LITMIR.BIZ

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it crossed his mind that she might slap him anyway, with words at the very least, but the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps broke the tension and he released her hand as Garth Buick strode into view.

      Kim gasped, her surprise this time tainted with delight as she launched herself at the Blackstone company secretary who was Howard’s closest and oldest friend. The fact that they’d remained friends for so long was a testament to Garth’s character and loyalty and remarkably even temperament.

      He wrapped his arms around Kim with genuine affection, but the eyes that met Ric’s over her head were shadowed with gravity. “Ryan’s just taken a call from Stavros.”

      Their contact at police headquarters. Ric’s heart stilled. “Bad news?”

      “Nothing on Howard,” Garth assured them both. “But we finally have confirmation of the passenger list.”

      “Was it Marise they found?” Kim asked. “Was she on the plane?”

      The older man nodded heavily. “Yes. They’ve just brought her body in to the morgue.”

      Three

      “Her body?” Kim’s voice rose on a note of shock. Confusion clouded her expression as she looked from Garth to Ric. “You said she was alive. A survivor. You said they—”

      “She passed away on the rescue boat,” Garth said gently, “shortly after they took her on board. I’m sorry, Kim. I know you were close.”

      “No, not really.”

      A deep sadness imbued her comment and Ric wondered if she was thinking about Marise or her husband Matt, the Hammond Kim was close to. Or perhaps the couple’s son. His jaw tightened. Dammit, he’d hoped there’d been a mistake. That they’d learn the woman wasn’t Marise Hammond, the mother of a small boy, too young and innocent to be the victim of such a tragic loss.

      “Are they certain it was Marise Hammond?” he asked.

      “Certain enough that Stavros told us before the formal identification process. Unofficially, of course,” Garth added.

      “When you called me in New Zealand, you mentioned a foul-up with the passenger list.”

      “Initially there was a Blackstone employee listed,” Garth said. “Jessica Cotter. She manages the Martin Place store and was supposed to be going to Auckland for the opening.”

      The name wasn’t familiar to Ric, but he hadn’t worked in the jewellery side of the business for almost eight years. “She couldn’t be the one they found in the sea?”

      “Wrong build, wrong hair colour, wrong clothing. It seems Ms. Cotter had a change of mind and got off the plane at the last minute. Hence the initial confusion over the passenger list.”

      “So it was Marise Hammond.” Sonya’s voice cut into the conversation, and Ric swung around to find her standing in the archway leading toward the kitchen. Although her eyes looked shell-shocked, she stood tall and poised and even managed a passable attempt at a smile. “Why don’t you go through to the living room? Danielle and Ryan are there and I think we should all be together to talk about this. I’ve made tea and coffee but if anyone would prefer something stronger, please let me know.”

      Ryan Blackstone looked like he needed something stronger.

      Ric eyed the younger man narrowly, taken aback by the gaunt grey cast to his normally tanned features. It was never a surprise to see Ryan wound tighter than a newly forged spring, especially in Ric’s presence, but in all his years at Blackstone’s Ric had never seen him unravel once.

      Today, as his stark green gaze met his sister’s across the wide expanse of the mansion’s living room, he looked perilously close to that point.

      “Coffee, Ric?”

      Sonya distracted him with the proffered cup—black, strong, welcome—for only a second, and he turned back to see Kim bound so tightly in her brother’s arms that he thought she might snap. It was a brief, silent embrace with none of the exuberant warmth of her reunion with Sonya or Danielle or Garth, but what it lacked in length and words it more than made up for in intensity.

      Feeling like an intruder on this deeply private moment, he looked away and saw that Danielle had done the same. The significance of this particular reunion hit him suddenly and with all the force of a runaway ore truck.

      It had nothing to do with their chequered history or Ryan’s disapproval of Kim’s defection. Nothing to do with any prior competition for their father’s approval and affection. Nothing to do with her taking the Hammond side in the long-running family conflict.

      Kim and Ryan were all that remained of their family unit. First their elder brother, James, abducted and never seen again. Then their mother’s suicide. Now they faced the probable loss of their seemingly indestructible father.

      No wonder they clung to each other so tenaciously.

      The room where the family gathered opened onto the terrace and front gardens, and rose up through the second storey to a thirty-foot ceiling. Light and air spilled into the vast space via the opened banks of French doors and the stacked windows above, yet the atmosphere strummed with the dark tension of a mausoleum, until it was broken by the faint rattle of cup against saucer.

      From the corner of his eye Ric saw Garth quietly take Sonya’s coffee and set it down on a side table. Her quiet “Thank you” broke the silence.

      “I’m very sorry to hear about Marise,” she continued with a calm composure that belied her distress.

      Danielle, sitting beside her, took hold of her hand. “We can’t be certain it was her…can we?”

      “It was,” Ryan said with surprising force. “The passenger list is confirmed. An all-male crew. Howard. His lawyer. Marise Hammond. She was the only female on the plane.”

      “Well, what was she doing on the plane?” Danielle fired back, undeterred. “I didn’t think she would even know Howard, let alone be on speaking terms with him.”

      Ric put his untouched coffee down. The same question had been circling his head all day, and he didn’t like any of the answers he’d come up with. But he could respond to the second part. “She worked at Blackstone’s as Marise Davenport before she married Matt Hammond. And unless the tabloids are doctoring pictures now, she was still on speaking terms with Howard in December.”

      “What are you talking about?”

      Danielle asked the question, but Kim studied him with equal bewilderment. Living so far from Sydney, neither woman would have seen the scurrilous piece run by a high-profile society columnist a couple of weeks back. A piece that could easily have been dismissed if not for the accompanying photo.

      “Scene published a picture of them dining together,” Sonya explained, “and hinted that they might be involved…personally.”

      Danielle’s eyes widened with astonishment on her mother’s careful choice of description. “Howard and Marise were having an affair? You have got to be kidding!”

      “Of course it’s not true,” Sonya said with some heat. “That magazine is renowned for printing outrageous scuttlebutt and getting away with it by using broad hints rather than actual claims. Marise is married—she has a child. Whatever Howard’s involvement with this woman, it was not an affair!”

      Sonya’s passionate declaration hovered for a long moment unanswered and uncontested, but when Ric caught Garth’s eye he knew they were on the same wavelength. Howard’s wealth and power and charismatic good looks had always attracted pretty go-getters—reportedly before, during and after his only marriage—and he’d never been averse to casting aside his current mistress in favour of a dazzling new model.

      And Marise Davenport Hammond had always been a dazzler. From her time working at Blackstone’s, Ric recalled her as a go-getter, as well. She’d put the moves on him and Ryan, too, before striking gold when she

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