by Diane Capri
CHAPTER 2
What a great hideout this place is. Jordan Fox leaned out the driver’s window of her car and surrendered her driver’s license to the armed guard at the entrance to Hills Bay Estates. She looked directly at the camera while it snapped her headshot. She pressed her right thumbprint onto the electronic pad.
He studied everything while she tapped her left foot impatiently. The guard’s name tag said “Sgt. Irwin.” From the look of him, he’d probably been military police once upon a time.
Adrenaline flowed through from her toes to her scalp. Minutes ago, she’d escaped from The Worst House Arrest Ever. No television, no newspapers, no internet, no calls from work or Tampa P.D. or even the FBI. For an entire week.
Sure, they were all worried about her after her kidnapping and near meltdown on the air afterward. But seriously? That kind of isolation was pure torture for a news junkie like Jordan.
She felt a level of tingling joy she could only describe as thrilled to break free of her home, even if she’d only traveled two miles.
This place was beautiful! She was excited to get back to work at Channel 12. And to get on with everything she had to accomplish before her shift started at 2:30 p.m., too.
Come on. Let’s go. Obviously, I’m not a burglar. You checked my I.D.
Her impatience didn’t speed Sgt. Irwin along at all.
An eternity later, he nodded and placed a temporary sticker on her window. The sticker had a bar code on it.
Then he used an electronic wand to read the bar code.
Finally, he opened the gate and waved her through.
Geez. Talk about being locked in a gilded cage. She shrugged. At least her dad and everyone else she knew couldn’t watch her like a hawk every minute while she was here.
Before Sgt. Irwin had a chance to change his mind, she smiled and waved through the open window and eased past the gate as if the nearly TSA-worthy procedures were completely normal in her everyday world.
Jordan lived in a comfortable but modest house on a quiet residential street in South Tampa with her dad. The only guards were the neighborhood dogs. The only gates were the flower pots at the end of their driveway.
Maybe she was a little crazy by now, but that entire security process back there made her feel safer and sillier at the same time.
She admired the lush tropical landscape. “We’re going to love it here, aren’t we, Hermes?” she asked her electric blue Honda.
Hermes said nothing.
She glanced into the back seat. Everything was still there. Everything she’d need to make real progress on solving her mother’s murder.
Finally, five years later, she was away from her dad’s watchful eye and constant disapproval of that goal. She’d apply laser focus to her mission. By the end of this week, she’d be light years ahead. She could feel it.
“Make it so!”
Jordan followed directions, traveling along the luxurious residential streets until she found 1486 Poinciana Way discreetly painted on the curb.
“Oh, man. This is the life.” Jordan steered Hermes to the right and parked in the circular tumbled stone driveway in front of the mansion. Water flowing through the courtyard fountain bubbled and splashed to greet her with good cheer.
“Work hard for the next twenty years, Jordan Fox, and something like this baby could be yours.” She giggled like a six-year-old. She felt her very bones relaxing for the first time since she’d been kidnapped by the El Pulpo cartel and rescued by Tampa P.D. nine days ago. “Yep. House-sitting in a ginormous mansion? Way better. For sure.”
This particular mansion belonged to Linda Pierce, Channel 12 Assistant News Director. Linda and her husband had left early that morning for a vacation. For the next week, Jordan would be the master of all she surveyed.
“Freakin’ amazing.” Jordan shook her head. “Life is weird.”
House-sitting for the woman who hired Jordan as a multimedia journalist, or MMJ, at Channel 12, then demoted her to intern on her first day? She hadn’t seen that one coming.
To be fair, the demotion was nothing personal. Budget cuts, of course. Same story everywhere in journalism. Jordan was lucky to have a job at all, and she knew it.
She shrugged. “If house-sitting gets me the next promotion, I’d live in a two-room shack.” Drew Hodges would have jumped at the chance, too. For once, something good came to Jordan first. Drew was probably jealous. “Yes!”
