The Beachside Cafe (Saltwater Secrets Book 3)

by Sage Parker

  Jaymee moved around the room, looking for anything that might help them tell where the man was or his condition. She saw no blood spatters or stains, which she felt was probably a good thing.

  “Hey.”

  She turned her head when Cheyenne said the word. Her daughter was standing at the tray table still, one finger on a pad of paper. “Hey, I think there might be something here.” She looked over her shoulder at Cameron and Jaymee. “I think there’s something written on this paper. Look.”

  She grabbed a pencil from beside the pad of paper while Cameron and Jaymee came over to peer over her shoulder. She rubbed the lead of the pencil back and forth over the blank paper until an address appeared that had been embedded in the paper.

  “Look at that. 748 Sycamore. Do you know the address?” She looked at each of them. They both shook their heads.

  “I’ll bet that’s where they took him. Or maybe he went there willingly. Maybe he was out when they got here and discovered the place like this when he got back. Maybe he found this address on the paper and decided to go there and confront whoever did this.”

  Jaymee was skeptical. “He didn’t look like the adventurous type to me.”

  She picked up the phone on the tray table, only a little surprised that the man had a land line. She didn’t know many people who had one in their home anymore. Giving Cameron a curious look, she pressed *69. “It used to work,” she said to his grin.

  A sound Jaymee hadn’t heard for some time came through the receiver. The service was not available. She twisted her lips and bit the inside of her cheek, thinking. Then she pressed the redial button.

  Chewing on her bottom lip, she waited as the line rang on the other end. Her eyes shot to Cameron’s face when the call was answered.

  “Dylan Lianetti’s office. Marianne speaking. How can I help you?”

  Chills rolled over Jaymee’s skin and she swiftly hung up, pressing the buttons down first so it wouldn’t sound like she’d slammed it down.

  “Who was it?” Cameron asked, curiously.

  “It was Lianetti’s office,” Jaymee said incredulously. “So far, everything is leading back to that man. He’s responsible for something. I just know it.”

  “He’s probably responsible for it all,” Cheyenne said. “Even Dad’s disappearance.”

  “We should go check out that address,” Cameron said.

  “Before the police get here?” Jaymee asked. “Shouldn’t we wait?”

  “I don’t think so.” Cameron’s voice was stern. “I think we need to get there as quick as we can. Russo could be in danger. He’s already been a lab rat once. We can’t let that happen to him again.”

  Jaymee nodded. “You’re right.” She turned to her daughter. “Will you stay here and wait for the cops? Tell them where we’ve gone, though. Can you do that?”

  “Of course. I don’t have a problem with that.”

  “Jaymee.”

  She turned when Cameron spoke her name. The way he said it made her chest tighten with anxiety. Cameron was moving across the room quickly. He went into the small kitchen, grabbed a paper napkin from a stack by the refrigerator and swept up something into his hand.

  “Look,” he said, emphasizing the word. He held out his hand. Resting on top of the napkin was a clear vial. A small amount of liquid was in the bottom.

  “Good Lord,” Jaymee said, her eyes snapping back up to his face. “We have to get there now! Right now! Doug might be there!”

  Cameron nodded. “That’s what I was thinking, too.”

  “Send the cops to us as soon as they get here!”

  “I’ll call Lou on the way. Maybe they’ll detour and get there at the same time. Sycamore isn’t very far away. I know it’s in the business district though. The factory business district, not the wall street business district.”

  Jaymee nodded. She and Cameron raced out the door, down the stairs and out to his car.

  Cameron tried not to drive too much over the speed limit. He called Lou as they were pulling out onto the street and informed him what was going on.

  They got to the address ten minutes later. It was an old abandoned building by an ocean outlet. A water wheel pumped the water into an underground irrigation system nearby, making a tremendous amount of noise as it probably hadn’t been oiled in decades.

  Cameron ran around the car to her and pulled on her arm. “That thing needs some WD-40,” he said. “Come on.”

  “Are you armed?” Jaymee asked, hesitating to go in the huge warehouse with the broken windows and rusted metal walls. “We… what if…”

  Cameron nodded. “I’m armed. I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise.”

  Jaymee followed Cameron in. The place was empty other than debris and old furniture. And a man, hanging by the neck, all the way on the other side near the water wheel.

  “Good Lord,” Jaymee cried. She and Cameron raced to the man. Once there, Cameron wrapped his arms around Russo and lifted, taking the tension away from his neck.

  “Hold him there while I get him down!” Jaymee grabbed a chair that was on its side and set it up under Russo’s feet. She used half of it to climb up and remove the noose from around Russo’s neck.

  “Is he alive?” Cameron asked from below her. She touched her fingers to the side of the man’s neck and waited for a pulse.

  “He has a pulse!” she announced. “It’s barely there but it’s there. We gotta get him to a hospital! Come on!”

  TEN

  The café was buzzing. Jaymee looked around, satisfied by the smiles and cheerful chatter she heard around her. She took a big tray of drinks to her table and set it down on the edge, taking a glass and setting it in front of each of her friends.

  “Here you go. And you. And you. And especially you.” She set the last cocktail down in front of a recovering Carmine Russo, who hadn’t left them alone since they saved him from certain death two days before.

