Total pages in book: 165
Estimated words: 154925 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 775(@200wpm)___ 620(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154925 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 775(@200wpm)___ 620(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
MaeBe shook her head. That was the first time in forever that her mind had wandered into ridiculous territory. Sometimes she saw the world like that, fun stories that played out in her head. She hadn’t for the longest time. It was like her creativity had died when Kyle had.
“See, that reminds me of what it was like in the old days.” Adam Miles smiled wistfully. “We had no money, and when Ian would set out a box of office supplies, we would Hunger Games the hell out of it. I’ve got serious scars from taking those pens from Liam.”
“Yes, it’s terrible for all of us.” Charlotte was right back to her normal chic perfection. “Now you two pull each other’s hair over who gets to use the private jet.”
Ian grinned her way, a devilish expression. “It wasn’t the hair on his head.”
“Asshole,” Adam replied and then shook his head and turned back to Drake, sobering. “I’m sorry we didn’t tell you. You have to understand the position we were in.”
“You couldn’t be sure I wasn’t part of it,” Drake replied. “I do understand that.”
“He better,” Taylor said under her breath.
He brought her hand to his lips. “I assure you, I do. I learned my lessons, but I hope the group can consider me above reproach at this point.”
“Someone could have mentioned it to me,” Kyle grumbled.
She didn’t like the guilt she felt. “The majority of this was gathered by me. I didn’t send it to Ian until it was too late to warn you. I needed to be sure. I didn’t want to ruin a whole family if I was wrong. I also didn’t honestly think Drake was involved. I knew how I would feel if someone I loved was accused like that without irrefutable proof. I didn’t understand that things were moving forward the way they were or I would have said something.”
“Yes, this is a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing,” Ian began, “mostly because the right hand cut itself off and ran away.”
“What Ian is saying in his extremely non-helpful way is we didn’t have the information we needed to make that call,” Charlotte explained. “That needs to stop.”
“This is no longer an Agency operation.” Drake’s hand was firmly in his girlfriends as he spoke, their fingers tangled together. “I have no idea who I can trust at the Agency.”
“I have a list of most of the Agency employees who either visited your father in the last several months or he visited them.” This was what she’d done since Kyle had been gone. She’d devoted it to figuring out how to get to Julia Ennis and fallen down the rabbit hole Don Radcliffe represented. “I’ve managed to piece together the last six months of your father’s life. I have a question I haven’t been able to answer though. According to the records, Julia went missing in Hong Kong. Three weeks after, your father bought a ticket to Hong Kong but he was a no show at the airport that day. I believe instead of the commercial flight he told everyone he was going on, he took a private jet owned by a billionaire real estate developer we think is a member of The Consortium. That jet went to Singapore and two days later made its way back to DC after a stop in Los Angeles.”
Kyle’s face flushed and Drake cursed.
She’d known it had something to do with Julia. “Did he tell you he was going to search for her?”
“He convinced my mother not to go to Hong Kong with him,” Drake said with a tight expression. “She didn’t go until Julia had been missing for three months.”
“So we have to assume that your father brought Julia back and perhaps put her in touch with the plastic surgeon.” She’d wondered about that. She’d known one of Julia’s early plastic surgeries had taken place with Dr. Blumenthall—the man she’d murdered at The Reef on the night she’d kidnapped MaeBe. “Though I wouldn’t think a nose job would be the first of her surgeries and while the doctor was known primarily for that, his only other expertise was with burn victims.”
“There was a fire,” Kyle admitted. “It was precisely why I didn’t bury her body. The building we were in caught fire. I shot her. The roof started to come down and Drake and I left. The fire was pretty intense. It was a chemical company’s test site. From the reports on the accident, the fire burned at over 700 degrees Fahrenheit. More than enough to burn human bones.”
How hard had that been on Kyle? She’d known he’d been the one to take the shot at Julia, but listening to the hollow tone in his voice it hit her how terrible that moment must have been. How much had he loved Julia? How hard had that betrayal cut him? Had it been such a blow he could never truly come back from it?