Harlequin Intrigue April 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 Carol Ericson (short books to read TXT) 📖

A quick glance at the apartment numbers on the side of the building told him her place occupied the worst possible spot for safety—in the back, near the carport. As he strode toward the rear of the complex, he cocked his head at the sound of jingling keys. As he rounded the corner to her front door, his leg brushed the spiky fronds of a sago palm. After he moved past it, the frond snapped back into place.

The slight noise was enough. Kyra jerked her head to the side, her hand reaching for her gun pouch, her eyes widening at the sight of him, registering recognition and then suspicion.

Jake stopped several feet from her, planting his wing tips on the cement walkway. “Hello, Mimi.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Kyra dropped her key chain. Despite her weak knees, she did a quick dip to retrieve it. Her brain whirred for several seconds as she gathered herself. She knew it was pointless to deny it, but years of self-preservation kicked in.

She faced him, one side of her mouth quirking into a smile. “You’ve got the wrong person. I’m Kyra, not Mimi.”

“You’re Kyra Chase now...” He squared his shoulders as if ready to do battle. “Twenty years ago, you were Marilyn Monroe Lake, a frightened eight-year-old girl who’d just lost her mother to a killer.”

“So sad for Marilyn Monroe Lake.” Turning her back on him, she shoved her key into the dead bolt and clicked it. What else had he discovered about her? Quinn had been right about J-Mac. She shouldn’t have tried to play him.

As she thrust open the door, she felt Jake’s presence over her shoulder. And now she couldn’t get rid of him.

“Are you going to invite me in to discuss this? Discuss why you lied to me?” He placed his hand flat against the door, holding it wide.

“Do I have a choice?” She floated inside her apartment, dropped the keys into a basket on the low wall that separated her small dining area from the entrance hall and placed her purse next to the basket. “You can close and dead bolt the door behind you.”

The door was shut, and the gentleness of it caused her more dread than if he’d slammed it. Would he kick her off the task force? She couldn’t allow that to happen. She’d use every favor, every tool in her arsenal, to keep her place on the task force.

She spun around, her fists clenching at her sides. “Why are you snooping into my background? Do you do that for every task force member or just the ones you don’t want to work with?”

He clasped a hand on the back of his neck, and for the first time she noticed the weariness in his handsome face, the lines on the sides of his mouth etched deep, the hazel eyes, dark and unfathomable. “Is that what you think? Have I really shown you that I don’t want you on the task force? Don’t want to work with you? I invited you to survey the video footage with me today. I drove you to the murder scene last night.”

She blinked her eyes. And she might’ve just messed up. She should’ve listened to Quinn. When had he ever steered her wrong?

“Besides,” he sighed, and sank onto her couch, grabbing a throw pillow and dragging it into his lap, “I didn’t discover you were Marilyn Lake by looking in your background, although I tried. Your name and ID change are pretty thorough. There is nothing online that links you to that little girl.”

“I hired the best to clean my background.” She perched on the arm of the chair across from him. “Then how’d you find out and why were you digging into my past?”

“You raised my suspicions. You couldn’t have worked with Quinn on any of his cases. He retired before you would’ve been old enough to work.”

“Oh, yeah.” She chewed on her bottom lip. She should’ve had a better story prepared, but she didn’t know Jake was going to drop in on Quinn the same night she was bringing him dinner. “That was it? I told you I knew Charlotte, had been her resource for one of her books.”

“That wasn’t all.” He tossed aside the handmade pillow she’d gotten in Guatemala with no apparent regard for the effort required to bring that pillow home. “Today, when I walked you to your car and you stumbled, I watched you from the station as you got out of your car and retrieved something from the gutter.”

Kyra felt the blood drain from her face, and she pressed her fingers against her cool cheek. There really was no fooling this man. Of course, she’d planned to tell him about the second card, but she’d had no intention of telling him she’d found it beside her car and had hidden it from him.

“That’s what convinced you to look into my past?”

He nodded, his face tight and wary.

For the first time in a long time she felt the burn of regret for her deception, and it wasn’t just because she’d been found out. She had the feeling that Jake had endured lies from others, and now she’d become like everyone else in his life.

She didn’t want to be like everyone else for him.

Sliding down the arm of the chair to settle onto the cushion, she asked, “You said you didn’t find out who I was by looking into my background.”

“That’s right.” He braced one foot against the edge of the coffee table. “I discovered your identity by looking at The Player case file.”

Tilting her head, she wrapped her ponytail around her hand. “There are no pictures of me as a child in that file and no indication that I changed my name. Quinn assured me of that.”

“That’s true, but there is a story about a hardened detective and his wife who were so overcome with pity for a motherless girl that they sought to adopt her and keep her out of the