Big Easy Temptation (The Perfect Gentlemen #3)(10)

Holland was correct. The news would definitely have run the story about the admiral’s disgrace, but the tabloids wouldn’t have covered it. His father hadn’t been a rock star or a celebrity. He’d been old school money serving in a position of prestige.

Dax was the celebrity. It didn’t matter how hard he tried to stay out of the press, the media associated him with two of the most self-avowed playboys of the Western world, along with the White House chief of staff and the president of the United States. Somehow, Connor managed to duck the news coverage. Probably because he never allowed anyone to take a full-frontal picture of him. And the CIA kept him out of the public eye. Being dragged into the news had never bothered Dax much. It had been fine. He was used to it. But his parents had not been.

“I wish I could have kept them off the story. We tried to keep it quiet.” She reached out, her hand almost touching his before she abruptly pulled back.

Damn it. He wanted her hand in his, wanted any touch she would give him. It had been so long since he’d felt any kind of affection for a woman. From a woman. “I know. They were always going to find the story and they were always going to spin it to sound as salacious as possible. It’s their job.”

She settled back in her chair. “So you think you have new information?”

She seemed determined to keep things professional. Maybe that was for the best. He’d come for a mission, not a woman. “I’m approaching the investigation from a new angle. It wasn’t hard to do. There was really only about a week of actual fieldwork put into the case. I was surprised at how thin the file was.”

She put a hand up. “I don’t want to know how you got a copy of that file.”

He was resourceful. He was also good at flirting with secretaries. “I’ll keep that to myself. Anyway, NCIS closed the investigation into my father’s case after his death was ruled a suicide.”

“There was no one to prosecute. It didn’t seem right to drag his name further through the mud. I actually had some say in making that call. I asked Bill and Jim to stop looking into it because they would have had to question your mother. I didn’t want to put her through that.”

He could understand her decision. “I appreciate that, but I think there’s more going on here than the report suggests. Did you know the girl my father was accused of sleeping with had disappeared?”

He used that bland euphemism. What his father had been accused of could be construed as anything from statutory rape to sexual assault of a minor.

“No. I wasn’t aware of that.” She took a sip of the wine he’d brought. “But she was a teenage prostitute with a history of running away. It’s not so surprising that she would go missing.”

“But Amber Taylor went missing before the investigation was closed. No one on your staff ever spoke to her. There’s no record on file to indicate they even attempted to contact her.”

She raised an elegant brow in surprise. “Really?”

Dax nodded. “The only evidence against my father is that videotape and the testimony of two of his aides.” For Dax, those clues made an awfully thin reason to tear a man’s reputation apart. Even if he’d been proven innocent, the damage would have been done. His father’s career had ended the minute he’d been called a pedophile in public.

“Maybe they didn’t need to talk to Amber Taylor. Those two aides of your father’s gave very in-depth interviews,” Holland explained. “They were good witnesses from everything I understand. I know Jim felt like they were solid and so did JAG.”

The Navy’s legal arm had been all for prosecuting his father. They would have a much harder time if they tried to prosecute him today since all their evidence was rapidly vanishing. “Did you know that one of those two aides was recently murdered?”

“What?” Holland reared back. “No.”

He’d been fairly certain she was out of the loop. “He was transferred out of NOLA about a week after my father died. He was killed in Puerto Rico during a mugging.”

“I will admit it’s odd, but it doesn’t prove anything.” Even as she spoke, her brow furrowed, a sure sign that her thinking cap was on.

Making her think was exactly what he’d hoped for. “I don’t have to prove anything. I simply have to prod your curiosity enough to look.”

“You think you know me?”

“I do know you, Holland. You’re smart and quick and you like to see justice done. You also liked my father.” In fact, Dax was counting on it.

That’s why he’d come back to New Orleans in the first place. He’d asked for the training assignment. Hell, he’d practically begged for it because he needed to be here if he was going to convince Holland to reopen his father’s case. He didn’t trust anyone else to look at it with a fresh, fair approach.

“I can’t deny that,” she murmured.

“In fact, you like my whole family and you hate what happened to us. If you could give us any respite at all, you would work day and night for it.”

“Now you’re playing to my ego.” A hint of an amused smile crossed her lips.

“Is it working?”

“You know it is,” she replied. “I’ll look over what you have tonight, but I can’t promise you anything.”