Best Kept Secret (Rochester Trilogy 3)

“Cards on the table, Emily.”

She lifts a perfect, blonde eyebrow.

“Lay out your cards. You want my help? Then I need information.”

A shadow of defeat falls over her. “You won’t believe me.”

“Try me.”

“No one believes me.”

There’s the ring of truth in her voice. She’s been silenced for so long. No wonder she’s armed. It occurs to me that I might face this kind of thing as a social worker. That would have been after years of schooling and training. But I haven’t gone to college. I have to face this on my own, with only my own experience, my own empathy to guide me. “Here’s the deal. I want to hear your story. I want to believe you, but I’m not going to take you to Paige while you’re holding a gun. If you want to shoot me? Then shoot me. You can’t take a dead body on a plane.”

CHAPTER THREE

Jane Mendoza

She doesn’t shoot me.

Instead, Emily puts aside the gun and looks me in the eye. “My brother killed my husband. I had to hide to save my life. I couldn’t spend any of the money. Couldn’t bring any attention to myself. But when you left, I had no other choice. You’re the only one who can talk to Beau and help me get Paige back. You’re my only chance.”

She stops. Swallows.

“I need your help. I want to see my daughter again, and I can’t do that if I don’t survive this.”

She means it. Her desperation doesn’t make her story less true. In fact, it makes me believe her. A person like Emily Rochester would have to be in dire straits to do this. She’d have no other options left. And something inside me knows this is real. “You don’t want to hurt Beau?”

“I just want my daughter.”

I glance at her purse. “No more guns.”

“No,” she promises. “Please come with me. I need to get back to her.”

“I need to know that you won’t do anything to hurt Paige. Even if that means…”

“I know,” Emily says. “I know it won’t be easy. Beau has custody.” There are ramifications to all that. Legal ones. “I won’t do anything to hurt her. I would never do that.”

I should turn her down and stay at this apartment, but it already feels like the wrong place to be. It’s a too-small outfit that’s not in season. And this is about Paige. This is about believing Emily, who has never been believed in all this time.

That’s how I end up back at the airport less than three hours after my plane touched down on the tarmac. It’s equally as disorienting as landing here in the first place in all my clothes from Maine, because this is a part of the airport I didn’t know existed.

Emily brought me here in a car I’m not sure is hers, but she doesn’t drive it to the departures lane or any of the parking lots. Instead, she takes a narrow road that loops us around to the back of the terminal. A plane waits on the tarmac, far from everything else.

“That’s a private plane,” I say, because it is.

I’ve only ever seen them in the movies. It sits away from the airport with its own staircase rolled up to the side. It’s significantly smaller than the plane that brought me here from Maine and significantly shinier. This plane has been polished to a high shine.

“Yes,” Emily says, her voice grim. She’s been resolute ever since we left my apartment. She drives her car onto the tarmac and throws it in park.

“Are you going to turn it off?”

“Are you honestly worried about the car? Let’s go, Jane.”

I get out of the car, and two men in uniforms move past us on the way to the trunk. Emily waits while they carry my suitcase onto the plane. It occurs to me that this is how she carried a gun through airport security, using a private plane. It might also be how she’s concealing her identity. I suppose money opens a lot of doors that aren’t available to regular people.

Emily takes the stairs first. On the way up she drops her keys into the hand of one of those men. He jogs back and gets into the driver’s seat.

My old apartment felt wrong. A private plane doesn’t feel right, either.

I’m beginning to think I won’t belong anywhere now that I’ve known Beau Rochester. A voice in the back of my mind whispers that the only place I belong is by his side. But how can I belong with him if he doesn’t want me there? I can’t. That’s the answer.

Emily lowers herself into a cream-colored leather sofa and tips her head back.

“Where should I sit?”

“Wherever you want,” she says, her eyes still closed, her face tipped to the ceiling.

I choose the seat across from her. And anyway, the flight crew is shutting the door on the side of the plane. “How do you afford all this?”