Hard to Trust (18 page)

He shrugged. "I guess if I thought I couldn't be successful, or it wasn't a right fit for my skill set, but that kind of thing is already built into the system at The Alliance."

"So why did they choose you for this assignment?"

Not that he hadn't thought about the same thing over the last few days himself, especially after the Istanbul connection, but he still didn't have an answer. "No clue."

"What if you were handpicked for some reason? What would you think?"

"I'd think that was crazy. Nobody would do that." Although in the back of his mind he remembered Jennings making mention of the fact that they had a shortlist of operatives they wanted to use for her, and that Jake's name topped the list. Why was he on that list to begin with?

"But if they knew you'd be assigned, then they could set you up. They could play you like a fiddle, and you would barely know it." She sucked in a breath. "They could have bugged your house, your car, and you wouldn't be suspicious."

He held up his hand. "Hold on there. I do this for a living. That couldn't have happened."

"I do this for a living, and it happened to me." She steeled her jaw and looked him in the eye.

It was clear she didn't want to be alone in the "I screwed up" department and needed to see he had his own set of foibles. "You're right. Would it make you feel better if we scanned my bag?"

"Infinitely." Her tone of voice softened, and a hint of tears rose to the surface of her eyes. "It's just that"—she drew in a breath as she fought through the bout of emotion—"they've been on us like we have a GPS chip hanging around our necks or something. What are we missing?"

"How do you know this is Alex's house?" Tessa asked as they rolled past the sprawling two-story set back from the street. "I don't see him living in this kind of place. He was never into the trappings of the middle class. He always said he could pitch a tent in the middle of the Rockies, and he'd be happy."

Had she ever really known Alex? Little by little she was discovering he was nothing like he'd portrayed himself to be. She'd been accustomed to not trusting people from the earliest of ages, but this whole idea had been taken to a level that seemed incomprehensible.

Was anyone who she thought they were? What was Jake's agenda? He said he'd been contracted for this assignment randomly, but something seemed off in the way he went about it.

"The investigator uncovered Alex's ownership of the house only through an exhaustive property search. Based on that, I'm guessing he didn't want anyone to know he lived here." He turned in the seat. To her surprise, he didn't have a
gotcha
look on his face. "I didn't know him, but it seems like Alex had many different sides. Did you really know as much about him as you thought?"

"I'm still unconvinced about your intel. Fancy house is one thing, but everything else…" She still couldn't make sense of what Jake had told her. Alex always said he was a rolling stone. In her mind she could picture him smiling and laughing when he said that, and then he would break into the old Temptations song "Papa Was a Rolling Stone."

Jake raised his eyebrows as if questioning her commitment. Not that she blamed him. The whole mystery kept getting crazier and crazier.

"If it's Alex's house then I'm sure he has a security system. I have tools in my go bag. I should be able to pick the lock easily unless you know of any additional stuff he might have set up, like flamethrowers or an invisible moat or something."

She smiled and shook her head. In another life, if things weren't so crazy, she'd find Jake charming. It was clear he was trying to lessen her anxiety even if it wasn't working.

"The CIA doesn't have that kind of technology. If you tell me The Alliance does I'm jumping ship tomorrow."

He laughed. "We have some talented people, but that's way beyond our pay grade right now."

"I've heard about that pay grade of yours, and that's saying a lot." She enjoyed his ability to get her off focus. Walking into what could be Alex's house would force her to confirm that everything he'd told her had been a lie told to her for a specific purpose. If all that could be verified, then she'd have to go to the next logical step and figure out why.

"Let's park a block over in case our friends from New York make a reappearance. I'm not saying The Alliance scanners aren't good but better safe than sorry."

She nodded through her sudden bout of nerves and slid out of the car. He held her hand as they walked together. Over the last forty-eight hours she'd become accustomed to his touchy-feely tendencies. Initially she thought it was about his need to be in control but now had come to suspect it was also part of his nature.

A clumping of tall evergreen trees surrounded the house. The closest neighbor was far enough away to avoid detection.
Ostentatious
was the first word that popped into her head. The Alex she knew would have made fun of people lured into middle-class trappings like a gigantic house. He even made fun of her for setting down roots by buying a townhome.

She bit back the rollercoaster of emotions churning inside and pushed on. "I'm anxious to see your technique," she whispered.

As if he sensed the war going on within her head, he gave her one of his lady-killer smiles. The type that would make a lesser woman putty in his hands. "Watch and learn."

In less than a minute, he had the back door to the house open as they searched for the security system. They found it quickly, and he hooked up his device, getting the code with seconds left on the trigger alarm.

"What should we look for?" Why she asked such a rookie question she couldn't say, but the reality of confronting smoke screens set up to screw her over wasn't something she relished. She didn't want to believe Alex had set her up from day one.

"Anything that leads us to the real story behind Alex. Then we need to follow the logical course of action and see if his death has anything to do with your current troubles."

"Sounds good. You take the upstairs, I'll check out the downstairs."

She rubbed her shoulder, as the ache had become more and more pervasive ever since the encounter with the guys in the warehouse. Every move she made seemed to exacerbate the wound. At times it felt like there was fire burning down her arm. Right now she didn't have time for indulgences, although she'd love to take a painkiller—even over-the-counter would be a relief.

Uncertain whether she wanted to know Alex's secrets, she moved through the house with an instinct born of survival. Even with objectivity in the forefront of her mind, it was difficult not to think about the possibility of hidden secrets from a man she thought she knew better than herself.

Anxious to dispel the myths Jake might have about Alex and his background, she combed the house for clues. She started with the kitchen and scoured the cabinets, the empty trash, and everything in between.

