She flirted with a short-lived temptation to call her parents, who lived in L.A., but she knew they couldn’t help, and they’d just worry too much. Other than that, she had no one to turn to. Her coworkers at the lab weren’t real friends. And Becca was on her way home today. Ava checked her watch, realizing that her friend’s flight had just taken off. Ugh.
She pushed her hand into her purse on the passenger seat, blindly searching for her phone. When she found her smartphone, her brows snapped together. “What the hell? I know I left this thing on.” She shook her head as she powered it on. The agents must have rummaged through her bag while she was being questioned and turned the phone off—but why?
The sudden buzzing of her phone alerted her to a voicemail—two messages, but there were no phone numbers attached to the voicemails. Weird.
She held the phone to her ear and listened to the first message.
“Hey, Ava. Crazy morning.” It was Eddie. “I got grilled by some creepy government agent about the lab. He recommended, more like instructed, that I take a much-needed vacation until this insanity is resolved. This is all surreal, but try not to worry. Anyways, I’ll be in touch.” She listened to the voicemail once more. Was he insane? He sounded like this was no big deal.
A vacation? Seriously?
She was ready to call him back right away but remembered she had one more message. Her shoulders slouched forward when she heard Kat’s voice. She was relieved Kat was okay, but she had hoped the message was from Henry.
“Hi, Ava. I’m assuming you know the lab is empty, and Henry is missing. After the agents questioned me, they told me to take some time off work. A vacation, maybe. Well, I guess I will talk to you later,” she said with a slight tremble in her voice.
Ava stared down at her phone, a puzzled expression forming, contorting the muscles in her face into a frenzied mess.
Two messages from her fellow lab assistants left within two minutes of each other, and eerily similar. And neither of their numbers had shown up. What in the hell was going on, and why weren’t they more worried?
Ava called both of them back, but the calls went straight to voicemail. She rested her forehead on her steering wheel as her brain clambered to make sense of what was going on.
Guilt slammed into her when a dim portion of her mind began to question whether Henry had wiped out the lab, himself. “No.” She jerked her head upright. “It’s not possible,” she mumbled, starting her car.
She opened her visor and stared at her reflection. Her cheeks were almost crimson red with anger or maybe fear. A hollow pair of aquamarine eyes stared back at her. “What are you going to do, Ava?” She needed help and, apparently, food. Her cheekbones were a little more prominent than normal. Aside from the alcohol last night, when was the last time she’d eaten?
How can I think of food at a time like this? But if she didn’t fill her stomach with something soon, she knew she’d never be able to think straight.
Deciding what to do, Ava threw her car into reverse and left the apartment parking lot. She drove away from Aberdeen and toward Baltimore, in search of a place she’d never been to before. If terrorists were waiting to snatch her, she didn’t want to go to any of her regular hangouts.
She parked in front of some obscure internet and food café outside of Baltimore and checked her wallet for cash. She didn’t want to use her credit cards. Maybe she was paranoid, but her gut feeling was that Henry was in danger, which meant that she, too, was not safe.
“Can I have a bagel, please?” she asked once inside the café.
“Anything else?” the barista asked her.
“Black coffee, please.” She paid and sat down in front of one of the computers. There were three in the café, and all were available.
“Excuse me?”
She looked up at the thirty-some-year-old man standing next to her chair. “Yes?”
“This might sound like a strange question, but are you—”
She didn’t let him finish. “No.” This wasn’t the first time someone had confused Ava for her sister. They were identical, but Ava would never parade down a runway in sexy lingerie. She preferred the modest bulk of a lab coat.
“But you look . . . you’re not dressed how I’d imagine, but I mean you look just like her. You sure you’re not just lying to me?” The guy raised a brow as his eyes flittered down to the curves of her breasts and back up to her mouth. She watched as his brown eyes seemed to darken with lust.
The same, self-conscious humiliation snuck up on her. Ava never wore anything even remotely sexy. She was boring. Purposefully plain. And still she was subjected to this.
Damn, my twin.
“Seriously, you have the same hair, eyes, perfect features . . . and, um, body,” he said, tilting his head and staring at her chest again.
Oh my God. Leave me alone. “I’m busy if you don’t mind,” she said before redirecting her attention back to the computer screen. She finished typing Henry’s full name into Google.
“Here’s your bagel, miss.”
She looked up in relief to see the barista and not the gawking stranger at her side. “Thank you.” She took an eager bite of her bagel, which was smothered in cream cheese, just the way she liked it. Unlike her sister, she didn’t need to worry about photo shoots. Not that she was overweight—she worked out a few times a week. Her body cried out for the exercise, after all the time she spent cooped up in the lab.
She inhaled the rest of her bagel and refocused on her search. Henry had never mentioned family, but she needed a place to start. She scoured through the results from the search engine, willing for a result—any result—that would help.
“Got you,” she said under her breath as she tapped the screen with her finger. It had taken a little digging, but she found a name. A sister. Sophia Davidson.
She Googled Sophia and got an instant hit—an address and photo. The image was a tad blurry. Judging by the graininess of the picture, the woman’s fringe bangs, and her blouse, the photo had been taken in the early eighties. Sophia was beautiful, though, with long, dark brown hair and green eyes. Or maybe blue.
