Harrison rolled his eyes. “Clean off the camera lens.”
The guy on Harrison’s monitor was choking. The private investigator Wystan recommended had spurted a mouth full of coffee all over the camera. It was gruesome to see the brown liquid on the screen that made the P.I.’s face twice the size it really was.
“What did you say her name was?” Osric Fountain asked after he paused to clean up.
“Paige Waters,” Harrison replied with a heavy dose of patience.
The guy on the other end hooted. “That’s tremendous! I thought I’d misheard you. She’s the woman I’ve been looking for all my life! I should come down there in person. What’s your address?”
Harrison’s dose of patience had already worn off. “Excuse me. Do you mind telling me what you’re so excited about? If it’s just because she once belonged to Zaphier Rawson and you think she might have an interesting story to tell a magazine editor, you’d be dead wrong. She had her memory wiped.”
When Harrison said that, the private investigator calmed right down. “Really?”
“Of course. I’m calling you to see if you can help me fill in the blanks of her timeline.”
Osric sucked in his breath. “Of all the rat sh… Still, I’ll come right down. What’s your address?”
“Are you sure you’ll be able to make it? It’s on the other side of civilization,” Harrison stalled. He wasn’t positive he could trust someone Wystan had recommended before he made the call, and now that he’d talked to him, he wasn’t reassured.
“Listen, I understand if you’re getting cold feet about hiring me,” Osric said rationally. “But the reason I’m interested in Paige has nothing to do with selling the fabulous story of a purchased woman. It’s because she’s been part of a case I’ve been working on for years. I thought she was dead.”
“Dead?”
“I’ll be there by tonight. I don't need your address. I’ll meet you at Wystan’s house,” Osric said before he cut the connection.
Harrison clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and turned the phone off. How could that maniac make it all the way to Wystan’s by evening?
Then he heard Paige calling him down the hall. It was time for lunch. He got up and strode down the hall. The kitchen was empty and it took him a second to realize she was in the conservatory pouring drinks for them.
There was a white rosebud behind one of her ears. The water in the crystal made a pattern of light across her cheeks and made her eyes sparkle.
Harrison’s heart ached.
What had that monster done to her?
Harrison revved the engine of his truck. He’d told Paige he was going to town to ‘hang out with the guys.’
“Which guys?” she had asked skeptically.
He’d never left for a night out before, so he was honest. “Wystan.”
“Wystan?” She laughed. She knew Harrison couldn’t stand him. “Have a good time!”
Harrison smirked. “Don’t you want to know why I’m going?” he called after her. She was already halfway up the stairs to her tower.
She leaned over the railing and said, “Not really. If it has to do with Wystan, then it means you can’t get out of it. Unless…” She drummed her fingers on the banister. “You’re actually going to see Narissa?”
That was when Harrison clued into the idea that Paige might know about his past feelings for Narissa.
Harrison waved her off playfully, but once he sat alone in the truck preparing for a bumpy drive to town, he hated himself. How had he given himself away? Was it obvious? Was that why Paige always seemed to regard him with unwavering platonic friendship? Did she think she would always play second-fiddle to a married woman? Damn.
When Harrison got to town, Wystan and the private eye were waiting outside the house.
Harrison shut off the engine and casually approached them. The stranger was Osric. He recognized him from their video call. Harrison mistrusted him on sight. His hair was too long. Harrison hadn’t seen his ponytail through the teleconference. The P.I. hadn’t shaved. It didn't add to his credibility that he didn’t do up enough buttons on his shirt or that he was smoking something vile in a pipe.
“Greetings,” Osric said cheerfully.
“Hi,” Harrison said.
Osric tapped out his pipe on an old salon-style hairdryer that was sitting in the yard and opened his mouth to say something when Wystan suddenly roared, “Hey! I just got that for Narissa.”
“Oh,” Osric said, brushing the ashes off it. “I thought it was garbage.” It was no wonder he would say that, considering the heaps of trash sticking up through the untrimmed grass.
Harrison realized that Wystan disliked Osric as much as he did.
Wystan scowled at both of them and indicated that they could come inside. Osric sat at one end of the couch while Harrison sat on the other and Wystan filled in his butt-print in his usual armchair.
