The Welcoming

herself. She wanted to stay calm and alert and alive. “I don’t understand.” She poured the hot coffee into two cups. She didn’t think she could swallow, but she hoped that sharing it would put him slightly more at ease. “They said something about counterfeiting.”
    It didn’t matter what she knew. In any case, he had worked hard and was proud of it. “For over two years now I’ve been running a nice little game back and forth over the border. Twenties and tens in Canadian. I can stamp them out like bottle caps. But I’m careful, you know.” He gulped at the coffee. “A couple thousand here, couple thousand there, with Vision as the front. We run a good tour, keep the clients happy.”
    “You’ve been paying me with counterfeit money?”
    “You, and a couple other places. But you’re the longest and most consistent.” He smiled at her, as friendly as ever—if you didn’t count the gun in his hand. “You have a special place here, Charity, quiet, remote, privately owned. You deal with a small local bank. It ran like a charm.”
    “Yes.” She looked down at her cup, her stomach rolling. “I can see that.” And Roman had come not to see the whales but to work on a case. That was all she had been to him.
    “We were going to milk this route for a few more months,” he continued. “Just lately Bob started getting antsy.”
    “Bob?” Her hand fisted on her lap. “Bob knew?”
    “He was nothing but a nickel-and-dime con man before I took him on. Working scams and petty embezzlements. I set him up here and made him rich. Didn’t do badly by you, either,” he added with a grin. “You were on some shaky financial ground when I came along.”
    “All this time,” she whispered.
    “I’d decided to give it another six months, then move on, but Bob started getting real jumpy about your new handyman. The bastard set me up.” He slammed the cup down. “Worked a deal with the feds. I should have caught it, the way he started falling apart after the hit-and-run.”
    “The accident—you tried to kill me.”
    “No.” He patted her hand, and she cringed. “Truth is, I’ve always had a liking for you. But I wanted to get you out of the way for a while. Just testing the waters to see how DeWinter played it. He’s good,” Block mused. “Real good. Had me convinced he was only interested in you. The romance was a good touch. Threw me off.”
    “Yes.” Devastated, she stared at the grain in the wood of the tabletop. “That was clever.”
    “Sucked me in,” Block muttered. “I knew you weren’t stringing me along. You haven’t got it in you. But DeWinter . . . They’ve probably already taken Dupont.”
    “Who?”
    “We don’t just run the money. There are people, people who need to leave the country quietly, who pay a lot for our services. Looks like I’m going to have to take myself on as a client.” He laughed and drained his cup. “How about some food? One of the things I’ll miss most about this place is the food.”
    She rose silently and went to the refrigerator. It had all been a lie, she thought. Everything Roman had said, everything he’d done . . .
    The pain cut deep and had her fighting back another bout of weeping. He’d made a fool of her, as surely and as completely as Roger Block had. They had used her, both of them, used her and her inn. She would never forgive. She rubbed her hands over her eyes to clear them. And she would never forget.
    “How about that lemon meringue pie?” Relaxed, pleased with his own cleverness, Roger tapped the barrel of the gun on the table. “Mae outdid herself on that pie last night.”
    “Yes.” Slowly Charity pulled it out. “There’s a little left.”
    Block had ripped the frilly tiebacks from the sunny yellow curtains, but there was a space two inches wide at the center. Silently Roman eased toward it. He could see Charity reach into a cupboard, take out a plate.
    There were tears drying on her cheeks. It tore at him to see them. Her hands were steady. That was something, some small thing to hold on to. He couldn’t see Block, though he shifted as much as he dared.
    Then, suddenly, as if she had sensed him, their eyes met through the glass. She braced, and in that instant he saw a myriad of emotions run across her face. Then it was set again. She looked at him as she would have looked at a stranger and waited for instructions.
    He held up a hand, palm out, doing his best to signal her to hold on, to keep calm. Then