Secrets of Bella Terra: A Scarlet Deception Novel

by Christina Dodd

  “I work the case I’m on, and in this instance, my case is finding Nonna’s attacker—and the mystery keeps growing. But yes, I am concerned. They’re good people. They’ve been with me a long time. And the pilot—I promised to do everything I could to get her out. I simply wish I could be there personally.” He took a breath. “Now, tell me, how are you doing?”

  She had wanted to know what was on his mind, and knowing made her realize the heroic man he had become . . . and how little she knew about him. “I’m fine.” She was. Because of him, she’d eaten well. Because of the situation in the wine bar, she had things on her mind other than yesterday’s rotting body.

  “Did Hernández’s body yesterday remind you of the man you shot and killed a month ago?”

  “No!” What kind of question was that? “Why would you think such a thing? No.”

  “Seeing death of any kind is usually a big deal for a civilian. Shooting someone is usually a big deal for a civilian. It seems as if you should feel some connection between the two bodies.”

  Brooke caught her breath. “Is there a connection?”

  “You tell me.”

  Amazing how he could in the space of a hundred heartbeats take her from heated reminiscences to massive indignation to inglorious rage. “I know nothing about who attacked Nonna. I wish I did.”

  “Before DuPey took Victor away, I snatched a minute and talked to DuPey. He said they’d done the preliminaries on Hernández. The gardener was strangled with a wire around his throat.”

  Brooke put a hand to her unexpectedly vulnerable-feeling neck.

  “No fingerprints and no murder weapon were anywhere to be found. You have to be strong and fast to pull off that kind of murder.”

  “I would imagine.”

  “Or maybe the killer took the victim completely by surprise.”

  Brooke recalled Hernández’s plain, simple face, and knew that was exactly what had happened.

  Rafe continued. “We know, because the killer has hacked into the resort’s security, that he’s smart. We’re all in danger, but because of Hernández’s connection to you, I’m afraid you, especially, are a target.”

  Perhaps Rafe wasn’t trying to make her angry. Maybe he was trying to make her think. “I have racked my brain, but I don’t even remember what exactly Hernández said that made me think Nonna was in danger. I simply recall that blind panic that had me driving up there, all the while thinking I was making a fool of myself over nothing. If I’d paid attention to my instincts and called nine-one-one, they would have beaten me up there and Nonna would have been rescued that much sooner.”

  “Some people have good instincts. I suspect you’re one of them. So if you remember anything about Hernández, who he hung out with, anything he said previous to the day he disappeared, I need to know.” Rafe grasped her arms. “Listen, about this morning when I said what I said.”

  She frowned at him. He’d changed the subject . . . sort of.

  “At your house. The thing that made you mad. I didn’t mean it.”

  Instantly suspicious, she asked, “What did you say that made me mad?”

  His eyes widened. He looked to the side as if seeking escape.

  “What didn’t you mean?” She pressed him harder.

  He struggled to speak.

  “You don’t know, do you?” Her phone rang. She pulled it out of her shirt pocket. “You haven’t got a clue what you said, Rafe. You have never had a clue. You are faking it.” Snapping her phone open, she said, “Hello!”

  A man’s voice said, “Could I speak to Rafe Di Luca, please?”

  Holding the phone away, she looked at the number. Strange area code. Putting it back to her ear, she asked, “Who is this?”

  “I’m Darren. I’m Rafe’s hacker. I really need to speak to him.”

  Was Rafe invading every part of her life? “Rafe has a phone. You could call him.”

  “It’s not that easy, Miss Petersson. If you’d let me talk to him, I’d be grateful and humble.”

  She snorted, and handed her phone to Rafe. “Did you give him my number? Because I do not appreciate this.”

  Frowning, Rafe took her phone and put it to his ear. “Yeah?” He listened for a moment, then turned and walked into the hallway and back toward the kitchen. Brooke could hear his voice fading in the distance.

  And she started counting the number of chances she’d given him, and wondered if Sarah was right.

