by Nancy Bush
That’s when she’d thought of Aimee, the only person she truly trusted to help with Tucker and keep her secrets. They’d met when Teresa first arrived in Martinique, and if not fast friends, they at least were like-minded, though Aimee wasn’t nearly as successful at grifting as Teresa was.
When she called Aimee and told her that she needed to hide her son from the Laughlins and Andre, Aimee had balked at first, but then she’d slowly come around to agreeing to care for him, once the bracelet was offered up as collateral. Like Talia, Aimee’s maternal instincts weren’t exactly in the A-plus range, but money was a really good incentive.
“I will pay you back, but you can’t sell the bracelet,” Teresa had warned sternly. “That’s a deal breaker.”
Aimee had eventually acquiesced and Teresa had been relieved that things had worked out so well because there was no way she could have the bracelet in her possession when she faced Andre again. He would immediately take it from her, and she wasn’t interested in giving it up.
Parting with Tucker had been wrenching. He hadn’t wanted her to leave him, but she had consoled herself with the thought that she would only be back with Andre for a short time. She had told herself she would return for Tucker within the year, and they would make a life together. She hadn’t been quite sure how she would convince Andre to let her go, and she had steeled herself for the confrontation to come, but she was going to make it happen.
But to her shock, when she had gotten back to Andre, he’d picked up several other women who were now living with him in the house she’d once shared with him alone. The handmaidens. It had been unbearable. She had been torn between jealousy and fury, and though she knew she’d made the right choice where Tucker was concerned, she had let herself fall into the drama, determined to win Andre back for herself.
What the hell had been wrong with her? Why did it take so goddamn long for her to see the truth about him?
She’d never been thrown over for another woman, and she didn’t react well to the new situation; she could be honest with herself about that now. The handmaidens had really pissed her off, sucking up bunches of the money that she had earned for Andre and herself. She couldn’t bear them, and she had complained mightily to Andre about them, but it had all fallen on deaf ears. In the end, she had resolved to make the best of it and get back to Tucker as soon as possible, but she had fallen into the new routine, playing that Andre was The Messiah, conning Marks out of cash and gifts, her mind constantly trying to find ways to oust the handmaidens and be first in Andre’s favor.
And then . . . the urgency to rescue her son had disappeared. Her whole life with Stephen had faded into the background, begun to feel dreamlike and distant, like it happened to someone else. Her reality was being under Andre’s watchful eye, and dealing with the handmaidens whom she had begun to hate with a passion that had been buried in a kind of numb state of repression she’d come to accept as the norm. Then the death of the Cantrell boy. At her hands. She’d woken up as if someone had slapped her. What she and Andre had once had in Martinique was long gone and the man who now owned her heart and soul wasn’t the same one who’d joined in their wild adventure together once upon a time. This Andre was a taskmaster who demanded total obedience and strange rituals that she had endured, even while she had begun secretly squirreling money away, sensing some formless future where she would run away with Tucker, a loose plan that had become fully formed over the last year.
Teresa lay in the tub, her hair wound into a loose topknot, her eyes closed, her pulse running light and fast. She didn’t fool herself that she’d gotten away from Andre. Picking up Tucker was merely the first step.
But she was here. In Martinique again!
Maybe she didn’t have to pick up Tucker immediately, she mused. Aimee knew she was on her way, but she hadn’t been specific about when she was arriving. Maybe there was time to run one more con. She and Andre had gotten away by the skin of their teeth, but it had been years.
She smiled to herself, feeling a rush of excitement at the thought. A few hours and maybe she could pick up a new Mark.
Chapter Twelve
The walk to Tucker’s apartment was only about fifteen minutes but on the way West’s cell phone rang. He snatched it up and frowned at the number.
“No international service, huh?” Callie commented.
“What’ve you got,” West answered the cell, shooting Callie a sideways look.
Yeah, you’re a liar too, she thought.
The bracelet was in her carryall. She was giving it back to Aimee. Whatever the story was on how Teresa had obtained it, it wasn’t her affair. She just wanted to be rid of it once and for all.
West was making monosyllabic replies, which started to piss her off. He’d actually stopped walking and Callie had slowed to a halt as well. They were now standing on the sidewalk, close to the buildings, standing back from the wheels of the parked vehicles that were humped up off the street.
After what felt like forever he finally clicked off. “A friend of mine,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“I do have international calling,” he admitted.
Callie shrugged.
“I didn’t want to give you an out until I knew more about you. You could have had me calling anyone.”
“Only my attorney. Or the Cantrells’ attorney, if you really want to get down to it.” Briefly she thought of Derek and Diane and their insistence that Jonathan had left more money and/or assets than what she knew of.
“Who was that?” she asked, nodding toward the cell phone he was dropping in his pocket.
“A friend at the LAPD. My old partner.”
“What did you ask him to get?”
“What?”
“You answered, ‘What’ve you got?’ so . . .”
He didn’t immediately answer as they started walking again. She could tell he was rolling things around, debating on how much to tell her, which only pissed her off all the more.
