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“How is my daughter?” His eyes are glued to mine and hold that same pleading look they did the last time we saw each other.
“She’s fine.”
“You haven’t hurt her, have you? Or done anything else?” His jaw clenches, and I know exactly what he means byanything else.
My lip twitches with a malicious smile as I mull over all that I’ve done with his precious baby girl who he doesn’t realize is a full-grown goddess.
“I haven’t hurt her.”
When his stony face tenses, taking note I’ve only answered part of his question, I give him a shit-eating grin.
“What else have you done to her?”
“Nothing she didn’t want.”
His flinty gaze hardens even more, and so does his face. “What do you want, Desmier?”
Time to cut to the chase. “I came here to find out if you knew the Butyrskayas.”
His eyes narrow to slits. “No. I of course knowofthem, but I’ve never met them.”
I stare back at him, not knowing if he’s telling the truth. Men like him are trained to be professional liars, so I’d never know one way or the other. With people like him, you’d never be able to tell from the usual signs that they’re screwing with you.
“Are you sure?”
“Of course, I’m sure. Why are you asking me about them?” The wrinkles in his forehead deepen when he frowns, making him look like a bulldog.
This is where I have to play this conversation by ear. I’m going to mention the crest, only because I’m sure Anastasia told me she’d told him about her nightmare about a million times. Of course, I won’t give him the meaning behind the crest. But I’ll see if he knows.
“The house I live in previously belonged to the Butyrskayas.” There’s a slight shift in his eyes I’m not sure is something I need to pay attention to. “Anastasia recognized something that belonged to them.”
“What did she recognize?”
“A crest. She’s told me she saw it in her nightmares. It made me wonder if you might have known the Butyrskayas before her accident.”
At the mention of the accident, his eyes become glassy and his face a dark mask of grief. “She’s had those nightmares for years. Whatever she’s seeing must be something imagined because we didn’t know the Butyrskayas.”
That’s exactly what failure to find any connection means, but I remember how Anastasia looked when she spoke about the crest.
She was certain it was what she’d seen in her nightmares.
All I have is her word. And my suspicion. But I’m not even sure I know what that is yet.
“Tell me more about her accident and where you lived before.” I have brief details in my reports, but I want to hear him explain. Just in case I can pick anything up.
The press of his lips unveils his discomfort in the topic. “I’m sure you know we lived in Russia. We were only here when we were visiting family and friends during the holidays. However, before Anastasia’s accident, we hadn’t been back to Boston for close to two years. When I got a permanent role here, we came back. I thought it would be good to take the family camping before Anastasia started school. That’s when the accident happened.” He pauses, then draws in a slow, shallow breath like a man who’s just been given terminal news. “Anastasia was playing hide and seek with one of the kids at the campsite. She went off the trail onto a road… and, um, was hit by a car.”
I know what happened next, but hearing the story like that makes me think of what Anastasia must have gone through at that age.
“What’s this really about, Desmier?” He lifts his chin higher, seeming to regain his composure. “What the hell do the Butyrskayas have to do with me?”
His question is correct. What is this really about?
I am suspicious of him whether I have evidence or not.
I’m standing in front of the shadiest man I’ve ever met in my life, and his daughter recognizes a crest she shouldn’t know about. Of course, something is up. So he must be lying.
If I didn’t think something was up, or trust Anastasia’s judgment, I wouldn’t have asked Gytha to check it out.
