by Shawn Keys
A brief spark of humor clung to Daniel’s voice for a few seconds. “Lucky I resisted this long.” The humor fell off as he went on, “Need your help, Love.”
The sudden drop of any pleasant teasing surprised her. “What’s the matter?”
“We’re in a bit of trouble. The sort of trouble you’re good at handling.”
“Oh?”
“Legal trouble. Plus, a bit of digging around.”
That made her sit straighter in her leather seat. “What’s going on, Daniel? You’re scaring me a little.”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to. I’ll give you the whole story soon. For now, I need you to act fast on this. There’s a woman named Jocelyn Nanier and her brother Rory. Rory Rimouldi.”
She gasped. “As in…”
“As in the cousins to that ass wipe locked away in prison. We walked into a trap they laid out. We’re on the wrong plane. Headed for Chile. It’s going to take a bit of a dancing and fast-talking to get back on a flight to London or Bordeaux. We’re still probably going to miss the opening ceremonies, no matter what we do.”
“What do you want me to do?” Evelyn asked, already working out a game plan in her mind.
“Not sure how, but I’m hoping you can figure out where those Rimouldi cousins are right now. They work for the airline, so they might have already jumped onto a plane heading out of the country. Or they could be somewhere on the island laying low. They might try to stay and play innocent, but I can’t see that working out for them.”
Evelyn juggled the facts that she knew in her mind. “Think there will be video evidence of them messing with you?”
A pause came over the line as Daniel puzzled it over. “Maybe. There’s a lot of cameras around the airport.”
“If they could mess with the computers enough to fake your credentials on a flight, then they could probably arrange for a few cameras to take a vacation at exactly the right time. Could come down to a hearsay situation between you four and these cousins.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about. Like I’ve told Cadence and the others, I’m not afraid of getting thrown behind bars for flight-hopping. Doubt Ciel Claire is going to smear their own reputation by pursuing charges against three national athletes who the airline is supposed to be taking to an international competition. But if we don’t get this sorted out within a couple days, Cadence is going to miss her event. MK is slated to go two days later. Irène has the most time, but 10 days still might not be long enough. Especially where lawyers are concerned.”
“And you’re going to have at least 18 hours in a plane to get to Bordeaux, considering how far off away you’re going to be.” Evelyn took a long breath. “Alright. Have you already been cooperating?”
“Yeah. I know, you’re probably going to suggest I don’t say too much. But I had to give them pretty much everything just to convince them I wasn’t playing some sort of bad joke.”
“Well, hopefully they’ll look into those big, innocent eyes of yours and end up believing you,” Evelyn suggested, trying to offer some humor into all this. “I’ll do what I can. Lawyers for sure. I have a few contacts there. They’ll meet you when you land in Santiago. I’ll bounce this information off the police, but they probably won’t bite. Might need a private investigator to keep tabs on them until the police get involved.” She considered a few other angles. “I might have someone I can talk to over at Ciel Claire.”
“Why call them?” Daniel asked.
“Because those two had to know things were going to go bad. They had to realize it was going to blow back on them. Seems strange to burn two careers on the off-chance that Cadence, MK and Irène would miss their events and you’d end up in trouble.”
“You think they were already disgruntled?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me. Damage you. Damage the reputation of an airline they might already hate. Maybe cause a bit of a scandal for having some of Portesara’s best athletes miss their events.” She gave a shrug Daniel couldn’t see. “Depends on the mindset they’re in. I’ll try and find out.”
“Thanks, love. Talk soon. Shouldn’t stay on here too long.”
“I’m surprised they let you make a phone call.”
“I’m taking that as a good sign that they are believing us. We’re not under arrest. Call it close observation. But I’m not going to push this air marshal too far. We’ve got over six hours left on this flight. No sense getting impatient. Best case is going to be us walking across the Chilean concourse and onto a different plane to get headed toward France.”
“Will you return here first?”
