Haydn eyes widened as he stared at her. “Holy fucking hell…” The sudden vise about his chest was making it difficult for him to breathe, so that all he could do was stare at Hailey.
Except he now knew for absolute certainty she wasn’t Hailey Frost.
There were changes from eight years ago. She spoke with an English accent rather than an American one, which also explained why he hadn’t been able to find her birth in the UK. She had also grown taller in the eight years since she was seventeen and the photograph from her school yearbook was on the front page of every newspaper across the world. Her hair was no longer shoulder length and blonde or her eyes emerald green, nor was there a silver brace on her top teeth.
There were subtle facial differences too. Nothing too pronounced, but enough so that it had slowed down his facial recognition program. Her nose was slightly shorter than in that school photograph, cheekbones more pronounced, her lips fuller, and her chin more pointed.
Haydn would take a guess on the shape of her ears having been modified slightly too. It had been scientifically proven, if not universally accepted, that ear shape was almost as definitive in proving a person’s identity as a fingerprint.
Despite those differences, Haydn was absolutely convinced he now knew exactly who Hailey was. “You’re Cassie…Cassandra, Snow…” he breathed softly.
Not only did Haydn now know exactly who she really was, but that identity told him the name of the man she was running away from too.
Chapter Five
Cassie Snow.
Hearing that name again after so many years was as painful, and then as numbing to Hailey, as having a lightning bolt shoot through her from her head to her toes. With the result her mind and body felt as if they were floating in a sea of nothingness.
“Cassie Snow died in a car accident seven years ago,” she stated flatly.
“That was the rumor, yes,” Haydn answered slowly. “But the thing to remember about rumors is that they’re as often wrong as they are right. Besides, her body was never found.”
“There was a funeral.”
“A very private funeral that none of the family attended.”
She had no choice but to sit down as her legs refused to support her. “My name is Hailey Frost, I was born in Gloucester, England. I’m the daughter of—”
“Your name is Cassandra Ellen Snow. You were born in New York, USA, the daughter of—”
“Stop!” she pleaded brokenly. “Please stop, Haydn,” she begged.
He crouched down in front of her, not touching her but near enough she could feel the reassuring warmth of his body. “Your father was Randolph Snow, deceased. He was a US senator. Your mother—”
“Please no!” she cried out. “I beg you, don’t!”
Haydn flinched as he saw the shaking of the hand she raised to ward off the delivery of the verbal blow his words would undoubtedly give her. A deep emotional pain, rather than a physical one.
Hurting her was the last thing Haydn wanted to do. Ever. After the things that had happened to her in the past, she deserved to be happy. To be able to stop running and take some of that happiness for herself.
But he couldn’t protect her if she wouldn’t confirm who she was. “Your mother was Ellen Elizabeth Snow, also deceased. Your sister, who is two years younger than you, is named—”
“Stop right there!” Hailey jumped to her feet, fury now emanating from every pore of her body as she glared at him. “You will not say my sister’s name—” She broke off, feeling the blood drain from her face at the realization she’d just confirmed she was exactly who Haydn had said she was.
Or had been.
Hailey had read the news reports on what had happened eight years ago. She knew that the high-profile kidnapping of the teenager, Cassie Snow, eldest daughter of a US senator, had been salacious fodder for the media for weeks of that kidnapping rather than days.
All helped along by the senator, in the process of running for office again, making a daily appearance in front of the cameras to comment on his daughter’s kidnapping.
Then, tragically, six weeks after Cassie had been kidnapped, and only hours after she had been located and rescued from a house in downtown DC, Randolph Snow was found dead from a single gunshot wound to the head, while sitting at his desk in his study in the mansion where the Snow family lived. The body of Ellen Snow was found in the master bedroom. She had also died from a single bullet wound to the head.
At first, the media speculated that a random intruder had killed the couple. But once the information was released that Cassie had been rescued, the possible blame for those deaths had shifted to the brother of one of the kidnappers who had been shot and killed during Cassie’s rescue just hours earlier.
When no evidence was forthcoming to support Ernesto Silva’s involvement in the murders, the coroner later ruled that Randolph and Ellen Snow had been murdered in their home by an unknown assailant or assailants.
The media had gone into a frenzy at the knowledge Cassie had been rescued at more or less the same time her parents had been shot and killed. There had been that initial wild speculation, but government agencies had quickly put a lockdown on any further information on the kidnapping or murders being revealed to the media.
Cassie, having been kept chained to the wall in a secured basement for six weeks, hadn’t known any of these details until much later.
She now focused on Haydn. “I won’t allow you or anyone else to do or say anything that might bring harm to my sister.”
As Haydn slowly straightened, he couldn’t help but admire the core of inner strength that told him Hailey meant every word she said.
He had studied her expressions as she obviously relived the past. The fear she must have suffered during those weeks of being held for ransom. The relief of her rescue, quickly followed by learning her parents had been murdered.
