Diamonds Can Be Deadly

by Merline Lovelace

  "Who?"

  "I can't talk to you. I can't talk to anyone. Except Bartholomew. I have to find Bartholomew."

  Her eyes frantic, she jerked free. Her sneakers made furious squeaking noises as she wove an erratic path toward the door.

  Heads turned. The other breakfasters followed her erratic progress with expressions that ranged from surprise to concern to bafflement. Patricia Helms telegraphed a silent question above Davy's head. Duncan Myers was more direct. Frowning, Bartholomew's financial adviser shoved back his chair and strode across the room.

  He was in jogging shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, obviously ready for a run. Unlike Edna's sneakers, his high-dollar Nikes didn't make a sound.

  "May I ask what that was about? Mrs. Albert is a very valued guest," he added when Jordan hesi­tated. "Bartholomew will want to know if one of the staff has said or done something to upset her."

  "It wasn't the staff. It was Harry McShay."

  "Harry? But he left yesterday." Myers essayed a thin smile. "Surely Mrs. Albert isn't that upset be­cause one of her poker partners deserted her?"

  "Apparently Harry did more than simply desert her. Edna just heard Mr. McShay was killed last night."

  The smile fell off his face. "Dear God! How?"

  "According to Edna, who got it from Felicity, Harry was gunned down at the Oakland airport."

  The shock was genuine. The blood drained from Myers's cheeks. His face turned ashen. Now if only Jordan knew whether it stemmed from distress over the loss of a wealthy client or a valuable courier.

  "Excuse me. I have to inform Bartholomew about this."

  He started for the door, swung back, and made a visible attempt to collect his scattered thoughts.

  "Was that all Mrs. Albert said? I thought I heard her mention something about her daughters?"

  No way Jordan was confirming anything until she cornered Edna and found out what had put that terror in her eyes.

  "You must have heard wrong."

  "I must have." Myers's palmed his shining crown with a shaking hand. "Excuse me."

  He hurried out of the restaurant. Jordan followed a moment later. Edna was trying to track down Bar­tholomew. So was Duncan Myers. She wanted to in­tercept the widow before Edna bumped into Myers or Greene. Cursing the institute's prohibition on cell phones for everyone but staff, she darted around an oleander bush and thumbed her earring.

  "Rigger, get TJ Scott on the net. Tell him I need a fix on Bartholomew Greene's current location. Like, fast."

  "Stand by, Diamond."

  Rigger responded less than a minute later. "Scott says Greene is at his residence. He's just finishing breakfast and is about to depart for the Meditation Center."

  "Tell Scott to meet me at the Meditation Center."

  Thumbing her earring again, Jordan started down the path that led around the bluffs. The mounded hibiscus bushes to the left passed in a blur of bright red blossoms. The thick, bushy palmetto palms on the right swayed in the wind.

  Except it wasn't the breeze causing the fan-shaped leaves to ripple, she discovered when a foot thrust out and tripped her.

  Momentum pitched her forward. She threw up her hands to break her fall, felt her fingers tangle in the thin gold chain that held her emerald, and went down hard. Black, glistening cinders scraped the skin from her right forearm and gouged into her kneecaps.

  Then something crashed into the back of her skull and the rest of the world went black as well.

  Chapter 15

  TJ checked his watch for the third time. A good twenty minutes had passed since Jordan's cryptic message. His impatience was mounting by the second. So was his uneasiness. Wondering what the hell had precipitated Jordan's urgent request for Bar­tholomew's location, TJ paced the airy, high-ceilinged hall of the Mediation Center.

  The door opened. The sound of female voices spun him around. He smothered a curse as Felicity Waller-Winston walked in with an older woman wearing a pink flowered visor and shirt with white tennis shorts. Felicity looked grim, the other guest shocked.

  "I heard it on CNN. He was shot in the head."

  The older woman clucked in dismay. "How awful for Harry's folks. I remember him saying they'd taken his wife's and daughter's deaths almost as hard as he had. Now this!"

  Neither woman noticed TJ until he stepped in front of them. "Felicity, have you seen Jordan?"

  "No, I haven't. Did you hear about Harry Mc­Shay?"

  "Yes."

