HiddenDepths (18 page)

“Yes. I worked on it. Terrible thing, a young girl like
that.”

“Could you tell me a little bit more about the circumstances
of the case?”

“Come on back to my office.”

The headquarters were deceptively roomy, the back office
sporting a high ceiling fan and built-in bookshelves filled with volume after
volume of leather records of some kind. “Have a seat,” the captain directed him
and then pulled down one of the numbered volumes resting it on the desk and
opening it to a certain page before he slid it across the desk Evan’s way.

It was a newspaper clipping, black and white, but yellowed
with age. “Tragic Drowning,” the man translated the headline.

Evan glanced at the date, but could not otherwise read the
article. Greek to him, as they say.

“It’s an account of the finding of Athena Stavros’ body.
Anything you notice there?”

Evan glanced at it again. “Not really.”

“No picture of the girl. Usually a story about someone’s
death would be accompanied by a picture of the deceased. But Stavros was
bizarrely obsessed with not having his niece photographed. I’m told he made it
a rule at the boarding school she attended as well, until he took her out of
school completely, that is, and brought her here. And he watched her like a
hawk when she was on the island. Might even say kept her a prisoner almost.
Barely anyone saw her.”

Evan nodded.

“My brother was one of her guards. One of her later guards.”

Evan didn’t want to even guess at the significance of the
“later” reference so he just asked. “What happened to the earlier ones?”

The man spit out a word in Greek. “Scum,” he clarified. “My
brother said whoever had guarded the girl before had,” he hesitated, “hurt
her.”

The blood came pounding to Evan’s head and he felt a rage
that rivaled what Stavros had just demonstrated in his office. He wished he
could slam something or pound it. But now was not the time to express outrage.
Now was the time to gather facts.

And make decisions.

“Was your brother there the day she, er, died?”

“Yes. He said she just swam away and they couldn’t catch
her.”

Evan said nothing.

“But she was a strong swimmer. By the time my brother and
the other guard reported it—”

Something about the way he said that seemed to suggest a
delay.

“She was nowhere to be found. And these currents…”

“Where was this?”

The captain jotted down a few lines of precise directions.
“Here. You can go see the spot if you want.”

“They found a body?”

“Not until Stavros flew back to the estate and took over the
search himself.” He pulled back the volume with the news clipping and flipped a
page, shoving it back Evan’s way.

Evan looked at the open page, swallowing his immediate surge
of disgust and despair. It was a photo of a corpse, black and white and
unforgiving in all its merciless detail. Small but bloated, with seaweed draped
around the limbs like some kind of perverted decoration, it was hard to even
tell whether it was even a woman, though the corpse was naked on the sand.

“I’d never seen Athena Stavros. But my brother had.”

A long pause.

“A corpse doesn’t lose six inches of height. Athena was a
tall girl and this poor soul…was not.”

“But the coroner ruled it Athena?”

The captain shrugged. “Of course.”

“Any other girls disappear around that time?”

The captain focused soulful brown eyes at the photo. “Of
course.”

Evan stood up and shook the captain’s hand. “Thank you for
your time.”

He was at the door before the man called to him, though he
hadn’t told him his name. “Mr. Reynolds. Fredrico Stavros is a dangerous man.”
He said something in Greek.

“What does that mean?”

“Let sleeping dogs lie, Mr. Reynolds.”

“Like hell,” he muttered.

* * * * *

“Why do you have an apartment in Greece, Michael, if you’ve
never been here?”

“I didn’t say I’d never been here, Vanny. I said I hadn’t
been here in a long time.”

“Since before Miss Prentiss, I bet.”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I think you’re right about that.”

“And she always traveled with you, which means she didn’t
want to come to Greece.”

“Yes, well, I don’t want to either really. So what exactly
are we doing here now?”

“I told you. Scouting out a possible wedding venue.”

“Yes, that’s what you told me. But what are we really doing
here? Following Evan? Or following Andrea? Because if we think we’re following
Andrea, then we’d be on a wild goose chase,” he said gently. “Just like Evan.”

