Page 62 of So Close

“A mother.”

“Ifshe was telling the truth about that,” he qualifies, and with that, he alters, the easy charm hardening into the flat gaze of a cop. “She’s been honest too rarely to believe her about anything. For all we know, she could have two parents who are alive and well. We have to assume that any information provided by her is a fabrication.”

“She’s been diagnosed with dissociative amnesia and has been living under yet another alias. Is it possible her identities are symptoms of that mental illness? Bluntly, can we determine if she’s a victim or a criminal?”

“A shrink would be better able to sort throughwhyshe is who she is. I can only tell youhow.”

“That’s fair.” My fingers drum on the tabletop. “Kane ended your investigation. Did you reach a dead-end, or did he act prematurely? Could you have possibly unearthed more?”

He studies me. “Didn’t he tell you?”

“Honestly, Mr. Prescott, I can’t believe anything he tells me when it comes to her. He’s been obsessed with her for years, to an unhealthy degree.”

He nods as if that’s no surprise. “I think we could have dug up more. She’s unforgettable and hard to mistake for anyone else. Once we narrow in on a location, people have remarkably detailed memories of her.”

“Yes, I’ve seen her in action. She’s incredibly charming, which helps make her a terrible blind spot for Kane. A possibly dangerous one, from what I gather. Your report suggested underworld ties …?”

“She doesn’t live modestly. Thorough background checks are required to lease the sort of multimillion-dollar properties she prefers. As you saw, copies were always made of her identification, but that alone wouldn’t be enough. A deep dive into her history would be routine, and she would have to hold up to scrutiny. Someone – and it could be her – is skilled enough to insert false information into government databases, then delete those entries later when that identity is no longer needed.”

His reports were detailed, so I knew all this. Ivy, Lily, Daisy … she liked her botanical names, didn’t she? And didn’t their very similarity suggest premeditation? Or perhaps the opposite is true. Either way, it was doubly concerning to have it laid out verbally.

“I don’t understand how Kane could know all this and let it go.”

“He didn’t let it go,” he corrects, leaning back in his chair. “He letmego. We believe he’s retained the services of a different firm.”

“He hired someone else? Why would he do that? Did you fuck up?”

Prescott’s smile is wry. “No. I run a tight ship here at Rampart. My staff is comprised of retired law enforcement officers from police departments, branches of service and federal agencies. I have a slew of lawyers on staff and paid student interns from a cross-section of disciplines. We don’t make mistakes, Ms. Armand.”

“Aliyah, please.” The siren of an emergency vehicle abruptly pierces the air. The alarming sound, mechanical chirps and beeps designed to be impossible to ignore, pours in through the open windows, chafing my nerves and setting me further on edge. The frenetic sound grows louder by the second as the vehicle draws closer.

His eyes crinkle in the corners as his smile widens and he raises his voice. “We work directly here. We knock on doors, ask questions and dig. I document things minutely, and we act within the scope of the law. While some of the professionals on my team are familiar with undercover work, we aren’t covert intelligence specialists.”

I reach for my water and attempt to unscrew the metal cap, but my hands aren’t quite steady. Prescott reaches over and gently takes the bottle from me, opening it and pouring the contents into the glass.

“Why would Kane need to act covertly?”

“There are two ways to come into money: honestly and dishonestly. For a woman as young as your daughter-in-law to come into her fortune honestly would mean she either inherited it – and there would be a paper trail for that – or she earned it. That amount of money isn’t earned without a lot of people knowing about it, including the IRS. We haven’t found anything that would legitimize her or her fortune.”

The room spins, and I take a deep, slow breath. Gideon Cross would never do business with a criminal, especially someone who’d stolen or embezzled money. He overlooks Paul’s misdeeds because he sympathizes with Kane, having also suffered the sins of a father. But Lily? A woman who owns a majority share of the company alongside Kane …? We would lose all of the investment into ECRA+ if Cross pulled out. It would be a near-fatal blow to Baharan.

“Your son used her assets to build his company,” he goes on. “If a crime ties to those assets, they’ll be reclaimed. Whenever an inquiry is made into her background, someone becomes aware that she’s being sought. You make a lot of inquiries; a lot of people know. She’s been changing her identity for years. You don’t do that unless you’re hiding, so taking a more covert approach – perhaps stepping outside the lines of the law, which we don’t do here at Rampart – would help minimize the risk of turning over the wrong rock and having something really dangerous crawl out.”

Oh no … Bile rises into my throat, burning acid that devastates soft tissue. I swallow hard, pressing a hand to my stomach in a vain effort to stop its roiling.

It’s not just Cross’s partnership we stand to lose. It’s Baharan itself. It’s everything.

“This is a nightmare.”

“There are a lot of pieces in play, but your son is still searching for answers. He’s just taken the search underground. He’s following the money, tracing it back to its source. If he knows where it came from, he has something or someone – maybe multiple someones – to keep an eye out for.”

“What if I paid you to keep looking?”

“Why would you take that risk?”

My brow arches. “He’s my son. I know him. And I know he’s incapable of being objective when it comes to this woman.”

Anger bubbles up at the understanding that everything I own is in jeopardy, every member of my family. Fury boils over.

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