No Turning Back by Helenkay Dimon Read Free Book Online

insanity train. Leah tried to pretend it wasn’t true, but she only slept a few hours per night and now saw Declan’s face every time she closed her eyes. That had to be some sort of mental issue.
    She’d been trained from a young age to despise Charlie Hanover. Her father pounded her responsibility into her brain back when her days were filled with crayons and dolls. Her task was clear: one day she would grow up and right the wrong, get Shadow Hill back in the Baron family.
    For years the obsession grew and festered. When she woke up a year ago and realized every dinner conversation with her father centered on Charlie, she’d stepped back, or tried. She needed a life. She knew that because Mallory kept saying it. Leah finally listened, even went out on a few dates with Ted, the newly divorced vet just outside of town who cried at the mention of his ex-wife’s name.
    All Hanover talk had just moved off the front burner of her life. The boxes sat in storage and she didn’t have to think about the Hanover name every single day. Then Nanette died, and Ed said he’d heard through a friend at the courthouse the Hanover boys were coming to town.
    Now Leah had to convince them to go or, worse case scenario, buy them out. For her father’s mental and physical health, not to mention her own, she needed them to leave town as quickly as they’d come. “This is an investigation.”
    “You have a degree in marketing.” Mallory garbled the words while chewing on a pretzel.
    “Actually, it’s in—”
    “I don’t care. My point is you have seven boxes here.”
    Okay, admittedly that sounded . . . off. Leah feared some murder cases had smaller files. “I’ve been following the Hanovers for a long time.”
    “I will skip the part where I tell you this is crazy and jump ahead to some questions.” She pointed at the older boxes on the bottom of the pile. “Whose handwriting is on the three white boxes?”
    “My dad’s.”
And that’s where the crazy gene had taken hold
.
    “Ah, I see. He started checking up on Charlie, and somewhere along the line you picked up the ball and collected four more boxes of crap.”
    Leah wished the pizza delivery kid would hurry up and get there. “You don’t understand.”
    “I do.” Mallory snatched another pretzel. “Do you?”
    “Dad’s boxes contain the paperwork from Charlie’s original con against the town. He emptied the town’s accounts and set up a fake set of books to cover his tracks.” When Mallory’s eyebrows inched up at each word, Leah’s sentence fumbled. “Also in there is some information about Nanette’s purchase of our house—”
    “Declan’s house.” This time Mallory stuck her whole hand in the bag. “Technically, Declan and his brothers’ house.”
    “For now.”
    “And why did you start collecting boxes?”
    “For a short time I picked up the ball and investigated.” Leah toned down her involvement as much as possible. Mallory knew most of the history and had seen a few files, but Leah used to store the files in the office closet. Hid them because, well, she knew how Mallory would react. Kind of like she was now. “Mostly, I was trying to see if Dad missed anything. That led me to the brothers.”
    “Up until now I’ve seen two files.” Mallory held up two fingers and scissored them in the air. “Where did all the boxes come from?”
    The corner of crazy and needs-medication
. “My dad’s garage.”
    Mallory stood up, never easing her death grip on the wineglass. She walked over to the boxes and ran a finger over the top. “Of course. Totally logical.”
    First with Declan and now Mallory. When Leah spelled it all out and let her brain wrap around the words and analyze them, it all sounded so over-the-top, but she’d been on this path for so long that she wasn’t sure how to jump off.
    Ignoring the dizziness spinning in her head, Leah tried to make it all sound a bit less shaky. “Look, I gave up the fight against Nanette a long