"Here, take this darned thing and shut it up, please."

Nicole grabbed the offending device from her mother's outstretched hand and silenced it, but not before casting an inquisitive eye to the screen. Danielle. She fought the urge to read it, shoving the phone into one of her robe's deep front pockets.

"You girls and your phones," her mother grumbled softly, organizing the cleansers in the cabinet. Nicole bent to help.

"Are you hungry, Nicky? You hardly ate any dinner tonight. I can't let you get any thinner. Those few days in Africa already took too much from you. You're skin and bones."

"I'm fine, Mom." Nicole grabbed a paper towel and wiped blades of gra.s.s up off the floor. "I was thinking of heading over to the high school in the morning. Summer school's in session now, right?"

"Cla.s.ses may have started, but why?" her mother queried, uneasiness in her voice.

"Since I won't be teaching in Kenya, I'm hoping I can get the same credit if I help out at the high school." Nicole was pleased with her ability to create such a plausible lie on the spur of the moment.

"Do you think that's wise?" Her mother straightened, nervously plucking at her nightgown collar. "Don't you think the rec program at the elementary school would be better? Those kids at the high school for the summer, well, they're not like the other students. It's more like being a warden in a prison than being a teacher."

"I'm gonna stop by and talk to Princ.i.p.al Thomas in the morning, run the idea past him."

"Mr. Thomas is a busy man. I'll call him first, see if I can set something up for you."

Nicole knew there had been something of a chaste flirtation between her mother and the high school princ.i.p.al for the past few years, but it wasn't something anyone ever spoke about. She certainly didn't want her mother meddling in this, finding out her lies.

"Nope, I'm good, Mom," Nicole said, hurrying toward the stairway. If she'd turned around right then, she would have seen that her mother's face had gone an ashen gray, but she was too preoccupied with reading the text message Danielle had sent.

Meet me at Zorba's @ 6 Wednesday. Need 2 talk 2 u!!!

Zorba's was the restaurant where Nicole had worked up until May. It was as good a place as any to learn just what Danielle's involvement might be in all this weirdness.

While I'm there, she humorously mused, I might as well apply for my old job.

The next morning, Nicole dressed in a white blouse with crisp pleats, charcoal slacks, and leather sling back shoes. The temperature was supposed to climb back into the upper eighties, so she decided to leave the matching jacket in the closet. She needed to look the part if she hoped to accomplish anything at all.

An ornate, gilded-framed mirror hung at the bottom of the staircase. It had been there for as long as she could remember, and since childhood she always quickly glanced at it when she pa.s.sed, but this time, she paused. The image in the reflection was not the one she was used to seeing, the one she expected to see. She wasn't the meek child hiding behind her mother's legs or the tomboy in torn jeans climbing trees anymore. Her stance radiated confidence and her lightly tanned skin seemed to glow with an inner light.

Even her large amber eyes looked seductive.

She remembered what her sister said. "You look different."

"Nice outfit, Nicole," her mother acknowledged fondly from the threshold of the kitchen. "Go on and see Louise at the grade school. I told her you'd stop by. No need to bother Mr. Thomas. Louise has all sorts of programs she needs help with since the state cut her budgets."

Embarra.s.sed at being caught admiring herself, Nicole rushed from the house to her decade-old Civic in the garage, where she'd stowed it for the summer. As she drove the five miles to her former high school, she pictured Kira, which she found she was doing whenever she allowed her mind to wander. The blond temptress teased and taunted her dreams. Even when Nicole was fully awake, Kira floated near the perimeter of her consciousness, tugging at her ability to concentrate on anything other than the memory of the achingly sweet kiss they'd shared.

She wondered what Kira was doing right at that moment.

Chapter Thirteen.

Turning into the school's parking lot, she surveyed the one-story brick building with less than nostalgic eyes. She hadn't made a trip back since graduating. High school wasn't a pleasant memory for Nicole. There had been no dances, cheerleading compet.i.tions, or love letters exchanged during the four years she'd slouched through the gloomy hallways, a painfully shy, blemished-faced geek with no interest in the silly shenanigans her fellow female cla.s.smates engaged in to attract boys.

