Secrets of Bella Terra

by Christina Dodd

  “No, no big deal. I’m in.”

  The kid was a genius. Geeky and literally living in his parents’ basement, but definitely a genius.

  “Downloading.” Darren grinned. “Your brother bought this program from a vendor who customized it for the hotel. Want to have some fun? We could have every occupied guest room call for K-Y jelly right now.”

  “It’s my family’s resort. I own some portion of it. So no.” But an amusing idea. “Just download the program, put me on as an administrator, and add it to my hard drive.”

  Darren sighed. “You old guys are so boring.”

  “I know. Sucks to be you.” Rafe thought it sucked to be an old guy, too. This morning when he got up (late), he had discovered his hip had a bruise on it so deep and painful, a mountain of ice wouldn’t have helped. Vaguely he remembered being thrown into the corner of one of the Beaver Inn’s fine tables; at the time he hadn’t noticed. Now . . . he noticed.

  “So are you going back to the hospital after they move your grandmother into rehab?”

  “How do you . . . ? Been hacking into hospital records?”

  “I thought you’d like to stay on top of stuff.”

  “They’re moving Nonna into rehab?” Good to know.

  “Because of the concussion, they don’t want her on her feet unless she’s supported. But because of her broken arm, she can’t use a walker unless she has training.” As he talked, Darren never stopped typing.

  “Haven’t you heard? We’re hiring a nurse.”

  Darren ignored the sarcasm, or maybe he heard it so often he didn’t notice. “Apparently the doc has been a friend of your family for a long time, and he says Nonna’s going to hate having someone wait on her and she’ll try to get up on her own and fall, and maybe break her other arm or a hip. So they need to train her to take care of herself, ASAP. Plus they’re going to make sure Bao and this new nurse are trained, too.”

  “Hm.” Rafe tapped his fingers on the desk, leaned back in the stained desk chair—and discovered one wheel had a glitch. He caught himself before he fell backward, muttered, “Noah, you cheap bastard,” righted himself, and said, “Darren, when you get done, would you run a profile for me?”

  “Sure. On who?”

  “The new nurse. Olivia somebody.”

  “Olivia Kelly. I did. Good nurse. No complaints. No criminal record. Want me to dig deeper?”

  “No.” Because he really was becoming a suspicious bastard. “That’s all I wanted to know.”

  Once Darren had downloaded the security program to Rafe’s computer, Rafe would be able to study the resort’s layout, view the videos, and check for any anomalies. Because in his experience, common criminals weren’t any too smart, and if Nonna’s attacker was on-site, Rafe intended to pick him out of the crowd. And punish him in ways DuPey would never approve.

  “Man, you look grim.” Darren had stopped typing and was staring at Rafe in fascination. “I’d hate to get on your bad side.”

  “Then hurry up,” Rafe told him.

  Darren went back to work.

  Rafe checked his cell.

  Still nothing from Kyrgyzstan.

  He wanted a progress report, damn it. This silence was ominous, and there were only a few reasons for it.

  The satellite transmitters were down.

  His men were fleeing with the helicopter pilot, Captain Stephanie Spence, and were afraid to give up their position.

  Or they were all dead.

  Rafe pinched the bridge of his nose—and winced.

  Yeah, Primo had landed a few punches there, too.

  Out of habit, he checked the desk drawer for any kind of information: passwords scribbled on a sticky note were not out of the ordinary.

  Nothing, not even a Gideon Bible.

  He looked under the desk, but under there it was merely cables and tape. He ran his fingers behind the computer—

  And behind him, the soundproofed door opened.

  Chapter 22

  Damn. Noah had caught him.

  Rafe swung around in the chair and met not Noah’s gaze, but that girl’s. The blonde. With the tits. The one he’d gone to high school with. And groped in the library. Gemma. No, Gloria. No . . . Jenna.

  Yeah. Jenna. Jenna Campbell. That was her name.

  “Whoa.”

  Rafe heard Darren’s heedless, whispered exclamation, and rolled the chair in front of his computer to block Jenna’s view of the gawking teenage geek. With a push of the key, Rafe muted the speakers and took Darren off the screen.

