Page 52 of The Bride Wore White

“What?”

“You were the undercover man the FBI sent inside Cordell Bonner’s lab.”

“How did you figure that out?”

“Intuition,” she said lightly.

He groaned. “You’re right. I was able to use information collected at the crime scene to identify Bonner as the most likely suspect. The Feds needed someone to go inside his operation and find the evidence required for an arrest.”

“You made the classic mistake of volunteering, didn’t you?”

“It wasn’t as if there were a lot of options. The job required someone who could go into a sophisticated drug lab, recognize the various chemicals and processes, and figure out what was going on. I was able to do that. But things got complicated. When Bonner realized he had been targeted, he set off the explosion. That caused a massive fire. And before you ask, yes, that’s how I got the damned scars.”

She glanced back at him. “I wasn’t going to ask.”

“Because you already knew the answer? You being a psychic and all?”

“Of course not. I made a logical deduction based on careful observation of the available facts.”

“Right.”

Prudence reached the top of the cliffs and stopped abruptly, her attention fixed on the house.

“Uh-oh,” she said.

“My keen intuition tells me that does not sound promising,” he said.

He reached the top of the cliffs and saw the Jaguar convertible parked in the drive. The rumble of the breakers on the beach had masked the noise of the vehicle’s arrival.

A well-dressed man in a pale linen jacket, dark blue trousers,and a fedora lounged against the fender of the car. He was smoking a cigarette. The top of the convertible was down and the passenger side door was open, revealing a woman in fashionable trousers and a pullover sweater. She was sitting on the saddle leather seat, one foot braced on the ground.

Jack heard the chimes again and got a rush of anticipation. “This is going to be interesting.”

Prudence shot him a quick, searching glance. “Not friends of yours, I take it?”

“No. Something tells me we are about to meet the other members of the Dover family.”

Chapter 24

The man in the fedora spotted them and straightened away from the vehicle. He dropped the cigarette and ground it out with the heel of a polished leather shoe.

Prudence watched him carefully as he approached. He held himself with the arrogant confidence that was the birthright of the very wealthy—those who had barely noticed the economic havoc the Depression had wreaked upon the country. Jack was right. There was, indeed, a high probability that they were about to meet Rollins Dover.

He was smiling politely, but when he got closer, he saw Jack’s scars. There was a flash of barely concealed morbid fascination followed by equally brief and barely concealed revulsion before he recovered. He made a point of fixing his gaze on Jack’s eyes.

“Jack Wingate, I presume,” he said. “I’m Rollins Dover.”

“Dover,” Jack said.

The handshake was perfunctory, over almost before it began. Rollins turned toward her. The sunlight sparked briefly on a wedding band...

... and on a gold signet ring on the little finger of his left hand.

She stopped breathing.It’s just a signet ring,she thought. A lot of men wore them as symbols of family heritage or affiliations with clubs and fraternal organizations.Just a signet ring. Don’t jump to conclusions.

But she knew she would not be able to rest if she did not get a close look at the engraving on Dover’s ring.

Rollins smiled. “You must be Miss Ryland,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot about you—or, rather, I should say I’ve heard about Madame Ariadne.”

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