False front, p.13
False Front, page 13
“It was my favorite tie, and some passed out blonde wouldn’t let go of it.”
“I should give it back to you.”
“Hey, if you play your cards right, I’ll give you this one too.”
“You hang onto it. Somehow I think you may have more inventive uses for it than I would.”
“Oh, Sunshine, you have no idea.”
“Take me to your place.”
“With pleasure. Can you walk?”
“Yeah, I just got a little light-headed. Happens a lot around you.”
“I have been known to have that effect on women.”
“You should list swooning as one of your special skills.”
“Nope. You swoon. I, I don’t know what I do.”
“You save me.”
He let out a weary sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. “When I think about what could have happened that night . . . .”
Emma shuddered, and he pulled her into his lap. “I couldn’t think clearly. I just needed to get somewhere safe.” She wrapped her arms around his neck. “I guess I found it.”
“I will keep you safe, Em. I’ll do whatever it takes.” A wave of anger surged through him, and she remembered something.
“That guy, Tom?”
Nathan stiffened, not from nerves but from rage. He ground his teeth.
“What about him?”
“They told me he got mugged walking home from a bar a couple of days after my . . .” she didn’t know what to call it, “. . . incident.”
“Incident.” Nathan rolled the word around like it was the last word he would ever use to describe what had happened.
“He broke his arm, ruptured his spleen, and had a skull fracture.”
“He got off easy.”
She squinted at Nathan, and his face went completely blank.
“Do you know something about that?”
“I know something about karma.”
Boom. The crack of the first fireworks exploding in the sky made Nathan flinch, but he quickly recovered.
“You okay?” He brushed a honey-colored curl from her face.
“Yes. So okay, you have no idea.” She kissed him softly as another firework blew.
“Not my favorite sound.” He squeezed his eyes shut on a long blink.
She held his face and kept his lips close to hers.
“Nathan?”
“Em?” he mimicked.
“I have a confession to make.” Nathan paled as though he expected her to drop some huge bomb . . . as if he knew she was hiding a big secret. He remained silent.
“I hate fireworks.” When the next one sounded, she clamped her eyes shut and wrinkled her nose. “Too loud.”
Everything faded but the sight and sound of him laughing. He laughed with relief and joy and, yes, love. She saw love in his eyes as clear as his bright green irises. And then he kissed her like he meant it.
“Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“Well, we are two people who hate fireworks, so this time I’m taking you home with me. In the future, we should consider leaving the country on the Fourth. The Caribbean or Greece.”
He tugged on her hand as he pulled her quietly from the room, the words home and future fizzing in her brain like champagne bubbles. No one noticed as they slipped out, their attention on the sky. Emma squeezed his hand, and he squeezed hers back, keeping his eyes forward, a hint of a smile dancing on his lips. As she walked to Nathan’s car with him, she imagined being together in a year, escaping to some tropical island to be alone, and she felt the best thing she had ever felt, deep in her soul.
Fireworks.
Two days later, Emma stood in the lobby of Knightsgrove-Bishop. She and Nathan had had a fairly businesslike interview, if you ignored the fact that she was in his lap for most of it, which ended abruptly when a giant of a man opened the door without knocking or speaking. A petite freckle-faced redhead stood behind him, holding a laptop, and staring down at her bright pink Converse high-tops. Nathan stood them up without embarrassment, kissed her on the lips and said he’d call later. The giant blocked the door for a moment, giving her a probing look filled with suspicion before moving to the side to let her pass.
Tox marched up to the desk and tossed a paper file in front of Nathan. Still lost in an Emma fog, Nathan glanced at it absently.
“What’s this?”
Tox leaned forward onto his fists. His expression was equal parts anger and sympathy.
“North, you’re being honey-potted.”