  “Hi!” She recovered fast, and smiled her cheerleader smile. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “No?” He lifted his eyebrows. Had she seen him breaking in and followed him with the intent of seeing whether she could wrestle him to the floor?

  But no. He’d been in here ten minutes. And either her surprise was real, or she was wasting herself working at a spa. She should be an actress.

  So why was she here?

  Jenna started chatting like a hostess with a reluctant guest. “I come in here when it gets to be too much at the spa. You know, when everyone is talking at me and nagging me for towels and two of the nail girls call in sick and . . . Oh.” She peered at him from large, guilty, fear-ridden eyes. “You won’t tell Noah I came in here, will you?”

  “I don’t know.” She looked so worried he didn’t hesitate to attack and see whether she turned tail and ran. “How did you get in?”

  “ ’Cause I’m the manager of the spa, I’ve got a master.” She showed him her key card.

  “The master doesn’t work for that door.” He’d checked.

  She looked shocked. “Mine does!”

  Okay. Picking the lock hadn’t been easy, he hadn’t heard her working it, and she had the key in her hand, so yeah, it wasn’t out of the realm of probability that her key had been programmed incorrectly.

  “So, why did you come here?” he asked.

  “I told you.” She fussed with her hair, then reached down and unbuttoned the third button of her golf shirt.

  The webcam was still on, and Rafe could almost hear Darren groan with lust.

  “They’re driving me crazy at the spa. I come in and play a little FarmVille, center myself again, and then go back into the fray.” She did that little dip like a Let’s Make a Deal spokesmodel.

  “Really?” She was playing a game on Facebook on the computer that ran the resort’s security cameras? And no one had caught on? Ever?

  Stranger things had happened, he supposed. But he was curious to see whether she accessed the Internet through some kind of glitch in their program, or if she had to work the system. He stood and rolled the chair in front of the keyboard. “Who am I to stop you?”

  “So you’re not going to tell on me?” She seated herself and tugged her shirt down to display yet more cleavage.

  Rafe hoped Darren’s fiery passion didn’t fry the cables.

  Jenna looked up at Rafe. “What are you doing in here?”

  Ah. Her little brain had jumped through the guilt hoop and had moved on to the possibility of blackmail. “I’m checking the resort’s security program.”

  “Is there something wrong with it?” She widened her eyes.

  “Not that I know of. Why? Have you had any problems in the spa?”

  “No . . . well, yes. Some of the girls steal the toilet paper from the storage closet. Can you make them stop?”

  He rubbed the bruises on his ribs. “No. Toilet paper has a way of disappearing, and there’s nothing any security man can do about it. Now, if the girls were stealing something important, like the hot stones for the massages, I might be able to help you.”

  Jenna laughed, a low, musical chime, and put her hand on his thigh. “I wish you could help me.”

  “I can.” Leaning over, he pulled the keyboard closer to her. “I don’t know much about Facebook games. Do you need the mouse, too?” He dislodged her hand, walked around to the other side of her, and handed her the mouse.
r />   She rotated her shoulders—an expensive stripper would be proud of the way those breasts swirled. Then, taking the mouse, she slowly moved it up and down on the pad.

  Subtle she was not.

  Taking the keyboard in her lap, she typed at an astonishing speed. Facebook flashed onto the monitor, then disappeared, then appeared again. “Oh. You make me so nervous.” She made a brokenhearted sound. “I can’t do this while you’re watching me.”

  “I’m sorry. I won’t watch anymore.”

  She pushed another couple of keys, then shook her head. “No, I can’t do this while you’re here. Anyway, I should go back to the spa. I’ve got an appointment with Mr. Edward Doherty. He likes me to give him his massage. He’s a boob man.” Leaning forward, she adjusted her breasts, and when she glanced up and caught Rafe watching—like he could look away—she trailed her hand down his hip and thigh. “I am awfully good on a massage table. Why don’t you make an appointment and try me out?”

  He stepped back to give her room to stand. “As soon as I have a free minute, I’ll do that.”