Haydn had been in France at the time, but he remembered watching Cassie’s rescue live on television. It had later been repeated over and over again, of course, but that initial immediacy had been riveting to watch. The volley of shots fired, two of the kidnappers down, the remaining two had surrendered so they weren’t given the same fate. Then, minutes later, seeing a frail-looking Cassie being assisted from the house.
She had been wearing a man’s overlarge T-shirt, her blonde hair a tangled mess. There had been no expression at all in the dullness of her green eyes when a camera was thrust in her face as she was wrapped in a blanket before being bombarded with a barrage of questions regarding her kidnapping and the kidnappers. Questions which were stopped when she was hustled into the back of a black SUV and driven to an unknown destination to be attended to by several doctors.
God alone knew how she’d coped when they told her of her parents’ murders.
The capture, prosecution, and year-long court case of the surviving two kidnappers had been another nightmare that Cassie had been forced to endure.
It became even more traumatic when Ernesto Silva, the twin brother of one of the dead kidnappers, had pulled a gun and attempted to shoot Cassie when she left the courthouse at the end of the lengthy trial. He’d been quickly overpowered before being arrested. For several weeks, the police had questioned him in regard to the kidnapping and the murders of Randolph and Ellen Snow, but in the end, they had to accept he’d known nothing about the former and had an airtight alibi for the latter. There was no way a thug like Ernesto Silva would have admitted to being in a threesome with two other men if he’d had any other choice. An alibi those two men confirmed and which had given Ernesto’s wife the grounds with which to later divorce him.
No doubt Ernesto Silva held Cassie responsible for all those things. His brother’s death. His own sexual humiliation. His divorce and losing custody of his two children.
This was the same Ernesto Silva who had been released from prison five days ago, after serving seven years for attempted murder by producing a gun and aiming it at Cassie outside the DC courtroom.
Haydn had never been totally satisfied with any of that sequence of events, especially the murder of the senator and his wife.
As he had questioned the convenient death of Cassie Snow in a car accident three months after Ernesto Silva was sent down with a lengthy prison sentence.
It had all seemed too neatly packaged to Haydn.
The kidnapping.
The rescue.
The unexplained and unresolved murder of the senator and his wife.
Then Cassie’s tragic accidental death only months later.
The disappearance of Rebecca Snow, Cassie’s younger sister, had never been explained either.
But as was usually the case, the media had quickly moved on to the next scandal, and Cassie Snow had been forgotten as quickly as she’d become fodder for every media outlet in the world.
Haydn, being a bit of a neat freak, had always suspected government involvement, and the last few days of looking for Hailey’s real identity had convinced him that supposition was the correct one.
He was convinced the living proof of that was now standing in front of him. She was red-haired and blue-eyed, not blonde and green-eyed, but Haydn had absolutely no doubts whatsoever that Hailey was really Cassie Snow.
For all of the media frenzy before and during the lengthy court case, only the court and Cassie knew what had really happened to her during her six weeks of captivity.
Nor had anyone ever been arrested for the murders of Randolph and Ellen Snow.
The sister, Rebecca, had disappeared long before the case of kidnapping even went to court.
Was that sister now also the reason Hailey was so adamant she was going to keep running, no matter what cost to her on a personal basis?
Haydn’s gaze sharpened. “Where’s your sister now?”
“She has a new identity and is safe,” Hailey bit out. “I intend to ensure she remains that way.”
“By continuing to run.”
Hailey drew in a deep breath. “If that’s what it takes to protect her, yes.” She met his gaze unflinchingly.
“The two kidnappers who lived—”
“Are still in prison.”
“But Ernesto Silva, the twin brother of Eduardo Silva, isn’t.” Haydn could only imagine what Ernesto had suffered during his years in prison, after having publicly used the alibi of a relationship with two men to clear himself of the murder of the senator and his wife. No doubt his treatment in prison was something else Ernesto blamed Cassie for.
“No.” Hailey didn’t bother to question how Haydn knew that. She knew from working with him this past year that he absorbed and dissected information as if he was one of the computers he so loved to work on. “Seven years ago, he also made it perfectly clear that he holds me completely responsible for the death of his brother during the shootout with the police,” she acknowledged heavily. “The fact that Eduardo kidnapped me, kept me a prisoner for six weeks, and was then shot during the confrontation with the police to rescue me seems to have escaped him,” she added bitterly.
“Cassie—”
“I would prefer you continue to call me Hailey,” she cut in. “I haven’t been Cassie for a very long time, nor do I have any desire to be her again. She was naïve and a victim. I’m neither of those things,” she stated firmly, chin high.
No, Haydn acknowledged with admiration, she most certainly was not. Tall, strong, and beautiful, Hailey was the one who now kicked ass, not the other way around. “You weren’t naïve then either. You were just very young. No one of seventeen should have to go through what you did.”
She breathed out heavily. “I survived then, and I will do so again now.”
“But only by disappearing before ditching the Hailey Frost persona and donning another one?”
She gave him a reassuring smile. “I know what I’m doing, Haydn.”
“Do you?” he challenged.
“If I don’t, then my Witness Protection handler does, and she’s already arranged for the new passport and identity I picked up earlier. Once Hailey Frost leaves England, she will cease to exist.”
