Bitterly, he wondered what would have happened if he’d been a better partner while they were in Vegas. What if he’d actually treated her like an equal instead of a novice to be ignored? Maybe then she wouldn’t have gone rogue with her little golf operation and attracted Sedarno’s attention. Maybe they would have found a solution to this mess together.
Ugh, this was all his fault. She was a brilliant woman; he should have taken advantage of that big brain of hers. God knew, it attracted him as much as her beauty. She was so fucking special, she made him dizzy. We could have been partners. In every way. Of course, his own stupid mind chose now to realize this fact. Now, when she was long gone into an existence she didn’t want.
Would he ever live without this ocean-like constancy of guilt? He’d hoped that delivering the diamonds upon Tony’s release might lessen it, but now, he feared he’d just re-focus on how he screwed up Jess’s chance to reclaim her life.
At least she’d be safe from Sedarno, he thought. God only knew what would happen if the mob boss suspected she had something to do with tonight, when the diamonds went missing.
He felt the buzz of an incoming text. Knoll must have arrived. Sure enough, he heard the hostess twitter, “Maurice! Did you enjoy the tour? So looking forward to your speech.” Keeping his face angled away, he saw Knoll’s florid face out of the corner of his eye. Now all he needed to do was wait until Knoll was fully ensconced in the party. Five minutes, tops.
He set a timer on his phone and settled himself in the corner of the ballroom next to the bar. Glancing at the array of liquor bottles, he sighed. Nope. As mopey as the situation with Jess made him feel, he needed to be razor sharp tonight. No bourbon until he and the diamonds were far, far away.
“What can I get you?” the bartender asked a brunette in a red dress.
“Just a club soda with lime please,” the woman answered.
Adam’s heart stopped. He knew it wasn’t physically possible, but that’s what it felt like—that his heart literally paused between beats. No.
He had to be imagining her voice. Jess had agreed to run. She understood the stakes, that her life was in danger. Didn’t she?
With icy dread in his stomach, he turned his face to get a better look. Jesus fucking Christ. It wasn’t her real hair, but Adam would recognize the sleek muscles in her back anywhere in the world. He’d spent an entire day stroking it, licking it, rubbing it. Why in God’s name was her entire back bare? What the hell was she wearing? He took a long, long look at her red dress. She looked...she looked...holy hell.
Abruptly, Adam wasn’t sure what he wanted to do first. Strangle her or fuck her against the nearest hard surface.
Other men in the room were less conflicted. Several openly gaped at her revealing dress, their eyes lingering way too long on her legs. Adam’s hands fisted at his sides.
The timer on his phone went off. Damn it, he should already be moving. He knew where the diamonds were, and Knoll wouldn’t be accessing them until Sedarno showed up. This was the time to go. But he couldn’t, not until he convinced Jess to get out of there.
Jess turned so that her back was pressed against the bar. Sipping from her drink with a small smile on her bright red lips, she reminded him of the first night he’d seen her. She looked like a rich socialite without a care in the world. Silently, Adam approached. There were too many people crowded around the bar for them to have the conversation they needed to have. Fuck, there was no privacy in this entire room.
He waited until she put her drink back on the bar. The second it was down, he grabbed her hand and steered her to the only place it was appropriate for him to talk to her privately—the dance floor.
To her poker face’s credit, she didn’t make a peep when he closed the iron grip over her hand. Her smiling composure didn’t waver, even though he almost yanked her arm out of its socket to get her to the dance floor as quickly as possible.
He faced her on the dance floor, maneuvered her hands and arms in the strict tango posture before smiling down, formally, at her. “Are you trying to get yourself killed, Blondie?”
**Adam. She willed her body to listen to her brain instead of twitching and fizzing and dissolving into a million happy pieces, which is what it wanted to do. On some level, she suspected he’d be here tonight and she’d been waiting for him, breath held. Foolish and silly given that he could only be here for one reason.
She returned his stiff smile, but the part of her that was recklessly thrilled to see him put warmth and humor in her tone. “Nice disguise. You look like a young, villainous, Tom Selleck.”
