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“You haven’t ruined our night,” he said, stroking her hair.“This has been the best weekend I’ve had in forever.We should do this more often.Just you and me and Dotti.”
“Yes,” she agreed.But she said it with an anxious heart.“And I’d love it if you cooked dinner.Thank you,” she added.Dinner was going to be a simple affair tonight, anyway.Sausages done in a frying pan on the small gas stove housed in a hidden compartment in the van—along with a countertop, it became a handy outdoor kitchen.Nico could throw together a quick salad from the few vegetables left in the tiny refrigerator and they could finish it off with some crusty bread she’d bought from the tourist center this morning.
As she watched Nico duck his head, bending his tall frame to get to the fridge inside the van she pushed a hand in to her shorts pocket where the little box sat like a stone.But the romantic atmosphere had been ruined.And now that niggling worry was weighing down on her mind like a bloody ten-tonne anchor, she couldn’t think straight anymore.She couldn’t ask Nico to marry her now.Not until it was confirmed one way or the other.And she couldn’t tell him of her suspicions.Not until she was completely sure herself.
CHAPTER TWO
NICO SAT BACK in his office chair, emitting a deep sigh.It was only ten in the morning and he already wished he was anywhere but at work.The pile of paperwork stared at him from the corner of his desk.So many files to read and review, but he just couldn’t find the energy.His boss, Chief Inspector Shadbolt had volunteered him to help the Hobart unit out by going over their case files on a tricky murder that remained unsolved four months down the track.But the words kept blurring together and he couldn’t concentrate.Perhaps a cup of coffee might help.
But he knew the real problem; the reality of returning to work after his short holiday was dragging him down.The few days’ reprieve he and Lacey had enjoyed on the weekend already seemed eons ago and it was only Tuesday.Such a great getaway, he thought as he put his hands behind his head and tipped the chair back.The peace and the beauty of the Tarkine was still lodged in his soul, and he couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t been there before.Lacey had picked the perfect place to take Dotti 2.0 out for her first run.
Walking the trails in the luminous rays of the summer sunlight with Smudge beside them had brought them closer together as the tranquility of the forest seeped into their bones, driving away the stress of everyday life.
It’d been six weeks now since he’d been wounded on top of Barn Bluff while in pursuit of the double murderer Sandra Brown.He’d been lucky that the bullet had been a through and through just above his hip, and hadn’t pierced any vital organs.But his recovery had been slower than he would’ve liked, and he’d only returned to active duty two weeks ago.Light duties—which really meant deskbound—had been driving him slowly insane.Shadbolt seemed to be intentionally keeping him tied to his desk with this newest case, reading over files for days on end.But the easy strolling through the rainforest had lightened his heart somehow, chasing away the ache in his side until he barely remembered it.
And after their hikes, they’d gone back to Lacey’s van at night and made unhurried love in her rooftop bed while watching the stars wheel in their lazy dance overhead, and he easily forgot that he’d even been injured.Despite their busy lives and hectic work schedule, they still had a great sex life.But even he had to admit that sometimes it was rushed or squeezed in between a late-night work call and the need for sleep.It was nice to slow down for once and take stock.Good for them both.And good for his still healing body to take it slow—not that he’d admit that to another living human being, including Lacey.Their connection was getting deeper and more substantial all the time, but this weekend away had cemented his commitment to her into the very core of his being.
Lacey seemed to have been slightly distracted, however, as if she had something on her mind.And then on Sunday night she’d become sick suddenly, which had worried him and put a dampener on their mood.But she’d seemed to recover quickly enough and was smiling at him throughout the rest of the night, even managing to eat half a sausage and some bread, but she’d turned her nose up at the salad for some reason.
That night, he’d held her in his arms and kissed the top of her head and they’d talked instead of making love.Lacey had finally fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder, her arm thrown over his chest, emitting soft snores, dueling with the sound of Smudge’s snores from his spot on his doggy bed on the van floor below.And he was fine with that.He hadn’t been able to sleep, feeling strangely energized and wide awake.So he lay there contemplating life and love and everything in between.
