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Rupert slapped the bottle onto the table, making the water splash out. “I’m telling you; I had nothing to do with this. I would never do something like that. Not to Rachel. Not to anyone. I don’t know how my name got on the file. If I did, I’d tell you.”
The comm unit in Harvard’s ear sprang to life. “I think he’s telling the truth,” Lake said.
Unfortunately, Harvard agreed. He leaned forward. “I need you to tell me everything about the night it happened.”
“How am I supposed to know when that was?”
“I’m going to tell you.” Harvard put that famed patience of his to good use. “It was the twenty-second of July, exactly ten years ago. Rachel was in London during college vacation and working as an intern at TayFor.”
Rupert nodded furiously. “Yes. I remember. It was her last holiday before going into her final year. We spent the summer partying through London’s nightclubs. Until—” With a shaky hand, he lifted the water to his mouth and took a sip. He swallowed hard. “Until she suddenly cut everything short and moved back to Glasgow.” His eyes welled up, and it was clear he was fighting the urge to cry. “I thought she’d just had a better offer from her friend Harry. She left me a message saying he had a great idea for a business. One that would make them a fortune. And he needed her straight away.” A trembling finger pointed at the photo. “But this was why she returned?”
Harvard nodded, feeling sorry for the guy. “Were you out together on that last night? The night before she left?”
Rupert ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. Back then, I spent most of my time drunk and on the pull. If I managed to pick up a girl, I often left Rachel and Sam to fend for themselves while I took my date home.”
“Samantha?” Everything within Harvard stilled.
Rupert nodded. “The three of us tore up London that year.”
“Is it possible you were out clubbing the night this happened and that Samantha was there too?”
Rupert looked horrified. “You don’t think my sister had anything to do with this?”
“Just answer the question. Is it possible?”
A tear ran down Rupert’s face. “What day of the week was the twenty-second of July?”
“A Saturday,” Lake’s voice said in his ear.
“Saturday,” Harvard told Rupert.
“Then, yeah, the three of us were together.” The t
ears were falling hard now. “We went out every single Saturday that summer. It was a joke among the rest of the family, that’s why I remember. We didn’t miss a weekend.”
Adrenaline coursed through Harvard as alarm bells sounded in his mind. “Could your sister have taken your phone and used it?”
Bleak eyes met his. “Yes,” Rupert whispered.
Harvard shot from the chair and was out of the door in a few long strides, the sound of Rupert’s sobs reverberating through the room behind him. Lake and Callum were waiting on the other side of the door.
“Rachel’s alone with Samantha in her apartment,” he said, fighting to keep calm. To think clearly.
“Call her,” Callum barked.
His phone was already in his hand. He lifted it to his ear and waited as it rang to voice mail. A sense of dread filling him, he changed tactics and sent a text. It felt as though time was suspended as they waited for a reply. Rachel always replied. That damn phone of hers barely left her hand.
At last, he looked up at the men he’d grown to respect. The men who cared for Rachel almost as much as he did. “There’s no reply.”
And then they were running.
“You?” Rachel gasped as the room spun around her. “You took the video? You were there?” She clutched the arm of her chair, silently begging for it not to be true.
Samantha waved a dismissive hand and strode over to the bar in the corner of the room, where she casually poured herself another glass of champagne. “I knew it had to be something dramatic to get you to leave TayFor, just asking you to go wouldn’t do it. Nor would some embarrassing photos of you out partying. And I couldn’t think of anything else that would do the job.” She turned to lean against the bar. “I had hoped to find that you’d been dipping into the company drug stock, but you didn’t even dabble. You are such a goody two shoes.”
“That smell. Patchouli.” Rachel shook her head, trying to clear it. “I thought it was incense, but it was your perfume. I remember now.”
“You were very rude about my taste in perfume back then. You said I smelled like a hippie. That was why I doused myself in it for our little party.”
