Page 36 of Secret (Chicago Underground 6)
“Yes, all right. I’m working on it. See, I’m not denying there’s a possibility for me and Luke. We could be together. Stranger things have happened.” I grinned. “Though I can’t think of any at the moment.”
“Not strange,” Allie said. “You’re not Shelly’s past and Luke’s job. You’re just a man and a woman in love. Love is the great equalizer.”
I was quiet for a moment. “That was deep. Oprah?”
She shrugged. “Saw it stitched on a throw pillow.”
Allie left the room, and a few minutes later, a waif dressed in black lurked outside the door. Finally, Claire slunk inside. She looked nice in jeans and a loose sweater. Her hair had been cut so it didn’t fall into her eyes, though she tried to reproduce the effect by hanging her head. I admitted to myself that Allie had been a better caretaker for her even if I hadn’t wanted to involve her. Claire wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“Do I look that bad?”
“No,” she said quickly. “You look great. Really good. I mean, I’m so glad that you look so good and—”
“You mad at me?”
“No, not at all.”
“You’re doing it again.”
She fidgeted with the hem of her sweater sleeve. “I made a little mistake. But the thing is, I couldn’t have known it would lead to all that.”
“Spill.”
She told me that she had kept the gemstones I had given her in a stash with her other things. Except she winced a little when she used the possessive term. Stolen things, she meant.
“I took a pen. I just wanted to, you know, write with it or something. I had no idea it was a special pen or that it cost so much. Who pays a thousand dollars for a pen? So then he comes into my room and is looking all around, and I’m pretending not to know what he’s talking about. And then he finds the whole stash, and he starts going through it and saying everything is his. Which it kind of was. But I told him the rocks were mine and that I was keeping them. Then he says he remembers them being part of some little statue thing in the library, and we had a fight.”
“Lord,” I said.
“Right? Anyway, he takes them, and apparently there are serial numbers on the diamonds. Can you believe it? He says he’ll prove that they were purchased by him through a broker or whatever, and I’m like fine, because I know they’re yours and even if you stole them, you didn’t steal them from him.”
“Appreciate the vote of confidence.”
“So it turns out the diamonds were sold twenty years ago to some guy who Philip knows and hates. So then he thinks I was sent there to spy on him, like the stones were a payoff. He was mad.”
Mad was an understatement. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
“No, but he called Colin to come get me. And he wouldn’t give the stones back to me.”
“Probably for the best. Everyone knows diamonds are blood money anyway.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You mean you’re not going to get them back?”
“We’ll consider it payment for room and board and security. I know you were very concerned about inconveniencing him.”
She looked mutinous, but she’d get over it. Eventually. “The important thing now is to get back your old life. Get back to living.”
Her forehead creased. “I know it was scary, what with the threat of death and all that. But in some ways, it was easier like that. Just in limbo, no one expecting things from me. I’m not sure how to go back.”
“I know, sweetheart.” But we’d both have to figure it out.
Chapter Sixteen
Luke found me in my hospital room and didn’t leave my side. When they discharged me, he took me straight to the cabin in the country. He seemed to know that I could breathe there, heal there. But I was restless too.
Allie had come to see me here. Even Jenny had been to the cabin for a short visit, which was awkward. Major had brought her. They had escaped from the men who’d held them, and not knowing where to look for me, had holed up in the woods until the cops arrived. Rico had slunk away that night, not wanting to be questioned by the cops—apparently he hadn’t exactly left the gang.
But there was one unanswered question that refused to let me rest. I asked Luke to drive me back into town. It was time to understand what had happened, time to pick up all the pieces so I could finally let them go.
