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Crista stared at the picture. It was a full frontal shot, though whoever was posing as her had turned their head to the side, allowing hair identical to Crista’s to cover their face.
It took a minute, but she saw it. She blinked, certain she wasn’t seeing clearly. The breasts were covered in the soft, chocolate brown silk of the blouse the other woman was wearing, draped over the mounds that were approximately the size of Crista’s. But with one difference. In this picture the soft material of the blouse had gaped where a button had come undone and revealed a very hairy portion of flesh beneath the breast.
Crista blinked and looked again. Male chest hair?
“We went over the other pictures once Natches caught that. ” Cranston said. “And he found a few other anomalies. Such as this. ”
The next picture had a red-marked circle around a dark spot on a smooth, creamy, hairless arm that appeared female.
“This picture was taken by another agent in France, where our young person here met with Akron Svengaurrd, the mercenary that brokered the deal on the missiles. ”
Once again, there were no facial features, but Crista focused on the red circle that pointed out a blemish of some sort.
“I’ll be damned,” Dawg muttered, his voice suddenly heavy, bitter. “I can’t believe it. ”
“He disappeared just after the missiles were stolen,” Natches said then. “Remember? We wondered where the hell he had gone? He also knew Cole, he worked for Cole’s father for a while on their farm near Frankfort. We cleared him on the investigation here because the connections were all superficial. Hell, Cole had a lot of acquaintances here in Somerset. ”
Crista stared hard at the picture, certain she was missing something. Then she saw it, remembered it. A small blemish, more a birthmark, on a friend’s wrist.
“Johnny,” she whispered, seeing the familiarity in the curve of his face then, in the way he stood, even dressed as he was in her clothes. “It’s Johnny Grace. ”
“He visited the detention center deliberately,” Natches said then. “To implicate Crista. Every move he’s made has been made to implicate her, to distract Dawg, and possibly me as well. He had to cover himself, and this was the best way to do it. He thought you and Crista had argued, and she was heading to Virginia. The detention center is on the way, a short little detour that she could have reasonably made.
Bam, she’s arrested, bad guys thinks she has the money, good guys crucify her. And Johnny was damned good; those fucking mercenaries really thought he was a she. They would have killed Crista first chance they had to arrange it. ”
Behind her, Dawg was dangerously silent. Crista swore she could feel the fury whipping through the room now, from Dawg as well as Natches.
“He made friends with Crista first thing when she returned, because he knew her history with Dawg, and he knew Dawg’s fascination with her. He was one of the few people that could have known what happened when she left eight years ago,” Natches bit out.
“Yeah. He worked at the clinic when Crista had the miscarriage. An orderly or something,”
Cranston added.
Crista felt her world crash around her then.
The silence in the room suddenly became heavy, tense, and filled with danger. She didn’t dare look at Dawg; she couldn’t. She could barely breathe, could barely form a thought.
“Cranston, I’m going to murder you. ” Natches sighed then. “We had an agreement. ”
Cranston’s gaze was going between Dawg and Crista then.
“Agreements are for men I can trust, Natches,” he said mockingly. “You two broke trust with me in your attempts to hide Miss Jansen’s presence at that warehouse. Consider this your slap on the wrist. ”
NINETEEN
Something was breaking apart inside Dawg. He could feel it. He fought it, he tried to force the pieces of his soul back into shape, but they continued to break away, piece by piece, destroying him in the process.
Cranston was a smart man. Once he glimpsed Dawg’s expression, he excused himself and left.
Quickly. It would have been laughable if it weren’t for the fact that everything inside Dawg was silently howling.
And she hadn’t said a word. Not a word. Even after
Natches left, she stared at the carpet and avoided his gaze.
Dawg wasn’t a man prone to tears. He hadn’t cried since he was five, but at this moment, he wished he hadn’t forgotten how to shed tears.
Because he wanted to shed tears. For his child, for what had been lost before it had even been born. For the woman who had fled the pain, and the man who hadn’t had a clue the pain he had inflicted in one night of pleasure.