Down in the lobby, Emma shot a text to Caroline confirming lunch and shopping. Caroline was leaving for LA the next day and felt the need for some seriously unprofessional outfits. When Emma got Caroline’s ‘thumbs up’ emoji, she glanced through the glass and spotted JT contemplating the souvlaki cart on the corner. He saw her waving and turned her way. She mimed eating and he nodded, relieved. Across the street, a jogger was running in place at the intersection. A lean, well-built guy, maybe thirty, probably scrolling through his playlist. She wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but the light had changed twice, and he remained as pedestrians filed past. He looked around at nothing in particular and disappeared around a corner. The loitering jogger was pushed from her thoughts by a sharp voice behind her.
“Who’s your friend?” Alex sidled up and peered over Emma’s shoulder at JT, who was walking to the car.
“No one,” she replied dismissively, pretending to check her phone.
“He’s a beast. Boyfriend?”
“Nope.”
“Brother?” She was relentless.
“No. Only child.”
“Well, he could be a bodyguard with that build.” Her gaze didn’t waver from the glass in front of them. She knew exactly what Alex was doing. Emma had been carefully schooled in the art of interrogation, in many forms. Alex was spitballing until she got a reaction. Emma wasn’t sure why, but she had her suspicions. As soon as she volunteered an explanation, Alex would know she had scored a hit. Well, surprise Alex, this wasn’t her first rodeo.
“Or an undercover cop . . . .” she continued.
“He could,” Emma conceded, “or he could be an NFL player taking an old friend to lunch.” She winked and walked out of the building, leaving Alex huffing in frustration and beating a hasty retreat to her office.
Emma climbed into the back of the Suburban around the corner from prying eyes and rested her head against the tinted glass. She had given a lot of thought to telling Nathan her whole truth. Two things had given her pause. She was reluctant to rock the boat this early. This was her first relationship, her first sexual experience, and her first time falling in love. The idea of adding more complications felt like aiming a fan at a house of cards. That was her chicken shit reason. The other reason was a bit more substantial. Nathan was clearly keeping secrets of his own. If her suspicions were correct, he, like Emma, was hiding another identity. And if that was, in fact, the case then they were currently on equal footing. Her lack of experience was an easy excuse to put the burden on Nathan to decide when they pulled aside the curtain. God, she hoped it was soon. She wanted to know every part of him, and, more shockingly, she wanted him to see every part of her.
Emma sat cross-legged on the chaise on her balcony, thankful the sun had gone behind a huge storm cloud, as she searched her mind and reviewed the notes she had written. Again. She had never had a memory of her abduction, so despite the potential damage to her psyche, she wanted to cling to every detail of the flashback. She was wearing one of Nathan’s Harvard Business School T-shirts and her favorite cutoffs. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a messy bun. She doodled on the legal pad she held in her lap, wanting to begin the exercise, but also stalling. Thunder rumbled in the distance. She started to scribble down notes.
She had had enough therapists assure her that if she did, in fact, recover any memories, they might not be reliable. Nevertheless, this is what she remembered, so she recreated it on the page, starting with the small tattoo: a rectangle with an ornate cross flaring out at the four ends. She admired her handiwork.
“How many pairs of sunglasses do I need in LA?” Caroline was leaning against the open French doors, scrolling through her iPad.
“For three days? I don’t know, seven?”
“You think? I was hoping to get by with four.”
“I was kidding, you loon.”
She sat at the foot of the chaise and shielded her screen with her hand as she showed Emma a variety of celebrity sunglass candids.
“I’m not. It’s LA. It’s a movie star interview. I’m considering changing sunglasses midway through.”
“Car, you are entering a race you can’t win.”
“I know,” she sighed defeated. “I can’t pull off a Christine-style interview.”
Christine Lamont was her mentor at CNN and more of a diva than any actress Caroline could imagine. She once notoriously cleared out an entire wing of the Bellagio to accommodate her needs during a Britney Spears one-on-one.
“Car,” Emma pinched her forearm and she looked up, annoyed. “This is going to be the easiest pep talk in pep talk history.”
“Okay, I’m ready.” She set her tablet aside and gave Emma her full focus.
