Big Easy Temptation (The Perfect Gentlemen #3)(97)

She’d told him she could forgive him, but was she fooling herself? She didn’t want to be Dax Spencer’s second wife when he’d gone into his first marriage with such a cavalier attitude. What did marriage really mean to a man who could do that?

“So we’ve had some overnight developments. Mostly because Freddy doesn’t sleep,” Connor said, pouring her another cup of coffee.

She was so ready to focus on anything besides her love life. “You don’t sleep?”

Freddy shrugged. “Not much. That whole eight-hours-of-sleep thing is a myth perpetrated by the mattress companies and big pharma.”

“Freddy’s very wary of big pharma,” Lara acknowledged. “But he’s also really good at digging up stuff other people can’t find.”

“Like records of Admiral Spencer visiting a psychiatric hospital in the English countryside. He requested records there,” Connor added.

That had her sitting up straight. “Records for who?”

“A patient named Jane Downing,” Freddy explained. “But I highly suspect that’s an alias. The hospital is known for being a hideout for the wealthy and insane. It’s small, with a high employee-to-patient ratio. They employ a gourmet chef.”

“Is anyone thinking what I’m thinking?” Dax strode in, tucking in his shirt. His hair was still wet from his shower.

“If you’re wondering if Jane Downing was actually Constance Hayes, then yes,” Holland replied.

She didn’t like to think about how close she’d come to climbing into that shower with him just to feel him wrap his arms around her again. The impulse had been there. She’d thought about inviting him into hers. Instead, she’d locked the door. She’d needed time, a little space.

“We’ve put a call into Zack,” Lara explained. “And we’ve got Everly trying to check some other rehab centers or mental hospitals to see if that alias comes up. We know she went on a couple of ‘vacations’ that were actually stays in a place like this. Not that any of them took.”

“Everly?” The name suddenly rang a bell. “Gabe’s fiancée? Sorry, I’m still getting used to the guys actually having women attached to them for more than a night or two.”

Lara smiled. “Everly is wonderful and she’s really good at getting inside computer systems . . .” She cleared her throat. “I mean at investigating.”

So Gabe was marrying a hacker. “As long as she’s not hacking the military, it’s not my jurisdiction. Besides, sometimes you’ve got to break a few rules to find justice. Every good cop knows that.”

Lara sighed. “Thank god.”

“She says that because she hasn’t always been on the up-and-up, have you?” Connor eyed his wife with a ghost of a smile on his lips. “Little criminal.”

“I have not. Anything I ever did was to expose criminal activity,” Lara replied primly.

“She’s scared that because you’re a fed, you’ll arrest her,” Freddy said with a grin. “I think she was right the first time around. You’re a Mulder.”

“I’m a what?”

Lara waved it off. “Freddy has this idea in his head that all government employees are either Mulders or Smoking Men. He’s watched way too much X-Files. Mulder was the one after justice, you see. He was the one who believed. And the Cigarette Smoking Man was evil, always involved in lots of bad things. So him calling you a Mulder means he likes you.”

Awesome. She gave him a smile because he was actually kind of interesting, in a weird way. “Thanks. I’m glad you don’t think I’m the other sort. So what are we doing while we wait for Zack to call back? I have some ideas about how to track down Peter Morgan.”

Dax sat down across from her. “My father’s aide-de-camp? I thought everything surrounding him was classified. We’re not hacking Navy personnel files. I’ve got Roman looking into it. They can’t find his current address.”

“I know, but I found out that his mother is in a nursing home not two miles outside of New Orleans.” She’d made a few phone calls, talked to some staff. They’d been more than happy to tell a “social worker” that Peter Morgan’s mother got a weekly visitor without fail. “I think he’s seeing her. The nurses at the home say it’s her nephew who stops in, but his mother was an only child. Needless to say, I think he’s visiting his momma and he usually does it at the same time every week. Which happens to be this afternoon.”

Lara clapped her hands. “We’re staking out a nursing home.” She stopped suddenly and frowned. “Wait. The last time we did that someone died horribly.”

“Yeah, how about you stay here and hold down the bayou with Freddy.” Connor patted his wife’s hand. “Holland and I will stake out the old folks’ home and figure out where Peter’s hidey-hole is. I don’t want to spook the man, at least not until we’re ready and know everything we want to ask him.”

Dax frowned. “I’ll go with Holland.”

She shook her head. “You have to talk to your mother, find out if there’s any connection at all between your father and Zack’s mom.”

“There’s this little invention I call a cell phone,” Dax offered.