LITMIR.BIZ

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If that’s the way you want it to be, so be it. But I refuse to spend this entire investigation sniping with you, so either we agree to act like adults or we don’t speak at all.”

      “Can I have that in writing?”

      Anthony squeezed his eyes shut and visualized throttling that long, skinny neck. Ten minutes. That’s all it took Emma to drive him nuts.

      How was he supposed to survive this? First some psycho calling himself the Doppelgänger had sworn vengeance for the companies Anthony had chopped up. And now he was face-to-face with the biggest wrong he’d ever committed.

      All he wanted to do was find the nearest corner and die quietly of guilt. But no. Dop meant to punish him, and making him deal with Emma again definitely took the cruel and unusual prize.

      And he’d just made it harder on himself by lying straight to her face.

      Coward. She’d find out how he knew about those e-mails and tear him apart with her bare hands. And considering this newest nightmare she’d been sucked into, he wouldn’t blame her one bit.

      Watching Emma stare at him with one eyebrow raised, Anthony marveled at his own stupidity. God help him. Lies told in the heat of the moment were the least of his worries. There were other lies she could uncover. Like what had really happened two years ago.

      He had to tell her. He owed her that much. But how did you tell someone they’d been nothing more than a convenient pawn, a casualty in the cold war between you and your father?

      Still not the worst of it. If she found out what he’d done more recently, he was a dead man. Why couldn’t he have left well enough alone?

      Footsteps sounded in the hall, preempting self-recrimination hour. He knew who was outside the door: a group of seriously unhappy FBI agents who were about to encounter one of the bigger challenges of their careers.

      They didn’t even knock. Jim DeBerg came in first, followed by Layne Crawford and Walter Hornsby. The three of them looked at Anthony accusingly, while Emma’s angry expression shifted to tolerance.

      Stepping forward, she seized control. Huge surprise. “Good morning. I’m Emma Toliver. You must be the FBI.”

      She shook hands with Jim first, Anthony’s best friend and a man very young to be where he was in the bureau. Thirty years old, and already in the Behavioral Sciences Unit.

      Jim introduced himself. “Special Agent Jim DeBerg. I don’t know how much Anthony told you, but we’ve certainly got a mess on our hands, Miss Toliver.”

      “So I hear,” she acknowledged, turning to Layne Crawford.

      Layne scared Anthony to death. She was a tiny little thing, sixtyish, with brilliant blue eyes that never stopped watching. Jim had summoned her a week ago and Anthony still knew nothing about her. He didn’t even know what position she held in the Bureau, if she even held one. All he knew was that she loved to make people talk.

      Not a big fan of talking himself, Anthony avoided her at all costs.

      He waited for Layne to introduce herself by title, but she gave only her name and stepped back in deference to Walter Hornsby. A giant in his mid-thirties, his job was to coordinate the practical aspects of the investigation—security and communication with the police.

      Hornsby gave his usual muttered greeting while Anthony watched Emma. She was an expert at reading people, but this time he could see her struggling. Good luck. He would enjoy watching her realize these three lived to annoy.

      Jim began. “Do I need a warrant to look at your computer?”

      “Not necessary,” Emma responded. “Be my guest.”

      While Jim clicked through messages, Layne’s eyes burned into his skull. Silence thundered through the room until she finally glanced at Emma.

      “Miss Toliver, is there somewhere I can speak to Mr. Bracco in private?” she asked.

      “No one will disturb you in the boardroom,” Emma said, “Anthony knows where it is.”

      He led Layne from the room like a man leading his own executioner to the gallows. Two doors down on the right was the boardroom, brightly lit by wide, paned windows and dominated by a long walnut table. The room smelled of aged wood, and the old leather chair he slumped into creaked beneath his weight.

      Layne sat primly, ankles crossed. She stared at him awhile before saying, “You were placed in protective custody for your own safety. I thought that was understood.”

      “It was.”

      “Interesting, as you completely disregarded our cautions this morning. Jim said you were already halfway here by the time he called you with the Internet service info, so I’d dearly love to hear how you knew about Emma’s e-mails before we did.”

      “I’m psychic?”

      Layne smiled. “She’s a beautiful woman. Lovely bone structure, and all that delightful blond hair. Given your rather…colorful past together, I would assume there’s unfinished business.”

      Anthony bobbed his chin, neither denying nor admitting anything.

      “You’re right,” Layne said. “It doesn’t matter, does it? But I must insist you share your insight with me. Frankly, I’m concerned I might have missed something in your e-mails.”

      Knowing he was being played with, Anthony lied, “It wasn’t anything concrete. There was a lot of publicity on what I did to Emma, and Doppelgänger could have seen it. Then Jim was talking about sympathetic symbols, someone this guy might relate to as one of my business victims, and it got me thinking. That’s all.”

      Layne shocked him by uttering two syllables that crisply defined her disbelief. “Pardon my French,” she added as an afterthought. “But I wasn’t born yesterday. Tell me the truth or I’ll start digging. You know I’ll find…something.”

      Purposefully mirroring Layne’s speech patterns, minus the French, he asked, “Hypothetically speaking, if I admitted I’d found out about the e-mails in a less…intellectual manner, would you find it necessary to inform Emma?”

      “That remains to be seen.”

      “Why are you threatening me? I’m not the criminal in this equation. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

      “Excuse my need to poke holes in your reasoning, but there’s a very dangerous man out there who disagrees,” Layne said. “In his mind you’ve done many things wrong. Now, I fully appreciate the fact that you’ve turned your life around, and believe me, I applaud and respect you for it. But if you hide things from us we can’t move forward.”

      With a sigh of defeat, Anthony said, “I have an insider here at the store. Charles, Emma’s goldsmith.”

      Layne’s brows shot to her hairline. “Dare I ask why?”

      “I tried to call Emma about four months ago. She was out so I got Charles instead, and we talked. I told him the truth about what really happened back then, and it sorta developed into something else. Anyway, Brady told him about the e-mails this morning, and Charles called me. You were gone. Jim was out. I panicked.”

      Ignoring his admission, Layne asked, “Sorta developed into what, exactly?”

      Anthony rubbed his eyebrows. “Emma didn’t have enough capital to get this auction lot of metals and stones she needed for Beautiful Things, so Charles and I rigged her bid. I’ve got about half a million sunk into her design label and she doesn’t know.”

      Layne was silent for a decade or so, then observed, “You can’t help yourself, can you? Emma’s a proud woman. If she finds out she won’t be amused.”

      “No, she won’t. After what happened two years ago you can imagine what she’ll think, but I took measures to make sure she’d never find out.”

      “Is

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