Nauti Nights

by Lora Leigh

Page 35

 

  “Meet Camden Cole. ”

  Crista moved closer to the table, her eyes locked on the picture of the stern older man. Hazel eyes stared back with cool detachment in a face as unemotional as a robot.

  “I know him. ” She was shocked that she did know him. “He worked for the electric company. He was at the house just after my parents died. Alex had requested a new meter be installed. ”

  “Bingo. ” Special Agent Cranston beamed at her as though she had answered a particularly difficult question. “That was just a few years ago, wasn’t it?”

  Crista nodded slowly as Dawg stared at her in surprise. He had been unaware that she had been in town at that time, she had made certain of it.

  “Alex asked me to come in and take care of a few things while he was out of the country. ”

  “So, yesterday, while Miss Jansen was supposedly on her way to Virginia, she shows up at the detention center. ” Another picture slapped down in front of her, causing Crista to freeze in shock.

  “That’s not me!” But it looked like her. The hair, the profile, even the clothes.

  “So Natches spent a considerable amount of time informing me after Dawg got my agent lost in the mountains this afternoon. ”

  Crista stared back at him as she felt fear beginning to build inside her. “I was with Dawg yesterday. All day. ”

  “And Natches was in town spreading tales of your desertion. ” He shook his head sadly and cast Natches a chiding look filled with mockery.

  “Sometimes you have to tell a few lies to get to the truth. ” Natches’s smile lacked any humor.

  “We were in the office after we found the attempted break-in,” Dawg reported. “I kept her up there until well after closing. ”

  “Yeah, Natches was telling the customers about that one, too. ” Cranston nodded. “He hinted you blamed her for the break-in?”

  Dawg grunted as Crista stepped back and stared at the three men.

  “Who is in the picture?” she asked.

  “Looks like you. ” Cranston gazed back at her blandly.

  The patently false look of innocence would have been amusing at any other time.

  “Crista, look closely at the rest of the photos,” Natches said softly.

  Crista moved back to the table as Cranston laid out half a dozen glossy color and black-and-white photos. There were none that showed the woman’s face clearly. Most were in profile, and all looked remarkably like her.

  “I have clothes just like these,” she whispered shakily, feeling Dawg move closer to her, his hand settling comfortingly at her back.

  The neat, almost businesslike outfits were identical to those hanging in her bedroom closet.

  “Agent Dane checked your home and confirmed that these same clothes were hanging in your closet. ” Cranston nodded.

  “You were in my home?” She stared back at him in shock. “Without a warrant?”

  “Honey, it’s a criminal investigation; of course we searched the house with warrant in hand. The clothes are now in custody and on their way to the lab for tests. ”

  “What kind of tests?” Shock filled her voice now, not just her mind.

  “DNA tests, little girl. ” Cranston frowned. “We’re looking for DNA other than yours. Criminals don’t always think about the many ways DNA can be found. A stray hair, sweat, sometimes blood from something as innocent as a scratch. We’re hoping our boy here left something. ”

  “Boy?” Dawg latched onto that word before Crista could make sense of it.

  “Natches caught it. ” Timothy shook his head. “Right here. ”

  He pulled one of the pictures free and handed it to Dawg.

  Crista stared at the picture. It was a full frontal shot, though whoever was posing as her had turned their head to the side, allowing hair identical to Crista’s to cover their face.

  It took a minute, but she saw it. She blinked, certain she wasn’t seeing clearly. The breasts were covered in the soft, chocolate brown silk of the blouse the other woman was wearing, draped over the mounds that were approximately the size of Crista’s. But with one difference. In this picture the soft material of the blouse had gaped where a button had come undone and revealed a very hairy portion of flesh beneath the breast.

  Crista blinked and looked again. Male chest hair?

  “We went over the other pictures once Natches caught that. ” Cranston said. “And he found a few other anomalies. Such as this. ”

  The next picture had a red-marked circle around a dark spot on a smooth, creamy, hairless arm that appeared female.

  “This picture was taken by another agent in France, where our young person here met with Akron Svengaurrd, the mercenary that brokered the deal on the missiles. ”

  Once again, there were no facial features, but Crista focused on the red circle that pointed out a blemish of some sort.

  “I’ll be damned,” Dawg muttered, his voice suddenly heavy, bitter. “I can’t believe it. ”

  “He disappeared just after the missiles were stolen,” Natches said then. “Remember? We wondered where the hell he had gone? He also knew Cole, he worked for Cole’s father for a while on their farm near Frankfort. We cleared him on the investigation here because the connections were all superficial. Hell, Cole had a lot of acquaintances here in Somerset. ”

  Crista stared hard at the picture, certain she was missing something. Then she saw it, remembered it. A small blemish, more a birthmark, on a friend’s wrist.

  “Johnny,” she whispered, seeing the familiarity in the curve of his face then, in the way he stood, even dressed as he was in her clothes. “It’s Johnny Grace. ”

  “He visited the detention center deliberately,” Natches said then. “To implicate Crista. Every move he’s made has been made to implicate her, to distract Dawg, and possibly me as well. He had to cover himself, and this was the best way to do it. He thought you and Crista had argued, and she was heading to Virginia. The detention center is on the way, a short little detour that she could have reasonably made.

