by Toby Neal
But she was still afraid.
“Beautiful One. I’m losing patience. Enough of this. You are not this fearful creature, hiding in its shell. You are my deadly viper, my fierce queen. Come back to me.” His voice was a crack of thunder now, and she felt pressure, squeezing.
She always obeyed when he used that tone . . .
A heartbeat against hers. Warmth. The strength of arms holding her, rocking her. Light against her closed eyes, a red-orange brightness.
Some kind of sharp, penetrating aromatic smell burnt her nose, made her gasp.
Consciousness dragged her eyes open at last.
She saw only shapes and colors: something white, a woven cloth that her cheek rested on. A column of golden-tanned flesh, so close she could see the pulse beating against the skin.
Her eyes hurt. Her ears hurt. Everything hurt. Her body was not a place she knew anymore.
She tried to move her arms but they were held down.
Pressure.
She opened her mouth and tried to speak, but her throat was sore and her lips cracked.
She felt a warm, wet drop hit her face. A tear?
“She’s awake, Master. She’s returned.” A different voice. She didn’t know this voice. She shut her eyes, afraid again, but now she felt a damp sponge at her lips.
Moisture.
She sucked at the sponge eagerly, desperate for liquid, for water, for wetness.
“Beautiful One. I knew you’d come back to me.” His voice in her ear, his warm breath against her neck, his arms holding her, hugging her, rocking her. “My poor darling, my Beautiful One. Your suffering is over. Drink.”
A straw at her lips now. She sucked, and moaned as warm water, flavored with herbs and honey, flowed across her tongue and down her throat. She drank in great, healing gulps.
“She’s in bad shape, Master. We should keep her on the feeding tube . . .”
“No. She will recover now. She was waiting for me, and now I’m here. She’ll be fine.” His voice shivered with something. Fear? Was he worried for her?
It was true. She’d been waiting for him, and now she could come back, if only this husk of a body would let her. She rubbed her face up and down against the warmth of the Master’s chest, nodding. She forced her throat to work, and a hoarse whisper emerged: “Yes.”
“Yes. My darling says ‘yes.’” He rocked her, and she felt his kisses along her hairline like the gentle touch of summer rain on parched soil.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Raveaux: Day Five, Late Afternoon
Approaching sunset began to cast long, pewter-colored shadows over San Francisco as Sophie and Raveaux exited the restaurant. Sophie’s mouth was shiny, and Raveaux suppressed a sudden flash of desire to lean over and kiss that leftover butter right off. Instead, he cleared his throat and handed her an extra paper napkin he’d slid into his coat pocket. “You missed a bit.”
Sophie rolled her eyes and dabbed at her mouth with the napkin.
“I’ll call for our rideshare.” Raveaux pulled out his phone, activated the app, and typed in the address that matched the IP location of the computer that had been receiving the keystrokes harvested from Samson’s confidential laptop.
He glanced up at Sophie. “The moment of truth is upon us.”
Sophie shrugged. “Not necessarily.” She shivered a little in a black silk tank top worn with a light gabardine blazer over those clingy black pants that tortured his imagination. “The tracker can get only the street address location, which could turn out to be an apartment building, business complex, something with multiple offices or dwellings. We will only be able to find out where the computer actually is through old-fashioned detective work. This could even be a dead end. I didn’t find more masking software, but that doesn’t mean this address is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”
Raveaux lifted his brows in question just as a Toyota Prius pulled up at their curbside. “Another Americanism I’m not familiar with.”
She grinned. “Never mind. Not worth explaining.”
They greeted the driver. Rap music vibrated the vehicle and their driver nodded to the beat, bouncing an impressive set of dreads. Raveaux tried to keep his eyes off Sophie’s butt while she slid into the seat ahead of him, but failed. The interior of the car smelled strongly of Lysol disinfectant, warring with a pine tree deodorizer hanging from the rearview mirror.
