Page 29 of Mistletoe and Malice
“Maybe I will. I need to get some more clothes, anyway. I asked your house manager if I could do some laundry, but she told me to bring it here and she would take care of it. I hate to make work for somebody else, though.”
“Yeah, good luck getting Irene to let you do any of your own laundry. Any of your own anything. That’s her domain. And, to be honest, she loves serving people. She and Hilda are cut from the same cloth. They’ve both been with us since I was little, and I adore them like family.”
“Okay,” he said with a shrug. “Then I’ll grab it too. I could get spoiled staying here much longer.” He looked down at her outfit and back up again. “Do you and your friends make it a habit to switch clothing mid-evening?”
Riley laughed while at the same time her heart skipped a beat. “Noticed that, did ya?”
Averting his eyes, he cleared his throat. “Being observant is part of the job.”
Of course. The job. She wasthe job. It would do her good to remember that.
“Yes, to answer your question. We’re constantly wearing each other’s clothes. We shared a house while we were all at Stanford, and when we were packing to move back here, it was impossible to remember what belonged to whom. I think I got to Boston for law school with clothes from each of them.”
“You’re fortunate to have such great friends.”
“I am. They’re amazing.”
He nodded, his expression thoughtful, before he straightened. “I’d better hit the road. Sleep well, Riley.”
“I intend to,” she answered over her shoulder as she started up the curving staircase to her suite of rooms. At least, she hoped she’d tired herself out enough to get more than the snatches of sleep she’d had the past week. “Please be careful going home, Colton.”
“No sweat.”
On the way through her study to her bedroom, her gaze landed on the cards she’d received. The first on Monday, another Wednesday, and yet another this morning. The video footage showed a different man each time. Tall, skinny, with long hair and a mustache on Monday, a heftier man with curly black hair and dark sunglasses on Wednesday, and today a bespectacled man in a business suit carrying a briefcase.
The handwriting on the cards themselves hadn’t changed, while the deliveryman had. Yet, somehow, they all seemed familiar.
She picked up the card she received that afternoon but didn’t open it. After reading it three times at the office that morning, every word had etched itself into her brain.
My dear Miss Hudson,
There’s a price to be paid for misplaced pride. Your stubbornness will leave you with nothing. You’ve been warned.
And then there was the phone call.
A cold chill ran the length of her spine, and it had nothing to do with the hail pelting the windows outside.
Maybe it was time to tell Colton.
Chapter Fourteen
“Good work, Blankenship.”
Colton berated himself after Riley disappeared at the top of the stairs. He hadn’t meant to offend her with his comment. In fact, he found her compulsion to take care of others admirable. But his tendency to speak the truth bluntly had inadvertently struck a nerve. Probably why the Bible had a lot to say about taming the tongue, although he hadn’t consulted the Good Book much in the past few years. Not since?—
His phone went off, and he pulled it from his back pocket. “Blankenship.”
“Hey, Colton. Dillon with Tech Ops. Something you should see came up on the social media scan I just ran.”
“Send me the link.” He took the stairs three at a time to the upstairs study they’d been using for daily briefings, where his laptop sat on the desk. So much for sleeping in his bed tonight. By the sound of the hail hitting the windows, he wouldn’t be going anywhere.
He put Dillon on speaker as he took a seat and opened his laptop, clicking the link when the instant message from Tech Opps popped up.
A social media page opened with a smiling Riley in the profile picture and her name at the top. He scrolled through the posts from the past two days, his pulse quickening. “This can’t be her page.”
“It’s a fake. Somebody’s posting as Riley.”
“Where’d they get these images?”
