Blindsided (15 page)

“Enough. Once or twice a semester.” She worried her bottom lip with her teeth as if considering whether to go on. “Since the accident, he’d become very good at playing the dutiful loving brother; riddled with guilt over the accident he’d caused that took my sight. He’d been there a few weeks before that last time along with my parents. A classmate’s funeral. We all paid our respects.”
 

They waited for her to go on, but her attention seemed immersed in scratching the mutt in the exact right spot behind his ear. Frodo’s stubby tail thumped the floor, his eyes rolling back into his head. Lucky dog.

“Actually he was my high school sweetheart,” she said.
 

Teigan had to scramble to figure out who “he” was. The classmate who’d died.
 

“He was deaf, I was blind. Hear no evil see no evil. We made quite a pair. It was sweet and simple, nothing serious. But then his life was cut short in a stable fire.”

Damn. That must have been hard. “No one got him out in time?”

She shook her head. “No one knew he was there until it was too late. He was found in one of the stalls. He’d been knocked unconscious and died of inhalation. Presumably he’d gone out to visit the horses and when the blaze started, the horse panicked and knocked him out.”

“Do you believe that?” he asked. It was obvious she didn’t, but he wanted her to tell him why.

“That’s what the police determined.” She’d gone impossibly still, composed, her voice set in careful monotone.

Garret folded his arms across his chest, his brow furrowed in thought. “So what, your brother coming back that last time was to check up on you? See how you were doing?”

“If you bought into his act.”
 

Garret tucked his tongue in his cheek. “And when he left his chopper exploded, within sight of the school.”

“I didn’t know then. I was…sedated at the time.”

“Because you were upset over the death of your boyfriend?” Teigan asked, hoping to hell that was the answer.

She shrugged.
 

Nope.
“You think it was all an act? From what I read there was virtually nothing left of the chopper and there were three witnesses who saw it explode.”

Her delicate shoulders lifted and fell again. “He could have figured out a way.”

Teigan’s eyes narrowed on her face. Nothing in her voice or expression displayed a hint of doubt. “You don’t think he died.”

“No.” She fiddled with the small lap pillow that had been on her chair, playing with the gold tassel. “I never thought he was dead. Not now, not then. But no one wanted to believe me.”

“Why?” Garret’s voice was gravely, the same tone Teigan got upon occasion.
 

He exchanged a quick glance with Garret. Garret’s arms were tense, as if ready to spring into action and rip someone limb to limb. Yeah, Teigan knew how his brother felt.

“Because no one wanted to hear what I had to say. By all appearances, he’d made a complete turnaround from those troubled times of his youth and no one, especially my father, wanted to believe he was capable of doing what I said he’d done. They’d rather think he was dead than face the reality of his actions.”

“What did he do?” Teigan asked. He wasn’t going to like this. Willis was throwing daggers at him with his eyes, but his hand was gentle and steady as he gave a slight squeeze to Aria’s shoulder, which she grasped tightly, knuckles white.
 

He really wasn’t going to like this.

“Byron is determined to be the best. No matter the cost.” She closed her eyes, swallowing hard. “So, after he’d sedated and tied me up, he, ah, checked to be sure that I was still a virgin. Then he said he’d be going away for a little while, and unless I wanted to be responsible for
another
boy’s death, and my own, I’d better stay that way.”

***

A hard knot of helpless fury tore at Teigan’s gut. He wasn’t the only one feeling that way. Garret had gone through a sailor’s vocabulary before calming back down and Willis was still glaring at him, hatred evident in his gray eyes. For Byron? Or him. Probably both. He was the one making Aria relive all this, but if they were measuring hatred for Bryon, Teigan thought he could give Willis a run for his money, because right now his was immeasurable.
Fucking perverted bastard, and yeah, every other horrid name Garret had called Byron, too.

“You said this happened right before the crash?” Garret asked and Willis’ wrath found a new target.

That’s right, focus
. Teigan couldn’t do anything about what happened to her in her youth. As Garret had just pointed out, the bastard might very well be dead already. If not, well then he was going to find the bastard and rip him apart with his bare hands.

She murmured something to Willis, who reluctantly moved to the sideboard, filling three tumblers with two fingers of scotch. The first one he downed. The other two he placed on a tray and presented to first Garret, then Teigan.

Teigan reached for the tumbler and Willis leaned in close, his mouth inches from Teigan’s ear. “If any of this comes back to haunt her, if you hurt her in any way, I’ll hunt you down and kill you.”

Aria’s head snapped around, her face paling. “Willis,” she said sharply, tension making her voice higher than normal. “I believe Frodo could use some exercise.”

Willis’ gaze remained on Teigan’s.
 

Hurt Aria?
He was more likely to toss her over his shoulder, call in a few favors, and stuff her in the most secure part of the bunker under Camp David than let her come to harm from any of this.
 

Teigan inclined his head slightly in acknowledgement.
 

“Willis?” Aria prompted again.

“Yes, Miss Idyllis.” Willis snapped his fingers and the mutt followed him from the room.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized after the front door had opened and closed. “He doesn’t mean it.”

She was wringing her hands. Nervous. Afraid he might go after Willis for threatening him? “He means it.”
 

She stiffened.

“I’d be disappointed in him if he didn’t,” he explained.

She expelled a long breath, her tense shoulders relaxing again.

“This is,” Garret broke the silence, lifting his half-empty scotch up to the light, “superb.”

Garret’s attempt at distraction worked. Aria turned to Garret and gave him a warm smile. Teigan found his hand tightening on the cut crystal. He was getting pissed with the number of smiles his brother was receiving.