So you’re Henry’s sister, huh?
She checked the address but found only a family called the Jacobsons, who had resided in the home since 1983. Sophia must have lived there before them.
Frustration clawed at Ava as she spent the next twenty minutes trying different search terms and databases to uncover additional information on the mysterious woman.
She hadn’t wanted to use the hacking skills she’d picked up from her roommate at Berkeley, but eventually, she had no choice. She cross-referenced Sophia’s name with every hospital within a sixty-mile radius of the address that had accompanied the old picture.
Ava’s heart rate doubled when her name popped up in connection to a hospital in Poughkeepsie, New York.
She peeked over her shoulder, checking to make sure no one was watching her screen, and then quickly tapped at the keys, accessing the hospital’s database. After a few more minutes she was able to obtain a birth certificate.
Aiden Liam O’Connor. 1983. So, Henry has a nephew.
She examined the document, which must have been scanned into the hospital’s system at a later date. The father’s name was Liam O’Connor, but his place of birth and residence was in Dublin, Ireland. Are you still in Ireland?
There was no birth announcement in any of the local papers—weird.
She decided to turn her Google search to Sophia’s son, Aiden, hoping for a better result than she’d had with Sophia. But after clicking through dead end after dead end, she came up empty-handed. Damn. Who are you people? She combed her fingers through her hair, leaned back in her chair, and squeezed her eyes shut. Like mother, like son.
She opened her eyes and tapped at the keys. Guess I’ll try Liam. She bit her thumbnail and waited for the results.
“Finally.” Embarrassed for speaking out, she glanced around her and spotted the man from earlier sitting at a nearby
table. His eyes were on her. Did he see her use her ninja hacking skills? She didn’t think so.
She could feel the heat burning her cheeks as she redirected her attention to the archaic computer screen. Her search had pulled up an article published last July in The Boston Globe, about a bar that Liam O’Connor and his son, Aiden, had purchased and renovated. There was no picture of the two—just a photo of an Irish pub in a charming brownstone building. A flashy fluorescent green sign shone above its doors, like many of the pubs she’d seen on her visit to Ireland three summers ago.
She couldn’t be sure whether Liam and Aiden were connected to Sophia, or even to Henry, for that matter. But she had to hope.
She stared at the image of the bar as she rubbed her hand against her cheek.
“I guess I’m going to Boston.”
Chapter Four
The vibration soothed her as the train roared down the track toward Boston. Rain pellets flicked against her window as she leaned her head against the glass. In the distant blackness, city lights flashed through the rain. She was getting close.
She looked down at her phone and blinked away tears as she swiped through the pictures. Henry had become so important to her, so fast. And she was only just now realizing how good-natured and caring he had been. It wasn’t often she met someone who was as passionate about the work as she . . . and they’d spent hours and hours together. And now he was missing.
She bit her lip, resisting the urge to bite down on her already chewed-at fingernails. Are you still alive? She chucked her phone back into her purse and inwardly cursed as her bag fell off her lap and to the floor.
“Allow me.”
She followed the hand to its owner and looked up at a man with silvery gray eyes. “Thank you.” She managed to spit out the words without showcasing her emotions.
Or so she’d thought.
“You okay, miss?” The man slid down into the empty seat next to her and handed over her purse. “I don’t mean to pry, but . . . it seems like you might want someone to talk to.”
How embarrassing. How many times had she cried already on this stupid train? Ava placed her large bag on her lap, unsure of what to do with it at the moment. “I’m all right. Thanks, though.” She forced a smile, hoping that her eyes weren’t ringed in black, leaking mascara.
The man clasped his hands on his lap, and Ava caught sight of black ink peeping out from beneath the sleeves of his dress shirt. “You from Boston?”
She shook her head no.
“You sure you don’t want to talk? I’m good at talking to people.”
She could detect a hint of an accent in his voice. Bostonian? “I don’t generally confide in strangers, but thanks.” She forced herself to look at the attractive man sitting next to her. He was tall and well built—his muscles constricted against his dress shirt. His semi-wavy brown hair was parted on the side, and his gray eyes seemed to pierce right through her.
“Okay, but if you change your mind, we have about ten minutes until we arrive at the train station.”
“Thanks.” She watched him stand up, and he gave her one last look before moving back to his original seat. She needed to pull herself together. She was about to face Henry’s relative—she hoped—as soon as she arrived in Boston. Her mind spun as she considered what she would say to him. Would he be of any help?
She released a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding when the train doors opened. She reached for her purse, the only thing she had with her, and forced her legs to move.
Once outside the train station, she stood beneath the overhang of the train plaza at Boston’s South Station and watched as rain slammed against the street. “Great,” she muttered, steeling her nerve.
“Care to share my umbrella?”
She turned around to see the handsome, gray-eyed passenger at her elbow. “I just need to hail a taxi. I can handle a little rain, but thank you.”
“You’re not very good at accepting help, huh?”
She thought about his question. “Maybe I could stand under your umbrella for a second while I catch the attention of a cab?”
