The little liar.
“And when you got back to town, then what?”
“Nothing. She headed to the train station. That’s it.”
“Did she say where she was going? Anything?”
Cassie shook her head and she and Tommy traded a look that said they were surprised he didn’t know.
“And this guy who showed up here? You’d seen him before?”
“Like Cassie said, he had a picture of the girl,” Tommy took up the narrative, “and he was flashing it around the bar tonight. Somebody said he saw her with Cassie, which is why I came over here.”
Cassie took another shaky breath and Evan realized the poor girl was still really shaken up.
“Look, I’ll go down to the police station. I want to see what I can find out about this guy even though I have a sneaking suspicion I know who he works for. And I’ll tell the cops you’ll be down in the morning to give your statements. Okay?”
Cassie nodded.
“Where’s your father anyway?”
“In Portland.”
Tommy had that look again, but Evan’s mother working her wiles on some local grocer was the least of his concerns right now, even though he had no idea what the hell she would be doing here now anyway.
“He is, Tommy! I don’t know what you’re suggesting!”
“Nothing,” the boy soothed.
“And he’s going to freak when he finds out about all this,” she added. “He’s just going to freak.”
“I don’t think you should leave her by herself,” Evan told Tommy, earning a surprisingly reluctant look. So he added, “This thug, whoever he was, was probably alone, but we don’t know that for sure, do we? Just to be safe, why don’t you take Cassie to your place?”
Cassie blushed scarlet and Tommy glanced conspicuously away.
Ah, young love. Whatever. He’d leave them to it.
“Or I can take Cassie with me back to the island.”
“Fuck you.” Tommy pulled the girl to his side.
Right. Like he thought. He smiled. “Okay, do a favor for me too, would you? Can you take my dog for a few days? I don’t think I’m going to make it home for a bit, things as they are.”
“Yeah, sure,” Tommy said.
“Name’s Bingo.”
Cassie dropped down to the dog’s side and petted him. “Since when did he get a name?”
“He’s a good guard dog,” he lied to Tommy. “So anyway, if you hear anything from Andrea, you call me,” he told Cassie. “Got it?”
“Of course. But why would I? I mean, isn’t she your…your…”
“Yeah, she is. And the infuriating woman is going to admit it if it’s the last thing I do.”
* * * * *
When Reynolds left, Tommy and Cassie were alone again, and now that all the excitement had died down, pretty awkwardly given Reynolds’ instructions, which did make sense after all.
“So, ah, I’ve got a place on Rivers Street, right on the water.”
“I know where you live, Tommy. God! Although I’m probably the only girl in town who’s never been there.”
She stomped back to her bedroom and came out again in two seconds flat in a fucking two-piece bathing suit, white with little pink polka dots.
He almost groaned as she pulled a sundress over it and slipped on flip-flops. “I know you have a natural cove there too where you swim naked with whatever slut you have with you, but I prefer a swimsuit, if you don’t mind. Come on. Let’s go. I’ll text my dad in the morning and explain everything. I don’t want him worrying all night and rushing back here.”
Especially not if Cassie was at Tommy’s place, whatever the reason.
It was a short five-minute walk over from the Baileys’, but it was true he’d never asked Cassie there before, not in the entire year he’d lived there after moving out from his cousin’s, and he sure as hell wasn’t convinced it was a good idea to do so now. Maybe he should have let Reynolds take her. Reynolds seemed hung up on the Babs chick anyway. Cassie probably would’ve been safe. Far safer than she’d be with him. Though he should forget about his cock for two minutes after what Cassie had been through.
But Reynolds wasn’t going home anyway, as evidenced by the dog he’d foisted on them, who trotted contentedly by their side.
Tommy unlocked the door to his modest bungalow, paid for with ill-gotten gambling gains Officer Vincetti need never know about but probably suspected anyway. Preceding Cassie in, he got a bowl of water for the dog, who promptly flopped down by the couch and slurped, while he tried to remember how he’d left the place to judge what Cassie’d think of it and then immediately remonstrated himself. She wasn’t here for the same reason any other woman had been here before, not that he’d ever cared what the hell any of them had ever thought of his place.