  Bam, she’s arrested, bad guys thinks she has the money, good guys crucify her. And Johnny was damned good; those fucking mercenaries really thought he was a she. They would have killed Crista first chance they had to arrange it. ”

  Behind her, Dawg was dangerously silent. Crista swore she could feel the fury whipping through the room now, from Dawg as well as Natches.

  “He made friends with Crista first thing when she returned, because he knew her history with Dawg, and he knew Dawg’s fascination with her. He was one of the few people that could have known what happened when she left eight years ago,” Natches bit out.

  “Yeah. He worked at the clinic when Crista had the miscarriage. An orderly or something,”

  Cranston added.

  Crista felt her world crash around her then.

  The silence in the room suddenly became heavy, tense, and filled with danger. She didn’t dare look at Dawg; she couldn’t. She could barely breathe, could barely form a thought.

  “Cranston, I’m going to murder you. ” Natches sighed then. “We had an agreement. ”

  Cranston’s gaze was going between Dawg and Crista then.

  “Agreements are for men I can trust, Natches,” he said mockingly. “You two broke trust with me in your attempts to hide Miss Jansen’s presence at that warehouse. Consider this your slap on the wrist. ”

  NINETEEN

  Something was breaking apart inside Dawg. He could feel it. He fought it, he tried to force the pieces of his soul back into shape, but they continued to break away, piece by piece, destroying him in the process.

  Cranston was a smart man. Once he glimpsed Dawg’s expression, he excused himself and left.

  Quickly. It would have been laughable if it weren’t for the fact that everything inside Dawg was silently howling.

  And she hadn’t said a word. Not a word. Even after
Natches left, she stared at the carpet and avoided his gaze.

  Dawg wasn’t a man prone to tears. He hadn’t cried since he was five, but at this moment, he wished he hadn’t forgotten how to shed tears.

  Because he wanted to shed tears. For his child, for what had been lost before it had even been born. For the woman who had fled the pain, and the man who hadn’t had a clue the pain he had inflicted in one night of pleasure.

  It had been a son. She had been carrying his son, and for some reason, some quirk of nature, it had been taken from her. Sweet God! Had been taken from them both.

  The file held the facts on more than the miscarriage. It was her life for eight fucking years.

  Every move she had made in the past eight years was there, as well as her living arrangements with the two men in Virginia and their sexual orientation.

  They were homosexual. The two men were lovers, and Crista, from all accounts, rather than being a third to the little love nest, had been treated more as a little sister. A sister that needed protecting, to be cared for.

  Neighbors had been questioned regarding Crista, as had her former boss. Everyone had given her glowing recommendations and stressed how dependable, reliable, and kind she was.

  One elderly lady had told the agent, posing as a prospective employer, that Crista Jansen was a wounded little bird when she first arrived with Mark Lessing and moved into his apartment. Cranston had related that piece of information with curious satisfaction.

  As he read, grief swelled in his chest with each word and the implications of what he had done to her. Agony pierced his heart, his soul, and ripped through his mind.

  Crista had run from him, lost their child, then left town, barely healed from the miscarriage. She had immediately enrolled in business school. She had dated rarely, never seriously, and photos of those men were included in the file. An accountant, a banker, the vice president of a manufacturing firm. All three men were suave, sophisticated, and about as dangerous or sexual as a neutered house cat.

  Crista had worked hard, played rarely. She had volunteered several weekends a month at a local hospital in the pediatrics ward, and everyone loved her.

  And she had been alone. She had left Somerset after losing his baby. After he had taken her with drunken lust and committed the unbearable sin of having forgotten that night. Except in his dreams.

  Dreams where she had tempted him, tormented him. Loved him.

  No wonder he hadn’t forgotten about her. No wonder he had dreamed of her for eight long years and with her return had focused on her with something bordering obsession.

  And it was no wonder she had refused every advance. No wonder she had avoided him every chance she had. She should have shot him. He was amazed Alex hadn’t done the job for her.

  “Did you want the baby?” His baby. His child. Grief nearly ripped his guts from his body at the thought of that child that had never drawn breath.

  “More than my own life. ” Her voice was harsh, thick was unshed tears as his own throat closed against the pain.

  “You could have told me. ” He would have claimed her, claimed their baby. He would have held her, protected her, shared her grief.

  “I was too young for you. ” Pain haunted her voice and his soul. “I didn’t run because of the miscarriage, or because of the threat of Rowdy and Natches. I could have handled informing you that wasn’t going to happen. But I couldn’t handle what you made me feel that night. ”

  Dawg lifted his eyes from the folder, and he wanted to howl at the pain he saw in her eyes.

  “You loved me, even then. ” He knew it, knew it in his soul, and that knowledge was killing him.

  She had loved him, endured this alone, and he hadn’t even remembered the night that had created their child.

  “I loved you,” she whispered. “I’ve always loved you, Dawg. But what happened between us…”

  Her hand lifted, then dropped helplessly. “What you made me feel. I couldn’t handle it. I craved it. I cried for you for months after I left, but I couldn’t come back. ”