“Where were you?” Nick asked.
“A small town in Arizona.”
“So, some random guy, what? Hit you on the head, drove you across the country, and convinced you you were Sesame Hemsworth of Bumfuck, Arizona?”
“Well, Nicky, I know how unbelievable it must sound—”
“Do you, ‘Beth’?” he said, putting air quotes around her name.
“Same old grumpy Nicky,” she said, unfazed by him, much like the real Beth had been. “I prefer Sesame now, but if it makes you more comfortable, you can call me Beth.”
“How about I call you—”
A movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention and cut off his insult. Riley slumped even lower in the chair with her eyes closed, her head lolling to the side.
“Thorn? You good?” he snapped, hurrying to her side.
She groaned, then whispered. “I don’t feel so good.”
“You want some water? Some food? Burt ate your lunch. You’re probably starving since your dog ate your lunch.”
“I just need to stop the spinning,” she whispered hoarsely.
Nick felt helpless. If there was one thing he fucking hated, it was lying schemers in his living room and also feeling helpless. “Here.” Dragging her and the chair over to the wall, he braced one of her hands against the wall, then adjusted her legs so one foot pressed into the floor. “Better?”
She opened one eye, managing to look both nauseated and amused. “What are you doing?”
“One hand on the wall. One foot on the floor. It worked for the drunk spins in college.”
“Riley, are you dizzy again? Do you want another smoothie? I can text Wilhelm,” Sesame offered.
“No, thank you,” Riley told her. “Just go on with your story.”
Nick was torn. On one hand, he wanted to lecture Riley on getting kidnapped and making herself sick while he carried her up to bed and force-fed her ginger ale and soup. On the other, he wanted to expose this busty fraud, then make Kellen arrest her.
“Why did this guy abduct you in the first place?” Josie asked, getting back to the topic at hand.
“Well, it’s all a little fuzzy. But Ithinkit had something to do with me hiring a carpenter here in Harrisburg to do something and then not paying him right away. I must have bumped my head when we were arguing about his invoice. The next thing I knew, I was Sesame Hemsworth and the carpenter was my husband. I worked in his family’s corner drug store and felt like a fish out of water, but I blamed it on the amnesia. Soon I was bonding with his three children like they were mine,” Sesame explained.
Her lower lip quivered.
“I thought they were mine,” she said. Then she began to wail. “But they weren’t. It was all a lie, and when I finally remembered who I really was, they all packed up and fled to Colombiaaaaaaaa.”
“Like, South Carolina?” Josie pressed, ignoring the woman’s distress.
“Nooooo! Like South Americaaaaaaaaa.”
Nick studied Sesame closely as something tickled at his gut.
Sesame was crying without actual tears. Beth Weber had been a gifted actress who went all in when it came to trying to get out of trouble, but she had never mastered manufacturing real tears.
Lots of people couldn’t cry on command, he reminded himself. Lots of people giggled and wrinkled their noses in the same way.
It wasn’t her. It couldn’t be. Not when she’d just shown up of her own free will and announced herself with a confetti cannon. Not when he hadn’t figured out where he’d gone wrong. Not when he hadn’t made it right.
“So your disappearance had nothing to do with the warehouse fire?” Nick asked.
“What warehouse fire?” she asked in a tiny voice. “I still don’t remember everything leading up to the amnesia. Did I witness a crime?”
