Page 19 of Never and Always
Chapter 5
Talkingto Nick last night had helped, and it helped now, too, to take the edge off her fears. She’d revealed her deepest emotions. Mia had never even told Claire about how she felt about her family. She’d never told anyone, but it was all true. That was how she was treated, and it would be worse now that, in the pursuit of her business, she’d managed to lose two million dollars and, damn it, she was sure the art collection was gone as well. Those gut instincts were shouting so loud her whole bodytingled.
She pulled in a deep breath as she was about to unleash her biggestworry.
“Our grandmother left us some of the paintings she collected. Glenn and I were going to open a small gallery at some point, but we placed them in a storage facility in Rochester. Just until we had the time to set everything up.” She watched Nick’s expressionchange.
He was very aware of the types of paintings that her grandmother collected. He knew that Mia wasn’t talking about any oldcollection.
“Did he get the password for the facility?” Nick asked biting the inside of hislip.
Mia nodded, feeling the anxiety gnaw away at herstomach.
“Oh shit,” he said, standing up. “Mia, why didn’t you tell us about that? The money is a lot harder to keep track of. Something like paintings are easier tomanage.”
He’d been incredibly sweet so far, and understanding, but it looked like she’d just lost thatedge.
“I was scared. Nick, the paintings are worth billions. The password was in the safe with everything else.” She grimaced, feeling the impact of the fear weigh in on her. It nauseatedher.
“Do you know if the paintings werestolen?”
“No. I tried to find out but I didn’t get anywhere.” She brought her hands up to her cheeks again. “Nick, if the paintings get taken and Glenn and my parents find out, I might as well jump off acliff.”
“No.” He shook his head at her. “Don’t you dare think like that. Come on, let’s get to the station. I have a friend I work with. We can see what we can come up with and take it fromthere.”
“Thank you. Thank you so much.” She was grateful that he wanted to help, and for hisunderstanding.
She quickly got up and grabbed her jacket andpurse.
Glenn wasn’t in the living room when they went downstairs. She wanted to let him know where they were going and that she was doing something to fix the problem, but it seemed like he was in hisroom.
It was okay; maybe it was best that they didn’t speak. He’d never been so mad at her, so mad he would throw her out on to the street. She felt bad that it had come to this, and that she’d lost histrust.
Hopefully they’d have some news when they got back, and hopefully Alan hadn’t gotten to thepaintings.
An hour later they sat in one of the offices at the police station with Nick’s friend Sawyer, who was adetective.
She explained all that had happened and was asked to provide all the information she had, from business documents Alan had dealt with to receipts. Thank God she’d had a majority of that stuff stored on a file that she had saved to a memory stick. She could give that to themlater.
What was hard was showing Sawyer the pictures she had of Alan, and then feeling her heart drop into an abyss of shock when he showed her an actual picture of Alan in their system. Their system that listed all the people who’d been charged with variouscrimes.
But he wasn’t called Alan. His name there was Simon, and he had at least ten otheraliases.
All Mia could do was stare at the computer screen, feeling fragile like if someone touched her she’d shatter. How could she have gotten involved with this person. It was all good and well to look back at mistakes and think of all the if only’s but she’d definitely exercised no care whatsoever in all her dealings with Alan. He’d been in prison for theft and embezzlement, had offenses built up from the same thing, and had the added bonus of drunk driving, drug-related offenses, and a host of otherthings.
If she felt like a fool before, she felt even worse now. And it was embarrassing because Nick was here. He saw her stupidity in choosing a shady accountant, but what was worse was he’d seen the poor choice of a man she’d beenwith.
“We’ll get the fraud and embezzlement team on this,” Sawyer toldher.
She watched him straighten up in his seat, squaring off his shoulders that were nearly as massive as Nick’s. Nick had told her that he and Sawyer met when they served in theMarines.
“But there is some bad news. I managed to get through to the senior manager at Hamptons and he’s confirmed that the paintings werereleased.”
Her heart jumped into her chest at that declaration and she couldn’tbreathe.
Shit! What was she going todo?
She looked over at Nick who was sitting in the chair next to her and couldn’t help the bout of tears that gripped her. He put his arm around her but she didn’t feelcomforted.