“Don’t try to make me laugh,” he warned, marching her across the dance floor in a series of five-steps. “I am beyond pissed at you. You lied to me. You should be out of the country by now. I don’t know where that big brain of yours wandered off to, but we don’t even have time to debate it. You need to leave now before Sedarno gets here.”
“I will,” she whispered, holding on to him for dear life and realizing that he was doing a very good approximation of one of the routines they’d watched in Vegas. “You actually know how to tango?”
“You would too,” he said, changing direction and tugging her along, “if you would actually just let me lead for once.”
Poker face slipping, she raised one finger from his shoulder to stroke along his cheek. “I wish I could. But we’re not going the same way.”
He stared down at her and even through the brown contacts, mustache and false eyebrows, he made her heart flutter. “I have Sedarno’s flight information. He won’t be here for hours. But you need to leave now. I just called the FBI and emailed them all the data I have. I was just waiting to make sure they arrived before I left.”
How much the FBI had understood from her frantic explanation, she had no idea. But at least she’d managed to convince them to check their email—it had everything they would need, including an urgent plea for them to arrive as soon as possible before Knoll managed to transition the diamonds to someone else.
“Don’t worry. I didn’t say anything about you. But I don’t know what their procedure will be when they get here, and...” She gave his face one last, soft caress. “I don’t want you to get caught.”
He made a sort of choking sound, pressed his face against the length of her finger. “I won’t. I’ll be long gone with the diamonds before they get here, Jess.”
What? No, that was impossible. How could he even know where the diamonds were? She’d assumed he was just tailing Knoll and had ended up here. But maybe not...maybe he knew, like she did, that—
“The diamonds are in a briefcase that’s handcuffed to his driver,” he said, flatly. “And in one minute, I’ll be relieving him of his burden.”
God damn him. How could he know that? It had taken her an hour of following Knoll around the stupid party. She’d still be in the dark if he hadn’t excused himself from the group at one point to take a call. While he talked, he walked to where the cars were parked. It was extremely difficult tailing him in her three-inch heels, but worth it when she saw him conversing with his driver. The driver who had a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist, which to her eager eyes was pretty much the same thing as a neon sign reading “Diamonds Right Here!”
She hadn’t seen much of the driver’s face, but he was a huge guy with a buzz cut and large earring in his left ear. He looked more thug than limo driver.
What was Adam going to do? Fight the guy? What if he took the diamonds before the authorities got there?
What if he got hurt?
Anxiety flooded through her veins and she stumbled on the dance floor. “This is such a mess,” she hissed.
“Jess, what if we—” There was a new note in Adam’s voice. One that made her pulse leap. It was hope.
She looked up, but his eyes had focused across the room. “Something’s up with Knoll,” he said.
She followed his gaze. Sure enough, Knoll’s ear was pressed to his phone as he stared down at the floor and nodded furiously, ignoring everyone around him.
Without another word, Adam released her. “Leave right now,” he demanded.
And then he was gone.
Chapter Fourteen
Knoll’s car was parked close to the house, probably so he could quickly retrieve the diamonds whenever Sedarno arrived. Glancing around, Adam noted that he and the driver were the only two people outside near the garage.
He glanced into a window, hoping for one last look at Jess in that red dress. Something to savor in his memory for the next couple of months until he saw her again.
Because damn it, he was going to see her again. He knew what to do now—for them both.
Knoll’s driver opened his door and climbed out. “Hey, man.” He gave Adam a fist bump.
“Good to see you, Dwayne,” Adam answered. “Ready to start your lifetime of luxury?”
“Hell yeah.”
Dwayne had been relatively easy to turn into an asset. Knoll treated his staff like crap, and Dwayne had no great loyalty to the man or his job. Adam started building the relationship with the driver by paying him handsomely for information on Knoll’s comings and goings.
