“Employees have been known to go off the grid, Randall,” the older man said, his gray eyes turning crystal. “You should know all about that.”
“I’ve been paying my dues to the FBI,” Connor retorted. “I only went off the grid this time to find out who’s trying to kill Armond. I’ve been undercover with the man for a while now. Or at least I was until that night of the Benoit heist.”
“A failed heist,” Sherwood reminded him. “But hey, you did find three canvases worth millions of dollars.” Then he asked, “Do you have any suspects you’d like to share?”
Josie watched as this showdown became more aggressive. Getting between the two men, she put up a hand. “We know Armond is a criminal, but we have to have proof of that, and so far, we don’t have anything on him except possibly the murder of his mistress and the cash and invoices. But his wife and son are hiding something, and they did hold us at gunpoint. We need to find out what that something is.”
“We’re all in danger,” Connor said. “We can’t stop now. And you can’t hold the Armonds for long.”
“Louis is still in and out of consciousness,” Sherwood said. He tramped around debris so he could move closer but Josie noticed his gaze darting here and there. “The wife and son have lawyered up enough that they’ll probably get away with a slap on the hand for holding y’all. Beaux Perot, however, has been a wealth of information. He might become our strongest witness.”
“That’s good,” Josie replied. “I’d love a go at him. Beaux seems like a good man caught in a bad situation.”
“Good men have been known to go bad,” Sherwood said, his hostile gaze settling on Connor. “I think we need to get back to town. Need a lift?”
“No, we have a car,” Connor said before Josie could respond.
Okay. Why did he say that? Beaux had brought them out in his SUV. It had gone back to the city for a thorough inspection.
“We’ll be along shortly, sir,” she said. “Mind if we have one last look around?”
“Not at all,” Sherwood said, his expression edged with distaste. “Just don’t do anything stupid, Gilbert. You’re still a probbie in my mind.”
“Yes, sir.” She watched him go, then when he was out of sight, she turned to Connor. “What was that all about?”
“We need to do one more search,” Connor said on a low breath. “I’ve learned to read people and, Josie, I’m telling you, something is off with your boss.”
“You’re imagining things,” she retorted on a curt whisper. “And I’m in enough trouble. Let’s look around, then get out of here.” She whirled. “Oh, wait. We don’t have a car, do we?”
“Actually, I know where Armond keeps another garage,” Connor said. “And I know a car that will get us back to town in a hurry.”
“You’ve been holding out on me,” she said as they retraced their steps and peered into the daylight filtering through the gaping hole in the roof. And she had to wonder, what else was he hiding?
“No, I think I mentioned it in passing. He has lots of outbuildings around here. But this is a small wooden shed, not what I’d call a garage.”
“Right.” Josie lifted tools and shuffled through old rags before opening toolboxes and hardware drawers. Nothing stood out. But this place was like a giant cave, and the upstairs rooms were completely cut off and burned out.
Then they both turned to each other. “Another garage.”
“Armond has another garage,” Connor said, his eyes wide.
“And maybe, just maybe, that’s where he’s hiding the something we’re all looking for. Lead the way, please.”
Josie made a production of bowing and holding her arm out. But she had to wonder why Connor had just now remembered such a vital piece of information.
*
“Great, more swamp.”
Josie’s boots slushed through the dark, rich loam as she batted away both bugs and palmetto leaves. “I’m beginning to hate Louisiana.”
“More than Texas?”
She ignored that baited question. “I loved Texas. I mean, I grew up there.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Connor replied. He stomped ahead of her, using a big stick he’d found from a fallen branch to hit at possible poisonous snakes. “So you’re a Texas native.”
“Born and bred.” She stopped to take a breath and to carefully measure her answers. “My father moved among the upper crust of Houston. He also took a lot of their money.” She shrugged and pushed at her damp hair. “I think that’s why my mother left Texas. She couldn’t take the pain of her friends abandoning her.”
Nor the pain of her daughter’s judgment and scorn, Josie thought.
Connor knocked down a twisted vine. “Do you ever visit your father in prison?”
“I haven’t in a while. We don’t have much to talk about.”
She thought about Dallas and the undercover operation that had gone bad. She couldn’t afford to mess up this time. She’d wind up old and alone like her mother.
“There it is,” Connor said, turning to help her the last few feet.
“That’s a garage?”
The old lean-to looked as if it might fall over if they touched it. “There’s a car in there?”
“Armond is a man of many surprises.” Connor moved through the bramble toward the building. “He liked to hide things in odd places, which is probably why we can’t find anything interesting around the house or the big garage.”
“And you just happen to know about this car?”
“He showed it to me once when he was in a melancholy mood. This was his first car.”
Josie glanced around to make sure they didn’t get picked up by a sheriff’s deputy. “Why haven’t you mentioned this earlier?”
Connor cut his gaze to her. “Are you curious or are you interrogating me for a reason?”
“It’s just odd that we’ve spent most of the night trying to find something in the big fancy garage when you knew about this one all along.”
