Read Online Raven on the Wing by Kay Hooper - Free Book Online

other apartment, and it
is
leased to Travers, not sublet. The staff wouldn’t talk.
    “She left the penthouse this morning, did a quick-change routine in a garage, and met a man at a museum. If I hadn’t known to look for the Pinto, I would have missed her, because she looked that different. It was definitely a prearranged meeting, maybe for some kind of exchange of information. I couldn’t go into the room to overhear them. I would have been too obvious; the room was empty except for them.”
    Rafferty’s normally humorous face was sober, as was his voice. “And then?”
    “Then she returned to the garage, changed back to her glamorous self, and went back to the penthouse.” He shook his head, frowning. “I managed to find a talkative maid in the cleaning service for the building—not easy, believe me. Their security is pretty tight. But the maid said Raven Anderson is very quietly known as the Ice Maiden. She’s been there only a few weeks. None of the staff believes she’s Travers’s mistress; they think he’d have more luck with a glacier.”
    “And domestic help usually knows that kind of thing,” Rafferty observed almost to himself.
    “Damn right they do.” Lucas sighed. “So it looks like the boss was right about that, anyway.”
    Zach stirred a bit and looked at the other two. “Maybe he’s right about the rest. When he came out of the penthouse the other night, he
believed
her. Somehow, she’d convinced him. And we all know how many women have tried to con Josh in one way or another through the years. He’s nobody’s fool. I think he’s right about her background being fabricated.”
    Rafferty looked at him sharply. “Because Josh believes in her? Or was there something that finally turned up in her background? You said it checked out.”
    “Oh, it did.” Zach nodded morosely. “On the surface. We dug deeper, and it checked out. Then we kept digging—and a funny thing is happening.”
    “Don’t keep us in suspense,” Josh drawled from the doorway.
    The three men watched as he came out of his bedroom and moved to lean against the desk.None of them got to their feet, but only because Josh disliked formality. Besides, their respect for Josh needed no outward signs to be apparent.
    Rafferty, the newest arrival, blinked when he saw his friend and employer of several years. Josh had lost weight, he realized, and there was something different in his eyes, something almost haunted. “Hello, Josh.”
    “Rafferty.” Josh smiled a little. “Come to keep me out of jail, or what?”
    “You been ignoring your parking tickets?”
    “No.”
    “Well, then, I’m just here as an advisor. I think.” He looked at Zach, who nodded.
    “I thought he should be here, Josh. Things are beginning to look damn complicated.”
    Josh crossed his arms over his chest and laughed faintly with no humor. “I might have known I couldn’t even conduct a private courtship without trouble of some kind.” His life was a public one, and Josh had learned over the years that nothing could be simple for him. Then he shot Rafferty a quick look. “In casethey didn’t convince you, that dossier on Raven is a bundle of lies—or some awful mistake.”
    “They convinced me.”
    “Fine.” Josh looked at Zach. “So what’s funny?”
    “Well, as I said, we dug deeper. And all of a sudden, people aren’t talking to us. With a vengeance. And Lucas’s contact in the intelligence community just closed down tight as a drum.”
    “I couldn’t get the time of day from him,” the investigator confirmed. “It smells, Josh.”
    Josh, who knew quite a bit himself about intelligence games, frowned. “A cover-up?”
    “No, just dead silence. And my instincts are yelling that we’re about to be warned off. Somebody doesn’t want us digging into Raven Anderson’s background.”
    “Travers?”
    “The odor doesn’t drift from that direction. Federal, I’d say.”
    Josh thought of the keen intelligence in violet eyes.