HiddenDepths (17 page)

“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 think 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?

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 extremely 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.

At the very least.

“I’m just trying to consider all the possibilities, Mr.
Stavros.”

“You’ve never heard of the idea that everybody has a twin? A
doppelganger?”

“I’ve heard of it but I’m not sure I believe it. The only
close resemblances I’ve ever seen were between close relatives.”

Michael and his father, for one.

“And so you automatically assume this girl is Athena? Bah!
That’s absurd. I identified the body myself. Athena committed suicide.”

“And you’re sure it was her?”

“Yes,” he snapped, standing up. “Although I can’t believe
you have the unmitigated gall to even pose that question. To bring up the
memory of my niece’s bloated, water-ridden body is sacrilege.”

“But she was recognizable?” Evan persisted, which was really
kind of rude. But he didn’t buy this guy’s grief. No way. The girl’s death
conveniently left Fredrico Stavros with the other half of the fortune he had
reputedly married to regain.

Stavros shook his head in apparent amazement. “Your father
is commonly known to be an arrogant bastard and I see he passed it on to even
the lowliest of his sons. I wouldn’t take this kind of treatment from Michael
Reynolds or the old man Damien himself and I most certainly won’t take it from
one of his countless other punk sons.”

Evan didn’t take the bait. “Actually, there are just five of
us. The sixth is a daughter and she’s even more impertinent.”

“Is that all?”

Evan remained seated. “Did your wife have any relations?”

“My people already spoke to your detectives when they were
investigating this girl to begin with. We told you then. Whoever she is, she’s
not a Stavros. Or a Bennett. And if she plans to make some specious claim that
she is—”

“I don’t know where Andrea Prentiss is.” Well, that much was
true. “But I certainly doubt a claim is what she has in mind.”

“I don’t care either way!” Stavros growled, pounding on the
desk for emphasis. Fredrico Stavros was awfully upset for a man who supposedly
thought this whole matter had nothing to do with him. He gestured toward the
door. “We’re done here. Now get out.”

“Do you mind if I see the autopsy report?”

Stavros exploded. There was no other word for it. With one
sweep of his ham-like fist he knocked everything off the desk onto the
floor—papers, knickknacks, framed photos—and came around the front of it in a
rage, clenching his fists. His beefy face turned five shades redder than it had
been at the beginning of the conversation.

Evan straightened the pleat of his pant leg but didn’t
otherwise move a muscle as the big Greek glowered down at him, standing over
his chair at a proximity that was undoubtedly intended to intimidate. It didn’t
intimidate Evan. But it did bother him. In fact, it left him feeling sick and
furious, though he masked his reaction. He knew—he just
knew
that what
he had suspected upon coming here was true. Andrea Prentiss
was
Athena
Stavros, and this man was why she had disappeared, at the beginning from this
Greek island paradise and then years later from Evan’s own sanctuary.

Evan stood up and smiled.

He was going to put an end to her running if he had to kill
this man to do it.

And that was beginning to look as if it might be the best plan.

“Thank you for your time.”

* * * * *

His next stop was the police department. In the small Greek
town adjoining Stavros’ estate, the headquarters was a modest building,
whitewashed with deep-blue trimming just as were all the other buildings in
town. He fervently hoped that computers had come to this town and that, as in
every other town in the world, money talked.

When he went inside the building, he saw there was a front
office and thankfully what looked like pretty modern Macs on the few desks
therein. Being the typical American he was, Evan expected the police officers
to speak English and they did, not even too heavily accented.

“What can I do for you, sir?” asked a man whose uniform
identified him as the captain to even somebody with as rudimentary Greek skills
as Evan had.

“I’d like to see an autopsy file from about eight years ago.
Athena Stavros.”

The captain expressed absolutely no surprise, confirming
that Stavros had called ahead. “I’m afraid those records are confidential, sir.
What is your interest?”

“They’re here, then? Either physically or on your computer?”

“Again, sir, those records are confidential.”

Evan had never been particularly good at throwing his weight
around. He’d never had to be. He was a fair judge of people, though, if he asked
the right questions. “Stavros won’t permit me to see them, right?” he floated
for a starter.

“Mr. Stavros has nothing to do with it.” The response from
the wiry, gray-haired police captain was without expression, but Evan thought
he could read some resentment there. The man was probably about Stavros’ age
but without the natural cushion from the years that wealth provided. He’d
probably been pushed around by the Greek tycoon his whole life.

“Did you work on the case?” Evan asked.

The captain hesitated, glancing at the younger man who was
the only other occupant of the office and who was doing a pretty good job of
pretending to study his computer screen. Maybe money didn’t talk here as much
as Evan would hope, but that could be a good thing. Maybe this man was sick of
being bullied by Stavros.