Claimed: The Dark Christmases Trilogy Read online

  He also cut a tiny smile, and I suspected he understood what I found so humorous about what I had just said. Jasper captured my hand and kissed the back of it as he had done numerous times before. I loved that he did that.

  “We’re more than soul mates, Holly. We were made for each other.” He kissed my palm. “And you were right about me. When my mother died, she fucking left me to deal with my father on my own. I was angry, but I missed her and loved her. Even though I had my siblings, I was fucking lonely. My mother was very much like me.”

  He had my undivided attention, and my eyes remained focused on his lips. I had been in this position hundreds of times—I knew when a source was about to say something that would change the course of my investigation.

  “She was smart,” he continued. “She knew my father was a sociopath, but she taught me to not fear him. She would say he was the prey and I was the hunter and Randolph knew it.” Suddenly, his frown intensified. I was acquainted with that look.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I just had a memory, I think.”

  I nodded encouragingly, careful not to push him to say anything.

  His face went through a number of contortions. “I was asleep—at least, my mother thought I was. She would often use the secret passageways to enter my room and check on me. Once, after I had a bad couple of days with my father’s special kind of grooming, which involved torture”—he snarled as he sniffed—“I couldn’t move my arms or legs, and I ached all over, and in the dark, she sat by my bed and said, ‘We’re still here because you’re going to make him pay, son. You’re going to take everything he has and leave him with filth.’” Jasper leaned back, standing with a rigid posture. “Damn it,” he said if he’d just remembered something. “Follow me.”

  He took me by the hand, and together, we walked up a curved set of stairs. I realized Jasper felt more comfortable with me by his side rather than with me following him. We entered a great foyer on the next floor. I ascertained that this was the main level. There was another modern-looking living area, except it wasn’t as wide-open as the first, and the furniture faced the skyline. The room had front and back views of the city. There were large hallways on both sides of the space. Only after we’d entered did I smell the light aroma of food cooking. My stomach gave a low grumble in response.

  “You’re hungry?” Jasper asked.

  I was shocked he’d heard that. “Um, yeah.”

  “We’ll eat soon. However, Bart isn’t here. He’s at the other location. I thought we’d be there tonight, but things have changed, of course.”

  I was not averse to cooking for the both of us. As a matter of fact, I could make a mean meal as long as I had a solid recipe. “But I smell food.”

  “That’s Deb, the backup chef. You’ll enjoy her food as well.”

  I nodded. “So where are you taking me?”

  “My office,” he said, leading me in a different direction from the delicious scent.

  We passed a bedroom and then another one. I saw a room with only a large porcelain tub in the middle. Jasper promised to give me a more in-depth tour of his home soon.

  His office was magnificent. The width of his desk competed with the span of the large windows, and his big chair sat in the middle. Tall cabinets stood on each side of the wall. A wide-screen television, which folded out from a bracket attached to the ceiling, was in the center of the room. There was also a conference table on one side of the room with eight white leather rolling chairs around it.

  Jasper walked over to open one of the cabinet drawers as I continued being awed about the sheer size of the space, which was half the size of my apartment in Philadelphia. It cost a lot of money to live that large in New York City. I often forgot how much of it Jasper had. Personally, having a lot of it was never my goal. I’d always wanted to be happy while spending the rest of my life doing the things that I loved. Picturing myself as Mrs. Holly Christmas seemed as absurd as the name Holly Christmas.

  You’re trash, I heard a familiar voice say in my mind. The voice belonged to the many people who’d shouted those words at my parents. You people are filthy fucking trash, and your daughter’s going to be a crack whore. Those were someone’s words. No matter how many awards I had won or how sought out as a journalist I’d been, I could never outrun those words.

  “Holly,” Jasper called.

  I quickly turned to face him.

  “Are you okay?”

  I was hugging myself, feeling alone, as I had most of my life. I dropped my arms and stood upright and put on a smile. “I’m fine.”

  Jasper’s eyes narrowed and then opened back up. He held up a tin box. “Here it is.”

  I grunted, intrigued. “I pictured the box being bigger than that.”

  “No, this is it.” Jasper nodded toward the conference table. “Let’s go over here.”

  He walked over, but this time, he got there before me and pulled out a chair for me to sit in. Once I sat, he took the seat beside me. My nerves were on edge as he opened the tin box, which had red, pink, blue, and white paisleys on it.

  “Whoa,” I said once the lid was off.

  “Shit, you’re right.”

  “When was the last time you opened it?”

  He glanced at me then back at the contents of the box. “Five years ago—a few days after my mother died.”

  I couldn’t believe he’d let all of this sit in a file drawer for so long. We had just struck the mother lode.

  Chapter Six

  Inside the box, and among other things, were a Princess Leia action figure and a piece of denim with the name Doris embroidered on it in yellow yarn.

  “How the hell did I miss this?” Jasper asked.

  I rubbed his back consolingly. “None of this would’ve meant anything to you back then.”

  He shook his hands in frustration. “But I could’ve checked. I could’ve taken her more seriously. My mother never did anything without it meaning something. You were right—I was so fucking emotional that I missed it.”