  "It's getting so everyone needs a bodyguard these days." Shuddering delicately, Felicity played with the mirrored sunglasses hooked in the V of TJ's shirt. "Are you sure I can't hire you away from Bar­tholomew? Whatever he's paying you, I'll double it."

  TJ had a few ideas of his own about what this woman needed and they didn't include a bodyguard. A keeper ranked close to the top of the list, right after an industrial-size vibrator. Spotting his employer approaching the center, he disengaged and stepped around the two women to intercept Bartholomew at the door.

  Greene wore a troubled expression. That in itself was unusual for the serene, smiling therapist. He was also rubbing his emerald pendant with a quick, almost jerky rhythm. The nervous gesture could be a reaction to the news of his patient's death. Or it could stem from the loss of a designated intermedi­ary and a cool quarter of a million in cash.

  "Good morning, Bartholomew."

  "What? Oh, good morning, TJ. Have you heard the tragic news?"

  "About Harry McShay? Yes."

  "Edna Albert caught me just as I was leaving my residence and told me it had been on the news. She was quite distraught, poor woman, as am I."

  He fingered his pendant, obviously seeking com­fort from the stone.

  "There's so much violence in this world, so much negative energy. If only I could reach more people and teach them to look inward for the positive—"

  TJ cut him off before he launched into a lengthy discourse. "Have you spoken with Jordan Colby this morning?"

  "Jordan? No, I haven't. Why?"

  "She had some questions about the iris-recognition system," TJ replied, inventing a cover on the spot. "She's thinking of implementing a similar system for her design studio and asked me to meet her here."

  "Jordan has been participating in morning group. Perhaps she's already in the meeting room."

  "No, she's not."

  "We have a few minutes before the session be­gins. I'm sure she'll appear shortly." Bartholomew's boyish face folded into sad lines. "Harry's senseless death will test the members of the group. Hopefully, I've given them the right tools to deal with such un­expected, unsettling changes. Excuse me, TJ. I need a few moments to gather myself before I meet with my patients."

  He started for one of the private meditation rooms, but turned back to issue a request.

  "Would you get a message to Duncan for me? Tell him I'd like to speak to him after group. Harry's death wasn't all that had upset Edna. Evidently there's some problem regarding the payment options for her treatment. I can't imagine what, but promised her I'd look into the matter."

  Bright red warning lights were flashing inside TJ's head. Pushing through the front door of the Medita­tion Center, he unclipped the cell phone clipped to his belt and hit the direct line to his Security Operations Center.

  "I need a fix on Jordan Colby. Do you have her on the monitors?"

  TJ narrowed his eyes against the dazzling sun­light, waiting impatiently until his on-duty security did a sweep of all twenty-four monitors.

  "Negative, Chief."

  "Check to see if she scanned in or out of her bungalow in the past half hour."

  The wait was longer this time. His heart drum­ming against his ribs, TJ scanned the postcard-per­fect setting. Jordan had to be somewhere among those swaying palms and trickling waterfalls.

  "Another negative, Chief."

  Dammit! Where the hell was she?

  "Run her emerald," he bit out. "See if the stone painted on any of the special filters."

&
nbsp; "I show Ms. Colby at the Jade Buddha at 8:46."

  Eight forty-six. Just a few minutes before she'd contacted TJ and told him to meet her at the Medi­tation Center.

  "Her emerald doesn't pop up on any screens after that?"

  "No, sir."

  "Thanks."

  TJ slammed the lid on his cell phone. He'd start at the restaurant. Maybe she was still there, huddled in a corner with Edna, away from the cameras.

  Crushed-lava rock crunched under his boots as he took the path in long strides. The morning sun beat down and reflected off the glistening black rock in a thousand tiny pinpricks of light.

  His mind chasing itself in a vicious circle of un­answered questions, TJ yanked his sunglasses from the V of his shirt. He'd have to purchase a pair of Jordan's, he thought grimly, from her line with high-level UV protection for the tropical sun.

  His current pair filtered most of the harmful rays. They also reduced the glitter from the crushed black rock—just enough for TJ to spot the thin gold chain lying beside the path. Only half the broken chain was visible. The other half disappeared under the giant fronds of a palmetto.