“I asked him to look up the Cantrells and the accident on Mulholland.”
She felt something flutter inside her chest. Fear . . . grief . . . remembrance of those terrible moments. She swallowed. “Did he find anything?” she asked lightly.
“Probably nothing you didn’t know. There were partial prints found on the car that hit your vehicle, on the door handle and steering wheel. There’s no match in the system, so far.”
“Nobody told me anything about the accident,” she admitted. “I was in the hospital and by the time I got out . . .” After a month at Del Amo . . .
“The case is still open,” he assured her. “The car that hit you was stolen and it was left at the scene. Whoever rammed into you ran and got away. Maybe they were fairly new to the criminal life, took the car for a joyride, hit you and after your car went over the edge, they just ran. Couldn’t cope with what they’d done.”
“That’s the prevailing theory,” she said. Her chest felt tight. Memory was torture.
“I asked Dorcas for a photo of Callie Cantrell. He’s sending me one.”
“You still don’t believe I’m me?”
“I just asked for the photo.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” she muttered angrily. “You’re still trying to tie me into all of this.”
“You’re here in Martinique,” he pointed out. “Fort-de-France. Where Teresa sent an e-mail to a local Internet café. The one you were at this morning,” he added. “You’re a doppelgänger for her, and you’re friends with a boy named Tucker, who, I’m pretty sure, is Stephen Tucker Laughlin. You’re wearing a Laughlin heirloom.” He indicated the bracelet. “You might not be Teresa, but you’re something.”
“I chose Martinique because it’s where Jonathan and I spent our honeymoon, that’s all.” She was beginning to wish she’d never listened to the voice inside her head that had thought a trip to Martinique was just the ticket.
But West was on his own track. “When I figure out what the connection is, I’ll let you
know.”
“It’s a coincidence. And don’t tell me there are no coincidences.”
“There are no coincidences.”
“What’d I just say?” she demanded and he gave a short bark of laughter, grinning like the devil.
Uh-oh, she thought, looking away. She couldn’t afford to like him too much. West Laughlin was far too attractive in a way that seemed to worm itself inside her. He was so different from Jonathan, who’d been handsome and clever, but cold and calculating beneath his pretty exterior. She reminded herself that she didn’t know West Laughlin well enough to make any kind of informed decision on what kind of man he was. They were stuck together for the moment, both interested in Tucker’s welfare, but that was as far as it went.
They’d lapsed into silence and though Callie was starting to feel tense, West seemed as unaffected by her as she was affected by him. Great. These digging little thoughts about him had to be repressed. She had to quit noticing the strength in his hands, the hard muscles of his arms, the faint stubble on his jaw . . . Good enough to gobble up, one of the teachers at the elementary school where she’d worked before her marriage would say whenever she saw a particularly handsome father of one of her students. Not exactly a PC kind of remark, but then Debra hadn’t been a PC kind of gal. She’d been named as one of the causes of the Peterkin divorce and had been slowly eased out of her position at the school. Didn’t stop her from marrying Adam Peterkin once he was free, though they divorced a year later. Callie should have learned her lesson from Debra, but she’d gone ahead and married Jonathan anyway, expecting to live happily ever after.
She would not make the same mistake with West Laughlin. If Debra had seen him she would have wanted to start gobbling. Hopefully, she, Callie, was a heckuva lot smarter now. Not that West had shown any interest in her apart from her connection to Tucker, which was good news for the immediate future. She just didn’t trust her own susceptibility.
Andre stared at Naomi impatiently, his jaw tightening by degrees, which tickled Daniella to no end. Naomi, Andre’s right-hand woman, who never, never, never argued with him and always did exactly what she was told, had dared to ask why they were putting on their robes so early in the day.
“Jerrilyn won’t be able to make it,” Naomi had pointed out, which had only increased Andre’s ire.
“Your sister, Teresa, set the timetable,” he snapped. “We have flights to catch later.”
Clarice breathlessly jumped in, “Maybe we should just go ahead without Jerrilyn.”
Andre closed his eyes as if willing up a patience he didn’t possess. He was already in his robe and his hair was pulled back at his nape with a leather thong. The ankh around his neck glittered briefly in a thin line of sunlight that sliced through the gap in the curtains. “We will wait for one hour. Get her here,” he told Naomi, who immediately turned to her cell phone and placed another call as she walked out of the prayer room.
Daniella had already donned her robe, as had Clarice, but Naomi, the stupid cow, was still in her jeans and a light sweater. She, of all of them, should know better, but then maybe she’d thought she might need to go out and drag Jerrilyn back by her hair.
It would be interesting to see what happened first: Jerrilyn’s return, or Andre’s urgency to go after Teresa. Would he be able to go ahead without one of his precious remaining handmaidens? Daniella certainly hoped so. Without Teresa and Jerrilyn, there would just be the three of them.
“This is it,” Callie said, indicating a somewhat tired-looking apartment building. West examined the stucco exterior while Callie led the way inside.
