Uncovering You: The Complete Series (Mega Box Set) (292 page)

I take out my laptop and set it on the desk. I hadn’t planned on using it. I expected this summer to be filled with books. But now that Sylvain’s here…

Well, I wouldn’t mind a little snooping on him.

But of course the network has a password. I’ll have to ask
him
to give it to me… later.

I look at my phone. I don’t have a signal. There’s only one spot, in fact, where I do. It’s in the very corner of the room, with my arm held out at an awkward angle. At first I thought going outside would help, but it didn’t. The whole estate is a cellular dead zone.

Except in that little corner.

I get up and go there and wait for the single, pathetic bar to show up. Then I text Min with my phone held over my head.

Me
: Here safe. Crappy signal. There’s a man!

She texts back seconds later.

Her:
What? Who?

And then, as I’m typing up my response, another text comes in.

Her:
Is he hot?

Me:
Very. I don’t have internet. Can you look up Sylvain Alastair for me?

Her:
What do you want to know?

Me:
Everything.

Chapter Five

Min calls over an hour later.

I pick up, wedged between those two walls.

“Hey,” I say. “If I get cut off it’s because I moved out of range. The connection sucks everywhere. What’d you find?”

“Oh my God,
so
much,” she enthuses. “You ready?”

“Pile it on, sister,” I say.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay, okay, okay. This is—” she sounds breathless. “This is actually kind of unbelievable. If you told me you were working for this guy before, or that he was the owner, I would have freaked the fuck out!”

“In a good way, or a bad way?” I ask, thinking back to Tammy’s remarks.

“In a
great
way!” she exclaims. “Well… you’ll see. I can’t believe you didn’t look him up earlier! You’ve got your nose stuck too far in those stories of yours, you know?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I say. I twist around—and the signal drops.

“Shit,” I mutter. I wait for it to pick up again, then I dial her back. “Min?”

“Hey. Phone cut off?”

“Yeah. I’ve got to be, like, in the most uncomfortable position ever just to make a call. You’re on speaker. I’m holding the phone like three feet above my head!”

She laughs.

“Anyway, you were saying?”

“I was saying,
how
did you not look up
anything
about the man who hired you?”

“I didn’t think he’d be here,” I say. “So it wasn’t really relevant. I looked up things about the castle, the estate, that sort of stuff.
That’s
what I thought I’d be seeing most of.”

“Looks like you thought wrong,” she says.

“Maybe. We barely spoke, though. I have no idea if he’s just here to welcome me, or if he’s here all summer, or…”

That’s a white lie. I have the
distinct
impression that Sylvain isn’t merely passing by.

“Well you better hope he stays!” Min says. “Dani, he’s… dreamy.”

“Thanks for the information,” I deadpan. “As if I didn’t know. Don’t you have a boyfriend?”

“Yeah, but
you
don’t. Imagine what would happen if you hook up with him.”

“Nothing good, I bet,” I tell her. Another tiny lie. “All right, so what is it you found?”

“
So
much,” she says again. “So, so, so damn much. Where do I begin? Well, he’s loaded, for one. Comes from a super-rich family.”

“Gee, with the castle and all, I couldn’t tell.”

“Just listen. He’s also brilliant. Apparently he was some sort of math prodigy as a child. Let’s see… he got accepted to Oxford at fifteen. Graduated in three years, top of the class, instead of four. Wrote some kind of proof that got him all these academic awards…. Yadda, yadda, yadda, that stuff’s not important.”

I roll my shoulders uncomfortably. I can handle rich. I can handle cocky.

But does he
have
to be brilliant?

I don’t know how long my defenses will last.

“What else?” I say.

“That’s just the start. I’ve got a bunch of notes. Hold on, uh…”

I hear her flipping through a notebook. Min’s always liked paper and pen.

“Okay, here, get this. Things get
really
interesting when he hits his mid-twenties. I couldn’t find anything in the interim, there’s like a bunch of lost years, but that doesn’t matter.
Here
. He was involved in a startup doing some sort of intense computer modelling. Working with huge swaths of data, the sort of thing NASA and all the big government agencies like. He was one of the co-founders. Anyway. They developed this intense, insane algorithmic system that did… Christ, I don’t even know what it did. It’s hard to find much about it. All I know is that he sold it, to IBM, for a huge amount of money.”

