SEAL’s Redemption by Leslie North
15
Afew days later, Hope finally got the message she’d been waiting for—Desmond Jones wanted to set up a new time to talk with her. Which was great, except he didn’t seem to remember the last meeting they’d had with him but had missed because of the accident. Plus, his email address was different from the last time too. It was all very puzzling, but she wasn’t about to mess up this opportunity, so she let it pass.
Logan, however, wasn’t so quick to do the same. “It’s weird.”
“I know, but who cares right now. If Desmond talks to me, it could blow this case wide open.” She typed out her response, asking if Desmond would be willing to do a video call with her. That way she and Logan could stay where they were and hopefully stay safe. Unfortunately, Desmond emailed back saying he had something to give her that he could only do in person. “I’m going to tell him okay.”
“Like hell you are.” Logan scowled. “Hang on a second. This seems fishy as fuck, and I don’t like it at all.”
“I know, but I have to take this meeting.” Hope took a deep breath for patience. “You can come with me. It’ll be fine. I need this evidence, Logan. Whatever it is he wants to give me. I owe it to Diana Lauren and her family to solve this mystery.”
He paced for a bit behind her in the kitchen, then scrubbed a hand over his hair before crossing his arms and staring up at the ceiling. “Fine. But tell him to meet you at that café near his offices downtown. I’ll go with you and have one of my SEAL buddies also keep an eye out on us from the bookstore attached to the coffee shop. He can lurk behind the bookshelves or something.”
“Fine,” Hope agreed, far too quickly, but damn. Excitement and anticipation zinged through her nerve endings. This was the part of a case she loved most, when all the pieces started coming together. She shot off her response to Desmond and waited for him to accept. When it came through, she couldn’t contain a little whoop. She closed her laptop and got up to walk around, wound far too tight to just sit still anymore. “This is so awesome. I need to start making a list of questions to ask him. And I wonder what it is he wants to give me. What if it’s the murder weapon? Or a signed confession? Or—”
“Hey.” Logan stopped her with his hands on her shoulders, blocking her path and bending slightly to put them at eye level. “Calm down. Don’t get too excited. It’s not good for the baby.” She gave him a look and tried to shrug off his hold, but he held fast. “How about we go for a walk outside? Get some fresh air. Might do us both good.”
“No.” He was being all sweet and supportive again, and that was the last thing she needed. She could tell that she was close to getting to the bottom of the mystery—and when that happened and the truth was revealed, Logan would no longer need to protect her. And he would leave. She couldn’t trick herself into believing there was a future with him again, no matter how badly she secretly wanted it. “I’ll stay here and go over my list of interview questions for Desmond.”
He gave her flat stare. “You’ve gone over them about a billion times already, Hope. Seriously. We’ve been cooped up in here the last two days working.” He looked away, as if considering something. “How about I drop you off at your friend Ben’s apartment? Didn’t you say he’d been bugging you to help him finish those party favors? Plus, you told me his place has excellent security. You can spend an hour or so with him while I go for a run, then I’ll pick you back up when I’m done.”
Hope wanted to say no again, but dammit, he was right. She did need to finish those party favors with Ben and he had been bugging her to talk, but she’d been so busy with the case she hadn’t had a chance to call him back. Part of her really wanted to stay here and stew over the upcoming meeting with Desmond Jones, but the other part of her knew how stubborn Logan could be when he got an idea in his head. Rather than have him hover over her shoulder all day, she’d go to Ben’s.
“Okay. Fine. Let me just change and I’ll be right with you,” she said, heading back to her room.
* * *
The following afternoon, Hope and Logan arrived at the busy café to await Desmond Jones’s arrival. Her first instinct was to grab a table while there was still one available, but Logan stopped her. From his expression, she could tell he was in mission mode now. He stopped her with a hand on her arm just inside the door and raised his chin toward another man lurking in the bookshelves across the way. He was big and blond, a few inches shorter than Logan, and looked about the same age.
“Wait until he gives us the all clear,” Logan whispered near her ear, making Hope shiver with unwanted awareness. “Besides, I want to take stock of this Desmond Jones myself before he gets a chance to see us, so let’s hang back for now.”
She sighed and crossed her arms. She’d seen Logan like this before, all bossy and business-like, but it was always during a crisis. Like after the car bomb, or during the accident. Now that they weren’t in any imminent danger—not that she knew of anyway—she had the mental space to appreciate how good he was at what he did professionally. And it reminded her that even though they’d been together, his work with his SEAL team was a big part of his life that he’d never really shared with her.
Then the entrance bells jangled and in walked Desmond Jones.
After the way Hope had built the guy up in her mind, she’d expected a larger-than-life villain or maybe someone like the Godfather. Instead, Desmond Jones looked like a typical businessman, in his tailored suit and tie. He was in his late fifties, tall and dark, with a tense expression and even tenser posture. Logan’s friend gave them the all-clear, and they found a table near the wall that was somewhat shielded by a large potted plant and away from all the noise and bustle of the place.
Hope got out her digital recorder and her notepad, and it was a good thing too, since Desmond didn’t beat around the bush at all. Not a criminal mastermind at all, apparently.
He waited until the server brought them their coffees—tea for Hope—then cleared his throat and dropped a bombshell. “Diana Lauren was my daughter.”
