Daddy's Toy-Box (A Daddy's Best Friend Romance) Read online

  I stood up and nudged the gun away with my foot, wanting it as far away as possible. There was a file underneath it, which must’ve been sitting in the box below the pistol, and I frowned and knelt down as I made out the faded words on it.

  Simmons Life Insurance.

  Curious, I opened the file. My stomach twisted into knots as I leafed through the paperwork. It was from around six and a half years ago, and it was a life insurance policy belonging to Jenna Potter. It looked like it had been taken out in her name mere weeks before she died, and the beneficiary was listed as….

  Jackson Barker.

  The policy was for over a million dollars.

  My heart pounded as I tried to comprehend everything I’d just discovered. A life insurance policy taken out only three weeks before Jenna was murdered, resulting in Jackson being paid a lot of money seemed seedy enough. But finding a gun with it? That was really dodgy, and it was making me question everything I thought I knew about Jackson.

  I knew it wasn’t the gun that killed Jenna (that particular one was found at the crime scene with my Mom’s prints all over it), but just the fact that Jackson owned one at all despite being so publicly anti-gun made him seem untrustworthy. It was hypocritical as hell.

  God, what if I didn’t really know Jackson at all?

  I sat back on the floor, my head spinning as I began to recall all those nightmares I used to have. I’d never been able to figure out if the first man I heard in those dreams was real. But what if he was? What if it was Jackson, and what if…what if he was there that day Jenna died? I knew he’d supposedly been at Dad’s office building all day, helping out with tax stuff, but back in those days my dad had a lot of staff and the place was always very busy all hours of the day. Jackson could’ve easily slipped out for a couple of hours without anyone noticing.

  I thought back to the tape Dr. Steinberg played me after my hypnosis session.

  ‘Lily, where are you right now? What’s happening?’

  ‘I’m here. At Jackson and Jenna’s house. He’s here too. I hear him.’

  ‘Who’s ‘he’, Lily?’

  ‘He’s saying that I did it. He’s asking why I did this. Oh god, there’s blood everywhere. I have the gun…’

  It hadn’t occurred to me before now, but Jackson was the most obvious answer to the question of who ‘he’ was in that context. It was his damn house, after all.

  My mind began to whirl even more. There were too many unanswered questions floating in there now. If the man in the dream was real, and it was Jackson, then why the hell was he in the house that day when Jenna was killed? Why was he telling me I did it, and why was I holding a gun?

  A horrifying thought suddenly occurred to me, but I immediately pushed it to the back of my mind. I could barely entertain the idea, because I loved Jackson. I trusted him…didn’t I?

  Then again, how could I trust him right now, with all these things I’d just found? It was just too damn messed up. The awful thought returned to the forefront of my mind, and I finally whispered the words out loud.

  “What if he killed Jenna?”

  There were so many ifs and maybes. Too damn many.

  Maybe he took out that massive life insurance policy on Jenna, and he killed her and plotted to frame my mother in order to collect the money. Maybe I heard noises that day and actually went over there, and in my sick haze at the time, I barely registered what was going on. Maybe I walked in and found Jenna and the gun, and that’s why I had this shockingly strong memory of smelling and seeing all the blood, which came to me in my nightmares. Maybe Jackson walked back in after cleaning himself off and found me, and he told me I did it to make me think I was simply sleepwalking and having a crazy nightmare, and so I went back home and got back into bed to return to my blissful sleep.

  And maybe what I heard earlier was Jenna pleading for my mother to help, because she was there too. When I thought she screamed ‘K, please, don’t do this!’, perhaps she was actually saying ‘K, please!’ to my mother and then ‘Don’t do this!’ to Jackson separately. But then Jackson killed her along with my mother, then made my mother ‘disappear’ in order to make it look like she committed the crime. He could’ve easily cleaned off the gun and put it in her hand to put her prints on it, and then bam…she looked guilty as hell, even though she was actually buried in a ditch somewhere.