  She sauntered toward the door. Opening it, she looked back at him. “I bet you’ll make time pretty soon.”

  He smiled back, and when she’d shut the door behind her, he said, “I’ll bet I won’t.”

  Behind him, his computer blared, “Why not?”

  Obviously, Darren could control the volume on Rafe’s laptop from his end.

  “I don’t do sluts,” Rafe said. Brooke had taught him what a quality woman meant.

  “Do you have every hot chick in the world after your ass?” Darren shouted. “And how do I get in on this action?”

  “I guess you make an appointment for a massage.” Rafe made a note to place microphones in the massage rooms. If Jenna really was “good on the massage table,” and if word got out that the masseuses at Bella Terra resort were prostituting themselves, the resort and the spa would have a public relations nightmare unlike any since a similar scandal in the seventies. Ugh.

  “I live in Indiana!” Darren said.

  “That’s a long way to come for an easy piece of pussy.”

  “Jenna? You mean Jenna? She’s not easy. Is she?” Darren sounded bewildered and hurt.

  “What did you think that was all about?” Rafe looked at Darren’s crestfallen face.

  Oh, no. The kid was a virgin.

  “Yes, she’s easy,” Rafe said brutally. “She’s always been easy. And she only does it with guys who have money or influence.”

  Rafe could almost hear Darren’s heart breaking. “But she’s so pretty!”

  “She’s a mercenary.” His grandmother had used a harsher term about Jenna. “Now—what was she doing on the computer? I saw Facebook flash up on the monitor.”

  “Um. Yeah. Uh . . .”

  “You didn’t check her keystrokes?”

  “I can go back and pick up her keystrokes.” Darren sounded less ardent and more intent. “Yeah. She was on Facebook. Yeah, she plays the games. Yeah, her profile picture is hawt.”

  “But was that all she did on the computer?”

  “There were a couple of extra keystrokes, but she types one hundred and thirty-five words a minute. When she’s that fast, she’s going to make some mistakes.”

  “Follow the stray keystrokes and make sure she didn’t mess with anything.” Because the way Jenna fawned on him made Rafe suspect ulterior motives. Not that that was necessarily true—he’d had women fawning on him all his life. But she was so sleazy about it he wanted her to be guilty.

  Darren was still as whirly eyed and infatuated as a cartoon character. “I videoed almost every bit of that luscious body from the time she walked in to the time she walked out.”

  Forbiddingly, Rafe asked, “Did you place the Bella Terra security program on my computer?”

  “Yes, sir!” Darren gave him a military salute.

  “Good. I’ll let you know when I need you again. In the meantime, try not to get your ass arrested. I don’t want to go looking for a new hacker.”

  “They’re not going to catch me. I do a good background check before I ever take a job, and I don’t take stupid chances.”

  Rafe thought about Jenna and her advances, about his responsibilities to his grandmother, about Noah’s resentment and Eli’s aloof anxiety. About the story DuPey had told him about Brooke, his admission that he knew Brooke had lied about the murder she was supposed to have committed . . . about how Brooke had moved on with her life, and didn’t need Rafe to complete her. “You’re a smart guy,” he said to Darren. “Never, ever take stupid chances. Stupidity hardly ever pays off.”

  Chapter 23

  It had been one of those days.

  In the hotel business, they happened frequently. A guest’s kids had put the plug in the tub, plugged the overflow drain, turned on the water, and left it running. The parents had been apologetic, but that didn’t solve the problem of an overflow so huge it ran out of the bathroom, soaked the bedroom carpet, leaked through the light fixtures into the room below, soaked the bed and carpet, and finally brought down the ceiling to ruin that guest’s clothing and suitcases. With two suites out of commission, rooms had to be juggled, tempers soothed, insurance adjusters called.

  Brooke had been up late the last couple of nights: posting bail for the Di Luca boys, then handling a crisis with a grown man who had picked up a garter snake out of the flower beds to show his kids and been bitten. He’d been surprised and indignant. She’d considered it proof that all men were stupid, although perhaps seeing the bruised, beaming Di Lucas around the resort had had something to do with her mind-set. She was tired, she was cross, she had about one nerve left, and everyone was standing on it. So when she took the elevator down to the lobby from the soppy mess that was the lower guest room, and her pager went off and the cell rang at the same time, she glanced at the cell—it was Rafe—and decided to deal with the pager instead.

