The door opens. A man walks in. Caucasian. Thirtyish. Built. He’s tall with shaggy reddish-blonde hair, handsome with the exception of acne scars pitting his cheeks. His suit is black, as is his skinny tie. I’ve never seen eyes that color, pale amber, like honey. He looks like a friendly ginger tabby cat, which I know is intentionally misleading.
Beneath his suit, there’s a bulge on his left ankle and one on his right hip. Tabby cats who wear guns strapped to various parts of their bodies are anything but friendly.
He sits on the edge of the table, casually tosses a manila file folder my way. It lands with a dull slap against the steel tabletop, slides a few inches, spilling pages from the sides.
“Is that me?” I ask, eyeing the file.
Shaggy nods.
“It’s pretty thick.”
“You’ve led an interesting life.”
I cock my head and appraise him. “So have you, I bet. What’s that accent? No, let me guess. Appalachia?”
He watches me with those unusual eyes. “Twenty years ago. You’re the first person in fifteen to catch it.”
We stare at each other. Without a hint of emotion, his gaze takes me in, moving over my face, my hair, my body, finally settling on my wrist. “Interesting timepiece.”
“Thank you.”
“Family heirloom?” His voice is faintly amused.
“Something like that. I’m surprised you didn’t confiscate it.”
“In my experience, plastic Hello Kitty watches usually aren’t cause for alarm.”
I smile, and the stare-off resumes. After a while I ask, “So are you going to tell me your name or should I just keep calling you Shaggy like I’m doing in my head?”
“You aren’t scared,” he notes.
“That’s not really my thing.”
“Right now it should be.”
“My ride’s on the way.”
His expression doesn’t change. “No one is coming to rescue you.”
“I never said it was a rescue,” I reply, holding his gaze. “But someone is definitely coming.”
“Really? Who?”
I have to give it to him, this guy has an amazing poker face.
“Not into suspense, huh?”
He smiles for the first time. He has good teeth, straight and pearly white, like a movie star. “On the contrary. I’m all about suspense. Mysteries too. Like that cryptophone we took off you. über mysterious. Never seen anything like it. Programmed in Sanskrit, encryption ciphers that blow all current known protocols away, even ours. Where’d you get a hold of technology like that? Bangalore? The Chinese?”
I blow a scornful breath through my lips. “I didn’t ‘get a hold’ of it. I made it.”
An infinitesimal pause follows. “I see.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“Perhaps if you elaborated.”
“Oh, you want schematics? Sorry, didn’t bring them along.”
Shaggy’s smile grows wider. “That’s all right. We’ll get them from your home office. We’re searching it now.”
I can tell he expects me to gasp or go pale or lose my shit in some visible way, but as I already called Juanita from the bathroom at the hotel before Connor and I went back to the studio and told her to flip the red switch on the wall in my office that would melt down all the hard drives on my computers and fry every circuit board on every other piece of electronic equipment I own, I’m sitting pretty.
Hopefully the rest of the house didn’t get melted down along with the computers, but I never finished decorating anyway.
I say, “You don’t have to walk around like that, you know.”
“Pardon?”
“With a face like a hundred miles of bad road. They have lasers that can fix acne scars now. There’s no need to be mistaken for Tommy Lee Jones. I mean, you’re a good-looking guy. The procedure probably isn’t even that expensive. One, maybe two grand? You’d be Brad Pitt.”
“He’s a bit of a douche, though, no?”
Now I’m smiling. “Totally. Why you’d leave Jennifer Aniston for that psychotic witch Angelina Jolie I have no idea.”
Shaggy shrugs. “Angelina is probably better in bed.”
“Well, yeah, but you just fuck crazy. You don’t marry it.”
After a moment wherein we simply stare at each other, Shaggy decides to get down to business. “There are things we don’t know. We’d like you to fill in the blanks.”
I make a face. “Uh-oh. The royal ‘we.’ I’m in trouble now.”
“For instance, when did you first discover S?ren Killgaard was your brother?”
Slam! goes my heart against my breastbone. The friendly tabby cat just unsheathed his claws.
After I catch my breath, I say, “He’s not my brother.”
Shaggy opens the file with one finger, lazily lifts up a page to read something. “Half brother. I stand corrected.” He lets the file drop closed, folds his hands in his lap, turns his golden gaze back to my face. “The unfortunate product of your father’s brief affair with a Norwegian student of his.”
I swallow. It feels like someone shoved a fistful of gravel down my throat. “Dutch,” I whisper. “The student was Dutch.”
We stare at each other. He doesn’t look so friendly anymore.
“The plane crash that killed your parents.”
Knowing what’s about to come, I close my eyes.