"I don't understand. What does this mean?" Lucy asked.
"That someone knows my past and is digging it up piece by piece. I got a lead to come here, and now I find this. Only problem is I don't know where to go next."
"How are Emma and Tasha involved?"
"I don't know. Emma told Christie she had a part in a play. Maybe they were paid to come here, ask for this room, leave me this note, and then they left. I just hope that means that they're safe." She took another look around the room and the adjoining bathroom. There were no other items of interest. "Thanks for letting me up here," she told Lucy as they made their way downstairs.
"If I can be of any more help, I'll certainly try."
"Will you let me know if Emma or Tasha come back?"
"Of course."
She left her phone number with Lucy and then joined Nathan, who got up from the bench by the door, a questioning gleam in his eyes.
She handed him the ripped photo.
His gaze narrowed. "I remember this event."
"Yes. I thought I was going to be famous when I made the paper."
"Johnny called you his supermodel," Nathan said, a terse note in his voice. "What the hell is this supposed to mean? Was there a note?"
"Nope. I think it means that they can rip me apart whenever they want, or am I being too literal?"
"Let's get out of here," he said, giving her back the clippings.
She put the envelope in her bag and they headed outside. She shivered as the wind gusted down the street, the temperature having dropped at least ten degrees. It was after seven now, and she was happy that the truck was close by, also happy that no one had tampered with it.
"What do you want to do?" Nathan asked, as they fastened their seat belts.
"I have no idea," she said with a sigh. "I need to think, but I'm tired, I'm hungry, and I'm pissed off that I am playing puppet to some master I don't even know."
"I can't do anything about the puppet master, but I can do something about food. You want to get some dinner?"
"I would like to eat something, but you don't have to babysit me, Nathan."
"I'm hungry, too. Where are you staying?"
"In a hotel by Michigan Avenue and the river."
"I know a place in that neighborhood, which is not tied to our past in any way."
"Thank goodness for that." Maybe after some food, she'd be better able to put some of the clues together in a pattern that made sense and would hopefully lead them to whoever was sending her on a sad trip down memory lane.
Nine
In a cozy restaurant, over one of Chicago's infamous deep-dish pizzas laden with vegetables and spicy pepperoni, Bree felt her tension begin to ease. Part of that was because of the pizza and the glass of wine she'd consumed, but most of it had to do with Nathan.
She'd forgotten how much she'd liked him when they were kids, how easy he was to talk to, how he seemed to know what she was thinking or where her brain was going even before she got there. Since they'd tabled all subjects involving the past for the duration of their pizza, it had been fun to hear him talk about his construction business and the triathlon he planned to do in the spring. He also clearly adored Grace, talking with great affection about his niece's love of reading and drama, how she was always roping him into playing imaginary games when he babysat for her.
Nathan had always loved his family beyond compare. She didn't think she'd met anyone who would go to the kind of lengths that Nathan had to protect the people who shared his blood. Certainly, her family had never done that for her.
But she shoved that thought aside, preferring now to concentrate on Nathan's very attractive face, his light-brown eyes that darkened with his moods, his strong jaw that could be incredibly stubborn, his sexily tousled brown hair, his full mouth that could utter both incredibly sharp but also incredibly kind words.
The years had put a few lines around that mouth, but his lips looked full and inviting, and she wondered what it would be like to kiss him. She had a feeling a lot of women wondered that. Their waitress had certainly made more than the normal number of stops by their table to ask if they needed anything, her gaze always on Nathan when she asked the question.
She'd always thought Nathan was attractive, but he'd put up a lot of walls between them as they'd gotten older. Actually, he'd put up a lot of walls around himself in every area of his life. He'd been much more open and outgoing in his early teens. By the end of high school, he'd been closed off, guarded, always on the edge of anger, and her behavior had certainly annoyed him.
"Where are you?" Nathan's voice cut through her reverie.
She started, realizing she was still staring at his mouth. "Sorry. Just thinking."
"About what?"
She raised her gaze to his. "I was actually thinking about you—how different you seem now in some ways, and yet very much like your old self in others."
"Do I want to ask you to explain?" he asked dryly, taking a swig of his beer.
"I'm not sure I could. It's weird how we seem to meet up at critical junctures in our lives. The first time we met was at the shelter. My mom had died a few years earlier, and I was living with my aunt, who had her own struggles. You and your mom and sister were escaping from an abusive situation. But being friends with each other made everything seem better. You were like Grace back then. You loved to tell stories, too, act out imaginary scenes, and I liked being part of that. You made me believe things were going to get better."
He tipped his head. "You made me believe that, too."
"No way."
"Yes, you did. You had the ability to compartmentalize in a way that I didn't even understand back then. But you could turn all your focus onto whatever we were doing, and that's all you cared about, whether you were beating me at board games or conning some street vendor out of a pretzel with some pretty real tears. You were a brilliant and competitive genius."
"I'm glad you said genius. For a minute there, I thought you might go with freak," she said with a smile.
He grinned back at her. "That might have been a better word, but it's what you're doing right now that always made my day better."
"What's that?"
"It's your smile. It didn't come that often in the beginning, and it became a challenge to me to see if I could make it appear."
"Really?" She couldn't imagine he'd cared that much.
"Yeah. Because somehow when you laughed, when you were happy, I felt happy, too."
She was touched by his words. "I think it worked both ways." She paused, tilting her head, as she thought about their past. "But that changed when we met up again in high school. We hadn't seen each other in several years, and I was so excited when I first saw you. I'd been in three foster homes by then and two other high schools, but when I saw you in the gym, it was like my world tilted upright again. I thought, this is going to be okay—Nathan is here."
His gaze darkened. "You never told me that."
"Well, I didn't want it to go to your head. But that first great feeling faded over the next year. Once I got involved with Johnny, you didn’t want much to do with me."
"I couldn't believe you couldn't see what he was really like."
"But was it that obvious then?" she challenged. "I mean, Johnny was funny, right? He was popular. We knew his parents were probably criminals, but a lot of kids had parents who did bad shit—yours and mine included."
Nathan frowned. "He was funny, but there was a core of ruthlessness and cruelty that you didn't see or that he didn't show you. I thought your relationship would be over as fast as it started, because just about nothing lasted back then for more than a few weeks, but you and Johnny just kept getting closer. I tried to warn you a lot of times, but you stopped talking to me."