by Chris Taylor
* * *
Charlie stared at the investigator and his unease intensified. He forced it aside. There was no way the Minister had ratted on him. It wasn’t possible. He shrugged and carefully schooled his expression into one of polite blankness. “There’s nothing else to tell.”
“Agent Stanford, I asked you a question. Tell me again how you know Minister Sabattini.”
Charlie crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against his chair, buying time while his mind spun in frantic indecision.
How much did she know?
If she knew the truth and he lied to her, it wouldn’t go well for him. Then again, if she was clueless and he confessed like a wimpy schoolboy, it would be even worse. He chose to bluff it out.
“Like I told you before, we’ve met a few times. So what? I bet he’s met thousands of officers over his time. He’s the Home Affairs Minister. That’s what he does. He meets and greets.”
“Except that he’s done more than meet you, hasn’t he?” she said.
Fury and disbelief arced through him. Fucking Stoltenberg. It had to be. The little asshole knew about him and the Master and he was jealous. It was the only thing that made sense. No doubt the prick had been overjoyed to spill his guts to the investigator.
Charlie drew in a deep breath in an effort to calm himself. Tension held him in a vice-like grip. He wondered again how much she knew.
“Talk to me, Charlie.”
It was the kindness in her voice that got to him. All of a sudden, he was weighed down by depression and disappointment. Yet again, he’d been forced to live a lie, to hide who he really was in order to satisfy someone else’s needs. First his mother’s and then the Master’s.
He’d thought the Master would be different. He’d thought the Master would be happy to parade him by his side—after all, Charlie was young, fit and good looking enough to draw attention.
But it hadn’t worked out like that. The Master had been happy to keep their relationship a secret. In fact, he’d insisted upon it. It wasn’t until about a month after they’d started sleeping together that Charlie discovered the Master was married. He happened to see a photo of a woman and girl on the Master’s desk. It was then that the Master had told him.
Charlie had worked hard at concealing his shock. He’d admitted to the Master that he hadn’t breathed a word of his own homosexuality to anyone since the fateful conversation with his mother all those years ago. The Master had been more than pleased at Charlie’s revelation.
The Master’s attitude had disappointed him at the time, but not enough to dim the burgeoning feelings he had for his lover who so often reminded him of his dorm master.
Now, he stared at the investigator and wished he could read her mind. Regardless of what she knew, he wasn’t ready to blow his cover. He had to assume she was still in the dark. Opening his mouth to reply, he did his best to sound outraged.
“Where do you get off accusing me of things like that? The Minister’s a happily married man. He’s—”
“Also gay,” Chloe interrupted. “Maybe bisexual, if that makes you feel any better.”
Shock ricocheted through him. How the fuck did she know? Nobody knew. At least, that’s what the Minister had told him. Not even that prick Stoltenberg would know something like that. She was bluffing. She had to be. He shook his head slowly back and forth, an instinctive denial rising to his lips. “No, you’re wrong.”
“When did you start sleeping with him?” she asked quietly.
He reeled backwards as if she’d struck him and his hands came up reflexively to protect his face. He gasped for air, his chest tight. Leaning forward with his elbows on the desk, his held his head in his hands and tried with increasing desperation to get control of himself.
“Talk to me, Charlie. You’ve been carrying this burden around for way too long. Longer than anyone—even the Minister—could expect. It hasn’t been fair the way he’s made you shoulder the responsibility for all of this, expecting you to betray your best friend, to lie to me, to lie to the court. It must have been so hard for you, Charlie.”
He lifted his head and stared at her, throwing off her sympathetic words and drawing on rage to stiffen his spine. He wouldn’t allow her to break him. The Master was his life, his everything. He wouldn’t let anyone destroy what they had.
“No, no, you’re mistaken! You have it all wrong!”
“I don’t think so, Charlie. I know a lot more than you think. You see, the Minister is my uncle.” Her calm voice hammered through the fog in his head, her words all the more powerful for their quiet, but firm delivery. He fought against a wave of dizziness, refusing to show weakness in front of her. He wouldn’t betray his lover.
“What happened, Charlie?” she persisted.
Her gentle words, laced with kindness and concern, seeped into his veins. He cringed and put his hands over his ears, hoping to block the words out. He didn’t want her compassion. He didn’t want her understanding. He’d lived all of his life guarding his secret, knowing that anything worthwhile, anything beautiful, anything beloved had to be protected and nurtured behind an impenetrable wall of lies and concealment.
For more than twenty years, he’d concealed his secret. He’d learned the hard way that the only ones who truly understood were the men who invited him into their lives: the father figures who took him in, showed him tenderness, showed him love.
He wouldn’t betray them, any of them. He stared at the investigator, his unrelenting gaze fierce with determination, but despite his best efforts, a voice echoed with increasing stridency in his head.
She was his niece. His niece! She probably knew everything… His resolve began to fade.
“The Minister asked you to frame Declan, didn’t he? Just like he asked Eric to steal Declan’s login details. For all I know, the Minister’s sleeping with his clerk, too.”