"You have to sign in. I'll need to see some identification," said a squat-shaped, forty-something female security guard with a large potbelly busting the b.u.t.tons of her uniform after Nicole asked to talk to the princ.i.p.al. "Is he expecting you?"

Nicole hesitated.

"Nicole Kennedy? Is that you?" A gravelly male voice echoed in the hallway. She turned and faced the man she'd known more than half her life.

Mr. Thomas was tall and attractive. He was a bit thicker around the waist than the last time she'd seen him but still in good shape for a man in his early sixties. Her first memory of the silver-haired administrator was when her mother had introduced Nicole to him at her father's funeral.

"Look at you, all grown up. Every time I see one of my former students, Mavis," he said to the guard, "I realize just how old I'm getting. Come with me back to my office, Nicole," he said with a dapper smile as he straightened his tie. "First period is about to end and it'll be mayhem here in a minute. School ends tomorrow and I'm sorry to say some of these kids will be back for summer cla.s.ses."

Nicole was bewildered. "I thought summer school started already?"

"We had to extend the school year." He shrugged his shoulders. "Too many snow days this past winter. Department of Education regulations. Everyone is miserable-the teachers as well as the students." He wiggled his gray brows. "They all want to be at the beach."

"But my mother's been off for the past few weeks. I don't understand."

A distressed look marred the princ.i.p.al's weathered features. "I thought you knew." His voice was solemn. "Let's talk."

Disturbed and confused, Nicole followed his distinguished form into the main office and through a half door cut into the laminate countertop. The school smelled exactly as she remembered-a faint, musty scent mixed with lingering odors from cafeteria food and floor wax.

"No phone calls please, Rita," Mr. Thomas told a harried-looking secretary before closing his office door and taking a seat behind a huge metal-gray desk littered with stacks of papers. It was a small, messy room with pictures of various graduating cla.s.ses adorning the plain white walls and a large window overlooking the baseball fields.

"What's going on, Mr. Thomas?" Nicole took a seat in one of the chairs on the other side of his desk. "If school is still in session, then why isn't my mother here teaching?"

"Please, Nicole, let's dispense with the formalities. We're both adults now. Call me Gavin." He cast a quick glance toward the door. "I shouldn't be talking about any of this with you. Legally, I could get in hot water for sharing any information concerning the termination of a school-district employee, regardless of your relationship. But I think you know I have a special fondness for your mother and I'm deeply worried."

"Termination? My mother was fired?" Nicole was aghast. What the h.e.l.l was going on?

"In a manner of speaking, yes."

He remained quiet for almost a full thirty seconds. "The school district called my secretary one day about three months ago to inform us that your mother's teaching certification had been revoked. I thought the situation nothing more than an administrative glitch, but when I addressed the situation with Dorothy, she became fl.u.s.tered and agitated. A few days later, I broached the subject again, but she refused to talk to me about it. She began calling in sick, and then one day, she simply stopped reporting for cla.s.s altogether. You know how much the kids love her. They were devastated. I dropped by the house but she wouldn't answer the door. When I called, she'd hang up on me. As I am legally bound to do, I sent her several registered letters, but she never responded. I tried to find out what had happened with her teaching certificate, but the school board wouldn't provide any clarity either. After two months, they simply closed her employment. Your mother is sorely missed, by her students and fellow faculty, but by me as well."

"How strange," Nicole remarked.

"That's why you've come to see me, isn't it?"

"Actually, no." She saw a muscle in his square jaw clench. "I was hoping you could help me with something else, although my mother's teaching license may somehow play a role in all this."

"I fear it might," he agreed in a steely voice.

"You know why I'm here?"

The room was deadly quiet. Nicole could hear two women laughing in the main office and the faint chiming sound of Microsoft's Windows theme as a computer sprang to life.

"Yes, Nicole, I believe I do." He leaned back in his chair, a pensive frown marring his aged but timelessly handsome face. "At one time, your father and I were close. I don't know what he got himself mixed up in or how this involves your mother, if it does at all, and I'm not sure I want to know. Your father came to me a few weeks before his death asking for my help." Nicole watched as he pulled his wallet from the rear pocket of his gray trousers. He reached for something from the inner confines of the worn leather billfold and held it out to her. "This is what you've come for."