“Not an option, I’m sorry to say. The attendant I was talking to mentioned the London flight only leaves once a week. We can’t take that long getting into Bordeaux. Not sure where we’ll route through, but it won’t be Portesara.”
She sighed, disappointed. “Let me know. If I need to, I’ll send my own charter plane to get you.”
A smile could be heard glowing behind Daniel’s voice. “Knew I could count on you, Love.”
“Anytime. Even if they end up locking you away and throwing away the key. Conjugal visits might be a fun.”
“You’re incorrigible.”
“Would you have me any other way?” Evelyn ended the call and sighed once more, talking to herself, “I swear that man gets into trouble just for the fun of it.” Despite her words, a fondness hovered around them. He pisses people off because he’s a good man who isn’t willing to leave well enough alone. She wouldn’t want him any other way.
She opened her contact list and searched down until she located the Chief of Operations for Ciel Claire. She started the call and waited.
“Luc Boivin speaking.”
“Good morning, Luc.”
“Evelyn! What a pleasant surprise. How can I help you? Pretty sure that most of the people who use your stadium have hopped on some of our flights heading for Europe, haven’t they?”
“Indeed. That is part of why I am calling you.” Evelyn killed any hint of the loneliness she was feeling after her phone call with Daniel. “I might need you in your COO role.”
“Why?”
“There’s a legal snafu that’s about to come your way. Don’t suppose you happen to know a couple of your employees named Jocelyn Nanier and Rory Rimouldi?”
“Those two, huh?”
At first, Evelyn was surprised at the reaction. Then, a small flush of pleasure followed. Any two employees who were known by the COO with that sort of instant dislike hadn’t made good names for themselves. She didn’t wish anyone ill, but if they had been good employees, it would have made the fight to clear the names of her lovers and friends a lot harder. “Afraid so.”
“What have they done this time?”
Evelyn sketched it out as best she could, leaving out anything that sounded incriminating on Daniel’s side. She didn’t have Luc’s personal phone number, so her concern was that the call might be being monitored. If the airline decided to bury this or try to shift the blame in the wrong way, she didn’t want to be feeding them ammunition. “Someone in your organization is probably already in contact with the air marshal on the plane.”
“Damn. Alright, thanks for the heads-up.”
“What’s the story on Jocelyn and Rory?”
“Not sure I want to get into any specifics. They’re still employees, even if they haven’t made any friends around here.”
“Don’t screw around with me on this, Luc. I called as a courtesy and to stop these athletes from getting roped into an even worse situation than they are already in. You thought you were sending them to Bordeaux to make our country proud. If it’s going to come out that your employees tricked them into boarding a different flight to stop them from competing for their nation, do you really want to help the perpetrators?”
“No need for implied threats, Evelyn. The company has equity in all this. I don’t want to commit to anything without discussing it with the other board members.”
“Stop dithering,
Luc. These athletes are on a clock. Let it tick long enough, and these two employees of yours will get what they want. I don’t think you want that. I’m getting you into the game early. Call it a favor so that you can get out ahead of the press and the police. I’m willing to say publicly how proud I am that you reacted quickly to help these stranded athletes. Or… I can point out that you scrambled to save face and protect your company’s reputation while letting some of our national icons rot in jail for a few days. I don’t know. Might be fun. I haven’t had a reason to let my vicious lawyers off the chain in quite a few months.”
“Your threats are getting a lot less implied, Evelyn.”
“Then start telling me things I want to hear.” She clenched her teeth, wrangling her aggression back under control. Give him space. Not a lot, but a little. I’d have to talk to my board as well. She hated to admit it or give him the space, but having him on their side was the better choice. She walked back her attack. “I’m going to give you a little time to figure out what’s going on inside your house, Luc. Don’t leave me hanging too long. Those years where our national sports nearly died was a dark time for all of us. This isn’t just about our country. I don’t want to have my stadium turn into a ghost town. I need those athletes making waves at the FLGs to pump my sponsorship and commercial time back into the stratosphere. I’m a patriot, but I’m also a businesswoman.” And… well, yeah, also a concerned lover, she admitted to herself. She’d be lying if that wasn’t blended into all this as well. She swore she would keep the two parts of her separate. In this case, every part of her was pissed and could act in concert.
