Pirate

Twenty-nine

Alexandra Avery and her hired PI, Kipp Rogers, watched across the street, waiting until they saw her husband’s car pull up to the front of his office building. About time, she thought, as he stepped out the door with his latest so-called client on his arm into the waiting car.

Kipp snapped a few photos. “Quite the looker, that one.”

“They always are.” How it was that Charles could date someone the same age as his daughter was beyond her. Then again, he’d never been close to his children, always preferring to leave them in the care of nannies when young, then boarding school when they were older. Alexandra always made a point to visit on weekends and talk on the phone. Charles embraced the distance, saying it built character.

And he wondered why it was they never spoke to him.

His loss, not hers.

“Better get to it,” Kipp said once the car drove off, then turned the corner.

She nodded. “I’ll call when I get into his office.”

“I’ll be here.”

She crossed the street and walked into the building. If Charles had the faintest idea of what she was about to do, he’d have her forcibly removed from the building. As it was, she’d made enough innocuous visits this last week to put them all off guard.

Everyone had come to think of her as an interfering, obnoxious, soon-to-be ex — which she was. In this instance, however, she had a perfectly good reason. Although she couldn’t put her finger on it, she knew her husband was up to something beyond his usual buying and stripping companies. Sure, he’d made his fortune from the practice, but the last decade or so she’d noticed he did it not only to stroke his ego but because he enjoyed seeing the lives destroyed after these onetime-thriving businesses were shredded to ruins.

It wasn’t that she was much better than he — after all, she married him for his money way back when. It was more that she’d grown somewhat of a conscience since then. Maybe because she’d seen what this lifestyle had done to her own children.

It would be nice to think that was her only motive, the children, but she knew better. There was also the threat of being completely cut off from the fortune he’d built during the time they were married — which is why she hired Kipp in addition to her legal team.

Fair was fair, and as long as she had a breath in her body, she was not about to let Charles get away with what rightfully belonged to her.

The challenge was making sure she still had a breath in her body, because the way he’d been acting lately, she wouldn’t put it past him to find some way to get rid of her just so he could keep his empire intact.

The first step, however, was finding proof that he was hiding something, and she knew without a doubt if anything was to be found it would be in his office.

She walked through the lobby, smiling at the security guard working the desk. He looked up, saw her, saying, “Your husband just left, Mrs. Avery.”

“He didn’t drop off my cell phone at the desk, did he?”

“No, ma’am.”

“I think I might have left it in his office. I’m just going to run up and have a look around. I might be a while. I have a few phone calls to make.”

He gave a polite nod, then went back to monitoring his screens.

That should keep him from wondering why she wasn’t coming right back down, she thought, taking the elevator to the penthouse.

Charles’s secretary was gone, and the lobby in front of his office empty. Perfect. His door, however, was locked, and she dug out a set of keys, duplicates for about every important room he felt needed to be secured from her.

If only he knew…

She found the key, unlocked the door, then slipped inside, only then wondering if he had any cameras set up.

Not that it mattered. Last she heard, prosecuting half an owner for theft was near impossible.

She set to work, going through his desk drawers first. The man was anal, everything neat, in its place. Doubting he’d keep something he didn’t want seen in so obvious a location, she sat back in his desk chair and looked around. The only thing that caught her eye was that map book he’d been so obsessed about. It sat on a table in the corner of his office, and she walked over, opened it, taking a closer look.

What was it about this thing that had him so fired up? Nothing that she could see. It looked just like the reproduction sitting in their library. She turned the pages, aware of how brittle they were in comparison to the copy at home. Her attention waning, she was just about to close it when she realized that someone had taken a pencil and drawn small circles in various spots around the intricate border design of…

Were those letters?

That’s exactly what they were. Archaic-looking letters that seemed more decorative, since they didn’t spell out any real words.

So why circle them?

She leaned in closer, about to take a better look, when her cell phone rang.

She walked over to the couch and dug it out of her purse, saw it was Kipp. “Glad you didn’t call when I was downstairs,” she said.

“Your ringer’s not off?”

“Who thinks of that stuff?”

“You should, if you’re sneaking around in your husband’s office. You were supposed to call me when you got up there.”

“If you were up here doing what I’m paying you for, I wouldn’t need to worry about that.”

“Right. Because no one would suspect a total stranger digging through your husband’s office. Who better to know what belongs and what doesn’t than you? So what’ve you found?”

“Nothing yet. Except that pirate book that he claims was stolen from some ancient relative of his.”

“The original book?”

“Yeah. Interesting thing, though,” she said, returning to the table and eyeing the yellowed pages. “Someone went to the trouble of circling letters all over it. Like a code.”

“Might explain his obsession. Take photos while you’re there. I’ll check into it. Have you looked at his computer yet?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Hurry up. You’ve already been there too long as it is.”

“You did see the number on his arm when he left? I doubt he’ll be coming back anytime soon.”

“Not worth chancing. Get moving.”

She took her cell phone, snapped pictures of each page of the book, her instincts telling her that whatever Charles was up to, it had something to do with this.

Photos done, she opened up his laptop, typed in the password he used for nearly everything — Pirate — then scanned the folders.

Nothing on there stood out.

She leaned back in his chair, looking around the office, certain she was missing something…

Her gaze strayed to the notepad. He’d ripped off the top sheet, but she recalled the town Fargo written across it and she entered that in the search bar, wondering what his interest in North Dakota was.

But it wasn’t the state that popped up in his Internet search history.

Fargo Group, Sam Fargo, Remi Fargo.

What the…?

A little more digging and she realized his fascination with this couple.

They were treasure hunters.

She glanced at the map book just as her phone started ringing. Kipp, of course. “You’re never going to believe this,” she said. “I know what he’s after.”

“You need to get out of there. He’s on his way up.”