  I shook my head emphatically. “No way, Jasper. You’re going to have to give yourself a break on this one. Sure, it all makes sense now, but could you have ever guessed your mother was kidnapped?”

  His eyebrows ruffled as he stared at the table. My heart was in my throat as I waited for his response.

  “It’s not that far-fetched,” he finally said and then closed his eyes. “Deep down, I fucking knew.” He pounded the table. “I knew something was wrong, because if I did the computation, it made sense.”

  My mouth fell open, and I stared. “That your mother was abducted?”

  “That Randolph was fucking capable of it. There was business he would never let me handle, but he would do it in my name. That’s why your friend hates me.”

  My neck jutted forward. I only had one friend who hated him. “Kylie?”

  “Yes.”

  I squinted at Jasper’s fingers, which were unfolding a sheet of paper.

  “And what’s this?” he asked.

  The note read “Benji Dow, not his real name.”

  I gasped as I slapped a hand over my mouth.

  “What?” Jasper seemed confused and eager for me to enlighten him.

  I told him about a meaty email Kylie had sent me during my stay at the Christmas mansion. I was on my way to Sally Preacher’s house. Kylie had compiled a lot of bad acts against the Christmases.

  “And she wrote details about a payoff from you to a man named Benjamin Dow.”

  Jasper frowned at the name on the paper. “I’ve never heard of him.”

  I opened my purse, took out my phone, and powered it on. “I have the email here.”

  “I wonder what this opens.”

  I glanced at Jasper’s hands. He was holding a single key. I raised my eyebrows at the object but kept on searching for the email. “Do you think it opens something at the Christmas mansion?” I asked, grimacing at the screen.

  “Maybe,” he whispered, sounding absorbed
by his thoughts.

  I had one hundred sixty-seven unopened emails, a lot of them from Kylie but, oddly, none from Rachel. According to Kylie, Rachel wanted me back on the team. And when Rachel wanted a reporter in her camp, she didn’t stop pursuing that person until she had them on the payroll. After the abrupt way we’d changed the nature of our association, her lips would have been planted squarely on my ass until I accepted her apology and new offer of employment. For a moment, I wondered if she was truly working things out with David on my behalf. Truthfully, I didn’t want the job. I preferred sitting beside Jasper, searching for clues, discovering the truth, and taking my time to build an accurate story to digging up news for the six o’clock show on BCN. I was more convinced than ever that I loved my professional independence.

  “Got it,” I said after finding the email Kylie had sent me three weeks earlier. I was ready to share it when I looked up at Jasper, who was still studying the key. Our eyes met. He looked greatly troubled.

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  “Go ahead?”

  “Read the email.”

  I shifted abruptly in my seat. “Oh, right. Yes.”

  I shook my head, bringing myself steadfastly back to the moment, slightly ashamed that all it took was an intense expression from sexy Jasper Christmas to take me out of it. I hit the high points of the message Kylie had sent me. I told him about how his brother, Asher, came to be known on his college campus as Santa Claus because he made and sold drugs to students. A number of students supposedly had overdosed on his drugs. Kylie couldn’t get anyone on the record to confirm those overdoses, but a boy named Benjamin Dow was paid off to take the fall.

  “Dow supposedly had done some prison time, and after he was released, he was paid handsomely for his sacrifice. You were supposed to have been behind the entire arrangement.”

  Jasper looked completely baffled and disturbed by what he had just heard.

  I sighed heavily, deciding to not stop but continue relaying the details, which steadily got worse. “Kylie wrote that Benjamin was given enough compensation to purchase a house in San Francisco that cost $3,789,999 and a luxury car, and he maintained a bank account that was upwards of sixteen million dollars, but he had no job. But you really don’t know anything about this?”

  The amount of control Jasper maintained was impressive. “No, Holly, I had nothing to do with this.” He sighed as he pressed his lips together. “Did you check out any of this information?”

  I shook my head, thinking. “No.”

  “Why not?” There was a hint of disapproval in his tone that I had not expected.

  “I was working a different angle, a more effective one,” I said defensively. “I mean, we’re here because of my discoveries.”

  He nodded. “That’s true.”

  The tension in my body released as I remembered to take a breath. Goodness. Questioning my professional instincts had hit a nerve, perhaps because my profession was the one thing that made me someone other than the daughter of two con artists.

  “Thank you,” I said, feeling my eyes gleaming with gratitude. With two words—That’s true—Jasper had just once again conveyed that he’d seen me, the real me.

  His smile was mild yet sincere. “You’re welcome, babe.” Then he quickly shifted in his seat as his grimace returned. “But seriously, how well do you know Kylie Roberson?”

  I hesitated as my muscles went rigid. “We’re friends.”

  “How well do you know her professionally?”