Jordan stretched like a cat in the sunlight. A Cheshire cat, maybe, since she couldn’t stop grinning. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and called her best friend, Claire.
“This place is freakin’ unbelievable.” Jordan inhaled a big lung-full of sweet jasmine scented air and strolled around the grounds. Lush green grass extended twenty-five yards or so on either side of the driveway before the neighboring properties began. “Are you sure you don’t want to come stay with me this week? We could hang out at the pool, get a tan, eat pizza every night. This place beats your apartment by a landslide.”
Claire was quiet on the other end of the line. Maybe she was reconsidering. Maybe she would come back from her parents’ home in Ft. Lauderdale to spend the week with Jordan after all. A girlfriend week sounded perfect.
Linda Pierce would be okay with Claire staying here. She’d said she wanted Jordan protected from El Pulpo, which was a bit melodramatic. No one had tried to hurt Jordan in at least a week. Another giggle bubbled up at the foolish thought.
Claire said, “You’re not getting hysterical, are you?”
“Stop worrying. I’m just glad to have a little space and fresh air.” That whole kidnapping thing seemed surreal by now, actually. Her kidnappers were arrested, her bruises had faded, and she felt perfectly normal. Why couldn’t everyone see that? “I love my dad, but he’s been a smothering hen since he found out what happened.”
“He’s not wrong.” Claire’s voice was quiet, pensive. “These people are dangerous, Jordan. You know that.”
“So you’re really not coming over here, then?” Since Salvador Caster agreed to testify against El Pulpo and disappeared into witness protection instead of going to prison, Claire had acted like a war widow.
Talk about melodramatic. Claire had only dated the guy for four months, after all. He must have been great in bed. Jordan giggled again. Maybe she was hysterical.
She wished Claire would snap out of it, but she didn’t push. Fun-loving Claire could be as stubborn as any two-year-old.
“Sal is gone. I’ve got to make a plan for my life.” Claire sighed like a weary old nun. “And right now, Ft. Lauderdale is the perfect place for me to do that.”
“Well, I’m here for a week. The place is amazing. Hit me up if you change your mind.” Jordan squared her shoulders and rang off. Maybe Claire needed the time. Maybe she’d be her normal self by the time she came back.
Other options? Jordan could invite her new man crush Tom Clark over to watch a sunset with her. Too romantic? Probably too romantic, too soon. They’d yet to even go on a real one-on-one date. But they’d talked on the phone a lot during The Worst House Arrest Ever. He didn’t know her story and she wanted to keep it that way for a while. That was one of the reasons she liked him. A fresh start.
She’d managed to keep her name out of the news and so far, had remained unidentified as a kidnapping victim. Not that it really mattered. El Pulpo, the crime cartel everybody was so keen to protect her from, already knew. Everyone at Channel 12 knew. Hell, everyone in law enforcement for miles around knew, too.
Even her dad knew.
And all of them had ganged up on her. They made her get a full medical examination and refused to let her work for a week. And now Drew Hodges was winning their job competition, too, according to regular reports from her friend, Theresa. Which royally sucked.
The whole thing was so unfair. She didn’t ask to be kidnapped.
She felt her chest fill and her nostrils flare and her blood pounding in her ears.
“Chill, Jord
an. That was last week. You’re in paradise now. You go in early, talk to Richard, and then you’re back to work.” She snapped her fingers and the foolish grin popped onto her face once more.
El Pulpo wouldn’t find her here at the Pierces’. This place was closed up tighter than Fort Knox. She was safe here. Her dad had a Tampa P.D. detail on his house. And FBI Agent Ryser said she’d check on him regularly, too. Everything was fine.
“Don’t borrow trouble,” Jordan said, just as her mom used to say. The minute the words were out of her mouth, gooseflesh raised along her limbs.
Jordan shook off the creepy feeling and hustled down the stone path that ran along the side of the house to the fence Linda had told her to open. She found the key under the rock by the hot tub.
