His mind worked rapidly with the new information. Sam had been there? “I assume the appointment went well?”
“He didn’t say. Shall I find out if the family needs anything?”
“Yes, that would be good of you.” He hesitated. “Find out whatever you can on their situation, but please be discreet. If they’re having difficulties, I don’t want to broadcast them. That’s not our place.”
“Yes, sir.”
He started to walk away but paused midstep. “Has Ms. Garza come in?”
“Just a few minutes ago.”
“Thank you.” Edward nodded and headed for the elevator. He’d have to tell her about Sam, though he couldn’t imagine he was guilty of anything. The man was absolutely enamored of his wife and two babies. Edward could only imagine how it must feel to be so completely in love with one person, let alone three of them.
And there he was, in that same bad place. The only two people he’d ever really loved had been his parents. It had been a year since they’d been killed in a car accident, and the pain was still raw. Nothing had ever come of the investigation into their deaths—nothing more than the revelation that the brake lines had been cut—but that wasn’t the only reason that wound wouldn’t heal.
His thoughts drifted back to the letter he’d received several weeks ago. It had been a copy of a death notice, sent from a concerned friend—two words he highly doubted were accurate under the circumstances. The notice had been that of Otto Zarrenburg, a minor royal who apparently wasn’t very well liked. If he had any bearing on Edward’s life, the connection was as buried as the man himself.
Then, a month later, the same so-called friend had sent an article about illegal adoption. There had been nothing personal about it, and at first the message had been lost on him. But then he’d received the remains of documentation suggesting he’d been illegally adopted, and his brain hadn’t turned off since.
At least not until he met Sophie.
Now his life was tossed into every type of turmoil imaginable. His parents had been killed, and both his origins and his integrity were on the line. On top of that, he had a woman turning him inside out. There were moments he truly didn’t know who he was anymore, and increasingly he didn’t care to. That man—whoever he’d been—was lost to him. Whenever he managed to climb out of this mess, he’d be someone else entirely, and the thought scared him.
It was the first thing that ever had.
His feelings for a certain redheaded investigator were the second.
* * * * *
Rufus answered the phone on the first ring. “It’s about damn time,” he barked.
“Cool it, sweet cheeks.”
“Who the hell is this?” The voice wasn’t the one he expected.
“You know who it is. Your girl is in the wind, so I guess it’s just you and me from here on out.”
“She’s gone?”
“Oh yeah. I guess she forgot how to sit and stay. She just ran out on you. And just in case she didn’t deliver my message, here it is again. The price just went up.”
Rufus’s jaw locked with anger. “That wasn’t our deal,” he said through his teeth.
“Your problem, not mine. You want to find a new man, suit yourself.”
Damned criminals. He’d yet to meet one good for his word. Everything was spiraling out of control, and he was fresh out of people to trust. But nothing spoke louder than the almighty dollar, and no one chased those harder than the asshole on the other end of the connection. “I’ll pay,” Rufus said, “but you need to deliver.”
“What do you want?”
“The attorney and his girlfriend. Kill them both.” Raw pleasure spread through him at the satisfaction that would bring.
“That’ll cost you an extra five figures.”
He’d have paid more. A lot more. And with any luck, he would. “I’ll do you one better.”
“How’s that?”
“Find my girl,” Rufus said, “and I’ll make it six.”
Chapter Eleven
Sophie saw Edward coming from a mile away, or at least for the majority of the distance that separated his office from the elevator. Her misgivings about their involvement did nothing to sway the fact that she just noticed the man. He was impossible to ignore.
“I brought you something,” he said, handing her a bag.
She looked inside. The contents affected her more than they should. “Thank you. This is really sweet of you. I completely forgot to grab anything to eat.” She extracted the Danish and took a bite. “These are heavenly. I think I’m in love.”
He looked as if he wanted to say something, but he didn’t.
She swallowed her first mouthful. “Did you check for missing, disheveled employees around the time of our little adventure yesterday?”
“Sam Johnson left. He said the twins had a doctor’s appointment, which should be easy enough to verify. He came back late.”
“His whereabouts in the building can be tracked. Anyone else?”
“Ms. Abbot said she didn’t remember anyone, but for what it’s worth, she didn’t remember Sam at first.” He set his coffee on the edge of his shiny desk and slipped off his jacket, revealing a crisp white shirt that practically glowed against his tanned skin. How he wasn’t pasty white, she didn’t know. This was only the second time she’d seen him out of a jacket, and only once had she seen him out of a shirt.
It wasn’t the best memory, yet she couldn’t unsee it.
The video.
She sat up straight, nearly dropping the half-eaten Danish. “Oh. My. God.”
He looked up from the chair into which he’d just settled. She loved how he didn’t seem bothered that she’d taken over his office. “What?” he asked.
“I think I know where I’ve seen that woman before.”
He sat a little straighter. “Where?”
