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“She is worth it,” I clip, walking away with my bruised ego. I’ve never felt this way about a woman before and I can’t explain our connection, but I owe it to her to help. She’s here because of me. And I’ll be damned if I don’t return her home safe.
“Okay,” he says. “And just because they’re not giving me anything doesn’t mean I’m giving up on finding out what the hell is happening.”
Relief, yet irritation fuels my body. “You could have said that from the beginning, asshole.”
Stomping to the couch, I fall into it and lean back, waiting for Max to spit out his game plan. His eyes jump to my bouncing knee. Every nerve inside me is racing to go. Do something.
“She’s with Richard so I’m not too worried. He’s a respectable guy.”
I narrow my eyes and lean my elbows on my knees. “Then why did he take her without his people knowing?”
“Not sure.” He blinks. “But he used to be the Head of Security for President Malone and we’ve worked together on a few cases. He could be protecting her,” he says with an unsettled tone, doing nothing to calm my nerves.
Max and I both stand tall as the front door opens. “Found something,” Stone, Max’s right-hand man and the computer genius on his team, declares as he struts through the front door. “Well, at least I think I did.” We follow him into the kitchen where he sets his laptop down on the island. “First, I pulled Aspen’s information. Her passport and birth certificate. That looked clean… until I dug deeper. When I pulled the hospital records where it’s stated she was born, there was zip about her. She wasn’t born there, or they deleted her records. But that’s more than I found on her parents. I couldn’t find info on them anywhere. I located a couple people with those names, but either they were dead or close to it because they were in their nineties.”
None of this makes sense. I met her dad, and he wasn’t in his nineties.
“We don’t know anything then?” I snap.
Stone holds up his finger, his smile growing. Leave it to the computer geek to find this amusing. “I didn’t say that. Max told me Richard called her Gabriella when he first saw her. I did a search typing in Richard Devereux and the name Gabriella.” He turns his computer around to face us. “This pulled up.”
Max and I both read the article’s title. “President Malone’s one-year-old daughter, Gabriella Malone, was found deceased.”
My head jerks up, confused more than ever. “I don’t understand. What does this have to do with Aspen?”
“Keep reading,” Stone presses, pointing to the computer.
My eyes roam over the article. Most of it, I’ve read before. We learned about it in history in high school and then again in government in college. There were so many rumors and conspiracy theories about what happened. I keep reading, waiting for something to pop out. It doesn’t take long.
‘Gabriella’s body was buried in a shallow grave in a wooded area on the outskirts of Aspen, Colorado.’
My heart slams against my ribcage, confusion flooding my vision. “It has to be a coincidence. That child was dead.”
Max bobs his head from side to side. “If I remember, the body was burned beyond recognition. They only confirmed it was her because they found pieces of her clothing close to the grave.”
“Correct,” Stone states. “And there were plenty of theories it wasn’t her.”
“So, what? Someone kidnapped her and flew her to an isolated island to keep her hidden?” The outlandish words that fly out of my mouth sound more like plausibility to my ears. Resting both my hands on the countertop, I drop my head between my shoulders. If someone was trying to hide her, taking her to a small South Pacific island isn’t too far-fetched. Aspen’s voice is clear in my mind. “My father is extremely protective. He doesn’t trust anyone.”
The hair on my arms rise. I found a buried treasure. And just like in the movies, messing with it always releases a dangerous storm. What the hell did I do?
“If it’s her,” Max says, emphasis on if, “at least Richard has her. He was the President’s right-hand man. Shit, he was his best friend.”
Stone snaps his fingers at Max. “He was. But most of the conspiracy theories said that it was an inside job. No one’s closer to you than your best friend.”
Hearing what I was thinking makes my fears explode. The situation just took a turn for the worse. She’s the one in danger. And we might have just handed her to her killer.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Aspen
My eyes never leave his constant movement. Methodically, he peeks through the thick curtained windows. One by one and then he checks the doors, unlocking and locking them again. Five times now and we’ve hardly been here an hour. Whoever he’s waiting for, he’s nervous.
We traveled by foot for a mile in the freezing cold to the abandoned house in the jungle after we switched cars three times at different locations. Each place deserted and had been for some time, so there was nowhere to run. He had my hands tied, and a gun pointed at me most of the time.
Yet, there’s a small voice inside of me that doesn’t want to run. Like it knows he’s speaking the truth.
His unquestioning confidence that I’m Gabriella is tugging on a string buried deep inside me. Why? Who is Gabriella? And who is Tobias Paul?