  Tears gathered in my eyes at the horrible thought of my mother being dead this whole time, and I tried to choke them back.

  When I went to Jackson all those weeks ago and confided in him about my nightmares and how I was worried they were real memories returning to me, maybe he somehow forged the letter from my mother to put my mind at ease and make me think she was alive and really committed the murder. After all, he’d received plenty of holiday cards and letters from our family over the years when we were still close, and Mom wrote them all back then, so he could’ve easily found a sample of her handwriting to copy.

  And last of all, maybe this whole thing was why he was with me now. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, as they say. Perhaps he wanted me close to make sure I never fully remembered anything, and if I did, he’d be the first to know so he could deal with the situation in his own way.

  So many maybes.

  I shook my head a second later. This was utterly ridiculous. Totally freaking ridiculous. What the hell was I thinking?

  Of course none of that was true. It wasn’t even possible. How could Jackson plot something so evil? Why would he need insurance money when he was already rich, as far as we all knew? And if I was really over there that day for whatever reason, why would he be so stupid as to let me think it was just a bad dream and go right on home? If he was willing to kill two innocent women, then he’d have no qualms about killing a young girl as well, if it meant saving his own hide.

  He didn’t do it. No way.

  My nightmares were really just that—nightmares. There was no truth to them at all, and the fact that I’d even conjured up such an awful image of Jackson made me a bad person.

  A bad girl.

  My hands shaking, I closed the life insurance policy folder and stood up. I knew exactly what to do now in order to get to the bottom of this. I had to be careful, but all I had to do was go and ask Jackson if he’d ever owned a gun, and maybe also try and sneak in a question about life insurance. If he was honest, then there had to be an innocent explanation for everything, and I would probably laugh about all this one day; laugh about how silly I was for suspecting a thing. But if he lied…then maybe the awful picture of Jackson my mind had just painted wasn’t so inaccurate after all…

  I went downstairs to find him sitting at the kitchen table. Two steaming plates of lasagne sat on the table along with two glasses of red wine, and as I sat down in front of my plate, Jackson smiled at me. “There you are. I was about to come looking for you to see if you were okay.”

  I forced a smile in return. “I’m fine. I looked for ages, but I couldn’t find the globes.”

  “No worries. I’ll go find them after dinner.”

  He took a bite of his food, then peered at me as he chewed. “Everything okay?” he asked after he swallowed. “You look worried.”

  “Sorry. This is just my thinking face,” I said. “My friend Alexandra has always told me I look really concerned when I think hard.”

  “What are you thinking about so hard?”

  “A few things,” I said, trying to sound as airy as possible. “I’ve been looking online at the course stuff for next semester at college, and I’m already kinda stressing about some of the content.”

  “Oh?”

  “One of the business classes apparently focuses on insurance a fair bit. I don’t know anything about that; I’ve never really thought about it.”

  He chuckled. “You know what insurance is, Lily.”

  I smiled. “I know. I didn’t mean it like that. Of course I know what it is, it’s just the finer details I don’t know anything about. Like life insurance
, for example. How does that work, exactly?”

  Jackson had been in the middle of lifting a forkful of lasagne to his mouth again, but he lowered it at my words and frowned. My heart lurched, and I worried I’d been too obvious already.

  “You don’t need to worry so much, baby girl. I’m sure your professors will have all the answers you need when the next semester begins. But that isn’t for weeks. You don’t need to get ahead of yourself, so stop worrying that pretty little head,” he said, reaching over and ruffling my hair.

  I breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Thank god, he had no idea what I was up to, so I could press a little harder. “Have you ever had life insurance? Or anyone you know?”

  He grinned. “Are you planning to kill me, Lily? Hoping for some sweet cash? Because no, I don’t have any life insurance. And I’ve never known anyone who does. The whole concept has always seemed a bit off to me.”

