by Dianna Love
“And if she does?”
“Then I’ll take care of it.” Dominique twisted a strand of hair then stilled her hand. No need to lose control now, the hard part was already done. Murder was a messy business.
Time to turn the tables and be the one making demands.
“Is the next phase ready?”
“All is set.”
“Good.”
“There have been no changes to the itinerary?”
She shook her head, even though the mechanical sounding voice could not see her. “No. Adjustments have been made in the time frames, but we’re on schedule for the Maldives and Miami after that.”
“And then Washington D. C.?”
“Yes, as planned.”
“Then we are ready. You will not be contacted by us until you reach Miami. Make sure there are no more mistakes.”
She tightened her grip on her cell phone, sure the inconsequential piece of plastic would splinter, but she kept her tone even and calm as she answered, “There have been no mistakes on my part thus far. It will continue to be so.”
Her only answer was a dial tone.
With a curse she threw the phone across the stateroom.
CHAPTER 34
I glanced at Franco, his mouth an open “O” at Bran’s announcement, still echoing in the stillness of the room. The first few seconds were always a dead giveaway as to guilt or innocence, because very few people could pale on command.
“This is not possible,” Franco’s words tumbled as he shook his head. He was stunned, but there was something else flashing through his eyes. Wariness? Confusion? The look came and went so fast I couldn’t put my finger on it before he whispered, “How? Where? When?”
Bran shot me a focused glance before responding to Franco. “The gendarmes are searching your room now. I expect they will find you shortly and request your presence for more questioning.”
The process all sounded so civilized, but that wasn’t the reality of a murder investigation. The sour taste of fear, the relentless questions battering at a person, the seconds of time Franco would need to account for, explaining away the unexplainable.
“He’s not to blame.” I hadn’t realized I spoke aloud until both men looked at me.
Bran’s gaze would have frozen hell. “Explain.”
Fine line to walk. Franco couldn’t know who I really was or how I came by my knowledge, but neither could I let an innocent man take the rap for a ruthless killer.
“It’s simple.” I thrust my hands into the front pockets of my jeans, aware of my ring rubbing the denim. “We came across Franco a good five to seven minutes before we found Sasha. During that whole time he was in our sight.”
“And this means?” Franco threw his hands in the air. “Sasha could have been dead hours.”
“Not possible.” I shook my head, risking my mission, with the truth. “Her blood had barely started to congeal. Which means she was killed probably less than fifteen minutes before we found her and the police surgeons will determine that.”
“And you know this how?” Wariness coated Franco’s words as Bran stood silent, his gaze anchored on me. Yeah, I’d told him something different when we’d first discovered Sasha’s body, but there was a reason. I wanted to see if he mentioned his being in the area prior to the murder, but he’d said nothing. Why?
He continued to pin me with his glare. Smart man, not wanting to help me dig my own grave.
“My father’s a pig farmer. We slaughtered animals on the farm so I have seen death, and blood, before. Besides, you had no blood on you and you were wearing white. As you saw, there was blood everywhere. It’s called blood splatter. You’d have been covered in blood if you killed her.”
“A pig farm?” Bran kept his tone enigmatic. Nice trick if you could do it. I liked the fact my being a murderer didn’t faze him but my being a pig farmer’s daughter surprised him. Go figure.
“Yes, a pig farm.” Temper tightened my spine. “Not glamorous but it taught me a few facts of life.” Like how to deal with arrogant, in-charge men and warlocks. “Franco didn’t kill Sasha.”
“I know I didn’t kill her,” the small man said, all the normal bluster leeched from his tone.
“I’ll have lawyers meet you in Monte Carlo.” Bran was back to his authoritarian voice.
“You believe me then?” Franco asked.
“Of course I do.” Bran glanced at me. “Besides you have a witness who backs up the improbability of you being a killer. Two including me.”
“But you see the problem?” I said, thinking through the repercussions of the knife.
“Besides my being accused of something I didn’t do?” Franco’s voice almost reached his normal high-pitch-with-attitude tone.
“Besides that.” I speared Bran with a steady look. “It means someone is setting Franco up. Someone on the yacht, who would have access to his room. The killer. Or they had help.” I so didn’t want to think about the possibility of more than one killer running around, especially as I focused on why was Franco being set up and not just me?
Easy. I had no room. But I did have my hairdresser’s valise. A knife could have been slipped into it easily enough except for the protection wardings. Finally being a witch was paying off.
I had spoken no names, but read in Bran’s lips that he understood I meant Dominique and he didn’t like the implications.
He spoke to Franco. “We’ll make sure you’re not detained for long.” A knock at the door made him add, “Don’t worry.”
Franco shook his head dog-style as if adjusting the short spike of red-blond hair made him taller. “I shall be vindicated.”
The gendarmes who appeared at my door took Franco away without incident, which meant Franco would be treated better than if there’d been a row. I waited until he was gone before I circled around Bran.
“What aren’t you saying?” I demanded, tired of tap-dancing around in the dark.