His mouth broadened into a grin. “That’s a start.”
She stepped under his umbrella and they walked from beneath the overhang to the sidewalk. Her mystery man held out his arm, although she wasn’t sure if he was hailing a taxi for her or himself. What was his agenda? The rain beat soothingly against the umbrella and the sharp, chill wind whipped against her face, burning her cheeks.
He started to move toward a cab that had pulled up to the curb. “Take care, Miss.” He opened the door. “I hope you have a better day tomorrow.”
His sincere words were a refreshing change. “Thank you so much.” Her lips curved into a smile as she scooted into the cab. I guess not all men are jackasses.
“Can you please take me to O’Connor’s Bar? It’s an Irish place in—”
“I know the place,” the cab driver interrupted.
She leaned back against the leather seat and shut her eyes, hoping for traffic. She wasn’t quite sure if she was ready to dive head first into this investigation, which might involve terrorists and definitely involved a secret government agency. She was just a biochemist, after all. This was way out of her wheelhouse.
When the cab pulled up in front of the bar, she looked out at the green neon sign hanging above the door. It was definitely the place from the news article.
She paid her driver and stepped out into the rain. After several hard splatters had threatened to soak her hair, she rushed to the building. It was only a few steps from the cab to the bar, but the skies opened on her like an ominous sign, the water thick as a wall between her and the door. The wind screamed warnings as it whipped at her body.
She swung the door open, her hair a disheveled, wet mess around her face. Her tank top was drenched. God, she was freezing. She clenched the straps of her handbag with a deathlike grip and ignored the bar’s patrons as she made her way toward the back, where she assumed she would find the restrooms.
“Excuse me,” she said as she bumped into someone exiting from a back room.
“My apologies,” an accented voice responded.
She pushed the women’s bathroom door open without glancing at the stranger, thankful to discover that it was a one-person-only bathroom. She locked the door, dropped her bag on the counter, and pushed strands of wet hair from her face. Oh God. She looked exactly like a raccoon.
“No wonder he didn’t hit on you,” she whispered.
Ava turned on the faucet and splashed some water onto her face before applying a paper towel to the mascara beneath her eyes. She combed her fingers through long, brownish blonde hair, and swept it off to the side into one loose braid. “I guess this will have to do.” She searched through her purse for anything that might help her look a little more human. Unlike her sister, she didn’t carry an arsenal of makeup with her at all times. But she did spot a lone tube of pink lip gloss in the bottom of her bag.
“Better.” She applied the gloss to her full lips and realized her cheeks were bright already from the cold air. Although normally she did everything she could to hide her looks, she was nervous to meet Henry’s relative and wanted to look somewhat presentable. Or, at the least, sane.
After a few calming breaths, she stepped out of the bathroom and headed for the bar area. The place was more crowded than she’d prefer, but when she caught sight of Monday Night Football on the flat screen TVs throughout the bar, she understood why it was packed. Perhaps no one would notice her with the game on.
She found an empty stool at the end of the bar, which lacked a good angle of the football game. Not a popular spot. She rested her hands on the counter and looked up into a pair of light blue eyes.
“Good evening. How are you doing tonight?”
Despite his age, the man’s sexy Irish accent infiltrated her system, somehow making her comfortable in the unknown environment. “I’m okay,” she lied.
“What can I get you?”
he asked, wiping down the counter in front of her. “I don’t take you for a whiskey drinker, am I right?”
Ava gave him a broad and genuine smile. “No. No, I’m not.”
“Keep smiling like that and your drink will be on the house,” he said before exposing a sideways grin.
Her cheeks warmed as she blushed. “I’ll just have a club soda if that’s okay.”
“Sure thing.”
As he poured her drink, another man pushed through a swinging door behind the bar. He greeted one of the patrons before his attention shifted to Ava. The man’s eyes locked on hers despite the loud eruption of cheers.
“Touchdown, Patriots,” someone shouted.
Ava could hear only the sound of her heartbeat. A strange feeling, like butterflies flapping their wings hard and fast, nestled its way inside her.
“You bet on the game?” her bartender asked the man while sliding the club soda in front of Ava.
“Nah, not tonight,” the man responded, without taking his eyes off Ava.
She forced herself to blink before studying the drink in front of her.
“Can I get you anything else?”
“I’m okay, thank you,” she responded before her bartender walked away, leaving her alone with the man whose eyes she could still feel on her face.
His tanned forearms flexed as he pressed his palms against the counter. “I know my father has already served you, but are you sure you wouldn’t like something a wee bit stronger?”
His Irish brogue made her head spin. She needed to pull herself together.
Ava took a sip of her club soda and tried to slow down her pulse a few notches before meeting his blue eyes again.
“You all right, love?”
The silky baritone of his voice made her forget why she was even in the bar. She’d never been the kind of girl to go weak-kneed just from looking at a man, but she’d never exactly met one like this before, had she? “I’m good, I think.” The stark contrast of his jet black hair against his bright blue eyes had her feeling a bit dizzy. The color of his irises reminded her of the Tahitian crystal waters she once swam in—so deep she could drown in them.
Buried Lies (Hidden Truths) Page 28
