“That’s how it works in those mob TV shows I’ve watched too.” The muscles in my smile felt stiff, like it had been forever since my lips had moved in that direction.
The smirk he returned felt just as foreign. Had it really been that long since we’d exchanged friendly banter? It would be so easy to fall back into it. I had to remind myself why that was a bad thing.
Sobering, I asked, “Who discovered Chris? Do you know?”
“The assistant director on the show. Don’t know her name.”
“Do you know the time? Was it when I was with Michelis? There was a phone call while I was there. Petros answered and said, ‘It’s done.’ It could have been a call about anything, but I swear it was about Chris. He wanted me to hear it. He dismissed me right after.” Not that it made much difference to find out. It wouldn’t prove anything in a criminal case, but it could at least settle the question in my own mind.
“That sounds like the manipulative bullshit he’d pull. I’ll have Joe look at the phone records into his hotel room. It’s unlikely to tie him significantly enough to murder, but it’s worth a shot.”
“Thank you.” I leaned against his desk, facing him. “What else does the e-mail say?”
He narrowed his eyes, picking up where he’d left off before. “Be assured that your possessions are safe from my hand.” He glanced up, his expression apprehensive. “He, uh, means you and Amber.”
“Yeah, I got that.” I bit my lip. “Does he actually consider Amber to be yours anymore? His messages thus far seem to indicate he thinks she’s his.”
Reeve shook his head. “I’m not sure it matters. I don’t trust him either way.” He put his finger on the screen at the next line in the e-mail. “Anatolios and Petros can’t work out the issues between us. Please consider face-to-face meeting. It’s time we figure out how to put things to, um, peace between us.” He concentrated for a moment on correcting the translation. “Put things to rest between us.”
Reeve cleared his throat before adding, “There’s a postscript. Here’s the favor I did. And he includes a link.”
“Where does the link go?”
He pushed the screen toward me. “Click on it if you want.”
I scooted back so that I was sitting on the desk. Then I picked up the computer and set it on my lap. I followed the link to a Greek news site and clicked the Google bar at the top requesting that the page be translated into English. The paragraph was short and didn’t read clearly, but I still got the gist. It was a report on a recent body that had been found dead, causes unknown. The victim had been identified as Broos Lasko – the man who’d killed Reeve’s parents. The man whom Michelis had wanted Reeve to kill in revenge.
“Oh, Reeve.” My throat felt tight. “I don’t know if I should say congratulations or I’m sorry.”
“Both are probably appropriate,” he said quietly. Then he blew out a frustrated breath of air. “He’s pretending he did this for me. He did it for himself. He’s hoping it will obligate me to him. It doesn’t.”
“He did the same thing to Amber. He killed her father and told her it was a present for her. Then held it over her head so that she felt like she couldn’t leave.”
Reeve cocked his head, his brow furrowed. “Did she tell you that?”
“Didn’t she tell you that?”
He shook his head, his expression guarded. “No. She didn’t tell me any of it. I knew, because Petros mentioned it. In his version, Amber begged Michelis to do it for her.”
I considered the possibility, which mostly meant trying to decide what I might have done in her place. If I’d known a man who had that power, if it were unlikely he’d ever get caught, would I have taken advantage of that connection?
I didn’t think I could do it. Which was a little surprising considering how attractive the “dangerous man” type had always been to me. Or maybe it wasn’t surprising because it would require me to make a choice with significant consequences, and that was not my strong suit.
Amber was another story. She’d been able to hit Aaron over the head in Mexico and then leave him for dead, but that had been in order to rescue me. “What do you think is the truth?” I asked, curious what Reeve’s opinion was.
“Your version makes more sense,” he mused. “It’s further proof of how my uncle twists everything to his benefit.”
I shrugged. “Or it’s proof that Petros can’t be exactly trusted either.”
“Also possible.”
There was something intimate about Reeve listening to my ideas and taking them seriously. It made my cheeks flush for absolutely no reason at all.
I lowered my head to examine the laptop, hoping Reeve didn’t notice. My forehead creased as my eye caught on the sender’s line in the heading of the message. “This isn’t from the same address as the other e-mails.” I’d seen two from the other address – one had included the picture of Michelis and Amber from the casino in Colorado, the other had attached the autopsy report of the woman I’d thought had been Amber.
“Like you, I’m sure he has more than one. Makes it harder to track him.”
“True.” Besides the one I had for Joe, I had an e-mail for junk, an e-mail for publicity, an e-mail for personal. But I tended to keep all my correspondence organized. If I e-mailed someone from a certain account, I didn’t later e-mail that person from another account.