“You know all that I know.” This was not a seducer’s tone, but a businessman’s, one whose toleration level was nil. “All that it’s safe for you to know.”
“Don’t play dumb with me.” I kept my voice low and steady. I might not be a multimillionaire, but that didn’t mean I took crap either. “Something is going on with Franco that has nothing to do with a weapon being planted in his room.”
“Are you always this suspicious?”
“I am when I’m being led a merry chase.”
“And by merry chase you mean?”
“Don’t do this, Bran. I’m on your side.” Unless he was behind what was happening. “If you’re not honest with me, I can’t help.”
Tell me. Tell me about coming out of the spa room door. Trust me.
“Is this the way you help?” His tone took on a sharp edge. “You accuse my cousin of involvement with no proof. A woman is dead, and now a man I know is innocent has been arrested.”
“He’s only been detained for questioning.”
“And I should be happy about this?”
“It means that in spite of the weapon they don’t believe Franco killed Sasha any more than I do. If they did, they’d have him wrapped up tight.” I stepped away. Was I wrong about my suspicions? That there was something else going on here?
I walked toward the porthole window, seeing only undulating turquoise blue sky from its circle then turned and speared him with a don’t-mess-with-me look.
He stood there like a pirate—dark, dangerous, and totally off limits and just as frustrated with me as I was with him.
So I pushed. “I saw you.” When he said nothing I added. “I saw you leave the community rooms.”
“When?” He bit the word out. I noticed he’d avoided the question with a question of his own.
“Shortly after your argument with Dominique.” Which we both knew put him outside the window of time of the killing. If Sasha was killed shortly before we found her, then she wasn’t dead when I saw Bran leave the area. But it still begged the question why had he
been there and why hadn’t he explained that fact.
“Are you now accusing me of killing her?” he asked, a bleakness around his eyes even though his voice was all angry warlock, which meant it whipped like a live wire.
“No.” Idiot. “I’m saying you were there. Why?”
“Am I not allowed to move about on the yacht that I’m paying for?”
He was still avoiding the question. And was now the best time to push? He didn’t kill Sasha. I threw my hands up. “Fine. This is your life—”
“You’re right. This is my life. My business. Not yours. You have no idea what you are involved in and yet you keep racing ahead into trouble. With no idea how much trouble.”
His thunderous look shut me out; asking for help was not easy for him. One thing we both had in common.
So why did it hurt? I was a professional, here to help. But from the first look at his image on a screen in Ling Mai’s office a little over a week ago I’d not been impartial about this man.
My problem. Not his.
“Alex.” His tone had softened, no longer ready to zap me to a nether world.
I was getting sappy if his saying my name made me quiver.
He continued. “What’s happening with Franco has nothing to do with you.”
His tone asked for exactly what I was asking for from him—trust. He was hiding something from me and telling me to look the other way.
But it wasn’t my job to trust nor really in my nature.
So we were at an impasse; neither willing to really trust the other, yet both compelled to try anyway. What a mess. But I wasn’t here to clean up this particular mess; I was here with a specific job to do. Find out who was behind the thefts and now a murder. And my own agenda, find Van.
I anchored my voice to a calmness absent from my emotions. “What’s the status of the rest of your tour?” I asked, my back ramrod straight, my hands curled at my side.
“Alex, I—”
I waved him off with a look and one hand.
He didn’t get it both ways. Either we were partners in a lopsided way, or we weren’t, and I wasn’t going to let the entreaty of his tone, or his look, intense and focused, to sway me.
“Is the rest of the tour on or not?”
He nodded once, his mouth a flat line. “It’s on.”
This was not a man who liked being thwarted.
Poor warlock, neither did I.
“Will there be any business conducted here on the yacht before we leave?” I asked.
“No.”
“Good.” One less issue to deal with. I could still move among the models and staff, even with sharp and wary gazes darting my direction, but I didn’t have to start the charade of moving in Bran’s world. “When will we leave for our next destination?” I asked.
“I already have my lawyers working to allow us to depart.”
“And with Franco’s detention, have they indicated a time frame?”
“Tomorrow unless there are more complications.”
This whole mission was a complication, but then he could afford the kinds of lawyers who’d let the tour move along.
We spoke as two strangers: short, clipped, impartial. Except there was more. Hurt. On both our parts. Uncalled for, unexpected, and definitely unwanted.
“When is the next social gathering scheduled?” I reminded myself the sooner I found a thief and killer, the sooner I’d be out of Bran’s life, and vice a versa.
“The evening on the second day we arrive at Kurra Huras. We’ll be ferried to the island the first evening.”
“Then I’ll be present.” As his date, though I couldn’t get those words out.
I was casting my lot, willing to enter his world to catch a killer. I’d better catch the bastard, because I was so not looking forward to rubbing shoulders with the rich and bored for long.
“Alex—” He stepped forward, raising a hand as if to touch me.
I wasn’t going to let him get to me that way. His touch would unfocus me from my job. I accepted that fact on a woman’s level, rejected it as a professional.
I stepped back, keeping my gaze even. “In the meantime I’ll pursue my inquiries.”
