Start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.
Nervous laughter bubbled up within me. Here I was, hunting through the darkest secrets of my father’s company, and a song from The Sound of Music was my guiding force? Clearly, I was losing it.
Before the bubble of hysteria burst and I sobered up once again, I quickly clicked the earliest file. It was so quiet in my room that I could hear the faint sound of the hard drive whirring. An audio reader program opened automatically, before keying up the clip I’d selected. Remembering that the files were named by their date of origin, I surmised that this clip was from the late eighties.
Before I could hesitate or drag it out any further, I reached out and tapped the space bar to begin playback. Knowing that there was no going back, I held my breath until voices began speaking through my laptop speakers.
The easily identifiable sounds of my father and McAvoy were joined by several other voices. Some of them sounded familiar, as if I’d heard them at some point, but I couldn’t pinpoint to whom they belonged. One sounded a little like John Anderson, the former CFO of Kingsley Diamond Corp.
From what I gathered, I was listening to a board meeting. The agenda items were nothing remotely interesting, let alone scandalous, and I found myself skipping large chunks of the two-hour-long recording.
Talk about anticlimactic.
After thirty minutes of listening to it in fits and spurts, ninety minutes in to the recording itself, the topic of acquisitions came up. By this point I was doodling on the notepad in front of me and beginning to feel silly that I’d apparently made a big deal out of nothing. Skimming through the rest of that file, I didn’t hear a single utterance of the mysterious word.
When my father’s voice dismissed the meeting, I went back to the list of files and clicked on the next one in the sequence. This recording was of another board meeting, equally as dull and equally void of any mention of Jyranji.
As I continued on, file after file passed without secretive whispers and nefarious dealings. Scanning down the list of file information, I quickly realized that I didn’t have time to skim through all seventy-three hours of recordings, let alone actually listen to them all. Since the agenda for each meeting was read at the very beginning, I only had to listen to the first two minutes of each recording to glean the topics about to be discussed.
Around noon, the audio files turned to videos, though they were almost all conference calls between my father and his top employees giving him status updates on various projects and the state of the diamond mines. In fact, it seemed that the mines were nearly all they discussed; the regions they were in, the political states of those regions, and the employees they hired.
Circa 2000 in the timeline of the files, mid-afternoon in my day, I was getting close to giving up on my mission, convinced that there was nothing to find. My head was resting on my arms, my eyes closed to the sight of yet another video call between my father and McAvoy. Their discussions had ceased to be anything close to interesting, only the occasional word fought through my daydreams of Blake and our upcoming date as anything more than gibberish.
As per usual, they were discussing several of the mines and the state of the localities. Just as I was about to stop the playback and click on the next file, a woman’s name that I hadn’t heard before broke through: Kimberly. Whoever she was, she was causing problems in one of the mines.
Interesting, I thought. Maybe they had to off her.
As morbid as the thought was, it at least woke me up enough to reengage in the search for answers. I still hadn’t heard the word Jyranji, but wondered if maybe it had something to do with this Kimberly person. Clicking play on the video program, the next recording began.
This time, eight men sat on either side of the long oak table in my father’s office, with him seated at the head. Another board meeting. By the harried look of the men, this wasn’t a routine gathering.
“We need to discuss Kimberly and what this means for our future,” my father said gravely.
“What about Washington?” an aging man with gray hair asked. He wasn’t a current board member, and I couldn’t recall having met him before. “Can’t we count on Washington to go to bat for us?”
“We can’t rely on suits. This is the future of the company we are talking about,” McAvoy interjected, his disdain for the older man evident with every word. “No matter how much support we throw their way, none of them will risk their careers over this.”
Now the conversation had my full attention. Someone who could jeopardize the future of Kingsley Diamonds? The thought was preposterous.
When their conversation turned to an in-depth discussion of the senators and congressmen they could count on, I skipped forward once again, passing up ten minutes of the conversation.
“—real issue here is Jyranji.”
I’d been waiting so long to hear that word that I choked on the mandarin orange Pellagrino I was drinking. With the fizzy liquid still burning my throat, I rewound the tape to be sure I hadn’t misheard.
“When it comes down to it, the only real issue here is Jyranji,” McAvoy said from the video. He tapped his pen with every word, emphasizing their importance.
“And the other mines?” My father asked, raising one eyebrow.
Before I’d taken the tapes, I’d tried googling Jyranji, but had been too far off with the spelling.
Why hadn’t I searched again once I knew the spelling of it?
Because you sort of suck at this whole sleuthing thing, I thought wryly.
Now I minimized the video player and the file list below it, and brought up the internet search app. Sure enough, when I searched for Jyranji with the correct spelling, the results came back immediately. Jyranji was a region in Africa. According to the internet encyclopedia, the territory’s number one export was diamonds. And it was a billion dollar enterprise. But the mine was no longer in use. It had closed over a decade before.
Odd.
Skimming the rest of the information, I received quite the history lesson. The area was in a political state of unrest, like so many other war-torn regions in Africa. Poverty was rampant, disease was widespread, and hunger afflicted most of the citizens. Apparently FEMA couldn’t even reach the region to provide aid because of the strong hold the insurgency had along the borders.
