Page 30 of Desire Me
“You said Remi and his brothers investigated Saint.” Another pause. Rae tried to pull air into her lungs, but the damn things felt squeezed tight. She didn’t want to ask the question, had in fact avoided every mention of her past, though she wasn’t sure why. Something about it scared her, but now, in this moment, she had to ask. She had to know. “Did they investigate me?”
This time it was Leah who paused. “Yes.”
Rae squeezed her eyes shut. “What did they find?”
“Nothing. And that’s what scares me about letting you go, Rae. They’re not just good, they’re the best, and they couldn’t find a thing about you.”
Rae opened her mouth to reply—with what, she didn’t know—but the door swished open and the moment was lost. In a quiet flurry, goodbyes were said, belongings gathered, and then the floor attendant was pushing Rae out to the sidewalk while Saint hurried ahead to pull his truck around.
Chapter Fifteen
Saint had taken the week off work, and because they were doing maintenance and paperwork for most of the day, King and Elliot were able to get away at lunchtime for Rae’s release from the hospital. While Saint was loading her into the car, his team was on the alert for their mystery man. Eli Agozi had managed to block the first intrusion into the hospital’s camera system after the man had escaped, but they weren’t sure if he’d managed to get back in another way, and Saint wasn’t taking any chances on being followed.
Apparently Remi Agozi had the same thought, because he’d pulled Saint aside and warned him he would be trailing behind. Saint had debated handing over his address, but despite the layers of security he and his teammates had put in place to keep their home addresses secret, protect their families, Remi had not only his apartment address but also his home’s location. The man had stood for Saint’s scrutiny without apology.
“I don’t want anyone getting that close to my family, Agozi,” Saint had warned.
“We get that,” Remi had said evenly. “We go to great lengths to keep our own family as safe and secure as possible. But Leah has adopted Rae as part of our family, and I wasn’t going to have her be left in the dark. Rae may be your girlfriend”—a hint of doubt colored his use of the word—“but she’s our responsibility too.”
Saint wanted to protest, but though the Agozis made him uncomfortable, he was grateful to Leah for taking care of Rae when he couldn’t. Still… “And my family? My responsibilities? How will you safeguard them now that you’ve broken my protection?” Because it would have taken a serious hacker to get through JCL’s security, and that put every one of Saint’s siblings, not to mention each precious niece and nephew, at risk.
“Eli put everything back exactly as he found it,” Remi assured him, then narrowed his eyes. “You told us Rae didn’t share much about her background.”
Saint shrugged. He could have made something up, but anything he’d said could be checked easily enough. So he’d gone with being in the dark himself—again, more truth than not.
“Eli has been searching for Rae’s identity.”
“Do you think I haven’t been? And don’t tell me her name isn’t pulling up anything; I already know.” Dain had pointed out a couple of weeks ago that Rae’s name might not be her actual name. Saint thought he was right. Of course, the Agozis had to be aware by now that the last name Saint had given them wasn’t Rae’s either. “I’m no idiot—she obviously had something to hide. That didn’t matter to me before all of this, but now, whatever she was hiding, it could be the key to whoever is after her.”
“I admit, I had my doubts,” Remi said. “You could easily be hiding intel to keep Rae under your control—in our world, that’s a distinct possibility. But nothing we’ve found indicates you would do that, or that your team would support you in it.”
“Gee, thanks.” Saint fought the instinct to flip Remi the bird.
Remi smirked, obviously catching the vibe without the gesture. “But…let’s face it. If you’re acting honorably with Rae, you’re likely also following the rules at work too. Eli isn’t bound by any ethical standards, which makes him the perfect person to be digging into Rae’s past.”
Saint just bet he was.
Remi ignored his eye roll. “So he’s been digging hard, but he hasn’t found a thing. No birth certificate, no social security number, nothing so far on any variation of her name.”
Saint simply cocked his brow. He hadn’t known what Rae’s job was, so he’d told her—and her entourage—that she’d been between jobs and that was one of the reasons they’d moved in together a few short weeks before her accident.
“NCIC has no record of her name either, but it does have thousands of hits for missing persons fitting Rae’s description. None of them are her.”
“Eli can’t have been through all of them,” Saint pointed out. He and King had been working their way through and making little headway. The National Crime Information Center was the clearinghouse for nationwide information on criminal activity as well as missing and unidentified persons. Over 600,000 individuals went missing in the US alone every year. Every day NCIC contained over 80,000 open missing persons cases. There was no way to search by image, but narrowing even by a basic description wasn’t going to help much.
And that was assuming Rae had been reported missing.
“He couldn’t, not manually,” Remi agreed, “but a computer coded to sort the photos from the NCIC entries could, and trust me, she’s not there.”
Handy. “She hasn’t been reported missing,” Saint confirmed to himself.
“Not that we can find, at least not in the US. No foreign accent, so limiting to the States made the most sense for now. We’re still combing DMV records country-wide—figured that would be our most likely place to find a match since we can’t find a social security number under her name either—but that will take significantly more time.”
Saint’s patience hit its end. “You’re assuming I haven’t been following leads as well, Agozi. My team is already searching, which means we’re all just spinning our wheels covering mostly the same territory.”
“You’re right, we are covering too much of the same ground. And none of us can be in two places at once. By default, you’ll be with Rae from here on out.” Remi looked more resigned than accepting of that fact. “Why not let us take on the search? Keep us updated on anything she remembers, and we’ll keep you updated on our end of the deal.”
It was a safe bet, Saint realized. He had the more valuable intel, Rae herself. Remi had nothing to gain by keeping anything from Saint and his team. He stared the man down a moment longer before he nodded. Remi nodded back, and the two of them had returned to Rae’s room.