The idea of asking Lacey to marry him had been rolling around in his head over the past few weeks and it was getting stronger every day.Silently, he berated himself for not being better organized; he could’ve popped the question while they’d been in Corinna if only he’d decided which ring to buy.The owner of the local jewelry shop had been sworn to secrecy over Nico’s increasingly frequent visits.But no matter how long he pored over the various diamond cuts and even the differing precious stones—like the large, square emerald or the marquise-cut sapphire—Nico couldn’t find the exact right one for Lacey.It was driving him crazy.Maybe he should bite the bullet, ask her to marry him and let her pick out her own ring.Yeah, that might be the easier way to go.
Coward, a little voice in his head whispered.And he knew it was true.Something else was holding him back, and he could probably put it down to the way Marietta had shredded his heart into a million pieces so that he no longer trusted himself when it came to making a commitment.
He loved Lacey with all his heart.He wanted to get married.Even have kids one day.He could do this.And he was going to do it right.Making up his mind, he decided he was going back to the jewelry shop this afternoon to choose a ring.
Lacey was out on patrol with Linc and wasn’t due back at the station until four.That should give him plenty of time to go down and make the purchase and then find a suitable hiding place in his office afterward.He needed to be quick and discreet, making sure none of the other officers saw him.Tyrell especially would know something was up; he was too good at reading people’s faces.If Nico returned to the station with a little blue box in his pocket, Tyrell would notice something was awry and call him out.Nico liked and respected the African-American man originally from Detroit; they’d become great friends over the past two years.But he couldn’t have Tyrell knowing what he was up to; he’d never live it down.
Linc and Lacey had been sent to check out a report from a farmer who said he’d heard screams and other strange noises during the night.The farmer ran an alpaca stud around twenty minutes outside of Burnie, but hadn’t bothered to call in his concerns until this morning.Nico was dubious about the story, wondering if the old farmer had been hitting the booze just a little too hard last night.But Shadbolt decided with all the unusual criminal activity Burnie had encountered recently—including not one, but two murderers caught in the space of six months—that every lead should be followed up and put to rest.He wasn’t taking any chances.
Nico respected his boss’ wisdom, even if he disagreed with his rationale.Although, the uncertain specter of the mysterious serial killer hunting in the northwestern corner of Tasmania still hung over their heads like a stinking pile of dog shit.Nothing had been heard on that front for over six months now.There’d been no more murders and no fresh leads in that time.Perhaps the killer had moved on, away from the heat of an active investigation.Gone to find easier prey in an area where the cops weren’t on high alert for his presence.Maybe he was no longer even on the island.Nico could only hope.
At the thought of Lacey following up a midnight distress call, he felt a spike of anxiousness.He always worried about her whenever she wasn’t with him.Ever since that phone call from his father right before Christmas.The threat might’ve been a veiled one, but Nico had heard the intended malice behind his words and it scared him.Nico trusted Linc implicitly and knew that Lacey couldn’t have been partnered with a better bloke.However, not even Linc understood the danger she could be in.He certainly didn’t understand the panic that gnawed around the edges of Nico’s thoughts day and night, wondering how he was going to protect her from his father.
Nico had informed Shadbolt about his father rising from the dead; he was duty bound just in case it impacted on any current or past investigations.And of course Lacey had filled Linc in; as her trusted partner, he had every right to know, since it may also put him in danger.But no one else at the station knew of his private pain.Lacey had downplayed the danger to Linc, saying that she was only telling him because Nico had insisted, and that she didn’t believe she was in any danger.But she didn’t know Serge like he did.Serge was canny, not book-smart, but street-smart, a sharp intelligence born on the battlefield.You needed to be smart to fake your own death and get away with it for seventeen years.They still hadn’t identified the body they’d exhumed from Serge’s supposed grave.Which was frustrating; if they had an ID for whoever that poor man in the burnt-out car had been, it might unearth a connection to Serge, lead to fresh clues as to his whereabouts.
Nico conjured up an image of his father, Serge.Or he should say Reginald Smith, as that was the alias he’d been using until a few years ago.Serge’s aliases seemed to have changed over the years with rapid speed and it was hard to keep up.In his memory, Nico saw a long, hawk-like nose, forever slightly crooked because it’d been broken during his father’s early years of playing rugby.A strong, determined jawline, not much different to Nico’s, except for the shallow cleft in his chin.His brother, Brice, had inherited that dimple, but Nico was thankful his chin remained cleft-free.High, dark eyebrows that Serge had a habit of winging up sardonically whenever he was skeptical about something—which was often.And equally dark eyes, almost black, able to chill a person to the bone.Serge had always been clean-shaven, a hangover from his military days, but Nico suspected he might be sporting a lot more facial hair these days in an attempt to hide his identity.The man was tall, had an imposing way of towering over a person.Nico remembered with a shiver of trepidation how his father had loomed over him as a child as he meted out his strict rules and even stricter punishment.