“Wow.” Beyond the pool, a big canal funneled into the open water of Tampa Bay.
She shivered when she saw the water’s edge was not fenced. By boat they could easily approach, dock, get onto the grounds and into the house.
She felt sure her mother’s killers had approached and escaped her home by boat, although the police had never proved that.
El Pulpo was active in drug smuggling by boat, which was how Claire’s boyfriend got jammed up.
El Pulpo could avoid the armed guards if they entered from the open water.
“Jordan! Knock it off!”
“Okay. Okay.”
For a few more seconds, she gazed across the empty blue expanse of tranquility, but then she squared her shoulders and returned to the car for her bags.
CHAPTER 3
Jordan unlocked the back door and moved the first batch of stuff inside: a computer bag, a medium-sized yellow duffel, and the sling bag that was practically glued to her body. The heavy door opened to the deep, woodsy smell of expensive, imported furniture. Afternoon sunlight reflected off granite countertops and spotless floors.
Plenty of room to spread out.
Her house-sitting duties were simple: bring in the newspapers and the mail, make sure the outdoor lights were on at night, give the cat a scoop of food every day, let the house cleaners in and wait for them to finish cleaning.
Jordan didn’t need a cleaning service. But Linda had insisted, and this was her house. When the boss talks, Jordan Fox listens.
“Well, sometimes, anyway.” Besides, it was no hardship to hang around this beautiful house for a few hours in the morning.
She trotted out to Hermes and collected everything from the back seat. She carried two heavy boxes of stuff she planned to use to solve mother’s murder into the house and set them on the dining table.
These boxes contained everything she’d accumulated so far. Surely, she’d find some answers here. Or at least, a few good leads she could follow up.
In these boxes? Not much, actually. There had to be a lot more evidence somewhere. Police files, for sure. Channel 12 archives, definitely. Maybe a few others. But she didn’t have access to any of that. Yet.
She had a few hours before she was due to report to work. And she was stuck here until after the cleaning crew left.
She plugged her mother’s external hard drive into her laptop and heard a loud hum as everything started up. “So far, so good. The hard drive’s still not damaged.”
She really should stop talking to herself. But she thought better out loud. Always had. Only child syndrome, maybe.
She placed her phone on the table and remembered something else she wanted to do before breaking into her mother’s private history. “Okay, you’re just procrastinating now. Admit it.”
Jordan shrugged.
Her mother had set up the security system to allow only five tries every twenty-four hours. The last thing Jordan wanted to do was to make five failed attempts every day like she’d been doing for weeks now. She had to be strategic about this. Think like her mom. But how?
Brenda Fox wasn’t the kind of woman who led a secret life or anything. Jordan figured she used the password to keep Jordan and her friends from accidently finding private student counseling information.
Whatever was on the hard drive seemed somehow more important because of the security system. “Or maybe it’s nothing more mysterious than old financial records. Ever think about that?”
“Okay, Jordan. That’s enough fooling around. Get to work. Carpe diem.”
“Seize the day. I get it.” She talked back to herself again, but damn it was quiet around here.
Carpe diem. Her mother used to say that to her all the time. She typed the letters carefully without spaces into the hard drive’s software entry screen on her laptop. Red X. Crap.
She settled into an armchair near the table to flip through her mother’s yearbooks for ideas. She reached for Riverside Middle School Footsteps 2006 because it was on the top of the pile.
A screech of brakes and a slamming door outside stopped her, just as she opened up the hardback cover. She closed the book. “Ugh. I’m coming, Mom. Hang on.”
Jordan walked to the front of the house and peered out the window.
A white van parked in the driveway proclaimed Lemony Fresh Cleaning. She checked her watch. 9:55 a.m. An hour early. Crap.
CHAPTER 4
Jordan watched through the window as a skinny guy with a goatee and hairy legs sticking out below khaki cargo shorts yanked open the front passenger door. He pulled the woman in the front seat by the wrist, and she practically tumbled out.
