Page 69 of Misdirection

The place could have been featured in an online decorating magazine.

It was nice.Reallynice.

Then a Great Pyrenes trotted out from a back hallway, his tail wagging.

The sight of the dog almost made her resolve crack.

She and Jason had always talked about getting a dog when they got married one day. Not just any dog—a Great Pyrenes.

However, Olive had set aside that dream for herself. She wasn’t home enough to care for a dog. Plus, she had attachment issues. It was better for her to fly solo—with people and pets.

“Loki, sit,” Jason told the dog.

The canine did as it was told.

Loki? If circumstances had been different, Olive would ask Jason about his choice of name.

Because Loki had been their favorite character when they’d watched the Marvel movies together. They’d even dressed as Loki and Black Widow for a Halloween party that year.

Olive quickly reminded herself why she was here. Jason could be a traitor . . . and maybe a killer. She couldn’t let herself get soft.

“You’re wondering how I pay for all this?” Jason beat her to the punch.

She turned her gaze from Loki and looked at Jason again, her resolve hardening. “Yes, I guess you could say that. This is all nice. Very nice.”

“You remember I was adopted, right?”

“Yes, I remember.” Jason and all his siblings had been adopted. His parents couldn’t have children of their own.

“About five years ago, the father of my birth mom found me. It sounds dramatic whenever I say this, so I don’t tell people often.”

Olive waited for him to continue.

“He wanted to meet with me, and I didn’t know why. But I met him for dinner one night—he flew down to see me—and we got to know each other. Apparently, I was his only living relative. His wife had died twenty years earlier, and my birth mom had been in a car accident. He told me later he’d come into our meeting very skeptical about me, but he left feeling as if he had gained a grandson.”

“Go on.” She was very curious as to where he was going with this.

“I didn’t know it at the time but, when I met my grandfather, he’d been given only a few months to live because of liver cancer. We got together several times to eat and get to know each other. I was living in Florida at the time, and he’d fly down to see me.”

“That sounds nice.”

“It was. Two months after we met, he died. I went to his funeral, and afterward his lawyer asked me to meet. I was shocked to find out my grandfather was extremely wealthy. He’d made a fortune on some kind of all-in-one exercise equipment. He left all that money to me.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Now that’s a story you don’t hear every day.”

“I know. I always told myself I didn’t want a big house. But he left me this.” Jason swept his hands around him. “At first, Iplanned to sell it. Then I was offered the job with Conglomerate, and it felt like the timing of everything was providential. I decided to live here until I could figure out what to do. So hopefully that answers your questions about how I can afford this house. I’mnotbeing paid off by an enemy of the United States.”

Olive gave him a look, careful not to confirm that had been her suspicion.

Jason crossed his arms, not bothering to offer her a seat. Instead, they continued to face off in the entryway.

“So why are you here?” Jason’s gaze burned into her.

“I’m here because I know about Adriana and Beau.”

She expected to see guilt flash over Jason’s face, something that proved he’d been caught and that his relationship with the woman was a ploy.

But she didn’t. Jason only stared at her with an unreadable emotion in his eyes.

---