  Chapter 40

  Holding Brooke’s phone, Rafe walked out into Nonna’s backyard and stood under the immense sweep of the live oak, flush with new leaves. He knew this place so well—the grass that thinned under the trees, the sagging shed some Di Luca had built so long ago, the tall swing Nonno had built for his son. Yet today the familiar felt different. Today he felt surrounded, scrutinized, paranoid. Paranoid in Nonna’s backyard.

  Damn it.

  The guard stationed at the house stepped out from behind the shed. “Um, sir?” Young and gauche, he flushed under Rafe’s gaze. “Everything okay, sir? Can I help with anything?”

  Rafe stared at him.

  Had the background check on Alden been thorough enough? Was Alden what he purported to be? Or was he a spy?

  Alden flushed again. “Sir?”

  Surely the kid couldn’t fake those blushes. And right now, Rafe knew he would be suspicious of anyone who guarded Nonna’s house.

  Rafe waved him away, and Alden once more slipped out of sight.

  Rafe spoke into the phone. “I don’t understand, Darren. How did my phone get hacked?”

  With the patience of a young man for an old duffer, Darren said, “Your phone is a computer, as powerful as I could make it. The hacker, whoever he is, controls the Wi-Fi for the resort. He accessed your phone and, hey! Now it’s his.”

  The implications tumbled through Rafe’s brain. “He’s been listening in on my phone calls. He knows about you.”

  “He already knew about me, recognized my pattern of hacking.”

  “The way you expected to know his—and didn’t?”

  “Exactly. He’s studied me, really nailed me. If he hadn’t, I would have caught him by now. But as a hacker, I’m anonymous. No one really knows who I am. Taking control of your phone gave him a lot of information he didn’t have before. He knows exactly who I am, where I live, what my phone number is. There’s blackmail material there.”

  “You’ve had threats?”

  “Nope. He’s playing me.” Darren sounded trapped. “My parents will be seriously unhappy if they find out what I’ve been doing.”

  “If it becomes necessary, I’ll help with your parents.”

  “You don’t know my parents. They’re not going to listen to some guy they’ve never met just because he’s a hotshot security agent.”

  “Yeah.” Rafe stroked his chin and thought of how Nonno and Nonna would have responded if he’d gotten up to something even vaguely illegal. “I’ll help if I can, and I promise to keep you out of jail. That was the deal when I signed you, right?”

  “Right.” Darren took a long breath. “Thanks.”

  With his Kyrgyzstan team in mind, Rafe asked, “Has the mystery hacker been intercepting my calls?”

  “Listening for sure. Intercepting? I don’t think so. I think he’d rather just listen. He’s learning a lot that way.”

  “Hm.” Having the resort’s computer hacked presented too many dangers in a situation changing too rapidly, and Rafe had control over none of it. “Does the hacker know that you know about my phone?”

  “He might suspect, but nothing I’ve done has alerted him.”

  “Very good.” Rafe almost purred with delight.

  When Rafe said nothing more, Darren continued. “I’ve got a friend, Cepheus, who just started working at the resort. He’s got a computer for you. It’s small. It’s in a case made for an e-reader. You can make phone calls on it. It won’t be fun—it’ll be clumsy—but it’s possible. It’s set up the way I want it, impregnable and, since
I’ve uploaded a program that’s keeping the hacker busy, undetectable. I want you to keep it on you all the time. The GPS will keep track of you and I’ll call you on Brooke’s phone or Noah’s phone or whoever’s phone is nearby.”

  “Right.” Rafe’s mind had shuffled through the scenarios, and now he saw an opportunity to end this thing quickly. “Darren. Is there any way you can bring up the map of the wine cellar under the main hotel building? Could you do it without the mystery hacker knowing that you’re doing it?”

  “Sure. I’ve got my friend Scuffy running the occasional block for me. I think MH—”

  “Mystery hacker?”

  “Right. I think MH knows Scuffy is there, but he hasn’t been able to catch him. What do you need?”

  “In the wine cellar that’s under the main building, there are a lot of corridors.”

  A moment of silence, then—“Whoa. Yeah. Here’s the map. What crazy dude built this?”

