Zack's Zest: A SEALs of Honor World Novel (Heroes for Hire Book 24)

by Dale Mayer

  He shook his head. “They were both tortured and shot.” His voice was hard. “And a note was left on the kitchen counter for you.” He brought out his phone and held it up.

  She read it out loud, then turned to look back at him. “What the hell does that mean?”

  Chapter 11

  Zadie didn’t know what to say. Everything overwhelmed her once again. “They were a really nice couple,” she said brokenly. “Sweet, wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “That may be,” he said. “They were also loyal, and they may not even have known about the information that the guys were looking for.”

  “No, of course they wouldn’t have,” she said. “They would not have had a clue.”

  “That just makes it sadder,” he said, “because, in fact, they lost their lives over nothing.”

  “Now what?” she asked, staring, not even realizing that tears poured down her cheeks, until he reached out with a tissue and wiped her face. She snatched the tissue from his hand and quickly wiped her eyes and then blew her nose.

  “Call the police again,” he said, “and, this time, tell them everything.”

  She nodded immediately. “Yes, of course. I should have done that in the first place. I just didn’t know what to do.”

  “Well, it’s past not knowing what to do anymore.”

  Just then a knock came on the door. She gasped and turned. Bonaparte immediately slipped to the side of the kitchen in front of her, while Zack walked to the front door and opened it.

  It was the paramedics.

  She sighed, limped in to join them, and explained where her mother was. Leading the way, she guided them upstairs, Bonaparte and Zack following. The paramedics brought along a gurney. As the three of them stood and watched, the paramedics pulled back the blanket on the bed, lifted the frail old woman, placed her on the gurney, covered her up with a sheet, and strapped her down. They very carefully moved her down the stairs and outside.

  Zadie followed them. Only when Zack put a hand around her shoulder, tucking her up close, did she still for a second.

  “You need to let her go now,” he said.

  Zadie realized that she was hanging on to the gurney as the paramedics were moving it. Immediately she released her hold, and the paramedics loaded her mother’s body into the ambulance.

  It didn’t take very long for the paperwork, and then they were gone. Just like that. She stared down the street and realized that her mother was no longer with her. She turned to look up at him, opening her mouth to speak.

  But he placed a finger on her lips. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Whatever you are thinking right now, you are just messed up with grief. Just take it easy and relax. Let’s go back inside, have a bite to eat, and a cup of tea.”

  She stepped forward and threw herself into his arms and burrowed close. She didn’t cry. She didn’t do anything, but she squeezed him as hard and as tightly as she could. He held her, gently stroking her hair; then he led her slowly back to the front steps.

  “When do I call the police?” she asked.

  Just then his phone buzzed. He pulled it from his pocket and said, “Levi just found somebody here in the police department to talk to. He said he’s already contacted them. They know the whole story now.”

  She stared up at him, and her bottom lip trembled, and she nodded and brushed away more tears. “I need to get a hold of myself,” she said.

  “Well, maybe it’s time to have a full-blown cry,” he said.

  She gave him a watery smile and walked into the kitchen. Bonaparte was busy plating the food and carrying the plates over to the table. The leftovers were on a huge platter, which he brought over next. She put on the teakettle, even though Zack nudged her toward a chair.

  “Sit down. I’ll finish the tea.”

  She sat down but stared aimlessly at the platter, full of cut sandwiches.

  He got a plate, put one halved sandwich on it, placed it in front of her, then ordered her, “Eat.”

  She glared at him.

  “Good, get mad,” he said. “Get angry. Get pissed. I don’t care. But don’t mope. You need food. You need energy. We have an ordeal to get through. We have police coming. And we have to make a plan.”

  She picked up the sandwich and almost viciously bit into it. By the time she chewed through the first half of the sandwich, she placed another half sandwich on her plate. She went through the second one more slowly. By the time she finished with that, she sat back and said, “I think I’m okay now.”

  “I hope so,” he said, “because we need you levelheaded and thinking clearly.”

  “The note was about the blackmail stuff, wasn’t it?”

  “I’m presuming so,” he said, “but again, we can’t be too sure.”

  “That’s what they brought her here for, but she didn’t tell them about the safe.”

  “I think she probably passed away before they could get her to talk,” he said. “That’s why they went after the caretakers.”

  “That makes sense,” she said. “It’s still not fair. They were the sweetest, gentlest, old couple. They wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

  “And these guys don’t care,” he said firmly. “They don’t care one bit, and they don’t care about you, and they don’t care about Bonaparte or me. They will kill us all.”

  She nodded. “And my name was on the note, wasn’t it?”

  He picked up his phone, brought up the image again, and placed it beside her. “Unless you know anybody else named Zadie.”

  She stared at it and shook her head. “Unbelievable.”

  “It is what it is,” he said. “And, for that matter, we need to make plans now.”

  “Because you think they will come after me?”

  “I would give it probably a 98-percent chance that they’ve been watching us,” he said. “I suspect they are formulating a plan of attack right now.”

  She stared at him, her eyes huge. “You think they would really come here and attack me?”

