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will when I can figure out all the codes. It’s very intricate."
     
    "How did you figure out the first ones?"
     
    "A friend of my father’s helped me. He was there when it all happened. He was charged with keeping my brother safe. He helped me decipher most of what I know. He sat with me for hours when I was a little girl, telling me that someday I might need to know this."
     
    "Why didn’t he speak with your brother, Hawke?"
    She paused then, looking at her hands, fingers interwoven and lying on her lap.
     
    "Lainie, tell me. Don’t leave anything out."
     
    "Hawke was too close to all that happened. He’d watched his father’s execution and vowed revenge," she hesitated again. "My friend was afraid Hawke would end up the same way as my father. He didn't think I would act on anything that was in the journal."
     
    Slade’s head lifted abruptly. Lainie’s words, rather than her body, finally held his full attention.
     
    "Ian, my youngest brother didn’t care. He thought Hawke’s need for revenge a foolish waste of time."
     
    "Family tales, fairy tales, I don’t see much difference. Both woven to help heal old wounds or open new ones."
     
    Lainie ignored the interruption. "Hawke doesn’t believe there are tales. Even though he was a little boy, he trusts what he saw."
     
    "Does he know about the journal?" Slade asked.
     
    Lainie shook her head. "I took it when I left my home. I thought I would have hours to try to figure all this out, but it’s so confusing."
     
    "You left the only one who could help you decipher this at home?" he asked coolly.
     
    "I had to leave," she said, tears forming in the back of her throat while she remembered the reasons for her leaving.
     
    Bertram’s horrible groping hands.
     
    The pain, the terror that held her hostage in her own home, and the fear her brothers would seek revenge.
     
    "Why?" he asked.
     
    She shook her head. The reason isn’t part of our negotiations. Nor did I promise to tell you about myself. The debt is paid in full. I owe you nothing."
    Unconsciously, Lainie laced her fingers together, remembering the pain. She was changed forever. That day she’d felt her life slipping away. She'd known she couldn’t stay with her family. She'd had to find a peace within herself before she could go home.
     
    Peace eluded her though. She didn’t think she would ever feel whole again.
     
    "All right Lainie MacPherson, tell me more," he commanded.
     
    "I can’t."
     
    Slade had caught the change in Lainie’s voice and the subtle tension in her body. He wondered what she was lying about.
     
    Even as Slade opened his mouth to a snide remark about the futility of hiding behind silence and pulling on his heartstrings, he realized there might be something to her silence. She had volunteered a lot of information--until their conversation became personal.
     
    Slade nodded. "I’ll let it go for now. But I mean to get to the bottom of your story. A time will come when you’ll tell me everything."
     
    "Never," she told him weakly.
     
    "Don’t bet on it."
     
    He watched Lainie close her eyes. The expression on her face changed so it was almost as if she was reliving something very painful. His heart ached for her.
     
    "I can’t imagine why I’d ever tell you my dark secrets. They have nothing to do with you or what I took from you."
     
    "I don’t believe you."
     
    Her eyelids flinched. "It doesn’t matter."
     
    "It might matter by the time we reach Edinburgh. You should work on a fairy tale that will stop me from handing you over to the authorities there." Slade said, not bothering to hide his disdain.
     
    "I won’t go to Edinburgh. I’d die trying to escape before anyone hands me over to Bertram."   
     
    "Why?" Slade asked again.
     
    She inhaled a long deep breath. Her eyes seemed to glass over for a moment. Then she shook her head, a lone tear sliding down her cheek.
     
    "All right, have it your way, for now," he said, sitting back, giving her