Replica

  “Make no mistake: my men will find her. And she will talk to me, with the greatest of candor. I want you to think very, very carefully about what you’ve told me this afternoon, Miss Lake, and be assured that if I talk to her and her story of last night’s events doesn’t exactly match yours, you will pay a heavy price. With that in mind, is there anything you’d like to add? Or amend?”

  If Mosely got his hands on Angel, she’d end up telling him about her connection to Bishop, whatever it was, and Mosely would know Nadia had lied to him during this interview. By keeping this secret, Nadia was risking her entire family’s future. Gerri could go to prison over this, and Corinne and Rory … Everything she had done so far, she’d done to protect those she cared about most, and now she was risking it all. Her sane and sensible side told her to blurt out the truth now, before it was too late.

  “Well, Miss Lake?” Mosely prompted.

  Coming clean with Mosely was the sensible thing to do. It would mean giving up forever the idea of marrying Nate. But it wasn’t fear of losing her advantageous marriage that kept Nadia silent. It was the boiling cauldron of indignation inside her.

  What Mosely was doing was wrong, on so many levels. He was abusing his authority, using blackmail, threats, and even torture to hunt down an innocent man while refusing to even consider the possibility that someone else was behind Nate’s murder. He might say he was doing it all for the good of Paxco, that he was just doing his job, but Nadia would never, ever accept that. Mosely enjoyed the power he wielded, the fear he inspired. There was no way she could see the avaricious gleam in his eyes every time he talked to her without knowing deep in her heart that he was a bully who loved his work. And after everything he’d already bullied her into doing, she was through with letting him win. She was just going to have to hope that Angel was as good as Bishop at staying hidden.

  “That’s all I can think of,” she told him, and even the artificial bravery of the alcohol couldn’t keep her from sounding as scared as she felt. “I hope you’ll keep in mind that everything I’m telling you comes to me secondhand. It’s possible Nate is keeping things from me.”

  “You’d better hope he isn’t, then. Because if I find out anything you’ve told me is untrue, it’s going to be you I hold responsible, not him.” He pulled an envelope out of his pocket and tossed it at Nadia. “There’s another tracker in there. If you’re telling me the truth, then it’s possible you’re right and Nathaniel won’t venture into the Basement again. But if he does, I want to know about it.”

  Nadia was forced to unclench her hands to pick up the envelope. Her palms were wet and clammy. “With the locket gone, I don’t know where I can put a tracker. I doubt he takes his wallet when he goes to the Basement.”

  Mosely smirked at her. “I guess you’ll just have to be creative.”

  He rose to his feet, and if Nadia were being her usual polite self, she would have risen, too, to see him to the door. No matter how much she loathed and despised him. But she honestly wasn’t sure her knees would hold her, and she didn’t want him to see her shaking. So she merely sat on the couch and stared at the envelope containing the new tracker as Mosely saw himself out.

  * * *

  It wasn’t until after Mosely was gone that Nadia lost the battle against the alcohol she’d imbibed in hopes of fooling him. The booze, the lack of solid food, and her terror whenever she allowed herself to think about what she was risking was enough to send her racing to the bathroom.

  Afterward, she took her second shower of the day, not because she needed it, but because she craved the comfort of the hot water. She shivered even in the heat and raised her face to the spray, wishing the water could wash away the obedient, dutiful child inside her who kept panicking over her decision to lie to Mosely. Her parents—even her father, who was less rigid than her mother—would disown her if they ever found out what she’d done. Even if no harm ever came to her family, she had broken the one cardinal rule she’d always been raised to honor: put your family’s needs above all else.

  Nadia was surprised to discover that after the gut-twisting panic had run its course, she felt better. The chill faded little by little, and by the time she exited the shower, she felt more like herself again. She had made the decision to lie because her heart told her it was the right thing to do. She’d protected her family as best she could while staying true to the promise she’d made to Nate, as well as the promise she’d made to herself to see Mosely destroyed someday.

