Marie Ferrarella - The Coltons - Nick, Clay & Jericho

Pretty convenient, Nick thought. “When did he leave?”

Javier looked like a man whose mind had gone blank. And then, mercifully, he recovered. Partially. “A few days ago.”

“Can you get him on the phone?” Nick asked in the same no-nonsense monotone.

Was he actually going to help her? Georgie wondered. The thought made her feel a little better.

Javier opened and closed his mouth several times without actually saying anything intelligible. A squeak emerged. Flustered, he glanced over his shoulder at the small row of desks lined up against the wall.

“Mr. Collins?” Javier’s voice cracked as he squeezed out the bank manager’s name. “Could you come here, please?”

A tall, somewhat heavyset man in his thirties came over after pausing to close a folder on his desk. Crossing to the teller’s window, Allen Collins offered Georgie a genial smile.

“Nice to see you again so soon, Georgie. Emmie,” he nodded at the child. “Change your mind about closing your account?”

This was some awful nightmare. It had to be. “I didn’t close my account. I haven’t been here,” she insisted. “I’ve been on the road. Winning this.” She pushed the neatly banded pile of checks forward. “There’s got to be some mistake.” She silently pleaded with him to agree.

Nick’s eyes shifted from the bank manager’s face to Georgie’s profile. The teller’s statement dovetailed nicely to back up the fact that the Grady woman had been here all along, churning out poisonous e-mail. That was his intellectual take on the situation. His gut, however, said something else. Her eyes conveyed that her whole life had been turned upside down. It had him doubting the validity of his own theory.

“No, no mistake,” Collins assured her. In the face of her insistence, his expression seemed just a shade uneasy. Suddenly, he held up his right index finger, indicating that she needed to wait for a moment. The manager crossed back to his desk and the old-fashioned rectangular metal file box he kept there. Flipping through it, he found what he was looking for. Collins removed a single index card and brought it back with him to the window.

Placing the card on the counter, he turned it around so that she could see. “See, there’s your signature, plain as day.”

Georgie stared numbly at the card. The signature was dated last week. It matched the original one from five years ago down to the circle over the letter i.

Was she losing her mind? Or was someone playing a horrible joke on her?

All she could do was repeat what she knew to be true. “I didn’t sign this.”

“But that’s your signature.” At this point, the smile on the bank manager’s face wore thin.

Georgie was afraid to look at Sheffield, afraid of what she’d see on his face. Smug triumph. What the bank manager was saying made it look as if she’d lied to Sheffield about her whereabouts. As if she’d been here all the time, conducting her life. Raiding her bank account and sending threatening e-mails to damn Joe Colton.

But it wasn’t true. None of it.

Stubbornly, Georgie shook her head. “Someone must have forged it. I didn’t sign the card, I didn’t close the account.” Her voice rose as she enunciated each word. “I wasn’t here.”

“Mama was with me, riding in the rodeo,” Emmie piped up. The pint-sized defender added in a logical voice, “Somebody stole our money.” And then she turned around to look at the man who’d come with them. “Are you going to help us get our money back?”

No way was this a four-year-old, Nick thought. She had to be one of those midgets—what was it they called themselves these days? Little people? She was one of them. And right now, this little person was putting him on the spot.

Rather than answer her directly—he had no idea how to have a conversation with someone too young to vote—Nick looked at the bank manager.

“You have surveillance cameras in this place?” he asked Collins.

The bank manager took offense. The smile on his face vanished without a telltale trace. “Just because we’re a little off the beaten path doesn’t mean that we’re primitive.”

Nick heard what he needed to hear. “I take that as a yes. Mind if I see the footage from the day Ms. Grady was supposed to have closed her account?”

Collins squared his shoulders. “I’m afraid that’s highly irreg—”

Nick stopped him by taking out his badge and ID and holding them up in front of the man.

The man’s small, brown eyes darted back and forth, reading the information over twice, before he finally raised them to look at his face. “Secret Service?” he asked uncomfortably.

Nick’s own expression was impassive, giving nothing away. “Yes.”

Collins and Javier both gazed uncertainly at Georgie. Collins found his tongue first. “This is a government matter?”

“It’s complicated” was all Nick would say.

“No, it’s not,” Georgie cried, turning toward him. Her bank account had nothing to do with the government. “Someone’s stolen my money.” She thought of the e-mails, the ones she hadn’t sent. Was there a connection? Had someone done all this to get back at her for something? Or was this a random attack? “And my identity.”

“Georgie, you don’t look so good,” Javier observed. There was concern on his drawn face. “You want a glass of water or to sit down, maybe?”

“What I want,” she replied, desperately trying to get a grip, “is my money.”

This couldn’t be happening. By her reckoning, with this last batch of winnings, she should have been up to a little more than three hundred thousand dollars. More than enough to buy her some time and some peace of mind before she decided what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. Instead, someone had wiped her out. All she had left were the winnings in her hand. Thank God for that.

And then, as if she wasn’t already reeling from this unexpected turn of events as well as being accused of terrorism by computer, something else suddenly occurred to Georgie.

Oh, dear God, no .

Georgie struggled to keep her hands from shaking as she pulled her wallet out of her back pocket. Flipping it opened, she took out her credit cards. There were four in all. She clutched them for a moment, as if that could somehow keep them safe. Keep them hers.

Watching her, Nick frowned. Now what? “What are you doing?”

Georgie’s breath grew shallow. She wasn’t going to panic, she wasn’t. She knew if she did, she’d scare Emmie. As it was, she was scaring herself. But this thing was just mushrooming. Before answering, she turned the cards face down one by one.

Picking up the first one, she searched for a toll-free number. “I’ve got to make some phone calls,” she told him, hoping against hope that she was wrong. The sickening, metallic taste in her mouth told her she probably wasn’t.

The expression on the manager’s face turned compassionate. “You’re welcome to use the phone on my desk, Georgie.”

She nodded, murmuring, “Thank you.”

The manager beckoned her over to the far side of the bank, unlocking a swinging half door so that she and Emmie could enter.

Georgie felt as if she was moving in slow motion, trapped in a nightmare she couldn’t wake up from. And all the while she kept telling herself that this couldn’t be happening. She had been knocked down so many times before and had always managed to get up again. If the worst came to pass, she could do it again. But this time it would be harder. This time her daughter was old enough to understand what was happening.

Nick followed her, putting his hand out to stop the door as the manager began to close it after Georgie and her daughter had passed through.