Sterile
would be the word she would use to describe the setting. Like a crime scene wiped clean by a perpetrator. Nothing was out of place. Nothing to give even the slightest hint that anyone had ever lived there.

Given the fact Alex had died nearly six weeks ago, she shouldn't be surprised at the sterility. She still had trouble swallowing the reality that he really lived here. The small slice of knowledge didn't bring about anything resembling peace along with it.

Only frustration.

She wandered from room to room, still with that sense of a staged presence, like in a model home. Everything was way too perfect. Like it was intended to illustrate some kind of point. Had he been working on some undercover operation he hadn't told her about? She absorbed the accompanying shudder.
If
this was his house. Wouldn't Jake look foolish if she proved this wasn't Alex's house after all?

With that triumphant thought, she roamed from the kitchen to the dining room to a massive family room and back to the living room and found nothing other than a sense of hopelessness and futility. Why did Jake think coming here would help figure this out? Why did she have this driving need to prove him wrong? Yep, she knew the answer to that question without even thinking much about it.

She reached a room toward the corner of the first floor and opened the door. Realization shimmied along her spine. For the first time since she'd walked inside the house, the presence of Alex seemed to bounce off the walls. He had lived here. If she let that door of awareness open in her mind, what else did she need to let in?

*  *  *

Jake took the stairs two at a time. Even though they'd gotten in easily, it didn't guarantee they had all the time in the world to search. Everything he did had to be methodical and based on what he knew about human behavior. Uncertain if they'd find something or even if this was Alex's house, he had to do his best to figure out what came next.

While Tessa was looking downstairs, he figured the real gems might be hidden upstairs. Most people who wanted to hide information never hid it in a place where someone could easily have access. They hid it someplace where no one would expect it to be. He could only hope his hunch was accurate.

One time when they were working for Petrovich, he'd sent them on a mission to recover what he classified as important documents from a man in Austria. The three of them easily got into the fortified home. It was determining where the man might keep his treasures that was the difficult part. Most times working with his siblings they'd engage in a healthy competition, if the circumstances allowed.

While his siblings focused on the mundane, Jake homed in on the oddball spots where someone might hide their possessions. Nine times out of ten it wasn't a safe. Way too obvious for those who had real secrets to keep hidden. Shoeboxes sometimes held valuable intel hidden underneath or concealed inside shoes. The age-old freezer trick was also one he found successful in retrieving data. And suitcases could hide anything and everything.

One time Jake had found the documents they were looking for in the bathroom trashcan. Beneath the plastic bag liner there was a stash of cash as well as the documents. After that, his siblings called him the treasure sniffer. His record remained unchallenged.

He couldn't help but smile as he drifted through the old memories and started his search in the first bedroom. Even though he suspected it would be a futile search in the unused room, he did a cursory inspection, opening drawers and shuffling through the contents, searching for hidden panels in the walls and closets. In the next bedroom he got the same vibe but utilized the same kind of precision, wasting no time in getting the job done.

He walked into the third bedroom and swore. It was decorated in a nursery theme complete with a crib and rocker, and it made him wonder about a possible child in the equation. He searched through the drawers in the dresser while he wondered what in the hell was going on. There weren't diapers or anything but a few baby T-shirts, which made him believe if there were a baby, it hadn't been born yet.

Jake had to still consider the possibility that Tessa was lying to him, but he couldn't make that fit in his head with what he already knew. He gave up trying to choose between the lesser of the two evils and went on to the room at the end of the hall.

Upon reaching the master bedroom, that Shaw itch crawled up his back. Still, nothing seemed out of order. But at the same time, he knew imminent danger lurked close by. The Shaw itch should never be ignored.

Like the other three bedrooms, this one contained top-of-the-line furnishings. From the four-poster bed and silk coverings to the matching dressers with marble tops, the room had to cost a small fortune. Between the mattress and the box spring seemed like a good place to stash something, but somehow he knew that wouldn't house anything of value.

Instead, he started with the drawers. Finding both women's and men's clothing added to the possibility of a marriage or at least a live-in situation. After finding nothing, he went to the closet. A set of custom-designed suitcases made by Henk Travelfriend, which averaged twenty thousand a pop, were stacked along the top shelf along with the requisite Louis Vuitton travel bags. But nothing was inside.

He started with the clothes, checking pockets, purses, shoeboxes—anything that might be used to conceal. Finally he hit pay dirt. Rummaging through the pockets of a men's navy-blue topcoat, he found a small key. It could be an office key or maybe something within the house if he were lucky.

Letting Tessa know he possibly found something tickled at the tip of his tongue, but he fought off the urge. That had been a habit when he'd worked with his siblings whom he trusted implicitly—not a stranger who might somehow be involved in this whole mess of a cover-up.

He examined the key. It was too small to be for a house. A key to a safe would be his first guess. He examined the walls of the closet then felt them with his hands, looking for imperfections that might lead to a hidden opening.

Nothing. He stepped inside the luxurious bathroom, which had a two-person Jacuzzi tub and a steam shower larger than most New York City apartments. Copper sink vessels topped a rich marble counter. If what he'd read were true Alex came from money, so the extravagance in the home wasn't too surprising. Would it be a reach to believe Alex had been involved in something unsavory to continue the lifestyle he'd become accustomed to?

While Jake let that thought simmer in his mind, he opened drawers of the large cabinet below the sink, finding jewelry and other mundane objects inside. Though frustrated by his lack of progress, he still somehow knew he was close.

Then he spotted the overly large picture above the tub, and something pinged inside his chest. The first thing that struck him as odd was the placement of an enormous abstract painting of peonies. Everything else in the room—in fact in every room—reflected classic details, no modern splashes of color, but this was like an eyesore compared to the rest. It didn't fit in with the design aesthetic for the rest of the place, so it had to be there for a reason.