  Nothing he’d said today was particularly damning, but at least she’d recorded him making vague, ominous threats. Maybe next time she was forced to talk to him, she would try to steer the conversation a bit more in hopes he would say too much—despite her promise to Gerri that she would do no such thing.

  Having thoroughly emptied her stomach out, Nadia called to the kitchen requesting some chicken soup and crackers for an afternoon snack. Mrs. Reeves herself delivered the tray, giving Nadia a look of grandmotherly concern.

  “Are you feeling sick, miss?” she asked as she set the tray on an end table beside Nadia’s reading chair.

  Nadia wondered if Mrs. Reeves was asking because of her pale face and shadowed eyes, or whether it was just the chicken soup and crackers. “My stomach is a little upset,” she admitted, though she felt fine now, and the smell of the broth made her hungry.

  “Well, this will be just the thing for you, now won’t it?” Mrs. Reeves said, and she unrolled the napkin to show that it contained nothing but silverware. “I tried to get to the bottom of what happened with your tray this morning. I put it together myself, and the girl who delivered it to you, Missy Hampton, swears up and down that she didn’t put anything in your napkin. I’m afraid I was a little sharp with her when I was asking questions.”

  Nadia imagined that being on the receiving end of a rant from Mrs. Reeves was an unpleasant experience, but after what she herself had been through with Mosely, she could scrape up only minimal sympathy. Especially as Hampton now seemed the most likely person to have delivered the note.

  “She won’t admit putting the note in your napkin, and she says she had no idea it was there. But when I pressed her, she admitted she had a little mishap on her way to your room. She tripped on the edge of the carpet in the hall and dropped the vase I’d put on your tray.”

  Nadia tried to picture the tray in her mind, and, sure enough, she couldn’t remember there being a vase on it. Mrs. Reeves never sent a tray out of the kitchen without a flower on it.

  “She put down the tray to pick up the broken pieces and left it unattended while she threw the glass away. She says when she came back, she saw someone nip out the other end of the hall in a hurry. She only saw the back of his head, but she thought it might be your father’s new assistant.” Mrs. Reeves’s frown said she didn’t quite buy the story, that she thought the maid was trying to cover for her own guilt.

  “My father’s assistant?” Nadia asked. “You mean Dante?”

  “That’s the one,” Mrs. Reeves confirmed. “Hampton says she didn’t think anything of it at the time, but he might have had enough time to tamper with your tray.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Reeves,” Nadia said as she turned over this new information in her head. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  Mrs. Reeves looked doubtful. “I don’t know about that. I’d want to hear what your father’s assistant has to say about it, but it wouldn’t be my place to question him.”

  Nadia smiled and patted Mrs. Reeves’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about him, Mrs. Reeves. I’ll ask him about it myself.”

  “And you’ll let me know if Hampton was telling me the truth? If she lied to me, then she doesn’t belong in this household.”

  Nadia didn’t want anyone to get fired over this, especially not some hapless maid who probably thought it was some harmless gossip. But if Missy Hampton concocted a cover story blaming someone else for what she’d done, then she deserved to be fired.

  “I’ll let you know,” Nadia prom
ised.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Nadia didn’t know what to make of Mrs. Reeves’s revelation. Maybe Hampton was making the whole encounter with Dante up, just to have someone else to point the finger at. Or maybe everything had happened exactly the way Hampton said, but it hadn’t been Dante she’d seen. Even if it was Dante, that could easily be coincidence. After all, there were plenty of legitimate reasons he might be in the hallway of their apartment. And of course, he could have been sneaking around on some errand of Mosely’s.

  Logistically, it was fairly easy to imagine Dante having had access to her tray, without anything in his actions seeming particularly daring or out of place. What didn’t make sense was for him to be conveying messages to her from Bishop, of all people. If he were truly working for Dirk Mosely, then he was the enemy—no matter how friendly he seemed—and there was no way he had any contact with Bishop. Of course, it was possible, maybe even likely, that Bishop had used an intermediary of some kind. Maybe Dante had no idea he was delivering a message from the man who’d supposedly murdered the Chairman Heir.