Since returning to Chicago from Vegas, Adam had met with him several times to see how amenable the driver would be to accepting $400,000 and a new identity for the ultimate betrayal of his boss. Luckily for Adam, Dwayne was single and pragmatic, with no strong ties to Chicago. Escaping to the tropics with a hefty bank balance suited him just fine.
Once they knew the date for collecting the diamonds and transferring them was sometime in May, Dwayne made sure that he was on Knoll’s staff schedule around the clock. When Knoll brought the briefcase to him, he’d taken a photo of it and texted it to Adam.
Now, having had a few hours to examine the picture of the lock, Adam whipped out his tools and was able to quickly disengage the lock mechanism from the handcuff.
Dwayne flexed his wrist. “Cool, let’s get out of here. You’re still giving me a ride to the station, right?”
“Minor change of plan,” Adam grunted, now aiming his tools on the combo lock of the briefcase itself. “Just need a few more minutes.”
Previously, Adam planned to hit the road with Dwayne with the briefcase full of diamonds locked. Escape was the first priority. He’d have all the time in the world to actually open the briefcase once he’d put enough distance between himself and Sedarno.
But seeing Jess tonight changed all that. He was going to split the diamonds. Sure, it would have been nice to set Tony up like a fucking king for the rest of his life. But $12.5 million would still be a hell of a “welcome out of prison” gift. Maybe Jess’s documentation to the police saying that Knoll smuggled $25 million of diamonds into the country via Ignatius’s study-abroad programs would be a little off. But Knoll would still have a hard time explaining $12.5 million in anonymous diamonds. It would have been nice to have Knoll tortured at the hands of Sedarno, but maybe Tony would see poetic justice in Knoll being hauled off to prison.
Sedarno was still a worry, but he might well believe that Knoll had been betrayed by his driver and his driver alone. Disloyal and backstabbing employees were a constant problem for the families.
He and Dwayne would leave the suitcase with half the diamonds in the car for the FBI to find, he decided. Ignoring the laughter from the party, the sound of cicadas in the night, the ping of an incoming text on Dwayne’s phone... Adam focused solely on the lock. Shit. Knoll had splurged on a solid model, and one Adam hadn’t worked with before. It might take ten or fifteen minutes to open.
“Dude, we have to bounce now,” Dwayne said, shoving his phone over for Adam to read. “Boss wants me to bring the suitcase in the house ASAP.”
“What?” Adam read the message and craned his neck to look through the house’s window. That didn’t make any sense. Why would Knoll want his driver—conspicuously handcuffed to a briefcase—in the party?
Crawling into the expensive landscaping, he prowled along the windows trying to catch a glimpse of Knoll or Jess in the ballroom.
Another ding from Dwayne’s phone. “Says to bring my piece and meet him in a bedroom on the second floor.”
Adam changed direction, finding a window that showed an angle of the staircase. For the second time that night, his heart stopped.
On the third marble stair, Knoll held Jess by her right elbow, his face a mask of anger and confusion.
Sedarno held her left elbow. He was gazing down at her like she was an interesting puzzle made of spiders. The two men quickly half guided, half pulled her up the stairs. A bodyguard of Sedarno’s followed.
“Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck. He’s early. She’s been made.”
Heart racing, Adam climbed out of the bushes and scanned the driveway. Where the hell were the authorities that Jess called? Why weren’t they here yet?
Ping on Dwayne’s phone. “He wants me to double-knock on the door when I get up there and then stand guard. Not to come in the room unless he comes to get me, no matter what I hear.” He whistled. “Someone’s in trouble.” Oblivious to Adam’s panic, he started walking to the lot where most cars were parked. “Someone’s getting hurt.”
Adam looked between the suitcase of diamonds and the marble staircase that led to Jess.
He said goodbye.
**Oh, this was bad. Very, very bad. They recognized her and they knew she was up to no good. As Knoll and Sedarno frog-marched her down the second-floor hallway, Jess tried the bimbo routine one more time. “Maurice! Arnie! What’s the matter? It’s so nice to run into you! I don’t understand why you’re angry.”
