Page 102 of Ten Beach Road

“Yes.” Nicole nodded, her expression numb. “Malcolm’s my brother, but . . .”

“No,” Maddie said. “There can’t be any buts about that.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” Avery asked, trying to make sense of it. “Did he send you to gloat?”

“Or is he hoping you’ll help him find some way to screw us out of Bella Flora, too?” Maddie asked. The horror and disbelief all of them were feeling were starkly etched across her face.

“No!” Nikki said. “I’m a victim like you are. He stole every penny I had invested with him. He didn’t leave me with anything.”

“Right.” Avery wasn’t buying it. “You expect us to believe that your own brother stole all your money?”

Nikki nodded. Her voice, when she spoke, sounded like something torn from her throat. “It’s true. If I had more than two hundred dollars to my name I wouldn’t be sleeping on a mattress and slaving on this godforsaken house.”

It was a sign of just how agitated they were that they let her get away with the slur to Bella Flora.

“There must have been some mistake. Were you estranged? Didn’t he realize . . . ?” Maddie seemed to be struggling to make sense of it, but Avery didn’t want to understand it. There was no explanation that could justify Nicole’s dishonesty.

“I raised him.” Nicole slumped in her seat, her voice barely a whisper. “Badly, it would seem. But for all intents and purposes, I was his mother. There was no mistake.”

Another silence fell. Kyra lowered the camera and switched it off. Nicole looked at all of them in turn, her face a glut of emotion. Avery saw shock, hurt, anger, disappointment, and ultimately an odd sort of resignation. But Avery didn’t care how Nicole felt. She could barely stand to look at her.

“You just stood there when we hung him in effigy,” Maddie said, shaking her head in disbelief. “And you never said a word. Not once in all the thousands of times we discussed and cursed Malcolm Dyer did you mention that you were related to him.” She folded her arms across her chest as if warding off cold. “I feel so betrayed. How could you?”

What Avery felt was ill. Their closeness, the sense that they were in the trenches together, was all one great big lie. “I can’t work beside you. And I sure as hell am not going to sleep next to you.”

Nicole didn’t respond, and she didn’t look surprised.

Avery turned to Madeline. “I need for her to leave,” Avery said. “Now.”

“But she’s an owner,” Maddie said. “Can we just tell her to go?”

“She can have her third when we finish and sell,” Avery said. “We’re not trying tostealfromher.” She took the time to emphasize the pertinent words. “But every time I look at her I’m going to know that she’s Malcolm Dyer’s sister and that she’s been lying about it from the moment we met her.”

“I didn’t lie,” Nikki said. “I just couldn’t tell you.”

Maddie shook her head one final time. Her brown eyes were dark with hurt and anger. Leaving Nicole sitting alone at the counter, she and Kyra came to stand on either side of Avery.

“We’re almost done anyway.” Maddie’s voice shook, but her tone was resolute. “I’m sure if you leave an address with John Franklin, he’ll make sure you get your share at closing.”

The three of them left the pool house and went back to work without further conversation or a backward glance.

It took Nicole less than fifteen minutes to gather her things and stuff them into the trunk of the Jag. Chase called out after her, asking where she thought she was going, obviously assuming she was trying to duck out of work. Only Joe Giraldi actually tried to stop her, striding out to the car just as she slid behind the wheel and bending double to lean in through the driver’s side window. “Where are you going?” he asked. “What’s happened?”

“As if you don’t know!”

Nicole revved the gas pedal with her foot and sent the grit under the wheels flying. “It was a nice touch, planting the story in that tabloid as if some scuzzy reporter was the one who figured out my connection to Malcolm,” she said. “Did you arrange for the paparazzi, too?”

He looked surprised but quickly masked it. “That wasn’t us. I told you you were running out of time. Anybody bothering to dig would have figured it out. We didn’t want you to be found out.”

“I don’t really care what you wanted, Agent Giraldi. And I sure as hell don’t care what my alleged partners think. All these months we’ve spent together, all of this ‘pulling together because we’re in the same boat’ crap! And as soon as they hear I’m related to Malcolm, I’m the scum of the earth.”

She pushed at his hands, wanting only to back down the drive and leave the house along with everyone and everything inside it, behind her. After all these years of going it alone, she’d bought into the hype, had actually felt as if she and Maddie and Avery had formed some sort of bond. She could hardly believe how stupid she’d been. Or how much the rejection hurt.

She’d been right to teach Malcolm that each man had to be for himself. As soon as you started worrying about others your chances of success shrank down to nothing.

“Nikki, look. It doesn’t have to be like this. Just work with us and I can explain that . . .”

“Leave me alone!” she shouted. “I don’t need you running interference when you’re just trying to get me to do your dirty work.”

She shoved at his hands again and slammed the gearshift into reverse. “And you better stay out of my way. If I see your face even for a second, you’ll be sorry.” She hated how childlike and impotent she sounded. Without another word she smashed her foot down on the accelerator, not even caring whether she ran over his feet or ripped his stupid arms out of their sockets as she backed down the brick driveway for what she assumed would be the very last time.

Nonetheless, Nicole watched Giraldi watch her leave in the Jag’s rearview mirror until he and Bella Flora grew small and disappeared from view. She actually cried all the way over the Corey Causeway Bridge into St. Petersburg and on a large section of Interstate 275. But by the time she reached Tampa she knew where she was headed. And exactly what she had to do.

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