Page 23 of Passion and Deception

The man shrugged his shoulders, still trying to avoid having the droplets spill onto the rest of his clothes. Humphrey shot Ann a malevolent glare, then slipped off the sopping jacket. “What an idiot!” he snapped.

“I’m so sorry, sir!” Ann repeated, clutching the tray against her chest and pretending to look worried.

“I’ll get this fixed up for you right away, Mr. Todras,” Maggie replied.

Emily walked into the room and pretended to take in the scene. She hurried over to the man and took his drink. “I’m sorry, Mr. Todras. Drinks for tonight are on the house.”

They wouldn’t be “on the house”. Ann, Emily, and Maggie had a slush fund for adventures like this. They knew that sometimes it took resources to figure out what these rich guys were up to. So the drinks would be paid for out of that money.

“Damn straight!” Humphrey grumbled, then accepted the other sports jacket that Maggie whipped out of one of the many secret supply closets hidden throughout the club.

“Here you go, sir. We’ll get your jacket cleaned up right away.”

“See that you do!” he spat out, jerking the new jacket on before he turned to his “friend”. The two of them chuckled over the stupidity of the working class, then resumed their seats on the leather chairs.

Emily already had a fresh drink ready for the man and set it down on the table. “Here you go, Mr. Todras. My apologies again.”

The three of them turned, Maggie clutching the other coat as she hurried to the back of the room where she disappeared through the employee doorway. Emily and Ann left through separate doorways, but all three met up in the room they always used for these kinds of missions.

“What’s in there?” Ann asked, peering over Maggie’s shoulder as she pulled the envelope out of the man’s pocket. Inside were pictures of two nude people in various compromising positions. “Wow!” Ann gasped.

Emily hummed. “Beautiful woman.” She tilted her head, eyes narrowed. “I’ve seen her face somewhere before.”

Maggie turned to look at her boss. “Where?”

Emily tapped her finger thoughtfully against her chin. “I’m not sure, exactly. But it will come to me.”

Maggie stared at the images, not sure if…? Shaking her head, she stuffed the pictures back into the envelope. But as she was trying to fit them all back in, she noticed some writing on the back.

“This is a phone number,” she noted, glancing at the digits. “And…!” She gasped, looking at the numbers. “I…recognize this number.” Her heart ached as she flipped the pictures over again. Suddenly, the penny dropped.

“What?” Emily prompted.

“She knows something,” Ann blurted out. “What do you know?”

Maggie blinked back sudden tears. She wasn’t sure if she was just emotional because of her pregnancy, or if the ache in her heart was because she recognized the phone number. “This is Sheik al Quadar’s personal cell number,” she whispered to her friends. There was a second number under the first. But this wasn’t a phone number. It was…? “Is this an amount?”

Emily took the photo, her eyes narrowing. “No, not an amount.” She tapped the information with her finger. “That looks like a land site’s plot number. It’s the kind that a municipal government uses to identify various plots of land.” She turned to Ann. “We know that Todras and Mathis had purchased a piece of land in Annapolis, Maryland. Could this be the plot number for that land?”

Ann examined the writing, then nodded. “It’s the right length, but what are the odds that someone would be stupid enough to write that kind of information on the back of a picture of a naked woman?”

“And why?” Maggie asked. “What’s the connection between the woman and the land number?”

Ann crossed her arms over her chest, leaning one shoulder against the wall. “Maybe there’s no connection between the two. The guy could just have pictures of a naked woman and he wrote some information on the back of one of the pictures.”

Emily shook her head. “I doubt it. But it’s curious that the pictures have been printed out. In this world, photos are digitized and stored on hard drives. So the fact that these are printed and with information written on the back…I think both are significant.” She turned to Maggie. “And I suspect that these images are somehow connected to your man.”

Maggie’s heart ached, but she pushed aside that pain. “He’s not my man,” she asserted firmly. “But whatever the cause, if these are Sheik al Qadar’s pictures, we should return them to him.”

Ann and Emily agreed. “But what are we going to say to Todras? He’ll be suspicious if we hand him back his jacket without the envelope of photos.”

Emily bit her lip, trying to figure something out. “What if we replace the photos? Then we could…?”

A male voice sounded behind them. Hendrix stepped into the loose circle, his eyes narrowing on the photos. “I’ll get one of my men to create some new pictures and we’ll change the numbers on the back. We can switch out the pictures for fake ones.” He looked at the printed images. “I can also go through the guy’s computer. If he’s using these photos to blackmail someone, then I can delete the photos.”

Hendrix must have seen Ann and Maggie switch out the jackets and realized something was going on.

Maggie noticed Emily’s reaction first. Her face turned bright red and there was a strange mix of anger and…hope?...on her features. But…Emily and Hendrix hated each other! Didn’t they? Yes, Maggie had heard Emily grumble about Hendrix on several occasions. In fact, now that she thought about it, Hendrix and Emily sat as far away from each other as possible during staff meetings. And during those meetings, they rarely looked at each other.

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