by Tessa Vidal
“Yes, your honor.”
Sims and I said the same words at the same time, but he resented them more. The judge could fine us for contempt of court, and the notorious criminal defense attorney had all his cash invested in his bespoke suits and blonde wife.
He cleared his throat. “Special Agent Rales, I'm concerned about the chain of custody.”
I allowed a small, deniable sneer to flicker across my mouth. This case was a slam dunk― one of the strongest I'd seen during my time at the FBI as a specialist in art, antique, and gemstone crime. So strong that my lead prosecutor refused to offer a deal to Sims's client, model/actress Patsee Easton.
The chain of custody was unbroken from the moment I spotted the nine-carat Stroganov Alexandrite. It had been hidden in plain sight, sparkling from the collar of Easton's Tibetan Mastiff puppy.
Sims wasn't winning this time.
“Do you actually have a question, Mr. Sims?” asked the judge. “If not, I suggest you sit down. I won't tolerate speechifying in my courtroom.”
“Ms. Rales...”
I narrowed my eyes. The judge did too.
“Erm, Special Agent Rales has testified that the stone she removed from Yukon's collar was the same stone she later identified in the lab as the Stroganov Alexandrite.” It was March. Was Sims actually getting to his question before Christmas? “However, as we now all know, alexandrite is a frequently counterfeited gem.”
We all knew that because I found the cutter Easton hired to create an exact duplicate of the stone. The cutter hadn't questioned it at the time. Many people in Los Angeles had copies made so they could wear the fake and keep the real stone secured in a bank box to slash their insurance cost.
Easton shifted where she sat at the defendant's table. Dressed by her lawyer in a collared prairie dress, her face scrubbed and her thick blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, she looked more like a fifties-era Sunday school teacher than a bumbling insurance scammer. She claimed she wanted the fake made for her dog's collar so the two of them could go out in public in matching stones.
Yeah, sure. That's why the real stone was in the collar.
I raised an eyebrow at the judge, and Sims talked faster.
“I have very grave concerns that the stone tested in the FBI labs is not the same stone Special Agent Rales confiscated from the dog.”
Still not a question. Bustamante was letting him hang himself.
He could read a room better than anybody. Time to fish or cut bait. With his own small, deniable sneer, he looked at the jury instead of me. “Special Agent Rales, is it not true that you have extensive experience working as a street magician under the name of Kitty Kait? Is it not true you have the ability to...”
Both FBI attorneys screamed to their feet.
“Objection, relevance.”
“Objection, badgering the witness.”
Bustamante banged her gavel. “The jury will disregard the last question. And you, Mr. Sims, will see me in my chambers after this session.” He'd all but accused me of switching the stones myself, but at least the nasty insinuation was going to cost him.
Sims made his face into a blank. “Yes, Your Honor.”
The judge banged the gavel even louder. “Silence! I will have silence in the courtroom. Now!”
Sims and I realized at the same time this ongoing stir wasn't even about us. Everybody had turned toward the open door at the back. A deputy was helping a woman locate the single empty seat. And not just any woman.
The kind of woman who made women and men alike forget how to breathe.
Twenty-six years old. Perfect creamy skin. Her hair a tumble of auburn. Her tall, lithe figure as graceful as a ballerina's but infinitely more shapely.
Clarissa Stanton.
Movie star.
Dressed down for a day off, she looked no less glamorous than she did with her face ten feet wide on a theater screen. The jeans cost a thousand dollars, as anyone who followed the popular Hollywood brands on Instagram already knew. The ivory blouse matched to the ivory jacket probably cost another few thousand.
As always, it was the gem that caught my eye― a four-inch banded brown-and-carnelian agate slab with a hole drilled through it. A beige leather thong secured it around her swanlike neck. It was natural, not one of those garish pink dye jobs, but you'd look hard for a way to spend more than a few hundred dollars on even the finest natural Brazilian agate.