  The page was Madelyn’s; it said, Lost diamond. Honeymoon Cottage, Millionaire’s Row.

  Surely to God finding a lost diamond would be easier than talking to Rafe about . . . whatever it was he wanted to talk about. He was so . . . intense. When he looked at her, he stared as if all of her secrets had been stripped away, and next up—her clothes.

  Worse, every time she saw him, she was glad. Pleased by the way he moved, by his dark hair and blue eyes. Pleased to hear his voice and know he was near. That pleasure was nothing but a hangover from her high school infatuation, and she scoffed at herself every time. Nevertheless, when he walked by, her heart trilled.

  Sweden was looking better all the time.

  Brooke started toward Millionaire’s Row.

  But her rotten luck held—she met Rafe on his way in.

  Heart trill.

  “You didn’t answer your phone.” The muscles beneath the T-shirt were sculpted, as if he’d been to the gym this morning.

  She brushed her bangs off her forehead. Summer’s heat had arrived early: good for business, tough when a woman wore a black suit as part of her professional image. “Dandy to see you, too.”

  He didn’t get the hint. “Why didn’t you tell me there’s a motorcycle on the property?”

  “A motorcycle?” She tried to think. Tried to think of something besides how good he looked in faded jeans and a clean T-shirt. No wonder Jenna Campbell had started following him around.

  Not that Brooke cared. “On the property? Where . . . ? Oh.”

  “Oh?” Rafe gave that Gerard Butler mocking half sneer. Maybe because it hurt to give a whole smile.

  Amazing how quickly Brooke’s pleasure turned to irritation. “It didn’t occur to me. Because the motorcycle—it’s Noah’s.”

  “Noah’s?” Obviously, she’d startled him. “What does Noah have a motorcycle for?”

  “To try to smash his brains all over the pavement. I don’t know!” She took a breath. “Because when he goes up to the vineyards, he likes to ride with Eli. But Noah is more than a little protective of his to
y. The motorcycle’s in a locked garage with security sensors. That can’t be the motorcycle that went up to Nonna’s. . . . Wait.” She stared at him more closely. “How did you find out about it?”

  “I was looking for a motorcycle and I broke into the garage.”

  She looked at her pager. “The alarm didn’t go off.”

  “The alarm wasn’t set.”

  “If Noah hadn’t set the alarm, the backup would have notified us.”

  “That alarm system is only going to keep out casual thieves. Apparently someone with the know-how tinkered with the alarm.”

  She stopped and stared at him, at his fading bruises and his hard, cold eyes. “Or someone had the code.”

  “Or someone had the code,” he agreed.

  “That is the motorcycle Nonna’s attacker used to get to the home ranch?”

  “That’s it.”

  You’re sure? But she didn’t ask. Because of course he was sure. “Have you told Noah?”

  “No. No one saw me go in. No one saw me come out. We’re going to keep it that way.”

  “Right. Because whoever it was might come back to use it again.” She felt foolish for admitting it, but she had to say, “I know how to ride a motorcycle.”

  “I remember.”

  She’d made him teach her in high school. “So I’m a suspect.”

  “You never weren’t a suspect.” His hair looked damp, as if he’d recently showered. He smelled good, too, like the resort’s orange spice soap.

  Sweden. Sweden. Sweden.

  Maybe Norway.

  Or maybe she should just concentrate on how much he annoyed her. “Why tell me about the motorcycle, then?”

  “I wanted to know why you hadn’t told me about it when it strengthens the case against you.”

  Her pager buzzed. She glanced down. Madelyn again, a little more frantic. “Look. I don’t have time for this now. I’ll talk to you later, but you know, if you’re determined to distrust me, there’s not a lot I can do about it.” Once again she headed toward the Honeymoon Cottage, leaving Rafe staring after her.