The Liberation of Alice Love - Abby McDonald [94]
And there it was. Ella had checked in on the twenty-fifth for four luxurious days of relaxation—registered with a passport in the name of Kate Jackson.
Alice looked back at the grainy black-and-white image, frozen on screen. Kate Jackson. She had her now.
***
Hugging the printouts to her chest, Alice was perfectly content to depart for the airport, and as they set about the airport checks and long security lines, she marveled at the chance discovery.
She’d done it.
Her sense of triumph was giddy and fierce, enough to make memories of that gray police cell melt away. All her intuition, all her quick thinking, every instinct she’d had about Ella, built from weeks of tracking and poring over those statements—they’d all paid off. Alice had been right about her. What had stung most about Ella’s early, shocking deceit was that Alice hadn’t known her at all. But now…
Well, Alice thought gleefully, settling into the scratchy airplane seat, now she knew Ella better than she would ever have imagined. She had found her, when police and professionals couldn’t. She knew how Ella thought now.
“I still reckon you’re taking this all too well.” They had been in the air a while when Nathan’s voice broke through her thoughts. “You didn’t even pause for breath after getting locked up by foreign police.”
Alice looked over, amused. “So, you’d have preferred to find me weeping and traumatized in that cell then?”
“Well, no,” Nathan corrected himself with a grin. “But maybe pale and repentant, with a single tiny tear.”
She laughed. Somehow, they’d slipped back into their easy banter, but this time at least, Alice knew there was truth lurking beneath the charm. Some substance. “Didn’t Stefan tell you?” she replied. “Crisis management is what I do best. I’m made of stronger stuff than that.”
“I’m beginning to see,” Nathan agreed. “Man, the first night I spent in jail, I was a mess.”
“You got arrested?” Alice perked up.
“Sure. Three times, so far, but that first one was the worst. I was a wreck,” he added. “I mean, up until then, most of my work had been staring at the computer screen, or interviewing bankers in their nice, air-conditioned offices. And suddenly, I’m sitting in the corner of a stinking jail cell in the far corner of the world with a bunch of drug dealers, wondering if anyone even knows I’m there.”
“But let me guess, by the end of it, you were playing cards with them and doing their secret handshakes like a pro.” Alice imagined the scene.
“Uh, nope.” Nathan grinned cheerfully. “By the end of it, I was still huddled in the corner, too scared to look anyone in the eye.”
“What about the other times?” Alice asked, digging a pastry from their bag of airport provisions. She passed it to him, the thick glaze dribbling between her fingers. “You said it happened more than once.”
“Yeah, but those stories aren’t as impressive.” He grinned, biting into the snack.
“Huddling is impressive?” Alice teased.
Nathan laughed. “You were supposed to be awed by my strength and resilience.”
“Oh, my mistake.”
“I suppose it’s a hazard of the trade, when you’re poking around in people’s bank accounts.” Nathan went on: “See, some investigators, well, let’s just say they operate in a legal gray area, but like I said before, your reputation is everything in this game, so I make sure to play by the rules. Or only bend them a little.”
Alice glanced out of the window. She doubted Nathan would approve of her more reckless approach to tracking Ella, but it had worked, hadn’t it? He would have told her that coming to Italy was a waste of time and that using her name to prompt investigations when it was still tainted by Ella’s crime was irresponsible, even dangerous. But without that dangerous impulse, she never would have discovered Ella’s next alias. Sometimes, Alice was coming to realize, recklessness was entirely necessary. Quiet questions and careful planning