Honeymoon To Die For (10 page)

Ryder didn’t knock, just opened the next door for her as they stepped inside a room that was larger than her apartment back in Virginia. Floor-to-ceiling windows made up two walls of the corner office.

The word that came to mind was spartan.

Everything in the room was neat almost to the point of feeling clinical.

Hubrecht Van Dyke stood across the room next to a window filled with the black night. Hubrecht was in a hushed conversation with another man Bianca pegged as Sam Long, Hubrecht’s right-hand man, who had a distinctive Wall-Street profile from his tailored gray suit to the wavy black hair with a touch of gray at the temples.

Sam was no shrimp at a couple of inches over six feet tall, but Hubrecht topped him by at least three more inches. Hubrecht’s dark gray suit, white shirt and conservative tie were streamlined and neat compared to Sam’s fashion statement.

No fancy cufflinks on Hubrecht. No silk handkerchief in the pocket.

Just a businessman’s armor.

Camouflage for a killer.

The meeting had ended the minute Ryder and Bianca entered.

As Hubrecht walked across the room toward them, Bianca mentally ran through her file notes on her main target.

Hubrecht Van Dyke, born in Holland, emigrated to the United States with his parents at age twelve, currently sixty-nine, engineer from MIT, married thirty-seven years to Lady Anne Lexton, daughter and heir to Lexton Aerospace and Defense Engineering PLC, second largest defense contractor in the United Kingdom.

Hubrecht stopped two steps from them with Sam at his side. “Ryder.”  

“Father.”  Ryder’s return volley was given in precisely the same cool tone.

Oh, boy. Talk about strained.

Until now, Bianca had doubted Ryder’s claim that he and his father didn’t get along, but if the air turned any more frigid between these two, tiny green leaves would start dropping off the Bonsai tree sitting on the glass-and-bronze pedestal.

Hubrecht’s thick hair was more silver than caramel brown, and he weighed at least two-hundred-and-fifty pounds. But spread across six-and-half-feet, he was fit and, well,
imposing
wasn’t nearly strong enough a word.  

In the same matter-of-fact tone, Hubrecht said, “So this is your wife.”

“Yes, this is Bianca,” Ryder replied, another stiff response.

Where was the hug and jubilation over Ryder’s being free?

Why was Ryder just standing there as if openly defying his father for some secret reason?

Hubrecht angled his head toward Sam. “Ryder, I don’t believe you’ve met my CEO, Sam Long.”

Sam extended his hand to Ryder, but his expression was hard and unwelcoming. “Ryder.”

When Sam addressed Bianca, his face turned even darker if that were possible, and he did not extend his hand. “
Mrs
. Van Dyke.”

Ryder bristled at Sam’s snub.

Was that part of the show or some undercurrent between Ryder and Sam?

The room might seriously explode from all the tension.

Thankfully, Sam said, “If you’ll excuse me, I have work to finish.”  He strode past them, pausing at the door to tell Hubrecht, “Kale is in his office monitoring tonight’s security. Please let him know if you need anything.”

Hubrecht nodded and Sam left.

Ryder practically vibrated with tension.  

Bianca could understand why, since Sam had all but shouted that she and Ryder were considered a threat, but she’d extended a margin of trust to Ryder so he could rule this meeting. That wouldn’t happen while he sounded downright surly and his face was shut down into a mass of sharp angles.

Hubrecht’s expression was no more inviting than Ryder’s.

What the devil was going on with Ryder and his father?

Screw it. She had to do something to break this stalemate.

Bianca sucked up her disgust at sharing the same air as Hubrecht Van Dyke and turned on her charm. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Van Dyke.”

“Please, call me Hubrecht.”

“Okay, Hubrecht.”  She stepped away from Ryder and reached out to shake hands with his father. She’d been avoiding Hubrecht’s gaze and dreading the moment she’d have to stare into the eyes of Satan. When she lifted her gaze, she couldn’t believe what she saw.

Hubrecht’s eyes were sky blue and ... friendly? They were nice eyes. How could a man this evil possess eyes that belonged on your local grocery store manager?

He addressed her in a pleasant tone that was a bit disarming. “You’re as charming as I’ve heard.”

