Crazy for Her(56)

Dani grinned. “You should probably let go of my hand now. Your wife packs a gun, and I don’t want her to shoot me.”

He gave a theatrical shudder. “Guns. Horrid things, but you needn’t worry. My Barbie knows my heart is hers.”

Christ, he was watching a farce. “Back to work, Ken, and take your Amazon with you.”

After the door closed behind them, Dani laughed. “Ken and Barbie?”

“It’s actually Kent, but the guys, who all have the mind of a twelve-year-old, couldn’t resist renaming him,” Maria said.

“I resemble that remark,” Buchanan declared.

A quick smile was exchanged between the two that seemed way too intimate for Logan’s liking.

“What does he do here?” Dani asked.

“He’s the best analyst I’ve ever met,” Logan said. “I’m lucky to have him. The CIA keeps trying to steal him, but fortunately for me, he’ll never leave Barbie and she swears she’ll never live anywhere she can’t wear a bikini year-round.”

He reached over and picked up one of the spiked coffees. “Now let’s get down to business so Dani and I can get out of here.” Suddenly, and more than anything, he wanted to play. With Dani. “What do you have, Maria?”

“I’ve told you the names of the companies we’ve unearthed so far, all with PO boxes for addresses and all based in Delaware. There are a lot of walls erected around each of them, but nothing I can’t get past with enough time.”

“We don’t have time,” Logan said.

“I did find a name associated with Good Shepherd, and I think they made a mistake there. It looked like they tried to remove it, but they didn’t go deep enough.”

Logan sat up. “What name?”

She rifled through some pages. “Herbert Ballard.”

Dani put her cup down. “Once, the guy who calls me, he started to say something and then stopped. He said ‘Papa Herb’ . . . but cut himself off. He even said he wasn’t supposed to say it.”

“Sounds like you hit pay dirt, Maria,” Jake said.

His sister’s eyes softened. Logan was sorry for it, but it was becoming clear he was going to have to kill Romeo. “Keep digging on the companies, Maria. And you start seeing how many Herbert Ballards you can find,” he told Buchanan. “If our bad guy is calling him Papa, it’s likely he’s older than Evan. I want both of you to copy Ken on whatever you find and let him start doing his magic. He has a way of seeing the bigger picture.”

Buchanan took his phone out and looked at it. “It’s Turner.”

Good, maybe he had some news for them. “Put him on speaker.”

“You’re on speaker, Turner,” Jake said. “The boss is here along with Maria and Dani Prescott. Learn anything new?”

There was a pause and Logan wondered if Turner was hesitant to speak while Dani was listening. He glanced at Dani and could tell she was thinking the same thing.

She leaned forward. “Hi, Jamie, long time.”

“Hey, Dani, too long. Sorry I’m not there. Would’ve loved to see you.”

“Same here, but I promise to come back sometime. Listen, they’ve been filling me in and I know Evan had a twin, so don’t worry about upsetting me with whatever you have to say.”

“Okay, I wasn’t sure how much you knew. Yeah, Evan had a twin. His name’s Eli. The old lady I talked to couldn’t remember much, but she said when the boys were about two, their father told her there had been a terrible accident, and his wife and one of the twins were killed. She didn’t know which one. He and the remaining son moved almost immediately after that. I called to check for the death certificates, and there’s no record for either one. Next, I checked the microfilm from local newspapers at that time, and there’s nothing about an accident involving them.”

Damn, he hated mysteries.

“What if . . .”

“What if?” he asked when Dani paused, her gaze distant.

“I was just thinking, what if the parents split and each took one of the boys? I could cry to think of Evan and his twin separated by a divorce.” Her eyes misted, and she blinked as she cleared her throat.

“That’s another puzzle, boss,” Jamie said. “There’s no divorce on record.”

“I think Evan truly believed his mother was dead, and he didn’t remember he had a twin,” Dani said. “He had dreams about playing with another little boy, but he just thought it was some kid he went to kindergarten with. I find it really sad that he had a brother and neither knew of the other.”

“I think Evan didn’t know, but this Eli, he knows,” Logan said.