"A key?" she asked upon seeing the small piece of silver metal. It felt as if a hand were slowly tightening around her throat. "To what?"

"A safe deposit box. Your father said he needed a place to store some extremely sensitive paperwork, but he couldn't have anything in his name. He was nervous and scared, mumbling something about corruption. I thought perhaps he was delusional or on drugs, but just the same, I agreed to do as he asked. The box has remained untouched since he pa.s.sed away."

Nicole shook her head. "I don't understand. Why didn't you just give me the key years ago or give it to my mother?"

"Luke was very specific. It could only be you, and I would know when you were ready. Look, Nicole, all these years, the only time I'd remember I even had the key was when I changed wallets. I never thought anything would come of it. Take it," he ordered as he handed her the key, "something tells me your father wasn't as paranoid as I once believed him to be."

"You say you're listed as a deputy?"

Nicole tried to quash her momentary panic. "Deputy?"

"Meaning you're authorized to have access to the box," the middle-aged redhead clarified in a bored monotone as she pecked at the keys on her computer. Her creased eyelids were coated with a layer of blue shadow and her chubby cheeks bore a heavy stroke of pink blush.

When Nicole arrived home yesterday after her visit with Mr. Thomas, she'd found the house hot and empty. She'd used the time alone to search through her mother's desk, hoping to learn exactly what was going on in her life-only to be horrified by what she found.

Tucked into the bureau's tiny drawers were several menacing letters from the IRS inquiring about deductions her mother had taken on past tax returns, a notice from the Social Security Administration informing her that she'd been overpaid eight thousand dollars in survivor benefits, at least three overdraft notices from the bank, the registered letters Mr. Thomas said had been sent from the school board, and a notice from the school's insurance company stating benefits would be terminated now that her mother was no longer an employee of the school district.

At least she knew the reason her mother had been circling want ads in the local flyer.

Nicole noticed something peculiar about the dates on all the correspondence. All the mail had been postmarked in the month of March. How could her mother's entire world simply fall apart in the span of one month?

Kira Anthony and her henchmen.

Dinner had been a practice in patience. It took every ounce of restraint she possessed not to tell her mother that she'd met with Mr. Thomas and now knew she was no longer teaching. And she'd wanted to question her mother about the letters hidden in her desk.

"Do you remember if your signature is on file? If we don't have your signature, you can't get to the box without the renter being present."

They were seated in a small gla.s.s cubicle just off the bank's main lobby in the heart of Washington DC. With all the mergers and acquisitions in the banking industry over the past decade, Nicole had been surprised to find the financial inst.i.tution still existed.

"Signature?"

"Oh, never mind," the redhead said, bringing a plump finger to her rouged lips, "here it is." She smiled. "I'll just need you to sign the electronic pad here." She pulled a device across the desk that looked similar to the machines retailers used for processing credit cards. "And I'll need some identification."

After showing her driver's license, Nicole nervously scribbled her name and waited with bated breath. This is it, she thought, they'll know I'm a fraud and have me arrested. Right now, she is probably pressing some secret b.u.t.ton under her desk to alert the authorities.

"The number of the box is 423. I'll get the guard key. And you have your key? We need both to open the box."

"I have it," she gulped with relief. She wondered how her father had managed her signature twelve years ago. And who had been paying for the box all this time?

423. The box number was the same as her birthday, April twenty-third. The room with the safe deposit boxes was a secured area tucked deep inside one of the bank's vaults; the steel- and copper-colored receptacles lined up from floor to ceiling much like post office boxes.

"How much time will you need?"

"Five minutes," Nicole answered, almost breathless with antic.i.p.ation after the small metal bin had been pulled from its tracks and carried over to a private desk. Once alone, she peered inside the container and saw her name written on an envelope in her father's recognizable scrawl. Under the envelope were two bundles of cash bound by rubber bands. She quickly thumbed through the bills. They were all hundreds. There had to be at least twenty thousand dollars there. Under the money was a stack of official certificates, but she placed them aside and returned to the folded manila envelope. Clinging to it was a tiny piece of paper like those inside a Chinese fortune cookie. On one side it was blank, and on the other it read, Your best friend is often in the mirror.