Pleasant? How could she think the man who sold guns to terrorists was pleasant? She finished shaking his hand and broke out her I’m-so-happy-to-be-here smile. “Why, thank you, Hubrecht. I’m flattered.”

Hold it. What he’d said finally registered.

Just as Ryder had warned, Hubrecht had been getting reports on them today. On her. He was every bit the enemy she’d peeled like an onion, layer by layer, through research. How many serial killers had friends and neighbors who had described the killer as “a nice man” who would never hurt a soul?

Had she really expected Hubrecht to look and sound evil?

He was a master at hiding his true colors, which made it so much easier to focus on running this game on him.

Lifting a hand to indicate the sitting area with a cream sofa and two cushy side chairs, Hubrecht said, “Have a seat.”

She glanced over at Ryder who showed no signs of moving, probably because that had sounded like an order, but too bad. If she could shake hands with the man who’d helped kill her best friend, Ryder could sit with him. With her back to Hubrecht, Bianca lifted an eyebrow at Ryder and, surprise, surprise, he actually moved to the sofa and sat down.

Let this get easier now.
She took her place next to Ryder as Hubrecht moved to a side chair.

After what had happened in the limo, she wouldn’t risk putting her hand on Ryder’s thigh so she casually bumped his leg with her foot when she crossed her legs.
Talk to your father.
 

Ryder put his arm around her and shifted, getting comfortable. Much better. She took that as a positive sign until Ryder asked his father, “Why’d you have us brought here by chopper?”

Wrong wish. She should have wished for him to have a
civil
conversation with his father.

“The media has camped out downstairs here and across from the gate at home. Your false wedding location appeared to have thrown the media off your trail, but someone always finds out the truth. I thought having you brought here by helicopter on short notice would insure that you slipped away undetected.”

Having it explained in those terms would have sounded uber considerate if the gesture had been made by anyone else, but in light of what she’d seen and heard, she was giving new weight to Ryder’s statements about this man. Given that, Bianca wasn’t sure what to make of Hubrecht’s explanation, but she stayed in character. “That was so thoughtful of you, Hubrecht. I don’t have to tell you what a pain it was to get rid of the media the minute word went viral that Ryder was innocent.”

“I understand that we have you to thank for getting my son released. How did you do it?”

Ryder’s fingers had been sitting loosely on her arm, but she felt them curl at that question, one of the landmines he’d been warning her about. Their mission was going to go down in flames right here if she failed Hubrecht’s first test. But she fully expected to be poked at verbally all week, to see if she’d slip.

She leaned forward, all serious. “How did I do it? With the God’s honest truth. I mean, who could believe that a man with Ryder’s military record killed J. K. Kearn?”

Ryder’s fingers uncurled and closed around her arm, warming her skin. She glanced at him and saw something in his eyes she hadn’t seen before. A vulnerability, as if ... he’d been waiting for someone to defend him.

To believe he hadn’t committed cold-blooded murder.

She couldn’t take on that role.

Did he think she could just deep-six months of research that supported a logical conclusion? Looking into his eyes, the answer was yes. He really thought he could convince her he was innocent. She wanted to ignore the power of his belief, but she’d be lying if she said it didn’t get to her. Ryder’s constant declarations of innocence—along with his heroic military record—continued to nip at her conscience as it had done since the beginning of her investigation.

“I know Ryder did not kill J. K.,” Hubrecht said, drawing Bianca back around to catch the rest of what he was saying. Maybe hearing Hubrecht’s admission would soften Ryder’s attitude toward his father.

Hubrecht continued, “In fact, I think your agency’s circumstantial evidence is an insult to someone with Ryder’s training. If he was going to kill J.K., he would never have met with the man that same night, and Ryder would have had an iron-clad alibi during the time of the shooting. The whole thing was ridiculous.”

Bianca smarted at Hubrecht’s statement, but her puzzle-oriented brain started considering the logic until she realized Ryder’s eyes had turned into ice chips when his father said, basically, that Ryder
was
capable of committing the perfect murder.

And
that
reaction from Ryder she could actually understand. Bianca’s parents would have been stomping around, declaring her innocence without knowing any of the details, because, motive and means be damned, they believed in her and stood behind her no matter what.

