Page 53 of Forged in Secrets

“You know what we have to do about Katie,” she said, her face revealing no emotion. “I don’t like it either, but we don’t have a choice.”

“No. I’m not a murderer, and neither are you.”

“That huge guy and the blonde chick from San Antonio are not going to back down,” she cut him off. “They’re going to keep looking for her. And if there’s something tofind, eventually, they’ll find it. You need to man up and do what you have to do to protect us.”

Without giving him a chance to protest, she turned heel and marched out of the room, closing the door behind her.

The room was silent and calm once more, as though the human windstorm that had just torn through it had never existed at all.

Ever since his wife had died, he’d messed up raising Jade. One day at a time, he’d let her grow into the spoiled, capricious woman she now was.

The spitting image of her mother, the daughter he still so deeply loved, despite the darkness that seemed to flow from her heart.

And now he was trapped.

Either he lost everything, likely including their lives, or Katie Fairman had to be silenced.

Permanently.

Craig walked over to the bed and laid back on it, staring at the ceiling, falling into his thoughts once again.

If there was another way out of this, he had to think of it.

They were running out of time.

CHAPTER

TWENTY

BEN

The screen of Ben’s laptop glowed brightly as several of the overhead lights clicked off one by one.

“I think they’re closing up,” Grace said, stretching her arms over her head and letting out a yawn.

They were seated in a small cafe attached to the lobby of their hotel, researching online for any information they could find about Jade Gorsky, her father, and the massive tech company, Lumen, that he worked for.

Well, Ben was researching. Grace was seated a couple feet away from him, nursing a cup of green tea and looking over his shoulder whenever the urge struck.

For once, he felt no annoyance at her backseat Google searching.

She had every reason to be upset with him for lying to her.

Grace was usually quick to forgive, eager to make sure everything was okay between her and whoever she wasmad at, but tonight, she was different. She didn’t quite look angry, but he could tell she wasn’t pleased with him.

Still, she’d insisted on staying, no matter how many times he urged her to get some sleep.

He stole a glance in her direction.

Maybe she was just afraid to be alone. But he couldn’t help but to hope that despite his screwup, things would be right with them again.

Not that he knew what that really meant, or how he was supposed to feel. Everything in his heart was a tangled mess that he couldn’t quite work out.

“So, what’s the verdict?” Grace asked, watching as a small man in a polo shirt pushed a large broom across the cafe’s floor.

Ben cleared his throat and used the laptop’s trackpad to scroll to the top of the document he’d been putting together.

“I’m not sure if I have a verdict,” he said carefully. “But there’s some interesting stuff here. Apparently, Craig Gorsky found some success at a very young age–basically right out of college–but his wife died before he got hired at Lumen and really made it. Obviously, this was hard on both him and his daughter. I guess she and Katie Fairman have losing their moms in common.”

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