Page 26 of Rufus

“What am I looking at here, Linus?” Rufus demanded as he frowned at the screen in front of him. “Who is Serena Jenkins, and what do these payments into an account in her name every six months or so actually mean? I can see the first deposit made thirty years ago was for fifty thousand pounds, and that they slowly increase over the years to the last one of a quarter of a million pounds five months ago?” He turned to look at his cousin as the other man hovered near his shoulder. “Who is Serena Jenkins?” he repeated.

Linus grimaced. “When you asked me to search for Ronan Harper, I came up with a blank, so I turned my attention to Sarah Harper. I got all the background information I needed and then concentrated on searching security footage from the airport archives from seventeen years ago. I did that on the basis that if Sarah Harper, or her body, hadn’t been found in this country, then she must have traveled, or been taken to, another one.”

“For what purpose?” Rufus frowned.

“I like to look into all the angles of a situation, put all the pieces together, and make an accurate assessment rather than guessing at the answers,” Linus dismissed. “I still don’t have any hard evidence on this one.”

“But you obviously have something for me?” Otherwise, Linus wouldn’t have requested Rufus come here.

“I do,” his cousin confirmed. “Obviously, security wasn’t as intense then as it is now, but my face recognition program eventually found and identified a Serena Jenkins boarding a plane to Paris a week after Sarah Harper’s disappearance. She’d changed her hair color and style and was a redhead rather than a blonde, had no makeup on, and was wearing bulky, shapeless clothing and flat shoes to conceal her slenderness and height, but my program doesn’t lie. Serena Jenkins was once Sarah Harper.” He clicked a few keys on the keyboard and brought up a split screen image of what initially looked like two different women.

Rufus’s eyes widened as Linus merged the two images and it was possible to see that the bone structure of the two faces was exactly the same.

He winced. “Did she have Molly’s baby brother with her?”

His cousin shook his head. “Serena was alone when she flew to Paris, as I said, and then on to Canada. She crossed the border into the US and made her way by road to Miami, where she took a flight to the Caymen Islands. At no time was there any evidence of an infant accompanying her, nor have there been any sightings of a son living with her since she moved permanently to the islands seventeen years ago.”

“This is all fucking unbelievable.” He had told Molly he would do his very best to find her brother, and had subsequently asked Linus to do exactly that. But if Ronan wasn’t with their mother, Rufus had no idea where to even start looking for him. It sounded as if Linus was just as puzzled regarding the boy’s location.

“The police didn’t have the software then, nor the skills I have now, to put all this information together. But I assure you, everything I’ve told you is accurate.” Linus was only stating fact, not chest beating.

“Oh, I believe you,” Rufus reassured heavily, more than aware of his cousin’s skill at hacking. He just had no idea what he was going to tell Molly.

“At the beginning of the investigation, it must have looked to the police, from the fact her daughter had been left alone in their apartment, as if Sarah Harper had disappeared under suspicious circumstances,” Linus continued. “It took them a couple of weeks, and the continued absence of Sarah, to reassign it as a missing persons case rather than a possible murder.”

“A missing persons case that would have since been classed as a cold case because of a lack of any new evidence.” Rufus gave a shake of his head. “Considering that for several days after Molly was found abandoned there were pictures in the newspapers appealing for witnesses to come forward if they had seen Sarah, it’s incredible that no one recognized her as she traveled from place to place. Or since.”

“It was a long time ago, and, as you know only too well, public interest is fickle and short-lived.” His grimace conveyed his apology for mentioning what he and all the Wynter family knew to have been a devastating time for Rufus. “Besides, as I said, she changed her hair color and wore shapeless clothing and flat shoes. I doubt anyone would have made the connection between the glamorous Sarah and the frumpy Serena. Well, obviously, they didn’t.”

Rufus was still having trouble taking all this in, so God knew how Molly was going to feel.

“Sarah went back to the glamorous appearance after a suitable amount of time had elapsed,” Linus added. “She’s had a little facework done since then, a nip and a tuck here, regular fillers in her lips and Botox in her forehead. The red hair has remained too, rather than her going back to being a blonde. It was only because I was specifically looking for her that my face recognition program identified the woman on the airport security footage, then again living in a house in a gated community on the Cayman Islands for the past seventeen years, as having once been Sarah Harper.”

“This is really good work, Linus, as always.” Rufus thanked him, despite feeling as if he now had more questions than answers.

Linus nodded dismissively. “What is most significant is that the bank account was opened in the name of Serena Jenkins thirty years ago, which means it must always have been Sarah’s intention to assume that name and move there at some point in her life.”

Rufus’s gaze sharpened as he glanced back at the screen. “It sounds as if you’re describing an escape plan.”

Linus nodded. “Yes.”

“But an escape from what?”

“I’m still working on that.” Linus stared at the screen. “There’s a sort of pattern to the timing of the payments into the account. I just have to work out what, if anything, those payments might coincide with. I don’t have any solid evidence yet of what they might be but… I’ll let you know when or if I find anything concrete to support what is currently only a theory.”

Rufus was still preoccupied trying to decide how he could tell Molly any of this.

She had been asleep in his arms, in her bed, when he received the text to call Linus at seven o’clock this morning. Rufus hadn’t questioned the timing, knowing that Linus slept and worked when the mood took him, with very little consideration as to whether or not the person he wished to speak to might be asleep. It wasn’t the first time he’d woken Rufus this way.

Rufus had carefully extricated himself from Molly’s arms earlier and quietly left the bed to collect his clothes before going through to the kitchen and dressing.

He’d written a brief note to Molly on a piece of paper he’d taken from a pad on the breakfast bar explaining he had to leave, and left it on the pillow he’d used before driving to his cousin’s London apartment.

Rufus glanced at the bank statement again and saw that the last payment into the account, of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds this time, had been made five months ago. “All this time, all this fucking time,” he repeated fiercely, “Molly’s mother has been living a life of luxury in the Cayman Islands, and for some reason, having hundreds of thousands of pounds paid into her bank account every six months or so. Without, apparently, so much as giving a thought to the young daughter she abandoned, who then grew up in care and has struggled since to support herself.”

“Yes,” Linus didn’t even try to sugarcoat it.

What would this knowledge do to Molly?

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