Charlie’s chaotic thoughts snagged on her last words. He frowned in confusion and then anger stirred inside him.
“What the hell do you mean, he’s sleeping with Stoltenberg? Of course he isn’t sleeping with that little asshole. Stoltenberg is nothing to him, a nobody. He’s in love with m—”
“You’re right, he is in love with you. And you’re in love with him. It’s why you agreed to help him. It’s why you agreed to betray a man you’d once called your friend.”
Her words spun by him in a blur. His mind caught on the image of the Master as he’d been the last time Charlie had seen him, offering Eric an encouraging smile and a lingering pat on the arm when the clerk had entered the Master’s office with a pile of papers.
Charlie hadn’t wanted the gesture to mean anything—had even convinced himself he’d imagined it, but the investigator’s words tore him apart. He was flooded with uncertainty.
Had he been wrong about the Master’s feelings? Was it possible the man he adored didn’t feel quite the same way? Had he been used in the worst possible way? Had his destruction of a friendship with the only mate he’d ever known been for nothing?
He dragged his head up and stared at the woman who sat across from him, his devastating thoughts shredding him from the inside out.
As if sensing his fragility, she reached out across the desk and squeezed his arm in reassurance. “Tell me what happened, Charlie.”
He held her gaze. She squeezed his arm again and gave him a nod of encouragement.
All of a sudden, his anger dissipated. His life had spiraled out of control and yet he felt completely detached from it—as if it was someone else’s train wreck he watched from afar with nothing more than mild interest.
He drew in a deep breath and eased it out. “I-I’d been…seeing the Mas—the Minister for about a month when he…asked me about Declan. He asked me if I knew him. He wanted to know what he was like to work with and things like that.”
“When did this happen?”
He shrugged and drew in another breath. “I’m not sure. Maybe some time back in July?
“I thoug
ht nothing of his interest in Declan. I knew he was interested in me and I thought he was merely being polite, expressing interest in my place of work… After awhile, it became obvious his interest in Declan had nothing to do with me and everything to do with him. Every conversation we had seemed to include a reference to Declan in some shape or form.”
Charlie lifted his head and challenged her with his gaze, a spark of his anger returning. “About three months ago, I found out why.”
“You mean to say he told you he propositioned Agent Munro?”
Shock ricocheted through him. He shook his head in confusion. That wasn’t right. The Master wasn’t the one who’d made the first move.
“No, no, no… That’s not how it happened. Declan was the one who approached him. It was Declan who wanted a relationship. I think about all the times Declan flirted with this woman or that, playing hard to get—it was all a front.
“The Minister sent him packing, but the prick threatened to go to the media. The Minister’s life and the life of his family would have been ruined. He had no choice. He had to get rid of him.”
The investigator shook her head in disbelief. “Think about it for a minute, Charlie. You’ve worked with Declan for more than a year. If what you say is true and Declan was the one who made the first move, do you honestly believe he’d stoop to something as low as blackmail when the Minister turned him down? The entire scenario is ludicrous.”
Charlie’s thoughts spun out of control. “But that’s what the Minister said. That’s why I had to help him fix the problem. I had to help him get rid of Declan. If everything came out, the Minister would be forced to end our relationship. We’d be over. Just the thought of that sent me into a panic. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t think straight. My life would be nothing without him. I was willing to do whatever it took.”
The woman stared at him, aghast. Charlie frowned, his confusion increasing. For a moment, neither of them spoke.
With a heavy sigh, she finally broke the silence. “Tell me how you did it, Charlie.”
He thrust out his bottom lip. “What does it matter? You already have my confession.”
“It matters,” she replied.
He shrugged, almost beyond caring. “The Minister told me he had to arrange for Declan’s removal from the AFP. He couldn’t take the risk that Declan would make good on his promise to expose him. The Minister assured me it would be nothing permanent, just enough to buy him some breathing space.” He looked up at her and implored her. “He said nothing about sending Declan to jail, I swear.”
The investigator stared back at him, her face a mask of stone. Charlie averted his gaze and kept talking, suddenly feeling the need to justify his actions.
“He… He asked me to help him. He said it would please him very much if I did what he wanted. I was in love with him.” He shook his head helplessly. “I’m still in love with him.”
The investigator remained unmoved. “You left the trail on Declan’s computer, didn’t you, Charlie?”
“The Minister gave me Declan’s login details. I already knew which computer he used. We were often on the same shift together. It was easy to login under his name while he was out on a job or even just in the bathroom. All it took were a few clicks of the mouse every now and then and the Minister had everything he needed.”
“What about the laptop?”
“That was the Minister’s idea. He assumed Declan had a personal computer at home. He thought it would look more authentic if child porn was also found on it. I copied some images from old investigations to a USB stick. When Declan went to the bathroom one Saturday afternoon when I visited him at his apartment, I saved them onto his laptop. It was the Minister’s idea to delete them. He said it looked like Declan had been trying to get rid of them.”
“What about Eric?”
Charlie frowned. “Eric? Why do you keep going on about Eric? He’s a nobody. All he did was access the HR file.”
