“You’ll remember the dossier we compiled when you met Eva,” he began.
Focused by the sound of my wife’s name, I straightened. “Of course.”
The memory of the day I met Eva came rushing back. I’d been seated in the limo at the curb, seconds from pulling away from the Crossfire. She had been entering the building. I watched her, felt the pull of her. Unable to resist, I told Angus to wait and I went back in to find her, chasing after a woman—something I’d never done.
She’d dropped her name badge when she saw me and I retrieved it for her, noting her name and the company she worked for. By the end of the night, I’d had a thin folder on my home office desk containing a quick background check—again, something I’d never done for a mere sexual interest. Somehow, on a level I hadn’t yet recognized, I knew she was mine. Knew that however I deluded myself, she was going to be important to me.
In the days that followed, the dossier grew, encompassing Eva’s parents and Cary, then Eva’s paternal and maternal grandparents.
“We’ve kept a lawyer on retainer in Austin,” Angus went on, “to send us any reports of unusual activity with Harrison and Leah Tramell.”
Monica’s parents. Their estrangement from their daughter and granddaughter was just fine with me. Less family to deal with. But I also understood that while they might not have had any interest in Eva as an illegitimate grandchild, their minds might change when Eva publicly became my wife. “What have they done?”
“They died,” he said bluntly, unzipping the binder. “Nearly a month ago.”
That gave me pause. “Eva doesn’t know. We were just talking over the weekend about wedding invitations and they came up. I assume Monica doesn’t keep tabs on them.”
“She wrote the obituary that appeared in the local paper.” Angus withdrew a photocopy and set it on the table.
Picking it up, I scanned through it quickly. The Tramells had died together, in a boating accident during a summer vacation. The accompanying photo was decades old, with clothing and hair dating it to sometime in the seventies. They were an attractive couple, well dressed and expensively accessorized. What didn’t fit was the hair—even in a black-and-white newspaper printing I could see they were both dark-haired.
I read the closing sentence. Harrison and Leah are survived by their daughter, Monica, and two grandchildren. Looking up at Angus, I repeated aloud, “Two grandchildren? Eva has a sibling?”
Lucky wriggled out of my lax grip and jumped to the floor.
Angus took a deep breath. “That mention and the photo made me take a deeper look.”
He pulled out a picture and set it down.
I glanced at it. “Who is that?”
“That’s Monica Tramell—now Monica Dieck.”
My blood turned cold. The woman in the photo was a brunette, like her parents. And she looked nothing like the Monica I knew or my wife. “I don’t understand.”
“I haven’t yet figured out what Eva’s mother’s actual name is, but the real Monica Tramell had a brother named Jackson who was briefly married to Lauren Kittrie.”
“Lauren.” Eva’s middle name. “What do we know about her?”
“For now, nothing, but that’ll change. We’re looking.”
I raked my hand through my hair. “Is it possible we’ve confused the Tramells and looked at the wrong family?”
“No, lad.”
Standing, I went to the bar. I took two tumblers off the shelf and poured two fingers of Ardbeg Uigeadail single malt into each. “Stanton would’ve checked out Monica—Eva’s mother—thoroughly before he married her.”
“You didn’t find out about Eva’s past until she told you,” he pointed out.
He was right. The records of Eva’s abuse, her miscarriage, the court transcripts, the settlement … they’d all been meticulously buried. When I’d tasked Arash with drafting the prenuptial agreement, we had verified her financial assets and debts, but that was all. I loved her. I wanted her. Discrediting her in any way had never been considered.
Stanton loved his wife as well. Her personal fortune, accumulated after two financially advantageous divorces, would have addressed the most pressing concern. As for the rest, I expect he and I had acted similarly. Why search for trouble when all indications were that there was none? Love was willfully blind and made fools of men.
I rounded the bar and nearly tripped over Lucky as he bounded in front of me. “Benjamin Clancy is damned good. He wouldn’t have missed this.”
“We missed it.” He took the glass I handed him. “If the Tramells hadn’t passed away, we still wouldn’t know. The background check was clean.”
“How can it be clean, for fuck’s sake?” I knocked back the whiskey in one swallow.