She stuffed it into a zippered pouch in her handbag and opened the envelope. It contained nothing more than a single sheet of old computer paper, the kind with holes along both sides and perforated edges. Random letters were printed on it in a dot-matrix font. It looked similar to the incomprehensible jargon her printer spewed out when she changed the ink cartridge. None of it made sense. She flipped the sheet over, and on the other side, in her father's almost illegible handwriting was a list of names. All had a line through them except for two: Taylor and Kohl.

Her attention returned to the certificates. They were all in Chinese. She recognized the symbols. A Chinese fortune and these strange-looking doc.u.ments that looked like Chinese stocks. Why had her father been hiding these items? Internal Share Certificate was stamped across the top of the stocks in English and Sempco Industrial directly under it.

"Everything okay, miss?" the bank a.s.sociate asked when she reappeared.

Nicole felt like she was going to shatter into a million tiny pieces and knew she probably looked it. She swiftly placed everything back into the safe deposit box, hesitating slightly when her hand touched one of the cash bricks. She recalled the mail she'd found in her mother's desk. This money could come in handy right about now, but her gut told her to leave it. She didn't know where it came from, and for all she knew, it might be blood money-or worse. It might be marked and the minute it the currency reappeared in circulation, the Department of Treasury might come knocking at their door.

"Do you need a few more minutes?"

Nicole shook her head. She couldn't speak. Her father was someone she thought she'd known, but it was turning out that he'd been a man of much mystery and many secrets. And Kira had been right. Judging from the contents inside the safe deposit box, her father might very well have been a criminal.

Shoving the key into her wallet, she watched as the box was returned to its slot. On her way out, she glanced at the bank's clock and remembered it was Wednesday. She was supposed to meet Danielle at Zorba's tonight.

Hopefully by then her legs wouldn't feel like overcooked spaghetti.

Outside the bank, she noticed the change in the sky. It had grown dark. The wind had picked up and the smell of rain was heavy in the summer air. The disc jockey on the car radio that morning had mentioned a coming storm would bring some relief from the record-breaking heat wave, and it looked like he'd been right. She'd had trouble finding a place to park, and had to park her Civic several blocks away. With any luck, she'd make it back to her car before it started to pour. She'd just started across the crosswalk when a large black Chevy Suburban nearly ran her over. She cast an angry glower at the driver but froze when she saw a familiar face at the wheel.

Stella Shevchenko?

It couldn't be!

Her momentary shock was all the time Bogie needed. He jumped out from the pa.s.senger door and shoved Nicole into the backseat. She started to scream, but before she could, the Suburban was already barreling down Ma.s.sachusetts Avenue, Bogie right beside her. The seats were leather and slippery. She struggled to get her balance.

"What the h.e.l.l's going on?"

Bogie's large, meaty hands were clenched securely around both her wrists, and her angry attempts to kick free from him did little good. He held her down and pulled the hems of her white linen pants up and removed the pocketknife she'd strapped around her right calf before leaving her mother's house that morning.

After the hijacking in Kenya, Nicole swore she'd never be caught defenseless ever again.

Bogie grinned.

"I'm impressed," he said in his South African accent, holding her knife up in the air like a trophy. "Easier to reach than having to fumble through your pocketbook."

"I thought I was done with you people!"

But deep inside, Nicole had suspected they'd be back-especially after she discovered the heart in the tree.

"Calm down, kid," Stella implored from the driver's seat. "You're not in danger. We just want to know what you found in the bank."

Nicole's blood boiled. "You don't really expect me to tell you, do you?"

Stella's eyes meet Bogie's in the rearview mirror.

"It would make life easier for all of us," Stella replied wearily in her crisp Russian dialect.

A mobile phone rang and Nicole watched Stella bring a shiny black handheld to her ear. "We have her." She snapped the phone shut.