Читать книгу Seducing The Enemy - Emma Darcy, Emma Darcy - Страница 7

CHAPTER ONE

HE’S dead.

The thought gave Annabel Parker intense satisfaction as she reread the killing summary of her article for the Australian National. She’d nailed Barry Wolfe to the wall this time. The long-time powerbroker in state politics and current finance minister couldn’t dodge these facts and figures. No need to add another word to what she’d written. Everything pointed directly to him.

Annabel smiled over the headline she’d chosen—“Pattern of Corruption.” There was a purity in patterns that couldn’t be obscured by personalities. The flamboyant and charismatic Barry Wolfe had fooled the public for too many years. The man oozed charm. One flash of his raffish grin and they fell in a heap, believing him, forgiving him, loving him. Accountability was well overdue.

She didn’t have the smoking gun, but the overwhelming bank of circumstantial evidence should land him straight into the courtroom of the commission into corruption. He’d need more than his handsome face and silver tongue to extract himself from that legal body. For one thing, the presiding judge was not a susceptible female.

It would be interesting to see if Daniel Wolfe, Q.C., would step in to defend his brother. The two men were poles apart, one embracing the law, the other holding it in contempt. The famous barrister had made his reputation winning unwinnable cases. It was said he could turn black into white. Nevertheless, Annabel very much doubted that even the highly skilled and formidable Daniel from the Sydney law courts could rescue his brother from the lions and resurrect a political career that was so deeply set in mire.

He’s dead.

Annabel was certain of it.

Having spent months following the money trails of dubious deals, and all this evening making every word count, she felt a sense of completion as she stapled the pages of the final printout together and locked the political dynamite in her filing cabinet.

Working from home had its advantages, but it meant the article would not be handed to her editor until tomorrow. Nevertheless, it was easy to imagine his elation over breaking such a high-ranking scandal. He’d be clearing the decks to use it for maximum impact.

Selling newspapers was not important to Annabel. Getting rid of corruption was. People like Barry Wolfe lined their own pockets while they sold their country down the drain. A complete shake-up was needed in the finance department. Ideally, her article would help to clean up the system of management and put some economic sanity back into the handling of public funding.

She was about to switch off the computer when her desk phone rang. The clock read ten forty-two. The late hour of the call brought an automatic frown, an unease.

Isabel...

Instinct identified her twin sister as the caller even before Annabel lifted the receiver. Her sixth sense picked up trouble, big trouble!

“Anna...” A desperate, frantic cry.

“Yes. What’s the problem, Izzie?” The automatic adoption of their childhood names for each other affirmed the special link that had always been theirs.

“He’s dead!”

The echo of her own thoughts rocked Annabel momentarily.

“He’s dead, and I don’t know what to do.”

Panic coming at her in waves. Annabel steadied her whirling mind. It had to be Isabel’s husband. “Neil?”

“Oh, God! Neil will throw me out. He’ll take our children from me. He’ll never let me see them again.” Hysteria breaking into wild sobbing.

Not Neil. Not family. A victim of a car accident? “Isabel!” She shouted to snap her sister back to the immediate problem. “Who is dead?”

It sobered her. “You’ll despise me.” Fear shaking through the evasion.

“Nonsense! I can’t help you if you don’t give me the facts. Where are you? What’s happened? Who’s dead?”

The firm demands succeeded in cutting through the emotional chaos at the other end of the line. Deep shuddering breaths, then, “I... I’m at a motel near you. The...the Northgate. We’re in room twenty-eight.”

Shock. Her straightlaced twin with a man in a motel? Neil Mason would certainly go off his brain. An adulterous wife would make a mockery of the family values he espoused for his political platform.

“It must have been a heart attack,” Isabel cried. “I wanted to call it off. We were arguing and he...he clutched his chest and collapsed. I gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. I tried everything I could think of.”

“How long since he collapsed?”

“Fifteen, twenty minutes...”

“You’re sure he’s dead?”

“I couldn’t get anything going again. No pulse. No breathing. Nothing. He was dead within seconds.”

Too late for paramedics to revive him now. Dead was dead, and discovery could wait. It wouldn’t make any difference to the man. The need to protect her twin surged to the fore.

“Get out of there, Izzie. Walk to my apartment—it’s safer than catching a cab—and I’ll take you home,” she instructed strongly, seeing no sense in her sister’s life being destroyed when there was no possibility of saving her lover.

Another burst of sobbing. “It’s no use. Someone took a photograph of us. I can be identified. Will you come and...and stand by me, Anna? I can’t face it alone.”

Annabel’s heart sank. “He’s a married man?” It was all she could think of—a wife having her husband trailed by a private investigator, taking a photograph to prove infidelity. If she was the vindictive type, the fatal affair could blow up into one hell of a scandal with Neil Mason’s wife involved.

“No. He’s not married,” came the gulping reply.

“Then why the photograph?” It made no sense.

“I don’t know. I was frightened. I wanted to leave. We had a fight. He laughed at me, saying one bell was as good as another. Whatever that meant. It all turned ugly and then—then...”

Some kind of set-up? Blackmail? Someone out to tarnish Neil’s puritanical policies? Or... A weird feeling of premonition crawled down Annabel’s spine.

The motel was only a few streets from where she lived in North Sydney. Her sister lived right across the city at Brighton-Le-Sands. With so many motels stretching over that distance, why come anywhere near her?

“Who’s your dead Romeo, Izzie?”

“I know you thought he was crooked, Anna, but he was so—so...”

“Who?” she asked, the premonition jagging into her heart. One bell as good as another. Isabel, Annabel, identical twin sisters, the same rippling cloud of distinctive red hair, green eyes, every physical feature such a close match. A photograph of either one of them could be mistaken for the other. “Tell me his name. Now!” she commanded tersely.

“Barry Wolfe.”