Connor stopped to give her a harsh stare. “Hey, we’ve been kind of busy for the past few days and we only realized something might be hidden in the garage after Beaux mentioned it and then you saved Vanessa Armond, remember? So we focused on that garage. Or do you still not trust me? Josie?”
Josie let out a sigh and then grunted out her frustration. “Okay, all right. We’ll talk about all of it on the way into town after we’ve searched every inch of this place. Let’s hope we find something to give us a clue and let’s hope this vehicle will crank.”
Connor opened the rickety old door and set it back against some shrub oaks. Inside the dark interior, Josie heard a scuffling.
“Rats or nutria,” Connor warned. “Nasty creatures.”
“Thanks for telling me that,” she replied with a grimace. “What else could be in here?”
He tapped the dirt floors with the rickety limb. “Snakes, of course. Spiders.”
The vehicle was covered in a heavy gray canvas. Connor tossed her the stick and then pulled the cover off the car.
She let out a gasp this time. “A ’63 Camaro.”
“A Z-28, at that.”
“Can you drive this thing?”
“Of course I can. Armond let me take it for a spin back when we got so buddy-buddy.”
“Let’s search it first.”
While they checked over the car, she wondered just how buddy-buddy he and Armond had gotten. Armond had called on Connor to help him out of a big jam, but that had been more like a summons—as in flesh owed him. She really wanted to figure out the dynamics of that relationship. It sure seemed mighty convenient that Connor had been on the scene just in time to help Armond. Coincidence or part of the plan? This case didn’t make a bit of sense, and her gut kept reminding her that Connor was still caught between two worlds. Which route would he really take when push came to shove?
After a half hour or so, Connor came around to the driver’s side. “Nothing. This car is clean as a whistle, if you ignore the
pollen and dust.”
Josie leaned in one more time. “Just an old necklace.”
Connor looked at the gold coin dangling on an old chain over the rearview mirror. “Yeah. I don’t remember that being there, but Armond has a thing for gold.”
“I noticed that in his furnishings.”
“Let’s go.” He got in and waited for her. “I’ll check out the coin later.”
Josie slid into the low black leather seat. “Does it have gas?”
“We’ll see.”
Connor did a little hot-wiring and cranked the car. The engine purred like a contented tiger. “Plenty of fuel. He kept it full and usually he’d sneak out about once a week and give it a spin around the country roads. Said this was his guilty pleasure. We laughed a lot that day.” He shrugged. “Armond’s son hates him. I guess I made up for that.”
“You really like the old man, don’t you?”
“I do,” he admitted. Looking over his shoulder, he backed out of the old garage. “But not enough to become his made man. Once, I would have jumped at the chance, but that changed when I realized my sister was afraid of me.”
“What made her so afraid?”
He kept his gaze on the dirt lane. “She works for Princess Lara Kincade, and last year things kind of came to a head when Deidre saw me back in New Orleans. She was afraid I’d followed them from Europe to steal the Benoits. She almost quit her job, she was so afraid.”
He stopped at the road out and turned to gaze at Josie, his eyes burning with remorse. “I’ll never forget the look on my sister’s face when she confronted me. It was the same look she had when we were little and I had to leave her behind.”
Well, that was certainly a new revelation. Something inside Josie’s heart melted away, leaving her standing in quicksand. “You love your sister more than you love Armond and a life of crime?”
“Yes. Deidre’s taught me about faith and love—unconditional love.” He shook his head. “Look, we don’t have time for a devotional but just know this, Josie. You can trust me. You have to trust me.”
“I do. I will,” she said, still not sure. And because she couldn’t deal with his raw honesty right now, she added, “Can I trust you to get me back to New Orleans without getting a speeding ticket?”
“Absolutely,” he said on a grin. “I know all the back roads.”
“A muscle car,” she said, shaking her head. “Criminals can be so eclectic about things.”
“Armond fits that mold,” Connor said, his hand on the gearshift. “One minute, I’d think I had him, and the next he’d be in such a foul mood no one, including me, wanted to be around him. He always seemed secretive, but at times he sounded downright depressed.”
“A life of lies and crime can do that to a man.”
“I should know that.” He glanced over at her. “One day, I want to be able to walk down a street without having to look behind me.”
Josie’s heart did another little shift. That made her mad. She didn’t want to like this man and she sure didn’t want to be attracted to him. But when he kissed her…her whole world became blurred and confused. She’d stepped over a mighty big line, and now she couldn’t go back.
Did she want to go back?
She glanced over at Connor. He was dirty, windblown and gritty right now, but he still did things to her.
“What?” he asked, giving her that slanted look that always took hold of her heart.
Josie shook her head. “I don’t know. Still trying to figure you out.”
“You need to give up on that.”
“Why? Afraid I’ll get too close?”
“You are too close.”
So he felt the same way. Or had he purposely tried to confuse her?
“We have to stay on track,” she said. “We’re running out of Armonds.”
“I won’t stop until they’re all either turned or in jail.”
“But you said you didn’t have much on them. Have you been holding out on the FBI?”
“No. I’ve shared things with the FBI to build a file and a case, but it was never enough to bring him in. For two long years I’ve worked hard to gain Armond’s trust. I expected the man to kill me several times over. The puzzle is this—why hasn’t he? And why did he turn to me the other night?”