“Before we begin, I should tell you that right now I’m working on a case for Mrs. Elizabella Rawson.”
“Who is she?”
“Zaphier’s wife.”
“Excuse me,” Harrison snorted. “He’s married?”
“Yeah, it was one of the biggest weddings in celebrity history. Back when she married him she was not only an honest-to-goodness princess, daughter of a king, and everything, but she was also a very accomplished clothing designer.”
“What happened?”
Osric took out his phone and projected a series of images onto the wall over the television. They were pictures of Zaphier and an extremely stunning woman in a white wedding gown. Harrison had seen her picture before, but the personal details were blank. He never read the rags.
“Why would a princess want to marry him?”
“The Rawson family is rich. They are rich beyond your wildest dreams, but also the wildest dreams of the Thryn family. Elizabella was married to Zaphier for the sake of money, but she didn’t know the money was drenched in blood.” Osric continued. “They were married for three weeks before she realized that there was something wrong with him. I mean something more than multiple surgical procedures—something worse. By the end of the first three months, she refused to live with him and now they are considered by the public as permanently separated. He simply won’t sign for a divorce. Besides, at this point, there’s little point in pursuing one.”
“Why?” Harrison asked breezily. “If she dislikes him so much?”
“She’s dying,” Osric admitted gravely.
Harrison’s mouth hung open in silence.
Osric continued. “She believes Zaphier married her so he could become a prince. What is not commonly known is that three months into their marriage she was diagnosed with M.T.N.”
Harrison’s throat tightened at the mention of the illness. It was completely incurable. Someone diagnosed with it could not hope to live for longer than four years. Many people died much sooner if they didn’t have proper treatment. Harrison had seen the effects of the disease. Patients lost their hair, limbs hanging on by threads—a patient lay blindfolded and crumbling at the end. Both his parents had died that way. But, the disease wasn’t airborne. You had to contract it from something.
Osric cleared his throat and went on, “Elizabella believes that Zaphier deliberately infected her with it to secure his title and be rid of her.”
Harrison turned his head away. “Would he really do that?”
“She doesn’t believe this without reason. The Rawson family hasn’t exactly treated their women with equality in the past. Zaphier’s aunt was put into cryostasis repeatedly to get her out of the way.”
“No one would do that either.”
“Yes, they would. Why don’t you ask Narissa?” Wystan said.
Harrison twitched. He never dreamed that when he overheard Zaphier call Narissa his aunt that he had been telling the truth.
“Even though there has been loads of criminal evidence against other members of the Rawson family—Zaphier is clean. The reason Elizabella wants to find Paige is that she’s sure that Paige knows the details of Zaphier’s past crimes. She was so tight with him back in the day and he paid her off.”
“She doesn’t remember anything about that?” Harrison reminded him dryly.
“I thought about it on the way over. There are two ways of having memories wiped. One is through brain damage. If it’s done that way, then there’s no way of recovering the information, but there’s another treatment based on hypnosis. They hypnotize a person and force them to close a door on a certain part of their life. The hypnotist closes neural pathways.”
“How was Paige paid off?” Harrison asked, suddenly remembering his conversation with her about her financial transactions before she went into cryostasis. “If she was paid to keep Zaphier’s secrets then why did she wipe her memory and sell herself? She was in debt when I recovered her.”
Osric looked taken back. “Hmm,” he said thoughtfully. “If that's the case, then the only answer that makes sense is that he didn’t pay her off—he wiped her memory and sold her off instead. If she didn’t consent, we wouldn’t know, would we? Her memory of that conversation is gone.”
Harrison clenched his fists and couldn’t speak for a second. He hadn’t even considered the possibility that Zaphier would have done it to her to protect his closet full of skeletons.
“How could we prove that?” Wystan interjected.
“We have to find out where she had her memory-wipe done,” Osric said confidently, as he turned off the projection. “In the meantime, I’d like to talk to Paige. Will you allow that? Even if she got her memory wiped, she may remember something that can help me put the pieces together and get a little justice for a princess.”
“Sure,” Harrison said, raking a hand through his hair.
“Good. Can you bring her to the café tomorrow?”
Harrison nodded.
Author's Notes: Thanks for reading! I'm really glad I discovered this place. It's been fun so far.