  He went down on one knee, his gut knotting. Slowly, he raised the spiky leaves and followed the snaking line of gold. Near the end of the chain lay the green teardrop.

  But no Jordan. Relief exploded through TJ with the force of a grenade. He sat back on his heels, almost shaking with the joy of not finding her broken or maimed body stuffed inside a leafy-green crypt.

  The relief lasted all of five seconds. Then he was on his feet, snatching his cell phone from his belt. Jaw tight, he punched in the phone number to Jor­dan's controller. Two rings later, a female with a nasal twang answered.

  "Beltway Cleaners."

  "This is Thomas Jackson Scott. Patch me through."

  Another voice responded almost before TJ had finished speaking. This one was slow and resonant and male. "I'm readin' you, Scott. Go ahead."

  "I need to contact Diamond."

  "Well, now, we don't normally contact field agents except at prearranged times."

  Or in extreme emergencies. TJ understood the Standard Operating Procedures. Hell, he lived by them every day. One-way communications shielded undercover operatives from signals that might arrive at awkward moments, like in the middle of a con­versation with dopers or mafiosi or the theft ring the agent had infiltrated.

  "I know the SOP," he bit out. "I also know you can transmit a silent signal, directing your field agent to check in with Control ASAP. Send it. Now."

  "Why?"

  There was nothing slow about that bullet. The single word bounced off a satellite orbiting a hun­dred miles above the earth with megasonic speed.

  "She was supposed to meet me almost half an hour ago and didn't show. I just found a gold chain she was wearing half buried under a bush."

  "Stand by."

  TJ kept the phone jammed to his ear while he swept the area around the palmetto for signs of a struggle. He spotted no blood spatters, no gouges in the soft earth on either side of the path, no sandals or sunglasses or other personal items. All he had to feed his fear was the shattered gold chain and emerald now clenched in his fist.

  "We've signaled her, Scott. She should check in with us shortly. We've also got a GPS lock on her transmitter."

  "Where is she?"

  "Nine and a half miles from your present location, moving northeast at thirty-eight miles per hour."

  Whirling, TJ squinted into the sun. The only road heading northeast from the Tranquility Institute followed the jagged coastline and dead-ended at the small state park at the northern tip of the island. It was a wild, isolated place, sacred to the ancient Hawaiians and dominated by the brooding peak the locals called Ma'aona.

  It was TJ's turn to bite out a terse "Stand by."

  Putting Jordan's controller on hold, he got his on-duty security officer on the line. It took only a few moments to screen the tapes and verify a rental car had driven through the front gate twenty minutes ago.

  "Sure looks like Ms. Colby at the wheel. Her face is angled away from the camera and she's wearing a silk scarf over her hair, but I recognize that glittery butterfly on her sunglasses."

  Jordan's signature logo.

  TJ stood for a moment, trying to reason this out. He'd already had one taste of the woman's inde­pendence. She'd ignored his urgent instructions to the contrary and walked out on a deck with a man who, for all they knew at the time, was a hired gun for the Colombians.

  Maybe this was a similar situation. Maybe she'd stumbled onto something and decided to check it out on her own. And maybe not.

  TJ went with his instincts. Breaking into a dead run, he clicked back to her controller. "I'm going after her. Keep feeding me that GPS data."

  "Roger that. I'll also keep trying to raise her. Over and out."

  An annoying little gnat buzzed around Jordan's ear, penetrating her red haze of pain.

  Someone was hammering spikes into the back of her head. She was bouncing around like a beach ball, up one moment, slamming down the next. Fiery needles shot up her arms into her shoulder sockets. Yet for some reason all she could focus on was that irritating little buzz.

  She attempted to get at it by hunching a shoulder. The gnat didn't go away and, she discovered on a jolt of teeth-grinding agony, her shoulder wouldn't hunch. The pain cut into her with the sharp, clean slice of a scalpel. Her eyelids flew up. Her nostrils flared. With a desperate wheeze, she sucked the stink of exhaust fumes.

  Blinking, Jordan stared into inky darkness and gradually made sense of things. The buzz came from her earring. The gold hoop was vibrating and send­ing low-frequency, inaudible sound waves against her eardrum. The pain came from the fact that someone had taped her ankles together and her wrists behind her before dumping her in the trunk of a car.

