Caught in the Frame (17 page)

“Hey, I think I found something!”

* * *

Around the corner toward where the corridor dead-ended, Remy waited while Dalton stood outside the door like a palace guard. He’d have to go back inside eventuall,y and there was no reason for him to come this direction, but if there was one thing Remy Vincent loved, it was instant gratification. Waiting for anything he really wanted chafed at him like ants crawling over his skin. Now he was stuck on the wrong end of the hallway; to get back to his room, he needed to pass the spot where Dalton stood.

He pulled his head back. Stupid Burnsoll. No sense of personal awareness at all. Remy knew he would feel eyes on him if someone watched him the way he was watching Dalton now. Must make one lousy cop.

“I’ll take that.” Dalton’s voice echoed toward Remy, who risked another look just in time to see a member of the staff hand over what Remy had come here to find: a carefully wrapped sheaf of dry cleaning. Nostrils flaring, Remy stepped back to wait until the hallway was clear. This was not turning out to be his day. Not at all.

* * *

Nate bent over a brown leather satchel, running a finger over a set of initials tooled into the surface. “JR. Javier Rosales. This is definitely his, and it looks well-used. It’s something he’s carried for a long time. Perfect place to keep valuables.” Nate opened the bag and began to rifle through the contents while the others watched. Dalton stepped away from his post by the door to get a closer look.

A tattered photograph fluttered to the floor and landed face down. EV picked it up and read aloud what was written in script across the back. “Javier Rosales and Tomas Delarosa. 1995.” She turned the photo over and stared into the face of a thirty-something Javier, his arm resting on the shoulder of another tanned, good-looking man who must have been in his early twenties.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Nate and Dalton shared an incredulous look; this wasn’t the first time they had heard the name Tomas Delarosa. “What are the odds?” The two men shared a look as something clicked.

“Will you
please
tell me what the hell is going on here?” Chloe screeched, her nerves shot and her patience reaching its end.

“Tomas Delarosa was one of the names we found in connection with Remy Vincent. I think you might have been right all along, Chloe. If Javier is mixed up with Remy, your mother is in big trouble.”

The sound of throat clearing behind them interrupted the series of open mouth looks being exchanged. As one, the four of them whirled guiltily.

Javier stood in the doorway blocking Lila from the room. The photo in Chloe’s hand and the look on her face told him it was time to come clean. With everyone. His hand speared through his hair in an uncharacteristic gesture, leaving it ruffled and messy. Behind him, Lila gave a nudge, then stood on tiptoe to peer around him in order to see what was holding him up.

Grudgingly, Javier moved into the room. “That’s my brother Tomas.” He reached out to gently take the photo from Chloe’s hand. “Come, Lila, sit here with me. I need to tell you some things.” Deep regret colored the words. Not regret for having to finally tell the whole story, but for keeping any of it from her to begin with. She knew most, but not all.

“A year and a half ago, my brother, Tomas, was the victim of identity theft. In the computer age, this is a common occurrence all over the world. At first, we assumed that freezing his accounts and getting new documents would be enough to protect him. But it was not. The thief created an elaborate network of stolen identities, while leaving a false trail of evidence that pointed straight to my brother. I’m sure you all know by now that the actual culprit was Remy Vincent.”

“I don’t understand, the name we found in connection with Remy was Tomas Delarosa. Not Tomas Rosales.” Scorn was rife in the words Chloe flung at him and she noted the frown that her words brought to Lila’s face. Apparently Javier had not told her mother the entire story.

“Tomas is my stair brother—” he paused to think, “step is the term, I believe. My mother remarried after my father died. Tomas was very young. His father and my mother had both lost their first loves and, together, they found solace, family.”

Gently grasping Lila’s hand, Javier continued. The prospect of speaking this next part out loud had his heart thumping in his chest. He stood to lose her if she couldn’t forgive him for what he had done.

“When the police came to arrest my brother, I vowed to him that I would do everything in my power to clear his name. Even now that more evidence has come to light, he has not been fully exonerated. Remy Vincent cost Tomas everything. He spent his savings to mount a defense, then he had to leave our business to keep it from going under due to the strain on his reputation. We cut all ties to, and then buried his connection with Garritek to preserve our livelihood.”

Lila squeezed his hand. Javier had told her about Tomas, though not in great detail, and certainly not that Remy had been the man behind the frame job his brother had been caught in.

“Six months ago, Tomas broke under the strain. He walked away from his family,” Javier’s voice sounded choked with emotion. “He tried to kill himself. It was only through God’s mercy that I found him in time.” He paused for a long minute to pull himself together. “I vowed that I would clear his name, no matter the price.”

So far, Lila had not pulled away. Now he would say the words that might cost him his future with her.

“I cashed in favors with everyone I knew from my security work. Private investigators, Interpol—I even hired a hacker—and followed the trail to Remy, but there was never enough evidence for a warrant. I investigated every connection I could find—including EV and you, Lila.” He turned to her. “Please don’t hate me. When I found you, it was under the guise of learning more about Vincent. I planned to shamelessly exploit the connection if there was any way you could lead me to him. If I had known that you would turn out to be the love of my life, I’m not sure I would have done anything differently. In fact, if I had known the trail would lead me to you, the only thing I would alter is that I would have put my feet on it earlier. Every day of my life without you in it was a paler version. Say you’ll forgive me.”

Javier’s eyes searched Lila’s for signs of recrimination. If she turned away from him now, his world would become a bleak, colorless place.

At that point, Chloe broke in, “I knew you had an ulterior motive. I just expected it to be money, not revenge.”

He turned toward Chloe, and when she saw the naked fear written on his face, now pale and grave, she relented. “Give him a break, Mom; takes a pretty decent guy to go to such lengths to protect his family. You could do a lot worse. Besides, he’s growing on me.” Javier gave her a half smile and a nod of thanks.

