Had her father actually had an affair with his housekeeper? Had he allowed her to give birth to his son and then treated them both as servants while he married and had a daughter?
Sickened by the thought, she allowed her gaze to drift down the letter. It took a few lines to realize that the words seemed familiar. Not that she’d ever received a love letter that was filled with poetry about her beauty, or the desperation to stroke his fingers over her silken skin. But still, there was something . . .
Carmen sucked in a shocked gasp.
She knew why this letter was familiar. It was an exact replica of the love letter her father had written to her mother.
With shaky hands she pulled out another letter. She skimmed over the words, easily able to recognize the flamboyant declarations of love. It was another duplicate.
So what did that mean?
Did her father have a copy of the letters stashed in his desk to send to whatever woman he happened to be having sex with?
It seemed the most reasonable answer. Then she paused, her brows knitting together as she belatedly realized that the letters weren’t exact duplicates.
She bowed her head, studying the heavy, sloping handwriting that didn’t look anything like her father’s light, elegant strokes.
The words might have been copied, but it hadn’t been by Stuart Jacobs.
“My father didn’t write these,” she breathed.
“Liar,” Ronnie snarled in fury.
Carmen lifted her head, her lips parted to explain that the handwriting didn’t match. But before she could say a word, Ronnie was swinging his hand downward, slapping her face with enough force to send her sprawling across the cement floor.
*
Even knowing it was a waste of time, Griff searched the house top to bottom for any sign of Carmen. Then he searched again. His brain simply refused to accept that she’d been stolen from his bed.
A great protector I turned out to be, he acknowledged in disgust.
He was in his study running a diagnostic on his security system when there was a knock on his front door.
Griff surged to his feet and raced through the house. He hadn’t expected the cops to be so quick. Maybe Rylan had called the chief to insist on swift action.
He yanked open the door, and his eyes widened in shock.
It wasn’t a cop standing on the porch. In fact, it was the last person he’d expected to see.
His brain stalled, the electronic impulses firing, but refusing to connect. Pure instinct took over as he reached out to grab the man by his tailored leather jacket. Then, with one mighty heave, he was yanking the unwelcome visitor into the house and slamming him against the nearby wall.
“Where is she?” he growled.
Matthew Jacobs flushed, his eyes wide with shock. “What the hell?”
Griff wasn’t fooled for a second by the man’s pretense of confusion. There was no way his arrival was a coincidence.
No. Way.
He moved one hand upward, wrapping his fingers around Matthew’s throat.
“Tell me,” he commanded.
Matthew lifted his hands to grab Griff ’s wrist, his face flushed. Did he think that Griff was stupid? That he wouldn’t connect him to Carmen’s disappearance?
“Easy, man,” he rasped, making a choked noise of distress as Griff tightened his grip. “Christ. Are you high or just crazy?”
Griff narrowed his gaze. He wanted to keep squeezing until the bastard confessed where he’d taken Carmen, but with an effort he forced himself to study the man’s frightened expression.
If he killed him, then he couldn’t reveal where they’d taken Carmen. For now he had to play the stupid game.
Matthew was here for a reason. And until the man had gotten what he’d come for, Griff assumed he wasn’t going to get the answers he needed.
“Why are you here?”
He hesitated, staring at Griff with a wary anger. Then, perhaps sensing his life was hanging in the balance, he licked his lips.
“My dad sent me to California to check on our warehouse,” he said.
Griff frowned. He’d gone through the Jacobses’ business records. Now he shuffled through his memories, trying to determine if Matthew was lying. He recalled the list of properties. There’d been seven stores. Three of them in Kentucky, the others dotted around the Midwest. But there’d also been warehouses. One on the East Coast and two on the West Coast.
Which meant there might be one nearby.
“Why are you checking on it?” he demanded, still convinced Matthew was connected to Carmen’s disappearance.
“Someone used our private code to enter the office in the warehouse two nights ago.”
“So?”
“We have a special code for all our properties that allows us to override the security.”
When Griff had met Matthew Jacobs, his first impression was that the younger man was an arrogant douchebag.
His impression hadn’t changed.
“Special code?”
“My father doesn’t trust anyone,” he admitted. “He wanted to be able to enter any store or warehouse without giving notice to the managers or guards he was going to arrive and check out the books, or do a surprise inventory. So each property has a code that overrides the alarms so he can come and go without attracting attention.” Matthew gave a lift of his shoulder. “Only three of us have that code. My father, Baylor, and me.”
Griff didn’t have any trouble believing that Lawrence Jacobs felt it necessary to spy on his employees. He wasn’t the sort of man who could earn loyalty. He would have to bully and threaten his staff to keep them in line.
But he wasn’t so willing to believe the shallow, self-centered Matthew would jump on a plane and travel across the country just because a private code had been punched into the security system.
They no doubt had guards at the warehouse who could investigate what had happened.
“And that made you travel all the way to California?” He shook his head. “Bullshit.”
Matthew’s gaze darted from side to side, as if hoping someone might magically appear to distract Griff. When it became obvious that there was no help on the way, he grimaced.
“In my inner pocket.”
Griff stared at him with blatant suspicion. “What?”
“Just reach beneath my jacket and pull out the paper.”
A trap? Hard to believe that he had anything in his jacket that could be a threat. After all, if he had a weapon he would want to keep it hidden.
Griff’s fingers continued to press into Matthew’s throat. “You even twitch and I’ll snap your neck,” he warned.
Matthew froze, a drop of sweat beading on his forehead and sliding down his nose.
“I’d heard that tech billionaires were psychos, but you really are nuts,” he muttered.
Griff ignored his babbling. He was far more concerned with patting down his visitor. Only when he was certain that Matthew wasn’t hiding a weapon did he slide his hand beneath the expensive jacket. His fingers easily located the folded piece of paper in the inner pocket. He pulled it out and held it in front of Matthew’s face.
“What is it?”
“It’s the reason I’m here,” Matthew said.
Griff made a sound of annoyance. Was the man deliberately trying to piss him off? A dangerous choice. Right now he wouldn’t hesitate to crush the man’s windpipe.
With one hand he awkwardly unfolded the paper. He could make out a fuzzy image that looked like it’d been taken by a cheap camera and then printed out in black-and-white. With a frown he tilted it toward the morning sunlight that poured through the open door. Finally he could make out what looked like a young man in . . . a lumberyard? There were stacks of wood in the background.
He looked closer and suddenly realized that he recognized the sharply carved profile of the man.
“Is that Ronnie Hyde?” he demanded in confusion. Why would Matthew have a picture of his housekeeper’s son in his pocket?
“Once the guard realized our code had been used, but none of us were in California, he pulled the footage from the surveillance camera and e-mailed this image to my father,” Matthew said. “We instantly recognized who was sneaking around our property.”