Page 52 of Return to Whitmore
But Nina didn’t stop running. They raced to the parking garage, where they cranked the engine and tore out of there without paying. They’d only been in the garage a few minutes anyway. Nina pressed her foot hard on the gas and narrowly ducked around a sharp corner and then another.
“Is someone chasing us?” Charlotte demanded. “What is going on?” She felt breathless and exhausted and terrified.
When they hit a red light two miles later, Nina took a staggered breath and smashed her hand on the steering wheel. “I think I know who the client is.”
Charlotte’s heart throbbed. “Tell me,” she begged.
Nina closed her eyes for a long time. “It’s our brother.”
“Jack?” Charlotte gasped. “You found Jack? You ran away from Jack?”
But Nina shook her head. She looked exhausted. “It was Alexander. I panicked. But he didn’t see me.” She let tears spill down her cheeks. “I didn’t want him to see me. It’s obvious he’s up to something. It terrifies me to know what.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
On their manic drive back to the Tuscan villa and back toward safety, Nina explained what had happened in the luxury Florence hotel. When she realized that they wouldn’t be able to see the private investigator, when she realized that the receptionist was a guard dog ready to protect her guests, Nina slunk up the stairs and made her way to the room where he was staying. “I figured if you look like you know what you’re doing, people will let you do anything,” Nina explained, her breathing still ragged.
“That’s why I called him anyway,” Charlotte remembered, gripping her knees. “I figured you’d need a distraction.” She felt like the cops were chasing them, but every time she glanced in the rearview mirror, there was just another fast Italian driver who wanted to pass them.
“That was smart. I didn’t guess for a second that there were two people in the room. But when I knocked, I heard two men talking about room service. I guess they’d ordered brunch or something. I hovered off to the side, waiting. And when Alexander opened the door, he was still talking to the private investigator. He wasn’t paying any attention to me. I almost had a heart attack. I mean, he was still wearing his pilot uniform!That was when I realized a staff member was wheeling a big cart of food toward his door. It was their room service! I ducked out of sight and ran to the stairs, where I found you.” Nina shook her head. She was sweating through her shirt.
“He was wearing his pilot uniform?” Charlotte gasped with disbelief. She’d only ever see photographs of him on the internet, all decked out as an official-looking pilot, speeding thousands through the skies. So many people put their trust in him. And Charlotte herself hadn’t seen him since 1998.
He’d gotten rid of the family. He’d dismissed them.
Why, then, was he trying to spy on them by way of a private investigator?
Charlotte closed her eyes. “Why would Alexander do this to us?”
“The only reason I keep coming back to is money-related,” Nina breathed.
“The treasure?” Charlotte demanded.
“Maybe,” Nina said. “Who knows if it’s real? But it’s gone to enough people’s heads over the years.”
“But Alexander doesn’t need treasure, does he?” Charlotte asked.
“I don’t know. Alexander is a stranger,” Nina said.
“We were all strangers until very recently,” Charlotte offered.
“No, but even before,” Nina said, still speeding down a Tuscan road. “Alexander was so much older than me. You and Jack were my only friends in the family, really. Alexander had responsibilities. He was sort of cold. Remember?”
Charlotte admitted that her eldest brother had always been a sort of mystery to her. “How do we figure this out?” she whispered. “How do we tell Mom?”
“We don’t,” Nina said firmly. “Not until we know more.”
“And how do we learn more?” Charlotte asked.
“We have the private investigator’s phone number,” Nina remembered. “Mom has it. Maybe we can trick him into telling us more, somehow. We carry more cards than we should.”
“But we still don’t carry very many,” Charlotte said.
They sat in stunned silence for a moment.
It was then that Charlotte felt that same idea, wiggling its way back to the surface. “If we try to reopen the White Oak Lodge, that will make a big splash. Don’t you think?”
Nina groaned. “But how?” What she meant was how would they get the money?
