The Past Between Us. Kimberly Meter Van

      “Cassi, don’t,” he warned, his chest heaving as his fingers curled around the cold, rough-textured metal. She stopped and turned. Her breath curled in a teasing cloud before evaporating into the night. She held his stare and he could almost sense her hesitation even though she seemed poised to run. He grabbed on to that hope, distant and fleeting as it may be. “I don’t want you to get hurt. If you keep running, it’ll only get worse. You’ll become hunted by every single law enforcement agency in the United States. There will be nowhere to hide and if you continue to run…they will use lethal force to bring you down.”

      “I’m not a criminal,” she whispered. “I’m just trying to get to the truth.”

      “What truth?”

      “I told you.”

      He ignored that. Everyone had a story or a reason for doing what they did but it didn’t lessen the crime. “What about the people you took advantage of? The people who took you in and bought whatever fairy tale you put together so that you could drain their savings and split town?”

      She sucked in a breath. “I never drained anyone’s savings. Who told you that?”

      The fact that she sounded outraged and hurt he found baffling. “Do you even know the charges leveled against you?” he asked.

      “No, but I can’t believe they’re serious enough to sic the FBI on me.”

      He ticked off the charges. “Grand theft, fraud, identity theft…fiduciary elder abuse… Cassi, these are pretty hefty charges. You won’t be able to run forever. You will be caught.”

      “What are you talking about? I never did any of those things. I admit, I borrowed some money from a few people but nothing that would be missed or would devastate their finances. And I told you that I planned to pay them back.”

      “Borrow?”

      “Yes.”

      “Borrowing implies consent and your victims weren’t given the choice. You took without asking.”

      “I will pay them back,” she maintained stubbornly.

      “It doesn’t matter. There’s a warrant for your arrest. You’re going to be brought to justice sooner or later. Make it easy on yourself and stop running.”

      “So you believe I did these things?” she asked, her stance rigid, her stare boring into his, almost daring him to answer. “Grand theft? Elder abuse? Do you really think I could do these things? Me?”

      He shook his head, his heart heavy in his chest. “It’s not about what I think you’re capable of…it’s what you’ve done. I have to bring you in.”

      “What if you’re wrong? What if all those charges were false? What if someone was trying to keep me out of the picture and painting me as a criminal was the best way to get rid of me? What if the real criminal was the one giving you the bad information?”

      “What about Barbara Hanks? Winifred Jones? Or Isaac Wilmes? What would they have to say about your claims of innocence?” At the mention of her fraud victims, she didn’t pale as he’d expected her. Her confused look threw him off for a moment but he shelved it. “You played yourself false to those kindhearted people and you took all they had to fund your little East Coast excursion. Barbara and Winifred were old ladies and that’s bad enough but the worst one, I think, was Isaac. You played him like a fiddle and left him not only broke but broken-hearted.”

      Something flitted across her face—guilt perhaps—but then she lifted her chin and responded with a quiet but unapologetic, “I told him I wasn’t the marrying type. I never lied to him.”

      “Except the part where you lied about who you were, your past and the future you had no intention of sharing with him.”

      Her mouth tightened as her eyes narrowed. “I don’t have to explain myself to you. My reasons were my own. Isaac has nothing to do with anything. Leaving someone isn’t against the law.”

      “No, but representing yourself as someone you’re not and getting someone to propose to you under false pretenses is called fraud.”

      “That’s ridiculous. If that were the case every single person who’s used their natural assets, be it a pretty face, big breasts, or money to get what they want would be guilty of fraud. And that’s not what happened with Isaac, not that it’s your business,” she snapped. “I had feelings for him. Just not those kinds of feelings.”

      “You liked him enough to accept the four-carat diamond he put on your finger,” he reminded her softly. “A diamond I suspect you sold the minute you left.”

      “It must be nice to be able to judge from that high horse of yours,” she said. Then her mouth pinched in scorn as she added, “And for your information I sent that monstrosity back to him. I didn’t want it in the first place but I hadn’t wanted to humiliate him in front of his family and friends.”