by Toby Neal
A rush of excitement energized Sophie. She’d hoped for something like this, and hadn’t been able to find it anywhere online. “Tell me more.”
“I went looking for my mother when I turned thirty. I found Mel, and we’ve been in touch ever since. I’ve only met her in person one time.”
“No one could find any trace of a relationship between you two. Why did you keep it secret?”
“She wanted it that way.” Bell pushed a hand through short black hair in agitation, disrupting an artfully-styled crest at the front in an endearing gesture. “I’m so . . . upset to hear she’s dead. I didn’t know.”
“How often did you communicate?”
“Once a month or so.”
“Did you know about her cancer?”
“Cancer?” Bell’s eyes widened. “What cancer?”
“Mel Samson had terminal cancer. And she was involved with something illegal. In the end it resulted in her death. That’s why there’s an investigation. I can’t tell you anything more, though. Detective Pellman will want to talk to you.”
Bell’s face crumpled, and she covered it with her hands. “I can’t take this in.” She stood up abruptly. Her eyes were dry and stark when she dropped her hands. “I just found out my mother died. You need to leave.”
Sophie stood too. “I’m so sorry for your loss. I met Ms. Samson, and she was an impressive woman.” She took the business card Detective Pellman had given her out of her waist pack. “Please call the detective and set up a time to meet him and talk, or I promise he will be calling you.”
Bell did not move to take the card. She seemed frozen, a pillar of salt, her thoughts turned inward and invisible, her face white.
“Again, I’m sorry for your loss.” Sophie set the card on the coffee table. “I’ll let myself out.”
Chapter Thirty
Raveaux: Day Six, Afternoon
Gunfire roared overhead as Raveaux pitched forward off his chair, diving under the coffee table. The six-foot slab of teak tipped up to accommodate him as it scraped along his backbone, knocking over the remaining cups and saucers. The coffee items crashed to the floor—but that minor sound was obliterated in the thunderous stuttering of automatic weapons fire.
“Merde!” Raveaux covered his ears, pressing his face into the nap of the expensive Turkish carpet, his face turned to one side. What a time to be unarmed . . . His ears rang so loudly it was hard to differentiate the sounds. He crawled deeper under the table, pressed instinctively as flat as he could, but braced for the impact of a bullet.
Shouts.
Screams.
More gunfire.
Raveaux shut his eyes, pressing his hands even tighter over his ringing ears.
What was his next move? His best move?
He was an unarmed man in the middle of a gunfight.
His best move was not to get shot.
A thump on his right. Something had just hit the floor beside him.
Raveaux opened his eyes. He was staring into Kim Hoo’s face. His former colleague’s eyes and mouth were open in an expression of surprise, but the man was quite dead already. Blood from too many holes to count poured out of the corpse. It oozed toward Raveaux across the carpet in a spreading pool.
Raveaux belly-crawled to the far end of the coffee table using his elbows, thankful that the piece of furniture was large and heavy. He might still get out of this alive . . .
He peered out from under, around the corner of the couch, as soon as the gunfire paused.
“Put your weapons down! San Francisco Police!” A new voice, young, strong and unfamiliar, reverberated in the room.
Silence. The room had gone still. Was everyone dead already?
Raveaux raised his hands from under the end of the coffee table. “I’m a friendly! Private investigator Pierre Raveaux,” he called out.
“Raveaux. We know who you are.” Pellman’s voice gurgled weakly from near the doorway.
Raveaux spotted the older man slumped against the wall, a long smear of blood decorating the stucco surface behind him.
Another cop, the one who’d called out, dropped into Raveaux’s line of sight, yelling emergency codes into his cell phone even as his gaze darted around the room, looking for threats—but the dead diamond dealer’s soldiers were sprawled around the room, motionless.
The young detective got up, ignoring Raveaux, and ran forward to kick the weapons away from the fallen mercenaries.
Pellman’s hand, resting on the floor, crooked a finger toward Raveaux. The older detective’s lips moved as though he wanted to speak.