  Alex, Cheyenne and Cameron had joined him at the Saltwater Café to celebrate his recovery.

  “Thank you so much, Jaymee,” Russo said, lifting the glass and saluting her with it. He took a large gulp from it and set it down with a content look. “That is delicious. Thank you.”

  “You’re very welcome.” Jaymee set the tray on an empty table nearby and slid into the booth to sit next to Cameron. “I’m just glad you got out of all that with only an arm in a sling and some bruises around your neck. They must not have really been trying to kill you. Maybe they just wanted to scare you.”

  “I don’t know but I’m grateful to the two of you for finding me.”

  “So you didn’t see who took you like that?” Cheyenne asked curiously, taking small sips from her martini.

  “Nope. Unfortunately I didn’t. I don’t even know how it happened. I got home and saw that place looking like that and got jumped from the back.” He looked at Jaymee. “You say whoever did this called Lianetti and that’s what led you to where I was?”

  “Yep. He left the address imprinted on the piece of paper below the one he wrote on. It was Cheyenne who found that, you know.”

  “And there was another one of those vials in your apartment, too,” Cameron added.

  “I didn’t get stuck by anything,” Russo said. “No needle marks. Didn’t feel anything. Got a bump on my head, though.”

  “Do you know what’s in those vials?” Jaymee asked.

  They had taken the vial they found to Alex, who said that it was yet another strain of the concoction of the other two, with slight changes. He couldn’t tell them how it had been administered to Russo without injection but somehow they’d managed to do it.

  “All I know is that those clear bottles were used in all the experiments. Some had placebos in them. Some had a drug of some kind. Maybe a narcotic. Maybe a hallucinogen. Could have been anything.”

  “So the tests weren’t just physical. They were mental, as well. They were testing how people would react when they weren’t given anything at all but were told
they had been.”

  Russo nodded. “I wasn’t lying when I told you I worked there as a researcher. But the company destroyed me. They took everything from me and turned me into a lab rat along with all the others. It was to keep me quiet. When Doug started blackmailing me, Lianetti said I was no longer an asset and threw me out on the street. That’s how I got to be where I am now.”

  “Do you know what they were searching for in your apartment?” Jaymee asked.

  Russo shook his head. “Not a clue. I guess they might think I’ve got some documents hidden or something. I said I did in my lawsuit.”

  “Do you?”

  Russo snorted. “Of course. I’m not stupid. But that also means I’m not going to keep them in that stinking apartment. I’m much better off with those papers being in a nice safe, secure place. They won’t be found, that’s for sure. But now I can’t go back to those apartments. I can’t go back to my place. They’ll just come for me again. I’ve been staying at a hotel but I really don’t have the money for that.”

  “Well, I’m moving out of the house soon,” Cheyenne said. Jaymee’s eyes shot to her daughter’s face, chills racing over her skin. “Maybe you could be a roommate for my mom.”

  Russo’s mouth fell open in surprise. He turned his gaze to Jaymee. “I met your mother two days ago. I don’t think she or Cameron would be agreeable to a situation like that.”

  “Actually,” Jaymee said, an idea forming in her mind. “There is a small sort of apartment attached to the north side of the house. I don’t see why you couldn’t move in there. I would charge a reasonable rate. But you’ll have to get yourself a job.”

  Russo looked around the café. “You hiring?”

  A huge smile spread across Cameron’s face and Jaymee nodded. “I think we are hiring, as a matter of fact.” She gave her daughter an admiring look. “You’re sweet for thinking of that, Cheyenne.”

  Her daughter shrugged. “I don’t want you to be alone, Mom. Even if you do have Cameron. Like you said, he has his enormous mansion to go home to every night.”

  Cameron raised his eyebrows, moving his gaze between mother and daughter. “Am I hearing this right? You two have been discussing me behind my back?”

  “We never ever have anything better to talk about, Cameron,” Jaymee responded, lifting her glass to him.

  He laughed and raised his to her. “That’s what I thought.”

  They all laughed at that.

  “I like the idea of you working here, Russo,” Jaymee said, nodding. “That way I can really keep an eye on you. And you’ll be safer here and at my house anyway. They won’t know where to look for you.”

  “Might be a good idea to change your name for any correspondence,” Alex suggested. “It’s easy to find people these days when they attach every single thing to their cell phone and home address.”

  “I don’t have a cell phone,” Russo said. “IDL was harassing me, not to mention D…” he hesitated. “Doug. He was harassing me, too. I didn’t have any money to give him. So he made me do other things instead.”

  It was the first time Jaymee was hearing that. She glanced at her daughter, who seemed as interested by Russo’s words as she was. She wondered if Cheyenne had given up hope that her father was a good man who would return to his wife and daughter.

  Well, his ex-wife and daughter.

  “What other things did he make you do?” she asked.

  “Nothing too bad, really,” Russo replied, thoughtfully. “I had to do some of the drop-offs and pick-ups for him. You know the vials, the blackmail money, that kind of thing. I didn’t have to give him a dime as long as I did that stuff for him. And since I needed all the money I had to eat and pay my rent, I was grateful for it.”

