Page 19 of Freeing Lark

“Several chatter spikes over the last forty-eight hours. Nothing specific enough to identify as credible, but the client doesn’t want to take chances.”

Hoot scanned the photographs. Then he stopped. A younger man stood beside Ambassador Whitmore in one picture. Dark hair with an athletic build. Another sharp-jawed man in an expensive suit. Something about him tugged at Hoot’s memory. Using his own laptop, he brought the image front and center on the big screen. “Who’s this?”

“Bradley Whitmore,” Flint said. “Charles’s son. Thirty-eight. Works for his father’s foundation.”

Hoot stared at the picture. Then another. Same man. Different event. Different suit. He’d seen that face somewhere else. His gaze shifted toward Haley. She was already looking at him. Then she looked at the photograph. “Oh.”

Spark leaned forward. “What?”

Haley hit a few keys on her laptop, and a social-media profile filled the screen. There she was, the unsmiling Lark standing next to Bradley Whitmore. Hoot’s stomach tightened.

Haley shuffled through the images. Lark and Bradley had been photographed at several high-end affairs. At a gallery. At a charity event. On a beach. In front of some art installation.

Hoot stared. He didn’t like what he saw. Lark still wasn’t smiling in a single photograph. Not one. She stood beside Bradley in every picture, but there was a stiffness to her posture that Hoot recognized immediately.

Her shoulders were too tight. Her smile nonexistent. Her eyes distant. He’d spent too many years studying people to mistake that for simple shyness.

“What the hell?” Spark murmured.

Hoot continued to stare at her images.

“What?” Eggs asked.

Spark pointed at the screen. “She’s not smiling.”

“I noticed that too,” Haley said. “And she looks like she wants to be anywhere but there.”

Voodoo leaned over. “She’s an artist?”

“Yes,” Haley replied, having already read through Lark’s resumé.

Flint’s eyes narrowed. “What are we talking about?”

Nobody answered immediately. Everybody’s gaze landed on Hoot. He sighed. “She’s the woman from the other night.”

Flint’s eyebrows rose. “The island?”

“Yeah.”

“The woman who dumped you into Bell Creek?”

“She didn’t dump me.”

Eggs coughed. “She absolutely dumped you.”

Hoot ignored him. “Her name’s Lark Meadows.”

“Marilyn Lenzer’s niece,” Haley supplied.

Flint looked at the photograph. “And she’s connected to Whitmore’s son?”

“We don’t know how,” Haley said. “Not yet.”

Spark looked between Hoot and the screen. “So, Hoot’s woman is apparently friends with the son of our client?”

“She isn’t my—” Hoot stopped. He wasn’t sure what he was about to say. Friend? She wasn’t, despite what she had promised as he’d left the bakery.

Girlfriend? Definitely not. Acquaintance? Technically. Woman who had somehow managed to occupy far too much space in his thoughts? Unfortunately.