He dropped his keys on the table as she kicked off her flip-flops and went to stare out the picture window at the darkened cove. Raised in the city, he never got enough of the views of trees and water and grass and shit. It was embarrassing.
But Cassie, having grown up in rural Maine, seemed just as enthralled. He flicked on the switch for the light out over his cove to help the almost nonexistent sliver of moon. At the motion, she pulled her sundress over her head and dropped it on the carpet.
He swallowed hard. “So you really do want to go for a swim?”
“I don’t know. Are you going to swim naked?”
Neither of them sounded like themselves.
“I can just swim in shorts.”
He led her to the back door and, once outside, she took off at a run while he kicked off his tennis shoes and tore off his T-shirt to keep up with her. His cove, as he pathetically could not stop from calling it in his head, wasn’t really dangerous at all—it was shielded from the ocean by some jagged rocks that only partially cut off the view—but it was rocky. You had to go into it gingerly. In fact, that was part of his come-on with girls he brought here. He’d keep on water shoes and carry the barefooted girl out into the water. That way she’d be all clingy and he’d wrap her legs around his waist, and sometimes, well a lot of the time, he’d end up fucking her as soon as he carried her out of the water. He liked that.
But he couldn’t think of another single woman he’d been with while Cassie Bailey was right here.
Probably why he’d never invited her.
“Hey, hold on!” he cautioned, slipping on one of the many pairs of water shoes he kept on the edge of the shore. “It’s rocky. You’ll hurt yourself.”
But she dove in with gusto, ignoring him, swimming out so far he had to really work to catch up to her. When he finally did, he grabbed her arm and while they treaded water, which thank God was relatively calm that night, he warned, “It’s not a good idea to swim too far out into the ocean this late.”
Out here, his cove light didn’t do much good. He could barely see her in the inky black.
“Don’t tell me about the ocean, Tommy. I’ve lived on it all my life.”
“Then don’t be a jerk, showing off.”
Yanking her arm away, she swam back toward shore and he followed. When they were close enough to stand, she did so immediately, without judging whether it was safe to do so, and made a face as her bare foot must have taken the sharp edge of a rock.
Without thinking, he swooped her up in his arms, as he would any other girl, and she gave a startled yelp, her arms automatically linking around his neck, causing him to laugh as he carried her toward the grassy bank.
“Don’t you dare drop me!” she warned.
Her almost-bare body was wet and cool from the water that never really warmed up in Maine, but with her shivering skin so close, his own body heated up precipitously.
“Don’t be a bitch. I’m just trying to keep you from cutting up your feet.”
Her fingers tangled in the wet hair at this base of his neck as he set her on her feet on the grass and he took a deep breath when she didn’t move away.
“Is that what you thin
k I am? A bitch?”
He could hear some kind of weird hiccup in her voice as he looked down at her. Suddenly, everything she had been through came roaring back to him but it didn’t hold off the sensation of having a near-naked Cassie Bailey alone with him at midnight or thereabouts in his own backyard.
Christ, he was turned-on, his boner not deterred by the cold ocean water. “No, I don’t think you’re a bitch, Cassie. You know I don’t.”
She stepped closer. “He, he had a gun,” she said on a shaky note.
And then shit, she was letting go. Not literally, unfortunately. Figuratively. He could see the tears sparkling on her wet cheeks, just streaming down as she wound her arms around his neck.
“Shh, shh.” He pulled her all the way to him. “Don’t cry, Cassie. It’s all right. Don’t cry, baby.”
And suddenly, inevitably, they were kissing, long open-mouthed kisses, not the tentative, light forays he’d allowed them before. He was tasting her, taking her, just as he wanted, burying his tongue in her sweet mouth. Self-control somehow, some way, in the face of her tears, had deserted him completely.
