Ruby Red Herring

by Tracy Gardner

  Outside, lost in thought, she headed toward the corner. She almost wanted to take the rest of the afternoon off so she could get the flash drive home and see what was on it. She supposed she could check it out on her work laptop, but that just seemed like a bad idea. Without knowing what information this little piece of metal and plastic around her neck held, she really didn’t want to risk inserting it into the laptop she and Micah had been using in the lab. Maybe she was being paranoid, but what if it somehow corrupted their files and all of the work they’d done?

  She stopped to wait at the light before crossing, glancing toward her car half a block down on the right side. Okay, yes, that does sound completely paranoid. The flash drive had come from her parents. It had been in a safe-deposit box with all three of their names on it. Why on earth would her parents leave her something that would damage her work? Of course they wouldn’t. Maybe it’d be fine to see what was on it when she got back to the lab? Otherwise she’d have to wait until tonight. She crossed with the light and dug around in her purse for her key fob.

  She should have started the car already; her leather seats were going to be hot in this weather. From ten feet away, Avery pressed the remote start button.

  She felt and saw the explosion before she heard it. Flames burst from the underside of her Jeep Cherokee, followed almost simultaneously by a deafening boom, and Avery was knocked backward off her feet, her vision filled for a moment with blue sky and skyscrapers rising around her. Stunned, she sat up and leaned forward, gingerly touching the elbow that had struck the pavement hardest. A car alarm filled the air and then was joined by others, though the high-pitched ringing in her ears was louder. Someone was shouting, but it sounded like they were underwater. A pair of hands slid underneath her arms and lifted her to her feet, dragging her back and then scooping her up and running with her. Her car was on fire. The flames reached up in wide, smoking tendrils onto and over the driver’s side door and front end of the Jeep.

  A smaller explosion blew the hood open, flames now coming from the engine. Avery saw Art Smith’s worried face as he set her on the concrete and crouched down, pulling her with him.

  “Get down now!” He hunched his body over hers, a much louder explosion shaking the ground beneath them.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “It got the fuel line,” Art shouted, but he wasn’t talking to her. He straightened up, and Avery saw his Bluetooth earpiece. He waved his arms, still in his security guard uniform, which looked enough like a police uniform that the scattered pedestrians listened when he shouted to get back and clear the area. Fortunately, most people had taken off quickly with the first explosion, but there had been a couple fender benders directly in the vicinity of the Jeep as drivers swerved to avoid the fire. No one seemed to be hurt.

  Avery couldn’t tear her gaze from her car. Her poor Jeep. It was her first car, bought with waitressing money way back when she was twenty. Cherry red and already three years old when she’d purchased it, it had a sunroof and bike rack and was her dream car. When her parents died, they’d left a nearly new Expedition and a metallic-blue Prius. She’d told Aunt Midge to take her pick, but Midge was too attached to her ’57 Thunderbird. So they’d designated the Expedition as Tilly’s, knowing William would have wanted his teenage driver safely ensconced in a big vehicle, and Anne’s Prius stayed parked in the garage. Avery had never been able to bring herself to sell it. She guessed she was now the owner of a Toyota Prius.

  “—hurt?” Art had asked her a question, his face close to hers. Behind him, a fire engine wailed down Fifty-Seventh Street toward them.

  She shook her head. Her ears were still fuzzy; he sounded partially muted. “I think I’m all right. Who did this? Are you okay? Why are you here?” It had just hit her that he was not at MOA but here, with her, at the perfect moment to pull her back from her car before she could get hurt.

  He started to reply, but two police cars pulled up near them, followed by the fire engine. She watched as firemen extinguished the flames and first responders began dealing with the aftermath—angry drivers with dented cars, people asking questions.

  Art led Avery over to an ambulance that had just pulled up and directed the paramedic to check her over. Once she’d had a light shined in her eyes and answered questions about who the president was, they bandaged up her bloody elbow.