Aimee and Tucker’s apartment proved to be on the ground level. West followed Callie down a hallway that currently smelled of cooked corn and burnt chicken. The carpet was worn but clean. When she got to the third door on the west side of the building, she raised her hand to knock on cream-colored panels that had begun to yellow. The place seemed cared for in the main, but it had been a while since anyone had put any real money or elbow grease into it. Callie’s rental was several rungs up the ladder.
Before she could knock he heard a woman’s voice raised in anger or frustration, coming from inside. Immediately he held up a hand to stop Callie, who froze in place, then leaned into the door, placing his ear against the panels.
In a mixture of French and English, a woman, most probably this Aimee, was berating someone up one side and down the other. When he heard a young boy’s response he figured it was Tucker.
Furious, he took over, slamming his fist in a loud slam, slam, slam against the door. Immediately the woman’s voice cut off. A few minutes later, footsteps crossed toward them and she called out, “Who is there?”
West looked at Callie who said, “It’s Callie Cantrell. I told you I’d be back at three.”
She opened the door without hesitation. “You have the bracelet?” she asked, then snapped her gaze to meet West’s. Her dark hair was wet as if she’d just taken a shower and she wore a pair of gray capris and a black, sleeveless T-shirt that showed off her well-muscled biceps. She looked like a woman who took her time at the gym seriously. She was about the same height as Callie, around five foot seven, but there the resemblance ended. Aimee was dark and swarthy while Callie was fair, with blue eyes and burnished hair. And Aimee was staring at him in surprise and defiance.
Behind her, Tucker came racing up, ducking under her arm to squeeze up to Callie. “You come for me?”
“I . . .” Callie cut herself off.
“I’m West Laughlin,” he said, sticking out his hand. Aimee gazed down at it and reluctantly shook with him. If she recognized the name, she was great at concealing it.
“Aimee Thomas.” She snapped her hand back as quick as she could.
“I go fishing with Michel,” Tucker declared, dancing into the hallway with delight.
“Tomorrow,” Aimee said quickly. Then to West and Callie, “Jean-Paul takes them feeshing on his bateau.”
He sensed Callie sending him a sideways look at Aimee’s suddenly strong French accent. “You want the bracelet,” he said.
She yelled at Tucker in French, then said, presumably for their benefit, “Get back here.”
The boy grabbed Callie’s hand and said, “Come in, come in.”
She followed after him and West brought up the rear, though it was clear Aimee didn’t want him to be anywhere near the forthcoming transaction.
“The bracelet belongs to my grandmother,” West said as an opening salvo.
“It ees mine. A gift,” she answered.
“Come see my room,” Tucker declared, and Callie looked helplessly to Aimee while West said expansively, “Go ahead. Ms. Thomas and I have some things to talk about.”
Aimee’s dark eyes flashed at him, but she just shrugged. Playing it both sides against the middle. She didn’t want Callie anywhere near Tucker’s room, but she didn’t want to completely piss off both Callie and West until she got her hands on the bracelet.
“I’ve got a few questions for you,” West said, when he was alone with Aimee.
“I do not have to talk to you.”
“You speak English as well as I do. Let’s get past that at least. You know who I am and what I want.”
“I do not,” she stated tartly.
“Okay, fine. We’ll play it your way. Stephen Laughlin was my brother. He’s dead now, and his widow, Teresa Laughlin, is suspected in his death. Tucker is Teresa’s son, and I’m looking for Teresa.”
She was staring at the floor, clearly trying to come up with something to say. “You are talking, but it makes no sense.”
“Tucker isn’t your son. He’s Teresa’s,” West said again.
“Non. Reediculous. He is mine.”
“Teresa brought you the boy and told you to take care of him. Where is she?”
“You are crazee!”
“He’s a Laughlin. DNA will prove it. I don’t want to fight with you, but if his mother’s abandoned him, I’m going for custody.”
&
nbsp; “You are trying to steal my son!” She drew herself up in outrage.
“Where is she? How long’s she been gone?” West demanded.
“Get out, and take that nosy beetch with you!”
“I’ve already been to the police,” West lied. “They’re looking into it and it’s only a matter of time before they’re asking the questions, not me.”
Aimee appeared ready to claw his eyes out but she restrained herself. He watched her, was aware when the moment occurred that she decided to capitulate some. “She did not abandon him,” she finally said.
“Where is she?” West pressed.
“The States. Somewhere.” She met his gaze with hot, dark eyes. “The bracelet belongs to me.”
“Teresa gave it to you. For taking care of Tucker,” he said. When she didn’t answer, he took that as an affirmative. “I don’t believe it’s a gift.”
She sucked in an angry breath between her teeth. “I don’t care what you believe. It’s the truth.”
“She’s gonna want it back, so you’d better hope it’s collateral for some other kind of payment.”
“You have no right to question me.”
At least the heavy French accent was gone. Progress, if infinitesimal. West had been through his share of interrogations and knew how much persuading went into them. The threat of the police had reached her whether she wanted to admit it or not, otherwise she’d have thrown him out by now.
“I don’t really give a damn about the bracelet,” he said. “You can have it, for all I care. All I want is the boy.”