  “A lot of people. The main cellar was built when the original hotel went up. The halls started winding around as they added on upstairs.”

  “What’s this room? It’s reinforced like a bunker.” Darren sounded curious, then excited. “Oh, man, is this a bomb shelter?”

  “A fallout shelter, really, built by my grandfather in the late nineteen fifties during the height of the Cold War.”

  “To protect against nuclear radiation. I know. How cool. I didn’t know anyone had a . . . a fallout shelter anymore.” Darren’s enthusiasm was almost palpable.

  “We Di Lucas are lucky in a lot of ways,” Rafe said drily. “Are there surveillance cameras in there?”

  “None.”

  Perfect. “Is the television feed coming out of there still live?”

  “A television feed. In a fallout shelter. Really?”

  “They had televisions in those days,” Rafe assured him.

  “I know. With three whole channels.” Darren’s voice smirked.

  “You’re a spoiled brat,” Rafe said mildly. “The TV cable went to the antenna on the roof, right? Although who they thought would be broadcasting if the atomic bomb dropped, I don’t know.”

  Darren got serious again. “Okay, I can’t tell if the feed is live. I’d have to have something that worked on both ends of the cable to tell. And if there’s a TV in that fallout shelter, it’s no longer functioning.”

  “Probably the tubes are dead.”

  “Sure.” Darren obviously didn’t have a clue.

  “Where does the wire go up?” Rafe tried to remember the way the shelter sat in relationship to the rooms above. “Up the wall in the fallout shelter and into the . . . ?”

  “Into the main electrical center.”

  “Perfect.” Rafe’s luck had turned. “I can tap into that easily enough.”

  Darren’s voice grew speculative. “Is that why the electrical center is there? Because the shelter is below?”

  “More likely the shelter is there because the electrical center was above.” For the first time in this crappy investigation, Rafe had caught a break—and his plan could work.

  Still eager, Darren said, “The whole basement is cool. You could hide a body down there.”

  “You could hide a lot of things down there.” Which was why the location was ideal. “I want you to check for something else.”

  “Sure. I’ve got the map right here.” Darren’s enthusiasm was contagious.

  Rafe felt his hopes rising. “Most of the corridors terminate in a bare wall, but the one with the fallout shelter on one extremity terminates with a locked door on the other.”

  “Right. Behind that is a big square room.” Darren was typing. “I’m giving Scuffy the heads-up.”

  “That room,” Rafe said, “is where the family hid their wines during Prohibition.”

  “Cool.” Darren sounded pleased to know that the Di Lucas, too, had flouted the law.

  “I need to know if there are security cameras in that area, and if they’re compromised.”

  “All the cameras are compromised. But wait a second; I’m having Scuffy check—yes! You’ve got a nice array there. He’s sending me the feed, and if I’m looking at the right place, there are wine racks but not many bottles stashed there. Mostly there are some really big-ass old wine barrels. I mean really big.”

  “That’s the place.” Rafe went to sit on the back porch steps. “Are there microphones in there?”

  “No. No microphones down below at all.”

  “Better and better. That’s what I needed. Thanks, Darren.” Rafe started to hang up, then remembered and asked, “Have you had any luck regaining control of the security program?”

  “I’ve got twenty-four hours,” Darren reminded him.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll wrap this up tonight.” Rafe hung up, dug out his own phone, and called Noah. “Hey, bro.”

  “Bro?” Noah snorted. “Since when do you call me—”

  “I’m worried about that special bottle we were talking about.” Rafe figured Noah was going to catch on fast. “Is it still in the same place?”

  “That special bottle . . .” Rafe heard the moment Noah snapped to attention. “As far as I know, it is. You worried about it? You think they found it?”

  This conversation should command MH’s attention. Rafe hoped his eyes were bugging out of his ugly, treacherous head.

  “I’m up at Nonna’s now,” Rafe said. “I’m coming down, and we need to check on it.”

  “Right. I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

  “I’ll be there right away.” Rafe hung up, satisfied for the first time in days.

