The sensation of her embrace created a steadfast ember of warmth in my heart. I’ve fought on my own for a long time, even struggling to let Colton in completely. But with Maisy, it feels like the world has opened up from the blinders I’ve had on.
Once we got back to the warehouse, I kissed her, then went down to work in the garage. She watched, perched on the steps until it got late. We ordered pizza that I went to pick up and stayed awake until the early hours of the morning talking. I told her more about what it was like growing up in foster care, about my favorite cove in Thorne Point, and the story of how I managed to track down my dad’s Harley and bought it back. My heart ached when she described what it was like after I had to leave town, then told me the story of when she met her redheaded friend, and how much her road trip plans meant to her.
At some point we finally passed out in the middle of the conversation, trying too hard to soak in each other and make up for all the lost years.
This morning I woke up with her tucked against my side, her face smashed into my shoulder and I spent several minutes gazing at her, lightly brushing her tangled hair aside. After getting up, I heard her rustling in the sheets and she joined me in the workout corner, running through yoga poses and stretching her lithe body while I went through my own routine. I thought I’d hate having someone else in my space, but with her it just fits as if we’ve always been like this. When we were done, she showered and I ended up on the couch with my laptop.
Instead of taking the coffee, I pull her down into my lap on the couch and get distracted for a moment, kissing the side of her neck as my palm skates over the strip of her stomach exposed by her tight crop top. I can’t decide if I like this version or one of her loose flowing ones better, but I’ll never get tired of having easy access to her tits. She arches when I push beneath her shirt to tease a nipple.
“Mm, focus, or we won’t get anything done today,” she says in a husky tone.
“Can’t help it,” I rasp against her neck. “I resisted everything for so long, but it’s like putting a starving man in front of a buffet.”
Her lips meet mine in a lazy kiss that has my arms banding around her waist. “Come on.” She speaks against my mouth. “Lay it all out.”
“I want to lay you out.”
Her shoulders shake with her laugh. “Later.”
“Fine.”
Releasing a calming breath to encourage my erection to go down, I adjust her so she’s not teasing me with every tiny move, settling a hand on her hip. She grabs the coffees and offers me one while I gesture to the laptop.
“I always knew that the accident was faked,” I start. “I was with my dad when he checked the car, it was only a day or two before. They weren’t supposed to go out that night, but they’d been arguing about something. I tried to listen, but they dropped it when they saw me trying to sneak down the steps. It wasn’t until I started to dig into everything to connect the pieces that things didn’t line up and I started to get suspicious of the circumstances surrounding their deaths.”
“Why do you think they had those samples hidden at your house? Is that what they were arguing about?”
“I don’t know. The best guess I have is they were trying to protect their patent. My working theory is Jacqueline must have gotten there first and the company rewarded her for it by appointing her CEO. It’s quite the promotion.”
She nods with a troubled look. “We went out to dinner to celebrate her promotion that same night. It wasn’t announced publicly, but she already knew.”
That’s news to me. I nod slowly, swallowing. She puts down her coffee cup and laces her fingers with mine.
“When I started looking into Nexus Lab to find answers connecting back to my parents, I found something weird that gave me the first clue something wasn’t right. The previous CEO just disappeared off the face of the earth. Officially he took early retirement about twenty years too early—he was in line for Forbes 40 under 40. It’s like someone got rid of him in order for Jacqueline to take the position, jumping straight from R&D to the top. It was the same when I looked into your dad with a miraculous promotion. I’ve been trying to follow the money to trace it back to what happened and how my parents ended up dead because of it.”
Maisy listens attentively, asking questions for clarity as I take her through what I’ve gathered. I let her in on what I was doing at the restaurant the other night before school ended, bribing a waiter to give me a stolen employee ID badge, which led to finding the remote shipping facility Nexus Lab uses when I accessed the employee's schedule. I show her photos Colton enhanced for me that I took discreetly at the warehouse. I’m only slightly surprised when she doesn’t shy away from the facts I’ve found that paint her parents in the worst light.
“Someone else was supposed to become the chief,” I explain. “He was in the process of taking the position when suddenly your dad was sworn in. Your dad’s been known to take bribes and has maintained a corrupt office as chief. He was who showed up at that meeting we staked out. I think it’s because he already knew how to play dirty that someone put him in that position of power.”
She sits up. “I know. I brought stuff that might help fill in the blanks. I copied the computer at the house before I skipped out. And the police report from the accident, although some of it is redacted.”
My brows jump up. Colt assured me he’d wiped most of the important things from the system so that I could dig before someone covered their tracks more than they had. “How did you get that?”
“My friend Connor. He knew about some of Dad’s corrupt ways and used that knowledge to squeeze it out of him to get information on you, or he was going to expose Dad as a bribable cop.”
I’m starting to get why Colt has taken such a liking to Connor Bishop. The two of them are practically cut from the same cloth.
“So Richard really gave it up?”
“I guess. I don’t think Dad thought anyone would look too closely at a closed case accident report, or maybe he thought it would be more suspect to withhold it like he was trying to hide something. My dad’s signature is all over it, though, even on the night of the accident when he had an alibi because we were out to dinner.”
“That’s the problem I have. I can’t prove their involvement without proof of payment or something more concrete. The alibis put them in the clear.”
“As smart as the alibis are, there are still holes. It didn’t make sense why pages were missing. Why hide things when it’s supposed to be an accident? It’s what first made me suspect his involvement in covering it up because it was closed so fast.” Her brow creases and she looks at the laptop. “But this explains why Mom was always so uptight and a total bitch to me. She didn’t want to risk anything casting doubt on her if it threatened her power. They’ve both changed, but she’s so different from when I was little.”
Frowning, I pull her closer, tucking her hair behind her ear and brushing my fingers down her cheek. I used to resent her for growing up with her parents and her brother, but I can’t imagine how much Jacqueline and Richard’s greed has poisoned their relationship with Holden and Maisy. I don’t see the woman who was sweet to me when I was a kid anywhere in the soulless woman she is now.
“Do you think my parents actually killed them, or were they the ones who covered it up?”