Page 74 of Burned Hearts (Burned 3)

“There are giraffes and elephants, too,” I pointed out. “Gazelles and monkeys. So all good there. I was just going with the—”

“Wait a minute.” Dane’s full scan of my wall documentary came to a screeching halt.

“What is it?” I asked, moving alongside him, scanning the layout. Nothing looked out of place. All the dots were sufficiently connected.

He stepped away from me to get a closer look at the puzzle. “Why do you have a picture of my father?”

“What?” I gazed at the wall, confused. “Where?”

“Here.” He ripped a computer printout from a small nail and handed it over.

I said, “That’s Ethan at an economics summit in the early eighties. If I recall the year correctly, it was 1983.”

“No,” he said, still staring at the sheet he held. “That’s my dad.”

I looked past the visage I’d constantly homed in on when working on my web and suddenly saw the second man in the photo. Really saw him. Dark hair, strong jawline, squared shoulders. I couldn’t discern his eye color or get a full read on him, since I only saw his profile. But the more I stared, the more I saw the similarity to Dane.

My brows knitted. “That’s odd, don’t you think? Your dad and Ethan in a photo together?”

Dane examined the picture for endless moments. Then he shook his head. “That can’t be Ethan.”

“Dane, that man looks exactly like Ethan. Thirty years ago, but still. That’s Ethan.”

“Has Amano seen this?”

“He hasn’t stopped by in a while. When he used to, he’d leave shaking his head, likely trying to erase from his mind whatever insanity he thought I was up to.”

“This is insane.”

; I let out an exasperated sigh. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”

“Not your montage,” Dane corrected. “It makes total sense. But how is my father in a photograph with Ethan?”

Okay, there was that.

I took it from him again and studied the piece of paper. “I was looking at social-political-economic summits around the world, with no real concrete reason or goal in mind. I was just thinking about the story Amano had shared with Kyle about him being a bodyguard for your dad and taking a bullet in the shoulder during one of those global econ conferences. Pretty ironic, in a not-so-nice way. You two have matching holes in your shoulders.”

“A definite similarity I could do without.”

“Agreed,” I muttered. “Anyway, I didn’t come across anything of value—that I could tell might be of value, that is. I kept this picture because I was surprised to see Ethan in it. And now that we’re talking about this, don’t you find it odd that Ethan probably knew your father? Did Ethan ever mention that to you?”

“No.”

“Well, I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for that. Perhaps he just never put two and two together.”

“Perhaps.”

I could tell Dane chewed on this new revelation as we left the office and joined everyone for dinner. I studied him closely while I poured the wine. I got the sense he didn’t want there to be one more secret-society nuance to dissect, now that all was finally almost said and done. Evidently, he mulled it over, anyway.

“We’re planning a baptism for Kid,” I announced, in hopes some good news would break the tension created by Dane’s internal ruminations, Amano’s chill factor still directed at me and Kyle, and my feelings of walking a tightrope in my own home. Rosa and Amsel were the only ones currently oblivious to the strained atmosphere, but I surmised that was because it was feeding time and my son was deeply entranced by his bottle.

Kyle said, “I suppose you’re going to ask me to wear a suit.”

I smiled. Leave it to him to know exactly when to inject a dose of humor. “As a matter of fact, yes. It’ll be a formal affair. Same group as the dinner we had at the Grand Canyon. Though with one addition.”

This piqued both Kyle’s and Amano’s interest.