as the wind blew through the palms and jacaranda trees. “It’s over, Charlie. We have to live with it.”

“Lew is sick. He needs health insurance.”

He nodded without turning. “I already let him know he isn’t fired. But this time next week, none of us will have health insurance.”

“Dad—”

“You can go,” he cut in softly. “Try not to provoke your mother on the way out.”

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

C
harlie gripped the steering wheel with white-knuckled hands and fought the tears thickening her throat. Don’t cry,
act
. Somehow, she had to fix the mess she’d made before her parents lost everything. And they weren’t the only ones. Everyone at the
LAG
—friends, co-workers, people she’d known her entire life, people she loved—their lives were about to be turned upside down,
ruined
, because of her.

She couldn’t sit back and let it all fall apart. She just couldn’t.

Ten minutes later, she pulled into the parking lot of Dick’s Auto Sales.

Harsh, high-noon sunlight glinted on the chrome and shiny surfaces of new cars and trucks artfully parked in the glass-enclosed showroom. The smell of new rubber and window cleaner hung heavy in the air, and a Muzak version of “Stairway to Heaven” played through tinny speakers while salesmen loitered around the showroom’s perimeter. No customers meant they had nothing to do.

At the information desk, Lucy Sheridan, a middle-aged woman with curly black hair and a deep tan so even it couldn’t have been fake, tapped away on a keyboard. She looked up as Charlie approached, and her face registered her shock.

“I’m here to see Dick,” Charlie said with a friendly smile. Just pretend we don’t know each other.

Lucy pasted on an answering smile and reached for the phone near her hand. “Shall I tell him who’s calling?”

“Charlie Trudeau.”

Lucy’s finger trembled as she pushed the phone’s buttons, and her gaze stayed down the entire time she spoke into it.

A moment later, Dick Wallace strolled out of his office. He was a big man, bordering on fat but still able to suck his gut in enough that it didn’t hang over the waistband of his crisp, new Levi’s. He had thick, silvery hair combed back from his face and a wide, let’s-make-a-deal grin that could charm or intimidate, depending on his sales pitch.

He looked Charlie up and down, his shrewd, blue eyes cold above a feral, I’m-going-to-enjoy-kicking-your-ass grin. “Charlie Trudeau. You have a lot of nerve showing your face here.”

She straightened her spine, not about to back down, not with so many livelihoods at stake. “Dragging everyone else into our problem isn’t the way to resolve this.”

“Gee, I’m real sorry about that, but you told your story, then I told mine to my many loyal Lake Avalon business friends. Guess we all just have to live with the consequences.”

“The
LAG
is the main advertising outlet here. You can’t reach the majority of the public without it.”

“You mean the public that’s suing my ass for fraud? Or the public that’s canceling deals that were all but signed and sealed? The public that hasn’t stepped foot in my business all day?”

Charlie swallowed. “We can work something out. I’ll do another story. You can apologize and promise not to jerk people around anymore.”

He laughed heartily. “Oh, that’s rich.”

Desperation tightened the band of anxiety around her chest. “I’ll take the story back. Say I made it up.”

“The damage is already done. The lawsuits are piling up.”

“Then what’s it going to take?”

“I want to know who ratted me out.”

Oh, crap. Not that. “I don’t reveal my sources.”

“I know it was someone who works for me. Customers don’t know the details that you shared. Who was it?”

“I don’t—”

He moved like lightning and grabbed her by the throat—

I rip the newspaper in half and heave the pieces across the desk at the moron standing there. He flinches back but makes no effort to catch the paper with its damning story. “How did this happen?” I shout at him. “How did you
let
this happen?” Whirling away, I bellow my rage. “I’m going to kill that bitch!”

She came back to herself plastered against a glass wall, the back of her head throbbing. Dick was in her face, spittle flying through thin lips. “. . . with me, Charlie Trudeau. I want to know who ratted me out or I’m going to snap your neck right here and now.”

A softly spoken “Excuse me” had the brute backing off so fast Charlie’s knees almost buckled at the sudden lack of support. Putting a hand to her already abused throat, she stared in shock at Noah Lassiter looming in the doorway.

Dick’s face flushed redder. “Who the hell are you?”

Noah gave him a polite smile. “If that’s how you speak to potential customers, I’ll shop somewhere else.” He shifted his steady gaze to Charlie. “Perhaps you’d like to join me?”

She slipped out from between Dick and the wall and preceded Noah outside, her legs far more unsteady than she ever would have admitted.

At her Escape, Noah looked down at her with a mixture of concern and censure. “Want to tell me what that was about?”

She massaged her aching throat. Bad guy was trying to kill me—Hello? “You tell me first how you happened to be here when—” She broke off, startled by what she’d almost said.

“When you needed me?” he asked, his eyes teasing and, oddly, a little bit searching.

The fine hair on her arms stood on end, the leftover electricity of watching her life flash before her eyes for the second time in two days. Or maybe it was the memory of the inside of Dick Wallace’s head when he’d vowed to kill “that bitch,” more than likely her. The energy in the air had nothing to do with Noah Lassiter. Right?

“I had it under control,” she said.

“I could tell.”