“How huge?” I ask.

She makes an excited sound. “Really,
really
huge. Like, massive.”

“Tell me.”

“Guess.”

I click my tongue. “No, Min, just tell me! I hate guessing games.”

“Come on. Just give it a try.”

I roll my eyes. “I don’t know. A few million. Two, three?”

“Not even close,” she says.

“Ten.”

“Higher…”

“Min!”

“Come on, this is fun.”

“Maybe for you.” I grunt. “I don’t know. Fifty.”

She laughs in delight. “Try
ten times
that amount!”

I almost drop the phone. “Half a billion?”

“Yup! Now, I don’t know what his cut was, but obviously, that catapulted him a few tax brackets up.”

“I’d say,” I whisper. I look in the direction of the castle.
So what’s he doing here?

“We’re just getting started,” she says. “Check this out. When he was twenty-seven, he was found guilty of insider trading and stock manipulation. He went to jail for
five years!
”

I shake my head. “What? When was this?”

“A while back. He got out in ’08.”

“But that means… he’s at least forty!”

“Uh, yeah,” Min says.

“Shit,” I say. “He didn’t look that old.”

“Some men age real well,” she tells me, as if
she’s
the expert. “How old did you think he was?”

“I don’t know. Thirty? Thirty-three?”

She laughs. “You were way off.”

“No kidding,” I mutter. I take a step toward the bed, looking to sit down—then remember the phone.

The damn thing might as well be tethered to the wall for all the freedom it gives!

“And then,” Min continues, “he went entirely off the grid.”

“What do you mean? He got out and disappeared? What, did he just retreat here?”

“No,” she says. “I don’t think so.” She hesitates. “But, um…”

I can always tell when she’s holding back. “But what, Min?”

“I don’t want to scare you…” She takes a breath. “Things are still great. But… you should probably know.”

“Know
what
? Something about him?”

“Yeah. Well—maybe. The lines aren’t so clear cut. I had to do a bit of journalistic investigating. That’s why my phone call took so long.”

“Out with it, come on,” I say. “No more guessing games.”

“Okay. Again, I’m not saying this is him, but—”

“Min, just tell me!”

“Two years ago a corporation without a name—just with the registration number—was hit by a nasty lawsuit.”

“So…?” I say.

“Well, the corporate number? It matches the
exact
amount IBM paid for Sylvain’s company.”

“I thought you said it was five hundred million?”

“Well, yeah, but not
exact
.” She makes an annoyed sound. “It was like, four hundred and seventy something. Not a single digit was a zero in the amount. It wasn’t rounded off, which I thought was strange at first. But then I figured it had something to do with that algorithm of theirs, I don’t know, some type of number with meaning attached to it. You know, like Sidney Crosby’s contract.”

“The hockey player?” I’m not a big sports girl. I’ve only heard of him in passing.

“Yeah. He’s number 87, because he was born in 1987, and his contract is exactly 8.7 million a year.”

“Cute,” I say.

“Yeah. But back to Sylvain.”

“The corporation.”

“Right. So the registration number was the same. And regular people can’t
choose
their corp numbers, they’re like, randomly assigned.” She cuts off. “I’m getting sidetracked. Point is, he—if it’s him—had someone on the inside pull a favor for him.”

“Doesn’t sound like much of a favor,” I note.

“No, but it ties things together.
That
corporation was hit by a lawsuit by the family of a girl who disappeared… right around the time Sylvain got out of prison.”

I take a sharp breath. “You think he’s connected?”

“Well,” Min pauses again. “She was from the same village you’re in now. Right by the Alastair estate. And if
he’s
there, and…” she trails off. “I don’t need to connect the dots.”

“You’re saying he’s responsible,” I breathe.

“Nothing was ever proven. And the lawsuit ended in an out-of-court settlement. The details aren’t in the public records. All I’m saying, Dani, is that
yes
, while this is exciting… you also need to be careful.”