  The only way she’d find out would be to question Dante, but the idea frightened her. If she let on that she’d had contact with Bishop, and if Dante relayed that message to Mosely …

  The old, painfully cautious Nadia would have measured the risks against the potential rewards and decided not to pursue this. But Nate had put his life on the line trying to find Bishop, and, thanks to the note, Nadia might now be able to help him, or at least point him in the right direction.

  At two o’clock, she headed down to the schoolroom for her classes, praying that Jewel and Blair would be absent. Surely they wouldn’t show up three days in a row. She let out a breath of relief when there was no sign of either one of them. Chloe was still keeping her distance as well, and Nadia suspected her former friend would soon formally withdraw from the class. Nadia wasn’t sure if it was because of the lingering taint on her reputation, or because Chloe knew their friendship could never recover from the awkwardness.

  Whatever the reason, Nadia was Mr. Guthrie’s sole pupil—unless you counted Dante, who was openly listening now that Jewel wasn’t around to harass him about it.

  No matter how much Nadia usually enjoyed Mr. Guthrie’s lectures, this time she could barely focus enough to keep up with him. She found herself constantly watching Dante out of the corner of her eye, searching for any clue to who he really was, what he really wanted. Trying to discern whether he was a danger to her, a possible ally, or just a coincidental bystander. Once or twice, Dante caught her looking, and Nadia hastily glanced away.

  When the class was over, Nadia doubted she could have repeated back a single thing from the lesson. She chatted amiably with Mr. Guthrie as the teacher packed up his things. If she was going to confront Dante about the note, now was by far the best time to do it, so, as Mr. Guthrie made his way out, Nadia drifted over to the refreshments table, where Dante was clearing away the untouched plates of sandwiches and pastries. She fixed herself a nerve-soothing cup of tea as he carried the plates away. Then, when he returned, she pointedly made eye contact.

  The wariness that crept into Dante’s expression the moment she met his eyes put her on alert. True, she didn’t make a habit of initiating conversation, but something about the way he was looking at her made her think he knew exactly why she had stayed behind.

  Dante averted his eyes and reached for the coffee urn.

  “I want to talk to you,” Nadia said, though she was sure he’d already guessed that much.

  Dante hesitated a moment as if in surprise, then shrugged and picked up the urn. “So talk,” he said, turning his back on her and carrying the urn toward the dumbwaiter at the far end of the room.

  Nadia shook her head at him as she followed on his heels. “You’re the world’s worst imitation servant,” she told his back, and was rewarded by a faltering of his footsteps.

  He recovered quickly, resuming his march toward the dumbwaiter. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He wasn’t the world’s greatest spy, either, Nadia decided. Shouldn’t a professional spy be able to lie more convincingly than that? Then again, he didn’t look to be any older than Nate, and he couldn’t have had a lot of on-the-job experience. Perhaps Mosely had set him on her as some sort of a training mission. If so, he’d need a lot more training before he’d be ready for the real thing.

  “Why don’t you make things easier for both of us by dropping the charade?” she suggested. He kept his face averted as he thumped the coffee urn onto the dumbwaiter, but she could see the flush of red creeping up his neck. Whether the flush was embarrassment or anger, she couldn’t tell.

  “Drop what charade?” he asked, turning his back on her again and striding toward the refreshments table.

  He moved fast enough that if she’d tried to turn and follow at the same speed, she’d have spilled her tea. “You know, a real servant wouldn’t turn his back on his employer and walk away when she’s trying to talk to him.”

  He stopped in his tracks, his broad shoulders tight with tension. He risked a look at her, and there was an expression she couldn’t quite interpret in his eyes. Anger, maybe, though she thought it was more complicated than that.

  “You’re not my employer,” he said. “Your father is. And I have a lot of work to do.”