Raveaux moved as far from Sophie as he could, belted himself in, and stared out the window as the Prius navigated away from the pier area toward the center of San Francisco. He had already looked up the street name and knew the location was near the major thoroughfare of Van Ness Avenue, an artery that connected to Highway 101, which traversed the entire length of the state.
Fifteen minutes later, the Prius disgorged them in front of a tall, gleaming high-rise building. Sophie frowned, gesturing to it as Raveaux waved the driver off. “The computer could be anywhere inside of here. What we need to look for now is some connection to Samson, or Finewell’s. But frankly, that might still not be enough to give us an exact location within the building.”
Raveaux’s eyes traveled skyward. The last of the daylight twinkled against the skyscraper’s mirrored windows like fool’s gold. “Is it even worth trying to get in?”
Sophie approached the double glass doors, tugged at one of the handles, and shook her head. “This is a locked building. We are going to have to find some legitimate reason to be admitted. I suggest we go back to the airport hotel, load that video footage onto our computers, and search for some connection to this building related to Samson or the Finewell’s investigation.” She turned back to him, frowning in concern. “At least, we know that this is a real address with some possibility of having a connection to the case.” A draft of chilly wind, smelling of the sea and San Francisco fog, billowed up the hill, blasting them. Sophie hunched in her thin jacket, her arms wrapped around herself.
Raveaux shrugged out of his sensible wool coat and draped it over her shoulders. “I agree that we need to regroup somewhere more comfortable. But I think we should reach out to the police. See if that detective assigned to the case found any leads. Perhaps he knows of some connection to this building. At the very least, if we get him on our side, he can gain us admittance.”
“Needle in a haystack, as my friend Marcella would say.” Sophie slid her blazer-clad arms into his coat, and buttoned it. “Thank you. I was freezing.”
Raveaux watched her button the coat all the way to the top. The feeling of satisfaction he had was the same he’d experienced looking at her empty plate.
He had fed her. He had warmed her.
Sophie took out her phone. “It seems unlikely that the detective will know anything that will get us any closer to that computer. But, if you want to work that angle while I review the surveillance recordings, that’s fine with me. My turn to call a rideshare.”
They had decided to work in Sophie’s hotel room because she had paid extra for high-speed Internet and a suite with a wet bar, fridge, and work area.
Raveaux rang her door, irritated that his heart rate was elevated. He wasn’t coming in for a nightcap in any form. They were working. He would keep it all business.
Sophie must’ve decided the same because her scarlet lipstick had been wiped off and she now wore a large, concealing sweatshirt that came to mid-thigh over black yoga pants. She handed him his overcoat. “Thanks for the loan. I’m happy to see that you brought your own laptop.” She gestured to the MacBook tucked under his arm. “An Apple acolyte?”
“I never claimed to be a techie.” Raveaux entered, ignoring the way the hair rose on his arms as he passed her. “I just like everything to work efficiently and not be bothered by viruses. You can’t say the same, using that.” He pointed to the silver case of Samson’s laptop where it rested on the coffee table. “I’ll take the desk. I’ll be using the hotel phone for calls, since the numbers I’ll be calling are mostly local numbers.”
“Sounds g
ood. I would offer you a drink, but you don’t partake, and we both need to stay sharp. How about coffee?” Sophie headed for the beverage station set up on top of the room’s mini-refrigerator.
“Perfect.”
The little coffee maker rumbled in the corner of the room as they settled into their work areas. Raveaux focused his attention on the telephone and a list of numbers from the case file that Sophie handed him from her briefcase. She put on a pair of headphones and plugged them into Samson’s laptop, booting it up.
Raveaux called Detective Deke Pellman’s direct number, provided by Matthews. He introduced himself as a private investigator who was doing a “probe into a pattern of high-end thefts that the Finewell’s Auction House has experienced.”
