Spellbound in His Arms by Angel Sefer Page B

and
covered it from plain sight.
    Michael walked around for a while trying to find some
tracks and then called his partner, Tony, to get an update. When he told Jackie
that his cell phone had no signal, he wasn’t actually lying. His personal cell
phone didn’t have a signal out here. But what he had failed to explain was that
he always carried a cell phone that the police department provided him which had
a wider range of coverage.
    Tony informed him that Jackie was a distant relative of
Stephanos Demiris’ wife. She grew up in Atlanta living with Stephanos, his wife
and their two daughters after her parents were killed in a plane crash.
    So she wasn’t actually a relative but close enough,
since she was raised by Stephanos Demiris. But what was she doing here and how much
did she and Stephanos know about everything that was going on? And what about
Maria? Tony had checked into her death. Her car had run off the road and caught
fire. Talking to the detective who had investigated the accident , Tony
had gotten the idea that he didn’t believe it was an accident at all. The car
had run off the road for no apparent reason. The wreck had happened in bright
day light, no rain or snow, and very light traffic. There were no witnesses and
the police had to finally close the case when they hadn’t been able to find any
evidence to prove anything different.
    Too weird of an accident! Michael thought. Just like Alexandra’s.
    ***
    Jackie started coming around. She opened her eyes to
find herself lying on her bed and Michael sitting next to her. She must have
fainted which was very unlike her.
    “What happened?” she asked. She shook her head to clear
her grogginess, when the memory of their conversation in the kitchen jolted her
upright. Her eyes flew wide open and she grabbed his hand, looking him straight
in the eyes. “What’s going on?” she asked scared and confused.
    “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “But I intend to find out.
And let’s start with you!”
    “What do you mean?” she asked and pulled her hand away.
    “What are you doing here?” he asked. “And what where you
looking for in the secret room?”
    “So it was you hiding in the secret passage,
spying on me!”
    He looked at her for a moment and then nodded his head
in acceptance. “Yes,” he said simply.
    She moved away, trying to put some distance between
them.
    “You don’t have to be afraid of me, Jackie,” he said
softly and reached for her hand. “I would never do anything to harm
you.”
    “How do I know that?” she yelled at him and slid off the
bed. “Ever since I met you, all you’ve done is lie to me and keep me in the
dark, while people are getting killed!”
    “I haven’t lied to you.”
    “Oh, yes you have! You told me you’re the owner of this
house, not to mention the fact that you never explained what you were doing out
here the other night and how you found me this time.” She was on the offensive,
not wanting him to know she had read the will and that she now knew he was
telling the truth about being the owner of the mansion. In any case, the fact
he was telling the truth about the property didn’t change her gut feeling he
was hiding other important things from her.
    Michael remained silent. Jackie could tell there was a
battle going on inside him. He probably contemplated what he would say to her.
Oh, how she wished he would be honest with her. She wanted the truth—the entire
truth.
    ***
    It was almost five o’clock in the afternoon and Tony Mavrikis,
Michael’s partner, was getting very impatient sitting at a corner table in a
small restaurant in Plaka—the historic district of Athens—right below the
sacred hill of Acropolis. He had been sitting at that table for the last
forty-five minutes, trying to blend in with the tourists coming in and out of
the place and watching everybody very carefully.
    A few minutes later, a heavy, middle-aged woman with
short blond hair came through the front door. Tony