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“Maeve wanted her to have the money, and she didn’t want her—you—to know where it came from. I was to arrange for it to come through me as an inheritance.”
“Okay...”
“Maeve gave me a safety-deposit key. Said not to go there until she’d passed. When I did, I found a note. It was for Celeste. For you. It said that to find your inheritance, remember how you liked to spend your time at her house. The real key is there.”
His voice lowered with each word, drawing them out as he watched my face for a flicker of recognition. Surely, I would understand my grandmother’s words, and he would see that understanding in my eyes.
“How I liked to spend my time at her house?” I said.
“A special place, obviously,” he said, voice snapping with impatience. “A secret spot? In the house or the forest or the swamp?”
“I had a few special spots,” I said. “But I also had a bunch of hobbies, and she could mean one of them.”
I managed to say this without even a hint of stifled laughter.
Ah, Gran, even from the grave, you can drive me to distraction, but I do love you. Crafty old fox? Nope. Crafty old rabbit, leading this puffed-up predator on a merry chase.
Now let’s see if I learned anything from you, Gran. I’ll keep this fox running in circles while he gives me what I need.
“I suppose that’s what you want from me,” I said. “A list of all the places Gran might have hidden Grandpa’s money and a promise that I won’t beat you to it.”
“I don’t need a promise. I know who you are, remember?”
I bit my tongue against reminding him how utterly useless that information was.
Not such a smart fox, are you, Liam? Well, that makes it easy for me to play along.
“Right,” I said. “But that doesn’t quite seem like a fair deal. You get the money—my money—and I get your silence.”
“I will give you a third of the money,” he said.
“No.”
He pretended to consider before saying, “Fine. Half.”
I promise, fingers crossed behind my back. Let me find the money, and half of it will be yours, and you can trust me to tell you how much I found.
I could trust him to tell me. Because I already knew the number. Zero.
Gran had Liam’s number. She’d thought he was useful, and she’d thought he was charming and handsome, but she’d also known he was out to screw her over. So she was leading him on this merry chase from beyond the grave. I hoped she was looking down and laughing her ass off.
“I don’t want any money,” I said, my chin lifting. “A man died for it. Blood money. You can have it all on two conditions. First, you don’t ever bring my grandparents into this—wherever you got the money from, it’s not connected to them.”
He tried to keep from smiling. “I believe I can agree to that. And condition number two?”
“When I’m ready to come forward, you’ll do it with me.”
His brows rose.
I continued, “You want to salvage your career, right? You’ll come forward with me, and we’ll pretend that you were trying to expose the imposter all along. Hell, you can even say you tracked me down and brought me here.”
His eyes glinted. Oh, you foolish girl. Giving me all the money in return for two things that help me more than they help you. Yes, I’ll happily leave your poor dead grandparents out of this. Yes, I’ll happily take the credit for uncovering the imposter.
“Oh!” I said. “There’s one more thing.”
He tensed.
I dropped my voice. “This may sound silly to you, but I want to know more about Gran. About how the imposter treated her. About how Gran felt about her. How Gran died. Anything you can tell me. I just...” I lifted my gaze to his, blinking as if holding back tears. “I just need to know, for better or worse. I torment myself thinking of how that monster might have treated Gran. It keeps me awake at night.”
“I’m sure it does,” he murmured, trying hard for sympathy and looking as if he was holding in gas.
“That’s the deal, then,” I said. “I’ll compile my list of places in the morning. Then we’ll talk about Gran. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