Raveaux had compiled a rough figure of the known losses to date, and the detective sucked in a breath when he heard the amount. Detective Pellman had a loose rattle behind his voice when he spoke. “I didn’t get very far with that case. Interviewed all the staff, no one knew anything. Looked at all the video, didn’t see anything. The insurance was covering it, anyway. If I had known it was part of a bigger picture, I would’ve taken it more seriously, at least boosted it to the Feds for the interstate aspect . . . but Finewell’s didn’t see fit to let me know that.”
“When I worked for the French police, we often faced corporate subterfuge. Even when they wanted their criminals caught, they didn’t want anyone looking too far up their ass,” Raveaux said, infusing his voice with camaraderie.
“Wish I had something more to give you.” Pellman coughed, an ugly sound.
“Do you know anything about this address?” Raveaux told Pellman the address of the building. “We’ve uncovered a link to a possible computer at this site. That computer collects information harvested by spyware related to one of the thefts in Honolulu. It doesn’t seem like a coincidence that Finewell’s San Francisco was also hit, when that building is only a few blocks away.” Raveaux gave Sophie a grateful nod as she deposited a paper cup of coffee at his elbow. He sipped the dark brew and refocused. “We have been able to dig deeper into the background of someone we know is affiliated with the robberies, and we’re still looking for more connections. We need to get into that building, and look for the computer that was collecting results from the spyware. I know it’s a stretch, but do you have any cases or information related to this address?”
The detective cleared his throat with an ugly rattle. “I’m not at my office. I would need to get into my own computer files. I was just Googling that address and it goes to the Lambert Building . . . which sounds familiar, but not from this case. It might be related to a different investigation, but who knows, maybe the two will cross.” The wet sound of his cough drew Raveaux’s brows together in concern. “It’s six p.m., in case you haven’t noticed, and I’m at home. Give me a number where I can reach you tomorrow.”
Raveaux gave Pellman his contact information and said goodbye. He looked around at Sophie. She sat on the couch, laptop on her knees, her fingers flying, her headphones on and her eyes never straying from the screen.
He was free to stare at her as long as he wanted.
Raveaux indulged in a long moment of doing so, then reluctantly re-opened the file. He still had a few more phone calls he could make.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sophie: Day Five, Evening
Sophie looked up at Raveaux. He had his back to her at the desk and even through her headphones, she could hear the low rumble of his voice as he talked on the phone.
An unapologetic aesthete, Sophie enjoyed beauty in all its forms. Raveaux’s lean, hard build, his debonair dress, even the silver at his temples and the chiseled sternness of his mouth—all of it pleased her eye.
And everything about him was so different from the other men who’d stolen her heart . . .
Sophie tightened her lips. “Focus on the job, chica,” Marcella’s voice said in her mind. She bracketed the clip of video that she was pretty sure was doctored to hide where Samson had stolen the San Francisco set of diamonds. She isolated the clip and shunted it to their case file in the Cloud, inviting Raveaux to view it via text.
She glanced up again.
He was still on the phone, leaning back in the chair, gesturing with his hands in that Gallic way he had. Hopefully he was getting somewhere with gaining them access to the building.
Now that she had the spliced clip of the video, she dug into the copy of Samson’s hard drive, sifting through the woman’s contacts on email. She wanted more on Samson’s contacts, friends, colleagues.
Most of all, she wanted more on Samson’s heir. Who was this mysterious young woman Samson cared about so much?
Sophie set up a deep dive search into Samson’s cloned hard drive using the DAVID program, her patented software designed to penetrate firewalls and find keywords. Using the right keywords, the program had soon located a copy of Samson’s will, hidden in an encrypted file. A few decryption software minutes later, Sophie pulled up the will.
“Elisa Bell. Got you,” Sophie murmured. Samson didn’t identify what their relationship was in the will. An address was included on the document—and Sophie’s spine tingled as she read it. Elisa Bell lived in the Lambert Building!
Now, she had an apartment number to investigate. Bell must have been spying on Samson for some reason.