Serge had spent fifteen years serving in the French Foreign Legion and a year fighting in the Gulf War in the early nineties before returning home to his family a changed man.Nico had only been two years old, and didn’t remember much of that time.One of the few things he did remember was that Serge had been a hard man; a hard taskmaster to both his wife and his children.The French Foreign Legion, or FFL, wasn’t easy to get into; only one in ten even made it through basic training, so Nico understood a man needed a certain edge to survive in that kind of environment.But Serge’s edge was more than hard.He was completely inflexible, with a definite mean streak.The FFL motto was “Honor and Fidelity,” but Nico doubted Serge had ever possessed either quality.When Serge had been pronounced dead after the fiery car crash when Nico was fifteen, he’d been secretly relieved to be rid of his father’s tyranny.But it seemed the man had faked his death only to come back and begin tormenting Nico with his elusive presence all over again.
Unable to help himself, Nico pulled out his phone and checked his personal email, but there were no new messages.Damnit to hell.He’d been hoping for an update from Patrick McTernan, but there was nothing.
McTernan was a private investigator whom Nico had first hired back when he’d heard rumors that his father was still alive.McTernan had been thorough and was good at his job, eventually confirming that the rumors were indeed true.At the time, Nico hadn’t wanted to hear the truth—that his father had betrayed his family and thought nothing of leaving them to cope alone and bereft, so he’d shut the investigation down.But just because Nico didn’t want to believe it was true didn’t make it so, and he and his mother, brother, and younger sister had to face facts that their father and husband was the lowest kind of rat fink who’d ever walked this earth.Not only had he verbally and emotionally abused them when he’d been around, but he hadn’t even had the decency to leave them like a man; instead, he’d taken the coward’s way out.
Nico’s guts seethed at the thought he’d even wasted one minute grieving for that deadbeat.Serge was no father to him.Or Brice, or Gaëlle.Never had been, never would be.
He remembered with great clarity his father’s words on the night he’d called him six weeks ago, right before Christmas.Serge had said,“We have some unfinished business, you and I.I’ll look forward to meeting you soon.I can’t wait to look into my son’s face and see what kind of man he’s grown into.”Then Serge had laughed, a cold, calculating sound that had all the hairs on the back of Nico’s neck rising to attention.He heard the implied threat in his father’s words.And when Serge had mentioned how beautiful Lacey was, and how Nico needed to take care of her, there was no mistaking that he included her in his threat.Which was why Nico hated to let Lacey out of his sight.
Why was Serge disturbing Nico’s hard-earned peace?It was a question he had no answer for.Yet.But he was getting closer.McTernan had been on Serge’s trail since early January.It was costing Nico an arm and a leg, but money wasn’t the issue here.
Six months ago, McTernan had been the one to uncover Serge’s defection to Tasmania from a small town in Victoria two and a half years earlier.Back then, Nico had put McTernan off once he heard that news, unwilling to look too deeply into the consequences of that information.But a month ago, not long after that threatening phone call, he’d re-employed the man to continue the trail.
Using CCTV to trace the old Volvo Serge had driven onto the ferry in Melbourne two years ago, the investigator had uncovered clues to suggest that as soon as he landed in Launceston, his father had sold the Volvo and used cash to continue his travels, so it was near impossible to track him.Also disposing of the name Reginald Smith, Serge then went through a variety of new names over the next few years.
It’d taken McTernan nearly a week to pick up the trail again in Launceston and find the person Serge had sold the Volvo to, but that was the break he’d needed.Serge had not only swapped the Volvo for an even older, beat-up Ford the man was selling, but had paid him way more money than it was worth just to sweeten the deal.
Serge was a wily bastard, and he was clearly trying to hide his trail.He’d gone through two more vehicles after that on his way down to Hobart, as well as many iterations of his name.But McTernan had finally uncovered the details of a possible current vehicle Serge was driving—a rusty, vintage Subaru.
