the hand.”
“Right!” he said, pointing the mustard-covered knife in the air. “That was it. Okay, so what about it?”
“Well, I was in a village in Tular recently,” she explained, leaning forward. “Several of the women had disappeared one night. When I started asking questions, a witness said that they remembered seeing a stranger wearing a shirt with an emblem on the right corner. A hand with a flame coming out of the palm.” She waited for her father to understand the significance.
He stopped making sandwiches and turned to look at Ella. “You think there’s a connection between a party an old man had more than fifteen years ago and someone walking by a village in another continent?” he asked incredulously.
Ella shrugged and accepted the sandwich he offered. “I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”
Tom sighed and took his seat across from her again. “If Edward Reynolds is involved, it might be dangerous, honey.”
Ella took a sip of her lemonade. “I don’t care. If that man is doing something illegal, I’m going to find out.”
Her father’s eyes turned wary. “What if the man just had a party with weird, kinky sex?”
Ella cringed. “Eww! That’s too horrible to think about.” She put her sandwich down, not really hungry anyway. “It’s possible that he had some kinky sex parties, Dad. But what if he had a party with women who weren’t there voluntarily?” she offered. “What if that man is involved in sex trafficking?”
Her father’s eyes sharpened now, anger starting to burn inside of him. “You think it’s something that nefarious?”
Ella sighed and looked down at the table, thinking, trying to put the puzzle pieces together, but there were too many holes. “I won’t know until I look into the issue. There’s definitely a connection. That pin and the description of the symbol on the shirt…they’re too similar. And the women who had disappeared, they were sick and vulnerable. Two had been kidnapped the month before, beaten brutally, and weren’t recovering well. They needed medical attention, the kind that the small villagers couldn’t provide.”
“That’ sounds awful,” Tom replied with a heavy sigh. “I know that you dive into these mysteries and, so far, you’ve come out unscathed. But Ella, please be careful with this one. If there is a connection to Edward Reynolds and the disappearing women, then…”
Ella put her hand on her father’s forearm. “I’ll be careful,” she promised. “I’ve learned over the years to be discreet.”
Tom sighed, nodding but he didn’t pick up his sandwich again. “Good,” he told her. “Good.”
Chapter 3
“Figures,” Ella grumbled, staring up at the imposing building that housed the headquarters of Reynolds Industries. Over the past few days, she’d done her research and, although the Duke of Theeds, Edward Reynolds, was still alive, he wasn’t active in the social world anymore. But he hadn’t passed his title or wealth on to his son, Malcolm Reynolds. In a way, Ella respected Malcolm more because he’d created so much from nothing. He hadn’t inherited his wealth, like so many rich aristocrats in the world. He’d created a massive empire through grit and determination. He was thirty-six years old and a billionaire many times over. He bought ailing companies, fixed them up, and sold them off. So he didn’t really own anything, other than a huge amount of land and real estate, all of which was separate from his investment company.
And yet, she remembered that shiver of awareness a couple of days ago at the restaurant. The man was tall and arrogant, she thought. But if there was one thing that had never impressed her, it was wealth. In fact, because of the way Edward Reynolds had treated Ella’s mother, the way the arrogant jerk had simply tossed her out of his house because he could, his disdain for decades of loyalty and service had caused Ella to despise people with a disproportionate amount of wealth. They had too much power and, in most cases, wielded that power with contemptuous disregard for anyone outside of their social circle.
But staring up at this imposing building, Ella felt…something. Something strange that…well, it wasn’t important, she thought. “He’s just compensating,” she muttered.
“What do you suspect I’m compensating for?” a deep voice asked from behind her.
Startled, Ella swung around, finding Malcolm Reynolds much closer than she’d anticipated. Much closer and…had he grown a few inches taller over the past few days? The man was crazy tall! Well over six feet. Ella was five feet, seven inches, so she was relatively tall for