Page 26 of Risk It All
His tight-lipped glance told her nothing. Her stomach squeezed as suspicion wormed its way back into her brain. It just made sense that he was after the necklace.Everyonewho was even slightly shady had been breaking into their house and stalking them and lurking in the trees around their property. Why wouldn’t Henry Kavenski, a bail jumper mixed up with several shady criminals, want a piece of that multimillion-dollar prize?
“What’s wrong?”
She stared at his profile, as if his true motives were printed on the hard plane of his cheek. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as simple as that. She either had to trust him or not, let that worm of suspicion grow or squash it completely. The car slowed as it eased around a hairpin turn before speeding up again. Cara squeezed her eyes closed for a long moment, trying to get her muddled thoughts in order.
“Seriously, what’s happening in your brain? Are you still worried about your sisters?”
This was the first time he’d ever tried to get her to spill her thoughts, rather than the other way around, she realized. She seized on the excuse he’d given her so that she didn’t blurt out her suspicions. “Of course I am. Do you think the guys that were chasing us have gone back to the cabin?”
He darted a quick glance at the rearview mirror. “Doubt we’d be that lucky.”
Cara turned around again, but all she could see were the rocky outcroppings that bordered the road. Between those and the trees, it was impossible to see more than fifty feet behind the car. The idea that their pursuers were just around the last bend was unnerving, especially when she wasn’t sure whether she could trust the man right here with her.
“I don’t know if I’d rather they be following us or at the cabin in case Molly and Norah show up.”
“What about the other two?” he asked, steering the car around another hairpin turn.
Her brain was trying to go in so many directions at once that his question didn’t make sense. “Other two SUVs? I thought just the one stayed behind.”
“No. Sisters. Don’t you have four?” Kavenski didn’t look at her as he answered, focusing hard through his cracked side of the windshield. When Cara glanced out her window, she saw why he was so carefully watching the road. After the last sharp turn, the road straightened, running along the edge of a cliff. Only a measly, spindly guardrail separated their lane from the drop-off below. From Cara’s perspective, it looked like they were just inches from the edge, as if just a slight swerve could send them plunging down the sheer rock face to crash into the river that snaked so far below.
Dragging her gaze from the precipitous drop, she focused on Kavenski’s profile. Even though she knew he might be a villain, at least he was aprettyvillain. Looking at him was as good a distraction as any. “How did you know how many sisters I have?”
Somehow, he managed to roll his eyes at her without taking his gaze off the road. “Everyoneknows about the Pax sisters. I did even before you started following me around.”
“Ugh.” She made a face, pressing her cheek against the headrest so that she didn’t give in to the train-wreck temptation of looking at the vast emptiness beyond the guardrail. “There’s another thing I can thank Jane for—notoriety among Langston’s criminal element. Thanks, Mom!”
Kavenski followed the curve in the road, and Cara was forced to squeeze her eyes closed when it felt like they tilted toward the cliff edge. “No need to thank her. You were well known before she stole that jewelry and took off.”
His mention of the necklace hung in the air between them. Straightening her shoulders, Cara looked at him again, needing to see his expression when she asked her question. “Are you after the necklace, too? Do you have some criminal connection with my mom?”
Although his poker face didn’t reveal much, the slight widening of his eyes appeared to be from true surprise. “What would I do with a hot, recognizable piece like that?”
For a confused second, Cara thought he was referring to Jane, and a weird jolt that felt unnervingly like jealousy zipped through her. Then her practical brain clicked back in, and she understood that he was talking about a piece ofjewelry, not a piece of… “Fence it, of course,” she hurried to answer before her thoughts could meander off too far in that inadvisable direction. “Don’t you have underworld connections?”
“Underworld connections?” Despite the tense cliff-edge driving, the corner of his mouth twitched up in an actual smile. In a flash, though, all hint of amusement was locked down, covered by his usual impassive mask. “Is that something that people actually say out loud?”
A huff of laughter escaped her. When she’d started following him, she’d never expected him to befunny. Everything about this man kept surprising her. “I don’t know. I’m usually in front of a screen, researching. I’m not out on the streets actually dealing with theunderworld.”
Although his smile was still of the blink-and-miss-it variety, it clung a little longer than the last one. “First, quit calling it the underworld. Second, I have no interest in your mom’s necklace.”
His words felt true, but she had to be sure. The blunt method of questioning seemed to be working pretty well, and it was distracting her from the treacherous road they were traversing, so she blurted out her next thought. “If you’re not after the necklace, then why did you show up at the cabin? Why risk your life to save me if you’re not getting anything out of it? And how did you even know where I was being held—or that I’d been kidnapped in the first place?”
This time, his mouth twitched down, holding the unhappy grimace for a beat longer than his sudden smiles. “Geoffrey Abbott called me.”
She blinked at his grim profile. After a few seconds of silence, she prompted, “Why did Geoffrey Abbott, the tax evader, kidnap me? And why did he tell you about it?”
He heaved a huge sigh, as if the explanation was both too tiring and painful to stand, and Cara almost apologized for forcing him to explain. Just in time, she caught herself before the words escaped. The very least he could do was tell her what was going on. After all, she was the one who’d been kidnapped.
“There’s a reason I warned you to stay away from him. I was supposed to meet him at one of his buildings in Langston. If I showed, he said he’d let you go.”
“But you didn’t go there.” Cara’s brain was working through the pieces as she realized she’d been putting together the wrong puzzle. From what he’d said so far, it didn’t seem like the necklace had anything to do with the kidnapping. “You came to the cabin. How’d you know I was being held there?”
“I didn’t.” One of his massive shoulders lifted in a partial shrug. “It was just my best guess.”
“Good thing for me that you were right,” she muttered under her breath. Although she wanted to know more about how exactly he’d figured out where she was being kept, there were more important questions to ask. “What did Abbott want from you?”
“Information.” For such an innocuous word, it sounded unnervingly ominous gritted through tight lips.