Vanny shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think Evan was
telling us everything he knows about what happened to her.”

“I still think we should have gone with my original idea of
just sending some security to go with Evan for his interview with Stavros.”

“Don’t be silly! You don’t want to give Evan the impression
he’s being followed.”

“Which he is, right? Just to be clear.”

The doorbell to the penthouse rang and they traded looks of
confusion, Michael’s leavened by slight disapproval.

“You don’t like it when people come to the door, do you,
Michael?”

“No, for one thing because they’re not supposed to be
allowed to just come up. That’s what doormen were invented for.”

He went to the door and opened it. “Oh.” He leaned forward
and kissed the woman at the door on the cheek lightly, ushering her in. “What
are you doing here?”

Vanny came forward eagerly. “Amanda!”

Vanny was exceedingly interested in all things Reynolds family
focused, his father’s ex-wives among them, so she’d met them all by now and was
busy becoming fast friends with each and every one of them. She was determined
to make the Reynolds clan into the Brady Bunch if it was the last thing she
did. Well, more power to her. Personally, Michael thought his fiancée had her
work cut out for her on that front.

“Fancy meeting you here! You look fabulous as ever!”

Evan’s mother smiled at Vanny and even spared a less harsh
glance than usual her ex-stepson’s way. “You too, my dear. But when am I going
to be able to wear the perfectly spectacular peach outfit I bought for your
wedding, by the way? Or are you just torturing this poor man by putting the
ceremony off all these months like this?”

Vanny laughed. “As if! I’m having to drag him to the altar
and he just weighs a little more than I thought. It’s taking me longer.”

Michael shook his head in disgust, muttering, “I’d marry her
at city hall if she’d let me, as she well knows.”

“As everybody well knows, Michael,” Amanda added wryly.

“But what the hell
are
you doing here, Amanda?” Michael
asked. “How did you even know we were here?”

“Your father, of course. We’re both worried about Evan.”

“Join the club,” Vanny said.

“And you came all the way to Greece because you learned he
was here? That seems excessive.”

“He’s my son, Michael,” she snapped, ever mindful that her
ex-husband had never let her forget he wasn’t. “A mother cares about her son.”

“Of course,” Vanny soothed.

“I just don’t know what you can do here. Hell, I don’t know
what we can do. I don’t even know what we’re doing here,” he noted as an aside
to Vanny as she showed Amanda to one of the sofas in front of the stunning view
of the Aegean.

“I’ve been trying to catch up to Evan for days,” Amanda
explained to Vanny. “I went out to Maine and couldn’t seem to connect and then,
well, I admit my focus wandered for a day or two—there was this scrumptious
grocer gentleman—and when I looked back, I found my son was interviewing some
Greek thug in the local jail and was involved in some altercation. And then off
to Greece!”

“It all seems to be connected,” Vanny admitted. “Evan came
to see Michael about setting up an interview with this Fredrico Stavros
character and then—”

“Then Dad got a call from the Maine attorney general, an old
friend—”

“Of course,” Vanny said snidely.

“Telling him about this business in the jail. In light of
that, I was of the opinion that we should have sent some security for Evan’s
interview with Stavros—”

“But it seemed to make sense to maybe just come here
ourselves and poke around,” Vanny finished for him.

“My reaction exactly,” Amanda assured Vanny, “when I called
Damien and learned the whole story. So here I am.”

Both women looked up at Michael.

As if he was the one who should have a plan.

“Well?” they said in unison.

He shook his head.

* * * * *

Evan steadied the tiller of the boat he’d just bought from
an ex-investment banker in the marina—
bought
,like any other
billionaire, instead of
made
like Evan Reynolds always had in the past.
But he was in a hurry. He wanted to see for himself where Athena Stavros—Andrea—had
disappeared into the sea. And the five-times premium he’d paid the startled
ex-investment banker for the privilege was worth it.

