His Brother's Bride

“Think about it,” he said, almost giddy with the surge of adrenaline pumping through him. “She could have been the next person Dennis was going to call, and when the call didn’t come, she wouldn’t know what to do. She’s a technical writer, not a criminal.”

“At least not until she fell in love with her own uncle.”

Scott cringed. “We don’t know for certain that he was her uncle.”

“We don’t know anything for certain,” Laurel reminded him.

“Suppose William and Cecilia are still alive somewhere, that Dennis was holing them up someplace while he made sure he could access the money he’d made Cecilia transfer and then get his butt out of the country. He probably had Leslie stay with them until he was certain that Cecilia had done what she’d said at the bank and he had the money in hand. It’s possible that Leslie had been told to wait for his call and then meet him at the airport. And when the call didn’t come, she was stuck with two kidnap victims on her hands.”

“He only had one plane ticket,” Laurel objected.

“Maybe she had her own. On the other hand, do you think he’d really plan to take her?”

“No.”

“So, to follow this through...”

“He could have been calling Murphy to tell him where to find William and Cecilia and then maybe he’d been planning to call Leslie so she’d get the hell out of there,” Laurel finished for him.

“Yes.” There was a particular feeling Scott got when he was finally making things fall into place. He was pretty sure he was getting that feeling now.

Of course, it could just have been the fact that he and Laurel were working together again as one unit. Not two separate entities who just happened to be traveling along an identical road.

He watched her pace around the room. Loved the grace with which she moved. Loved...

Something was teasing Scott’s mind. Slumping into the chair he’d vacated earlier, he pulled out his notebook and flipped through the pages, hoping to trigger whatever was escaping him.

There were pages and pages of stuff. None of it good. Worse, nothing was clicking.

His gut like rock, Scott read on, anyway.

“I’d forgotten Maureen had run into Dennis in Cooper’s Corner.” Laurel’s voice was hushed behind him, giving him chills. Or perhaps it was the words scrolling in front of him that were doing that.

He hadn’t known she was behind him. Laying the notebook in the middle of the table, he turned it so that, if she sat in the other chair, they could both see it.

Once she was seated, Scott forced himself to relax, to allow the thoughts to flow so everything could fall naturally into place.

Another, not completely related thought struck him, and it was one he couldn’t share with Laurel. He was fairly certain, based both on instinct and the fact that things were so tidy without Owen Nevil’s involvement, that the New York criminal had nothing to do with William Byrd’s disappearance. It didn’t seem like the Nevil brothers to let another man, one with as little kidnapping experience as Dennis, handle a job with such a high payout. And that would let Maureen completely off the hook—except that Dennis had seen her.

What if he’d also seen a picture of Maureen, Carl Nevil’s nemesis, while hanging out with Nevil in prison? It was highly likely that if Carl intended to put a price on her head, he’d be showing her picture to people. Especially someone who might be getting out soon and could help him keep an eye out...

And if Dennis knew the Nevils were looking for Maureen, if he recognized her that day in Cooper’s Corner, that phone call to Owen Nevil might have some very serious implications.

* * *

REACHING THE LAST PAGE of the notebook, Scott read the notes he’d jotted after their walk around Dennis’s house.

“I know where they are.” Finally.

Scott was so relieved, he almost felt good for a second.

Laurel was staring at him. “Where?”

“Remember that piece of ring you found today?” he asked, pictures flashing through his mind.

“Yeah?”

“Didn’t it strike you as odd that it wasn’t any dirtier?”