“So he didn’t know anything about the Minister’s plans, is that what you’re saying?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. He’s just the errand boy,” he scoffed. “The Minister would never trust him with something as important as this.” A smile he couldn’t quite maintain wobbled on his lips. He hoped beyond hope he was right.
“I take it he rewarded you well?”
Charlie smiled widened in memory. “Oh yes, he rewarded me very, very well. We even used the crop.”
The investigator’s mouth gaped open. Her face leached of color and she wore a look of horror.
“W-what do you mean, the crop? As in a riding crop?” Her voice sounded strangled.
“Of course.” He smiled. “Is there any other kind?”
CHAPTER 20
Chloe’s body felt weighed down by concrete. The day was drawing to a close and she could barely keep her eyes open and yet, her job was still not done. She had yet to report back to her boss with her findings after her interviews with Eric and Charlie. Knowing she was only delaying the pain by putting it off, she dragged herself out of her chair and headed toward Hammond’s office.
As quickly, and with as little emotion as she could manage, she brought him up to speed. His expression turned grim, but his voice was gentle when he spoke.
“I’m so sorry, Chloe. I really am.”
His apology almost undid her. She bit back tears, determined to see it through. Quietly and efficiently, Hammond outlined a plan of attack, starting with putting together a taskforce who would carry out the arrest of Minister Sabattini. Given the fact that the suspect was a government minister, it was vitally important that every protocol was closely followed.
Chloe nodded in agreement. “I agree. We need to dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s. The last thing we need is to bungle this. The media is going to have a field day as it is.”
“I’m going to have to bring the Attorney General in on it, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wants to liaise with the Prime Minister.”
Chloe compressed her lips, even more fatigued at the thought of what lay ahead. To top it all off, was the heavy sadness that plagued her knowing her family still had to be told. Her shoulders slumped on a sigh. Misunderstanding its cause, Hammond looked at her.
“Go home, Chloe. Get some rest, if you can.” His expression turned grimmer. “You’re going to need it.”
* * *
Chloe stared up at Declan’s apartment building and wished she had the courage to go inside. After the way they’d parted, she didn’t know if he’d ever speak to her again. She owed him an apology. It was the reason she found herself there, parked on his street, when she should have been home in bed.
It was after eight and she was emotionally drained, but she’d never be able to sleep until she’d cleared the air with him—or at the very least, offered him a heartfelt apology.
The lights that shone from his apartment assured her he was home. All she had to do was find the courage to climb out of her car and ring his doorbell. Surely, after all she’d been through, apologizing to him was the easiest part of all?
With that thought in mind, she opened the door and stepped out onto the pavement. Turning to lock the car with her remote, she walked the short distance to his apartment block and headed for the elevator before she changed her mind. All too soon, she stood outside his front door. With a deep breath, she pressed the buzzer.
The door opened almost immediately. Declan stood on the other side, a wary expression on his face.
“Chloe.”
“Declan. Um…hi, I was just in the neighborhood and I thought… That is, I wondered…”
His lips compressed and his arms came across his chest. Chloe lowered her gaze to the floor. She got it. He didn’t want to speak with her. Disappointment flooded through her. She turned to leave.
“Chloe, wait. Please, come in.”
She turned back to face him. He’d stepped away from the doorway and was indicating with his hand that she should precede him ins
ide. After a slight hesitation, she nodded her thanks and walked slowly into the apartment.
Once inside, her carefully rehearsed apology flew out of her mind. She’d left him in the middle of shouted denials about her uncle—denials she now knew were misplaced. The burden of that knowledge anchored her to the spot. She couldn’t imagine how she was going to find the strength to tell her parents.
The thought sent a surge of determination flooding through her. At the very least, she could get this apology over with. She turned to face him.
“I interviewed Eric Stoltenberg and re-interviewed Charlie Stanford today. You were right. About everything. My uncle’s responsible for framing you.”
Declan’s eyes widened in shock. It was a moment or two before he spoke. “I take it your witnesses gave you what you needed.”
His tone wasn’t accusatory, but she flushed with guilt. The evidence she’d gained from Stoltenberg and Stanford only cemented what Declan had told her, what he’d begun to suspect.
“Yes, they did. Stanford admitted to downloading the images to both computers. He told me about the Minister. My…my uncle will be arrested tomorrow and brought in for questioning. It’s my guess your name will be cleared within twenty-four hours.”
Declan nodded, accepting her pronouncement with little show of emotion. “That’s great news.”
“Yes. I-I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. I was in shock and I didn’t want to believe you, but that still doesn’t make it right. This mess wasn’t about me; it was about you. It wasn’t my life that had been turned upside down and inside out for something I hadn’t done. My actions were inexcusable.”
She stared at the floor in silence.
“Are you finished?”
Her head snapped up. A slight grin tugged at the corner of his mouth.
“How can you smile about this? For more than two months, your life has been torn apart through no fault of your own and you’re smiling about it!” She shook her head in confusion. “I don’t get it.”