“Don’t strive for a Christine Lamont-style interview. Strive for a Caroline Fitzhugh interview. You’re sunglass shopping when you have the most beautiful eyes ever. You’re preparing questions that Christine would ask. Ask him what Caroline wants to know. Remember when we would sit up and watch A Walk in the Park or Broken Vow and you would ask me if I thought he would like popcorn with Junior Mints mixed in? Or if he did anything crazy at night before bed, like when you checked for ghosts?”
“I still do that.”
“Ask him! Clark Rhodes wants a change, and you are the biggest breath of fresh air out there. You can’t win trying to be a cheap imitation of Christine, because Christine is a cheap imitation of herself as it is. But if you go out there as you, real and unedited you? You with no filter and inappropriate sense of humor? Clark Rhodes won’t know what hit him.”
“Damn.”
“Good, right?”
“Seriously, that should go in some sort of book of pep talks.”
Emma made a tiny bow from her yoga pose. “Thank you, thank you.”
“I’m going to go pack.” She snatched Emma’s legal pad. Their friendship had absolutely no boundaries. “What’s this?”
“I’ve been writing down everything I remember from the flashback.”
“That’s the tattoo?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s weird. It looks Middle Eastern or Eastern European.” She squinted and amended, “Maybe Egyptian?” She pinched the thin skin between her thumb and index finger. “And it was here?”
“Yes, right hand.”
“You know, there’s a guy at work who hunts down shit like this. He sources weird symbols associated with terrorist groups and stuff. I could ask him to research it. See if it’s a common symbol, or if it has meaning.”
“Yeah, that would be great. I’ll tell Dad you’re doing that when I give him the notes. We can all put our heads together when you get back.”
Caroline snapped a photo of the drawing with her phone.
“I’m gone for three days. I think the flight will last longer.”
“Maybe you’ll fall in love and stay.”
“Ew, Em, he’s like a hundred. I’m not falling in love with Clark Rhodes.”
“I wasn’t referring to Clark Rhodes, but it’s interesting that you went there. Also, interesting how defensive you got.”
“I’m going for coffee and not taking that bait.” She rifled through her bag for some cash. “Maybe he has a son.” She blinked innocently.
“He’s thirty-six, not fifty, you spaz.”
“Maybe I should bring him some adult diapers.”
“I’ll take a cappuccino if you’re going,” Emma said, refusing to acknowledge the last comment.
“No problem. I’ll stop by Duane Reade and pick Clark up some Rogaine on my way.”
Emma’s only response was to throw her pencil at Caroline. She laughed as she retreated and shouted from the hall, “And prune juice!”
Emma chuckled, then sobered at the thought of seeing Nathan the next day, their day. Emma had given it a lot of thought and concluded she was being foolish. For one thing, whatever Nathan’s secret, it surely paled in comparison to her own. For another, Nathan already held her heart. This tether that joined them was unbreakable. She wouldn’t insult or threaten their bond with a lie. She had a plan. The time for secrets was over.
It was her birthday. Her real birthday. Emily Webster’s birthday. July 7. It was also Nathan Bishop’s birthday. Emma could remember their parents laughing about the coincidence—five years to the day apart—and she could remember the double cakes. Nathan’s was chocolate, hers was pink, and they would all celebrate on the beach in Nantucket. Her father would start the singing and the rest of the group would join in. Nathan made it all about Emily, mostly because she was a spoiled little girl, but also because it was his natural tendency to fly under the radar. He never liked attention about his birthday, and not much had changed, apparently, because as she walked up to his office, there was no indication that this was anything other than a normal day. Her contact lenses were gone, and her violet eyes sparkled with anticipation. Wearing a jade silk slip dress and paillette splash pumps, she had carefully wrapped a small box containing a chocolate cupcake and a pink cupcake from Magnolia Bakery. In another box, she’d put his present, the present that would tell him everything.
She had been playing on the front lawn with one of Mariella’s dishcloths stuck to her head with bobby pins and a fistful of violets in her hand when he’d walked down his drive, hauling a bulging backpack. She had chased after him.
“Nave, come marry me!”
“I can’t today, Em-em, I’m heading back to school again.”