  A moving car, she amended as another jounce thumped her up, then down. Fire streaked from her arms to her shoulder sockets. She was riding the wave of pain when she realized the jounce had rattled something else, something that went clank in the darkness.

  A toolbox? A loose spare tire?

  Clamping her jaw against the pain, Jordan wig­gled backward. She groped behind her, touched a length of metal, felt it up and down with her fingers. When she made out the object's L-shape, she rec­ognized it instantly as a tire iron.

  Her stomach heaved. Acrid bile rose in her throat. She gulped in huge, dry swallows of exhaust-tainted air in a frantic attempt to control the nausea. She managed to conquer her queasiness but couldn't stop her mind from shooting back to a musty, one-car garage.

  For a sick moment, she was a bruised, defiant thirteen-year-old trying to escape her drunken step­father. She could smell the fear, taste the hot fury in her throat as she dodged around the junk he'd been working on.

  He'd cut her off. Backed her into a corner. Lashed out with a fist that split the skin just above her left eye. She'd grabbed the closest object and put every­thing she had into the swing. The crunch of the iron hitting bone had followed her out into the icy night.

  She hadn't killed the bastard, she'd learned later. Not for lack of trying, certainly. But something told her she'd better be prepared to take out whoever had dumped her in this trunk.

  Working blind, she locked her jaw in savage con­centration and felt along the length of the tire iron. If this one was like the one she'd used on her step­father, the L-shaped tool would have a lug wrench at one end and a sharp wedge at the other for prying off hubcaps.

  Her probing fingers found the lug wrench. With a hiss of satisfaction, she reversed the iron. The angle was awkward but she managed to prop the tool against the back of the trunk. The sharp edge she ma­nipulated until it pressed against the tape binding her wrists. Locking her jaw against the pain, she started sawing her arms up and down.

  The tape parted after just a minute or two. Jordan drew her wrists forward, fighting the moan that rose in her throat, panting hard and fast. The exhaust fumes almost choked her,
but the burning agony in her shoulders slowly subsided.

  Reversing the rod again, she angled it downward to get at her ankles. She didn't dare saw all the way through that tape. She'd need the element of surprise when the vehicle stopped. She'd have to keep her arms behind her and her legs looking as though they were still bound when the trunk opened. If it. opened.

  The grim possibility the driver might slow the car, jump out and send it careening off one of the island's high bluffs with her locked inside the trunk sent panic bubbling through Jordan's veins. With a vivid mental image of waves crashing against jagged rocks, she scrunched her body and flipped onto her back. Vehicles manufactured after 2001 were sup­posed to be equipped with an emergency trunk release.

  It had taken the tragic suffocation of six children in one week to focus national attention on the dangers of becoming locked inside a trunk in broiling temperatures. The ensuing study had also compiled data on trunk entrapment as a means of confining victims of car-jackings or abductions. The startling results of the study led to legislation man­dating internal release mechanisms on new vehicles.

  Praying she wasn't locked inside an old clunker, Jordan searched the darkness. Relief oozed like sweat from her pores when she spotted the T-shaped handle hanging from the trunk lid. Constructed from a special phosphorescent material that allowed it to shine in the dark for hours after a brief exposure to ambient light, it glowed like a beacon of hope. One quick pull should spring the trunk lid.

  Okay. All right. She could get out if she had to.

  Her incipient panic squelched, she groped for the tire iron again and attacked the tape on her ankles. She made the cut at the back and sawed until only a small thread of tape remained intact. She fingered the cut, testing it, and kept sawing until she was confident one good kick would part the remaining strands. Then she curled up in a ball and thumbed the back of her earring.

  "This is Diamond," she whispered. "Come in, Control."

  TJ's cell phone danced on the dash of the green-and-white-striped Jeep he commandeered. A half second later the phone began to ping.

  Maintaining a firm grip on the steering wheel, he fought to flip up the phone lid one-handed. He didn't dare take his eyes from the narrow, twisting road. The right side hugged Ma'aona's steep, densely veg­etated slopes. The left dropped off into thin air.