She arched her eyebrows. “I grew up in this city. I’m sure I know it just as well as you do.”
“You don’t know my turf.”
“Well, how about we eat on neutral territory then?” she suggested. “I’m sure you can think of a restaurant that would suit us both.”
I did have somewhere. “Fine. We’ll leave here at seven. Oh, and wear something classy, like a little black dress. Actually, I’ve got a present for you that would go with an outfit like that perfectly.”
I watched with amusement as news of me buying her a present caused her emotions to war on her face. Where I was completely closed off and unreadable, Hallie wore her feelings in the turn of her mouth, in the colour of her eyes, in the pallor or pinkness of her skin. Right now, I could see hope beaming from her, and perhaps I felt just the tiniest bit guilty. Poor Hallie Wynter wanted this to work out. Was her loyalty so great to her family that she actuallywantedto marry someone like me, or could there be a spark of something real between us?
Internally, I shook the thought from my head. None of this was real. She was just a girl who was being forced into something she didn’t want, and who was making the best out of a bad situation.
I liked to think I was doing the same.
She blinked a couple of times. “You have?”
“Absolutely. I’ll bring it up to the bedroom later today. Now go and unpack, or rest, but stay put. I have some business to attend to.”
“I won’t stay put. I’ve already planned to meet Layla for coffee.”
I was tempted to tell her not to defy me, but instead I decided to pick my fights. I might have a far bigger one on my hands once she discovered what the present was that I’d bought her.
“Fine, but don’t be late.”
She stuck out her chin, a smile of victory pressed behind her lips, and turned and ran the rest of the way up the stairs.
Silly girl. She hadn’t won.
I needed to go to my father and tell him what had happened in Estonia. He wasn’t going to be happy that we hadn’t nailed down the culprit for sure. Had we also lost our forger at the same time? What did it even matter if we couldn’t trust that particular forger to deliver the right goods?
We still weren’t any closer to making the Gilligans pay for murdering Harvey. My father said we wouldn’t until we had proof, but I didn’t see what more proof we needed.
A thought occurred to me. If Hallie and I reached the point of a wedding, would someone try to kill me, too? I wanted to believe that we’d be smarter this time around, that we wouldn’t allow any holes in our security, but we’d believed we’d done that the first time around. Wait a minute. What the fuck was I thinking? There wasn’t going to be a wedding. It would never get to that point.
***
MY FATHER STOOD INhis customary place by the floor-to-ceiling windows in his office. He appeared to ignore me as I ran through what had gone down in Estonia, but I knew he was taking in every word.
I told him everything. There was no point in lying to my father.
“Sly shot Rasmus’s brother, Kaspar,” I finished. “We dumped the body in the woods for the animals to take care of and then got out of there.”
“And you still don’t know who stole our fucking money?”
I pressed my tongue against the inside of my lower lip and glanced away. I hated being told off like I was a naughty boy instead of a grown man.
“We believe it was someone on the Estonian side of the shipping company. Don’t worry. I’ve got a handle on it.”
Samuel Cornell turned to face me. Behind him, the Thames ran in a muddied snake of brown.
“Rasmus’s brother might have been able to give you a name.”
“I know that. We did take Kaspar’s phone. Sly believes he can hack into it and get whatever information is on it. If Kaspar had contacts he was dealing with in regard to our money, they should be on that phone, and we might be able to narrow down who made the switch.”
“We’d have narrowed it down a lot quicker if we’d just been able to question Kaspar.”
I gritted my teeth. “I wasn’t the one who shot him.”
My father shook his head. “It was your team, Tam. You take responsibility. Honestly, I expected more from you.”