Single Malt by Layla Reyne

Author:Layla Reyne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2016-07-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Pen twirling around his thumb, Aidan reviewed the papers scattered on the conference room table, searching for answers in the data Walker’s overnight searches had produced.

Emily Richards died five years ago, the summer after she and Jo Ann Richmond graduated from Tulane. Why had Jo Ann assumed her best friend’s identity? Who or what was she running from? Was her past connected to the present security breaches at GNL? Who was she with Tuesday morning?

Familiar voices in the hallway grew louder as they approached. Aidan’s gut clenched. Laughing, Walker and Torres walked in, their heads close like they had been last night. Aidan had set this farce in motion and he liked it less and less by the minute. “Sampling more of the local cuisine?”

Walker withdrew the arm he’d started to extend, curling the cardboard cup he held toward himself instead. “I’d picked up this Mexican coffee for you, but I think I’ll keep it for myself now.” He took a sip and sat across from Aidan.

Torres claimed the chair next to him. “Any luck, Agent Talley?”

“Striking out, like you.” Aidan stared down the other man.

Ignoring them both, Walker opened his laptop. “Let’s see if Magnum’s had better luck.”

Disregarding the ridiculous, adorable fact that Walker had named his computer after a fictional detective—albeit a very hot one, in his prime—Aidan kept his attention on Torres. “No one at the nursing home had any idea Jo Ann wasn’t Dale Richards’s real daughter?”

“As far as anyone there knew, Jo Ann Richmond was Emily Richards. She’d arranged Dale’s admittance and visited twice a week. Staff said she sometimes looked a little frazzled, but no more than the kid of any other patient with early-onset Alzheimer’s.”

“And he played along with it?”

“By the time she admitted him, he couldn’t remember his own name. If he slipped up and called her Jo Ann from time to time, no one thought anything of it.”

“I may have something,” Barnes interrupted from the doorway.

Aidan gestured to the seat beside him. “Let’s hear it.”

Agent Hipster eagerly took the offered seat and placed a thin orange file folder on the table. “We received Jo Ann’s foster records this morning. I’ve been going through them to see if she crossed paths with anyone local.”

“Any hits?”

From the file, he pulled out a grainy black-and-white copy of a Louisiana driver’s license. “Eric Hamilton. He was Jo Ann’s foster brother in her last home before she moved on campus. Eighteen months ago, Hamilton was discharged from the navy. Six months ago, he got a job at the Port of Galveston.”

Aidan rifled through the meager contents of the background search. In addition to the driver’s license were copies of Hamilton’s Port employment application, his union card, and a list of known addresses. There were no military discharge papers. “What was he discharged for?”

“His file is sealed.”

Aidan slammed the folder shut. “We’re the fucking FBI.”

Barnes rolled his chair back a bit. “It’s classified. Gary’s working on it.”

Across the table, Walker cleared his throat and gave Aidan a look that said “calm the fuck down.

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