Raveaux crawled out from under the table and made his way through the carnage to kneel beside the older man, glancing around as he went.
Kramer was sprawled face down at his end of the coffee table, brains and blood splattered across the shiny wood. Gore dripped off the edge, splattering Kim Hoo’s astonished face. The mercenary who’d brought their coffee was draped over the back of the sofa. The other two were also down, sprawled in the graceless poses of the unexpectedly dead. Pellman’s partner was still yelling into his phone as he checked the bodies for signs of life.
Raveaux turned his attention to Pellman. The detective moved his lips feebly. His eyelids fluttered. His hands trembled and curled with nerve spasms.
“Just relax. Focus on breathing.” Raveaux squeezed Pellman’s shoulder.
“I made you a copy of the case folder.” Pellman gasped out. He grabbed Raveaux’s hand. “Left it for you at the hotel.”
“Don’t worry about that.” Raveaux squeezed his hand. “Help is on the way.”
“Won’t be in time. It’s okay. I was dying anyway.” Pellman tried to smile, but as he did, a gush of blood bubbled from his lips and rolled down his chin. His eyes were already filming over and his skin had gone the clammy shade of a mushroom.
“Do you have anything you want to say to a loved one? Any messages I can pass on?”
“Don’t have any loved ones. Only the job.” Pellman gasped. His hand clenched Raveaux’s reflexively, and then relaxed as he slumped, a puppet with cut strings.
His partner, seeing this, screamed into his phone. “Get those ambulances here, stat!”
“Too late,” Raveaux said. “He’s gone.” He passed a hand lightly over Pellman’s face, and closed the man’s eyes.
Raveaux called Sophie from the police station after the hubbub of the crime scene had died down, and Fremont, Pellman’s partner, had taken his recorded statement. A migraine played colored lights across the back of Raveaux’s retinas as he thumbed his phone open to her number in his Favorites.
Sophie answered brusquely. “Where are you? I have news.”
“I have news, also. You need to come down to the Mission Street San Francisco Police Station. We are now working with a Detective Fremont on the case.” Raveaux blew out a breath, rubbing sore, gritty eyes. He could scarcely focus. “I’m down here after making a statement. I was involved in a shootout, and Detective Pellman is dead.”
He waited for Sophie to protest, exclaim, to barrage him with questions. She only asked one. “Are you injured?”
“No.”
“I’m on my way.” And she ended the call.
Raveaux rested his sore head on his crossed arms on the metal table of the interview room. Fremont had not released him. He understood. He would not have released him, either. The whole situation stank to high heaven and had gone deadly so fast . . .
Scenes from the firefight played across the back of his aching eyeballs.
Perhaps he fell asleep.
Maybe an hour later, the door opened and Sophie stood framed in the doorway. “I’ve spoken with Fremont. You’re free to go.”
Raveaux stood up, feeling every day of his almost forty years, and a few decades more. He staggered a little, and shut his eyes. “Migraine,” he said. “Got to get somewhere to rest.”
Sophie hurried over, lifting one of his arms over her shoulder and sliding an arm around his waist to support him.
She was three inches shorter, just the right height for him to lean on, and he felt her sturdy strength as they made their way out and into a hall lit with flickering fluorescent bulbs that made Raveaux cover his eyes with his free hand, groaning.
She squeezed his side, almost a hug, and he felt her curves and the firmness of her hip and waist. If he hadn’t been crippled by the migraine, he would have enjoyed it.
They got a rideshare back to the hotel, and Sophie didn’t try to talk to him. She unlocked his room, helped him past the king-sized bed and seating area, and pushed him into the bathroom. “Take a shower. Where is your medication?”
Raveaux pointed to a plastic bottle on the table next to his bed. She headed toward it as he went into the bathroom.
Once inside, he stripped off his suit jacket, filthy and reeking of gunshot residue and blood. Raveaux tugged his dress shirt out of his trousers, unbuttoning it. Suddenly repulsed by the blood spatter ruining the crisp white fabric, he ripped the shirt off and tossed it into the corner. He stripped the shoes and socks off his feet and wadded them up, throwing them after the shirt, each movement explosive. He dropped his trousers, kicking them away.
