Then There Were Three

“Told you, Chief. She won’t talk to anyone but you.”

Obviously, Nic wasn’t going to get this on his own. He tightened his grip on the door handle, ready to end the suspense. “Anything else?”

“Good luck.” Jurado handed him the file folder containing the incident report. With a sigh, he headed toward Operations. “You know where I’ll be.”

The instincts that had kept Nic alive for so long on the streets suddenly revved into gear. He didn’t know what was on the opposite side of this wall, but Nic knew that whatever—whoever she was—would rock his day.

Not bothering to glance at the report, he opened the door to find a teenage girl dozing in his chair, sandaled feet with brightly polished toes propped on the corner of his desk.

She jerked awake at his entrance. Her head snapped back, and she glanced at him, blinking away sleep.

Nic had been with the NOPD for years. Before the new mayor of New Orleans had appointed him police chief, he’d been commander of the high-profile and highly pain-in-the-ass Eighth District, which included the French Quarter, Central Business District and Harrah’s Casino. He’d seen it all. Nowadays it took something really good to surprise him.

The young girl staring at him through unfamiliar eyes surprised him. Probably because the only thing unfamiliar about her were the eyes. The rest of her, from the top of her tawny head to those brightly painted toenails, was pure DiLeo.

Nic blinked, but the girl was still there, staring up at him from a face all-too recognizable to deny a blood connection.

If the tawny hair and olive-skinned features didn’t give her away, the look in her eyes did—a mix of curiosity and attitude and a little too much pride.

This girl was a DiLeo, no question.

He wasn’t going to catch a break, was he? And here he’d thought he was done cleaning up family messes.

With a mental sigh, Nic calculated her age, trying to guess which one of his brothers might be responsible.

Fourteen, he decided, early high school. She seemed to be poised right on the brink of becoming a real have-an-answer-for-everything, demand-the-car-keys teen. Nic knew the look. Knew it very well, in fact, as the oldest of six siblings. Which took his youngest brother, Vince, out of contention straightaway. Too young. That left Marc, Anthony or Damon.

Nic’s money was on Damon. But to be fair, Marc could have done the deed. He would have been knee-deep in his rock-star phase about the time this young girl became more than a twinkle in her daddy’s eye. Marc’s band had practiced in the garage behind the family house and no matter how often Nic and his mother had patrolled the premises, the groupies marching through those practices rivaled a Mardi Gras parade.

Definitely not Anthony. His girlfriend of the time had spent more time at the DiLeo house than Anthony. Still did. No way could she have kept a pregnancy secret.

So Nic was going with Damon. Just because he was on Nic’s shit list today.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” the girl announced before he’d gathered his wits enough to begin the interrogation. “I didn’t know about the curfew. And if that disgusting old pervert hadn’t been yelling at those women, the police wouldn’t have even come at all.”

Nic noticed a few things straight off. Her accent for one. There, but distinctly not there. As if no one place had taken root, yet many had left an impression. For some reason he wanted to say European, but knew that wasn’t right.

Then there were the glaring flaws in her reasoning. Namely, she would have still been breaking the curfew ordinance even if she hadn’t been caught. So unless there was parent or guardian in possession of a notarized letter in the folder he held, that fresh piercing on her nose also contradicted the part about her not doing anything wrong, too.

Nic was back to his original question.

Opening the folder—no parents or guardians in here—he glanced down at the incident report and…a passport. A few more facts clicked as he snapped open the booklet one handed. The girl was a U.S. citizen, a traveler.

Croatia. Africa. Thailand. He’d been right about the accent. The most recent custom stamp came from Chile, South America.

Raking his gaze over a photo taken a few years ago, when she’d been ten maybe, he glanced at the name—

Violet Nicole Bell.

The hair on the back of his neck crawled, and for a blind instant, he could only stare as every shred of reason rebelled.

Violet Nicole Bell.

The name jolted him from the present and filled his head with a memory from long ago…a memory of the beautiful girl he’d once been involved with.

Megan Bell.

He might not have thought about her in years, hadn’t seen her in even longer, but Nic didn’t have to close his eyes to pull up a vision of her face. Heart-shaped with a delicately pointed chin. Porcelain skin and a full mouth, a kissing mouth if ever there had been one. A mass of silky chocolate hair and eyes so deeply blue they looked almost violet.

Violet Nicole Bell.

With a quick shake of his head, he tried to dispel the image of that face, tried to shock himself back to the present where a young girl was staring at him, a young girl who couldn’t…shouldn’t exist. Nic shook his head again, determined to get control of himself, of the memories and speculations and facts that were paralyzing him. He needed to get a grip, so he could figure out what to think, what to feel.

Fingers trembling over the remaining papers, he forced himself to focus on the documents—a visa, some sort of permission form, a photo.

He knew this photo before he could bring himself to look at the smiling young faces. He fingered the paper frame that had yellowed over time, cartoon gravestones and grim reapers with scythes, a keepsake from a French Quarter ghost tour.

Unable to stop himself, he glanced at the back of the photo at the inscription.

Always, Nic.

At the time, he’d meant it.

Now, he had to force himself to flip the photo over, to look at the image, to shock himself with the knowledge that always hadn’t lasted a month after this photo had been taken.

And there they were. He and Megan sitting together on the curb, so close they might have been fused at the hips, his arm around her shoulders, her hand resting casually on his thigh. Their heads were pressed close. Their expressions revealing no clue of what would be in store for them. They were immortalized in a way that couldn’t have been any more permanent than the young girl in front of him.

Nic was suddenly aware of her gaze, tense, expectant. She was waiting for something.

His reaction?

He didn’t have one. Megan had disappeared shortly after this tour, though she hadn’t intended to leave for her pricey private university until August. Nic had refused to believe she would walk away from him without a word, but Megan had never contacted him again. Not even to explain why she’d left so suddenly.

Nic’s shock must have been all over him because suddenly the girl—Violet—laughed and said, “I know. Crazy, isn’t it? I just found out myself.”

Her laughter finally penetrated his shock. Megan’s laugh. He hadn’t even known he remembered.

It took every ounce of his not-inconsiderable willpower to keep a poker face as he lifted his gaze to face this beautiful young girl with unusual blue eyes.

One glimpse of the uncertainty she was trying so hard to hide, and he knew his reaction mattered. He could see it all over her. He could feel it in the tight knot in his gut.

Somewhere in the back of his brain, the gears started grinding, and the only thing Nic knew for sure right now was that he couldn’t give over control of this situation.

It didn’t matter that a levee had collapsed and the past flooded in. It didn’t matter that his head was buzzing and long-ago memories and resentments were colliding inside. Not when Violet—his daughter—stared at him expectantly.

So Nic forced a smile. Then he said the only thing he could think to say, “Crazy works for me.”

Her expression melted, all the expectation evaporating into relief. He could see amusement, too, uncertain amusement, true, but it was still there.