"Darling!" she called and waved. "Have you recovered from the conference? It was something else, wasn't it?"
Adrian leaned back in his chair. "We're just going over some potential accounts," he told me.
"Okay." I looked between them. Nothing seemed amiss. "I'm going to have lunch with your brother. You want to come?" I asked him, still feeling suspicious.
"Nah, we're just going to finish this," he replied.
"Go along to lunch," Anke said. "Adrian and I will order in here."
Something about them felt off. But surely Anke wouldn't be going after Adrian? He was barely out of high school, and he didn't run a company. I didn't think he even had money. He still lived at home.
I chewed on my lip as I walked into Mace's office. Henry ran to greet me, and Mace stood up, smiling warmly at me. My heart ached. Would he still want me when my house of cards, more crappily built than my tiny house, came crashing down?
We ate pizza at a small shop on the second floor of one of the many old historic buildings.
"Is the train coming?" Henry asked excitedly.
"Not until this evening," Mace told him. "Sit down and eat. You like pizza."
"It's good pizza, Henry," I told him.
"Not as good as yours," he said.
The FBI agent texted me as we finished lunch. He was in Harrogate and wanted to meet in ten minutes.
"I'll meet you guys at the office," I told Mace as we walked out of the restaurant. "I need to run by the store."
"I can drop you off," he offered.
"No thanks!" I said brightly. "I'll just walk. It's a nice day."
"I'll see you later," he said, pulling me close and kissing me.
I pretended like I was walking to Ida's General Store then cut to a side street to the café where the agent wanted to meet me. He was standing outside. He was a tall square-jawed dark-haired man who looked like every stereotypical Hollywood FBI agent.
"Detective Donley," he introduced himself when I walked up. "You're Josie?"
I nodded. We sat at a table outside, and he took out a laptop and pulled up a document.
"Can you tell me when you first met Anke?" he asked.
I told Agent Donley everything in great detail, how I had met her at a club, how effortless she seemed, how she always seemed to have all this money, how we took trips, how slowly she stopped paying upfront and started having me front the money.
"She would always pay me back," I said, starting to cry. "Until she didn't."
"I see you filed a police report," he said.
"They said it was a civil matter," I said, hiccupping. "And refused to pursue it."
"This is more than a civil matter," Agent Donley said. "Anke has defrauded various banks in Europe and America out of millions of dollars."
"She has another scheme," I told him.
"Yes, her position at Svensson PharmaTech," he said.
"I don't know what she's up to. I think she's trying to convince one of the Svensson brothers to marry her or be her sugar daddy or something," I told the FBI agent.
Agent Donley snorted. "Well don't tip her off. If she's there thinking she's going to be the next Mrs. Svensson, it will be easier to nab her."