He could feel tears, dried now to just a crust of salt, in the creases of his eyes. He didn’t remember crying. Must have been when Pellman died. Poor bastard . . .
Sophie entered, holding two of the migraine pills in her hand and a glass of water.
Raveaux straightened to his full height, tightening his abs, and met her eyes.
She seemed oblivious to his state of undress, that he stood before her in nothing but his boxers. In spite of the fog of migraine pain and post-traumatic stress, he felt a twinge of disappointment. What would it take to get her to look at him? Really look at him?
But she was looking at him. Her warm brown eyes on his were compassionate. Kind. “Here. Take these.” She held out the pills.
Good enough. Kindness was all he could handle, anyway.
Raveaux took the pills and threw them back with a gulp of water. He drained the liquid and handed her the glass. “Thank you.”
He turned away and dropped his boxers. He walked forward into the frosted glass shower stall without looking back, and turned on the water.
Chapter Thirty-One
Sophie: Day Six, Night
Sophie sat on Raveaux’s bed in the lotus position and stared at the bathroom door, listening to the sound of water running.
Raveaux was in rough shape. Hopefully the shower, medication, and some rest would help.
Detective Fremont, Pellman’s young partner, had cynical dark eyes and an energetic manner. The young black man had grilled her thoroughly on who she was and all she knew about the case. She had seen no purpose in holding anything back, so had shared all she knew about the diamond heist and their mission in San Francisco. “Raveaux is my partner and works for Security Solutions. He didn’t tell me about today’s meeting, only that he had a contact he was going to reach out to.” She’d showed her ID and shared her business and case information, and then had to wait while he verified everything.
It had seemed like forever, sitting at Pellman’s cluttered desk, looking at his messy files and a few personal knickknacks, until Fremont and another detective verified her information and finally gave Sophie permission to take Raveaux home.
Sophie still had little idea of the precipitating incident that had killed Pellman and the diamond traffickers, and how events had come about—Fremont was good at asking her questions, but much less fair in providing her any intel in return. From what she could put together, Pellman had tracked Raveaux with a GPS after he deduced what Raveaux was doing, called Fremont for back up, and the two had walked into a meeting that was about to turn into a bloodbath.
She couldn’t wait to give Raveaux a tongue-lashing for leaving her out of such a vital meeting—not even telling her where he was going or what he was doing!—but she didn’t really have any justification for leaving him out of her trip to Bell’s. She had broken into the apartment, and Bell had held her hostage with a Taser. Her field trip could well have devolved into bodily injury, too.
Who knew that pursuing a set of missing diamonds would prove so deadly?
The shower stopped.
Sophie tried not to imagine Raveaux’s chiseled form as he stepped out of the shower, the water droplets rolling down his olive-tan skin.
It had taken all her willpower not to let him see that she noticed his body—but once he turned away and dropped his boxers, she’d enjoyed the view.
Raveaux had little body hair. Every muscle on his graceful frame was well-defined. His buttocks flexed like a pair of clenched fists as he walked. He was a human rapier, flexible, honed, and sharp.
And those haunted dark eyes! The weariness, the pain . . . She just wanted to pull him close. Make him forget.
Images of how to do that made her cheeks burn and her insides heat.
Raveaux opened the bathroom door, and started at the sight of her. He’d wrapped a fluffy white towel around his narrow hips. Clearly, he had not expected her to still be in the room.
Sophie kept her eyes firmly on his face. “Feeling any better? We need to talk.”
“I know.” He raised a hand to rub his eyes, grimacing. “Mind if I just put on a robe? I need to lie down. This medication is kicking my ass; it’s strong stuff.”
“Of course.”
He went back into the bathroom. Sophie walked over to the wet bar in the corner of the room. “I’m in need of a glass of wine,” she called. She rummaged in the little refrigerator. “There’s some apple juice in here. Probably would be good for you to get a little bump in your blood sugar.”
