Secret Obsession (Carder Texas Connections #6)(47)

“Slow and easy,” he said to her, keeping his distance. He was Rafe Vargas not Noah Bradford. He would treat her as such.

She tried not to take it personally. She wanted to hold on to him, feel his strength and his warm touch.

Instead, she shoved her hands into her pockets. With the security at the UN, she couldn’t carry her gun. She hated feeling so vulnerable.

They walked past the police cars and toward the front entrance. She sent him a sidelong glance.

She didn’t know how he felt. He’d shut down after the phone call. Once again, pushing her away. His eerie ability to transform himself into another man gave him the tools to become the Falcon. It was the mask he wore. She didn’t know if she’d ever penetrate the crack in his emotions again. For a brief moment she’d seen beyond the Falcon, beyond the computer genius. Beyond the man who was determined to save her life.

An hour ago he’d held her as if he never wanted to let her go. She couldn’t remember feeling more needed or desired.

Now he was an acquaintance. He was a man who she’d hired to help her. She’d believed she found the real Noah, but could she ever be sure?

Tension pulsed from his body as he escorted her to the entrance. Yellow crime-scene tape draped near a door just inside.

Two guards stepped in their path. “Move along.”

“We have business—” Noah began.

“They’re with me.” Zane motioned them in.

The guards stepped aside.

“Ransom pulled some strings,” Zane said quietly. “Otherwise, I’d be sitting in jail right now lawyering up.”

“Good thing we have friends with even more powerful friends,” Noah said.

His words barely registered. Lyssa hadn’t been in the lobby of the building for two years. Very little had changed. “He wants to destroy everything about my past, doesn’t he?”

She’d imagined herself doing important work in this building. No matter what happened, she’d never come back here.

Zane led them over to a closet. “Can you give us a minute?” he asked a pair of investigators. “She might be able to identify him.”

They stepped aside.

“Brace yourself. It’s not pretty,” Zane warned.

Lyssa stepped closer and peered into the small room.

The gruesome remainder of a man’s body sat propped up inside, positioned as if staring straight ahead. Her eyes dropped to the symbols carved into his chest.

“Infinity,” she whispered.

“Plus another symbol,” Zane said.

A shape similar to a cursive p had been carved just below the man’s naval. Lyssa’s mind wouldn’t stop whirling. She knew the symbol. What was Archimedes trying to tell her?

“I recognize it. Why can’t I think?”

She knelt down, forcing herself to study the carving. It wasn’t a perfect p. No, there were too many curves. It wasn’t a rho either. More like a wonky p with a tail. More like...

Her thoughts went back to her last job at the UN.

“It’s Sanskrit,” she said, her voice harsh.

Zane stared down. “I’ll be damned.”

“The number nine.”

“Numbers,” Noah said. “Could the other symbols have meanings in other languages?”

“I think so. The epsilon could be Arabic for the number four.”

She clutched Noah’s arm. He glanced at her then she dropped her hand. She couldn’t pretend they knew one another. Archimedes was probably watching.

“We’re getting closer,” Noah said. “Do you recognize him?”

“He looks familiar.” She tried to avoid looking at his legs, but the gruesome sight of his missing feet drew her gaze. “Why?”

“He wants to make sure you’re too afraid to deny him,” Noah’s hand drifted down her back, the small movement comforting, and invisible to anyone watching. “Can you remember where you met him?”

She studied his features. His face, the indentation in his chin, his hair.

His hair. The man’s reddish-blond beard stabbed at Lyssa’s memory. “Did he have any identification?”

Zane shook his head. “Nothing. They’re running his prints. We should know something soon if he’s ever worked in government, was in the military or had a record.”

She studied the man’s face more closely. His eyes were open, staring into space; his mouth was twisted in pain. “I know him. I’m certain of it.”

Her gaze fell to the carnation on the collar of his shirt. “What about the flower?”

“Weird, huh,” Zane said. “It was there when I got here.”

“It’s a carnation. A boutonniere. Oh, God.” Lyssa couldn’t believe it. “I know who he is.”

Noah shot her a sharp glance.

“It’s Bill Zeigler. He was my date. To my senior prom.”

*

THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT didn’t go for cheap office furniture. Archimedes leaned back in U.S. Marshal Reid Nichols’s executive leather chair.

The solid wood desk hadn’t been a challenge, and right now Archimedes couldn’t stop smiling. He replayed the airport-surveillance tape.

Noah Bradford had a distinctive walk, a slight hitch from an apparent injury to his left leg. Archimedes’s nemesis had left New York and returned to Denver. He’d seen the man board the plane, and a quick hack into the reservations system had verified the ticket.