A Dangerous Business by Lorelei Moone Read Free Book Online

seal. The red wax was still intact, and looked exactly the same as the day when their cousin, Elise, had handed it to him for safekeeping. He set it aside and continued to rifle through the contents of the box.
    Underneath all the papers, he found the gold locket his mother had always worn. The policeman who had come to the farm to notify them of what had happened had given that to him. Although not strictly relevant to his mission, he opened the pendant anyway. Inside, exactly as he remembered, was a photograph of his dad on the left and one of Derek and himself, when they were only boys, on the right.
    It hurt. Seeing these things always hurt.
    He quickly shut the pendant again and placed it back into the bottom of the tin, and started going through the various clippings instead. It didn't take him long to find exactly what he was looking for: one of the first articles in the Isle of Skye Gazette, titled
Tragic Road Accident Claims Two Lives
.
    The article was accompanied by a photograph of the wreckage, along with a man in a firefighter uniform. Bingo.
    Aidan squinted at the picture, but it remained as grainy as ever. He was certain that this was the same man he'd seen in Edinburgh the other night. Neither the caption, nor the article mentioned him by name.
    This could not be a coincidence. After all these years, following instinct alone, he finally had some proof: their parents' death had been no accident.

Chapter Seven
    Heidi's second morning at the Alliance office wasn't perfect, but at least she'd slept well enough. Somehow, knowing that Aidan was going to be gone for a couple of days had helped her relax.
    She was up by seven and headed straight down to find the office eerily quiet. After figuring out how to work the coffee machine, she settled down into her chair and looked through the files she'd started working on yesterday. The news that Aidan might have found actual Sons of Domnall members running around Edinburgh had been very exciting indeed.
    The one thing she didn't understand was why Aidan had run off all of a sudden, giving Jamie some nonsense excuse about a family emergency. She couldn't explain how she knew, but there was no family emergency. It had something to do with the job, she was convinced of it.
    It was too bad they hadn't had the chance to talk further until Jamie came in, or she might have known more about what exactly Aidan had seen, and what he thought it meant. Still, just because Aidan wasn't here, didn't mean Heidi had to sit around doing nothing. She knew about the websites, she had read the files Aidan and Jamie had given her, and she was plenty motivated to get started and make some real progress.
    She had only taken a few sips of her hot coffee by the time she logged on to the main website.
A profile.
She needed to create a profile for herself, just like Aidan had done. Heidi made a few notes, picking phrases from Aidan's glossary that she felt would make her sound authentic.
    Although the member profiles of the other people on the website were vague at best, Heidi opted to fill out the "gender" field anyway. Perhaps they'd be more inclined to talk to a new
female
member? That was how the world worked, wasn't it?
    Once her profile was set up and her introduction typed out, she sat back, lukewarm cup in hand and admired her handiwork. Not a bad start.
    Rather than wait around for responses - she couldn't imagine any of these people would log on so early in the morning anyway - Heidi started working on something else that had been bothering her ever since she'd arrived day before yesterday: the state of the office.
    She began with her new desk, but as soon as she'd gotten into the swing of things; tidying up papers, throwing away random bits of rubbish, and wiping the top down with a moist cloth, she found it hard to stop just there. She moved on to the coffee maker and stationary cupboard, then finally sorted out the final empty desk in the corner of the room, until everything looked