  Nadia had known who Dante’s true employer was since before she’d ever laid eyes on him, and it wasn’t her father. Perhaps she would get him in trouble by revealing she knew the truth about him, but there was too much at stake for her to continue being so cautious. She put the cup of tea down, no longer interested in it.

  “You work for Dirk Mosely,” she countered, unable to keep the distaste out of her voice. He seemed remarkably likable for someone who worked for Mosely, but then maybe he was better at acting than she gave him credit for. “You’re here to spy on me, and I’m tired of pretending I don’t know it.” Not that her pretense had been any more convincing than his had been.

  Nadia could practically see the denial on the tip of Dante’s tongue as he once again met her eyes, this time with a definite hint of belligerence in his expression. But both the belligerence and the denial faded away as his shoulders slumped. Maybe he realized that nothing he said would convince her, or maybe he was as tired of pretending as she was.

  “If you’re so sure you’re right, then what is it you want to talk about?” He sounded weary, almost defeated, and she wondered what Mosely would do if he found out Dante’s cover was blown. A reasonable man would understand that Dante’s cover had been ridiculously thin to start with and wouldn’t blame him for being discovered, but Mosely was not a reasonable man.

  “I’m not going to tell on you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she reassured him.

  He gave her a wry little smile. “You mean you’re not going to call your good friend Dirk and demand I be removed from your home immediately?”

  Okay, maybe that hadn’t been what he’d been worried about. She matched his smile and his dry tone. “Much as I love chatting with him, no, I’m not.”

  Some of the tension eased out of his shoulders, and he came closer to her, no longer looking like he was on the verge of fleeing. The look in his green-flecked eyes softened in sympathy.

  “He hurt you yesterday, didn’t he?” Dante asked.

  Nadia reflexively put her hand to her middle, where Mosely had hit her. The pain had been sudden and shocking, and the ugly threats that had come with it had haunted Nadia’s sleep. “I thought I hid it better than that,” she said, her knees suddenly feeling weak. She headed toward the conference table, grabbing a chair and turning it around to face Dante as she sat down.

  Dispensing with the servant act completely, Dante pulled out another chair for himself and sat. “You’re much better at acting than I am,” he assured her. “It’s just that I know how he operates.”

  “You were very nice to me afterward,” she said. She remembered the kindness in hi
s eyes when he’d found her, still reeling from Mosely’s visit, and she remembered how he’d made her a cup of tea without being asked. “Was that all part of the act? Mosely being the bad cop and you being the good one?”

  Dante raised an eyebrow. “Did I ask you any questions?”

  No, he hadn’t. Hadn’t shown any sign that he was trying to take advantage of the weakened state Mosely had left her in. “Guess you’re as bad at being a spy as you are at being a servant.”

  She regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth, but Dante didn’t take offense. Instead, he smiled, the first full, genuine smile she’d ever seen on him. The smile brought out dimples, which in combination with the freckles over the bridge of his nose might have made him look cute if he weren’t so physically imposing.

  He really was nice to look at. Not as polished and traditionally handsome as Nate, of course, but he was more rough-hewn and rugged. Certainly not the kind of boy an Executive girl should be attracted to, but maybe that in and of itself was part of his appeal.

  “I’m still a beginner,” he said, his eyes dancing with amusement. “Give me a couple years, and I’ll have earned my cloak and dagger.”

  She shook her head at him, realizing that he’d been putting on more of an act than she’d originally thought. Now that he’d decided to stop pretending to be a servant, his whole demeanor had changed. Even his body language was different, loose and completely relaxed. She’d seen hints of this side of him before—most noticeably when she was verbally sparring with Jewel and he was trying not to laugh—but even if he hadn’t quite mastered the demeanor of a servant, he had certainly managed to make himself considerably more stiff and formal.

  She couldn’t ever remember anyone but Nate being this relaxed around her. Certainly not any of the Executive boys she knew, who were all too afraid of offending Nate to let down their guard with her.