He took his own sip, surprised at the smoothness of the hard liquor. “You’re right. Goes down as easy as candy.”
 

“Vintage 2069. Not my father’s best, but it always did him in a pinch. Good enough to kill yourself with,” she added with a wry twist of the mouth.

“So he did drown himself in scotch,” Teigan surmised.

She shrugged. “If you can blame the scotch for the drunken state he was in when the bullet slammed through his brain, then yes.”

“Suicide?” Garret guessed.

“No.” She moved to the sideboard, grabbed Willis’ discarded glass and poured herself two fingers. “I think my mother just got sick of the beatings.”

Neither of them had a response to that. Teigan wasn’t surprised that the circumstances of the Bruce Idyllis’s death had been hidden. The greasing of the wheels was something that had not changed since man had developed a system of bartering.

“How much data have you been given access to regarding the deaths of the foreign soldiers?” she asked abruptly, changing the subject.

Teigan let out a breath in frustration. “Not much. There isn’t much international cooperation here. No one wants to bring in the Global Police, for obvious reasons, so all we’ve been provided, other than they were Viadal soldiers, is when they died and that the method of death was the same.”

She nodded, moved over to the armoire and opened it. A quick swipe across the panel had the system coming online. “Computer, display file vt4692 collected data voiceprint Aria Octavia Idyllis.”

“Palm scan required to access this data.”

She placed her palm on the screen and a blaze of light outlined the tapered hand.

“Access granted.”

She sat down in the chair, settling in. A series of Braille bumps scrolled across the screen. It might as well have been Greek.

“You’re going to have to help us out here,” Teigan told her. “I don’t read Braille.”

She gave him a slight smile. Be-still his beating heart. “Computer, display file in the common alphabet and numerical system. English.”

The bumps changed to numbers and letters, forming coherent dates and words. Teigan leaned forward, anxiously scanning the data. Garret moved in closer.

“How did you get this?” Teigan asked in amazement as he touched the screen to scroll down over the collected data. Everything was here. Names, id numbers, date of birth, training protocol, missions, medical and psychological reviews. Pages and pages of data on each of the deceased men, including the international files—information he was sure even Whitesman had never seen.

“I’m handy with computers,” she stated modestly.

He studied her intently. On the one hand he hoped she was telling the truth. He hadn’t forgotten his fears that whoever her source was could be a conspirator in the killings. On the other, if he had firsthand knowledge of a breach in the system, he was honor bound to report that breach—technically.

“This is some highly classified stuff,” he said carefully. “Even our boys can’t breach most of these systems.” He thought of John. John had tried, and been unsuccessful. General consensus amongst all the tech geeks in the Agency was that if John couldn’t do it, it couldn’t be done.

She shrugged as if it wasn’t such a big deal. “Computer, display condensed summary sub code vt4692 profile.”

Here she’d condensed the data and listed it chronologically, starting with the first murder until the latest with Noah Gordon. Each name was followed by their country of employment, their date of birth, and their date of death. When she’d said profile, he’d expected a page of notes where she speculated on the killer and why he was murdering Viadal’s boys. This was merely a list. He fingered a name and tapped on it. Wondering if there were further sub-files buried under each name. Nothing happened.

“See it?” she asked.

He shook his head. “See what?”

“Look at the dates.”

“I don’t…” he sat up straighter just as Garret sucked in a breath. “Wait. Shit. They all were killed in the weeks before their birthday.”

Damn. He wished they’d had this information before. A little international cooperation might have saved some of these soldiers’ lives. If they’d known the threat would come the month of their birthday, maybe they could have caught their killer before now.
 

He glanced at his brother. Thank God they’d been concentrating on Garret as a possible target. But they’d been doing so because he would be the easiest to get to—that and Whitesman had thought him suspect—not because his birthday was next.

“Which birthday?” she asked pointedly.

“Their thirtieth.” He squatted down, craning his head around to be at eye level with her. It was a futile effort. He knew he couldn’t read her by looking in her eyes. But damn, they were beautiful eyes. “You think that’s relevant? It being their thirtieth?”

She hesitated, inclined her head. “If I’m right that Byron is alive, then it is.”

“Because of this supposed deadline your father gave him.”

“Computer, display file BI062207,” she said in lieu of answering.

A file and image popped up on the screen. Her twin brother, Byron, with basic information such as birth, death, education along with some of his youthful achievements. He’d been involved in practically every sport and academic club until he went to private boarding school. While there, he’d still participated in some of the more prestigious ones. If the number of awards was any indication, Byron’s team always won.

“Competitive,” Garret commented.

“Very,” she agreed. “Computer, display generated image, age 26.”

A new image popped up on the screen, a computer generated image—age enhanced. An older Byron certainly, but still very handsome and athletic.

Teigan turned his gaze on the profile of her face. “I’m sure you’re going somewhere with this.”

She nibbled her bottom lip, nodded. “Computer, split screen and display file BI062207 ssi.”

The screen split into over a half-dozen different boxes, each containing a fairly grainy or fuzzy image with a date, time, and place stamped under them. The images were collected from security systems, satellite images, and one or two private digital shots. It was obvious where she was going. The man in these pictures could very easily have been mistaken for her brother, especially taking aging into account. But they were also distant and grainy enough to make a positive id improbable.

“Have you run a probability scan on these?” Teigan touched one of the frames. It popped out, rotated the holographic image. The edges were sharp or blurry where there was no data to draw from and the computer guessed on the rendering. He touched another. This one was worse.