LITMIR.BIZ

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A guard stepped out to meet them. Sophie lowered her window. “I’m Sophie Montgomery,” she said. “I have a meeting with Mr. Prentice.”

      “Yes, Ms. Montgomery, we’ve been expecting you.” He nodded to Rand. “Who’s he?”

      “This is my friend Jake Peters.” It was the name they’d agreed on, in case Prentice had a roster of the task force. Jacob was Rand’s middle name and Peters was his mother’s maiden name.

      “Mr. Peters is not on our list of authorized guests,” the guard said.

      “I am a single woman and Mr. Prentice is a stranger to me,” she said frostily, also as they’d rehearsed. “He can’t expect me to come to his house, in this remote location, alone.”

      “Wait here a moment.” The guard retreated to the stone hut and made a phone call. He was back a moment later. “Someone will be along in a moment to escort you to the main house. Wait here.”

      “How many houses does he have?” Sophie whispered when the guard had walked away.

      “I think there are a couple of places where the help live,” Rand said.

      A Jeep roared down the road in front of them and slid to a stop inches from the rental car’s bumper. The driver, also dressed in desert camo, motioned for them to follow, then turned the Jeep and headed back up the road.

      They drove up the gravel drive, around a curve and up a hill. At the top, Sophie gasped and stomped on the brake. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said.

      The place was definitely a castle, but more Disney than Dusseldorf. Constructed of gray stone, it featured crenellated battlements, towers and turrets...even a drawbridge, though there was no moat. “It’s like something you’d see in Vegas,” she said.

      “Being rich obviously doesn’t guarantee good taste,” Rand said. “But I suspect it’s another of his ploys to goad the government into buying him out. He tried to get the feds to buy the land and incorporate it into the national park. When that didn’t work, he threatened to build a triple-X theater right at the park entrance, but the county passed an ordinance making such places illegal. Finally, he built this monstrosity. I suspect he thought if he created a big enough eyesore, the public would push for its removal.”

      “But you can’t see the building from the road.”

      “You get a great view of it from the Pioneer Point overlook in the park, though. It actually blocks a view of the Curecanti Needle, one of the most famous natural rock formations in the country.”

      She shook her head and drove on.

      They parked under an arching portico and a stone-faced servant who looked and acted like a bodyguard ushered them into a great hall reminiscent of a medieval stronghold. “Mr. Prentice will see you in the library,” the man said, and led the way to a pair of large wooden doors.

      The room in question was indeed filled with books, and with a Native-American pottery collection that, if it was authentic, would command hundreds of thousands of dollars. Rand wondered if any of it was legal, or if Prentice had acquired it from the network of grave robbers who ransacked the pueblos.

      “This place is a real fortress,” he said, standing close to Sophie in the middle of the room. “I saw at least three guards from the hallway.”

      “You don’t know that they’re guards.”

      “Right. Maybe he’s recruiting his own football team. Why does one man need that kind of protection?”

      “I imagine someone with a lot of money could be a target.”

      “Or someone with a lot of enemies.”

      “So sorry to keep you waiting.”

      They turned as Richard Prentice approached. He looked small in the massive room, with more gray in his hair than in the pictures Rand had seen and a slight paunch showing in spite of his expertly cut suit. He walked forward to meet them, hand outstretched to Sophie. “Ms. Montgomery, I’m delighted to meet you.” He ignored Rand completely, which was fine by him. He had no desire to shake this man’s hand.

      Rand followed Sophie to a love seat upholstered in butter-colored leather and sat beside her. Prentice took the matching chair opposite. “Your message said you’re looking for your sister, Lauren Starling. How can I help you?”

      “She’s been missing since late May,” Sophie said. “Park rangers found her car in Black Canyon of the Gunnison Park, but no one has seen any trace of Lauren. I found your business card in her apartment in Denver and I wondered if she’d been to see you.”

      “I’d heard of her disappearance, but I’m afraid I can’t be of any help to you. I haven’t seen Lauren in four or five months, at least.”

      “How do you know her?” Rand asked.

      Sophie shot him a pained look. All right, he’d promised to keep his mouth shut, but honestly, Prentice was so oily and smooth, Rand wanted to put him on edge.

      “How did you and Lauren know each other?” Sophie asked, her voice soft, less demanding than Rand’s.

      “We met at a fund-raiser in Denver earlier this year, to raise money for an orphanage in Guatemala that is a special interest of mine.”

      Prentice was interested in Guatemala, all right—as a source for the illegal workers he used in his drug and prostitution operations. Some of the victims of the human-trafficking ring the task force had broken up last month had been from Guatemala.

      “We ran into each other in the bar after the dinner,” Prentice continued. “She’d clearly had a little too much to drink and I was concerned, so I offered to take her for coffee. We ended up talking for quite a while. She confided her troubles to me—the end of her marriage, her recent diagnosis of mental illness and her worries over her job.”

      He definitely knew a lot about Lauren, though he could have gleaned all that from newspaper accounts of her disappearance. “Did you stay in touch?” Sophie asked. “Have you talked to her since that night?”

      “A few times. Just casual phone calls.” He leaned forward, one hand on Sophie’s knee. “I hope it doesn’t distress you to know this, but your sister was a very troubled woman. She tried to keep a positive face on things around the people she loved, but she was able to let her guard down more with me. I urged her to seek professional help, but she resisted the idea.”

      Sophie shifted slightly and gave Rand a warning look, perhaps sensing that he’d been ready to take Prentice’s hand off at the wrist. “Lauren did struggle with depression, especially in the months immediately following her separation and divorce,” she said, the words carefully measured. “But recently she was on medication to control her mood swings and was doing very well.”

      “Perhaps she wanted you to think that.”

      “When was the last time you spoke with her?” she asked.

      His eyes narrowed and he might have frowned, but his forehead remained perfectly smooth—the result of BOTOX, or merely remarkable self-control? “We spoke briefly on the telephone perhaps a month ago. She called to ask if I knew of any job openings in television. She was convinced she was about to lose her position. She sounded desperate. I wanted to help her, and told her I would ask around. She promised to call me back, but I never heard from her again.”

      Rand had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from commenting on the fact that Prentice had failed to tell the Rangers any of this. In fact, he’d denied knowing Lauren Starling at all.

      Sophie knotted her hands in her lap. “The last time I talked to her, she said she was working on a new story—something big that would show the station how valuable she was to them. She sounded very excited.”

      “She never mentioned anything like that to me. What was this story about?”

      “She didn’t say. I was hoping you’d know.”

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