Reverse snobbery, I thought. A statement.
People were remembering how to catch their breaths. Some of them renewed their whispers into the ears of their companions.
“Silence in the courtroom.” The judge banged her gavel yet again, and judges don't appreciate doing anything yet again. “One more word from any of you, and I will have you all removed.”
Stanton, nodding and smiling at the deputy, settled into the place that had so obviously been reserved for her. The man seated at her elbow looked as if he'd just won the lottery. The deputy retreated. The flame-haired beauty stared straight ahead at the front of the room.
Correction. She stared straight at me. Not so odd, since I was the current occupant of the witness box. No reason to feel as if she was looking into me.
No reason at all for that butterfly in my stomach.
Most other people returned their attention to the front as well. A few― entertainment reporters, from the look of their hipster beards and three-hundred-dollar jeans― slipped silently out the still-open back door. They'd been waiting for this moment. Their articles were probably pre-written, ready to be slapped online so they could promote their links instantly on Twitter and Facebook.
Hell, the clickbait headlines had probably been assigned by their editors days before.
Clarissa Stanton in court to support ex accused of insurance fraud.
Clarissa Stanton still believes, “My girl is innocent.”
Clarissa Stanton attempts to confront FBI agent who cracked Stroganov gemstone case.
By now, I could have written all the headlines myself. I'd never been a reporter, but I knew the score. A big trial in California wasn't like a big trial in any other state.
It was show business.
By the time the room settled down enough to allow us to continue, Sims's questions were an anti-climax. Once again, I described the critical moment when I scratched Yukon's fluffy head and realized I was looking down at the supposedly stolen alexandrite. The jurors jolted awake by Stanton's arrival were starting to nap on their benches again. They'd heard it all before. More observers left the courtroom. The reporters had heard it all too.
“Where is the counterfeit now, Special Agent Rales?”
Was he trying to dance back around to the taboo topic of the talented Kitty Kait? I shrugged. “The FBI didn't recover the counterfeit. There was no reason to. The counterfeit was not insured.”
He flourished a piece of paper I didn't need to read. The search warrant executed on Easton's home.
“Yes,” I said. “The counterfeit is listed as one of the items we were searching for.”
“You might wait for me to ask the question first, Special Agent.”
“I might if it didn't take you fifteen minutes to formulate a question.”
Our exchange of glares was cut short by the judge's gavel.
Clarissa Stanton appeared to be studying the back of Patsee Easton's head. The skin under that prim and proper ponytail must be burning.
Easton's current partner, a forty-seven-year-old producer with alleged ties to the Russian mob, had yet to show his face in this courtroom. He'd given her the stone for what he thought was her twenty-fourth birthday. After her arrest, he learned she was thirty and preferred women. The tabloids had a field day, and he decided it was a good time for an extended visit to the old country.
Nobody needed him to make our case. The facts were simple. After learning from her insurance appraiser what the stone was worth, Easton decided to cash in by reporting it stolen. While fumbling around for a buyer on the dark web
, she stashed it in plain sight on the rhinestone collar of a Tibetan Mastiff puppy named Yukon.
Don't ask me why anybody would think that was a good idea. Maybe she'd read, “The Purloined Letter,” too many times when she was an impressionable child.
The FBI came in because the insurer thought the Russian might be involved. Gemstone fraud was a growth industry in a world where rising billionaires had fortunes to be laundered.
But this particular scam was too idiotic to be a professional job. I hoped Stanton wasn't dreaming about a happy reunion with her larcenous ex anytime soon.
After I was dismissed from the witness box, I didn't hang around. There were always other cases that demanded my attention. As I paused at the law enforcement exit to pick up my phone and my weapon, I felt a hand on my shoulder.
“Bailey.” I said her name before I even turned around.
“Ronnie.” Bailey looked good. Damn her. She'd been lifting again. “Let's grab a coffee.”
“Let's not and say we did. I can't keep doing this.”