My heart felt heavy as I read the words. What monsters the rebels must be, to let their people die instead of allowing food and medicine to reach them. How could anyone choose money and power over basic human decency?
Was this why Kingsley Diamonds had closed the Jyranji mine? Because of the insurgents? Was the region so dangerous that we could no longer ensure the safety of our workers?
But why would the name of a place where we used to have mines scare my father?
IT WAS DARK when I woke. Mouth dry and head full of cotton, I rolled over onto my stomach and stretched languidly like a cat. The pillow was impossibly soft and smelled faintly of expensive perfume. Despite being unfamiliar, the scent was oddly comforting. In the distance, I heard a chirpy female voice saying that the temperature was going to break one hundred in D.C. today, a record for this time of year.
Great, I thought. Another day of sweating my ass off.
Snuggling deeper into the covers, I savored the feel of the cool sheets against my warm skin and silently thanked the inventor of central air. The fact that the television was on meant that Asher was already awake. Awesome.
As embarrassing as it was to admit, I’d never spent the night with a boy, even one who was just a friend, and had no idea about proper morning-after protocol. Should I make a dash for the bathroom? Wash the sleep crusties out of the corners of my eyes before going to say good morning? What about the inevitable creases etched into my face from the pillow? How did I get rid of those before seeing Asher?
Oh no…what about morning breath? A concern on an ordinary day, it was even more of an issue since I’d gone to bed without brushing my teeth. To make matters worse, th
e vodka seemed to have left a fuzzy coat of grossness on my tongue. Maybe Lark had a spare toothbrush in her medicine cabinet or something. She probably had a stash of makeup here somewhere, too. If I was quiet, I could tiptoe to Lark’s bedroom and make myself presentable with Asher none the wiser. Although, wouldn’t it be weird to pretend I’d just woken up with a face full of makeup? What if he thought I cared too much? Or read too much in to it?
Whoa there, girl. Slow down, I chastised myself. You and Asher are friends. Nothing more. Don’t get carried away.
Still, I was an eighteen year old girl and he was a super-hot college grad with an awesome personality. No matter how many times I told myself that my appearance didn’t matter where Asher was concerned, I was destined to be self-conscious around him. And paranoid about bedhead.
Just get it over with, I told myself.
Rolling over, I mentally prepared myself for what was sure to be an awkward encounter with Asher. And froze. A wave of panic that had nothing to do with my appearance seized me.
At five-foot-six and relatively slender, I am not a large girl. But by no means was I petite, either. And definitely not small enough to make cover-angels on a daybed with only a twin-sized mattress.
Shit.
Slowly, I sat up and scanned my surroundings. There was enough natural light filtering in through the curtains for me to make out a desk, a dresser, a nightstand, and the outline of the enormous bed I was sitting in. Fears confirmed, my heart began to pound painfully against my ribs.
No, no, no. Not again….
Footsteps in the hallway sent me scrambling out of the king-sized bed. Still disoriented and now slightly panicked, my hip knocked Lark’s nightstand and sent a manila envelope crashing to the floor. The manila envelope. The offending mailer from the safe that I never wanted to see again and wished I never had in the first place.
“Shit,” I swore, audibly that time.
Apparently I’d forgotten to fasten the little metal clasp on the envelope, because the contents scattered across the carpet at my feet.
“Raven? You awake?”
Asher’s voice was soft and distant. Probably near the guestroom door.
Kneeling, I hastily shoved the passport, credit card, and bank card back into the envelope, giving myself a smarting paper cut in the process. A small, crimson pool welled up on the tip of my index finger.
A door opened in the hallway. The door to the guest bedroom.
Crap. He’s going to know I slept in Lark’s room last night, I thought. How was I going to explain it? What should I say?
“Raven? Where are you?” Asher called, louder now. Apparently he was no longer concerned with waking me.
I bit down on my bottom lip, trying and failing to conjure a believable excuse for sleeping in Lark’s bed.
“Raven!”
When he called my name for the third time, Asher’s voice cracked like a prepubescent teenager, and I thought I detected a note of panic.
“Um, in the back!” I finally answered, not wanting to freak him out further.
Hurrying, I tossed the manila envelope back onto the nightstand and stood. As I did, a slip of paper caught my eye, laying in the exact spot the envelope had been a moment earlier.
Did the paper fall out of it? Surely, I would’ve noticed it before now if it had been in there the whole time. Right?
The doorknob began to twist.
Bending down and scooping up the scrap of paper, I had it hidden safely in my hand when Asher stepped into the bedroom.
“Hey. What are you doing in here?” Asher asked, looking both relieved and curious.
“Um, well….”
Come on, Raven. Think. Any excuse is better than admitting you sleepwalked in here last night.
“I woke up early and didn’t want to bother you. I decided to get another look at the stuff inside that envelope. Now that the shock has sort of worn off, I guess I thought it would be easier to process it all…or something.”
Eloquent, Raven—way to ramble.