Ones you’ll not be privy to, and that will definitely include your cousin.
“You’ll be my date on Kurra Huras?” he asked, as if expecting more argument.
“Yes.” There weren’t a lot of options to take the course of least resistance on this one. As long as it didn’t come back to bite me on the butt. “I’ll play hairdresser by day, escort by night. I’m sure you’ll be able to explain my presence so it doesn’t raise concerns.”
I’d love to see just how he did that with his cousin, not that the thought wasn’t petty and small.
“I’ll take care of it.”
Tension lay heavy and immobile in the room. It took everything I possessed not to flinch as I held his gaze, his eyes smoldering blue embers, his face chiseled stone. He was not pleased, but then I wasn’t either.
Checkmate.
I was much more an arm-wrestling kind of gal; and maybe that was the problem. I wasn’t part of his world—an aberration, forced on him. Not friend. Possible enemy, in spite of the sparks between us. Sparks that only complicated the already very troubled tour.
He left without another word.
Only then did I start breathing again.
CHAPTER 35
“So how’s life in paradise?” Kelly asked, sounding like she stood in the next room instead of separated by the Indian Ocean, the closest she could be inserted to the Maldives without arousing suspicions.
“Damn, it’s good to hear your voice instead of you-know who,” I said.
“Mandy means well,” Kelly soothed.
“Said the rattler before she strikes.”
Kelly snorted on the other end of the line then sobered quickly. “I’m so sorry we couldn’t find more about Van.”
That was the bad news. The team had hit a stone wall, which is why it was more important than ever for me to find out who this Vaverek guy was and see if he led me to Van. The shifter on the yacht was associated with Vaverek. The shifter was also standing guard outside Dominique’s door. So in my book Dominique, or someone on this tour, was associated with Vaverek, who was tied in with Van’s disappearance. It was a thin thread but the only one I had left.
“You tried your best,” I offered, knowing it wasn’t enough. Every hour Van was held hostage was an hour more of pain or an hour closer to death. Either option unacceptable, so cooling my heels in a tropical paradise sucked.
I groaned aloud. Was there anywhere else on earth as idyllic as the coral island I stood on? The brilliant blue of the Indian Ocean lapped at platinum sand beaches, a humid breeze whispered the thatched roofs of the private bungalows, the soft spray of an outdoor shower rained in the background.
I leaned on the rail of a private sun deck of one of the water villas built over the smooth glass of the ocean, the air scented with jasmine and sea salt. Bran had given me one of the exclusive accommodations, when other staff members were put up in the nice, but not as idyllic, beach bungalows. Way to paint a target on my back. The message the staff received loud and clear was if you got suspected of killing someone you earned a promotion.
Wait till they found out exactly what that promotion entailed. The big test came tonight and already my stomach was a wreck.
“You there, Alex?” Kelly’s voice jerked me back to the present with a thunk.
I replied, tongue in cheek. “I was thinking there was a serpent in paradise.”
Still was. And maybe more than one.
“Any leads?” Kelly’s tone turned serious.
“Nada. Franco is very subdued, which should be a good thing.”
“But?”
“It’s so un-Franco like it’s making everyone jumpy. He didn’t snap once today.” I watched a seagull float high overhead, white against the turquoise sky. “You hear anything from the Monte Carlo police on his status?”
“Still a person of interest.”
“Which means they’re not buying him as chief suspect. Good for them. Any intel back on the murder weapon?”
“No prints. Only Sasha’s blood on the blade. One of the knives from the galley on the yacht.”
“Which means a big fat zero. Anyone could have had access to it and wiped it clean.” Heck, I’d grabbed two of them myself.
“Yup.”
“Give me some good news.” I heard the frustration in my own voice. But between Franco being downright morose, Bran with a stick up his butt, and me having to keep an eye on Dominique plus the rest of the staff, I was juggling a lot of balls. Any one of which might crash down on me at any time.
“Did you find any information on the green-rimmed eyed, cinnamon smelling creature?”
“A little but not a lot.”
“Right now I’ll take anything.”
There was a pause before Kelly spoke again, sounding as if she were reading off a document. “Looks like we’re dealing with a Grimple.”
“Say that again?”
Kelly spelled it out for me then said, “Like wimple—”
“Or pimple?” I asked, finding a smile for the first time in days.
I heard Kelly choke back a laugh. “Yeah, that could work, too.”
“So tell me more?” I prodded.
“I went to the source.”
“Fraulein Fassbinder?”
“Yup, but she didn’t have all that much either. It appears that the cinnamon and sandalwood scent is the strongest indicator of a Grimple. The rimming of the eyes could be intense blue, green, or even red, depending on the emotions felt by the creature.”
“And the skin slippage?”
“Fraulein Fassbinder seemed to think that might be morphing more than slippage.”
“Morphing into what?”
“That’s the problem,” Kelly sounded apologetic. “Since Grimples are very rare, and have legendary control over their emotions, there are not many descriptions available as to what they look like in their non-human form.”
