by Dale Mayer
“Still should be a fairly open-and-shut case, with just a few insiders involved,” Stone said. “And, like you said, a lot are disgruntled family members.”
“The money alone to be gained would bring out all manner of lowlifes,” Merk said, sitting by Stone. Then Merk added, “But you put a family dynamic like that together—rich, successful, competitive—and you’re bound to get some hard feelings.”
“I’ve asked her about that,” Ice said. “It’s not that she’s reluctant to talk, but she is reluctant to bad-mouth anybody in the family. We understand that because honor is a big thing with us. However, to get to the bottom of this case …”
Dezi spoke up. “Then we need the truth. No matter how ugly.”
Ice looked at him and smiled. “Which is why you’ll be on this case.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Why is that?”
“Because you’re very good at getting to the bottom of all that’s dirty,” she said.
The others chuckled.
He stared at her. “I’m not exactly sure where that’s coming from. Outside of getting caught in a couple cases here with some pretty ugly bottom lines …”
“Exactly,” she said. “Ugly is a good fit for you.”
He groaned. “Not that I have anything against it, but I’m not a good fit with the diamond world. You know that, right?”
“You’ll have to clean up,” she said cheerfully. “And we’ll send Vince too. He cleans up real well.”
Vince snorted. “This sounds like fun. You’re gonna take two swamp dogs and stick them in with the diamonds?”
At that, the others laughed too.
Ice nodded. “Nobody’ll recognize you for anything other than what you are, so you won’t be mistaken as part of the glitter,” she said with a grin.
Levi walked in at that moment, stepping up to the front beside Ice, then speaking to the roomful of people. “You need to understand that Diamond is a friend. It’s not that she requires special handling, but you will treat her as a VIP client.”
Dezi’s heart sank.
Levi nodded at the look on his face. “We’re not asking you to use kid gloves when dealing with her, but we do need you to be as discreet as possible and to get to the bottom of this very, very quickly.”
“Where is she located?” Dezi asked.
“That’s another reason you were chosen,” Ice said. “She’s local. You’ve taken a lot of long-distance trips lately and could use a break. She’s in Houston.”
At that, he sat back and smiled. “Perfect. I’m in.”
Vince snorted. “Sure, but you should still get yourself into a three-piece suit to do the job.”
“Like hell.” Dezi shook his head. “She might be a diamond of the first order, but I’m a diamond in the rough. We’ll deal just fine, even if I’m wearing jeans and a T-shirt.” He turned toward Levi and Ice and added, “My best pair of jeans of course.”
*
Diamond received the computer link by email from Levi and Ice, not having had much luck previously with this online video chat process. Diamond followed Levi’s instructions and watched as her monitor filled with what appeared to be a conference room. And there were Levi and Ice. Diamond smiled with relief. “Hey, I wasn’t sure I could make all this technology work.”
Levi gave her the gentlest of smiles.
She’d always loved and respected that man. He had a heart of gold, and he and Ice were perfect together. It delighted Diamond to see the ring flash on Ice’s finger. The matching wedding band was in Di’s vault, still in progress, waiting for Levi’s final confirmation.
Diamond looked around the room; at least a couple dozen men sat around the tables. She became a little more formal and said, “Good morning. My name is Diamond Liechester.”
Two men at the back of one of the tables stood. “Good morning,” the first man said.
He was stocky, with big wide shoulders but that lean-and-mean tough look she always associated with Levi’s men.
“I’m Dezi, and this is Vince. We’ll be helping you on this case.”
She smiled. “Thank you. I hope we can resolve it fast,” she confessed. “I can’t have word of this getting out. If anybody were to suspect their pieces were forgeries, my business would go under immediately.”
Dezi shook his head. “You can count on all of us here to keep your secret,” he said, “but I do need all the data given to your private detective. And we also need information on your family.”
Her face twisted. “I’m not …” She turned to look at Levi. “Levi, isn’t that something you can handle on a more delicate level?”
“We still need that information,” he said gently. “I can guarantee you that such details won’t go past this room.”
She looked at the whole room and winced. “An awful lot of people are in there.”
Ice stepped forward. “They’re all our men, and they’re all guaranteed to be solid. You can’t tell us via this link anyway. What we’ll do is flag your emails for security, and only one or two of us will work on your family’s background, sharing it only with Dezi and Vince. I understand this isn’t something you would choose to go through if we didn’t need to. But, in this case, we do need to,” she said firmly. “We don’t want you sabotaged by a family member who you think is loyal.”
Diamond’s shoulders sagged. “I know,” she said softly. “That’s why I’ve come to you. I know everybody assumes it’s an inside job, but, for the life of me, I don’t believe it’s any of my employees or my sisters.”
Dezi spoke up again. “The courier company could also be involved.”
She looked at him in surprise and frowned. “How would that be possible?”
“Because, when you gave the piece to the courier, it was the original, right? When you got it back, it was a forgery. Is that not correct?”