Sophie ran a quick background on Bell, and soon pulled up a good deal of basic personal information. Counting from the woman’s birthdate, Bell was thirty-seven years old. She was single, a professional freelance graphic designer, and in Sophie’s estimation, her work was quite good.
Bell’s social media presence was limited. She couldn’t be a niece—Samson had no siblings. She wasn’t a direct offspring, either, because Samson had never been married, nor were there any children listed anywhere in Samson’s background. Perhaps she was a student Samson had mentored?
Sophie began a new keyword search on the two women, looking for university or college connections, club or other associations.
Raveaux wrapped up his call. He set the hotel’s phone back in its cradle, turning to glance her way.
Sophie pushed her headphones down around her neck as she caught his eye. “I found some good stuff.”
His brows arched and his mouth curled up just the faintest bit—still not a smile, damn it. “And?”
“The segment of video that was doctored to hide Samson’s theft of the gems—same MO here as Honolulu. I sent you an invite to view the clip. And then, I found us an address we need to recon inside the Lambert Building.” She cracked her knuckles with excitement, and rippled them across her keyboard. “Elisa Bell, Samson’s heir, lives there. She was likely spying on Samson’s computer—but why? We have a couple of real leads, here.”
“Excellent.” Raveaux stood and stretched, raising his arms high overhead, his fingers locked. His turtleneck rode up, baring a couple of inches of ripped abs and olive skin. He bent over to touch the floor, laying his palms flat on the floor. The shirt rode up again, showing his supple, well-defined back. He straightened to face her, and his eyes sparkled with an excitement that matched hers. “I too found some good stuff. I talked to one of my old contacts. He knows a San Francisco fence who had a batch of blue diamonds pass through his hands.”
“They broke up the set. What a shame.” Sophie had wanted to see those magnificent, unusual stones in their original settings.
“Those blue diamonds were way too distinctive as a collection. But with any luck at all, the fence can positively identify them as part of that set, maybe give us some information on who brought them to him. I have an appointment to meet my contact tomorrow, and we’ll pay the fence a surprise visit. Tomorrow, we’ll know more from Detective Pellman about getting into the Lambert Building. He said he might have some information related to it, but needed to get back to the office first.”
“Sounds good.” Sophie closed her laptop and stood up. “I’d like to call it a night, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.” Raveaux picked up the wool coat she’d returned to him and shrugged it on. “I’m going to grab a bite to eat. Want to come?”
“No, thank you. Room service for one this evening.” Sophie needed to get some distance. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“I’ll let you know what I hear from Pellman. Hopefully we can all go to the Lambert Building together. Get some rest.” He shut the door quietly behind him, and was gone.
Sophie walked over to the door and put the bar on. She turned and checked the clock radio—Momi would just be getting up from her nap on Kaua`i. She perused the room service menu, ordered a large pasta salad and a glass of Pinot Grigio to go with it, and then took out her tablet.
Armita answered the video chat right away. Her nanny’s long black hair was snarled and mussed, and her brown eyes were ringed with dark circles. “I finally got her down for a nap,” she said in Thai. “She’s running a fever.”
Sophie’s pulse immediately spiked. “Oh no. What is it?”
“Some kind of flu. A bit of a cough, too. Alika took us to the doctor already; they think it’s a virus going around.” Armita yawned, and made a patting gesture with her hand. “Momi will be fine. We have the situation in hand. You said you were going to San Francisco?”
“Yes, I’m here in the city now, for a case.” Sophie got up. She paced back and forth in agitation, holding the tablet. “I need to see her. Show her to me, Armita.”
“All right.” Armita carried her phone into Momi’s dimly lit bedroom.
Sophie had always appreciated the lovely downstairs bedroom that belonged to her daughter in Alika’s mansion in Princeville. It also had a small adjoining bedroom where she or Armita stayed. He’d decorated the room with a beach theme, and the walls were cleverly painted with scenes from the island—whales and dolphins, beautiful mountains, palms and sky, and the rolling sea.