“Remember when I asked you about your intimate relations in Europe?” The woman…even with her hair and makeup now entirely different, her face bore a striking resemblance to Honeysuckle’s…and to that of the woman in the footage with Edward. The accent had provided the connection.
“You think I don’t?” he asked dryly. But his eyes were lit with curiosity, her own excitement reflected there.
She pulled out her cell phone and looked at the photo she’d taken that morning. Then she found the video and hit play, stopping it as soon as the woman’s face was visible—an early shot that didn’t include Edward. The video quality wasn’t high def, but when she mentally ditched the hair color their faces were remarkably similar. “Are you sure you don’t know her?” she asked, looking up from the display.
He frowned. “It’s possible she was once a passing acquaintance, but I don’t remember her.”
Passing acquaintance? Sophie held up the phone so he could see the video still. “Is this her?”
He rose and walked over to her. After a brief look, he then took the device and studied it more closely. “It could be, but with the zoom the picture quality isn’t great. Maybe if I had a side-by-side comparison.”
She took back her phone and switched to the photo from the café that morning before handing it back. “How’s this?”
He studied it. “Okay, yes, I see it.”
So did Sophie, and she was ill that she’d ever thought the woman on the video to be her sister. “If she’s the same woman, that’s one hell of a passing acquaintance.”
“What are you talking about?” He looked genuinely confused.
She weighed her options. She really didn’t want to see the stupid thing again, but she didn’t have to watch. Edward’s reaction, however, might prove valuable, so she went back to the footage, started the video, and handed over the phone.
Only a few seconds passed before the mild confusion on his face turned into deeply etched shock. “What the hell is this?”
“I would think you’d know.”
He stared at the screen. A minute passed, then two. “This isn’t me.”
> “Nice try. That’s you all the way down to the haircut and the zillion-dollar suit.” That he’d lie to her face—again—stung. But doing it while holding the evidence? That hurt.
He looked up, staring blankly. “No, I’m serious. This isn’t me.”
She stared back. He wouldn’t continue to deny what was right in front of their faces would he? “I know it’s not the best quality video… What are you doing?”
He’d set down her phone and had started working on his tie. “Taking off my shirt.”
“I can think of a million reasons that isn’t a good idea.” Not that she wasn’t intrigued…
“Really? Name twenty.”
“I’m serious. We’ve already established you have a habit of performing for the cameras—”
“Very funny, Ms. Garza.” He worked the buttons now, revealing a little more of his chiseled chest with each one.
“The boardroom, your desk, and this…whatever this is. It’s a pattern.”
He finished the last button, then opened his shirt.
Oh, good God. How did a man who wore a suit all day get so ripped? He had an actual six-pack—the first one she’d ever seen in real life. He should model underwear. In fact, she’d pay to see it.
“You’re looking a little too far south.” Mild amusement hitched to his voice.
Oh hell. She blinked and drew her gaze upward.
Edward had a tattoo—one the size of her palm on the left side of his chest. “How did they get that thing on there over all that granite?” she muttered.
“Granite, huh?”
She studied the design. Tribal, but that didn’t tell her much. “What does it mean?”
“It means don’t get drunk near a tattoo parlor. And also, that when your friends are likewise drunk, they are not your friends. Especially not when you’re near a tattoo parlor.” He paused, presumably to take in the expression on her face. “It was a long time ago and it rarely sees the light of day. At least not in public.”
“And it also means that’s really not you in the video.” The tattoo could have been covered by makeup for the footage, but if someone wanted to frame Edward, they wouldn’t hide the ink. Granted, if Edward was part of the setup, he’d know to hide the tattoo to later use its absence to claim innocence, but if he was guilty, he had no reason to throw suspicion on himself to begin with.
“And the plot thickens,” she muttered.
They both glanced at the screen and just as quickly looked away. He reached over and touched the display, stopping the video.
“Whoever that man is, he looks exactly like you.” There wasn’t much point in saying it aloud, but the observation made it a bit more real.
“Can you enlarge that on the computer?”
“Sure.” She leaned over his desk and woke the computer, then pulled up her email.
“It was emailed?” He seemed surprised.
“Yes. Anonymously.”
“How does one do that?”
“There are plenty of web-based services out there that will do the whole cloak and dagger thing for you. You can hide your IP address by using a proxy server, though the less inclined may not be aware of the need. The average person would probably just use a free email service to make a new address.”
“Were you able to trace the email?”
“That would have been too easy. This guy wasn’t average.” She opened the email and played the video, stopping it as soon as she had a good facial shot of the man who was not Edward. “Okay if I print a screen capture?”
“Go ahead.”
She sent front and side headshots of the man to the printer, then scanned for a decent shot of the woman. “This one is harder,” she muttered.
“It’s almost deliberate,” he observed. “What are the odds of having great shots of him and almost nothing focusing on her?”
Sophie had to bite her tongue not to speak of the woman’s resemblance to Honeysuckle, and there was no way to ask if he saw one or would think anything of it. They’d already connected the woman on screen to the one in the café, so the whole familiarity spiel was dead in the water. And with Honeysuckle in Europe, there was no way Sophie could draw a passing comparison.
