Nausea clutched at her belly again. She willed it to subside. “Please go on,” she said resolutely.
“There's not much more to tell. With Peter's testimony, we could have nailed the bastard in ‘85, but Victor ran off to Greece, and before we knew it, Peter was floating facedown in the Sound. Uh... sorry, miss.”
“It's OK.” She waited.
Haley shrugged. “After that, Victor got smart. He cleaned up his act, went mostly legit. We haven't been able to get a hold on him since. He's very slick. Very careful. And very connected.”
She clenched her hands together in her lap and braced herself. “Do you believe that Victor had my father killed?” she asked bluntly.
Haley's face lost all expression. 'There was no proof that Peter's death was anything other than a boating accident That’s just the way it is sometimes. Nothing we could do. Particularly since Peter's wife and daughter vanished. We never got to question them.” His eyes fixed on her in a cold, probing gaze. “But here you are. Did you see or hear anything on that day, miss?”
There it was again, the swirling, nauseous panic, the blur of green. Screams, echoing. She swallowed hard and fought it down. “I... don't remember,” she faltered. “My mother insists that we weren't there “
“I see.” He tapped his pen against the desktop, a rapid tattoo. “Your uncle, does he know you're asking around about Peter?”
She shook her head.
Haley shrugged. “Be a hell of a lot better for you if he never found out, if you ask me.”
“I know that,” she said stiffly.
“You watch your back, miss. People who take too much of an interest in Victor Lazar's business have a bad habit of dying young. And being closely related to him isn't much of a safeguard. Obviously.”
“Obviously,” she repeated softly.
The grim silence that followed signaled a close to the conversation. A faraway, mechanical part of her brain dealt with the business of shaking hands and thanking Bill Haley for his time. The same part kept her from walking into the people in the corridor outside.
She finally had something concrete to corroborate her dreams. That was progress. But if trained agents of the federal government, with all their experience and all their vast resources had thrown up their hands in defeat, what could she possibly hope to accomplish?
Raine bumped into someone, and veered away, mumbling an apology. She had to keep on as she was. Infiltrating. At least she wasn't crazy or delusional. She was on the track of something horribly real, no matter how elusive. That was something to cling to. A man was turning to stare at her as she walked past. She shot him a brief glance, just long enough to register information without seeming interested. A split second after she looked away, her stomach began to roll.
There was no reason for it. She'd never seen him before. She reviewed everything she had caught in the swift, photographic glance. Tall, protruding belly. Thinning dark hair, clean-shaven, bifocals. Nothing particular about him, other than his expression. Not one of masculine appreciation. He'd looked horrified.
She turned to look again. He was striding down the hall away from her, very fast Almost running. Ducking into a doorway, the same one she had just exited. Bill Haley's office.
She turned around and kept walking, shivering with the rising panic. It was like a whirlpool inside her, a sick, out of control feeling. The green blur, the screaming. This was sense- less. Why was she having a panic attack after catching a glimpse of an innocuous middle-aged man? Maybe she really was going nuts.
The best option was the simplest and most direct one, she told herself. She could go back to Haley's office, knock, and ask the man if they knew each other from somewhere. Either they would or they wouldn't. Raine turned, and took a slow, reluctant step in that direction.
There was a loud snap. She felt a stabbing pain in her hand. She pulled it out of her coat pocket She'd been clutching the frog glasses so tightly that one of the earpieces had broken off. The metal joint had dug into her palm, hard enough to draw blood.
Trust your instincts, Victor had said. With trust, they grow stronger. She shoved the glasses back in her pocket and hurried towards the stairwell. As soon as her legs got moving, it was all she could do not to draw attention to herself by breaking into a dead run.
Chapter 15
“Ah. There you are. Harriet told me you were absent for a doctor's appointment. I trust you're feeling better?”
Raine looked up from the cell phone into which she was trying to punch a message to Seth. She slipped it into her pocket, message uncompleted, and forced herself to return Victor's solicitous smile.
“Tm fine, thank you,” she assured him.
“My personal physician would be happy to see you at any time.”
“No, really, I'm quite all right,” she repeated.
“So glad to hear it I trust you're fit enough to go out to Stone Island this afternoon, then. I need your help on an urgent project.”
She heard Seth's reaction in her mind, and winced inwardly at the thought “I—ah, well, on such short notice, I really—”
“Don't worry about packing. Everything will be provided. The car is waiting to take you to the marina. I will join you at the island after I take care of a few small items of business. Be brisk, please. There's a great deal to be done.” He strode away without waiting for a response.
She stared at his retreating back, dismayed. Harriet sashayed over to her desk and leaned down with a big fake smile. “Don't worry” she hissed. “Everything will be provided.”
Raine lifted her chin and glared right back, sick to death of the pointless, toxic hostility of that place. “Don't you get tired of being such a cast-iron bitch, Harriet?” she demanded. “Doesn't it wear you out?”
Her voice carried farther than she'd intended. Shocked silence spread out, like the electromagnetic pulse of a hydrogen bomb. Not a piece of paper moved Even the phones stopped ringing. The whole office waited for the sky to fall.
Harriet yanked Raine's coat off the hook and flung it at her. “Your carriage awaits “ she spat out “Get out of here. Don't come back”
It took the whole ride to the marina for her heart rate to slow down to normal. She calmed herself by fiddling with the cell phone, composing and sending a message to Seth. Going to Stone Island. No choice. Don't worry. She added three little heart icons. Goofy little messages, that was what he said he wanted. Useless, too. Of course he would worry. She had to push that fact away and concentrate.
She was met at the dock, not by Clayborne, but by a stunning brunette with hazel eyes who introduced herself as Mara. They passed right by the main stairway that led to the second floor office, to Raine's bewilderment. “But aren't I— doesn't Clayborne need me in the office?”
“Clayborne's not here. None of the office staff are here.” Mara started up a spiral staircase, which led up to the tower bedroom that had once been her mother’s. Raine's apprehension climbed a notch.
“Then why did Mr. Lazar tell me—”
“Ask him, not me.” Mara pushed open the bedroom door.
The room was brilliantly lit with a makeup mirror. A rack of plastic-covered clothes hung in front of the bed. Raine turned to Mara, bewildered. “But Victor told me he had a project he wanted—”
“You're the project, honey,” said a thin, short-haired woman. She and the plump white-haired lady beside her rose to their feet, eyes narrowing as their professional instincts leaped to life. “Out of that horrible outfit, and into the shower, please. We've got to get your hair shampooed so I can blow the curls out.”