Reveal (Wicked Ways #2)(52)

“Got a bit more for you on your other interest,” he says, referring to my request for him to dig deeper on Vaughn and her past.

“Is that so?” I ask, feeling like an asshole for uncovering everything about her layer by layer without her knowledge, but I know I’m only doing it because I’m trying to protect her from Carter.

“Her last name is technically not Sanders.”

I do a double take when I look at him, a little put off, a lot confused, and try not to be pissed that I didn’t know this. “Continue.”

“Her father’s name was Henson, but she wasn’t given his last name.”

“True, but Vaughn told me her mom’s family didn’t accept him. I bet you money her mom talked him into using the family surname with some excuse about inheritance simply because she was too chickenshit to go against her parents.”

“It happens.”

“More than you think.” I scrub a hand over my jaw. “So then what’s the last name on her birth certificate?”

“Dillinger.” It takes a second for the name to hit my ears and recognition to fire. The Dillingers of Greenwich. Stuart sees the minute it does and nods. “Yes, she’s one of those Dillingers.”

“Well, shit.” I rise from my desk and walk to the windows as I wrap my mind around all this. The small world we live in. This unexpected connection Vaughn and I somehow unknowingly share. And the quiet fury that rages beneath my more than calm demeanor . . . but Stuart knows I’m trying to rein it in. He knows better than to talk right now.

“So her last name is Dillinger?”

“Up until she was seven years old it was. Then her mother filed for a legal name change to Sanders. I’m assuming there were reasons for her to give her children the maiden name of their maternal great-great-grandmother, but none that I could find.”

I slide my hands into my pockets, and I continue to stare out the window but never really focus on a single detail.

I think of my college roommate, Chance Dillinger, and the stories he’d tell me of his cold family steeped in generations of tradition. The old-school rules they adhered to that weren’t allowed to bend to modern ways. Marriage only to those with a specific bloodline. The requirement for the males of the family to be sent to boarding school and away from their mothers so they’d never get soft. Soft men don’t become captains of industry.

How convenient that they send all the boys of the family away so all the little girls are left as perfect prey for their perverted uncle. My stomach churns.

“It’s a good name. Sanders,” I finally say. “A hell of a lot better than Dillinger.”

“Mmm.” It’s all he says in response, and I can hear him shuffling through papers. “The interesting thing is I messed up first go ’round. She has two uncles named James. Both brilliant in their own right. One named Dillinger. Another named Sanders.”

“And you thought the Sanders one was—”

“—the one you were looking for. Yes.”

“It makes sense why there was nothing there,” I finish for him, referring to why we couldn’t find anything nefarious on the James Sanders we’d found . . . but then again, there aren’t often neon signs pointing to child predators. “Anything on James Dillinger?”

Stuart’s silence weighs down the room until I turn around to face him. His look says everything.

“What?” I ask.

“Things don’t exactly add up.”

I walk toward the desk, take a seat in my chair, and study the papers he’s laid out on it. I shuffle through them, each one confusing me more than the last.

“I don’t understand.” I pick up the two arrest warrants—Vaughn’s name is front and center on the first, Samantha’s on the second one—almost as if I don’t believe what I’m seeing.

“James Dillinger is a paraplegic.” Stuart’s eyes meet mine.

“And?”

“And those papers”—he points to the arrest warrant naming one Samantha Dillinger for attempted murder—“state that she’s the one who pulled the trigger.”

“The fucker deserved it.” It’s my automatic response, my moral compassion for a man who preyed on young girls less than nil.

“Not going to argue with you there . . . but your girl here is in some serious trouble.”

I stare at the warrant. At the charge of accessory to attempted murder. At the name “Vaughn Dillinger” on it. And while none of it makes any sort of sense to me, I know it would be perfect for a man like Carter Preston to see. To threaten with. To hold over Vaughn’s head to try to coerce her—to blackmail her—into doing exactly what he wanted.

“How come it names her as Vaughn Dillinger and not Vaughn Sanders?” I ask. “Same goes for Samantha?”

“Maybe the Dillingers rejected how her mother changed her name? Maybe they felt slighted and wanted to claim her back?”

“Or maybe they didn’t want her caught?” I propose.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning if she legally goes by Vaughn Sanders, then file the warrant under Vaughn Sanders and it’s easier for the law to search for her and find her. File the warrant under a name she doesn’t legally hold and . . .”