  I scratched the corner of my eye. I felt as if my entire body was in the midst of a crisis. Part of me wanted to bark at Jasper and shout, Why are you asking me this? The other part of me had come to know him very well. If he was questioning me, there had to be a pertinent reason behind it. So I was determined to answer honestly, and that meant searching deep within my memory bank. My eyes shifted from left to right as I recalled the first time I met Kylie. We’d had a conversation at the airport. We exchanged business cards. She emailed me to congratulate me on the acclaim I received after publishing The Howsley Project. When I thought about it, she was the one who kept our communication alive. I was never good at making friendships grow and evolve, even though I’d always wanted to be better at it. But then I remembered how Kylie came to my aid after Arthur Valentine left me so rattled. Whenever she called, we would stay on the phone for hours, talking about the stories we had just finished or were working on and what we’d encountered while fact collecting. Sometimes we’d gone to some of the same cities or towns and spoken about our experiences with certain establishments and people. Sometimes our conversations would turn personal. She knew a little about my father, but other than that, I kept my personal cards to myself. I always knew Kylie was one of those people whose goal was to get more information out of someone than she gave in return. Truthfully, I couldn’t say I was much different. Revealing as little as possible about ourselves was just our way.

  “I know her well,” I answered. “Listen, Jasper. I know there’s a lot of tension between the two of you. I mean, you’ve legally stopped her from investigating your family.”

  “Yes, because she went too far, Holly.” He sounded irritated that I had chosen to stand by my friend.

  “Yes, she got caught paying off a coroner. If he’d been able to get her that information, it would’ve been factual and valuable. It’s not about how she gets the information—it’s about whether or not she gets it.”

  Jasper’s eyes narrowed to slits. If looks could kill, I would have been six feet under. “That is not the point, Holly.” He enunciated every syllable.

  My goodness, he is pissed.

  I didn’t feel like letting him off the hook. If he was going to sully Kylie’s reputation, whatever shit he had on her had better stink to high heaven.

  “I believe in a strong and free press, but Kylie is a dangerous journalist who will do whatever the hell it takes to get the desired results.”

  I threw my hands up. “Prove it.”

  He nodded once vigorously then rose to his feet. My arms were crossed as I watched him walk to the file cabinet and press a number on a keypad to unlock it. Then he opened a drawer and searched through tabs until he found what he was looking for.

  When Jasper returned to the table, he calmly sat a thick folder in front of me and opened it. “Go ahead. Read it.”

  I swallowed nervously. Jasper wasn’t the kind of guy who made accusations he couldn’t prove. I was almost too scared to discover who Kylie really was. But I also had to know the truth.

  Chapter Seven

  We had definitely gotten off the subject, but at some point, my stomach growled again, and Jasper had his kitchen staff bring us dinner, which was peppercorn-encrusted prime rib, roasted brussels sprouts, and garlic and herb risotto. I read one page at a time, eating as though I didn’t need to impress the sexy man in the room. The pages were all proof that Kylie was a liar. Jasper had twenty-three articles that Kylie had written in which she presented the names of people who didn’t exist to editors, claiming them to be deep background sources. But it seemed in each circumstance she had been in contact with another journalist who was working on the same story. Jasper had indisputable evidence that Kylie had been writing the story along with that person but submitted it to an editor by confirming her fake sources before the other journalist could confirm his or her real sources.

  One in particular caught my eye, and I tapped the pages as they sat on top of the desk. “Wait. This is mine.”

  “Yes, it is,” he said.

  I looked at him with my mouth agape. It was a story I had spent weeks working on, uncovering a criminal element who made a lot of money fixing minor-league-championship games.

  “Shit,” I said under my breath. “She called me after her article was published to apologize for not letting me know she was working on the same story. Of course, I asked her how she knew I was investigating the group. She said one of her sources told her they spoke to me. I thought it was strange, but I
believed her because I had no reason to doubt her.” I cocked my head as I remembered something else. “But the entire article was eventually retracted because…”

  “Three sources said she lied.” Jasper read the names off another page. “Those people didn’t exist. Read this.” He handed me what appeared to be a short report on the revoked story. Apparently, a guy named Peter Fordham, who was one of the sources that I’d actually interviewed, emailed Dennis Thompson, the editor who published all of Kylie’s bunk articles, to say that he could confirm that those sources didn’t exist and the information being claimed by them was fraudulent. Instead of challenging Peter, Dennis had pulled the article.

  “Dennis knows…” I muttered. He was the editor in chief of Journalistic Weekly Report, also known as JWR, and had signed off on and published all her stories. “No wonder I could never get anything published in JWR.”

  I got to a point where I didn’t need to read anymore, so I closed the folder and pressed my lips together as I looked at Jasper. “Does she know about this?”

  He nodded once.

  “This is the leverage you have on her?”

  He looked worried as if he feared I would blame him for allowing Kylie to continue preying on my colleagues. “Yes.”

  “Why haven’t you told me before now?”

  “I am bound by our agreement. She’s dangerous. Even a hint of her false reporting could ruin my family.”

  “What about other people’s careers? Is everything about you protecting your family?”

  He snorted forcefully. “Yes, Holly. Protecting my family always comes first.”

  Our stare down was of epic proportions. My jaw was clenched, and I couldn’t stop shaking my head. I wanted to run away from him as fast as I could. I told myself, See? That’s why you couldn’t trust him in the first place.

  Finally, he sat back in his seat, taking the tension out of his body. The tip of his finger landed hard on the folder full of Kylie’s lies. “I’m breaking my agreement with Miss Roberson by showing you this.”