The Fall of East: Book 3 in the Hear No Evil Trilogy by Malone, Nana (best reads .txt) 📕

He hesitated at my door. "Hazel said that hanging out with you was nice."

I winced. "Right. Yeah, I've seen more of her."

"Thank you for that. I know she doesn't really make friends easily. And she's new to the area, so it's kind of you to spend time with her."

I blinked in surprise. Were we actually have a polite conversation? "Um, okay. Sure. That's me, kind."

He sighed. "This is awkward for me, honestly. I'd rather you two weren't friends. But she seems to like you."

"I don't know why it would be awkward for you, Denning," I said with a straight face.

With a nod, he knocked twice on my door jamb, then strutted out. I couldn't help but smile to myself. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t want to kill him.

I realized that I'd been tensing my shoulders, which made them throb. I forced myself to relax and do some of the physical therapy exercises I'd been taught. The therapist came to the penthouse every other day to put me through my paces. First thing in the morning, so it wouldn’t impact work.

Turning back to my desk, I moved my mouse. I smiled automatically at the photo of East and I at Piazza del Duomo. The sunset had been so vividly intense, it felt like we could reach up and touch the sky. The day tour of Milan had been great. People chasing us notwithstanding, I was glad we had an opportunity to go.

With Telly digging through fingerprints and Lucas going to get us Lord Jameson's prints, we were on the right path. So for me, it was just a matter of focusing on work.

Mostly, my work consisted of going through inventory of the artifacts and paintings we'd discovered at the car park, the authentications, tracking down registered owners… none of this was sexy stuff. But the amount of art that had been recovered by following the paper trail was astounding.

I knew when to pay attention. But when my eyes started to go bleary, I shifted to my other side project. The file Theroux had given me. I’d brought the box to work, because I knew that once I was home, there was no way East was going to allow me to work on it. He was going to insist on taking care of me. Which could be worse, but my brain needed to pick at the puzzle, or I was going to go insane.

I placed the box on my desk. I'd already been through half of it, but so far, nothing had given me any clues as to what I was even looking for.

It was mostly lots of information about Theroux. His movements, his known associates, how he managed his jobs. On one job in particular, he'd dressed up in character. He assumed an identity for three weeks. He posed as a teacher at a posh boarding school just to steal a ring. It wasn't just any ring, though. It belonged to Prince Skarsgard from Norway. In his teens, he'd been on an archeological dig with his father, and he found a priceless artifact believed to belong to Princess Anastasia. For those who followed Russian culture, that ring was priceless. But it sat there on the prince's pinky. Theroux knew he’d have the opportunity to get close to the prince when he attended a parents’ weekend at his son’s boarding school, and he crafted the identity that would put him in the right place at the right time. I had to give it to him. It was brilliant.

Lucas probably salivated over Theroux’s heists. From what I had read about Lucas himself, he had a very particular streak as well. Not as high-end or as public as Theroux's, but he'd still made a nuisance of himself in America.

I pulled out a file of witness statements from the box. When I sat back down, I propped my feet up. One by one, I went through the pieces of evidence that my father had compiled, chasing him for the last job Theroux did. It didn't matter how I looked at it, none of it made sense until I came across a photo of a woman in black and white. Nothing was written on the back. She was shown in profile, and her thick dark hair hung to her back and blew in the wind. There was something about the angle of her head, and I frowned. Why did she look so familiar?

And then my brain locked in. She looked like my mother, but not identical. Her jaw was fuller and the nose too sharp. The French Riviera was in the background. Her face was partially obscured by a hat, but there were her lips… Mum?

My hands shook as I sat up and pulled out a photo I had of her in my wallet. It was of me, my father, and her on holiday. Dad had me up on his shoulders and we were all smiling and happy. I was looking at my mother, and she was glancing up at me. It was my favorite photo of her.

There were certainly more at my father's house and one of my mother and father when they were married. But this one was my favorite. Still, the nose was wrong, but why did this unknown woman look like her? It couldn't be. Could it? If it was, what was my mother’s photo doing in a witness file?

I set it aside and looked through the rest of the box. There were no other photos. I kept coming back to that picture. It wasn't attached to anything. It wasn't clipped to a statement. Nothing indicated that it was supposed to be in this box. Had dad brought the photo and mistakenly got it shuffled in here when he was investigating? That didn't make any sense.

I pulled out the witness statements in the file. There was confidential informant documentation. It looked different than what we used now, but it covered the basics. The woman was identified as