“Have you ever hot-wired a car?” I asked.
“No. But you don’t need to anymore.”
He walked around the car, almost as if he was looking for something. Instead, he quickly broke out the side window with his elbow, glass shattering and flying inside the car. He unlocked the doors and grabbed a cell phone that was sitting in the console. After playing with it for a moment, he jumped behind the wheel and touched the phone to the push-start button and the car immediately started.
“How did you do that?”
He held up the phone. “An illegal app a friend told me about.”
“You’re kidding me! There really is an app for everything!”
He brushed the glass off the seat and opened the door for me. Seconds later, we were on the road, making our way away from the River Walk and toward the suburbs of San Antonio. I sat back and closed my eyes, the wind blowing across my face, and once again fell into a welcome slumber that Brock had to wake me from when we reached our destination. This time, however, he carried me away from the car rather than shaking me awake. By the time I came to, we were inside an elevator.
“Where are we?”
“An apartment building. A friend just moved out of his place here, so no one will be here and no one will be looking for us here.”
“The good guys or the bad guys?”
“Exactly.”
He opened the door with a key that had been hidden over the ledge of the door jamb and carried me through like a bride on her wedding day. I would have found it funny if I wasn’t so exhausted. It was a lovely apartment, empty save for some trash and dust marks from photographs that must have hung on the wall for some time. He carried me to what must have been the bedroom and laid me on the soft carpet in the center of the room, taking off his sport coat to make a pillow under my head.
“Try to sleep.”
“Whose place is this?”
He brushed the hair back from my face. “It doesn’t matter. Go to sleep.”
I didn’t need a lot more coaxing. I closed my eyes and was gone in a matter of seconds, falling into a deep slumber that I didn’t emerge from until many hours later. And when I did, my first thought was of my father.
Was he really okay?
I sat up and found Brock asleep beside me, turned with his back to me. I got up and went into the living room, peeking out the blinds that still covered the windows. It was dark, but there was a little light around the edges of the sky, suggesting that dawn was on its way. I’d slept at least twelve hours, perhaps longer. That was quite a sleep for me.
The kitchen was as empty as the rest of the house, the fridge bare of everything but a bottle of mustard and a wrinkled old tomato. The idea of going much longer without some sort of sustenance was almost unbearable. I knew Brock wouldn’t want me to go out alone, but I needed food. And a phone to call my father and verify for myself that he was okay.
I grabbed the baseball cap Brock had abandoned on the counter and slipped out the door, taking the key that he had left beside the hat to let myself back in. With any luck, Brock would still be asleep when I returned and wouldn’t have to know the full extent of my escape act.
The building was ten stories high and located in a commercial district, with several shops and a mall down the street. I found a bakery that had just opened—though the pastries weren’t as beautiful as those in the bakery in Paris—and chose a couple of scones and some bear claws with lovely slivers of almonds. When I asked to use their phone, the clerk was quite accommodating, offering to allow me to come behind the counter so that I’d be able to have a small amount of privacy.
My father’s voice was so beautiful when it drifted to me over the phone—even with the annoyance I could hear in his tone because of the early hour—that my knees went weak with relief.
“You’re okay?”
“Of course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I heard you’d had an accident.”
“No, not me. Not in ten years.”
“I’m glad to hear it, Daddy. Really glad to hear it.”
“What’s going on with you, Luna? You sound weird. Are you still in Paris?”
“Yeah, Daddy. I just… I was worried about you. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you.”
My father was quiet for a moment. Then he made a choking sound, like he was struggling to clear his throat. “That’s sweet, kid,” he finally said. “I feel the same way.”
“I’m going to come see you in a few days. I think we have some things we should talk about.”
“Like what?”
“Nothing big. I just… I want to clear the air, make sure you know how I feel.”
That sound again, like he was clearing his throat. “I know, darlin’. And I hope you know I feel the same way.”
My eyes flooded with tears. “I do.”
“Good. Now go back to work. There’s no time to sit around and blabber about emotions.”
I smiled. That was my daddy.
I walked back toward the apartment building, still smiling as I replayed the whole conversation in my mind. All that worry, all that stress, and it was as easy as just a few simple words on the phone. Why hadn’t I done that a long time ago? I chuckled under my breath as I chewed a piece of a blueberry scone.
The apartment building was just around the corner when… I didn’t even see them coming.
Chapter 22
Brock
She was thrashing around, fighting the hands on her wrists, the bag over her head. Curses flew from her mouth, so angry that she was practically spitting venom like some sort of rattlesnake. I might have laughed if it was under different circumstances. She had no idea what she’d just done.
“Let her go!”
They released her immediately and she snatched the bag off her head, the baseball cap she’d been wearing flying across the room with it. Her eyes narrowed as she stared up at me from under the wig that had gone askew, anger coming like firecrackers out of her eyes.
