“As you have said yourself, nothing in any of this is making sense.” And until we really understood their motives or who might be backing them, it probably wouldn’t. “Did Mark say anything else that can help us?”
“No, but I do have other news—the security tapes for the twenty-four hours before Tane’s arrival were sent, and I’ve been going through them.”
I bit back my surprise. I’d half expected Sophie to restrict our access to them. “Find anything?”
“You could say that.”
She turned the laptop around so I could see the screen and hit Play. It showed an empty corridor with the time ticking along in the right-hand corner. It remained that way for several seconds, then, just on the edge of the camera’s purview, an elevator’s floor indicator lit up. A few seconds after that, three people walked fully into view—two women and a man. They all had their backs to us, but the scarlet hair did at least identify them as royal witches. When they reached the door, two of them turned and scanned the corridor, one of them glancing straight at the camera.
“Lanie and Luke,” I said, although in truth it was no real surprise given both seemed to be up to their necks in this whole mess. “Why is she there and not the other bridesmaids?”
“I have no idea, but it does get better,” Ginny replied.
The other woman stepped forward and scanned a keycard. It was none other than Monica herself. “Well, I guess that answers the question as to who opened the safe.”
“Yes, and the three of them come out about twenty minutes later carrying a largish satchel, which no doubt contained the jewelry Tane said was missing. But the surprises aren’t over yet.”
She rewound the tape an hour, then hit Play again. After a few beats of corridor silence, the lift arrival light flashed again, and a man strode into view. He was tall, reasonably well built, with the signature crimson hair of a royal witch.
“No,” I said, my mind leaping to the surely ludicrous conclusion. “It can’t be.”
“Indeed, it can,” Ginny said, even as the figure arrived at Tane’s door. As he turned to swipe a keycard through the reader, his face was revealed. It was none other than our so-called cuckolded fiancé, Mark.
“What the hell was he doing there?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going back in the morning to ask.”
“With your telepath, I hope.”
“Yep, already arranged to meet Mary there at nine.” Ginny turned the laptop back around. “He came out about ten minutes later and didn’t appear to be carrying anything, so we need to know what he was doing there.”
“Especially given the AirTag and the fact he already knew she wasn’t there.”
Ginny nodded. “Is it possible Lanie was the woman you heard on the USB?”
“Maybe? It’s not like I talked much to her—or indeed any of them—over the time we were following them.”
“It’s not like we were given much opportunity to talk to them, given our orders were to keep them safe but not impinge on their fun.”
She picked up her coffee and took a drink, a devilish spark entering her eyes, one that told me an inquisition of a different kind was about to begin.
“No,” I said immediately. “It wasn’t a date, and there is nothing to tell.”
“Oh, come on. I mean, was he hot? At least give me that.”
I pursed my lips. “On a scale of one to ten..., he’s a fifteen.”
Her laugh was filled with delight. “Excellent. Does he have a name?”
“He does.”
She gave me the look. The one that said,No games, woman, this is important.
Because in Ginny’s opinion, there was nothing more serious than men, sex, and relationships. I took another drink just to prolong answering. “His name is René Jones.”
She just about choked on her coffee. “The playboy?”
“I have no idea. He said he was a philanthropist and owns some company called Diablerie.”