“And how’d that go? Were you able to better process it? Or something?”
Asher grinned as though he found my babbling endearing.
Unsure of how to answer, I shrugged.
“Not really. I mean, how did she get the passport picture? I know where she got the picture, but I don’t get how she was able to use it for a passport. Don’t you have to actually have a special picture taken for one?
“And how did she get credit cards and debit cards in my name? Is it really that simple to steal someone’s identity? Wouldn’t she have needed my social security number for some of that stuff? It can’t be easy to find a stranger’s social security number, right? Or am I just being naïve?”
Asher crossed the room to where I stood. He sat on the edge of the bed, where the covers were still pushed back from my hasty exit. Thankfully, he didn’t ask about that. Asher patted the bed next to him, indicating that I should sit. Hesitating for long enough that it became awkward, I finally sat.
“I don’t bite, Raven. You know that,” he said with a frown.
Asher reached for my hand, the one holding the slip of paper I’d picked up off the floor, and covered it with his own.
“First of all, take a breath,” Asher gently ordered. “I know you’re freaking out. Hell, I’m freaking out and it isn’t my name on those things.” He nodded towards the manila envelope on the nightstand before continuing.
“Unfortunately, it is that easy to steal someone’s identity. Social security numbers are easier to find than you might think, if you know where to look. And a girl like Lark Kingsley can afford to pay someone who does. Wait…did you say that you know where Lark got the picture?” Asher’s brows drew together and confusion caused the corners of his mouth to turn slightly downward in a frown.
Nodding, I realized it felt really good to actually have an answer to share with Asher, instead of another question. Telling him about the passport picture being my senior portrait and how I’d managed to realize that once I’d calmed down, I was kind of embarrassed. It shouldn’t have taken me that long.
“I mean, I know this doesn’t actually help us locate Lark or anything,” I said, staring down at my hand, still covered by Asher’s. “But at least that’s one mystery solved.”
“One down, a million to go,” Asher said, a smile in his voice.
When I met his gaze, my own smile froze as Asher’s features grew serious. His long fingers slid up over my palm to lace with my own, sending a shiver up my spine. Asher’s eyes were soft and warm, like melting chocolate, as he looked back and forth between my own, almost as if searching for something. His expression was tinged with sadness, and I wondered what he was thinking about. Staring at his full lips, I became oddly transfixed by the way his two front teeth pressed gently against the bottom one as he debated his next words. Asher opened his mouth to speak, but quickly closed it again, seeming to change his mind at the last second.
“What’s this?” Asher asked, drawing his hand back.
“Huh?” I asked stupidly, still staring at Asher’s lips, which were now frowning.
“This piece of paper? It was in your hand…”
Asher smoothed the rumbled slip on the leg of his jeans.
“Oh, right. I think it was in the envelope,” I said, gesturing towards the nightstand.
“You think?” Asher quirked an eyebrow, more amused than questioning.
Rolling my eyes, I fessed up.
“Well, I knocked the envelope over and everything spilled out. When I picked it all up, I found that piece of paper. So, no, I am not positive that it was with the passport and cards. It’s more of an educated guess, using deductive reasoning.”
“Got it,” he replied, grinning.
When Asher looked down at it again, I followed his gaze.
The paper was thin, cheap, and reminded me of the kind used by the wait staff at diners. It was small, only about an inch long and three inches wide. One side was slightly jagged. Runni
ng my fingertip along the rough edge, I realized that it was perforated, as if the bottom half of…something. A receipt, maybe?
Printed in bold, black letters in the lower right hand corner was an address:
3685 14th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20009
After doing a quick mental calculation, I estimated the address to be approximately one mile west from the Gibson Street apartment, slightly farther from the Pines.
In the opposite corner, in red ink, were two typed words followed by a string of numbers.
Claim No. 45923
“It’s a claim ticket!” Asher and I exclaimed in unison. Our mutual excitement over stating the obvious caused us both to start cracking up.
Finally, the tension between us broke. Suddenly, I no longer felt self-conscious about possible morning breath or sleepwalking into Lark’s bedroom. We had another clue. And I wasn’t alone in this scavenger hunt any longer. Asher really was right there by my side.
“What do you think it’s for?” I asked, chewing my thumbnail as I pondered my own question.
“Drying cleaning?” Asher suggested, toying with one corner of the paper.
My closet consisted mostly of cotton and fabric-blends—both the one here and what was left back home in Pennsylvania—and I could count the number of items that were Dry Clean Only on one hand. But this was Lark we were talking about, not me. And she probably had a plethora of silk, cashmere, and other expensive fabrics too good for a washing machine tucked away in her closet in Manhattan.
Except, the clothes in the closet here, only ten feet away from me, were more the wash-and-wear type.
Shrugging, I considered the likelihood of his suggestion and didn’t feel confident.
“Yeah, maybe. But why would Lark put a drying cleaning ticket in with all those important documents? That seems random.”
“True,” Asher conceded. “But a lot of what you’ve found seems random, doesn’t it?”
Crossing my arms over my chest, I ignored the rhetorical question and continued to ponder the possibilities.