“You did this?”
I didn’t answer because I knew whatever I said would seem insincere to her in this moment.
She jumped to her feet and rushed at me, nails flying. She scratched at my chest, reaching for my face, but I managed to grab hold of her wrists and pull them upward, forcing her into a position in which she couldn’t hurt me without hurting herself.
“You left the apartment.”
“I went for food.”
“You used a phone. They could have traced it and found you.”
“I needed to hear my father’s voice. I’m sorry you can’t understand that.”
“I understand that just fine, but you should have talked to me first.”
“You had me snatched off the fucking street!”
“Better me than them!”
“You don’t even know they’re after us anymore. Those cops at the airport could have been the real deal. They could have had a real warrant for your arrest!”
“Would you rather go take your chances on the street? I’ll put you right back where you were—just say the word.”
“Whoa, wait a minute.” Ox approached us, his hands raised in a gesture of peace. “Let’s not get crazy here.”
Luna twisted in my arms to look at him. “Make him let me go.”
“Brock.”
I let go and stepped back. She smacked my chest, forcing me to make a gesture to Ox that he didn’t take as good-naturedly as he might have under different circumstances. He asked Luna to sit, but she continued to charge around the room, clearly still angry.
“You hired us to protect you, Ms. Walsh,” he reminded her. “That’s all Brock was trying to do.”
“He had people snatch me off the street.”
“He had friends bring you to a safe place.”
She stopped and looked around herself for a moment. “Where are we, anyway?”
“This is a panic room under the Caballo building. It’s specially designed for these sorts of si
tuations.”
She walked around a moment longer, clearly more curious now than she’d been a moment before. I watched her, seeing the anger slowly seep from her petite body.
“You’re here because they have some information.”
“We have reason to believe that one of your employees isn’t who she says she is.”
Luna turned and crossed her arms over her chest as she focused on Ox. “Who is that?”
“Angela Powers.”
Luna scoffed, shaking her head as she made a noise deep in her throat.
“We ran a background check on all your employees and hers came back with some oddities on it.”
“I ran a background check when I hired her. They told me it was clean.”
“It is clean. Too clean.” Ox held out a file folder. “There is nothing adverse on her credit history, nothing that might raise red flags on her driving record or in her loan history. She falls right down the middle in just about everything we could find on her.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“No one ever falls right down the middle like that, Ms. Walsh. It’s not in human nature to be that average. We all have something we do too much or do too little. We all have bills we forget to pay, or items we buy when we really shouldn’t.”
“But not Angela.”
“Her background check suggests someone who’s trying not to stand out too much.”
She shook her head. “I knew Angela in high school. She is a bit milquetoast.”
“That’s the thing.”
Luna turned her attention on me when I spoke, but there was still anger in her eyes, almost making me wish she hadn’t.
“You have her high school photo on your phone as her profile picture—right?”
“Yeah. She put it on there for me. She thought it was funny.”
“The thing is, though, the picture you have on your phone and the picture that appears in your year book aren’t the same.”
Luna shook her head. “Sure they are. I went to high school with her. I remember having art class with her.”
“You had art class with a girl who looked a lot like her, but it wasn’t this Angela Powers.”
“We have the original photo from the high school yearbook here,” Ox said, holding it open for her. She stepped forward and studied the picture for a long moment, her shoulders slowly drooping as she looked.
“You think Angela’s been doing all this?”
“If she is, she’s not doing it alone.”
Luna clearly wasn’t happy to hear those words. She turned to me, desperation in her eyes. “Tell me you know what’s going on. Tell me that this is all over and you’re just doing the big reveal.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry. We can’t tell you that.”
Her shoulders drooped even more as she dropped onto the couch. I sat down beside her and reached for her hand, grateful when she allowed me to take it.
“We’re working on it, but we need more time. A day or two more.”
“If Angela isn’t who she says she is, then who is she?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Ox told her. “But… we spoke to Heather Masters and she insisted that she wasn’t the one who filled your car with fish heads and the other things that were used to vandalize it in high school. She suggested someone named Geraldine Thomas did it. Does that name sound familiar?”
“I knew Jenny Thomas—still know her; she works for me—she’s Jenny Samuels now. But I never knew a Geraldine Thomas.”
“Angela said that Jenny had a sister. Could that be her?”
Luna frowned. “Jenny was an only child. Her mother was diabetic, and she had a lot of trouble sustaining a pregnancy. Jenny told me once that she had four miscarriages before she was able to carry Jenny to term.”
Ox frowned. “We’ve been trying to locate Jenny since we were told she’d left Paris early, but can’t seem to find her. We can’t find Tony Greene, either.”
