Page 79 of Malicious Marriage

“All good. All good. But you really gotta listen to what I found.”

“About?”

“Hailey. You remember I called right before your wedding and you told me to check and verify before we were to act?”

“I do.” Jack’s curious eyes meet mine in the mirror. “You found something?”

“I did. And as I wasverifying, what I found got flagged again. Twice in two months is pretty concrete, don’t you think?”

“I do. Tell me everything.”

34

CLOVER

“You look nervous.” Dean, relaxing back in the cream-colored lounger with one ankle crossed over his knee, shoots me a comforting smile. “Talk to me.”

I grip the armrests of my own lounger but can’t meet his smile. “This is the first time I’ve been in an airplane.”

“Private jet,” Bobby corrects from somewhere behind me.

“Is there a difference?” I snap.

“Yes,” Bobby, Jack, and Dean all say in unison.

I roll my eyes. “You’re all a bunch of nerds.”

Soft laughter rumbles through the jet, and usually, it would make me feel better, but nothing about this flight feels good. A week ago, Dean came home to cook dinner and sat me down, telling me that he had a real, tangible lead on Hailey due to the quiet work of his private investigator, Andrew.

But the lead was in Greece, halfway across the world.

“Tell me everything again,” I say tightly to Dean. “What Andrew found. It’ll… it’ll help keep me calm.”

“Alright.” Dean lowers his leg and leans forward. “Although a drink might help.”

I shake my head quickly. I need to keep a clear mind for whatever we might find.

“Just before we got married, Andrew was looking into your uncle’s accounts. Through those, he found several much smaller accounts scattered through multiple banks. Not unusual, but what did catch his eye was that several of them hadn’t been touched in four years.”

“Which suggests they were my father’s accounts and my uncle doesn’t know about them.”

“Exactly. One account had a very brief moment of activity where someone tried to access it, but he didn’t get full details until after we were married and he was able to tag each account. Two weeks ago, someone tried to access the same account but was denied. The bank trying to access the account was in a small town near the Pindus Mountains. CCTV is pretty grainy, so it’s hard to work out facial details.”

“But it could be Hailey.”

“Yes,” Dean says gently. “At the very least, it’s someone who knows about these secret accounts and even if it’s not Hailey, it’s someone who got the information from somewhere.”

“So either Hailey or someone who has Hailey.”

Dean rubs his beard. “I don’t want you to get caught up in sinister thoughts, Clover. You said Hailey likes to travel a lot and she’s been missing, what, six months now? Don’t you think it’s more likely that it is her and she’s just been caught up being a tourist?”

Six months.

“It’s been six months,” I lie. “She wouldn’t stay away by choice.”

Dean’s brow furrows. “My security team will be on standby so as soon as something,anythingseems shady, they will act. No matter what the reason, we will bring Hailey home if she’s here.”

He’s so earnest about it and I so badly want it to be true, but my stomach flips once more, and like I’ve been doing for most of the flight, I have to bolt to the bathroom to hurl nothing but stomach acid.