The possibility that they wouldn’t find the answers they were looking for had never occurred to him when this ordeal had first started, but now Jay was wondering if they would ever understand the truth. The more time he spent with Carina, the more he realized she wasn’t going to be easy to leave behind.
He had considered putting in for some more leave so he could stay with her a bit longer, ideally helping her find someplace to hide out that wasn’t too far from his home; unfortunately, Jay knew the request wouldn’t be approved. It was a minor miracle that his squad hadn’t gone active the minute the news came in about the retaliation bombing in Islamabad last week. He also knew he didn’t want to watch his teammates go into action without him by their side.
The itch to get to work was back, tempered only by his desire to stay and spend more time with Carina. He saw the door open as he and Seth approached the house. Carina emerged onto the deck and looked out over the beach until she saw him. Then her eyes locked with his, and she smiled.
Her hair was pulled back into a short ponytail, and he suspected that the sundress she wore was one of her designs. Over the past week, he had seen enough of her sketches to know she rarely wore anything besides jeans that she hadn’t made herself. He also suspected that if she had not found herself caring for her sisters, she would likely be succeeding in the fashion industry in New York instead of barely scraping by.
Jay slowed to a walk a few yards from the house. Seth jogged past him and took the porch steps two at a time. Seth glanced back at Jay when he reached the door. “I’m going to grab a shower before dinner.”
Jay nodded in response and then waited on the sand while Carina closed the distance between them. She reached up and gave him a brief kiss. “How was your run?”
“Fine.” Jay motioned toward the house. “What have you been up to?”
“Looking for a job.”
“Excuse me?”
“Somebody named Kel called and talked to Vanessa right after you guys left. I guess he’s the one who knows the owner of this house.”
Jay nodded. “What did Kel want?”
“He said the owner won’t be using this house until the first of August, and he’s willing to let us housesit for him until then.”
“Really?” Jay asked, his emotions mixed. He had hoped to get her settled a little closer to Virginia Beach, but he couldn’t deny that she was safely off the grid here. His concern for her safety overshadowed the convenience he had hoped for, and he gave her a slow smile. “That solves one problem, at least for now. Any luck so far with jobs?”
“I found a few possibilities. Bianca already has an interview tomorrow for a lifeguarding position at one of the local hotels. There aren’t a lot of businesses here on the island, but I think I can probably do pretty well if I can get a job waitressing at one of the higher-end restaurants.”
“You shouldn’t have to waitress,” Jay said, not pleased with the image of her standing on her feet for hours, knowing that she had already put her talent and her education on hold for the past two years.
“It’s only for a couple of months.” She shrugged. “Besides, from what I hear, tourist season is pretty good here. Since I won’t be paying rent, I should be able to save up for a new place by August.”
“Any chance you might consider moving to Virginia?” Jay couldn’t stop the question from coming out of his mouth, even understanding the risks.
“I was hoping you might want me to.”
“Absolutely.” Jay smiled at her. “And I hope you don’t mind if I come down here to visit you every chance I get.”
She wrapped her arms around his waist and looked up at him with complete sincerity. “Come as often as you can.”
She reached up, and her lips met his in a kiss filled with warmth and promise. Jay fell into the kiss, drawing her closer, wishing this moment could go on forever.
He heard the rumble in the distance, at first too lost in Carina to worry about the source of the sound. Then the back door opened, and Seth’s voice broke into the moment.
“Jay, we’ve got to move. We’ve been called in, and our ride is almost here.”
A new sense of adrenaline rushed through him when he turned and saw the military helicopter closing in fast. “That’s for us?”
Seth nodded. “The landing zone is just down the beach.”
“I’ve got to go grab my gear,” Jay told Carina, pulling away and rushing into the house. He packed up the contents of his room in less than a minute and then raced back downstairs, where everyone was waiting on the back porch. He pressed his car keys into her hand. “Here are the keys to my car in case you need them. You should be able to keep using the Jeep while you’re staying here though.”
“What will you do for a car?”
“I’ll have my dad ship your car to Virginia on the train. We can switch when you come up.”
Carina nodded, and she glanced hesitantly at the helicopter lowering onto the beach a few hundred yards away. She pressed her lips together and looked up at him like she wasn’t quite sure what to do. Then she said simply, “Be safe.”
“You too.” Jay leaned down and kissed her, lingering longer than he had planned. “I’ll call you as soon as I can.”
Carina nodded as Jay moved down the stairs onto the beach. He fell into step with Seth as they both started toward the helicopter. Sand whipped up into the air, and they both shielded their eyes as they jogged over the beach grass and climbed aboard.
As they strapped in and ascended into the air, Jay looked down at Carina standing on the porch with Bianca and Vanessa. All three women were waving, and he was struck with the odd sensation that he now had someone to come home to when this mission ended.