A prickle run down the back of my neck. “Yes,” I agree. “I will be.”

Chapter Six

Sylvain Alastair shows up a few hours later, unannounced.

I start when I see him. I wasn’t expecting it.

“Dinner is ready,” he says curtly. “You may eat in the dining hall, inside the castle.” He looks around the room. “I’m surprised you haven’t explored it yet.”

“Just getting settled in,” I tell him quickly.

He nods in agreement and turns away.

“Wait,” I say.

“Yes?” he pauses at the door.

“The lady in town…” I lick my lips. “She told me not to come here. Do you know why she would say that?”

He turns on me, then, and his intensely dark eyes pierce into me. I feel like he can see all the way down to my soul… and extract the
real
question I’m asking:

Are you dangerous?

“If I were you,” he says in a low, grave voice. “I would pay
less
attention to what other people say and think and
more
to your own personal judgment.” He tosses an old tape recorder on the bed. “Give that a listen. Before you come inside. It might grant some… perspective.”

He leaves.

***

I look at the recorder.
What the hell?

I approach it and pick it up. I have to turn it over a few times before figuring out how to work it. The tape’s at the very end. I rewind it, and hit play.

My own voice comes through the speaker:

“Hey, if I get cut off it’s because I moved out of range. The connection sucks everywhere. What’d you find?”

My stomach seizes up. Next comes Min’s:

“Oh my God, so much.”

I hit stop.

Sylvain heard the entire conversation. He heard, and he
recorded
it.

Quickly I go through the rest of the tape. Every single word of ours is there.

Dear God.
I feel sick.

But… how? I look around the room. Hidden microphones? No, the quality was much too high for that. The only thing that makes sense is that he…

He tapped the actual line.

I don’t know whether to be scared, or outraged, or…

Both.

My heart is racing. As well it should! I’ve come into the lair of a madman. I shouldn’t just be scared—I should be terrified!

I glance at the door, the way Sylvain went. He’s gone now, obviously.

Dinner
? I think. I wonder what awaits me there.

I take a deep breath. I need to think. ‘Madman’ might be a bit histrionic.

But what else would you call someone who tapped your line?

I look at my phone. I can’t call Min.

He’d
know.

A cold chill takes me. A phrase he used in our first interaction stands out:

You are the one I wanted.

I’ve been reading some intense dark romances lately. That sounds like a phrase right out of the books.

But this isn’t a story. This is real life!

Maybe my imagination is getting the better of me. Min’s first impression, after all, was that the situation is, and I quote, “Great.”

She didn’t tell me to be scared. Even though she knew about the disappearance of that other girl the whole way through.

I push myself up. I’m not going to let irrational fear get the better of me. It’s not like I’m all alone. Min knows I’m here, as do my parents.

No, I shouldn’t be scared. It’s not logical. Not yet. I can be a little unnerved, maybe even intimidated. But who wouldn’t be, in the presence of such a man?

I leave the guesthouse and walk to the castle.

***

The tightness in my shoulders doesn’t disappear when I’m inside. But the sense of wonder I get from being in such a place definitely increases.

I’m in awe of the vast amount of space. The entrance hall has been retrofitted and modernized just enough for it to feel livable. Not enough to do away with any of the medieval charm.

There’s faint piano music playing. Intrigued, I follow the sound. I’m led down a series of narrow and winding halls. Eventually I come upon a distant sitting room.

Sylvain is there, his back toward me. His fingers dance over the keys of the grand piano. He doesn’t know I’m here. For a moment, I just watch him.

His body sways with the melody. I don’t know the piece, but it sounds baroque.

Very fitting.

There’s a fireplace along one wall, unlit. An enormous armchair stands beside it. There are shelves piled with books all around the perimeter of the room.

The music picks up in a powerful crescendo. Sylvain is really into it now. His entire body moves with the notes.

I feel like he’s pouring his soul out onto the keys.

Abruptly the music stops. Sylvain’s back rises and falls with heavy breaths.