She nodded. “But how would they have gotten the counterfeit piece?” And then her expression changed. “So you’re thinking the switch might have happened at the courier office. That makes a lot of sense. But how would they have gotten my design to begin with?”
Levi said, “I’ll get a couple of my best IT guys on this. I’m pretty sure someone hacked your computer network and likely your security system. Once they got the design sketch from you, they’d make a forgery with a good jewelry maker themselves. And then, knowing you’re shipping these pieces out and when—again probably by hacking your email or your ordering system—they could have the reproduction ready at the same time. Plus they get the double benefit of receiving the original piece.”
“Oh, good Lord,” Diamond said, rubbing her forehead. “You know I don’t like technology. It’s one of the reasons I make all my pieces by hand. I design them by hand too. But I know a lot of jewelry companies run everything through software.” She shook her head. “So you need to come here to my business?”
“We can,” Levi said. “I hate to say it, but I bet we can get into your computer network from here.”
She gasped. “That’s possible?” In the corner of the room she saw a very large, heavyset, bald man waving at her. “Stone …” Her face broke out in a grin. “How are you?”
“I’m fine, but I’d feel better if I hadn’t just accessed this.” He grabbed his laptop and walked to the front so she could see the screen displaying the ordering database from her own store.
Her heart sank. “That’s supposed to be confidential. How could you access it so easily?”
“Because I was looking for a hack job,” he said. “Once a door has been opened, it has to be closed very securely in order to stop somebody else from coming in behind the original hacker. Your network has definitely been compromised. We don’t want to close that loop until we know who has compromised it. Because, right now, while it’s wide open, or at least open enough, we should be able to track where that information has been coming from and where it’s going to.”
Chapter 2
Diamond ended the call. She sat back in her office chair and c
ould feel tremors racking her spine. While not technologically inclined, it had never occurred to her that somebody would hack her computer network, her ordering system. To think somebody was sophisticated enough to break through that was terrifying. Not to mention Stone had done it in the short time they’d been talking. She wondered what other damage the hacker had done. Panicked, she checked her bank account, relieved to see everything appeared to be normal there. That made no sense. Surely a hacker would go after the money. But, of course, several layers of encryption were involved with the online banking software. Probably not on her network.
Just to be sure, she changed her password and made it as convoluted as she could. Then she was forced to write it down and to put it somewhere safe so she wouldn’t forget it. “What the hell is the world coming to?” she muttered. “All I wanted was to make jewelry.”
When her success had taken off, with it had come all these extra problems. It had been tough even hiring her first assistant. Now she had a staff of five who relied on her for their monthly paychecks. It was daunting to think that, if Diamond went under, all those people’s jobs went under too. And yet, what was she supposed to do when somebody else was trying to take her work? Not only take her work, which would be a theft in itself, but to pawn off inferior work as her own. It was a sophisticated operation, and that scared her.
She hated the fact her family would come under a microscope, not to mention her employees. Diamond was pretty damn sure her employees were decent people but understood that was the logical place for Ice and Levi and their men to look. She did like Dezi’s suggestion about the courier company and noted down her reasons.
A) They were somebody she didn’t deal with on a personal level.
B) They had the opportunity.
C) They knew when her designs were shipped.
D) They had access to her original piece.
And that was huge.
Her phone rang. She glanced at her Caller ID and stopped the call coming through. The last thing she wanted was to talk to her sister—any of them. Diamond rarely spoke to them, and only recently had Emerald had shown any interest in Di. But then Emerald had married not too long ago and was now pregnant, so maybe that was why she was reaching out now. Since their father had had Diamond’s DNA tested and found out she wasn’t his genetic daughter, her sisters had ostracized her.
Not that Diamond didn’t want anything to do with Emerald, but it just seemed odd after so many years without any contact for her to suddenly be friendly, with a baby on the way or not.
These suspicious thoughts were now everywhere Diamond looked and added to her pain. It wasn’t who she was. She didn’t do people. She did jewels. To her, the gems were much more valuable and much more fascinating. People always let you down eventually, whereas, with diamonds, you knew exactly what you were dealing with from the beginning. They had the capacity to become something so much more than what they were when you first saw them. But, even if they didn’t, she would always accept the gems’ lack of clarity or their lack of jewel tones due to Di’s own skill—or lack thereof. She didn’t blame the diamond.
But, when it came to people, she didn’t understand them, and she never seemed to make the good things inside them shine. All she ended up with were strange relationships, like with her family. She’d been the odd duck from the beginning and knew they all felt the same about her.
Finding out your father isn’t your father, and hearing about it from your sister in a moment of spite, … well, it didn’t make for warm familial relationships. She looked like her sisters. She’d been named the same as the others. But since the DNA test had shown Diamond was another man’s child, Di’s life had not been the same. This secret was not discussed, except when her sisters were angry at her or when Diamond was at her lowest moments, feeling ostracized from the others. Her mother had walked away when Diamond had confronted her. And, if one of the girls wasn’t her father’s daughter, who could say for sure any of them were? Her mother had enjoyed many men.