35
Alex checked the license plate of the little coupe when it pulled into the parking lot, and he gritted his teeth in determination when the tall man stepped out of it and headed toward his apartment. He was tired of waiting, tired of trying to run the Outfit with only a portion of the tools he needed. Carina Perelli needed to be found, and he was resolved to make sure it happened soon.
Three different times, he had sent his underlings to find her and bring her back to him. Each time, they had failed. Their excuses had varied. First had been the unfortunate timing of Lieutenant Wellman’s deployment. The next two attempts had been unsuccessful when his men had failed to keep the lieutenant in their sights when they’d suspected he was going to meet Carina.
He knew it was possible that Wellman wasn’t going to see Carina at all on his weekends away from home, but the lengths that he was going to in order to make sure he wasn’t being followed made Alex think the lieutenant was still in contact with his niece.
His niece. The term was laughable. Carina Perelli didn’t even know he was family. All she knew was that he was one of the men with her father when Leone Hamilton had been silenced. He wasn’t about to allow that knowledge to come back to haunt him. He also wasn’t about to let Carina unravel the clues her father had sent her.
He couldn’t be sure exactly where Giovanni had hidden the payoff records he had accumulated over the years, the records that could supposedly expose his true identity as an FBI agent. What he did know was that Giovanni had sent her a key to one of the apartments owned by the property management company their father had left to Giovanni’s children, one of the legitimate companies he and his organization needed in order to hide their vast income from their less-than-legal sources.
Alex gritted his teeth as he thought of his father’s last-minute changes to his will. It had been bad enough that a portion of family assets had gone to his younger half brothers, but he had been infuriated to find that his father had also singled out these girls who had lost their place in the family years before. The last straw was when he’d learned that both his father and Giovanni had reportedly locked away information about him, leaving those tidbits for the girls to find.
His birth certificate, payments to his mother, and correspondence between his paren
ts would prove that he was a Perelli by birth. Copies of his old FBI cases could prove that he had used his position as an agent to pave his way to the top. The biggest concern, however, was the video that one of Giovanni’s men had supposedly taken when Alex had killed Donna Perelli. That item, if it really existed, would put him in prison for life.
It wasn’t going to happen, Alex promised himself. The Perelli girls were a loose end he couldn’t afford to leave hanging, and he was now determined to take care of them himself.
Alex focused on the young man who would lead him to his objective. He waited until Jay was safely inside his apartment before pulling into the parking lot beside his car. Then he picked a handheld device off of his seat and read the data it displayed. As he suspected, the lieutenant’s car was equipped with some type of GPS jamming equipment. Casually, he stepped out of the car and walked toward the apartment building, glancing down at the readings as though checking a phone for text messages.
When he reached the apartment building, he knocked on the door of one of the ground-floor apartments he knew to be empty. After waiting an appropriate amount of time, he continued toward the manager’s apartment. He was nearly to the manager’s door when his equipment confirmed that the jammer had finally lost its effectiveness. He checked the distance between himself and Wellman’s car.
Then he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and put it to his ear as though he was answering a call. He turned and walked back to his car. As soon as he was again seated in the driver’s seat, he dialed a number and prepared to utilize the Bureau’s resources to help him achieve his goals. With the right tools, he was certain Wellman’s car could be tracked without the lieutenant ever knowing about it. At least, he wouldn’t find out about it until it was much too late for him to interfere again.
Alex slid the key into the ignition and put his car in gear. As he drove away, his lips curved slightly. His time was here. He could feel it. Finally, he was going to take back what was rightfully his.
* * *
“Hey, guys. We just got word.” Brent leaned on the doorjamb leading into Seth and Jay’s office. “We’re shipping out again on Tuesday.”
Seth looked up from his computer screen. “Where to this time?”
“Afghanistan.”
“Any idea about how long?” Jay asked. Their last mission had only lasted a week, and he hoped this one would fall into a similar time frame. Carina had less than a month to find an apartment, and he wanted to help her get settled when the time came.
“Hard to say,” Brent said, “but I’d guess a month.”
Jay couldn’t keep his disappointment from showing on his face.
“Don’t worry, Jay,” Seth told him sympathetically. “Vanessa can help Carina move if we aren’t back in time.”
“Amy isn’t coming with us on this trip, so she’ll be able to help too,” Brent offered. “Did you ever figure out what to do with the stuff from her old apartment?”
Jay nodded. “Carina gave me a list of things she really wanted to keep, and my dad loaded everything into her car when he shipped it up here last month. She had him sell the rest of her stuff in a yard sale. She decided it would be easier to buy new furniture instead of paying to ship everything and taking the chance that someone might try to follow the movers to her new place.”
“Smart.” Brent nodded. “I’m looking forward to meeting her.”
“You know, you and Amy could always come down with us this weekend,” Jay offered. “Assuming that it’s still okay for me to take off tomorrow.”
“We wouldn’t want to intrude.” Brent shook his head.
“You wouldn’t be intruding,” Jay assured him. “Seth and Vanessa are coming down with me too. Vanessa has been doing a bunch of research on Carina’s family, and we’re still trying to figure out what that key goes to.”
