LITMIR.BIZ

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at the time; there was no other explanation for his doing what he’d done. He didn’t have his father’s flair for making money, so he’d turned to a family known to have underworld connections. Men who broke legs as easily as matchsticks and with less thought. He wouldn’t put it past Matt Schaffer to try to ruin him.

      His eyes grew bright. “Matt Schaffer’s the one who has the ring. I’d bet my life on it,” he concluded heatedly.

      She hadn’t thought she’d ever hear that name again. “Matt Schaffer’s in California,” she heard herself saying hoarsely.

      And then her father blew her world apart by saying, “No, he’s not. He’s right here in Vegas. Working for Luke Montgomery. Or at least that’s the story he gives out.”

      Matt Schaffer.

      Here. In Vegas.

      Natalie suddenly felt as if the ground beneath her feet had turned to quicksand.

      Chapter 3

      Harold continued to talk, but Natalie could no longer make out the words.

      Her father’s voice became a buzzing sound in the background as she grappled with the information he’d just carelessly flung out at her. Coming on the heels of Candace’s murder, learning that Matt Schaffer was now living back in Vegas was almost too much for her to process. Or bear.

      But she had to, Natalie told herself fiercely. What choice did she have? There was no one around to run interference for her, no one to try to smooth out the choppy waters so she could navigate them without going under and drowning.

      All that was on her shoulders. But then, she’d more or less been on her own for the last eight years.

      Natalie raised her chin proudly. Okay, she’d deal with Matt being here in Vegas. Deal with having to see him.

      But despite the way things had ended between them, she knew Matt Schaffer would never kill anyone. If he had the ring in his possession, then he’d gotten a hold of it while Candace was still alive. She’d make book on it.

      You also thought he’d never leave you, remember? Called that one wrong, didn’t you? her annoying little voice taunted.

      Still, just because the man didn’t have the guts to commit and lacked the backbone to tell her so face-to-face didn’t mean he would kill someone over a ring no matter how valuable it was. He wasn’t a killer or a thief, if she discounted his stealing her heart.

      “Matt wouldn’t kill Candace,” she told her father firmly.

      Her father looked like a cornered man desperately fighting to survive. He vacillated, not sure of anything anymore.

      “Maybe not, but someone in his family would.” Everyone knew that the Schaffers had underworld ties, connections to people who did things that could not bear scrutiny. He grasped her hand as if that would make her understand better. “I owe them, Natalie. I owe them.” Harold struggled to keep his voice from cracking. “The Schaffers know people. And those people,” he insisted, “have killed for pocket change.”

      She glared at him. “Then why would you have knowingly gotten mixed up with them?” she demanded.

      It made no sense to her. There were lending institutions. Yes, money was hard to come by, but Harold Rothchild was a reputable businessman with a great deal of collateral. Going to a loan shark, if that was indeed what he’d done, was like agreeing to play Russian roulette with not one but half the chambers loaded with bullets.

      “Because…” He began to explain, then stopped abruptly. “Oh, it doesn’t matter why. I did, and now Candace is dead and the ring’s gone.”

      Her father seemed to have forgotten one very important element in this horrible tale. So typical of him, she thought.

      “Your nephews are fine, thanks for asking,” she told him sarcastically. She’d checked on the boys on her way over here. She’d stopped by the nanny’s sister’s home and asked Amelia to tell her in her own words what she’d seen. She had to wait until the young woman stopped throwing up. The details were sketchy, the nanny’s reaction honest. She’d asked the young woman to watch the boys until she got back to her.

      “The boys.” Harold stared at her for a moment, a lost look in his eyes. And then he seemed to come to. “Where are they?”

      “I left them with their nanny.” She rattled off the address. It was far off the beaten path of both the casinos and the better residential areas, but it was still a decent-enough neighborhood, thanks to a renovation effort on the part of the city.

      “I’ll send a car for them,” Harold said, thinking out loud.

      “Good idea.”

      She didn’t mean that to sound as caustic as it did. But she was on edge. The toughest part of her day was still ahead of her. She was going to have to go and interface with the one man she didn’t want to ever see again.

      Some days it just didn’t pay to get up out of bed, Natalie thought wearily.

      About to say goodbye, something in her father’s expression stopped her. She knew it would drive her crazy for the rest of the day if she didn’t ask. “Is there something else?” she wanted to know. “You look like you want to tell me something.”

      “No.” Denial was always his first choice, but then Harold thought better of it just as his daughter began to leave. “There was a note.”

      Natalie turned around. What was he talking about? And why hadn’t he said anything when she’d first come in? “A note?”

      He nodded his head. “I didn’t understand what it meant until you told me that Candace was dead.” He sounded breathless as he said, “We’re all in danger. The curse is real.”

      Natalie looked at her father as if he’d lost his mind. It took considerable effort to remain patient. “You’re talking in riddles, Dad. Start at the beginning. What note?”

      Rather than continue trying to explain, Harold took a folded piece of paper out of the pocket of his robe and handed it to her. She noticed that his hand shook a little.

      “This was in the mailbox this morning. Clive found it when he went to put in the outgoing mail.”

      Using her handkerchief, Natalie took the note from him and carefully unfolded it. She didn’t want to get any more fingerprints on it than there already were.

      There was a single line typed in the middle of the page: One down, many to go.

      The words had been typed by a laser printer, and she was willing to bet a year’s salary that once the LVPD lab tech finished analyzing it, he would find nothing remarkable about the paper or the printer that had been used.

      “We’re all in danger, Natalie,” her father repeated insistently.

      She folded the note. Leaving it within the folds of her handkerchief, she placed it in her purse. She didn’t have time to hold her father’s hand—she had a murderer to track down.

      “Try to think positive for once, Dad,” she advised crisply. “I’ll get back to you when I have more information,” she said by way of parting.

      She left him the way she found him, sitting on the terrace, staring off into space.

      Though she did her best to talk herself out of it, Natalie could feel the adrenaline rush through her veins as she left the Rothchild grounds and made her way to The Janus.

      It was coming in waves, she realized, a little like when she knew there was going to be a showdown. One that might leave her wounded.

      There were few things in her life that Natalie had believed to be a certainty, but one of them was that she’d thought she would never see Matt Schaffer again. Eight years ago he’d vanished out of her life, leaving behind a one-line note tucked under a pillow that had grown cold. All the note had said was:

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