“Excellent, Mrs. Bloom. If you’ll follow me.”
Ten minutes later, Cara struggled to keep her expression calm as she walked the short distance to the cab where Wes waited. When she slid in next to him, she couldn’t hide the triumphant light in her eyes. “Holy shit,” she mouthed at him. Cara’s lips stayed shut on the ride to the hotel, and when they were in the elevator, Cara tugged the scarf loose.
“We were right!” Wes punched the air in excitement.
“No.” She shook her head. “Not 1155. It was 7827.”
His brow furrowed, and Cara knew he was trying to work out the significance.
“On a phone keypad, it’s the wordstar. It was just like I thought. My father left the message for me. I was standing in front of the lady, thinking I’m screwed, and an image of the note flashed in front of me. My father wrote STAR in all caps. I knew I only had one more chance, and it was my best guess.”
Wes pressed a smacking kiss against her lips. “What’s in the envelope?”
“Bullshit,” Cara muttered. Her brothers were waiting in the hallway when the elevator doors opened. She shoved the envelope into Declan’s chest, but her eyes were on Luke. “It’s total bullshit. Don’t leave him.”
Wes arched a brow but followed her back to their room. Cara had just started applying the oil to loosen the fake pieces when Declan’s voice exploded in the hallway, followed by Luke’s angry voice.
Cara looked up and met Wes’s eyes in the mirror.
“What was it?” he asked.
She swallowed hard. “Pictures, and a USB.”
“Pictures of what?”
Cara scrubbed roughly at her face. “A car accident.”
Wes’s brows drew down.
“I didn’t look at them closely. The second I opened the envelope, I knew they were what my father wanted me to find. I just don’t know why he had them, or what he wanted me to do with them.” She rubbed at her forehead, fighting back tears. “It’s bad, Wes. Really bad.”
He paled and then stepped forward to wrap his arms around her. He pulled her back against his chest and dropped a kiss to the top of her head.
“We’ll figure it out.”
CHAPTERFIFTY-FIVE
Wes heldoff asking any more questions until they had rejoined the two men in the hotel suite. A frown seemed to have taken a permanent spot between her eyes. Whatever she saw in the envelope had upset her deeply. She gnawed at her lip.
“Declan can be a controlling jerk, but I know there is an explanation. Don’t judge him.”
Wes could see how important this was to her, so he simply nodded. After the shouting in the hall, he didn’t know what to expect when they reached the suite door.
Luke opened the door, his face drawn, before wandering back to stare sightlessly out the window to the city beyond. Declan was slugging back whiskey, the decanter sitting on the table in front of him.
Declan’s eyes burned with anger. “They aren’t real. I swear.”
Cara didn’t hesitate. She crossed to him and threw her arms around his stiff body.
“I know.”
“The real questions are why did our father have them and where did they come from?” Luke turned back to the room with his hands shoved in his pockets.
Wes stood back, not wanting to intrude, but the curiosity was eating him alive.
“They could be doctored, right? Photoshopped?” Cara sank onto the sofa next to Declan.
Luke nodded. “They’re pretty blurry, so it wouldn’t have taken an expert. There’s a police report which is more of a problem. We need to find out if one actually exists in the system, or if it’s a fake.”