And she wasn’t helping.
The breathy little sighs, the way she leaned into him, all of it set him on fire. In two seconds she was beneath him on the grass, her thighs wide open, her lush tits pressing into his chest as he kissed her, and every erotic dream he’d ever had about her seemed in reach.
“Don’t stop,” she moaned. “Don’t you dare stop, Tommy O’Neal.”
Stopping wasn’t exactly top of mind right now.
She was half out of her skimpy two-piece and he was straining against his shorts and, Christ, he wasn’t stopping.
It was only when he was done and panting over her that he had the panicked thought.
Cassie wasn’t just another girl. She was special.
Oh God, what had he done?
Chapter Nine
Vincetti didn’t seem too happy that Cassie and O’Neal hadn’t come back down to the station with Evan. After a lot of hemming and hawing about recollections being kept fresh, etc., the cop finally deigned to take Evan’s statement. It was considerably shorter than it could have been since he left out anything to do with Andrea and claimed to be just walking by the grocery store when he heard the trouble.
A precautionary call to the state attorney general ensured Evan was allowed to talk to the prisoner alone before he was given his one phone call. Vincetti wasn’t too happy about that either. As he closed the outer door to the jails, leaving Evan with the prisoner, only cell bars between them, he said curtly, “Make it quick. We follow correct police procedure in this state, no matter who you know, and this scumbag is getting his one phone call. And then I want to talk to him about a suspicious homicide a little over a week ago of a guy who seemed like he might just come from the same neck of the woods. Knifed to death, bleeding out all over this cheap little apartment down the coast.”
Evan tried not to show any reaction. A knifing. Andrea had said she hadn’t been convicted of any crime. Shit. So she had killed whoever had come after her.
And now they had sent another. And she was on her own again. Fuck.
He nodded.
“What’s your name?” he asked once he was alone with the prisoner, assuming it wasn’t John Smith, which was the name the man had given the cops.
“None of your fucking business.”
Apparently a lead pipe to the head didn’t endear him to this guy.
“Fine. My name is Evan Reynolds. Does that mean anything to you?”
Somebody had given the prisoner an ice pack and he held it to his head, sitting on the cot in the cell, eying Evan resentfully. “Why would it?”
“Because you’re looking for a girl who means a great deal to me.”
“Oh yeah? Who says I’m looking for anybody?”
“The picture of her in your pocket does, though I’d say it was from eight years ago or so, right?”
The man said nothing, still eying him resentfully.
“Whatever he’s paying you, I’ll pay you ten times that. Twenty.” He never had picked up the Reynolds lesson about not bargaining with oneself. The man looked at him stonily. “If you tell me everything you know about why he’s looking for this girl.”
“Who?”
“Fredrico Stavros.”
* * * * *
Regina Wittenberg—recently known as Andrea Prentiss—looked out the window of her cottage at the sea, a world away from the view Evan was probably seeing right now, though eerily similar. She hadn’t picked this stone cottage nestled on a cliff in Malta because it reminded her of Maine. She had barely known Maine existed when she bought this tiny safe house, almost a decade ago. She had just liked the picture of it online and had purchased it, along with a handful of other small residences, each tucked respectively out in the middle of nowhere, as an insurance policy of sorts. So she would have somewhere to run away to, quickly, should she need it. She had never imagined so many years would go by before she would need it. Had never imagined her persona as Andrea Prentiss would be so successful.
Or that she would have such trouble leaving it behind.
This cottage in Malta was where she should have come when Tottingham first recognized her. Here or any one of her other obscure hideouts. But she hadn’t. Instead she had lingered, leaving Andrea Prentiss behind only in the most technical sense but staying close at hand in Maine to the one person who really meant something to that imaginary girl. And consequently putting that one person at risk.
Goddamn it.
