Lyn Stone – Mission: Marriage: Bulletproof Marriage (страница 26)
“Boyhood friends, best friends.” She’d heard the stories all her life.
“Yes. But, when we were growing up, there was another.” He cleared his throat, still sounding coolly collected. “There were three of us.”
“Three?” She didn’t understand. “All I’ve ever heard about were my dad and you. Corbett and Phillip. Best friends. There were only the two of you.”
“No. There was another. We swore a vow, your father and I, never to talk of him or to say his name.”
“But all the photographs I have show only you two.”
“We destroyed all the others. But now, I’ll break my own vow.” Corbett sounded grim. “The Hungarian was the third. We were inseparable. Phillip, myself and … Viktor.”
“Viktor?”
“Yes. Viktor was—is—my cousin.”
“Are you telling me that my father is safe?”
“Not exactly.”
Her temples were starting to ache. “Explain, please.”
“Phillip went in to try to—as he put it—talk some sense into the Hungarian. He ended up being a prisoner.”
She could barely contain her impatience. “Is he in real danger or not?”
“I’m not sure. Viktor has no reason to hate him, unless it’s because he associates him with me. But my cousin’s mental instability is a factor. Either way, before you make plans to try and rescue him, your father thinks he can handle this himself. He says he doesn’t want you going anywhere near him.”
“Of course he doesn’t!” Natalie exploded. “But you and I both know I’m going anyway once I know where he is. Where is he?”
“He refused to tell me.”
Natalie wondered again if Corbett was telling the truth.
“What are his reasons?” Sean stepped forward, placing a cautionary hand on Natalie’s shoulder.
Corbett sighed. “He has some crazy idea of trying to talk sense into my cousin. After all, we were all close friends once.”
“What happened to change that?” Natalie asked.
“Now is not the time—”
“Yes, it is. Now more than ever before, we need to lay all our cards on the table.” She shot Sean a meaningful look. Narrowing his eyes, he shook his head.
Corbett coughed. “I really don’t think—”
Ruthless, again she cut him off. “Neither do we. Now tell us what happened to make your own cousin hate you so much that he wants to kill you.”
Silence.
“A woman?” Sean guessed.
“Yes.” Corbett’s clipped reply told them he still found the subject unpleasant. Tough. “We all fell in love with the same woman.”
Incredulous, Natalie met Sean’s gaze. “All three of you?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“She must have been some woman.”
“She was.”
Natalie swallowed as a thought occurred to her. “Please tell me this wasn’t my mother?”
“No.” Finally, Corbett chuckled. “This happened a year before Phillip met Evelyn. One year, three months, and a few days, to be exact.”
“You’ve never forgotten her.” Sean made the question a statement. “Even after all this time.”
“Phillip recovered first. Loving Evelyn helped him.”
The nonanswer intrigued her. “What about you?”
“I barely remember her face.”
Though she suspected Corbett was being less than truthful, she didn’t comment. Instead, she tried to stick to the information related to the topic. “But Viktor still …”
“Who knows what Viktor thinks?” Corbett’s usually civilized tone was laced with acid bitterness. “Obviously, he still wants revenge.”
“For what? You still haven’t told us what happened to cause the split between you three.”
The strangled sound that came over the phone line revealed the depths of Corbett’s pain. “She chose me.”
“And Viktor didn’t deal with this well?”
“No. Viktor had a psychotic breakdown. He raped and killed her.”
Shocked, Natalie and Sean locked gazes. “He what?”
“He raped and killed her and then blamed me for her death.” Clearing his throat, Corbett made an obvious effort to regain his composure. “I went to the police, but Viktor had disappeared.”
Natalie wanted to ask how and why, but Sean, apparently reading her mind, shook his head.
“Now that you know the past,” Corbett continued. “How will that knowledge help with the present? Viktor has your father, my closest friend. And Phillip somehow believes he can talk sense into a madman.”
Sean’s expression revealed how stunned he was by Corbett’s news, though his steady voice gave away nothing. “Surely you have an operative in place who can help us?”
“SIS might be a better source.”
Natalie shook her head. “No. I’m not contacting them. Until the mole is captured, I can’t trust anyone.”
“I understand. Let me make a few phone calls and see if I can set up a meeting.”
“Just warn your guy,” Sean spoke up. “Have him take precautions. We don’t want another one of your operatives to wind up dead.”
Corbett agreed, promising to phone them back once he’d arranged a meeting.
While they waited for his call, Sean went out for more food while Natalie continued working on the laptop. When he returned a few minutes later with a packet of freshly made roast-beef sandwiches, she put the computer aside. In silence, they devoured the food, washing it all down with warm root beer.
Corbett called a few minutes after they’d finished.
“I’ve got someone working on it,” he said. “My operative is trying to arrange a meeting for you with one of his sources. The guy’s been claiming to know where the Hungarian is holed up. If he talks, he’ll want cash for the information.”
Cash. The one thing they were short of.
“We don’t have any—”
“I do,” Sean interrupted. “How much do you think he’ll want, Corbett?”
“Depending on who you speak with, it could be anywhere from eight hundred euros to eight thousand.”
Sean whistled. “High-priced informants you got there, don’t you think?”
“Not for the kind of information we’re wanting.”
“Corbett?” Natalie heard the tremble in her voice and realized she was perilously close to tears. “If you hear anything else about my father—or
“I will.”