She felt weak. She took a few steps back, leaning against the edge of the table for support.
She pictured her father the moment he found the itinerary and the photos and understood the terrible truth, or at least part of it. He must have taken them to Dow, and when he broke into the site, they realized that whatever reason she’d been at the Sinclair home, it wasn’t because she was stalking her lover. She’d seen something. She’d snapped photos. It was the reason she was murdered. He’d been stripped of his life and, more cruelly, his trust in the woman who had owned his heart. And left with nothing. He’d trusted in the justice system once before and been screwed, and so this time, instead of turning to the police, he’d taken matters into his own hands, part of his soul so twisted he’d done the unthinkable and set his sights on an innocent in retribution for what had been done to him.
How long had he stewed, allowing the open wound to become a gaping sore that he fell into, melding with the rot? Becoming it. Morphing into the very monster he despised.
Planning his revenge.
Her eyes lifted to Evan as he watched her. His wheels were turning, too, as the picture became clear. He turned away, folding the contract and putting it in his back pocket. The drawer closed with a small click. “We should try to find the files from the case,” Evan said, his voice scratchy. He cleared his throat as he moved to another drawer. “His lawyer might have returned them—”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “The case presented was all lies. They must have known, but even if they didn’t, they looked the other way.” Uninterested in the truth. Only there for the money. “There’s nothing to be done. Trying your father again would be double jeopardy.”
She clamped a hand over her mouth. It was all too much. Too much. Evan stepped forward, wrapping his arms around her, whispering calming words against her hair.
Us, she reminded herself. We are the cure. We are the answer to the sickness that wants to spread.
He stepped back after a moment, their pained eyes meeting. “My dad,” he said. “He wasn’t surprised by your presence in that motel room that day in Mexico.” He blew out a breath, looking over her shoulder, back in time. “His reactions . . . have always felt off.”
She drifted back there for a moment, pictured the bandage around his broken hand, that shower where’d they’d tried so desperately to cleanse their souls, making do with their bodies, the furniture piled in front of the door, the way his father had looked at her with hatred. But Evan was right, no surprise. “Maybe you told him on the phone that I was there with you,” she said. She’d been in the shower when he’d called his dad.
He frowned. “Maybe, but I don’t think so. Also . . . he seemed to know about my hand. He told me he’d get a surgeon. How did he know it wasn’t burned or . . . just needed a cast.” He massaged his temples. “And he didn’t call the police. He came there himself. He explained it later by saying he didn’t trust anyone, and I didn’t, either, so I accepted that.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I don’t know. But maybe . . . he didn’t call the police because he knew the rules. He knew once we got out of there, we were free. Bets were paid, and the cleanup crew went to work. We’d won, and no one would come after us.”
She felt full body shivers, but she steeled her spine and tried her best to clear her mind, to think. She wished she could help, but everything seemed off that day. “It all feels . . . distorted. I don’t trust my own memories. But, yes, your father did seem to know more than he should have.”
“Because he’d watched us.”
She looked away. There seemed to be some evidence to suggest he’d watched whatever game they’d been a part of at some point, but to watch them? And not do something? Even for a monster, it didn’t make sense. Her mind snagged on something. “The rope,” she murmured.
“The rope?”
“Yes, the one I was sent. It didn’t fit at the time. What was it for?”
“Are you thinking my dad sent it? For what reason?”
“Maybe he was giving me the opportunity to hang myself. Maybe he thought if I did, you’d be free.” A twisted kindness? Or merely a plea to end the game for his son? Hang yourself. End this.
Evan looked like he was going to be ill. He turned and jerkily started opening more drawers, pulling out file folders and loose papers, giving them a brief glance and tossing them on the floor. “Evan—” She stepped forward and put her hand on his arm, but he shrugged her off.
“There must be something here,” he said. His voice sounded the way it had when they’d been in those cages. Parched. Broken. There was too much horror being tossed at them to begin to comprehend. His dad had watched them. Watched his own son suffer. Be brutalized. Wither away. Be humiliated.
She understood that he needed to throw things, and if he wanted to throw his father’s files—hell, if he wanted to pick up the cabinets themselves and toss them at the walls—she had no reason in the world to stop him. Hell, she’d even join him. She pulled a drawer all the way out and let it crash to the floor, spilling its contents.
Evan had gone over to the oil painting on the wall and was pulling it open like a small door. Ah, so there was a compartment behind it. She started stepping over the spilled contents of the drawer when something caught her eye. She bent, picking up a piece of paper with writing on it that definitely wasn’t English.
“Evan, look,” she said, and he turned his head. He was holding what appeared to be a necklace case, and he brought it with him as he walked over to her.
“I don’t know what this is,” she said, handing him the paper, “but look.” She tapped the spot at the bottom that held an address.
He looked up, meeting her eyes. “Brussels?”
She nodded. “That story you printed. The diamond-mining company. The missing women. They were from Brussels.”
“What is this, though?”
“I don’t know. It looks like some formal document. We’d have to try to translate it. But there’s a name on it.”
“Fontane Lejeune.”
“Have you ever heard that name?”
“No. The man from that article who’d been questioned was named Dedryck Van Daele.”
Noelle frowned. Still, that was odd. She heard another small noise from outside in the office and tiptoed quietly to the door, peering out again. No one. And the doors were locked. There’s probably a full staff in this house. You’re only hearing them. Relax.
When she turned back toward Evan, he’d opened the top of the box in his hands. She approached him, looking at what he was holding. A red gem sparkled up at them, the large stone resting at the end of a delicate silver chain. It looked very old and very expensive. “A ruby?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But it’s from a jewelry store in Belgium. What the hell is going on?”
“I have no idea,” she said. She pulled in a breath. “But we need to find out what the connection to Belgium is.”
He held up the jewelry box. “You know who we can ask about this?”
“Yes,” she said. She knew just who he was talking about—André Baudelaire, purveyor of antiques, collectibles, and fine jewelry. Evan stepped over the mess they’d left, leaving the compartment exposed. It had been empty, except for the necklace. And then they both exited the small hidden room where Leonard Sinclair stored his secrets.
A few of them at least.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Evan drove, his mind filtering through what they’d just discovered as Noelle used a search engine on her phone to look up the name Fontane Lejeune. Unfortunately, all the hits she got were in Dutch.
“He might have been the son of a judge,” she said. “There’s a photo from the early sixties of a man named Sevrin Lejeune being sworn in to office. The boy in the photo is named Fontane.”
He glanced over at her to see a troubled frown on her face. “What is it?” he asked.