“Vandalism? You think someone on my staff—?”
“We don’t know. That’s why we’re having this conversation. Alaine,” he added, stressing his friend’s name, “you know I trust you, but how well do you know your staff?”
Alaine’s brow furrowed, and Damien knew the answer. Some probably worked at Alaine’s various restaurants, but others were undoubtedly temp workers.
“Tell me what happened,” Alaine insisted.
“Nikki saw someone dressed in a server’s uniform sitting in the last row right before the ceremony. Afterwards, we came upstairs and found this.” He held out his phone, showing Alaine the picture of the note that he’d taken earlier.
“Good God.” Alaine sucked in a breath, then shook his head slowly. “If someone on the staff was sitting in the guest area, they were violating my policy. But surely they were only adjusting a shoe, taking a stone out, something like that. I can’t imagine anyone on my team would do such a thing.” He crossed his arms, his eyes meeting Damien’s. “I trust my staff. And I hope you trust me.”
“I do, but I need to be sure. You can understand that.”
“Of course. Of course, I do.” He reached up to rub his temples. “I’ve know most of my team for years. But we do have a few who have worked only one or two events. People I’m auditioning for when I formally launch the catering arm.” He shook his head, looking disturbed and furious. “If this was one of my people, I swear I’ll—”
“Let’s find out. Your entire team is still here, right? No one’s left early?” That’s what Ryan had texted Damien, and he hoped it was the truth.
“That’s right. Everyone’s still here. We’re packing up, that’s part of their job.”
“Then let’s go downstairs. And, Alaine, I hope you know you’re one of my closest friends. I apologize for the inconvenience. But we have to work this out. There was an incident. There was someone dressed in the uniform you chose for tonight. So you know, we believe he may have already left the property, but I hope you understand why we need to go through this exercise.”
Nikki slid up beside him, taking his hand. “Please know that your work today was excellent,” she said. “The food was superb, and the service was absolutely perfect. It has nothing to do with that. But you have to understand that security is important to us.”
“Of course, of course,” Alaine said. “We will talk to the staff, and that will prove to you that nobody on my team was behind this.”
“I think you’re going to be right. But we have to know for sure.” He gestured toward the open area and the stairs that led down to the first floor. “Ryan should have everyone downstairs by now. Shall we?”
Only minutes later, they were on the first floor, standing in front of a line of catering staff, most in their twenties, and all of whom were obviously trying hard not to fidget.
“I apologize for the inconvenience,” Damien said, “and please understand this is a precaution. A checking off of a box, if you will. I believe Mr. Hunter already told you that we had an incident in the house this evening, and we have reason to suspect that the culprit was wearing this particular serving uniform. That doesn’t, however, mean it was one of you. We also believe that the person we’re looking for has already left the property. But we wanted to speak to you all, since you might have seen something important and not even realized it.”
As planned, while he gave the speech, Nikki was looking at the faces of all the people standing there. He glanced sideways at her, and noticed that she’d focused on one particular dark-haired man, who wasn’t meeting her eyes.
He felt something dark knot up inside of him. If this was the man who’d taped that note to the portrait...
She turned to him with a tiny shake of her head, and that knot started to dissolve, morphing into something less immediate, but more dangerous. Once he did find this person, it wasn’t going to be pretty. But at least he knew the culprit hadn’t been here all along.
He drew in a breath and focused on the situation at hand. “Did any of you notice someone dressed as a server, but not part of the team?”
A woman, thin and shorter than all the others, stepped forward. “I did,” she said, her eyes down. She cleared her throat, then looked up. “I did because he looked, well, he looked a little like you,” she added, finally lifting her face to meet his eyes. A deep red blush crept over her cheeks. “He, um, caught my attention.”
Damien forced himself not to smile. “Thank you. That helps. I’d like you to hang back a minute. Mr. Hunter has some questions for you, just to jog your memory, maybe nail down a description.”
She nodded and glanced toward Ryan as Alaine asked, “Is there anything else?”
“No. Thank you all for your time. I’m sorry to have to put you through this.” He met his friend’s eyes, hoping that Alaine really did understand. But there was no way that he was putting his family second behind potential embarrassment to his old friend. Alaine nodded, just one quick tilt of his head, but the tension in Damien’s shoulders relaxed. At least on that front, it looked like they were still good.
“And so you know,” Damien added before they all filed out, “you’ll all be receiving bonus checks as a thank you for your hard work and for your patience.”
The front door opened as the staff was retreating back to the kitchen area, and Mario stepped in. Tall and lean with energy to spare, Mario was the guru of all things tech at Stark Security. “So what have we got?” he asked, bouncing to a halt beside Damien. “Nobody’s touched this note right? We’re hoping I can pull some clean prints?”
“Ryan filled you in?” From across the room, Ryan glanced up and nodded.
“A nasty note tacked to Nikki’s portrait, right?” Mario asked. “That’s about the sum total of what the asshole’s done, right? That you know of, anyway.”
Damien nodded. Mario did have a way of narrowing things down to the basics. And at the moment, Mario didn’t need to know about the texts.
As Mario started to head up the stairs, Alaine returned from where he was ushering his team back toward the kitchen. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
“Of course.” He nodded toward the patio doors, then unlocked them so they could step outside. “What’s going on?”
Alaine frowned. “I’d intended to bring it up tomorrow. I didn’t want to interrupt the day, but now I think it’s necessary.”
“Go ahead.”
“Someone called me.”
“Called you?”
“Asking questions,” he said. “About Germany. About the three of us. You and me and Sofia,” he added unnecessarily. There was no other “three of us.” Alaine, Sofia, and Damien had been inseparable during their years in Germany.
Or, rather, inseparable except for the times when Richter forced Sofia and Damien to be alone. Or the one time when Sofia’s aunt had taken her home to Illinois to visit her ill grandmother. That had been a blessing. She’d escaped for over four months that trip.
For one brief, harsh minute, Damien wondered if the same type of abuse had been going on with Alaine and Sofia as had been going on with him. But he dismissed the thought. Sofia would have told him. And Richter had never held power over Alaine. The man had been Sofia’s father and Damien’s coach. But Alaine was on the circuit with his own father, and as far as Damien knew, his life was as happy as traveling with a tennis team could be.