  Art had left her to go talk with one of the police officers. The officer looked over at her, then at the foamy, smoking mess that used to be her car. He wrote something down, asked Art something and wrote some more, then headed over to the Jeep.

  “What happens now?” Avery met him in the street, looking up at him.

  “Did they say you’re good? You don’t need to go to the ER?”

  “Yes. I swear.” She showed him her bandaged elbow. “Minor injury. What did the officer say?”

  “Just getting a few details about what happened. Was there anything in there you need?”

  Everything inside her car was probably either burned or soaking wet. Besides Aunt Midge’s sweater in the back seat, there really wasn’t much. Sunglasses, a few CDs. “Nothing of value. I have my purse. Are we allowed to leave? I mean, am I? Oh jeez. I’ll need to call someone.” Her mind raced. Who could drive her all the way home to Lilac Grove? Micah. But not Micah. “Oh my God.”

  “We can go. They agreed to speak with you later. It’s all right; I can drive you home.”

  “No, Art. We have to go to Micah’s. I don’t know if this is connected or not, but I haven’t been able to reach Micah all day. And he never just blows off work.”

  He stared at her. “When did you last talk to him?”

  “Last night, around dinnertime. But he was supposed to meet me in the lab this morning, and I can’t get him on his phone, not even his house phone. This is not like him at all. He doesn’t take sick days, and if he did, he would let me know.”

  He nodded. “Let’s go see. You can tell me why the hell you were running around on a secret mission and keeping me in the dark while we drive.”

  Avery began to speak, but Art’s expression stopped her. He wasn’t simply giving her a hard time. He was angry.

  In the passenger seat of his Dodge Ram truck, Avery fished the flash drive out of her blouse and showed him. The silver-and-black rectangle was about the same size as the safe-deposit box key. “I have no idea what’s on it. Aunt Midge figured out the key must be to a box at some bank that had a Lexington Street address.”

  He looked at her sharply. “Why did it not occur to you to tell me? We just talked about this, Avery.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Art, I am really sorry. For real.” She rested her good elbow on the console and leaned toward him, waiting, so he’d have to look at her.

  He finally did, scowling. “It was reckless. I’d say stupid too, but I know you’re not.”

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “Midge learned that the address of Bennington Bank used to be 1073 Lexington, which matched the key’s inscription. But that branch moved over here to Third last fall. I didn’t update you because, honestly, I thought I was going to get some more papers from a safe-deposit box. Who could have done this to my car? How would someone have been able to follow me?”

  “I did. Anyone else could have too. You could have been killed,” he said. “What if you’d started your car after you were in it?”

  Avery blinked. That thought hadn’t occurred to her. She felt the blood drain out of her head and heard a roar in her ears. What if she’d gotten into her car, buckled, and turned her key in the ignition instead of trying to get the AC going ahead of time? She took a breath, ready to defend herself, irritated at Art’s irritation, but an abrupt wave of nausea hit her at that image, at what could have happened. She could have been inside her car. “I feel sick.”

  Art jerked the steering wheel and got the truck over to the curb. He reached around in the back, handing her a plastic bag. She rolled her eyes at him but kept it, putting her face near her open window. The coo
l breeze helped.

  “Take some deep breaths,” Art said. “In through your nose, out through your mouth.”

  She did as he instructed. It helped. “Sorry. I’m sorry.” She turned her head toward him, resting it on the headrest. “Why would someone have tried to kill me?”

  His eyebrows were furrowed, a deep crease between them, but this time not because he was angry with her. “To get you out of the way.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m still working that out. The break-in at MOA Friday was part of this. Someone stole the original certificate of authenticity your mother signed. And yours is gone too.”

  “Someone doesn’t want me to see the original signature,” Avery blurted out. “That has to be it. She never would have signed two days early; I can’t make that make sense. I don’t think she ever actually certified the Emperor’s Twins as genuine. There was a problem, and I think they knew. My dad left Micah a voice mail, saying he wanted to talk to him about the medallion before they turned in the report. And there’s this.” She pulled out the scrap of paper with her dad’s numbers scrawled all over it.