  “What was he blackmailing you about anyway?” Cheyenne asked curiously.

  “He knew I was suing the company and threatened to tell them I had been behind some of the failed experiments that caused damage to the people in the trials. I wasn’t responsible. But he forged some documents with my signature, which he got while he was working at IDL. Once he showed those to me, I knew I was ruined. IDL had already taken everything from me. Now Doug was finishing me off. I’m surprised I wasn’t hanging by the neck of my own accord.”

  “You’re a strong and brave man for going through all that and being here to tell us about it,” Cheyenne said, reaching across the table and patting Russo’s hand.

  “Thank you, dear. I’m shocked my old body could handle it.”

  “You can’t be that old,” Cheyenne stated pleasantly. “You’re about Mom’s age, surely. And that’s not old.” Cheyenne added the last part, giving her mother an intense look, making Jaymee laugh.

  “I’m almost 54,” Russo said. “And I shouldn’t be in the situation I’m in right now. I should have pulled out of IDL before they took my life from me.”

  “You’re going to build a new life now,” Cameron said. He raised up his glass. “I say we all drink to new beginnings. Jaymee gets a roommate and Cheyenne gets her own apartment.”

  “House,” Cheyenne said firmly with a big smile. “I’m getting a house. And I will definitely toast to that.”

  They all clinked their glasses together, smiles all around. Jaymee was a little apprehensive about the changes being made in her life.

  But mostly, she was just happy.

  CONTINUE THE SERIES…

  (BOOK 4)

  [CHAPTER 1 TEASER]

  Jaymee Mason thanked Andrew, the bartender of her oceanside café on the coast of California when he set a tropical cocktail in front of her.

  “You always make these better than anyone, Andy. Except Cameron, of course.”

  They both laughed. She’d been introduced to the drink by Cameron Smith, a private investigator and investor in her café. Cameron was helping Jaymee investigate the disappearance of her soon-to-be ex-husband, Doug Lent.

  It had been three months since the last time Jaymee saw Doug, and during that time their investigation had uncovered some devastating and disturbing discoveries. Doug was blackmailing six people who had worked with him at IDL – Intersectional Dynamics Laboratories, more than five years before his death.

  Cameron, she came to realize, was well known by the police and detectives and they valued his input. This helped them work in conjunction with the investigators who’d been assigned the case.

  Jaymee had decided early on she was going to divorce Doug. He was not the man she thought he was. It devastated her and shattered their daughter, Cheyenne’s, trust. She had always been a daddy’s girl. Twenty-one was still too young to realize that trust can’t just be given, it has to be earned.

  She felt a presence beside her and turned to see her boarder and new employee, Carmine Russo, sliding onto the stool next to hers. He smiled at her, exposing two rows of crooked but clean teeth. “Mornin’,” he said.

  She raised her eyebrows. “It’s not noon yet?”

  They both turned their eyes to the clock hanging on the wall, which said it was ten minutes till.

  “Thank God for that,” Carmine said in his raspy voice. “I’m supposed to be in at twelve. Saw you sitting here and thought I’d say hello.” The fifty-year-old was one of the men Doug had been blackmailing. Cameron and Jaymee had taken him off their suspect list in Doug’s disappearance as his life had been threatened as well. Made homeless through the events, Jaymee invited Carmine to take an adjoining apartment that connected to the large house Doug had bought for his family.

  “Well, it’s good to see you, Carmine. You’re looking pretty good.”

  “Appreciate it. I’m a little surprised to be honest with you.”

  Jaymee raised one eyebrow. “Why?”

  “I didn’t think I’d be here right now, talking to the wife of the man who was blackmailing me and helped ruin my life. Have you looked any further into Amanda? Anything you can report?”

  Jaymee thought about Amanda Dinklage, the only woman on Doug’s blackmail list and one of their top suspec
ts. She was one of those women that liked control and made sure she had it with the men in her life. If she didn’t have control, she kicked the man to the curb, as they say.

  “She’s been lying low,” Jaymee responded. “Everything’s been quiet between her and Dylan. I only know that because Cameron’s been keeping a pretty close eye on her.” She gave Russo a narrow look. “Did you know he had Cheyenne doing surveillance for him? Can you believe that? He recruited my own daughter for that dangerous work!”

  Russo laughed, knowing Jaymee wasn’t nearly as outraged as she was pretending to be. Cheyenne was a grown woman and just as courageous and bold as her mother. Jaymee could have objected all day long but if that’s what Cheyenne wanted to do, she was going to do it.

  “Sounds like something both of them would do,” Russo responded with a laugh. “I mean, think about it. Those two get along like two peas in a pod.”

  Jaymee sighed, taking a long drink from her cocktail. “Of course you’re right. That’s why I love them both so much. Fearless. Both of them. Going where angels fear to tread.”

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  BOOKS BY SAGE PARKER

  THE BEACHSIDE CAFÉ

  Book 1

  Book 2

  Book 3

  Book 4

  Book 5

  Book 6

  SISTERS OF SNOW PINES SERIES

  Part 1 | Lakehouse Beginnings

  Part 2 | Lakehouse Secrets