She and Logan exchanged a look, then Hope asked. “And you didn’t mention this to anyone earlier because…”
“Because my family was ashamed of it. And of me.” His broad shoulders sagged. Now that she knew the truth, Hope realized she could see so much of Diana in her father. Same coloring, same mannerisms that she remembered from when Diana had been her babysitter. Desmond continued. “I’d gotten a poor teenaged girl pregnant during my senior year of high school. My parents kept it hushed up at the time, so I could go off to college and have a life. And I did. I went to college, worked my way up in my father’s business, married a beautiful, glamorous woman twelve years younger than me—I did all the things my parents expected of me, and I never told anyone that I had a daughter—not even my wife. But then…” His voice cracked, and Hope felt the oddest urge to reach over and squeeze his hand, offer some comfort. She’d walked into this meeting convinced that she’d be face-to-face with a killer—but that wasn’t what she’d found.
“Then,” Desmond continued, “Diana reached out to me, told me she knew the truth and that she wanted to meet. I thought she’d hate me, that she’d yell at me for never being there for her…but instead, she was so sweet, so happy to finally talk to me, so positive about the idea of us getting to know each other. I went to bed that night, happy for the first time in as long as I could remember—and then it was over. She was gone. All I wanted was to find my little girl, but my hands were tied. My parents never would have allowed me to reveal the truth—and I’ll admit, I was afraid of how my wife would react. But now, my parents are gone, and Clarissa and I are getting a divorce, so it doesn’t matter who knows anymore.” He stirred cream and sugar into his coffee, frowning. “There’s no one left to protect, and I want to know what happened to my daughter, Ms. Cabot.”
Hope sipped her tea and watched him over the rim of her cup. “Did you never want to meet Diana?”
“Sure,” Desmond said. “All along, I regretted abandoning her and her mother the way I did. It was one of the things that fueled my addiction to alcohol, in fact. But Diana’s mother refused to let me have a relationship with her unless I stopped drinking and publicly acknowledged that Diana was mine.” He shrugged. “Frankly, I used that as an excuse. I wasn’t brave enough to stand up to my parents, but this way, I could say that it was Brenda’s choice to put those restrictions in place, and there was nothing I could do about it. But I kept tabs on her, as best I could. When I heard she’d gotten into Johns Hopkins but was considering state school to save money, I had the school set up a scholarship for her. The financial aid office was happy enough to play along and pretend that it was something she’d won.”
“Yes,” Hope said, leaning forward. “We learned about that.”
Desmond nodded, then drank more coffee. “When Diana reached out to me, I was shocked to learn that she’d found out the truth. Her mother had told her my name, so she knew all along that I was her father. I guess me paying her tuition convinced her that I did care about her, and that it would be worthwhile to get in touch. When we met, she also mentioned that she needed a place to stay for the week. She’d planned to crash on a friend’s couch, but I offered to put her up in the hotel. We’d made plans that night to meet up in a few days to talk more.” His expression turned sad. “When she didn’t show up for our meeting, I figured she’d changed her mind about wanting me in her life. It wasn’t until days later, when her mother called to ask if I knew where Diana was that I realized something had gone horribly wrong. When I went to the hotel, I learned that no one had seen her since that night. That’s when I called Brenda back and told her that she should call the police and report Diana as missing. At the time, everyone thought it was a missing person case because all of her things had been removed from the hotel room. They figured she’d just taken off.”
He reached into his suit pocket and pulled out a small plastic bag and slid it across the table to Hope. Inside was a charm bracelet, a pair of earrings, and a watch.
“Those were Diana’s,” Desmond said. “There’s no doubt about that. The charm bracelet—apparently, she wore it all the time. It was a present from her mother, and the charms were things that had special meaning to them. The watch was a graduation present from her grandparents, engraved with her initials. I got the package with these things in it about a week after the last time I visited the hotel. A hotel maid sent them to me. Her note said that she’d taken them because she thought they’d been left behind accidentally—that the previous occupant had forgotten them when checking out. Apparently, if no one calls in the first few days after something is found, the hotel staff gets to keep it. But then the story broke about Diana and she saw the pictures in the paper, recognized the jewelry as something Diana was wearing in one of the pictures the paper ran. She didn’t want to be charged with theft or worse, so she mailed them to me, since I’d rented the room and had come to the hotel to check on Diana.”
Hope stared at the bag like it held a live grenade. “Why didn’t you give it to the police? This is proof that she didn’t leave voluntarily. She wouldn’t have left this stuff behind.”
“I know,” he agreed, “but I couldn’t turn it over, not without falling under suspicion myself.” He sighed. “I also received a threatening note that said they’d come after my family if I ever spoke to the authorities about it. But I’m not scared anymore. I just want Diana’s murder solved.”
Logan took the bag carefully by one corner and wrapped it in a clean napkin before tucking it in his pocket. “We’ll turn these in for you.”
“Thank you.” Desmond rested his elbows on the table and frowned down into his cup. “I blame myself.”
“Why?” Hope asked.
“Because if I hadn’t tried to reconnect with my daughter, she wouldn’t have been at that hotel in the first place.”
“You couldn’t have known,” Hope said, finally giving in to the urge to reach over to place her hand over his. “I have to ask. Do you have any idea who might be behind this?”
“If I had to guess,” he said, “I’d say it was a ransom attempt gone wrong.” At Logan’s narrowed look, he added, “I’m wealthy. It happens. People want a part of that. Anyway, there were a lot of other people around that night, and any of them could’ve seen me hugging Diana, then us talking and laughing in the bar. They must have seen her as a way to get to me.” Desmond rubbed his eyes. “If I’d not tried to meet her, she’d still be alive today.”
Desmond left shortly afterward, leaving Hope and Logan to take in what he’d said.
“Well,” Hope said after a moment, completely spooked. She wished Logan would put his arm around her, but he stayed oddly distant, despite her inching closer to him. Maybe he was still in mission mode. “I guess that confirms Diana was murdered.”
“Hmm.” Logan finished his coffee and stood. “We should get home and figure out how to get this evidence to the police.”
