Otto grunts his agreement.

Quinn, perhaps sensing the minor mutiny brewing in the penthouse, shows them his palms. “I didn’t say anything about any of you leaving. I suggested you take a leisurely swim, because you’re going to have a long night ahead of you. By the time you return, I’ll have made a phone call, and your assignments will be waiting for you.”

Theo smiles and shakes his head. “Can you imagine what it was like to be this guy’s roommate in college?”

Chapter 31

THE TWINS

Even though they have papers due the next morning, Hannah and Brooke Clee head back to Turks and Caicos for the night.

Brooke laughs and says they’ll have plenty of time to write them on the Gulfstream—or download them from the internet, whichever’s easier. But Hannah doesn’t find this amusing in the least.

“I can’t believe you’re joking at a time like this. Do you even realize why we’re headed back down to the island?”

“Because maybe, oh, I don’t know, you’re hopelessly OCD?” Brooke asks. She means it to sound devastating, but there’s enough uncertainty in her voice to let Hannah know her sister’s not entirely sure what those three letters stand for.

“No, it’s because we need to know if they really found her or not,” Hannah says. “And there’s only one way to do that.”

Hannah, of course, was the one who arranged the impromptu trip. Ordinarily such a lavish expense would have to pass through her father’s office for approval—the jet is company owned, after all.

But Hannah has had eighteen years to practice her powers of persuasion and manipulation. A sob story about a lost ring (allegedly a gift from her stepmother, Daddy’s second wife) and the delicate need to search for it in person was enough for the jet crew to scramble to get the Gulfstream down to Turks and Caicos for the second time in a week. Flying the jet for an hour costs about $9,000; the round trip would set the company back about $100,000. But the staff knows that if it makes Hannah Clee happy, then it’s wheels up.

“All we know is that somebody found a body,” says Brooke. “If it really is Paige, wouldn’t it be all over the news?”

“Exactly,” Hannah replies. “We can’t trust anybody. For all we know, those jerk FBI agents spread a fake story. We have to be sure.”

“Why? We didn’t do anything!”

“Well,” Hannah says, “we did something.”

Brooke sighs, then sneaks in a mumbled complaint. “We should never have invited her along for spring break.”

“Oh, don’t even go there, Brooke. If we hadn’t invited her along, you know where you’d be right now?”

Brooke has no response to this, because deep down she knows her sister is right. Throughout their childhood Brooke was always the one to run her mouth off at the wrong time, and Hannah was the one who’d have to bail her twin out of the mess. More than once using her fists.