Slow Burn (Dynasties Seven Sins #7) - Janice Maynard

One

Jake Lowell had circumnavigated the globe more than once in the last fifteen years. He’d traveled everywhere and seen everything. Well, except for Antarctica. That continent was still on his bucket list. But of all the cities and countries he’d visited and/or put down temporary roots, the one place he absolutely thought he’d never return to again was Falling Brook, New Jersey.

The town’s name was idyllic. Jake’s memories weren’t.

He’d left his birthplace at twenty-two, in the midst of scandal and tragedy. And he’d never returned. Until today. Under duress.

When his stomach growled for the third time, he pulled into a gas station and topped off his tank. The credit-card machine on the pump was out of paper, so he wandered inside for his receipt and to grab a very late lunch. In the end, he decided a candy bar would do for now. He’d always had a sweet tooth.

As he paid for his purchases, the stack of newspapers near the checkout stand caught his eye. The usual suspects were there. New York Times. Wall Street Journal. But it was the small-town paper that gave him heartburn. The headline screamed, “Vernon Lowell Lives! Black Crescent Fugitive Located in Remote Caribbean Location.”

Jake’s stomach churned. The story had broken over a week ago, but the local news outlets were milking it daily. He’d had time to get used to the incredibly upsetting news, but he was still in shock. For a decade and a half, he had known his father was gone. Probably living it up in the bowels of hell. Now the dead had come to life.

When the cashier handed Jake his receipt, she gave him a curious look. Too late for him to realize he should have paid cash. Would the woman see the name on his card and put two and two together? Was she part of the always speedy Falling Brook grapevine?

The name Lowell wasn’t all that unusual, but here in Falling Brook it was radioactive. Fifteen years ago, Jake’s father, Vernon Lowell, had absconded with an enormous sum of money—the assets belonging to some of Falling Brook’s most high-profile citizens. A dozen or more elite clients had entrusted Black Crescent Hedge Fund with their fortunes and their futures. Vernon, along with his CFO and best friend, Everett Reardon, were financial wizards who founded Black Crescent and made piles of cash for everyone involved.

But, inexplicably, something went very wrong. The money evaporated. Everett Reardon was killed in a car crash while fleeing police. And Jake’s father disappeared from the face of the earth, presumably dead.

The living were left to clean up the mess. And what a mess it was.

Jake drove aimlessly, tormented by the memories even now.

Falling Brook was a small enclave, still not much more than two thousand residents. Jake had done his due diligence before returning home. He’d waded through enough online research to know that not much had changed. This town with the rarefied air and high-dollar real estate still protected the famous from the outside world.

For a few moments, Jake parked across the street from Nikki Reardon’s old house—a mansion, really—letting the engine idle. Nikki’s world, like Jake’s, had been destroyed by her father’s misdeeds. Fifteen years ago she’d fled town with her mother, their lives also in ruins.

When Jake allowed himself to remember Nikki, he experienced the strangest mix of yearning and uneasiness. Because his father and Nikki’s had been business partners and best friends, it was inevitable that the two families spent a considerable amount of time together while Jake was growing up. But what he remembered most about Nikki was his one wild night with her in Atlantic City five years ago.

Though she was four years younger than he was, she had always been mature for her age. Eons ago, she had been his first real girlfriend. Despite all that, the alluring woman he’d hooked up with in a brief, unexpected, passionate reunion in a casino hotel was far different from the redheaded, pale-skinned beauty he had known as a very young man.

That new Nikki had dazzled him. And scared him.

Muttering under his breath, Jake made himself set the car in motion. Nikki’s ghost might still wander the halls of that glamorous house, but she was long gone.

His immediate destination was a small boutique hotel known for its discreetness and luxury. Jake needed the first and would enjoy the second. Though he possessed the skills to live off the land, these days he much preferred a comfortable bed at the end of the