Raveaux had walked over to sit on the bed, wrapped in one of the hotel’s robes. “Sounds good.” His olive skin looked waxy against the bright white terry cloth. His eyes were both bright and too dark, his pupils tiny.
Sophie unscrewed the cap on the bottle of apple juice and held it out to him. “Drink it all. I’m calling for some food, too. You shouldn’t take that kind of medicine on an empty stomach.”
He nodded, then tipped back his head to drain the bottle of juice. She watched the flexing of his powerful throat, then turned away to peruse the menu on the side table. She picked up the phone and ordered room service, making her best choices for what she thought he’d like. She hung up the phone. “You’ll have to take what you can get with the hotel food, Raveaux.”
He sat, leaned forward, elbows on knees, a hand shading his eyes. He grunted. “I’m sure it’s fine. Thanks for ordering. I can’t think right now.”
Sophie returned to the wet bar and opened one of the mini-bottles of white wine stocked in the refrigerator. She poured the beverage into a plastic glass, and returned to sit beside Raveaux on the bed. “Start talking.”
She stiffened in surprise as Raveaux tipped over slowly until his head rested on her thigh. He drew his legs up on the bed beside her, his body curled and eloquent with silent pain. “Pellman died.”
“I know.” Sophie set the wine down on the side table. Her hand dropped to stroke the damp, dark curls away from his face. His eyes were closed, thick black lashes resting on high cheekbones, but his mouth was still tight. Sophie stroked the silver at his temples, enjoying the silky feel of his hair. Gradually, Raveaux’s mouth relaxed, falling open. His breath came easier.
Finally, he spoke. “I asked him if he had any last words for anyone. Any messages that he wanted me to pass on. He said he had nothing but the job.”
“That’s terribly sad.” She smoothed the feathered black line of Raveaux’s brow. “I liked Pellman.”
She didn’t know what else to say. Such a strange case. Somehow, in the course of it, they’d encountered two lonely, single older people dying with no meaningful connections to anyone. Clearly, that had affected Raveaux—and if she were truthful, it haunted her too.
“I didn’t know Pellman had planted a GPS in my messenger bag, and was tracking me. His partner pulled the bug out later and
showed it to me… I was looking for the diamonds through my friend Kim Hoo, and we found them with Kramer, the fence.”
Raveaux’s story came out haltingly: he had met his contact, a confidential informant he had worked with many times over the years. Hoo had taken him to Kramer’s apartment. Raveaux had positively identified one of the blue diamonds from the Finewell’s heist. Things had been progressing with some bumps when Pellman and his partner’s surprise arrival had precipitated the gunfight. “Pellman should have known better. He should have come with SWAT,” Raveaux said.
“He couldn’t have known he’d walk in on a group of heavily armed African diamond dealers,” Sophie said. “Who would expect that in San Francisco?”
“Still. Pellman should have talked to me.” Raveaux’s mouth tightened, regret digging deep lines beside his lips. “Not just tagged and tracked me like that. I would have let him in on the meeting.”
“No, you wouldn’t have. You would have implicated your CI if you’d done so.”
Raveaux stayed silent. A muscle ticked in his jaw. His eyelids twitched.
“You didn’t expect it to be what it was.” Sophie’s fingers smoothed down Raveaux’s cheek, stroking that corded muscle in his jaw. “It’s no one’s fault. These things happen when dealing with dangerous people. Besides, that raid may have cost Pellman his life, but those two cops took out four heavily armed men who likely did more crime than just deal in stolen diamonds. Not a bad way for Pellman to end his career.” She moved her hand away from the tempting danger zone of Raveaux’s mouth—how she wanted to touch his lips! See them soften, feel their stern but sensuous shape . . . she slid her fingers back into his hair, instead. “Perhaps Pellman died the way he wanted to—a hero, doing the job he loved. Not alone, in a hospital bed, from cancer.”
Raveaux turned, his face pressing deep into her pelvis. His downward-facing arm came around, hugging her buttocks, as his topmost arm encircled her waist. He rubbed his face back and forth against her thigh, a deliberate, sensual gesture.