“Did you give her the copy we made for her?”
Jay nodded. “Yeah. I gave her one, and I kept a copy for myself. We think the numbers on that note Carina got before this whole thing started might be a clue, but we haven’t figured it out. Mostly, we’re just going to spend this weekend searching through property records and the information Vanessa has on the Perelli family.”
“In that case, maybe we will try to come. Amy would love a weekend at the beach.”
* * *
“Carina, these are incredible.” Amy flipped through Carina’s wedding dress sketches, a look of amazement on her face.
“Thanks.” Carina couldn’t stop the smile from spreading over her face. “Formal dresses are actually my favorite thing to design.”
“It shows. I wish I had known you when I got married. It was a nightmare trying to find something not too low-cut and that had sleeves.”
“I wish I had known you then too,” Carina agreed. “It’s so hard to find that first person to trust you with such an important design. Once you have done a couple, people start to believe you know what you’re doing.”
Amy looked up from the sketches, an odd look on her face. “Is this what you want to do for a living? Design wedding gowns?”
“It’s where I’d like to start,” Carina admitted. “The dream is to design modest formal wear and eventually branch out to create a women’s line too.”
“How are you at keeping secrets?” Amy asked as though she was contemplating some top-secret mission.
Before Carina could answer, Vanessa spoke. “I think with her family background, keeping secrets is probably a requirement.”
Amy’s mouth widened into a grin. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and dialed. Her eyes still on Carina, Amy greeted the person who answered. “Hi, Kendra. It’s Amy.”
Amy laughed at something Kendra said before responding. “Hey, you know how we were talking about trying to find a new designer, someone you could trust to not leak any information? I think I may have found one for you.” Amy nodded. “She’s just starting out, but I’m looking at some of her designs, and they are incredible. I can e-mail you a couple to check out.”
She looked down at the sketches again, sliding three from the stack. “Okay, I’m going to send you my favorites, and you can let me know what you think.” Amy nodded again. “Sounds good. Tell Charlie I said hi next time you see him.”
As soon as Amy hung up, Carina asked, “What was that all about?”
“That was my brother’s fiancée. If it’s okay with you, I’m going to scan these and send them to her. If she likes them, you may have your first commission.”
“Seriously?” Carina’s eyes lit with excitement. Then the puzzle pieces started to fall into place. “Wait a minute. Isn’t your brother dating Kendra Blake? The singer?”
Amy nodded. “He’s marrying Kendra, but that isn’t public knowledge yet—thus the need for secrecy.”
Carina’s jaw dropped. She held up a hand and tried to formulate a cohesive sentence. “You’re saying I might be able to design Kendra Blake’s wedding dress?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“That’s . . . that’s . . . huge!”
“It would definitely put you on the map as a designer.” Amy nodded. “You might want to start thinking about company names. You probably don’t want to use your own name with what’s been going on.”
Suddenly nervous, Carina motioned to her sketches. “I don’t know if I want you to send these in to her yet. I’m sure I can do better.”
“Relax.” Amy laughed. “These are just a sample. If she doesn’t like these, I’ll have you send some others.”
Carina pressed a hand to her jittery stomach and took a deep breath. “Okay.”
Amy motioned to the stacks of files Vanessa had brought with her. “I know you two still have a lot of papers to look through. I think I’ll grab Bianca and take her into town so we can pick up some dinner. Brent wanted to try out that seafood place in town.”
“That sounds great,” Vanessa said before Carina could say anything. “With any luck, the guys will be finished with t
heir run by the time you get back.”
A minute later, Amy and Bianca headed out the door. Still stunned by the possibility of designing a dress for a famous singer, Carina tried to turn her attention back to the papers in front of her but found herself rereading the same things two and three times. That’s when she noticed something unexpected in the biographical sketch Vanessa had given her on her grandfather. “This is strange.”
“What?”
“According to this, my grandmother was my grandfather’s second wife. Apparently, he was married once before.” Carina skimmed through the account of Sergio Perelli’s brief six-month marriage to Helen Alexander.
“What happened to the first wife?” Vanessa asked, shifting so she too could read the information on the computer screen. “It looks like she moved to Houston right after they split up. I can’t tell if she never used the last name Perelli or if she changed her name back, but she definitely was using her maiden name after the divorce.”
“Let me try something.” Vanessa reached for the laptop and shifted it so she could type a few keys. She opened up a new tab, entered a website through a secure login, and then ran an identity search using birthdates that started from right before Helen Alexander and Sergio Perelli divorced through nine months later. Six names popped up on the screen with the last name Alexander.
One by one, Vanessa opened them. On the fourth one, her eyes lit up with a combination of excitement and surprise. “I think this is it.”
“What? I don’t understand.” Carina skimmed over the birth record. It was dated five months after the divorce, and the mother was listed as Helen Alexander. The father was listed as unknown.
“I know it sounds crazy, but I think it’s possible that this baby is your uncle.”
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