  I had to force myself to laugh at his joke about me, but on the inside I felt like throwing up. Why would he lie and say he’d never known anyone who had life insurance when he received over a million dollars in beneficiary payouts from Jenna’s policy after she died? Maybe he simply didn’t want to talk about it, but I couldn’t be sure.

  I changed tactics. “Oh, I just remembered. While I was Googling the college stuff, I saw something else,” I said. “Apparently some girls at the college had their apartment broken into over the weekend.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “He had a gun. That’s how he forced his way in,” I continued. “Isn’t that just terrible? It’s so scary.”

  Jackson reached across and patted my hand. “It is. But you’re always safe with me, baby girl. You know that.”

  “Am I?” I blurted out before I could stop myself.

  He frowned, and there was a strange flicker in his eyes. “What do you mean?”

  I quickly covered myself. “I mean, what if someone broke in here while we were asleep and tried to attack us? Do you have anything in the house that could protect us? Like a gun, or a baseball bat, or something like that?”

  His frown grew deeper. “For Christ’s sake, Lily, of course I don’t have a gun. You know how I feel about them.”

  My heart sank. Another lie. That could only mean one thing…

  Jackson leaned forward and stared at me, and I saw that his eyes had gone steely. It instantly reminded me of the cold look he had on his face that day he threatened my father during their fight, and I gulped.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, his voice stiff. “You’re acting very strangely, and you’re asking all sorts of weird questions. I wasn’t born yesterday, Lily. I can tell there’s something.”

  I was sprung. It was now or never.

  I jumped up from the table, preparing to run out of the kitchen and out of the house if need be. “I found the stuff in the attic,” I said. “The gun and Jenna’s life insurance policy. You just lied about it all! And there’s only one reason I can think of why you’d do that.”

  Jackson’s eyes remained cold, and he stood up, face etched with fury. Before I could run away, he was on my side of the table, hand gripping my upper arm. I tried to squirm out of his grip, but he held me still and leaned down.

  “You’re coming with me, little girl,” he said. “Right fucking now.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Jackson

  Lily had completely fucking lost it.

  A gun?

  A life insurance policy?

  I had no clue what the fuck she was going on about, and I wasn’t happy about whatever the hell it was she was insinuating about me. In fact, I was pissed as hell. She’d lost her damn mind.

  She squealed and tried to break free of my grip, and I leaned down. “Lily, for fuck’s sake. I’m not hurting you. I’m taking you to the attic so you can show me this goddamned stuff you’ve apparently found, because I’ve got no clue what you’re talking about!”

  She didn’t reply, and I frowned at her wide-eyed, trembling visage. “You’re frightened of me, aren’t you?” I said, softening my voice. “Lily, I didn’t mean to scare you. I just want you to take me up there and show me what the hell is going on.”

  “I…want to go home,” she mumbled, not meeting my eyes.

  I let go of her arm and crouched down so that my eyes were directly level with hers. “Okay, I understand. You don’t trust me right now, because you found something you think is incriminating in some way. So why don’t we just stay right here in this hallway, and you run me through it?” I said. “Then at least I’ll have some idea of what we’re dealing with.” I rose to my full height and put my hands on my head. “And here, I’ll keep my arms up so you know I’m not about to grab you and do god knows what. You might not believe me right now, but I’m not the sort of guy who hurts women.”

  Lily nodded, body still trembling, and she began to run me through what she found in the attic earlier. What she thought it could all mean. I listened, frowning the entire time, because I still wasn’t sure what she was talking about.

  “And I just…I thought that if you lied about these things, then there’s obviously a reason for that. And I could only think of one main reason you’d lie—because you’re more involved in what happened back then than you ever let on,” she finished. She couldn’t meet my eyes.

  I sighed. If she really had found these things, then it certainly did look bad for me, but there had to be a simple explanation. “Lily, I don’t know what to tell you. I’ve never owned a gun, and I certainly never received any money from a life insurance payout after Jenna died. I didn’t even know she took a policy out so close to her death. Believe me, if I did, the cops would’ve been all over me after her murder, accusing me of collaborating with your mom, or even setting her up like you’re thinking right now. But I didn’t get a single dime. I can prove it, too. I can show you my financial records for the last decade if I have to.”

