“Wonder what’s going on,” Ian said as they stepped out of the elevator on the ground floor and saw a crowd of people gathered around the front of the casino the next day. “The last thing we need is a delay in getting out of here. I, for one, am ready to put this place at my back.”
“I thought you liked the crowds, noise and activity.” Ian hadn’t said much when they discovered Piper gone, then again, he hadn’t been obsessed with the woman like Brody had.
“I do, or did. Hell, this case has me so fucked up I don’t know what I like anymore.”
Brody smiled at his frustration, suspecting it was Haley who had his friend so confused. He could sympathize with him on that score. Prepared to shove their way through the crowd, both of them were shocked to see Charles Sandoval break through upon spotting them. Flanked by two suits who looked like the lawyer type, he walked right up to them and stuck out his hand.
“Agents Pearce, MacGregor. It’s good to see you again.”
Pushing seventy, Piper’s surrogate father had aged well in the past five years. His full head of hair was now completely grey and new lines creased his face, but otherwise he looked hale and robust. “How long have you known?” Brody asked him after he shook his hand. No point in being uncivil, at least not yet.
“I figured it out the night someone tried to kill me. Where’s my daughter?” Charles asked abruptly, his need to see Piper and assure himself she was all right his top priority.
“Piper left sometime last night, I assume to go back to Missouri. We need to talk. Now.” Brody didn’t have time to play nice. He had to get Charles where he knew he couldn’t take off again, at least until they had time to question him.
“Am I under arrest?” Charles asked him calmly knowing full well they didn’t have enough on him to do so.
“You’re wanted for questioning on a number of matters at this time.”
“Then questions can wait. I’ll speak with you, however, privately.”
“Charles, I have to advise you against that,” the suit to his left said, scowling at him in disapproval.
“Fine,” Charles answered coolly, “you’ve advised me. Agent MacGregor, if you’d like to speak with my attorney’s, feel free to do so. Pearce, we can talk in my office.”
“How do you know you still have an office?” Brody asked him as they left the others and Charles led him to a private elevator.
“I know.” They took the elevator to the second floor where the business offices were and Charles stepped into his office as if he owned the place, which he still did, thank God. Per his instructions from the private plane he had chartered first thing this morning upon getting word that Pasquino was dead, his office was cleaned and aired out, his desk neat and ready for him to resume his seat behind it. Instead, he walked to the bank of windows that overlooked the strip and gazed out at the sights he had missed so much, but not as much as he had missed Piper.
Getting a new identity and living off the money he had stashed in a Swiss bank account under a dummy corporation had been no hardship and neither had spending the last five years living peacefully on a tropical island and traveling throughout Europe whenever he wanted a change of scenery. What had been hard was leaving Piper, having no contact with her, especially right after he realized just how much he loved her. And harder still had been the terror that filled him when he learned by sheer luck that Pasquino had been shown a picture of Christine and knowing it was only a matter of time before he discovered she had left a daughter behind.
“Talk Sandoval,” Brody snapped when the man just stood with his back to him without saying a word. “I don’t have much time.”
“I know.” Heaving a sigh, he turned to face the man he had taken a huge chance on to keep Piper safe. “I wanted to thank you, personally, for looking out for Piper, not just in these past few days, but the past five years.”
“How did you know?” Brody wasn’t surprised by his knowledge of the tabs he had kept on Piper, just curious about how he knew.
“Your face when you heard her and saw her that night. It was more than surprise at seeing her there, it was pure terror for her, the same as I felt. I suspected from your behavior when you returned from your trip to her graduation that something happened between you two, something that made you think of her as more than just a nice kid whose father you thought was a crook. I banked on it.”
Brody wasn’t about to explain what happened between him and Piper back then or now. Let him wonder, he thought irritably, just as she wondered what had happened to him. “What do you mean, you banked on it?” And just that quickly the light bulb went off in his head making him swear a blue streak as he visibly struggled to keep from jumping across that desk and plowing his fist into the man’s face. “It was you,” he
accused him with cold fury. “You’re responsible for her going missing and returning in the state she was in. What the fuck were you thinking?!”
Charles closed his eyes to briefly block out the fury on Brody’s face before sucking it up and facing him head on again. “I was desperate. I don’t expect you to understand how a parent feels when they know their child is in danger, the fear and desperation that make you do the unthinkable if it means keeping her safe.”
“Piper’s not your daughter,” he threw at him coldly as he remembered all the times she had looked at him with uncertainty and fear over her memory loss.
“The hell she’s not,” he snapped back, just as furious now as Brody was. “I may have been too wrapped up in this place,” he said, waving his arm in a wide arc, “to realize it until it was almost too late, but that girl is my daughter in every way except biologically, and I don’t give a rat’s ass who planted the seed. She took her first steps into my arms, called me daddy and it was me her mother trusted to take care of her. I was there when he wasn’t and that’s all that matters.”
“You weren’t there these past five years,” Brody reminded him.
“I know,” he admitted more calmly. “And that was my fault. I’m not about to confess to you about anything, I just wanted you to know that everything I did, from hiding out all this time to orchestrating her disappearance in a gamble that you’d run to her rescue and stay until she was safe was because she means more to me than anyone else in this world. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for her. I was hoping she’d still be here so I could tell her myself.”
“You know where she is and obviously you had help with your little scheme. I’m thinking your friend Doc. He would have the means to get drugs, drugs that cause amnesia, sexual enhancement drugs. Why that one, why leave her to suffer like that?”
Charles sank down onto his chair, leaned his elbows on his desk and rubbed his hands tiredly over his face. He had had some bad moments over his decision to have Doc give her the aphrodisiac, as a parent he didn’t want to think about its effects or what Brody had done about it. “It had been so long since you’d seen her, I needed to make sure you didn’t just assure yourself she was okay and then leave again. I was hoping if you picked up where you left off in Geneva you’d be more inclined to stay awhile.”
And damned if his little plot hadn’t worked like a charm, Brody thought derisively. “Pasquino didn’t know who she was last night, so why did you think she’d be in any more danger now than any time before that.?”