A Beautiful Lie (Playing with Fire #1)(79)

They needed to put all of their concentration into finding out all of the answers to their questions and end this once and for all. Things still didn’t add up, and Parker knew they were missing large pieces of the puzzle. Something in her gut told her Fernandez was behind all of this. Parker had to believe that someone or something had pulled Milo into this life. Something happened a year ago that changed him, affected him in such a way he was never able to be the same man again. A man didn’t just go from being a strong, trust-worthy Navy SEAL one day to a secretive, immoral human being the next. Something had to have happened to influence him.

Parker wanted to get to the bottom of this mess and finally move on with her life.

Move on with Garrett.

She knew without a doubt that was where she belonged now.





Chapter Seventeen



For the next several days the team holed up in Parker and Garrett’s villa and went to work pulling as much information as they could find. The days were spent on the computer and making phone calls. The nights were spent discussing the information that was found and what they would be doing the following day.

When Brady, Austin, and Cole finally left to go back to their own villas each night, Parker and Garrett should have fallen into bed and passed out from exhaustion. But once they were finally alone, the clothes came off, and they fell into bed with thoughts other than sleep on their minds.

Some nights it was hurried and intense, others it was slow and sensual. No matter how they loved with their bodies, it was always perfect. Garrett instinctively knew every spot to touch on Parker that would cause her to sigh his name with need, and Parker unconsciously knew where to kiss and slide her tongue along Garrett’s skin that would cause his body to shudder with desire.

There was a lot they should have talked about during those nights, many things they should have admitted, but neither one was ready to put into words what they felt, and they both knew they needed to put all of their concentration into the mission. Once or twice, one of them would mention the need for them to talk and the other would remind them there would be plenty of time for that when the mission was over.

The first relevant piece of information the team came across was ten days after Garrett and Brady found out Milo had been a patron of Occidental El Embajador.

Parker informed the team about the Vice President’s use of the words girls, money, and boat, during their dinner at the palace. So far they knew a large percentage of the missing girls from the past several years were listed as employees for The Target Agency, so that took care of the girls aspect. Brady was able to find out that all of those girls had roughly the same home life as Catalina Olvera – parents who didn’t care enough to keep their children safe.

They knew from all the details they’d gathered that these girls were more than likely involved in some sort of prostitution ring. If Fernandez had anything to do with it, they were having a hard time proving anything. The matchbook from the Occidental El Embajador that Parker saw on his desk seemed to just be a coincidence. Garrett and Brady went back there to question the maid that helped them previously, and she stated that the President had never been a guest there as far as she knew.

The team was unable to find any information on the missing girls once they found out they were all runaways and listed as Target employees. There were no phone numbers or any way of contacting the girls after they left home.

The next clue they were able to uncover had to do with the boat. While Brady hacked away at his computer during the day with the rest of the team, at night he did as Garrett asked and spent the time looking into Milo’s background. Brady dug up everything he could find on the man up until he left for the Dominican on his last mission.

Brady was able to uncover that Milo’s mother put in a request for a passport three months before she left Milo and his father. On the same day, she applied for a Residence Visa to none other than the Dominican Republic. Records here in this country didn’t exist for her, however. There was no Visa application approval, court or bank records in her name, or any other piece of evidence that Milo’s mother ever made the trip she had obviously planned for.

While Brady continued his search into Milo’s mother, he found out Milo had been the proud owner of a fifty-seven foot Bayliner. That left Parker speechless for an hour and Garrett equally as stunned. If Brady hadn’t been so adept at computers, he might never have found the information. The boat was purchased several years ago under Milo’s father’s name. The only reason it came up as a red flag was because Brady ran a list of all boat registrations and bumped them up against court records. The registration for the boat had initially been filed years after Milo’s father had died. In the state of Maryland, you didn’t need to be present to register a boat; it could be done via mail, which was why the state registered a boat to a dead man. There was no record of the boat again until four years after Milo had moved to California. The boat was then re-registered in his name where he had to provide the state with the hull identification number, which worked similarly to the vehicle identification number for cars.

With the hull identification number, Brady was able to pull up all of the maintenance records for the boat. Twice a year, without fail, the boat was docked in a marina in Santo Domingo, roughly three hours from where they were currently staying, for routine maintenance. With a quick call to the marina, Brady found out the boat was currently docked. Not wanting to raise any suspicions, he hung up without asking more questions.