“You’d have to ask Angela. I don’t keep track.”
Ox and I exchanged a glance. There was something odd going on here. If I hadn’t seen those two people on the plane when we flew to Paris, I’d wonder if they existed at all.
I followed Ox out of the room a moment later, aware that he wasn’t too happy about all this just from the look on his face.
“We have less than twelve hours to figure out what’s going on here. The press must be aware by now that she left the hotel. Everyone is going to be looking for her very soon.”
“I’m aware.”
“The cops at the airport are our latest lead. I’ll put Cheryl on it while you and Akker check into these names. We need to locate those two artists as soon as possible.”
“We will.”
Ox touched my arm. “I know you will. You’ve never let me down before.”
He walked away, what he’d left unsaid falling heavy on my shoulders: Don’t let this be the first time.
***
Cheryl jumped out of her chair and gave me a hug when I walked into her office.
“I heard you were back. You look good, brother.”
“Thank you.”
She smiled, dropping a wink as she fell into her chair. “So, we located Mrs. Samuels’ husband. He works for a law firm downtown as a researcher. He says that she came home four days ago because she was homesick and tired of always being at Ms. Walsh’s beck and call. He says she intends to put in her two weeks’ notice on Monday.”
“Will he bring her down to talk to us?”
“No problem.”
“What about this Geraldine Thomas?” Akker asked as he came around the corner to join us, jumping into the conversation like he’d been there from the start.
“We still don’t have anything new, but we’ve moved on from the student body to teachers and other staff. I figure it doesn’t hurt to check them all out.”
“That’s probably a good idea. What about Tony Greene?”
She shook her head. “We have no idea where he is, but it doesn’t look like he ever left Paris. At least I don’t think he left under his own name.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “You might have the cops pick up Angela Powers in Paris. She claimed to be having an affair with Mr. Greene. Maybe that has something to do with her real identity.”
“Already done. They picked her up forty minutes ago. We should have something on that soon.”
It seemed like all our loose ends were packing themselves in neatly. That wasn’t good. We needed one of these people to be the guilty party. If we didn’t find a culprit soon, things could get messy for everyone, especially Ox and Caballo.
And for me. I wanted Luna to know that she could trust me, and she was really wavering on that idea right now.
“I’m going down to check on Luna. Let me know if you get anything.”
I was nearly out the door when Cheryl called out.
“Hold on. I think we’ve got it.”
Chapter 23
Luna
I was walking around the room, looking at the books on the shelves, touching the furniture that was surprisingly expensive, even ducking into the bedroom that was off to one side, complete with a bathroom and a full closet containing clothing of various sizes.
Had Eva Rae stayed here last month when she was having her own problems? What would she think of me coming up behind her? Again? I was, after all, like second best to her first. Brock had been her first choice, before his brother Akker. What kind of woman chooses the twin brother when she first fell for the other? Isn’t there something incestuous about that?
I heard the heavy door clang open and closed in the sitting room and almost ran, anxious to see if Brock had come back to me, but reminded myself that he had chosen Eva Rae first. Not me. I walked calmly, unable to control the leap of my heart at the sight of his increasingly familiar face.
“What can you tell me about your high school art teacher?”
That was not the first thing I’d expected to h
ear come from his lips.
I crawled into a straight-backed chair and pulled my legs up under my butt, curling up in a sort of crisscross applesauce position. I stared at my hands as I thought back to my four very long years of high school.
“Art was a release. I could go to that class and doodle for an hour without getting in trouble. I didn’t go in there to learn anything because I felt like I already knew everything she had to teach. Needless to say, she didn’t like me much when she figured out that was my attitude.”
“When did you come to the realization that she didn’t like you?”
I rolled my shoulders. “I don’t know. My senior year, maybe? I don’t think she noticed me much until then, anyway. Angela and the others always kept her attention, asking stupid questions about shading and colors and whatever.”
Brock came over and sat on the coffee table that sat kitty-corner to my chair. He took my hands and pulled them toward him, forcing me to look at him.
“When your mother was alive, do you remember her talking about someone named Chip Alda?”
“That seems like a common name.”
The truth was, however, I did remember.
“Do you remember her mentioning that they were drinking partners?”
I shook my head. “I don’t remember a lot about my mom except that she was always drunk, and she fought with my dad a lot.”
“Do you think he would remember?”
“You can’t ask him!”
“Why not?”
I jerked my hands away from him. “What are you getting at here?”
“Chip Alda is in the hospital. He fell and hit his head. The doctors thought he might not make it, but he seems to be coming around.”
“Why do I care?”
“Because he claims to be your father.”
My body went cold. I stared at Brock, my eyes narrowed with anger. “How dare you even joke about something like that!”
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