Anger glittered in his eyes. “Not to me! Not to my family either.”
Her gaze lowered. “I’m sorry.”
His nostrils flared. “Are you?”
“Yes, I really am.” She breathed raggedly. “You and your family are the first real friends I’ve had since I was seventeen and my previous life was completely destroyed. But I can’t stay here. Surely you can see that?”
Of course Haydn could see that, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. Nor did he have to like being lumped into the “friend” category with the rest of his family. “Because you think Ernesto Silva will hunt you down now he’s been released from prison?”
She shuddered. “I know he will.”
“Why?”
She drew in a shaky breath. “Because he knows what I know.”
“Which is?”
She smiled bitterly. “That my father and his brother Eduardo plotted and worked together to kidnap me.”
Haydn recoiled. “What the fuck!”
Hailey gave a humorless smile at his obvious shock. “I really will have to kill you if you reveal to anyone else the things I’m about to tell you. None of this was revealed to the media at the time, and it never will be.”
Haydn’s eyes narrowed. “If you insult me like that again, I might just have to spank you.”
Hailey felt her cheeks burning at the rush of warmth between her thighs. Because of Haydn’s threat to spank her?
She gave a determined shake of her head. “My English maternal grandparents left my mother an inheritance of ten million dollars,” she continued. “As my father was notoriously bad with holding on to money, much preferring to gamble it away, my mother kept that inheritance in a separate account. It was to ensure the future of the family and also pay for Becca’s and my schooling and college. My father didn’t like that, felt that some of that money should have been his to do with as he wanted. I seem to remember there were quite a few arguments about it.” She grimaced. “Apparently, my father had gambling debts to the Silva family, and Ernesto’s threats, as head of the family, were becoming more urgent for my father to pay up.” She shrugged. “I can only surmise my father must had met Eduardo Silva at the same time as he met Ernesto. However they met, between the two of them, they arranged to have me kidnapped so they could share the ransom money. My father could pay off his debts and Eduardo would have his share too.”
“I’m guessing this was all without Ernesto’s knowledge?”
She nodded. “Eduardo always resented being the younger twin and thought he and Ernesto should have shared being head of the family business.”
“Which is a sure sign that he really shouldn’t.”
She smiled without humor. “Probably. Anyway, the arrangement was my father would keep two million of the five-million-dollar ransom they were asking for, Eduardo and friends would keep another two million, and the million that was left would pay my father’s gambling debts to Ernesto. And let’s not forget it was also good publicity for my father to be so high-profile during an election year,” she added scathingly.
Haydn’s jaw clenched. “Except…?”
“Eduardo rethought his position two weeks into the kidnapping and realized he could cut out the middlemen, my father and the three other kidnappers, and just keep the whole of the five million for himself. My father insisted that wasn’t the deal they’d made. I believe the two of them spent the next few weeks threatening each other with exposure and arguing back and forth as to who had the most to lose if that happened.”
Haydn had never heard of anything so fucked up in all his life. Or maybe it just sounded so much worse because it was Hailey this had happened to. Whatever the reason, if Randolph Snow were still alive, Haydn would have taken great pleasure in taking that life away from him. Slowly.
He scowled darkly. “Damn it, two of the men who kidnapped you had served time for rape.”
He
r gaze avoided meeting his. “Eduardo protected me from them.”
His eyes narrowed. “Why?”
She breathed out slowly. “I’m sure you’ve heard of Stockholm syndrome?”
His heart jolted in his chest. “You…?”
Hailey shook her head. “Other way round. I’m just not sure there’s a phrase for when the kidnapper becomes obsessed with the person he kidnapped.” She grimaced. “But Eduardo did exactly that. It was the reason, after my mother had paid over the ransom money, he decided to keep it all for himself. By that time, he had no intention of ever returning me to my parents. He was going to take all the money, and me, and we would disappear. Initially to South America and then wherever we chose to go after that. At the time, I had no choice but to go along with those plans.”
Haydn’s anger intensified. God knows what those weeks of emotional torture had done to her.
Something still niggled at the back of his mind. “How do you know all that about your father? What really happened to your parents? Damn it, there was no intruder in their house, was there,” he realized as if a light bulb had gone on inside his head. “Who killed whom?”
Hailey’s eyes appeared very blue in the pallor of her face. “My father had insisted from the beginning that he wouldn’t have the police in their home, monitoring calls, etc. He also insisted on handing over the ransom money himself, again without involving the police. But when the ransom was paid and I wasn’t released, my mother became suspicious and confronted my father.”
Holy fucking hell!
“When he admitted what he’d done and why, my mother took the gun from his desk and shot him in the head,” Hailey stated flatly. “Then she went upstairs, telephoned the police officer in charge of my kidnapping, and told him where they could find me. While she waited for him to ring her back and let her know I had been rescued, she wrote three letters, one explaining everything to the police, one to Becca, and the last one to me. She explained why she had done what she had, told us she loved us, and, once she received the call from the police officer confirming my safety, she killed herself.”
Haydn (Steele Protectors 5) Page 4