  Art had put the truck in park. He took it from her. “This doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  She pointed. “These are specific gravity and chemical composition readings for a spinel. A man-made ruby. The real Emperor’s Twins dragon is known through legend to have two natural Burmese ruby eyes. I think my dad knew. Maybe the medallion is real—I have no reason to believe otherwise; it’s too intricate not to be,” Avery said slowly. “But maybe the ruby eye is a spinel. Maybe they weren’t going to sign the certificate at all. They would have had to tell Goldie, and she wouldn’t have acquired it.”

  “And someone who needed the deal to go through made sure the signed certificate made it to Goldie and your parents never had the chance to do anything with what they knew.”

  “Yes.” She was quiet, staring at the floor, trying to put herself into that investigation last year, to imagine what her parents had been thinking. “Art, they had to have known they were in danger. Why else would they have left me a trail of clues, a safe-deposit box key? Though I can’t for the life of me fathom how they planned ahead for someone to plant those notes. And what about the phone calls? How could they have known that there’d be a need to put me in touch with you? They wouldn’t have even known back then that I’d have this new ruby assignment and you’d be moonlighting at MOA. They . . . they couldn’t have known anything. You didn’t get involved until they were killed.” Avery frowned, trying to unscramble the pieces and make them make sense. “But the note told me to find you for help.” She stared at him.

  Art was still, studying his hands on the steering wheel. A muscle in his jaw pulsed. He cleared his throat and then finally spoke. “I have to tell you something, Avery.”

  She held her breath without meaning to.

  “It might be hard for you to hear. I want you to know, I haven’t told you until this point because protecting you was more important than you knowing the truth. It still is. But I’m afraid if I don’t tell you, not knowing will continue to compromise your safety even more.”

  “Art.” She wasn’t sure she was ready to hear what he was about to say.

  “You’ve got to promise to take what I’m about to say only for what it is: a change in course to save your life. Yours, Tilly’s, and Midge’s. You cannot tell them.” He looked at her, his intense gaze boring into hers. “That’ll just undo any good there is to be gained by telling you. I’m going to lose my job over this,” he muttered.

  Avery bit the inside of her cheek, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. She knew she should tell him to drop it; nothing was worth his job. But she couldn’t do it.

  Art turned toward her in his seat. “Your father is alive.”

  Avery frowned. She shook her head slowly. “He can’t be. I remember . . . at the hospital that night . . . the surgeon came out and talked to us himself. He said my dad’s internal injuries were too severe. He couldn’t save him.” That was real. Her mind had worked against her for months, in her dreams, in her unpredictable anger, to twist what had happened and make it anything other than her parents both being dead, but they were.

  “Avery.”

  “We went to the funeral.”

  Art reached over and took her hand, loosening her fingers, which were clenched tightly together. He held her hand between both of his, not speaking until she finally made eye contact with him. “The FBI made a decision that night.”

  Avery felt her pulse pounding in her temple. Even though her hearing had begun to normalize, now everything grew distant and far away: the sounds from the street outside the truck, someone’s music farther down the block, a car horn. They were enclosed in a bubble, the two of them. Art’s hands were warm, and his fingers felt rough on her skin. The brown stubble on his jaw and chin was a few days’ growth; he must have been too tired or too busy to take the time to shave. His dark eyes never moved from hers, and she could see him weighing what to say next.

  “Your parents were targeted because of the Emperor’s Twins medallion. We found evidence of an explosive attached to the engine cradle of their car. None of you were meant to survive that night. I’m so, so sorry your mother didn’t. But, Avery, your dad did.”

  He paused, letting that sink in, and then rushed forward. “By the time your father was in surgery, the FBI field officers were already in contact with Springfield PD and the highway patrol. The senior field officer strongly felt that if it became known that William had survived, not only would a second attempt be successful, but you and your sister would be used to get to him. Their director agreed. When your father woke up from surgery three days later, he was already in a different city with a new identity.”

