Fearless - Fern Michaels Page 0,92

the gates and parked in the garage. Mandy was still staying over a few nights a week. Christina had a walking cast on, and tonight she’d had Tiffany over to spend the night, a celebration of sorts.

As soon as she changed into her sleep shirt, Anna went to her personal computer and sent Barb an e-mail telling her that she would no longer continue to cover Ryan’s hotel. Then she went to the website of the credit card she had used and sent a message asking that the card be cancelled, then paid the balance. A whopping seventy-three hundred dollars. That done, she logged on to her Facebook page and read a few posts, seeing that she had a friend request from someone named Laura Jones. Anna thought she was probably the friend of a friend, and though she was not sure, she was in a good mood, so she accepted the request.

She clicked on the page, a bit surprised to find photos of the event she had just attended. She recognized a few of the people in the photos, but she wasn’t sure who this Laura Jones was. She clicked the mouse and enlarged the picture, and though she had never met this woman, she knew she’d seen her recently.

Then she remembered. This was the face in the photographs Daniel had taken of the pictures in Renée’s luggage. Only, she was much older and hadn’t aged well. She looked rough, unlike the usual glammed-up women who attended the event. These weren’t photoshopped, some kook trying to play mind games with her. This was real.

The implication behind the photos blew her away. How could this be? Was she seeing more than was actually there? She examined the pictures again. This was definitely an older version of the woman in the pictures he’d shared with her.

If she put two and two together, and she was quite capable of doing so, she had to conclude that Laura Jones was none other than Ryan Robertson’s dead wife.

She glanced at the clock, saw it was after one in the morning but didn’t care. She called Daniel. He needed to know what she’d just discovered.

Ryan’s wife was alive and well.

“Hey, it’s late. This better be important.”

“It is.” She relayed the evening’s events, then explained about the friend request. “I’m going to send these pictures to you while you’re on the phone, and I need someone to tell me I haven’t completely lost my mind. Give me a minute.” Anna clicked and pasted the photos in an e-mail, then sent them to him. “You should have them any second.”

“Let me boot up my laptop. Two seconds,” he said.

Anna heard his fingers clicking across the keyboard.

“Okay, I have them. Give me a minute to look at them.”

“Sure,” Anna said. This had to be the ultimate lie. And his kids? Did they believe their mother was dead? And if so, what could possibly keep a father from telling his children the truth?

“You’re right, it’s her. Aged, and not too kindly, but it’s her. She’s using a different name, obviously. I don’t know what this means or how it relates to your case, whether or not she’s involved in some way. It’s hard to get something past me, and this, well, let’s just say I’m shocked. I’m going to make a few calls, see what I can find out. Are you going to be up for a while?”

“I’ll never be able to sleep unless I pop an Ambien, and I’m trying to ease off those things. So, yes, I’ll be awake.”

“Talk soon,” Daniel said, ending the call.

Anna was also in a semi state of shock. Nothing made sense. Poor Renée. She didn’t like the girl. She had tried to kill her daughter; whether that was her intent or not was yet to be determined, but still, to not know your mother was alive. It couldn’t be good, whatever the reason for her disappearance, if that’s what it was. Or maybe she’d left and decided after all these years to return.

The publicity surrounding her daughter—had it brought her out of hiding? Anna was at a total loss for any reasonable explanation.

Her phone rang, and it was Daniel. “Did you find out anything?”

“I did, and I hope you’re sitting down because you’re not going to believe what I learned about this woman. This story just keeps getting stranger by the minute.”

Daniel told her what he’d found out. As he had predicted, Anna was shocked. Though she’d just told Daniel she was