“She’s right.” EV tossed in her two cent’s worth before Nate spoke up.

“We should get out of here,” he said, “and give them some privacy.”

“No. Stay right here.” Lila finally spoke. “There’s nothing to forgive. You could have told me before, and it would have made no difference.” She cupped his cheek in her hand, “I don’t care what your motives were for finding me, I’m just glad that you did.” Her kiss was gentle, a soothing balm to his soul.

“Well, it took him more than fifty years, but it looks like Remy finally did something right.” EV’s humorous observation broke the tension. She ran through the Ponderosa Pines part of the story quickly, bringing Javier up to speed. “Now can we please make a plan for dealing with the piece of slime? Or do the two of you need to get a room?”

Color returned to Javier’s face and he could take a full breath without worrying that his world was about to come crashing down; his mind cleared.

“We have a room, but I think we can hold out while we discuss the business at hand. With our combined evidence and testimony, we might just be able to nail him to the wall.” Javier couldn’t stop grinning though the look in his eyes was fierce.

“Assuming Vincent had an opportunity to lift EV’s key card, it had to have been him who went through Chloe’s things.”

“What about the other incidents we’ve been hearing about?” Dalton questioned.

“Non-issues.” Javier said, “a misplaced piece of jewelry that turned up later—money
borrowed
by a teenager from his father’s wallet. Nothing of consequence. The glitch in the system that caused safe doors to reprogram inaccurately was down to one of the security technician’s error. This is the only genuine break in, and assuming it was Vincent, the only question is: what was he looking for?”

“All of that makes perfect sense,” Nate said thoughtfully, “it comes down to why he went rifling through Chloe’s things? You’re sure nothing is missing, Chlo?”

“Not that I can see.”

Javier suddenly lost all the color his face had regained only moments before. “Baylee.”

“Baylee?” Lila said.

“I’ve one more story to tell.” Javier strode across the room where he stood, facing out the balcony doors with his back to the others who stood waiting for his next revelation. “Now that you know about Tomas, you’ll have realized Baylee is his wife. We made arrangements to access the safe in his room in our search for evidence.”

“HA! That explains the conversation Nate and I overheard,” Chloe’s outburst caused Javier to turn in surprise.

“Now I can see why you’ve been suspicious of me for so long. In any case, no one has seen Baylee since she left to search his room.”

EV’s voice dripped ice, “And you’re only telling us this now?”

“I received a text from her later with the all clear message, and then Ross said she had contacted him, so I assumed she had other reasons for not wanting to be with people right now; that she was dealing with distress over coming up empty yet again.”

“What does that have to do with Remy breaking into my room?” Chloe didn’t see the connection.

“If she was in trouble, Baylee would come straight to me, so it makes perfect sense that she might have made her way back here. And yet, she’s still missing. Perhaps she was intercepted by Vincent. You must help me find her.”

Chapter 18

Nate laid a sheet of paper out on the table. His hands flew across the pristine whiteness to sketch a quick diagram of the castle’s layout between Remy’s room and Lila’s suite. “Stashing her in his own room would be risky.”

“Lacking a key card, he wouldn’t have had access to a vacant room, even if he could find one,” Javier agreed.

“That leaves storage areas and the portion of the castle that hasn’t yet been renovated.” Nate looked up to see nods of agreement. “He’d have to get her out of sight quickly, which means he would have gone for the nearest area to where he caught her. Dragging a resisting woman through populated corridors would be stupid.”

“This is all my fault.” Javier paced the room like a caged animal. “I shouldn’t have let her get involved. We thought if we had some evidence to show the authorities—any kind of proof—they would have to take action.”

“We’ll find her.” Nate bit the words out.

EV stood behind Nate to look over his shoulder. “Assuming she made it back to here,” EV pointed to the area that corresponded with her own room, then glanced at the exterior photos on the castle brochure spread open near Nate’s drawing, “there’s an unused turret section there.”

Spinning the drawing to face him, Dalton pointed toward the south wing, “And an entire area blocked off over here. So we concentrate on this section? How did he get her past the security cameras?”

“I can answer that, I had the cameras along her route on a loop. Once Baylee was clear, she was supposed to text me so I could put them back on live feed. I waited an extra five minutes in case she’d gotten held up. By then, it was too late.”

“Is there anywhere between his room and ours where another camera may have picked up something?” EV ran her finger along the most direct route between Remy’s room and her own. “Be worth checking the videos to see if he shows up. Do the cameras record sound?”

Javier turned pale and slumped heavily onto a chair. “Yes, of course. I should have thought to check immediately. The footage would still be in the system.” He ran a hand over a day’s growth of whiskers; the perfectly pressed and groomed man was slowly devolving into a haggard, sleep-deprived one. Baylee was family, or close enough to it that he had let worry overrule common sense. “I’ll go right now.”

“I’ll come with you.” Lila insisted, “two sets of eyes and ears are better than one.” He squeezed her hand as the two headed for the door to be stopped by a question from Chloe.

“Is it going to be enough? What she found, I mean.” Chloe fidgeted with her hair; twirling it around a finger absentmindedly. “It would have to be, right? Otherwise, what reason would he have had to detain her.”

“Probably would have been.” The glance Nate cast at Javier was filled with pique. “If her bout of B&E hadn’t rendered the evidence useless by being obtained without a warrant.”

“I was trying to help. I had no idea anyone was actively pursuing Vincent. I’m sorry.”

Knowing that Baylee had put herself in danger for nothing took even more of a toll on Javier. Head down, and, shoulders slumped with defeat, he led Lila out the door to see if there was anything he could do to help salvage the situation.