It wasn’t Diamond’s fault her mother had had a dalliance, and her mother would say it wasn’t her own fault either because her husband had ignored her so much that she’d been forced to go elsewhere for some fun and excitement. Again something else Diamond didn’t understand. And still another reason she tried to avoid the whole family dynamic.
She’d found out when she had just turned sixteen—what a horrible time to have that dumped on a girl in the midst of her awakening hormones and the normal teenage angst and trying to fit in at school and with the added pressures of her family business and …
She and her father had managed to maintain a close bond. After her mother had failed to respond to Di’s questions about paternity and DNA, Diamond had not asked her father about the results, afraid then that her sisters would be tested, breaking her father’s heart again and again. Once she’d asked him point-blank how he would feel if he found out he wasn’t her birth father, and he’d looked at her with so much love in his gaze, as if he knew. But his response had been instant. “It wouldn’t make any difference in the way I feel. But you are mine so it’s not and never will be an issue.”
And that told her that her father didn’t know. Everything had changed for her then. At least in the beginning.
She’d been a little needier. Clingier. And much more interested in his business, as if to find a place for herself in his passion if not in his blood.
She had buried herself in her jewelry, finding the betrayal of her parentage hard and the jewelry something she could sink into and divert herself from this focus on her DNA. Now she butted up close to thirty, with a business of her own, her father still here in her life, even if their bond was different, and her mother, … well, her mother was no longer married to her father and was off gallivanting around Italy with some young guy from Rome. Whoever he was, he was the current flavor of the month.
Her sisters said they didn’t mind what her birthright was, but she didn’t believe them because they’d changed toward her. Laughing behind her back, making comments that hurt. She was no longer their full-blooded sister but an impostor, an observer, somebody who had access to the family money and connections and didn’t deserve them. Maybe if she’d been born to somebody her father had had a dalliance with, it would have changed things because it was his company, his family business. Not her birth mother’s business.
Diamond got up and walked toward her store’s safe. She only kept a small portion of her jewelry here at her shop. Pieces she currently worked on, pieces she needed supplies for. The rest were kept in part of the Liechester safes downtown. She used couriers to bring them back and forth, something she would have to rethink obviously.
She buried herself in her work for the next few hours.
When a knock came at her office door, she looked up, irritated at the interruption.
Sammy, her manager, poked his head around the corner and smiled at her. “You have company,” he announced.
“I don’t want company,” she said irritably. “Tell him to come back.”
“I did,” he said with a bright smile. And then it dimmed as he apologized. “But they won’t listen.”
A voice called from the other room. “Diamond, it’s Dezi and Vince.”
She sat back with a heavy sigh. “Let them in,” she said to Sammy. “And I’ll be busy for the next few hours.”
Surprise lit his dark-chocolate-colored eyes, but he bobbed his head in agreement, pushed the door open wider and stepped out of the way.
As she had seen earlier on her video chat with Levi and Ice, Dezi had one of those big square, tight frames. He had remarkably slim hips, but his shoulders were massive. He filled out his jeans … perfectly. He strolled into the room and stopped to look at her, and his eyebrows went up.
She frowned at him. “What?”
“Been working all morning, have you?”
She stretched and rotated her shoulders and back. “Yeah,” she confessed. “A little tired right now.” She glan
ced at Vince, who flashed her a bright grin.
“You might want to wipe the dirt off your face,” Dezi said.
She groaned, reached for the small mirror she always kept at work and glanced at herself. She grabbed a Kleenex and wiped her face. “Everybody thinks this is a clean business,” she said, holding up her hands to show the dirt and dust and solder. “But it’s quite the opposite.” She walked to the corner where she had a minikitchen with a sink and a stovetop and a teakettle. She glanced at the men. “Do you want a cup of tea?”
They both eyed her with interest.
“Coffee?” Dezi asked.
She shook her head. “Some is in the main office area in the break room.”
“What kind of tea?” Vince asked.
“Damn near anything you could think of,” she confessed. She opened up a cupboard with double doors to the right of her head, all filled with boxes upon boxes of tea. Both men walked over and nodded.
“Earl Grey for me,” Dezi said.
“And I’ll have English Breakfast,” Vince said.
She laughed. “Two black teas coming up. Just pull up some chairs to my desk.” She made the tea and brought it to them in cups with matching saucers. She smiled as Dezi’s huge fingers tried to pick up the teacup.
“I can probably find you a mug somewhere,” she offered.
“No, I’ll survive,” he said. “I can’t guarantee the cup will, mind you.”
That elicited a chuckle from her. She appreciated his sense of humor. She sat with her own cup of ginger tea and smiled. “You didn’t waste any time getting here. I appreciate that. Thank you.”
“Not an issue,” Dezi said. “The good thing is, you’re close enough for us to travel back and forth if we need to, but the plan is to stay at a nearby hotel overnight—a few nights perhaps.”