Skinny guy put one hand on her waist and one hand on her shoulder, correcting her posture, and then smoothed her pleated navy skirt, running his hands roughly, intimately, down the sides and the front.
“Dude, I think she can do that herself,” Jordan said, as if he could hear through the walls. She shivered. This guy already gave her the creeps.
He closed the door and the woman stood stiff, silent, waiting, while the driver opened the back door, yanked a second woman out by her wrists, too. He straightened the front of her crisp white blouse. When he moved to smooth her skirt, Jordan reached for the doorknob to intervene.
She stopped. Maybe this is normal. And this isn’t my house. I’m not their client. Linda is. I should stay out of this.
The second woman looked like a teenaged girl. Thin, slight, chin down as if hiding her face behind a curtain of brown hair. He said something to her and she reached into her pocket, pulled out a gray ribbon, and tied her hair back neatly.
Jordan watched the driver point at the women like a conductor. Faked smiles slashed across their faces in quick response. He then picked up two buckets of supplies and motioned toward the front door.
The women marched ahead, eyes downcast. He followed, mouth slightly open, revealing a crooked row of teeth that could have used a good whitening with industrial strength bleach.
Jordan felt her stomach revolt. What a disgusting creature. Touch me, buddy, and I’ll knock you into next week. She looked around quickly and spotted a heavy pair of candlesticks that would make good clubs if need be.
She stepped back so they wouldn’t see she’d been watching. Each woman wore the same uniform. The one from the front seat was taller and maybe a bit older. The closer they came, the younger they looked. They were girls. Young. Eighteen, tops.
They marched up to the front porch and he rang the bell.
“Lemony Fresh Cleaning at your service.” The girls spoke in unison when Jordan opened the door, wide smiles in place.
Jordan forced a friendly tone into her voice. “Yes, welcome. I thought you weren’t due ’til eleven?”
The man put one hand each girl’s shoulder. “We’re running ahead of schedule today.” He tilted his head and leaned forward as he spoke. His foul breath nearly knocked Jordan over. “I hope it’s no inconvenience.”
She moved back, shook her head rapidly, and tried not to inhale. “No problem at all.”
He gave each girl a little push in the center of their spines and they stepped into the foyer.
“I’ll be back at five, girls,” he sing-songed before he turned and sauntered bac
k toward his van, whistling and destroying every air particle in his path.
She closed the door behind him and locked it. How did these girls put up with him?
The shorter girl bowed slightly. “I’m Maria.”
“And I’m Edith.” The taller girl’s voice was raspy. She didn’t bow. She scowled and stared over Jordan’s shoulder, avoiding eye contact like the annoyed teenager she surely was.
“I’m Jordan. You’ve been here before?”
“Yeah.” Edith gazed down the hall, still avoiding eye contact.
“I haven’t.” Maria seemed especially nervous. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She shook her head and her voice trembled. “Thank you for allowing that us may clean your house.”
Jordan detected a Mexican accent, or maybe it was Dominican? She was normally good with accents, but she couldn’t pinpoint the region. Not yet, anyway.
She stepped aside. “Well, Edith you probably know your way around. You’ll show Maria? Let me know if there’s anything you need.”
They nodded and set to work with their buckets of cleaning supplies. Maria shuffled into the kitchen while Edith clomped upstairs.
Jordan’s phone rang. She patted her pockets. Not there. It rang again. Right. She’d left it by the computer. She hurried to grab it and noticed the caller ID flashing on the screen. Clayton.
She was afraid she’d given him the wrong idea when she called him “not ugly” last week. She was just being friendly, but he must have thought she’d been flirting because he kept calling on one pretext or another.
Or maybe you shouldn’t have spontaneously kissed him when he saved your ass by finding your phone and returning it, huh?
She scowled and answered his call. Carefully. “What’s up?”
“I’ve gotta talk with you.” His tone was urgent. “I have news on the Evan Groves–Ruby Quinn murder case.”
