We stared at each other for a quiet moment. No words or touching, but the atmosphere hummed with all the questions that hadn’t been answered.
The messenger bag on the floor held proof that my intentions were earnest and very personal. It was time to show her everything I gave her parents, and her reaction would dictate how I would proceed from there.
But I needed some questions answered first. “What are you doing with the information Hal Pinkerton sends you?”
Her breathing quickened, and tension stiffened her posture. “What?”
“You’re using the schematics to attend the underground races. What else are you doing with it?”
She clenched her jaw. “How do you know about that?
“I know a lot of things about Trenchant’s dirty ties. Answer the question, and I’ll tell you.”
Her fists went to her hips. “Obviously I’m not reporting it in the papers or turning it over to the cops. I just like to watch.”
Part of me believed she used to go to watch me. “Why is Trent logging onto the server where Jenna is retrieving the files?”
Her eyes widened in frozen pools of blue, and seeing that loosened my shoulders with tremendous relief. Her shock wasn’t only authentic, it confirmed my suspicions. She was in the dark about Trent’s dealings. At least, with regard to the underground racing network.
I walked the few steps to my messenger bag. Picking it up, I gestured to the chair. “Have a seat.”
She sat, watching me with a cautious expression. I lowered into the chair perpendicular to hers and removed the folder from the bag. It was harsh, but I wouldn’t prepare her. I simply set the packet on her lap and studied her reaction with breathless concentration.
As she read the first page with a dazed stare, I knew Trent hadn’t shared the details of my blackmail with her. Her hand shook through the next page. Several pages later, the blood drained from her face, her chest heaved, and her elbows pressed against her sides.
Fraud, laundering, embezzlement, rape, murder. The papers trembling in her fingers were bloodied with the crimes of her family.
As she flipped through the pages, I felt her pain as if it were my own. I felt her fist clenched against her stomach, the quiver in her chin, the droop of her shoulders. Aching to comfort her, I shifted forward and reached a hand toward her knee.
She flinched. “No. Just…” Her voice cracked, her palm out, warding me off. “Don’t.”
During that agonizing fragment of time, I saw the mother who taught me how to power through my childhood hurts. Who flew her bike over eighteen-wheelers and nearly died from a launch between two thirty-foot buildings. Who died instead from the evil that was hurting Kaci now.
Her voice cut through the dark smudge of memory. “This is what you used to blackmail the board?”
She didn’t have the orange confidential envelope I’d shown Trent. “Mostly, yes.”
Head down, she stared at the folder in her lap. “But they denied it, right?”
I wasn’t surprised by the hope in that question. Slowly, I reached for her face, and this time she didn’t cringe. I tilted up her chin so I could see her eyes. “They couldn’t. The truth is all there.”
She leaned away from my touch. “Are you a cop?”
I shook my head.
Angling away, she stared into the sunrise, the back of her hand trembling against her brow and shielding the glare. “This is personal for you.”
I hadn’t intended to tell her the true reason behind my blackmail, only to show her the evidence I’d given her family and evaluate her reaction. But nothing about Kaci Baskel fit into my plans. Despite all logic, I trusted her. “This is deeply personal.”
Her beautiful face twisted in misery, her mouth flickering between a pained smile and a heartbreaking grimace. She was shocked, scared, haunted.
Undeniably innocent.
Which meant her definition of justice would strongly oppose mine. “We’re not going to the cops. Do you understand?”
She dropped her hand and skewered me with a fierce glare. “No. I don’t think I do.”
The lines of her face were delicate and exquisitely shaped, even as they sharpened with anger and horror.
Maybe she hadn’t leapt to the conclusion that I intended to murder her family, but some part of her must’ve known it was a possibility, and I needed her to understand why.
I reached in the bag and handed her the orange envelope.
20
Kaci
I lowered the papers with frozen fingers and woodenly returned them to the orange envelope. The pressure in my chest felt as if I were being held underwater, my body weighted down by the crimes of my family, the documents I’d just read, and the connections my mind was racing to put together.
The envelope Logan had saved till last was the tipping point. Medical records, DNA tests, proof of parentage, all of it made me hyper-aware of the stillness in the man watching me.