She went back to the computer screen and read the details again. It was a travel itinerary. It wasn’t on the Reynolds Industries database—Evan handled his own travel arrangements—but that made no difference. She had no trouble hacking into Evan’s personal accounts as well. And she had no qualms about doing it either. It was just as she had feared. He wasn’t leaving well enough alone after all.
He was going to Greece.
* * * * *
Fredrico Stavros was a bear of a man and not as old as Evan would have thought he’d be. They shook hands and Stavros offered him a seat and took one himself behind a polished teak desk. He was dressed as casually and as expensively as Evan in a maroon cashmere sweater and tailored pants to set off six-thousand-dollar shoes. Actually, he was dressed more expensively than Evan, even though for once Evan had dressed to make it clear he came from money.
The office was in a modern steel-and-glass structure right on the Stavros estate, hermetically sealed and cold to the point of freezing. Unlike the beautiful whitewashed open-air buildings that Evan had seen so far since arriving on this island, no breeze from the Aegean Sea would make its way into this office.
Stavros lit a long black cigarette and took a few puffs before setting it in an ashtray that could pass for solid gold even if it wasn’t. But it probably was.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Reynolds?”
Evan fell back on his timeworn, fairly accurate—until lately anyway—persona of the laid-back, relaxed young man of means. “First off, I want to thank you for seeing me, Mr. Stavros.”
Stavros shrugged. “You have powerful friends.”
“Well, family anyway.”
“So what is it you want, Mr. Reynolds?”
“Just some information. I’m interested in your first wife’s family.”
Stavros took a few more puffs from the cigarette, deeper this time, and blew the dark smoke upward when he exhaled. “The Bennetts?”
“Yes. They resided in Greece, I believe, but were of European origin.”
“Why would you be interested in them? My wife—or I guess you could say my stepdaughter—was the last of that line.”
“I’m trying to confirm that.”
“Is this about the girl who worked for your brother again? Some secretary?”
Evan felt umbrage at the description of Andrea Prentiss as a secretary. He knew it was ridiculous, though. For one thing, she had been a secretary. And an extreme
ly competent one at that. For another, despite his elite upbringing, he knew there was absolutely nothing wrong with being a secretary any more than there was with being a carpenter or an electrician, both of which he had always been happy to consider himself. Maybe it was the implication that Andrea had been “just” a secretary. Nobody, but most especially Andrea, was just their job description.
“Yes,” he responded anyway. “I’m trying to find her and she looked a lot like your late wife, Angelica Stavros. Did Mrs. Stavros have any other children?”
“Other than Athena, you mean?”
“Yes. The girl who died.”
“A tragic case.”
“I understand the body was recovered.”
Stavros stiffened and stubbed his cigarette out with unnecessary vigor. “That’s very private, Mr. Reynolds.”
“Of course. And I don’t mean to pry. Really. But is there any way that this, this Athena might not have drowned? Been kidnapped or something?”
Stavros thinned his fleshy lips and when he let them go again said, low, “The suggestion in itself is preposterous. If she’d been kidnapped, we would have had a ransom demand.”
“Perhaps she escaped.”
“And not returned to her family? Worked as a typist in some crummy little office?”
It did sound kind of far-fetched when he put it like that, although Michael’s digs, not to mention Andrea’s, could never have been described as a crummy little office. But in any case, there was a crucial part of the equation that was missing from that narrative, but clear as day from the way Andrea had cringed at the suggestion of violence.
Nick Dukakis, the thug who had burst into Cassie’s apartment and who even now was enjoying the hospitality of Maine’s prison system, had not been able to tell Evan much, beyond the bare-bones fact that Stavros was looking for the girl in the picture and if Dukakis found her he was to bring her back to Greece. Dukakis hadn’t known who the girl was, and if he had suspected, he hadn’t shared it. But he had agreed, for a price, not to warn Stavros that Andrea had gotten away.
So Evan was able to come to this meeting hastily arranged by Michael with a relatively clean slate—and a dogged intent to goad Stavros into something.
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