  “Unless you are prepared to put the blackmail material outside with a pretty bow and a note, saying, This is what you want. Leave me alone, I suspect yes. Also, they don’t know if you can identify them or not, so your life is forfeit regardless.”

  Bonaparte picked up his fourth sandwich, bit into it, chewed then said, “The bottom line is, your life is worthless to them. And it’s safer for them if you are not around to have anything to say in the matter.”

  “And they’ve already killed my parents, now the two caretakers, so what’s another dead body or three?” she added. “Exactly.” She shook her head and said, “This is just unbelievable.”

  “Regardless, we need to deal with it and fast,” Zack said with meaning.

  *

  Zack’s phone rang then. It was Levi. He picked it up, got up, and walked away from the table a little. “What’s up?”

  “Cops are coming,” Levi said. “They picked up the housekeeper involved in Zadie’s kidnapping. Apparently she was quite happy to tell them everything. She’s worried about her family.”

  “Well, they had already kidnapped Zadie, so, yes, that would make sense,” he said harshly.

  “The one brother apparently is involved, and she wants him charged, but she wants to keep her husband and her husband’s other brother safe and out of it.”

  “But she was also part of it.”

  “But she will talk in order to save her own skin,” Levi said. “I’m pretty sure it’ll all turn out to be a minor issue, considering the other deaths that have since occurred, and the cops wouldn’t make a deal like that.”

  “Interesting,” he said. “Well, I’ll talk to Zadie and see if she is looking at pressing charges.”

  “I think her hands are full, but, yes, talk to her,” Levi said.

  As soon as they hung up, Zack walked over to explain what happened. She nodded and said, “I think she was just trying to save her husband.”

  “Brothers can be a strong influence,” Bonaparte said, “an
d, if one led the other down this kidnapping pathway, then maybe it could be said that the one brother influenced the other two brothers, so just the one brother should be punished.” He looked at her and continued, “How about you? Are you okay to let that all go? Your captivity?”

  She shrugged. “I think I have bigger problems right now,” she said. “As long as the kidnappers don’t come after me again, then I’m okay with whatever the cops do to them,” she said.

  “Good enough.”

  She looked over to see Zack texting. “What are you doing?”

  “Telling Levi how you feel about the cook, the female kidnapper.”

  “Good,” she said. “Can you tell him to send some backup, so we can catch these assholes who are coming after me?”

  “Not sure we need backup,” he said. “Not exactly sure who is paying for our wages as it is.”

  At that, she gasped and stared. “That’s right,” she said. “Who hired you in the first place?”

  He looked up and smiled. “Your mother.”

  And she burst into tears all over again.

  Chapter 12

  Once Zadie started crying again, it was just so damn hard to stop. She used the Kleenexes that Bonaparte gave her to dry her face. But the cup of tea Zack put in front of her was really what she needed. She took a couple sips of the hot tea, then several long, slow, deep breaths, and then she whispered, “I’m sorry. I just keep breaking down right now.”

  “It’s all right,” Bonaparte said. “Death of a loved one is a shock for anyone.”

  “I can hire you guys,” she said. “I’m sure all the cash around here could cover your services, even if it’s very expensive.”

  Bonaparte said with a big smile, “I work for free on the right cases.”

  “And it’s hardly an issue right now,” Zack said. “We already are here on the job.”

  “But, if my mother paid you already,” she said, “I’m not sure that any money is left over to cover this additional element.”

  “Huh. How did she make payments for our services to Levi?” Bonaparte asked, lowering his hands to his lap and studying her. “How good was she at computers?”

  “Very,” she said. “And she handled all the bills anyway.”

  “So then she moved money around?”

  “Yes, all the time. Whatever my father told her to do.” When the two men looked at her funny, she looked at them in question. “What?”

  “You do realize that your mom’s probably the one who’s been hiding the money all over the place, right?”

  She frowned. “Was there any money to hide?”

  “According to our research, yeah, your parents were worth millions,” he said. “But a lot of it was in foreign accounts.”

  “Right,” she said. “If she followed his instructions all the time, so maybe.”

  “So as long as they had access to a computer at any house, including where they were under house arrest, she could have taken care of things.”

  She nodded. “She did say something about getting things in order. She could easily have done that with only her phone,” she said. “I know a lot of older people aren’t good with phones, but my mother was. She did a lot of banking on it. She had different sim cards too.”

  “Where is her phone now?” Zack asked suddenly.

  She looked at him in surprise. “I don’t know. It wasn’t on her person. I know the ambulance guys checked her pockets before they loaded her up, but they didn’t find anything.”

  “Might be something worth checking into,” he said. “At least then you could find the accounts.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “That is more than I want to think about right now.”

  “Understood,” he said.

  They heard sirens coming up on the far side. “That’s the cops now,” she groaned. “I don’t really want to face them.”

  “That’s all for me,” Bonaparte said, standing from his empty plate. He still had another huge sandwich in his hand. “I’ll eat and work at the same time.” He looked over at Zack and said, “I don’t know how long it’ll take at the cottage, but the cops will have to come back here. You may want to put on some coffee for that part. By the time they leave, I’ll really be running on empty. Before we make a dash anywhere, I’ll need to crash for four hours.”

