His eyes went hooded. "God, that’s so blazingly hot."
My brows popped. "What, me putting my hair up into a bedhead?"
"Yes, bedheads are always sexy. But then there is your 'time to get to work' hair. You do that every time. When you're about to get down to it, you pull your hair back and tie it up. I watch as the elastics fight to stay intact and not pop. It’s sexy."
I rolled my eyes. "You know, I have always hated my hair. It's so thick and generally curly and unruly. It didn't help that I didn't have a mum to help me figure out how to tame and manage it. My father, of course, was completely unhelpful. When I was a kid, he just used to cut it, so I had a boy hair cut from age ten to twelve."
East winced. "Oh God, the worst time."
"Oh yeah, the worst. It was bad because I got boobs at ten. Not big ones, but enough so that I looked weird. And there were braces too."
A deep rumbling laugh poured out of him. Then came the howling laughter. "Oh God, can I see a picture?"
I shook my head. "No. You may not since you're laughing."
"I'm sorry, love. I don't understand it though. He was in an international community. Couldn't he have asked someone for help?"
"God only knows. No one else in my family has this hair at all. When I got older, I had Brazilian blowouts often. I wish I’d learned to love my hair though. I just… I don't know. I didn't know what to do with it, so my hair and I, we have a complicated relationship."
"Well, I love it either way.”
"Maybe one day I'll go curly again. It's going to look really awkward for a while there as the curls grow in."
"I'm sure I will love it either way."
"He says now, until he sees me with the wild curls that are going to make me look like Medusa."
"I love curly hair. It gives me something more to play with."
The look he gave me was all warmth and fuzz. I was glad we could do this. We could still be at ease and be relaxed, considering someone had tried to shoot us yesterday. Considering that we had both lain awake all night, pretending we were asleep, wrapped up in each other. We did actually give up the ghost at 4 a.m. and made love, giving us both the needed respite for a couple of hours sleep. But now, now we could pretend as if everything was okay, as if someone hadn't tried to kill us yesterday.
After a few short minutes of shuffling papers, East said, "Can I just tell you how much I miss my computer?"
I laughed. "Oh God, what would you have been without computers?"
He clutched his chest and gasped. "Thank God I never have to find out."
For the next thirty minutes, we searched and searched, and finally, East sat back. "We’ve got nothing on the missing persons. Nobody I’ve come across resembles Henry Warlow, or at least who we know to be Henry Warlow. But I did find something interesting in the police report from that day."
"What is it?"
"There was a report of an accident the day of the regatta, but we knew that. What it says here is that the boat the boys were on had eight boys on board. But there is an interesting story here that said that there were, in fact, nine."
I frowned. “But it was a sailboat. If there had been a stowaway, surely someone would have noticed.”
"Exactly. Anyway, there was a crash. And the boys had to be rescued. One of those boys was, as we know, Lord Jameson. He was wearing his family's crest on a nylon vest.”
I pulled out my phone and pulled up the image I’d taken of the photo in Jameson’s office and then handed it to him. "Is this the one?”
He took my phone and nodded. "Yup. It's the same one. Okay, so, what it's saying is that he was found dressed, his face badly battered. One of the other boys identified him as Walter Jameson."
"Who was the other boy?" I asked. He took a moment to search the report.
East's breath whooshed out of his lungs. "Holy fuck."
"What?"
Since he wasn't saying anything, I dropped my box off my lap and went over to him. "What is it? Tell me."
He glanced up at me. "The lad that identified Walter Jameson was Marcus Van Linsted."
My stomach flipped. "Holy fucking shit. You're telling me Marcus Van Linsted identified Henry Warlow as Walter Jameson? Do you think he knew?"
"It's hard to tell. The only reason it was noted was because there was another witness, presently unnamed." He frowned. "It doesn't say who it was, it just says a young man on site to watch the regatta was the witness who declared that there was another passenger on the boat. But everyone else on board insisted that there were only eight of them."
"Okay, so someone's aware that there was another person on board that sailboat. Who was it?"
He scanned the photos that were in his hand. "I don't know. Check the other box over there."
They were all marked with the same date, and I pulled them out. There were several news clippings from the day of the regatta, and I looked through all of them. Most of them were inconsequential, the crowds, the boats… And then I stopped and frowned at one photo in particular. East leaned over. "What? What do you see?"
I pointed. "Okay, it's low light in here, but who does that look like to you?"
He leaned over me, and his scent immediately enveloped me, making me wish we'd stayed in bed that morning. He must have noted the sudden tension around me because he lifted his brow and smirked. "Is something wrong, Agent Kincade?"
"You just focus on what you're focusing on."
He gave me the devil’s own grin. "Yeah, okay, for now. But I have certain parts