“We're good together. You know we are.”
“Good at taking each other for granted. Good at being each other's backup plan when we've got nothing better going.”
When she had nothing better going.
“Fourteen years, Ronnie. You're going to throw away fourteen years like it was nothing?”
Pointless to argue. Walking faster, I headed out.
My driver had already pulled the sedan around, and a uniformed police officer had the back passenger door open. There were the usual microphones and flashing cameras, but I hurried past as if I saw nothing.
The officer closed the door behind me with one hand while shooing off the reporters with the other.
My driver was already pulling into traffic.
It was as slick a getaway as I'd ever had.
Except for the woman sitting in the back seat.
Clarissa Stanton. Movie star.
Chapter Two
Clary
Beating an FBI special agent to her own car was easier than I expected. My favorite entertainment reporters had already been tipped off, so they didn't have to tail after me the way they usually did. As for the crime reporters waiting for Veronica Rales, fuck crime reporters. My dark sunglasses let me whisk by them without blinking an eye to acknowledge their existence.
“Oh, no, no, no, fuck, no.” Veronica didn't sound all that pleased to see me.
“Surprise.” I smiled and batted my eyelashes. “I checked in with your field office first. Special Agent in Charge Matt Dau...”
She bit me off. “Look, you can't be in here. Regardless of what you think the SAC said.”
“I don't ‘think’ Matt said anything. I know what he said.”
“Matt?” Her eyes narrowed. At thirty-four, those eyes crinkled with experience as well as natural intelligence. “So it's like that. You're on a first name basis. Or you'd like me to believe you are.”
She was a force in a crowded courtroom. Up close, even more so.
Twelve years ago, she'd been a tall, athletic, and conventionally pretty brunette. Almost a girl next door type. Now, she'd matured beyond pretty into beauty. Her cheekbones were more defined. So, I suspected, were her FBI-trained muscles.
If only fate hadn't destined us to be enemies.
“You're welcome to call Matt and confirm for yourself.”
It was a risk, sitting this close to Veronica. A tiny risk. Nobody ever confused Malory Maine, a long-vanished model who would now be thirty-two, with a twenty-six-year-old movie star. Nobody ever thought about Malory Maine at all. She was one of those sad stories, a girl who came to Hollywood to make it big but instead disappeared in a cloud of suspicion.
If there was some superficial resemblance between me and Malory, so what? There was also a strong superficial resemblance between me and Rita Hayworth, a star who had died years before Clarissa Stanton was ever born. Hell, there was an even stronger resemblance between Clarissa and Nicole Kidman, the Rita Hayworth of my mom's generation.
Hollywood operated on types. The blonde bombshell. The sultry brunette.
I was the glamorous redhead.
“I'm a federal agent providing testimony about your girlfriend's involvement in a federal crime. You cannot be in contact with me. You cannot be in this car.” She leaned forward. “Woody, can you pull over as soon as possible to let out our hitchhiker?”
“We still have reporters on our tail, ma'am. Some of them saw Ms. Stanton get in the car, which may have encouraged them to follow.”
“Fuck, fuck!” She looked back.
So did I. At least two of the vehicles behind us were news vans. They shouldn't have been able to keep up with an experienced FBI driver, but that's LA traffic for you.
I smiled. Publicity stunts don't work out so well if you don't get any publicity.
“You are in so much fucking trouble.” Dark eyes flashing, Veronica turned to me. “I don't know what SAC Dauphin thinks he's doing, but this is obstruction of justice. You are not going to create a mistrial for your girlfriend.”
“Not. My. Girlfriend.”
“What?”
“How many times do I have to say it? Patsee was not my girlfriend. She was never my girlfriend. She was a friend friend. Not even that, really. An acquaintance. One of those social climbers who swirl around you once you get a hit movie or two under your belt.”
For the first time, Veronica looked at my face like she was really looking at me. Into me. Instead of looking at the shell.
That jolted me. Even scared me.