  Eli had demanded the situation be fixed by the time he came back.

  Rafe had the matter well in hand.

  He entered the kitchen, calling for Nonna and Brooke.

  Brooke rushed down the hall toward him, her finger on her lips. “She’s asleep.”

  In dismay, he said, “I’ve got to go back.”

  “More problems?” Brooke’s blue eyes grew wide.

  “The problems we have are enough, don’t you think?” It wasn’t an answer.

  But she didn’t notice. “Is there anything I can help with?”

  God forbid. “Not this time, Brooke. As Eli pointed out, I made the mess. I had better clean it up.” He touched her cheek with his fingertip. When this was over, the two of them were going to have a long talk about the past, the present, the future. . . .The thought of long talks, especially with Brooke, made him queasy. But not talking damned sure wasn’t working either, and Mrs. Petersson’s biting criticism echoed in his mind.

  What kind of relationship do you have that you don’t talk to her about your job? About what matters to you? About your plans?

  So he’d bite the bullet and have a conversation . . . later.

  For now, he needed to tell her one important fact. “The reason Darren called on your phone is because mine has been hacked.”

  “What?” She glared at him as if she blamed him. “Hacked? How?”

  “The same way the security cameras were hacked. So listen carefully. If you need me in the next few hours, I’m meeting with Noah. Call him—and be careful what you say.”

  “Right. Sure. Because your phone is hacked.” She sounded incredulous.

  “Exactly. I’m going to send Bao out here to join you.” He made the call on her phone. “If you see a guy lurking outside, it’s the guard I set on the house. His name’s Alden. He’s got brown hair and he looks like he had a good time at the beach, because he’s got one hell of a sunburn. Until Bao arrives, if you see anyone else—anyone else—hanging around, you call nine-one-one and scream your head off.”

  “I will,” she promised.

  “If at any point in the rest of the day you’re in trouble or think you’re in trouble or smell trouble, call nine-one-one.”

  “And scream my head off?”

  “Yes.”

  She glanced toward the bedroom where Nonna was sleeping. “Rafe, you’re scaring me. I mean . . . scaring me more.”


  “I don’t think you need to be scared. I think you need to be cautious.” He pulled the keys out of his pocket. “Hang on. In the next few hours there’ll be some big changes and this will all be over.” He gestured toward the front door. “When Nonna wakes up, get a car from the resort.”

  “I’ll make sure she gets back to rehab . . . although not on time for her next session. I’ll call them and cancel all her appointments.” Brooke removed her phone from his hand.

  “Okay.” Pulling her toward him, he held her tightly, relishing her warm vitality. “I don’t want to lose you now.” Letting her go, he walked out to the Mustang and drove away.

  Chapter 41

  When Rafe got back to Bella Terra Resort, he went first to his cottage and picked up the tools he needed, then to the electrical room where he located the antenna cable coming up from the fallout shelter. With a flashlight held between his teeth, he cut the power to the main building—alarms sounded everywhere—and with a few quick slashes he cut and spliced a transmitter onto the cable. He flipped the power back on and scooted out before the on-site electricians arrived to check out the problem.

  He hoped to hell the outage had done something awful to Mystery Hacker. Given him a shock to the ass if nothing else.

  In the lobby, Rafe found Noah behind the concierge desk, showing someone Rafe did not recognize the tourist maps and literature.

  Glancing up, Noah made eye contact with Rafe and gestured him over. He spoke to the concierge-in-training for a few more minutes, then told the well-groomed young man, “If you have any questions, Robert, you can ask the desk staff. They know the drill, too.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Di Luca. I’ll do that.”

  “Hang on a minute, Rafe. Let me give the floor manager a heads-up that I’m leaving Robert on his own.” Noah walked away.

  Robert turned to Rafe. “Excuse me, are you Rafe Di Luca?”

  “Yes.”

  “Someone left this for you.” Robert handed him a black, scuffed, padded flat case zipped on two sides.

  Rafe eyed it in puzzlement.

  “I think it’s an e-reader,” Robert said.

  “Oh!” Rafe considered Robert.