“The last thing I want is for Ciel Claire’s reputation to be trashed. Especially not to protect those two. We’ll look into what happened and have some answers within the next few hours.”
“I’d really appreciate it if these athletes are never put in handcuffs. You have six hours before they walk off the plane. Figure as soon as an image shows up on the internet with them being walked off by an air marshal into a cell, you’ll have lost any of the credit you’re hoping to keep.”
“Let me guess. You’ll make sure someone is there to take those photos?”
“I’m going to have someone there to make sure their rights aren’t getting trampled. I promise I won’t let any photos leak as long as you’re playing fair.”
Luc let out a dark laugh on the other end of the line. “Never seen anyone offer the carrot as well as the stick at the same time as well as you did, Evelyn. Don’t worry, you won’t need the dogs of war. We’ll get this done.”
“I honestly hope you will.” Evelyn hung up, then peered out the window, trying to think of what else could be done. In the end, she decided she had enough to focus on already. Finding a lawyer wasn’t going to be as easy as she had made it seem. A few trustworthy contacts might not lead directly to one she could trust. That alone might take a few hours. At least they’re on the same time as us. I don’t need to wake anyone up in the middle of the night.
She got to work, not about to let any of them spend even a second in jail if she could avoid it.
Chapter 17
Matteo cupped his hand over his ear opposite the one he had pressed against his phone, trying to dull the crowd noise around him so he could pick out Daniel’s voice. It was a bad connection. “When are you getting in?”
Through the speaker, Daniel’s voice sounded scratchy and broken. That might have been the weak line, or it might have had something to do with the stress he’d been under over the last 48 hours. “We’ve been cleared to fly. Our tickets have us routing through London and then Paris. Twenty-five hours if you include lay-overs.” He sounded tired merely talking about it.
“Direct from Chile to London? That’s a long haul.”
“Mandatory so we can pick up our bags. It was a condition of us being allowed to go. Not that we don’t want to have our clothing, so we probably wouldn’t have rejected the option.”
“Where have you been staying?” Matteo asked, hoping they hadn’t been made ‘guests’ in the holding cells there.
“Airport hotel. Was the only place they were willing to let us stay. They had us ordering room service the whole time.” He snorted softly. “Had us in four separate rooms. They’d come in to interview us occasionally over the first day, as if they were checking to see if we could keep our stories straight.”
“Just the first day?”
“Evelyn pushed the airline pretty hard for us. They found evidence of what the twins did within a few hours. A day later they had close to a complete picture. Then it took this long to sort out all the legal tidbits and get our names cleared in the flight registry.”
“Good lord. What a pain in the ass. You missed a great ceremony. But it seems like you’ll get back in time for Cadence to jump. Or is my math wrong? Time zones always mess with my head.”
“You’re right. But she’s only going to have a single night’s sleep in Bordeaux before she has to be out on the field. I swear, if she could ever participate in a competition where she hasn’t been banged around, had her friend suffer a terrible loss or be ragged from lack of sleep, she’d probably jump to the moon.”
Not wanting to be selfish, Matteo had questioned Daniel about his situation and Cadence before finally let himself ask, “What about Irène?”
Daniel didn’t tease him for it. “She’s fine. Nothing gets her down, that’s for sure. She’ll have plenty of time to get warmed up for her events. No problem.”
Exhaling in relief, Matteo asked, “What about those idiots that did all this? What happened to them?”
“Not really sure. From what Evelyn tells me, they were already pretty disgruntled about how they were being treated at the airline.”
“Honest complaints or were they being idiots?”