Squinting her eyes against sunlight that seemed brighter than before, she opened her car door and got in. A steady throb began in her temples. “Well, thanks. I appreciate the help.”

His lips quirked as he angled his body between the door and the frame to keep her from closing it. “What’s the story? Why’d he want to snap your neck?”

She shrugged. “All in a day’s work.”

“He’s the guy you wrote about in the paper today. You come back to rub some salt in his wounds?”

Temper flashed. “
His
wounds? He screwed over a lot of people.”

“So you know he’s pissed and you come over here to harass him some more? Maybe I shouldn’t have interrupted. Maybe you’re one of those annoying dog-with-a-bone reporters. You get slammed up against the wall often by the people you write about?”

“Writing the truth about a crook is hardly harassment.” She was so
sick
of journalists being considered the bad guy for doing their jobs. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind . . .” She pulled the door so that it bumped against his arm.

He stepped back and raised his hands.

She slammed the door and started the truck, but before she could back out, the passenger door opened and Noah Lassiter and all his muscles plopped into the seat next to her. “You probably should have locked that,” he said with a grin.

She jammed the truck back into park. “What are you doing?”

“I wasn’t done talking to you.”

“I wasn’t harassing that guy. He’s a dick.”

His green eyes twinkled as he glanced at the sign above the entrance. “Yep, that’s his name.”

“I meant the other kind.”

He tilted his head, amused. “I know. I’m just wondering why you were trying to bargain with someone who’s such a dick.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Try me.”

“I’d rather go home.”

“So a guy pins you to the wall by the throat and you just give up?”

“Are you making fun of me?”

“A little.”

“Well, stop.”

“It just kind of makes me laugh when little people like you try to take on guys like Dick.”

“
Little
people?” She couldn’t help but bristle. Apparently, the guy had a big-city attitude.

“I meant in stature. Would you prefer ‘small’?” He looked her over, an appreciative glint in his eye. “You’re too well-proportioned to be called skinny.”

Her face started to burn. She should have been irked at the once-over, but she was more irked at the pleasure that arced through her that he’d noticed. God, she was an idiot. “Whatever.”

“He has to have at least a hundred pounds on you.”

“I had my knee well-positioned.”

“I had my eye on your knee, and it looked shaky to me.”

He had that right, which just made her all the more surly. “What’s your point? I have somewhere to be.”

“My point is that if I hadn’t happened by, you’d probably be on the floor of that guy’s office puking your guts up.”

“I already said I appreciate what you did. Thank you, again. Now please get out.”

He grinned. “My charm appears to be failing me.”

She snorted. “Charm. Right.”

He settled back in the seat and propped his elbow on the console between the seats. “So where to now?”

She shot a glance at him out of the corner of her eye. “Excuse me?”

“You obviously need a guardian angel, and I happen to be free. So let’s go. I’m game for anything. How about the beach? I haven’t been there yet. Perhaps you could give me a tour.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay, you decide. Like I said, I’m free.”

“Don’t you have a car here?”

“I’ll pick it up later.”

She studied him for a long moment. What the hell did he want from her?

He arched an inquisitive brow. “So what’d your mom have to say when you asked her about her sister?”

Ah. Rolling her eyes, she put the truck in drive. Maybe she could drop him in the middle of nowhere. “How do you know I asked her already?”

“You don’t strike me as the kind to sit on vital information. You want answers and you want them now. Am I right?”

She shrugged as she pulled into traffic on Lake Avalon’s main thoroughfare. “Maybe.”

“So what’d she say?”

She almost told him her mother tried to slap the crap out of her and had a mini-meltdown in her head before her father intervened. But that would probably make him all the more determined to dissect her screwed-up family. “She denied it.”

“Hmm. What do you suppose she’s hiding?”

“Maybe she’s not hiding anything. Maybe she simply doesn’t have a sister.” Rena could be anybody, really. A cat.

“Are you calling my friend,
your cousin
, a liar?”

“Maybe
your friend
was misinformed.”

“She looked a lot like you.”

“Brown hair and brown eyes are so exotic.”

“You’re not a very good liar.”

She glanced at him. “What?”

“You narrow your eyes when you lie.”

“The sun is bright, and I’ve got a headache.” One that was growing by the second.

“Doesn’t change your tell. When you lie, your eyes get squinty. It’s a trend.”

“And you’re an expert at spotting liars.”

“Want to see my badge?”

“Why would I lie about that?”

“That’s easy. To protect your mother, of course. It’s what we do as humans when someone we love is threatened.”

Charlie braked for a stoplight and closed her eyes. Pain squeezed at her temples, flashing light across her vision every few moments. Nausea began to churn through her stomach. She’d never had a migraine, but she recognized the classic symptoms. Perfect.

Beside her, Noah slapped a palm onto his knee. “You know what I’d like to do? Meet the parents.”

Charlie swerved to the side of the road and stopped.

Noah looked around in surprise. “Hey, you don’t have to kick me out.”

She ignored him as she opened her car door, stumbled a few yards away from the car and threw up at the base of a palm tree. Bracing a hand on the trunk for balance, she swallowed several times while her eyes watered and her pounding head spun. Her knees shook, and she prayed they wouldn’t buckle.