He twisted to face her fully. “To confirm, are you asking me to promise you won’t get killed?”
“More specifically, that whoever is behind this won’t get spooked, or want me removed for monetary reasons, and use me for target practice on the archery range.”
“They closed the range five years ago and turned it into a practice putting green.”
“There’s a lake and I bet it’s deep.”
Nico tilted his head to the side. “Can you swim?”
“Yes, but swimming won’t help if they tie me in a sack.” She warmed to her topic as Nico made a note on his tablet, no doubt about her aquatic ability and disinclination to be killed in cold blood. “They could lure me out to that boathouse, then knock me on the head and push me out a window. Bodies sink before they float and I have dense bones. Iwouldn’t be found for a while.”
“I thought you had glass wrists.”
“I contain multitudes.”
“There are less risky ways to deal with a corpse at a cottage.” Nico put down the tablet as if to give this predicament serious consideration. “All that forest, for instance, and the closest neighbor is over a kilometer away. They could leave our bodies in the woods and wait for animals to dispose of the evidence.”
“Our bodies?Plural?”
“I’d be dead too.”
“Why would you be dead?”
“Roger told me to help you.”
“So?”
“So, they’d need to kill me to get to you,” he said, like it was obvious.
“Oh.” She couldn’t help the grin that this, frankly, superhot statement caused.Kill me to get to you.Obviously, that was a worst-case scenario and a terrible outcome, but wowzers. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. To go back to your original question, the Badgertons are more the killing-with-words-rather-than-knives type.”
“Would you have said they were the keeping-big-family-secrets type?”
“All families keep secrets.”
“Mine doesn’t.”
“No?”
“That would mean a level of effort neither of my parents bothered with after their remarriages.” She rushed on before he could reply, unsure of what had led to that particular overshare. “Anyway, tell me about my new life as Valerie Badgerton.”
“You don’t want to talk about the other two murder categories?”
Love and lust. She kept her gaze away from his forearms. “I’m good.”
“Then back to your story.” Nico referred to his notes, which sheassumed were color-coded and organized into relevant subheadings. “We’ll keep your name, age, and occupation all the same.” He looked up with those eyes and she found it hard to pay attention.
“Makes sense,” she agreed, casting around for her tea to give herself a moment to recover. “Sticking to the truth will avoid confusion.”
“We can say Roger hadn’t met you until the celebration of life. He was struck by your similarity to Yvette and wondered if it was possible you could be his daughter.”
That had been true enough. Valerie was back to thinking about the messiness of what would happen if Roger was proven right and one of his siblings had hidden knowledge of his daughter. She shivered at the hurt and fury that would cause, and wondered if any of it would be deflected onto her.
Well, those were worries for later. She’d committed to this, and if she thought through the impact of everything she did, she’d never leave her bed. A lot could happen in two months. Perhaps there wouldn’t be any fallout. Perhaps when the true lost Badgerton daughter was found, they’d be so happy they’d forgive Valerie’s role as pretender.
She liked this version of a potential future.
