“I don’t understand. How did Magda and Ronan explain why they got married, and not Magda and Sully? When did they switch back their identities?” My head was hurting, to the point where every single last scrap of this new information I was being given simply wouldn’t make sense.
“Ronan found out when Sully finally came home from deployment. He came back to the island and found him. They agreed then to become themselves again. It was time for them to be who they were meant to be. I oversaw the meeting between them. Ronan was worried that Sully might not exactly be pleased to see him.”
“So you knew about this? All these years?”
“I did.”
“And you didn’t think to mention anything about it when Ronan died? You didn’t think to explain why it would be so damned hard to get Sully to take Connor and Amie?”
Linneman smoothed down his suit, politely declining a tray of hors d’oeuvres from Aunt Simone. “It wasn’t my place. I can only legally discuss the matter with you now because Sully has asked me to.”
God, what a mess. It was all such a mess. In times like these I would normally have turned to my father for guidance, but that wasn’t possible anymore. “How much trouble is he in?” I asked.
“A considerable amount,” Linneman said. “It seems he triggered some sort of red flag when his ID was entered into the airline’s systems back in Maine. The army has been trying to hunt him down for some time. It seems a number of sensitive files were leaked during the time that Sully was deployed under Colonel Whitlock. A specialist named Crowe was arrested for selling military secrets to outside parties. He’d somehow figured out Sully was pretending to be Ronan back then, and he told the police Sully was the one selling the information. That he had taken a number of files when he left the army, and since Crowe didn’t have any files on him when he was arrested, it looked like Sully was at least complicit in hiding evidence if not directly involved in the crimes that were committed.”
“Espionage? I’ve never heard anything so stupid in my whole life.”
“I know. Sully insists he doesn’t have any secret files, but the military aren’t likely to believe him since he lied about who he was for so long. Basically, it’s not looking good, Miss Lang. It’s not looking good at all.”
“Haven’t they searched his place back on the island?”
“They’ve torn the place apart. Not a thing was found, but now they’re saying he could easily have hidden the files somewhere else. Buried them. Secured them in a safe place. Given them to someone else, perhaps.”
This was outrageous. There was just no way Sully would be involved with selling top secret military information to anyone. No way whatsoever. And no way he was involved with this Crowe guy, either. The name was familiar to me, Sully had mentioned him once or twice, but if they were aligned with each other in any illegal activities, surely he wouldn’t have mentioned him at all?
Then…
My blood ran cold as I remembered something. Sully, sick with a fever after the Sea King went down, tossing and turning on his couch, yelling out a name. Yelling at a man to help him. He had been yelling at Crowe. When I’d asked him about Crowe later, I recalled the sour look on Sully’s face as he’d said he wasn’t a friend.
There was another time, too. Another time Sully had mentioned Crowe. I wracked my brain, trying to bring the memory to the surface of my mind, scouring every single moment Sully and I had spent together, trying to scan through conversations and interactions until I came across it.
“Miss Lang? Ophelia, are you quite all right?” Linneman touched my shoulder, a deep frown of concern on his face, but I held up one hand, burying myself deeper in my thoughts.
When? When had it been? God, I had to remember. I had to. And then, just as I was about to give up, it came to me in a sudden rush, a revelation that made my head spin. “Shit,” I hissed.
“What is it, Ophelia?”
“I know what the files are,” I told him, shaking my head. “I know exactly what they are, and I know where to find them, too.”
Linneman looked alarmed. “If they can help clear Sully’s name, then we need to get them to the police immediately,” he said.
“I know. You should call them and tell them they need to go back to the island. The files are a set of USB drives. They’re in my underwear drawer. And…well.” I cleared my throat. “They’re full of porn.”
******