Soren leaned back, his eyes turning cold as ice. “The housekeepers don’t have the code, and the regular security guys say they never opened the safe. The next person to check it was Camilla, and the jewels were gone.”
“Completely gone? Nothing left in their place?”
“Gone. All the pieces. Necklace and earrings.”
Nick thought he might be sick. Rowan hadn’t been lying about the replicas, which meant the Stevensons had hidden them, thinking they were the real thing, in order to frame him for a crime that, as far as they were concerned, never really happened.
Soren ran a hand along his desk. “You told me about opening the safe to check on the jewels after you saw the rumpled bedspread. That’s a pretty damning piece of evidence, don’t you think? You don’t want to deal with charges like this. Just let this thing at Wicked Divine go.”
Nick’s gaze snapped to Soren’s.
“Everyone knows who you are,” Soren whispered under his breath. “You don’t want to mess with these people. They aren’t like you and me.”
All of Nick’s internal warning flares started firing like the Fourth of July. Verinetti had lied to Rowan. Nothing she could do could save him. Verinetti and his crew knew who he was and had planned to blackmail him all along, and he’d bet his life the vampires knew too.
“You set me up,” Nick said through his teeth. “Begging me to fill in for you at the Stevensons’ summer home. You told me it was for Rhonda, so you could be with her on your anniversary, but you don’t care about Rhonda. You’ve been fooling around on her. No, that was an excuse to get me out there so you could frame me. You’re working for him. You did all this because you need detectives who will look the other way when your boss says so, to protect NAVAK.”
Soren chuckled under his breath. “You were always so perceptive. Congratulations, you solved the case, Detective. Now, accept the reality that you don’t want to be sniffing too close to this flame, you know what I mean? You’ll get your nose burned.”
Nick tapped his pen on his desk. “I know exactly what you mean. You’ve made the situation more than clear.”
“Good.” Soren stood, a shit-eating grin on his face. “Oh, and Nick, keep this conversation between us. I’d hate for others to assume you’re hiding something about this jewel theft.”
Nick swallowed down the bile rising in his throat and forced himself to remain calm. He’d get this bastard, but he’d do it the smart way. Letting his emotions get the most of him now was not the way to win this game.
“Understood. Uh, I better get to work. Got a ton of email.”
Soren nodded smugly and left his office.
Nick rubbed his chest. Rowan had been right, and he understood now why she’d done what she’d done. Manhattan was a city of secrets. When he’d caught her in Stevenson’s closet, she had no reason to trust him. Hell, he could have been someone like Soren. She’d taken a risk telling him who and what she was. In the beginning, she hadn’t known him enough to trust him. Of course she’d lied. He might have done the same thing in her shoes. Hell, he’d just allowed Soren to believe he’d been bought. That was a lie. Nick had no intention of letting Soren or Stevenson get away with blackmailing him.
But first he needed to warn Rowan that Verinetti was using her. He picked up his phone and texted her.
Need to see you. Tonight?
* * *
The important thingwas keeping Nick safe.Rowan repeated that to herself as she dressed in the backless red minidress she’d purchased specifically for its ability to be distracting. Michael was taking her to dinner with Malvern, the master of the NAVAK vampires. She needed to keep him from asking questions about the video at Wicked Divine and to redirect his coven’s energies away from the man she loved.
Nick. She couldn’t stop thinking about him. But he hadn’t called her and it was clear from what he’d said the other night, the night they’d made love, the night he’d remembered her stealing the jewel, that he didn’t trust her, might never trust her again. Shehadlied to him. All the reasons and excuses she’d given him meant nothing. No reason in the world would excuse her behavior. But she suspected there was more to the story. He might not admit it to himself, but the damage he carried from his past was still with him. Nick had been abused as a child. He’d become a police officer and then a detective to compensate for what he had to do in his youth to survive. Perhaps he didn’t want to bond with her, not just because she’d lied but because on some level he didn’t think he was worth that sort of commitment.
She wondered if she would ever be the same again or if the unrequited connection she felt to Nick would drive her as crazy as it had Alexander. At least she had this dinner, and the correlating hope that what she was doing was good for Nick, to distract her from her predicament.
A white owl landed on her terrace railing, and Rowan went outside to meet Michael. She’d spelled the boundaries of her home so he could no longer get in without an invitation, and no way would she ruin all her hard work by inviting him in now. She watched him slowly transform to his commonly used and preferred human form, which unfortunately was completely naked.
“Hello, Michael,” Rowan said, unable to keep the disgust from her voice.
“Rowan. Aren’t you a sight? That dress should be a registered weapon.”
“I thought that was the point. Distract Malvern. Keep him from asking too many questions about the attack on Wicked Divine. What about you? Do you plan to show up to this vampire dinner naked?” She crossed her arms over her chest.
“No. I have a car waiting for us downstairs. Far easier to come up this way than to deal with the doorman.” He gave her a lecherous grin.
“You just wanted to show me your dick, didn’t you?” She made certain that every word was loaded with assurance that she was unimpressed.
“Just thought you might like to see what you’ve been missing.”
She shook her head. “I haven’t missed anything about you.”