Staring out at the rocky shoreline to Stavros’ compound, he
tried to imagine the thoughts of the eighteen-year-old girl who had walked into
the sea. Tried to imagine the thoughts of that girl right now.

And while he was at it, maybe figure out where the hell she
was.

A crack of thunder was his only answer and he glanced up at
the darkening sky. The sun-kissed blue had turned to gray verging on black. As
an experienced sailor, he should have taken note of the conditions before
heading out, but he could think of nothing but the police captain’s
revelations.

The body they had found had not been Athena’s.

He looked toward the shore, almost too distant to see. He
was a good swimmer and could swim that distance easily. But then he looked out
to the churning ocean in the other direction.

But swim to where? There was no boat here the day Athena
Stavros disappeared into the sea.

Or was there?

The rain began as a thin, cold stream that Evan just
absorbed, barely registering the damp turning his windbreaker and then his T-shirt
and shorts to soaking. Eyes fixed on the shoreline, deviating only to check out
the waves behind him every once in a while, he stood stock still in the
storm—his sea legs second nature to him as the boat rocked this way and that—as
if somehow by standing there he was accomplishing something that would bring
that long-ago girl, his girl, back to him.

He would kill Fredrico Stavros. He would. There were ways.
Hadn’t some part of him always despised the money and the power he’d been born
into because he knew instinctively there were
ways
? Ways to get around
every rule made for other people. Even the biggest one.

And if he didn’t get around it—if he ended up in some Greek
prison—so be it. It wouldn’t matter. At least Fredrico Stavros would be dead
for what he’d done to Andrea.

A jagged shard of lightning brought a figure up from the
roiling waves at the back of the boat and with a deft leap, the sea creature
landed on the deck, water streaming from her sleek black swimsuit and long wet
hair as she came to her feet, breathing heavily.

Evan jumped back a foot from the apparition, startled. He
couldn’t help it. His heart jarred out of his chest as well as he recognized
who had just climbed onto his deck. But the heart pounding wasn’t out of fear.

More like disbelief in equal measures with elation.

Jesus. It was her. As if she was some kind of siren and his
engrossed thoughts had called her to him.

Oh no, with sirens it was the other way around. They called
to you.

But shit. She was
here.

The rain was so loud now the sound resembled hail on the
hard wooden deck as the two soaked figures stared at each other, visible in the
faint illumination of the automatic lights that the investment banker’s toy
sported and that had gone on in response to the darkening storm.

“Do you get some kind of a charge out of showing up in the
middle of storms and freaking the shit out of me?” he finally called to her
over the sound of the rain.

She shook her head.

“Ever think of using a boat or do you just swim everywhere?”

“I didn’t want anyone to see me. You’re awfully close to his
compound.” She didn’t need to specify who “his” was. “Why can’t you just stay
out of all this, Evan?”

“All what? Your life? No fucking way.”

“He’s a dangerous man.”

“And yet you came right back here when you discovered I was
talking to him, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did.”

“Why? I thought your thing was running away.”

“I can’t let you get mixed up in this.”

“Remember, I told you once already. Too late.” He grabbed
her wrist and pulled her to him, drenched body to drenched body, the cold no
match for the heat of what they felt for each other, the swaying of the deck no
match for the grounding they experienced in each other’s arms.

“How could you leave me like that?” he asked, directly in
her ear. “Without a word? You promised.”

“I didn’t promise you anything.”

“You did. You promised to tell me what you could before you
left.”

“I—there was nothing to tell.”

“And you promised more than that. You know you did.”

One kiss, even long, hard, bruising her salty lips, wasn’t
enough to quench his thirst for her. He thrust his fingers in her hair and held
her for a second and then a third.

Then he tugged her down the stairwell to the lower quarters.
When he had her below, he switched on a light to see her shivering. Rummaging
through a cupboard, he threw out a shirt, the investment banker’s no doubt. “Here.
Get out of that wet suit.”

He threw her a towel as well.

“What about you?” She was shaking as she clutched the towel
to her chest.