Don't Say a Word - Barbara Freethy [109]
"Wait," she said. "Maybe we don't want to go in there."
"Believe me, I don't want to go in there," he replied, "but we have to try."
It was too easy. The knob turned in his hand.
Alex entered the room first. Julia clung to his back, peering around him as he stopped in the living room. She'd expected to see chaos, destruction. Instead, she saw nothing. Everything was gone. There wasn't one stick of furniture left in the room, no evidence of the vase Alex had broken, no sign of the television or the couch. A fine layer of dust covered the hardwood floor, dust that appeared to be untouched, as if no one had ever been in the house. But Charles Manning had stood in this room only yesterday. His belongings, his life, his dog, for God's sake, had all been real. Hadn't they? She blinked, wondering if she was somehow dreaming.
Alex stepped away from her.
"Where are you going?" she asked quickly, reluctant to be alone.
"To check the bedroom. Wait here." He returned a moment later, his expression grim. "He's gone, not a trace of him left. He disappeared into thin air just like he did before."
"How? How does someone leave that fast? It was yesterday afternoon, barely twenty-four hours ago." She felt incredibly disappointed and also unnerved. There was something about the empty house, the fact that someone had gone to a lot of trouble to wipe Charles Manning off the face of the earth again, that was more than a little frightening. She hoped nothing had happened to him.
"My father must have had help. Damn him."
"Do you think he did this?"
"He disappeared once before."
She heard the bitterness in his voice and knew he was hurting again. He'd taken a huge personal risk to come here and face his father, and he'd been deserted again. The sound of a car drew her toward the window. She pulled the curtain aside to see a silver Honda Civic park in front of Alex's car.
"Who do we have here?" Alex muttered, as he peered over her shoulder.
Daniel Brady got out of the car. It wasn't the same car he'd driven to the beach. She idly wondered how many he had. Brady looked around him before making his way up to the front of the house. He wore a navy blue suit today with a white shirt and a conservative tie. He looked like a corporate businessman more than a government agent-or whatever he was. Alex's friend in the State Department had never called back with that information. Julia still wasn't sure exactly what Brady's job entailed. Maybe it was time to find out.
Brady opened the front door without bothering to knock. He didn't appear surprised to see them standing in the living room.
"Where is he?" Alex asked.
"I'm sorry. That's classified," Daniel said smoothly.
"Then why are you here?"
"He thought you'd come back. He wanted you to know he's all right, but that your visit yesterday compromised his safety and yours. He had to leave."
"How did our visit compromise anyone's safety?" Julia asked. "Were we followed?"
"It's possible."
"So nothing specific happened," Alex said. "This was just a preemptive strike."
"Exactly. I told you to drop it, Alex. You don't know who you're dealing with."
"Because you won't tell us," Julia snapped. "If you don't, Alex and I may keep stumbling into trouble. Maybe you should explain what's going on."
Brady withdrew an envelope from his inside jacket pocket. "We're providing you with a background, Miss DeMarco."
"Excuse me?"
"Everything you need is in here. Addresses where you lived with your mother before she married your stepfather. We've also listed a job where your mother worked and character references who can testify to her presence in Berkeley during the time in question. We have photographs of you as a toddler playing in the park in Berkeley, long before that picture in Russia was ever taken."
Julia stared at him in amazement. "How can you do that? How can you have pictures of me when I don't have pictures of me?' "Technology is amazing."
"So it's all fake, and you expect me to use it? Why would I do that?"
"Because you're in danger. And not just you, but your family, your