“He thought he had you cornered,” Josie said. “By the way, why did you agree to meet him at the opera? We went along with it, but now that I look back that seems crazy, considering we wanted to bring him in without any fanfare.”
He winked at her. “It was La Bohème.”
“I get that you’re into Italian operas, but you had another reason for being there. Or maybe he did.”
He finally nodded. “I wanted to spy on Armond before I met with him. I thought if I got something else on him, I could use it against him as leverage when we had our little talk.”
“A gift to the FBI or payback with Armond?”
“I’m not above blackmailing a criminal to get out of a jam.”
“Why at the opera?”
“He conducts a lot of business in his balcony box.”
“So you dressed up and planned to what…stand in the corner and listen in, or maybe sit down beside him and ask him to tell you something you could use against him?”
“It wasn’t like that. I wanted to see who would be meeting him there.”
“Oh, and how did you know he’d be meeting someone else there?”
He hesitated, then glanced over at her. “You won’t like this, but I haven’t told you everything.”
Josie’s heart pulled back up to solid ground. Of course he hadn’t told her everything. Hadn’t she felt this coming? “You just told me you had. Talk, Connor, and this time, don’t leave anything out.”
Connor’s expression filled with regret and resolve. “Sometimes, he’d dismiss all his guards and go alone to his box seats. And I mean alone. I never was invited to attend with him, but I’ve gone to the opera house several times to see if I could figure out who he was meeting.” He maneuvered the car around a sharp curve. “I thought maybe it was Lewanna. His guards weren’t around when she got shot.”
“But you obviously didn’t see anyone else.”
“No. I was getting close—I’d dismissed several people as bit players. I’m beginning to wonder if maybe his son wasn’t showing up. His other son, that is. Whoever it was always slipped away before anyone knew.”
“Did you know there might be another son?”
Connor shifted gears and turned onto another stretch of highway. “I suspected. I was trying to find out who that might be back when the Benoit issue came to a close. But I’m beginning to think no one will ever know for sure.”
FOURTEEN
The Camaro lived up to its name.
They’d made it back to the city in record time.
But Josie couldn’t enjoy the ride. She stared over at Connor, all the trust built between them crumbling like decayed bricks. “You suspected and yet you failed to mention that because…?”
“Because it’s just a hunch, and because I was waiting to see what transpired.”
“Waiting? Connor, this isn’t about waiting. This is about being honest with me. You didn’t speak up when Beaux told us there might be a second son. Are you trying to break free from this man’s grip or are you protecting him because you’re really on his side?” She turned in the seat and hit a hand on the dash. “You’re still playing games with me.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I should have told you right up front, but I don’t have any proof. He just mentioned it once, when we were cruising in this car.”
Still reeling, Josie asked, “And what exactly did he say?”
“He told me he wished things could have been different…for his sons.”
“Sons? Plural.”
“I just thought he’d used the wrong term. He looked broken and sad and…I don’t know…my instincts told me he wanted to say more.”
“Did you question
him?”
“I tried. I asked him about Lou and why he never came around. He gave me a sad smile. He said, ‘I don’t make him feel loved.’”
“What else did he say, Connor?”
Connor downshifted as they exited the interstate. “He said he wasn’t sure who would inherit his estate.”
“And?”
“And he replied that another man would get the bulk of it. That’s when I figured he had a silent partner.”
Josie’s mind went into overdrive right along with the zooming car. “A silent partner who is his secret son?”
“I don’t know. When I asked him about it, he brushed it aside and changed the subject, but something about that day stayed with me.”
“And yet, you didn’t tell me any of this until now. How do you expect me to believe anything you say to me?”
“Look, I’m working hard to prove myself, but…I told you this is just a hunch. When Beaux told us Armond might have another son, I figured that was why he was so morose and depressed that day.”
“You can say that again,” she replied, anger shimmering underneath her still-shaky heart. “Nothing about this makes any sense. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’ve been taking me on a merry chase down a rabbit hole.”
“I’m not doing that,” he replied. “I want to find out the truth, too. We need to come up with a con to get them all talking.”
“No, no cons, no more lies. Just take me to my office.”
“I’m taking you to my apartment,” Connor said as they cruised through early-morning traffic. “We can shower, eat and get some rest there. And maybe we can do some more research, come up with a plan.”
“I don’t want to go to your place. I need to report back to the office.”
“You can’t do that. It’s not safe.”
She pinned him with a burning glance. “Says who?”
“Me. What if someone is watching your apartment? What if someone in your office is in on this?”
“I’ve got people handling that.”
He gave Josie a quick glance. “You think you’ve got people handling that.”
“So while you’ve had me on the run, you’ve also been working behind my back.” Putting her hands to her head, she clutched at her hair. “You are seriously driving me nuts, Connor. I can’t trust you, and I’m sorry I ever thought I could. Now, take me to my apartment.”
Love Inspired Suspense June 2014 Bundle 2 of 2: Forced AllianceOut for JusticeNo Place to Run Page 13
