Deception (Infidelity #3)(36)

I shrugged. “Me. I don’t even think Nox touched it. I was the one to open it. He grabbed the pages from me, but the envelope… I don’t remember if I threw it away or left it on the desk.”

“It was on the desk,” she confirmed.

“Why?”

“Because there’s a partial print on the envelope. The letter itself has your prints and Lennox’s. The other prints are being verified. So far Mr. Spencer’s prints have not been detected.”

My eyes grew wide. “What?”

“I’ve alerted Lennox, but I wanted to be the one to tell you.”

My head moved from side to side. “Maybe Bryce wore gloves or something.”

“Why would he wear gloves and sign his name?”

I don’t know.

“D-do you have it, or even a copy?” I asked. “Maybe if I looked at it again, I could tell if it was really his signature.”

“I didn’t bring it with me, but I have a picture.” Deloris reached into her bag and pulled out her tablet. As it came to life, she said, “The only other prints on the paper were not in our system, but I found the possible match in a database of employees.”

I didn’t understand.

“Demetri Enterprise employees?” I asked.

“No, Infidelity.”

I gasped.

“Do you recognize the name Whitney Blessings?” Deloris asked.

I shook my head. “Karen said we wouldn’t know any of the other employees.”

“You wouldn’t know her from Infidelity. You might know her because of where she works—her main job,” she qualified.

“Why? Where does she work?”

“Montague Corporation. She’s your father’s—I mean your stepfather’s—secretary. Personal assistant. Her job description isn’t very specific.”

My stomach twisted. What did this mean? Was Alton an Infidelity client?

“That doesn’t make sense. I mean I’ve known forever that he screwed around on my mom, but why would he be a client?”

“Are you saying that he’s such a charismatic charmer that paying for companionship would be beneath him?”

I scrunched my nose as bile bubbled from the pits of my empty stomach.

Gross!

“No, that’s not what I mean. I-I just never imagined he’d be a client.”

“I didn’t say he was. I said his assistant is an employee, and I believe she touched the letter—more accurately the paper—possibly long before the words were written and it became a letter. This theory leads me to believe that the paper at the very least came from your stepfather’s office.”

I tried to process. “Maybe Bryce got the paper from there. He works at Montague in the corporate offices.”

“That’s a possibility. But wasn’t your stepfather on that call?” Deloris asked.

“Yes. He called me on my mother’s phone.”

“Why would he do that?”

I shrugged. “Because he knew I wouldn’t have answered if he’d used his own phone.”

“And he wanted…?” she asked.

“He said he was sending a plane. He wants me home… to Savannah,” I clarified.

Deloris’s expression remained blank, neither concerned nor anxious, as if dealing with threatening letters full of Demetri secrets was an everyday occurrence. She turned her attention to her tablet.

My phone buzzed with a recognizable ring.

The screen read ALTON.

Deloris’s green eyes met mine. I’d never looked at their color before. With the sunlight from the windows, flakes of gold and brown shone from their depths. Perhaps she was showing more emotion than usual, though she was much better at hiding it. “Alex, I apologize for cutting your call with your mother short. I’m concerned.”

My phone rang again.

“Lennox,” she continued, “has entrusted me with many tasks. Keeping you safe is one of them, one he holds as my greatest priority.”

Another ring.

“And him,” I said.

Deloris nodded. “As you know, that is my number-one priority. I should be with him in DC right now…”

Ring.

“If I don’t answer this, it will go to voicemail.”

She hitched a shoulder. “Would that be bad?”

“You saw the screen?”

“I did.”

My phone vibrated, indicating the call was sent to voicemail.

Though I had no desire to answer that call or listen to the message, I knew without a doubt I’d pissed Alton off, more than usual. Not only did he think I’d hung up on him but now I’d refused to answer his call.

“Here,” Deloris said as she pulled up the picture of the letter I’d found. She scrolled to the final page, the one with the signature. It simply read Bryce.

“You know,” I said, “he goes by different names.”

Deloris’s eyes opened wider. “That seems to be a trend I’m noticing with both of you.”

I tilted my head to the side. “Touché. But I was never Charli, not until Del Mar. I wasn’t even Alex until Stanford. I was always Alexandria. That was the name on the outside of the envelope. My point is that my cousin, Patrick, knew Bryce… well, forever. He calls him Spence. I’d never thought about it until the other night when Pat was talking about him. Over and over, he referred to him as Spence. Nox knows him, somehow, and calls him Edward.”