THE PERFECT TEN (Boxed Set)

you?”
    Her chin lifted. “I’m not a thief and I never dealt drugs. No matter what that person just told you, I’m not lying to you. I got screwed by my father and the legal system when I was eighteen. The gold coins you found were stolen from a gallery in Boston by someone working for Mason Lorde.”
    But she was an employee of Mason Lorde, he reasoned. Or she had been until she stole the coins from the head of Lorde Industries, a prominent businessman probably seen on the covers of a half-dozen business magazines in any given month.
    She continued, “I worked for Mason, in his warehouse as a legitimate employee, and found some stolen paintings, small ones hidden inside the lining of a shipping crate. They had been all over the news the week before. I recognized one of them and thought someone in the company was the thief, so I brought the paintings to Mason’s attention.”
    “Why didn’t you go to the police?” Zane asked. Now his throat sounded as if he’d swallowed rusty nails.
    She held up her finger for him to wait. “He’d given me a position in his organization in spite of my record. At least that’s what I thought. What I didn’t know was he’d hired me because I had a record. One I didn’t deserve. Silly me, I thought I’d gotten a break, no more cleaning toilets or shoveling crap at the dump. Decent companies don’t hire people with a record, but you probably know that. I was so excited. I finally had a real job.”  One tear leaked down her cheek.
    Zane started to move around the bed. He wanted to hold her and make all the pain go away.
    She halted him again with a raised finger and continued.
    “So, when Mason realized I wasn’t going to cooperate he locked me away in his private compound in Raleigh near the airport where I met you. Mason had a second ... more personal interest in me. The night I stowed away on your airplane was my second attempt at escape. The first – ”  Her voice broke, but she swallowed and kept talking.
    “The first time I tried to run, I only made it to the house garage. The man who guarded me, Jeff, took too long on his smoke break. That allowed me the couple of minutes I needed to get through the house undetected.” 
    She sniffled and whispered, “Mason made me watch when he shot Jeff for his lapse in duty. I have to live with that.”  Fire flashed in her eyes when she glared at him. “But I didn’t commit any of the other sins. I’ve had to live with the ones that have been forced on me.”
    Muscles tightened across Zane’s chest like a vise.
    Did he go with the evidence that Ben gave him or what his gut was telling him? Had an obscenely wealthy man stolen art?
    And rare coins?
    Had she been forced to mule drugs? Had her father forced her? She’d been eighteen.
    Some teens were hardened adults at that age and others were still naïve. Which had Angel been?
    His heart screamed at him that she’d been naïve and that she was telling the truth. But he’d been taught to never let emotion overrule logic and evidence.
    There was only one way he could find out. One way to solve this. Only one way to really help Angel, and he’d be there for her every step of the way.
    His throat constricted, but he managed to get the words out. “Turn yourself in and I’ll help you any way I can. I’ll do this with you.”  If it cost him the deal with the DEA, so be it.
    The disappointment in her face rocked him to the core.
    “You don’t believe me,” she whispered. She clutched her throat and laughed, a pained sound full of hurt and anger.
    “Baby, you have to understand – ”
    “Oh, God, how could I have been such a fool ?” she raged. “I can see it written on your face. You , the one person I trusted to know the real me, believes I’m guilty of everything.”
    He took that one to the midsection. Six feet of bed stood between them, but she might as well be on the other side of an ocean.
    Zane made another step.
    “Stop. Don’t touch me. Don’t come near me,” she warned. Her voice vibrated with unrestrained anger.
    “Angel, please. I’m trying to help you.”
    His damned cell phone rang again.
    Neither moved.
    The insistent chirping pierced the chasm between them.
    Zane finally twisted to his right for the phone, but Angel’s movement in his peripheral vision spun him back around.
    She’d climbed up on the railing, facing out to nothing.
    “ Angel, nooooo ...” he yelled, leaping on the bed and over it to reach the balcony.
    She dove