  Avery was shaking her head before he even finished. “I don’t believe any of this. If he was alive, he’d never have stayed away. He’d never have let us go through the worst pain imaginable, thinking he had died.”

  “He stayed away so that you could live. So that he could eventually have his family back. The moment he was well enough, he began pushing the Bureau’s operatives to move on their plans to bring your mother’s murderer to justice. But they needed proof. And your father didn’t make it easy to protect him while he was chasing down answers on the Emperor’s Twins and doing everything in his power to make sure he didn’t compromise your and Tilly’s safety.”

  She couldn’t breathe. She could hardly swallow around the lump in her throat, and her eyes were hot with unshed tears. She covered her face with her hands, trying to gain control, but she was shaking; her entire body was shaking.

  “Avery.” Art put a hand on her shoulder, keeping it there and not moving at first.

  She turned her face into his forearm, drawing in a hitching breath, and in one motion he wrapped his arms around her as she leaned into him. She let go, tears streaking down her cheeks, and she could finally breathe, her eyes closed and her cheek pressed into his chest. She didn’t know how long she stayed that way. It could have been minutes or an hour.

  Art held her, not speaking.

  Avery’s breathing began to slow. She felt her heartbeat slow too, leaving her head, leaving her throat, until she couldn’t feel the heavy thudding anymore. She opened her eyes but didn’t move. She couldn’t yet. Art’s chest was soft but firm, and his navy-blue uniform shirt smelled like fabric softener. Finally, she drew in a slow, steady, deep breath, feeling calmer. “Art, my dad . . .”

  “Your dad is fine. He’d want me to tell you that he’ll see you soon.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Avery sat up, sniffling. She patted Art’s uniform shirt where it was damp from her tears. “I don’t, uh . . . I don’t know what’s wrong with me. My dad’s alive. You just told me the best thing I’ve ever heard in my life. I didn’t mean to get so . . .” She met his gaze and then looked away. She had no explanation for why she’d reacted that way.

  “So human? So normal?”

  She looked back at
him.

  “You almost died in an explosion and then learned that your father, who died a year ago, is alive. I think your reaction is completely normal.”

  “When can I see him?”

  “Not yet. He’s already broken protocol too many times. Right now would be the worst possible time for anyone to know he’s still alive. But we’re close. Whoever is behind this is getting nervous, and that equals careless. Let’s go make sure Micah Abbott is all right.”

  He pulled out into traffic while Avery tried to process everything she’d just heard. “Whoever is behind this, whoever killed my mom, they had to have stolen the real ruby eye out of the medallion last year. Before my parents ever even began the process of certifying it. Right?”

  Art nodded. “That’s the working theory. They may have assumed the fake they made—what did you call it?”

  “A spinel.”

  “They may have assumed their spinel was a good enough substitute that it’d slip right past your parents. They could have planned on it slipping right through with no one knowing the ruby eye wasn’t real.”

  “Any good anthropologist with a gemology subspeciality would know it was fake. I haven’t been able to finish evaluating it yet, but it’s all about the math.”

  Art smiled at her. “You make it sound so simple, when it’s honestly too complicated for me to really grasp. But, if the plan had worked, your parents would have certified the medallion in its entirety as genuine, MOA would have an authentic three-hundred-year-old artifact with a fake jewel in it, and the thief would have pocketed a sixteen-carat natural ruby. I assume that size ruby would be worth a small fortune.”

  “It depends what you call a small fortune,” Avery said. “A flawless natural Burmese ruby that size would go for roughly fifteen million.”

  “Dollars.” Art said it as a statement, but his expression was incredulous. “Fifteen million dollars?”

  “Yep. That medallion, without either of the ruby eyes in it, would be worth around four million, given its relevance to history and the smaller inlaid jewels. The Emperor’s Twins medallion, if it had both ruby dragon eyes intact, is estimated at a value of about forty-two million dollars.”