Her eyes grew glassy. “But it’s summer.”
“Hey, hey, hey. I’m coming back in a few weeks for the long weekend.”
I’ll be back for our birthday. I’ll bring you a present.”
“Will you have time to marry me when you get back?” She fiddled with the violets in her hand.
“You bet, Em-em. I will come back, and I will marry you. Sound good?”
“Okay. When?”
He thought for a minute, then reached to his wrist and unhooked a black rubber sports watch. He held it open and Emily extended her arm. It was huge but there were holes punched all the way to the bezel, so he strapped it on.
“See the little window on the face? There’s the date.”
He did a quick calculation in his head.
“In twenty-three days, I will be back. I will bring you an awesome present for our birthday, and we can get married. Again.”
“Okay.”
She stared at the watch and waved to him without looking up.
“Bye, Em-em.”
“Bye, Nave.”
She was taken four days later. She had spent her ninth—and Nathan’s fourteenth—birthday in captivity. The watch stayed on her wrist the entire time. As she wrapped it this morning, she felt a tremor of anxiety, but it was quickly replaced by the image of Nathan opening the box and realizing . . . .
She pushed open his office door with a beaming smile and was met with a stony stare that knocked the joy right off her face. Nathan looked at her, but it wasn’t Nathan. It was a cold, empty man with barely contained rage flowing through him.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, birthday surprises forgotten.
“Who are you?”
“What?”
“Who. The. Fuck. Are. You?”
He’d found out. She shouldn’t have been surprised. This was a guy who uncovered secrets for a living. He clearly didn’t have the whole truth, but he had part of it. And having a partial truth was a dangerous thing.
“Nathan, I can explain.”
“I’ve spent the last three hours running through our conversations in my head. What I’ve told you, what I let slip, who you could have told . . .”
“Nathan, no, it’s not like that.”
“Really? What’s it like then? Because Emma Porter didn’t exist until fourteen years ago. Emma Porter’s birth certificate in Georgia is a very good fake. Emma Porter’s childhood home was purchased through a shell corporation.”
“Nathan, please, just let me tell you the truth.”
“The truth!” he bellowed. “Now you want to tell me the truth? I fucking trusted you. I never let my guard down like that. For anyone. Ever! Stupid. Fucking stupid.”
“Nave.”
“That whole fucking sob story. Was it all just a hook to draw me in?”
“Oh, God.” She felt sick. “No.”
He talked over her.
“Get out.”
“Please, Nave.”
He looked confused, but his anger was consuming him.
“Security is on the way. If you move quickly, you can escape getting thrown on your ass onto Sixth Avenue.”
She set the packages on the edge of his desk, and pleading violet eyes met fiery greens.
“I’m going, but you need to open these. Please. It will explain everything, and I promise you it’s not what you think. Remember that night at the bar? When you came in with that woman? Remember how bad it looked?” He wouldn’t budge.
“Out. Now.”
“Nave, I swear. Only good surprises.”
She turned without a word and left the office. As she rode down in the elevator with a suited executive who never looked up from his phone, she sent up a silent prayer that Nathan would open the boxes and not send the bomb squad to destroy them. Deep down he had to know. Emma knew he had to know, so she relied on the faith she had put in him.
She emerged onto Sixth Avenue and stopped on the sidewalk at a loss. Pedestrians moved around her, altering the flow of foot traffic like minnows avoiding a rock in a steam. The Suburban was parked on a side street, JT leaning against the driver’s door reading something on his phone. Nathan’s Range Rover pulled up out front. Chat emerged from the driver’s seat, came around the hood, and stopped abruptly when he saw her. Emma looked at him with a desperation that had him widening his eyes. Chat stood for a moment, assessing. Then he navigated the crowd, took Emma by her shoulders, and guided her back to the expansive recessed entrance of the building. With a serious face and soothing voice, he said, “Everything is going to be okay. You’ll see.” Then he turned to the glass front doors, pulled the closest one open, and gestured toward Emma as Nathan came charging through. Then Chat disappeared inside, a secret smile on his lips.
