Rebels and Lovers by Linnea Sinclair Read Free Book Online

tiredly—one leg propped up on the sofa table—on a nail-studded couch catercorner to the desk.
    Hannah was upstairs with Marguerite, Valerie, and the children.
    A half dozen armed security personnel were milling about the house, their footsteps and occasional low conversations drifting into the library.
    “But I have a hard time believing,” Devin continued, “that kidnappers would have cleaned Trip’s apartment, packed his duffel and his bookpad, but left his deskcomp behind. And where’s his pocket comm? Why would they leave him with a means to contact us?”
    “Stop playing detective, D.J.,” Ethan drawled. He was the only one who called Devin that, and he knew Devin hated it. But everyone was strained, nerves taut. That was just Ethan’s way of showing his frustration. “The police are trained for that kind of thing. You’re not.”
    Devin shook his head and looked at Ethan. His brother’s dark hair was tinged with gold from the sun, his face tanned from the hours he spent sailing. But all the fresh air and sunshine hadn’t been able to remove the dark circles under Ethan’s eyes, the result of hours of drinking. And—Devin often suspected—possibly worse. His brother was in no shape to handle this kind of stress from his family. “It has nothing to do with playing detective. It has to do with logic.”
    “People don’t become criminals because they have an excess of logic.”
    “If they were criminals, Ethan, they would have taken Trip’s vidcams, comps, everything. Nothing that happened there bespeaks a lower criminal element.”
    Ethan snorted. “Bespeaks?”
    That rewarded Ethan with a slanted glance from his father. Ethan shrugged and fell back against the couch cushions. There were six years between Ethan and Devin, so for six years Ethan had been the baby of the family. Devin’s arrival didn’t seem to change that. If anything, it made it worse. Or so Devin had heard the servants whisper more than once.
    But this wasn’t sibling rivalry. This was something no Guthrie did well: feeling helpless. Ethan just did it worse than the rest of them.
    “Explain to me why there’s no sign of a struggle in the apartment,” Devin asked again.
    “To throw us off,” Jonathan said grimly.
    “But if they wanted to cover the kidnapping by making it look as if Trip ran away, then why leave Halsey’s body behind? If they had time to get a cleaning crew in Trip’s apartment, they had time to get someone to dispose of Halsey’s body. Any other explanation is illogical.”
    “Tage wants Philip, badly.” J.M.’s voice was tight. “That kind of hatred can make a man do illogical things.”
    Just as the horror over Halsey’s death and Trip’s disappearance was making Devin’s father and brothers jump to illogical conclusions. “Tage doesn’t kill people himself, Father. He farms that out to his ranks of ImpSec assassins. And ImpSec wouldn’t be that sloppy.”
    Ethan waved one hand dismissively. “So you’re an expert on ImpSec now?”
    That earned him another warning glance, this time from Jonathan. “Try contributing instead of complaining.”
    “I’m not complaining. I’m as upset as the rest of you are.” Ethan’s voice rose to an almost petulantwhine. “Just because I don’t have all the degrees you and Devin have doesn’t mean I’m stupid. Neither is Father. We’re Guthries. We have money. Lots of it. And people who want that try kidnapping. All the time.” Ethan switched a look from Jonathan to J.M. “You know that’s true. There’ve been kidnap threats against us before.”
    Devin opened his hands in a helpless gesture. “Kidnappers work against time and discovery. They’re not going to let a kid pack his duffel and his bookpad. It would be of no use to them.”
    But it would be of use to Trip. That was something Devin thought of as soon as he saw the police reports. Trip never went anywhere without his bookpad, which held his prized collection of Philip’s training