“Talk to me, please,” she said. “What is going on here?”

“I can’t . . . discuss it with you.”

Grier dropped her hold and stepped back. “Wrong answer,” she bit out. “Totally wrong answer.”

As she glared at him and all his resolute silence, she realized why she’d felt so oddly comfortable around Isaac: Her father was a ghost as well. Always had been. She’d literally grown up and now lived under the fear that at any moment he could disappear forever.

And her client had given off that exact same vibe.

“You’ve got to talk to me,” she said grimly.

“I can’t.” The eyes that looked at her were those of a stranger in familiar garb—as if someone had taken a mask of her father’s features and stepped in behind the surface dressing to stare outward. “Even if I could . . . I couldn’t bear to contaminate you with . . .”

He sagged as if bowing under a great mountain of weight.

Strange, she thought. There were definitely times as you got older when you began to see your parent as a person rather than Father or Mother. And this was one of them. The man in her kitchen was not the all-powerful lord of house and office . . . but someone who was caught in some kind of bear trap, the jaws of which were seen only by him.

“I need to go,” he said roughly. “Stay here and don’t let anyone in. Turn the security system on and do not answer the phone.”

As he went to leave, she blocked his way to the front hall. “Unless you tell me what the hell is going on, I’m going to walk out that door the moment you leave and parade around Charles Street until I either get mowed down in traffic or am found by whatever you’re so afraid of. Do not push me on this. Because I will do it.”

There was a moment of glower-to-glower. And then he laughed harshly. “You are my daughter, aren’t you.”

“Through and through.”

He started walking, doing laps around the granite-topped island.

It was time, she thought. Time to get the answers to all those questions that she’d wanted to ask about him and what he did. Time to fill the voids of mystery and shadow with tangible answers that were long overdue.

God, as much as Isaac was a complication, he was almost like a blessing from above.

“Just talk, Dad. Don’t be a lawyer—don’t think everything through.”

He stopped on the far side of the cooktop and stared over at her. “My mind is the only thing I’ve got, my dear.”