Danger in a Red Dress by Christina Dodd Read Free Book Online Page A

is, plus her health is precarious, plus she hasn’t got two nickels to rub together.” Carrick leaned forward. “Do you know what that party will cost to put on properly? And Mother insists on doing everything properly!”
    “Have you talked to your mother?”
    “I tried.” Carrick sighed heavily. “Mother should be preparing for the government inquest. Instead, all I hear is, Hannah says .”
    “But what is Hannah Grey going to get out of it?” That was the important question.
    “What I’m afraid of . . . I am so desperately afraid that she . . .”
    Gabriel said it for him. “You’re afraid that your mother is going to tell Hannah what she knows about your father ’s fortune.”
    “Exactly.” Carrick grasped Gabriel’s arm and squeezed gratefully.
    “You think if there’s any money left, Hannah will remove it and leave your mother to face the consequences.”
    “Yes!”
    Gabriel asked the question that hovered between them. “ Does your mother know where Nathan Manly put the money?”
    Carrick exploded in muffled exasperation. “I have no idea! She has never in any way indicated that she knows, but you don’t know Mother. She’s angry about Father’s betrayal, and she never forgets or forgives. Added to that, she’s secretive and distrustful of everyone, even me. The older she gets, the worse she gets. That’s why this relationship with Hannah Grey is out of character.”
    Jasmine appeared. “Here you go, gentlemen.” She placed the plates before them.
    Carrick ate a few bites without visible interest, and zoomed right back to his problem. “I know Mother’s odd and probably not the best mother in the world, but she’s the only parent I’ve got. I can’t let her go to prison.”
    Gabriel surrendered to the inevitable. “Okay. Consider me hired. What do you want me to do?”
    “Do you think you could bug the house?” Carrick asked eagerly. “Fix it so we could hear what Mother tells Hannah and give that information to the government? I know it stinks, but I don’t think my mother could survive the inquest, much less a trial, and certainly not prison. I’ve got to do what I can to save my mother ’s life.”
    “I can bug the house.”
    “Mother’s smart, and she’s observant. She’s got a bad heart, too, and I don’t want her disturbed.”
    It must be nice to feel that way about a mother, even when she didn’t seem like much of a parent at all. “I’ve got cameras that are wireless and the size of a pencil. Will that do?”
    Carrick leaned back in relief. “Yes. That will do very well.”
    Truth to tell, this job appealed to Gabriel. To go to his father’s house, to see where he’d lived and walked . . . He had researched Nathan Manly, trying to get a picture of the guy who would build up a multibillion-dollar business and demolish it, wed a woman and destroy the marriage, romance four girls, and leave them pregnant, steal a fortune, and abandon everything and everyone he knew.
    But if Gabriel was going to do this, he couldn’t tell Carrick that they were brothers. Not here. Not now. That would have to wait for another day.
    “I almost forgot. Here.” Carrick thrust something toward Gabriel. “Here’s Hannah Grey.”
    It was a photo, and not a good photo, either. Grainy and unflattering—her driver’s license, or maybe her nursing license. It showed a blond woman, very pale, with minimal makeup, a solemn face, and huge blue eyes.
    But Gabriel felt like he’d been punched in the gut.
    He was looking at the woman of his dreams.

SEVEN
    The house was watching her.
    Hannah returned the breakfast tray to the kitchen and walked toward Mrs. Manly’s suite . . . and stopped in the middle of the wide sweep of stairs. She looked around, peering at the shadows, half expecting to see eyes peering back.
    The house was watching her.
    She examined the high ceiling, the cove moldings, the pictures that lined the walls. She saw nothing. She heard nothing.
    Yet the hair on the back