“Didn’t stop to ask. Don’t really care. Considering this is the way they chose to leave rather than simply giving two-weeks’ notice like a normal person, I’m biasing toward the latter.” He grumbled a little. “Apparently we weren’t their only parting gift. Getting revenge on us was the icing on their cake. Trashed a bunch of records to make the airline scramble. Make a real mess of things. Oh, and embezzlement. Then they hopped a ferry to the mainland and disappeared into the Venezuelan landscape. Your guess is as good as mine if we’ll ever see them again.”
Matteo grimaced. He wasn’t normally one to believe the worst in any given situation, but this time Irène was right in the thick of it. “They’ll be watching the news. Seeing how it all plays out. When they see they have failed and that you have made the events, they might not let it go.”
“Thanks for the happy thought.”
“Not trying to spook you. But it couldn’t hurt to watch your back for a while.”
“I’ll do what I can. Certainly going to pay more attention to any tickets handed my way in the next couple years.”
“Words to live by,” Matteo chuckled. “Alright, I gotta go. The girls are about to go into their free program.”
“Oh? How are they doing?”
Matteo couldn’t keep a note of pride out of his voice. He really didn’t have anything to do with how well they performed, but knowing he had helped bring them into the competition wearing the Portesaran colors felt good. He glanced up at the scoreboard.
After Technical Round
1 – FRA 1 – 84 – 29.40
2 – CAN 1 – 83 – 29.05
3 – CAM 1 – 83 – 29.05
4 – SWI 1 – 82 – 28.70
5 – PTS 1 – 81 – 28.35
6 – SEY 1 – 78 – 27.30
7 – BEL 1 – 76 – 26.60
8 – FRA 2 – 75 – 26.25
9 – CHA 1 – 75 – 26.25
10 – BEL 2 – 74 – 25.90
11 – CAN 2 – 74 – 25.90
12 – BUR 1 – 72 – 25.30
13 – CIV 1 – 71 – 24.95
14 – LUX 1 – 70 – 24.60
15 – TOG 1 – 70 – 24.60
After Free Swim Roun
d
1 – SEY 1 – 73 – 47.45 – 74.75
2 – BEL 1 – 73 – 47.45 – 74.05
3 – FRA 2 – 71 – 46.15 – 72.40
4 – CAN 2 – 71 – 46.15 – 72.05
5 – CIV 1 – 72 – 46.80 – 71.75
6 – CHA 1 – 70 – 45.50 – 71.75
7 – BUR 1 – 71 – 46.15 – 71.45
8 – LUX 1 – 70 – 45.50 – 70.10
9 – BEL 2 – 68 – 44.20 – 70.10
10 – TOG 1 – 67 – 43.55 – 68.15
11 – FRA 1 – ## – ##.## – 29.40
12 – CAN 1 – ## – ##.## – 29.05
13 – CAM 1 – ## – ##.## – 29.05
14 – SWI 1 – ## – ##.## – 28.70
15 – PTS 1 – ## – ##.## – 28.35
“After the first round, they were a solid fifth with a good lead over the next team down. As good a place as we could hope for. Cameroon surprised everyone by putting a team into the top three. Otherwise, it’s France, Canada and Switzerland ahead of them.”
“Within reach of the podium?”
“Possibly. From what Flora tells me, their technical program is stronger than their free program. They don’t like it as much or think it is as creative. Picking up any ground is going to be difficult. The scores from the Seychelles have come up. They did well but I don’t think it will be enough to get them out of 6th place. Our team just has to have a good showing and they’ll be fine.”
“Well, good luck. Text me the results, alright?”
“Sure. Have a good flight. Don’t get lost in London.”
“No time for sightseeing, that’s for sure.” Daniel clicked off the line.
Matteo lowered the phone and turned back to Flora. “They out yet?”
The coach shook her head, eyes glued on where her team would soon be emerging. “Not yet. Can’t believe you could take a call at a time like this! I wouldn’t even have heard it ring.”
“Probably wouldn’t have either if it wasn’t for Irène being trapped halfway around the world.”