Knoll flung open a bedroom door and yanked her inside. Sedarno and his bodyguard followed at a leisurely pace contradicted by their reptilian eyes and steely jaws.
“Coincidences, Jessica,” Sedarno replied. “You see, I don’t believe in them.”
“What does that mean?” she asked, fear pitching her voice high.
“After our golfing meet-cute, I did a little research on you,” Sedaro replied. “Turns out, you’re connected to the same University at which Maurice, here, is a trustee.”
Half-blotchy, half-pale, Knoll looked between them, clearly not understanding Sedarno’s implication. “You’re a fucking idiot, Maurice,” Sedarno said, conversationally. “She’s here to cause trouble for you.” He sat down in an armchair near the wall, and his bodyguard flanked his side. “Normally I’d find that amusing, but not tonight. Not in advance of my payment.”
There was a sharp double knock on the door.
“That’s your payment.” Knoll’s voice was eager. “You can take it right now.”
No. Goddamnit, where was the FBI? She needed to stall. But how?
Well, for one, she needed to stop acting like a bimbo. The gig was up on that anyway. She looked at Knoll, then focused on Sedarno. He was the power in the room.
She let the expression of confusion drain off of her face and gave Sedarno a wry smile. “You’re right, of course. I have nothing against you, sir. But I was hoping to put Knoll in his place before you got here tonight.”
“Fascinating,” Sedarno said. “Go on.”
Since he seemed relaxed and truly interested, Jess did. “He ruined my life,” she said, matching Sedarno’s casual tone. “I found out about some of his illegal activities at the University and was about to blow the whistle when I was fired and disgraced. Now I’m broke, no one will hire me, and my family will barely speak to me.” She jabbed a thumb in Knoll’s direction but kept her gaze on Sedarno. “I was trying to expose him so that I could change all that.”
“How?”
Poker face, Jess. “I was going to take the diamonds from him and alert the authorities.” All three men stiffened at the
mention of law enforcement and from a quick glance exchanged from Sedarno and his bodyguard, she suspected they may not quite believe her last statement.
She hastened to clarify. “I never intended—and still don’t intend—to implicate you, Mr. Sedarno. I only want to show proof of Knoll’s illegal activities so I can exonerate myself and reclaim my life.”
Sedarno pursed his lips and steepled his fingers. Leaning back in the chair, he epitomized a powerful man in repose.
But then his thoughtful expression devolved into one of studied regret. “I feel for you, Jessica. I really do. Maurice’s unnecessary blundering has been your downfall.”
He paused, wagged a finger at Knoll. “Shame on you, Maurice.”
Knoll looked like he didn’t know if he should laugh or look contrite. In the end, he just looked constipated. Unable to stand still, he paced across the room and stood fidgeting near Sedarno’s bodyguard.
Sedarno gazed at Jess again. “You seem like a lovely, intelligent girl. But you got in over your head, young lady. You know too much about Knoll and the diamonds. I’m taking them, and I can’t let you lead the ‘authorities’ to me.”
He sighed, a long wheeze through his nose. Shaking his head, he said, “Really a pity. I mean, my goodness, you hit your driver like an Amazon! But...” He nodded slightly at his bodyguard, who removed a gun from his jacket. The gun was elongated with an attachment that Jess had seen in movies—a silencer.
So much adrenaline flooded through Jess’s system that she literally couldn’t blink. They’re actually going to kill me. Adam had been right. She wished, suddenly and fiercely, that he had gotten the diamonds and was far away with them by now.
The bodyguard raised the gun. Interesting, Jess thought, in a detached kind of way. In her last seconds on Earth, she would have expected to picture her family. But instead, she saw Adam’s bright blue eyes, the way they crinkled when she pulled an unexpected laugh out of him.
She held up pleading hands. “Please don’t—”
Frowning, Sedarno just shrugged. “I wish I didn’t have to,” he said. “But at the core, I’m a businessman. If only you had another card to play.”
Caught in the Act: A Jewel Heist Romance Anthology Page 30