  “Done deal,” Zack said. “And I can drive too, you know.”

  Bonaparte gave him a bright grin. “You could, but I want to get where we are going in a decent time.” And, with that, he walked out the back door.

  “I’m not looking forward to talking to the police,” she admitted. “I don’t know what to tell them.”

  “Do you trust them, or are they corrupt?”

  She shot him a shadowed look. “I don’t know,” she said. “I know my father was corrupt, and that’s a hard thing to admit.”

  “So maybe trust the police with the truth.”

  “I don’t know the repercussions of that.”

  “Your parents are both dead,” he said gently. “What repercussions are you afraid of?”

  “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “But I’ve spent a lifetime fighting between the two factions of legal and illegal.”

  “Where did your mother fall in this?”

  Zadie was silent for a long moment as she tried to walk her way through it. “I’m slowly wondering if my childhood adoration for my mother blinded me, and maybe I didn’t realize that she was more involved in my father’s business than I had been willing to see.” She sneaked a glance over at him to see the compassion on his face. She sighed, letting her shoulders sag. “It’s only as we were talking about what she did on the phone that I realized how capable she was and how much money she moved on a dime at his instructions.”

  “And, therefore, potentially money that wasn’t necessarily legally obtained, correct?”

  “Quite possibly,” she said with a sad smile. “Maybe I should check into that now,” she said, looking toward the hallway that led upstairs. “Maybe I need to have a better look around her bedroom.”

  “What are you expecting?”

  “Expecting nothing, hoping for some vital message from my mother,” she said sadly.

  “If she had her phone, how would she have sent a message?”

  “Probably via a personal email,” she said, and then she froze. “Actually we had several safe places that we used to drop stuff that we needed. When I ran out of money at one point in time, I didn’t tell her that I was as short as I was, but she must have known, because she dropped ten thousand dollars into the account and then sent me this little note about what she’d done. It’s like cyberspace storage, and she had put a note in there.” She pulled out her phone and started picking her way through. “I wish I had my laptop,” she said.

  “Do you have a spare around here? Or what about your father? Is there a spare in his office?”

  “There should be several spares in the house somewhere,” she said, frowning as she glanced around. “It’s just that it’s been a long time since I’ve been here that I feel disoriented.”

  “No surprise there. You were a prisoner at one place, just as you tried to make an opportunity to escape, you get kidnapped. Then we rescued you and found out that your parents were dead, so anybody would be disoriented. Give yourself some time.”

  “Feels like there is no time though,” she argued, as she hopped to her feet. “I need to see if there is a laptop around.”

  “Let me go with you,” he said.

  They headed into the office. She stopped, winced as she saw the mess, and said, “They didn’t open the closet though.”

  “What closet?”

  She stepped over papers on the ground, went to where the printer/scanner/copier machine was, and opened the cupboard that lay flush in the wall. Because everything was hardwood, including the wall, he hadn’t noticed it previously. He stepped beside her to see stacks of copier paper and above it were three laptops.

  “Okay, so not just one spare laptop,” h
e said with a disbelieving gasp.

  “I know a couple of these are probably older,” she said, reaching for the top one. “My mom had a couple spares somewhere too. I’d have to go upstairs and look.”

  When Zack’s phone lit up, he pulled it out and noted it was Bonaparte. “What’s up?”

  “The police want to question the both of you,” he said. “So I’m coming in with two officers right now.”

  “Fine. We never did get that coffee on.”

  “I suggest you do,” Bonaparte said in a joking manner. “The reception isn’t friendly.”

  “Great.” He swore, hung up his phone, and said, “Let’s put these back, make it look like nobody’s been in here. Bonaparte says the officers want to speak with us now, and the reception isn’t friendly.”

  “Now that’s the police,” she said with a determined voice. “It won’t be pleasant, but we’ll get through it.” She straightened her shoulders, stiffened her spine, and led the way back to the kitchen. There she put on the coffee and began to clean up the remnants of the sandwiches that Bonaparte had made. She was still hungry though, now that she thought about it. She cut herself a fresh slice of bread and lathered it with peanut butter.

  Zack came up beside her, saw what she was doing, and repeated it for himself, then he did two more.

  She looked at the other two. “Who are they for?” she asked.

  “Bonaparte,” he said. “That man needs fuel.”

  “Well, if he eats the way he drives, there isn’t enough food in this house for him.”

  “Remember. Answer the questions without volunteering anything. I’ll try to give as much information as I can too,” he said. “We are not trying to expand this investigation into anything bigger than it already is.”

  “The lesson my father always taught me was, answer with the least information, and don’t offer anything,” she said.

  “Only tell what you have to tell,” he interrupted with a smile and a nod.

  “I just wish it was over with.”

  Just then came a heavy knock on the door, and it was pushed open. Bonaparte stepped in. She turned and smiled at him, as his gaze lit on the bread she had on the counter with peanut butter, and he rumbled, rubbing his tummy. “I was hoping there was more bread.”