  “Then why did I find those things in your attic?” she asked, an accusatory gleam in her eyes.

  “Look, Jenna used to keep all sorts of shit up there in boxes. After she died, I obviously went through the house and cleared out all her stuff, but honestly, I forgot about the attic. I barely ever go in there. So there’s probably a few boxes of her stuff still up there. I’m sorry, Lily, I honestly had no idea it was there. I guess she hid things in those boxes. Gun and paperwork included.”

  Her gaze shot up to meet mine. “So you think it was her gun?”

  “Has to be. Like I said, it’s not mine. And as for the policy…well, I had no idea about it. She must’ve decided to take it out all by herself, and I wasn’t informed at all. I’m not sure why I was never informed, but I’d damn well like to find out if it means getting to the bottom of all this.”

  Lily nodded and rubbed her arms, where goosebumps had begun to crop up. I leaned down again and tentatively reached out to stroke her. “Lily, I want you to know—I blame myself for this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I planted an awful, silly idea in your head while we were cooking dinner. This idea that maybe your mom was innocent and was actually killed in order to be framed for Jenna’s murder. But I didn’t mean to; I was simply spit-balling about alternate explanations for the letter you got, and why there would be jewelry indentations on it when she never wore any jewelry. I didn’t mean I thought that’s what actually happened. I thought you knew that. But I feel like it’s gotten in your head, and you’ve started to think that’s what really occurred, and now you’re looking for criminal masterminds anywhere and everywhere. Even me.”

  Lily shook her head. “Jackson, I already thought it might be a possibility before you ever mentioned it,” she said quietly, tears brimming in her eyes.

  “Why, baby?”

  “Because of what the police said. They said it could be other stuff, but the most likely explanation for the indentations on the letter is jewelry. And it just made me think…Mom never wore any, so someone else could’ve written it. And there
’s only one reason why that would be the case. So don’t worry; you didn’t give me that idea. The cops did, inadvertently.”

  I frowned. “Listen to me, baby girl. Your mom is still out there, and I bet she’s changed her entire identity to stay hidden. She’s dyed her hair, probably got herself some glasses, and she’s given herself a new style. Maybe part of that new style includes wearing jewelry. She could’ve found some that works for her skin and doesn’t give her allergic rashes, right?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Occam’s Razor, Lily. Simplest explanation is that your mom did it. Remember that.”

  “I’m trying. It’s just…”

  Her voice trailed off, and I reached out to hug her. “It’s hard. I know. Especially when you’ve been having all these confusing nightmares. But let me tell you again, baby, they’re just dreams. That’s all. I wasn’t here that day when Jenna died, and neither were you. The things you’re hearing in the nightmares are all figments of your imagination. And hell, you know what? I can even prove I wasn’t here that day.”

  “How?” she asked, eyes wide as saucers.

  “I have a private investigator. He’s helped out with certain aspects of the campaign, like opposition research. I can call him right now and have him look into that date six and a half years ago. There’s security cameras all over your dad’s construction company offices, and if I left the premises at all that day, they would’ve captured me on film. Same with any traffic light cameras in the area. So I’m gonna give him a call right now and have him start looking into that, just to give you some more peace of mind, okay? I want you to trust me, Lily.”

  “Okay.” Lily looked down, her lower lip trembling. “But you don’t need to do that. I feel really stupid. I feel so…”

  “Baby, don’t feel stupid,” I said. “Look, these things you say you found in the attic—they don’t exactly make me look great, and when you thought I lied about them…well, that made it worse. I understand why your mind jumped to where it did, even if it jumped too far. You were traumatized by what happened with Jenna and your mom all those years ago, and it’s still affecting you. It’s still on your mind a lot. I understand that.”