Who had stood behind Ryder that way when he was growing up?

A subject for another time.

She slipped her hand down between her and Ryder to find his. With a little prodding, she forced him to unclench his fingers and take her hand again while she said, “I’m glad to hear that I’m not the only one who believes in Ryder, but I have to admit that I didn’t change my mind until I found conflicting evidence.”

Hubrecht’s unreadable blue eyes watched every move she made. He propped his elbows on the arms of the chair, lacing his fingers over his chest. “Why aren’t you on a honeymoon, Ryder?”

“We’ll take one once the media finds something new to focus on.”

“What are your plans now?”

Ryder drew in a long breath and let it out, not rushing to answer. “Don’t know. Not a lot of companies interested in hiring someone most people will still suspect of murder until the real killer is caught.”

“If you had come to me when you got out of the Army, you wouldn’t have ended up in this position.”

“Getting arrested had nothing to do with the corporate security work I was doing for Slye Temp. I got screwed because I was doing a favor, which was ultimately for you.”  

Ryder was still testy, but he was engaging Hubrecht, so Bianca stayed out of the crossfire. This was his part.

Shaking his head, Hubrecht made an impatient noise. “I told Terrence that not even you could get that snake J. K. to the table. The man can’t do an honest deal.”

That was an interesting comment since Hubrecht had said nothing of the sort about Kearn when Hubrecht had been deposed in this case.

Ryder’s voice hardened. “J. K. might be a snake, but that doesn’t mean he deserved a bullet in the head.”

Bianca sucked in a sharp breath at the subtle accusation.

Hubrecht’s expression never changed. “Are you insinuating that someone at VDE had something to do with killing J. K.?”

“The only people who knew I was meeting with J.K. that night were people connected to VDE.”  

Hubrecht dismissed that with a slight movement of his fingers, saying, “That sounds as paranoid as the media bent on convincing the public that I had my son kill a competitor. Preposterous,” he muttered. “Why would I kill someone I can crush in business?”

Nothing about this conversation between Hubrecht and Ryder fit with what Bianca had anticipated. She’d expected Hubrecht to welcome Ryder with open arms, which he hadn’t, and for Ryder to be at home in this environment, which he wasn’t. And Hubrecht knew that she was FBI, or former FBI for her new cover identity, but he hadn’t brought that up yet. Now he claimed that Kearn was not a threat to his business.

But business news had speculated that Kearn had a new weapon coming out that would make a top-selling Van Dyke weapon obsolete.

Hubrecht’s statements wouldn’t change the evidence her team had compiled, but it did give her reason to look at some of her research with new eyes,
if
what Hubrecht said was true and he wasn’t just posturing.

Watching these two men interact was bringing up a whole pile of possible questions, starting with who was playing whom? Had Ryder really agreed to the FBI’s deal to see his father convicted and sent to prison, too? Was this about Ryder getting his potential sentence reduced? Or was it about being free long enough to get back at the person Ryder believed let him take the fall for a killing?

If someone else in VDE had actually taken that shot, Ryder had a legitimate beef with more than one person here.

But if Hubrecht was the reason Ryder was arrested for murder, would Hubrecht trust anything Ryder said or did at this point?

She couldn’t start doubting her research. Not now.

Both men were guilty. That was all that mattered.

Hubrecht broke the silence with, “What about J. K.’s people? They could have known about the meeting as well. His oldest son has taken over since J. K.’s death. How do you know
he
didn’t arrange the killing to push his father out of the way?”

“They wouldn’t kill their father. J. K. was close to all three of his boys.”

“And that makes him a good man?”

Hubrecht hadn’t sounded disappointed, or hurt. That would be too human an emotion to attach to this man, but Bianca was wise enough to understand that he was no longer talking about J. K. Kearn’s death.

When Ryder didn’t answer, Hubrecht sighed. “You’ve always had a place here.”

Good time to get back to the reason they were here. She hoped Ryder would change his tune and be more agreeable.

Ryder made a
pfft
sound. “In sales? That’s not me.”

Bianca kept the idiot smile on her face but wanted to strangle him for killing the perfect opening for a job at VDE. She angled her head at Ryder. “Don’t be so quick to discount yourself, Darlin’.”