Frustrated, she went to the printer and collected the images of the man. She drew a sharp breath.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She held up one shot to get a real-time side-by-side between the man and Edward. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you had a twin.”
* * * * *
Edward wasn’t amused, nor was he convinced. “Are you sure?”
“Stand there. Don’t smile.” She laughed, as if that was funny. As if any of this was funny.
He stood, unsmiling—no problem there—while she took his picture.
“Let me email this to myself so I can print it and you can see what I’m seeing. And for God’s sake, button your shirt.”
He did. “I’m not some kind of enigma. I mean, dark hair, dark eyes… Other people have that.”
“Just wait.” When the printer spat out the image, Sophie gathered it and held the two side by side. “Do you see it now?”
“There’s a resemblance,” he admitted.
“That’s more than a resemblance.”
“Doppelganger?”
She paused and stared him down. “Yes. When all else fails, let’s assume it’s paranormal.”
He pushed his hand through his hair. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Of course not.” She reached up and brushed her fingers through the ruffled strands as if smoothing the mess he’d just made. “You meant you have a twin.”
“That’s not possible.”
“How do you know?”
He didn’t. He’d been adopted—illegally. He didn’t know a damn thing. “How many celebrity look-alike contests are there out there? It happens.”
“Yes, it happens. But how often does it just happen that I get an anonymous email that just happens to look like it features you and—” She stopped and looked at him, wide-eyed.
“Me and who?” Honeysuckle Hawk, that was who. It just hit him that the woman on the video was dressed exactly as Honeysuckle had been the night of the coronation. But when he’d dug into Sophie’s credentials he hadn’t found any indication that she knew Honeysuckle, and she hadn’t been at the coronation, so she had to be thinking of someone else.
She swallowed. “The woman from the café.”
“We don’t know that.”
She glared at him and brushed past, taking a seat at his computer.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Searching the IP address from that email,” she said without looking up.
He pressed a hand to his forehead, hoping to chase away the beginnings of a headache. “You just said it was anonymous.”
“It is, to a degree. It belongs to a proxy server, so we dead-end there unless we come up with a warrant.”
“Which brings me back to my original question. What are you doing?”
She glanced at him. “I’m using the IP address to geolocate the proxy server.” She spoke slowly, as if that would make the words make sense. It didn’t work.
He watched her for a few moments, trusting she knew what she was talking about because he hadn’t a clue. “If it’s a false location, what good does that do?”
“Maybe nothing,” she said. “Or maybe a lot.”
“Could you be a bit more evasive?”
She sat back from the computer. He couldn’t read her face, though it was clear the news was either really great or really awful. “The email,” she said, “came from somewhere in Zarrenburg.”
He stepped back. “That’s not funny.”
“Why would it be funny?”
“If I’m understanding this foreign language of yours, couldn’t someone from pretty much anywhere use the proxy in Zarrenburg?”
“Yes, but you’re thinking like a lawyer. Start thinking like an investigator. Either the email originate
d in Zarrenburg or someone wanted you to think it did—someone, mind you, who knew enough to use a proxy to make it convincing. Why would anyone do that?”
He sat in the chair opposite Sophie, who looked mighty damn comfortable at his desk. “I was just in Zarrenburg. Maybe I upset someone.” Yeah, that was the understatement of the century. Adam had been livid, and that was probably after he’d calmed down. Had Adam seen the video?
“So that person sent it to me?” she asked. “This goes back to Steel Hawk.”
“Probably,” he admitted.
“But there’s something more,” she said.
He looked up. “What are you getting at?”
“I know Steel Hawk has a longstanding history with the Zarrenburg royal family.”
He cringed inwardly. “Thanks to that book that came out recently, everyone knows that.”
“Monique Vass,” Sophie said, like it was a major revelation.
He blinked. From her expression, he gathered that he was supposed to know the name, but he didn’t. “Who is that?”
“She authored that book.”
A dead weight settled in his chest. “I thought it was anonymous.”
“It is,” Sophie said brightly, “but my source is rock solid. At one time, Monique served as the royal biographer, and in that capacity, she would have had access to the castle records room. And who knows what else.”
“Why would the royal biographer care about Steel Hawk?” He was starting to feel a sense of impending doom, like the walls were closing in, but none of the pieces were in place. Just a bird’s nest of oddities, the collaboration of which couldn’t be a coincidence, yet they didn’t seem to fit together.
Sophie was looking at his computer, her fingers flying furiously over the keys. “Good question.”
“Now what are you doing?”
“Finding her. I’m getting a bunch of junk on an image search. Let me try one more thing.” A soft oath fell from her lips. She turned the monitor and grinned. “Edward Long, meet ex-royal biographer Monique Vass.”
Dangerous Illusions (Steel Hawk Book 3) Page 12
