on chopping duty.”
Nina smiled. “I’ll make you proud.”
She got to work cutting veggies as best she could with her right hand while Wyatt’s strong hands cracked each egg with ease—though who would eat all of this food was anyone’s guess. But even with the easiness of their friendship, the weight of the day washed back like the incoming tide. It always did, and Nina wasn’t sure she’d know what to do if one day she no longer had to worry about it.
“Tell me what all this is about.”
The knife slipped across her finger, and Nina cried out.
Wyatt rushed around the island and pulled her to the sink. He ran the cold water gently over her right hand and held her finger there. The liquid washed away the drops of blood and helped numb the pain. Too bad something so simple didn’t work on everything.
He ran his thumb over the tiny cut. “It doesn’t look too bad, but you should put a bandage on it.”
Nina got one from the end cupboard and sat so he’d know she didn’t need his help. She finished the rest of the chopping without speaking, and then pushed the cutting board to his side of the island. He looked up from stirring, evidently content to wait for her to be ready to answer his request.
“My mother was killed, you know that. Parker said it. Her name was Congresswoman Clarissa Holmes.” Nina sucked in a breath. “When I was five years old my parents separated for a while. My mother began having an affair with another man.”
Nina clenched her fingers together in her lap, but it hurt so she let go. “I would see him when the nanny brought me home from the park. His name was Mr. Thomas, and he was very handsome. He would have tea with my mother and me every day, and he would tell me stories about pirates, and fair maidens, about spies and bad guys. I think he was one of them. A spy, I mean.
“Maybe he’s part of the reason I said yes when the CIA wanted to recruit Sienna and me. I looked for him in their databases as much as I could, but never found a single trace of anyone with the first or last name of Thomas who looked like him. Maybe I was wrong about him being a real spy, but that’s what I thought for a long time. Anyway, one day—I was six and a half, I think—we came home from the park and the front door was open.”
Wyatt slid the eggs into two bowls and came over. He sat on the stool beside her, but didn’t say anything.
“She was in the bedroom. There was blood everywhere. The nanny started screaming, so I ran to the study and called 911 from the phone. She fled out the front door and left me there. The police found me, on the stairs. Alone in the house with my dead mother.”
“And the police thought your father did it?”
“It was his letter opener. He’d left it when he moved out, but he hadn’t been there in months. I was sent to live with my grandparents, and they shipped me off to boarding school. I don’t think they were too interested in another child, especially one who had gone through a trauma.
“I went to see my father after I turned eighteen. He said it wasn’t him, and he wasn’t lying. It never seemed right to me that he had just shown up that day and killed her. But the police never believed me about Mr. Thomas.” Nina blew out a breath. “I’ve been thinking it through ever since.”
Wyatt nodded.
“When I told the police about Mr. Thomas they thought I had invented him to cover for my father. They never found the nanny—she just disappeared. No one else knew anything about the man who’d been spending all that time with my mother. They thought he didn’t exist because she hadn’t told anyone—not her friends, or employees—about him. They even tried to get this counselor to say I was making the whole thing up, like I was hysterical or delusional or something. Like I’d made up the idea of another suspect just so they wouldn’t send my father to jail.”
Nina squeezed her eyes shut. “I was the kid in school whose father killed her mother and who made up a story. The crazy child no one wanted their kid to hang around with because my delusion might get them killed, too.”
“Except Sienna.”
“She was as alone as I was, and she didn’t care what anyone else thought.”
Nina had worked for years with her best friend, Sienna. Playing bad guys off against each other, rehashing missions that had gone bad. They had been friends since that first day of third grade at boarding school, and they’d been inseparable ever since.
Except that Sienna had married Parker a couple of months back. Nina didn’t begrudge the happiness Sienna had found with the marshal. Sienna certainly deserved it after she was attacked on a mission and got amnesia. Nina had tried to help her remember where she’d hidden the sensitive information, which had presented a significant breach of national security. Sienna and her husband had cleared all that up, though, and fallen in love in the process.
But Nina couldn’t help feeling like maybe she’d been left behind.
Wyatt returned her smile. “And...now you’re trying to find this Mr. Thomas guy? To prove that your father is innocent and get him out of prison?”
“My father is dead.”
* * *
Wyatt swallowed against the lump in his throat. “I see.”
An innocent man had died in prison? There wasn’t much that Nina would achieve by unearthing something everyone else involved probably considered over and done with. He didn’t like it, but things were what they were. Still, the look on her face pricked his heart.
“I could...make some calls.” He took a breath. “Find the original investigating FBI agent, see if I can maybe get you a copy of the file.”
If she saw the evidence against her father for herself then she would know why he’d been put away. Maybe after that she could be convinced she didn’t need to continue on this fruitless search. Wyatt wasn’t discounting her memories, but she had been a child. Whether her mother had been having an affair or not, her father had been convicted for a reason. The evidence had to have been conclusive, or there would never have been a guilty verdict.
He believed in the justice system, despite its flaws. Wyatt believed if the evidence hadn’t been there, then the wrong person would not have been sent to prison.
“You would do that?” Nina’s look was full of hope, of wonder, that he might be able to help her. “Could you get the file?”
Wyatt nodded. “It’s worth a try.” He had a cousin who was an FBI agent that he could ask. If only to put to rest her questions, and this search she was on, to find a truth that was likely anything but. It’d be worth a call to help her do what he’d had to.
Move on.
Have you, really?
“Thank you.” She jumped up and put her arms around him.
Wyatt was taken aback for a moment, but remembered himself fast enough that he could return the hug before she got embarrassed over what she’d done. When was the last time someone had hugged him to say thank you? He wasn’t sure he could remember.
When they’d eaten, he