That night in the gold limo. Her leg against my leg. The memory of that, the long electric sensation of our two bodies pressed together...
If Veronica remembered...
But no. She wouldn't, she couldn't. Clarissa Stanton was twenty-six. She would have been fourteen years old when twenty-year-old Malory Maine sat in that limo with twenty-two-year-old Veronica Rales.
The special agent would never have a reason to link the two of us together.
“Can we start over?” I put out my right hand. “I'm Clarissa Stanton. Call me Clary.”
She eyed my hand warily. Gave it a single firm shake and let it drop. “I'm Special Agent Rales of the FBI. You can call me Special Agent Rales.”
“Yes, I know. I heard the judge giving the beat-down on that lawyer when I was walking in.”
“Sims is the world's biggest jerk.”
“It's his job to be a jerk,” I said. “If he can get a rise out of you, cast some doubt on your testimony, he can make it look like you're out to get her. Los Angeles juries can be sympathetic to that. We know about police wrong-doing.”
I shouldn't have said all that. Everybody hates defense attorneys. And probably nobody hates them more than the FBI.
“You sure you're not the girlfriend? Because you're starting to sound an awful lot like the girlfriend.”
“I'm not anybody's fucking girlfriend, all right? It's just that everybody deserves a strong defense.”
“I do know the theory. Tell me again, if you ever managed to tell me the first time. Why exactly are you in my car, Ms. Stanton?”
“Thanks to this shitty case, we both have a publicity problem that needs to be addressed.”
Malory Maine had brown eyes. Clarissa Stanton has green eyes. Time to bat them at the sexy agent.
Veronica took a sharp breath. “You have a publicity problem. I'm about to tick off another win and another promotion.” The words were harsh, but her tone was a little softer. I was getting to her.
I hoped.
“All right. I have a problem. The thing is, I did nothing wrong, and yet somehow my name got pulled into your case.”
“I'm sorry about that.” Her voice softened some more. “The FBI has no control over what the tabloids write, but I can see how it's upsetting.”
“Every single time they cover this trial, they have to throw in a line about how I'm the ex-girlfriend of the accused, and I'm just... not. We w
ent on one date, and she built on that, using my name to get jobs or dates or whatever. She's been selling stories about our relationship that were completely invented.”
That fucking famous date. We'd left the club by the super-secret VIP exit, only to get a flash popping off in our eyes before we had both feet out the door. I put a hand in front of my face, but the damage was done. Patsee tried to look as upset as I was. Bullshit. Someone tipped off that photographer, and it sure the fuck wasn't me.
And, of course, he'd signed the damn photo with a stock agency. Every news service in the world could buy the right to run it any time they got the urge to describe Patsee Easton as Clarissa Stanton's ex-girlfriend.
“That isn't a crime, that's a civil matter,” Veronica said.
“I'm not asking you to put Patsee in jail for lying to the tabloids.” This should have been easy. Why wasn't it easy? “I need your help.”
“I'm not in any position to help you.” She was talking right over me. “It might be hard to hear it, but your best play is to distance yourself from this case. Don't visit the courtroom, and don't get in my car. You are your own worst enemy, Ms. Stanton. You're helping to create your own rumors.”
“Please,” I said. “Hear me out. I've got a real problem here.”
“And I'm telling you that if you get out of this car, you don't have a problem. Look. I'm not allowed to discuss an open case with you, but I can tell you that you're not the focus of an FBI investigation. The tabloids may be pulling you into this trial, but the FBI knows you weren't involved.”
She didn't have to tell me. If that was happening, I'd already know.
Because they'd already know I used to have another name and another set of papers.
It's Hollywood. There isn't one fucking thing wrong with changing your name and your age to get a second chance at the game. There's nothing the least bit criminal about that. But law enforcement officers have their own ideas. And I was well aware the younger identity I'd bought would never withstand serious FBI scrutiny. Fingerprints can't be changed.