by Diane Capri
“What about James Preston?”
Shaw frowned and his eyes narrowed. His nostrils flared. “What about him?”
“So you know who he was, then.”
The phone on his desk buzzed. He ignored it. “A rapist and a killer, according to the jury. He was put to death last week.”
“He was. But I talked to him first. He had some interesting things to say.”
“About what?” The phone buzzed again.
“About Marilyn Baker.”
Shaw continued to stare, chin out, like a pugilist assessing his next jab. But his arms weren’t long enough to reach from across the room. He said nothing.
“You knew Marilyn Baker. She lived and was murdered in your old hometown. You and Crane offered a reward for information that would lead to her killer’s arrest.” Flint moved to get a better look at Shaw’s face. “Why?”
Shaw did not reply. The phone buzzed again. And again. He walked over to the desk and picked up the receiver. “Yes . . . I see . . . Five minutes.” He replaced the receiver and said, “I’m afraid I have another meeting. You can find your way out.”
Flint didn’t move. “What was Marilyn Baker to you?”
“A murder victim. Mount Warren is a small town. Crane and I were both living there. Up and coming at the time. We contributed money to a reward fund. That’s it.” Shaw nodded his head toward the elevator. “Nothing sinister. We contributed to all kinds of causes. I still do.”
“I don’t believe you. I think you or Crane killed Marilyn Baker. Then you offered up the reward as a cover-up.” He could be stubborn, too, even if he preferred to think of himself as tenacious. “And you sent Veronica Beaumont to me to keep me out of the way until James Preston was executed so I wouldn’t find out what you did.”
“What you think is not my problem.” Shaw scowled and picked up the phone again. “Do I need to call security, or are you on your way out?”
Shaw would make good on his threat to have him escorted from the building, but that’s not why Flint let him win today’s contest of wills.
Shaw had already confirmed enough. He’d known James Preston. He’d known Marilyn Baker. He’d paid money to help find her killer. And he’d wanted Flint out of the way to be sure Flint didn’t keep Preston alive. Those facts were enough for Flint to work with for now.
Without another word, he turned on his heel and walked to the elevator. When the doors opened, Shaw’s visitor was not inside. Flint entered and turned to watch Shaw, still talking on the phone, until the doors slid shut.
What the hell was he up to?
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Houston, Texas
Three Months Later
Katie Scarlett arrived after midnight. She let herself in through the back door and collected a crystal tumbler on the way to his den. He offered her the bottle of Scotch. She poured a healthy shot. She removed her jacket and tossed it on the sofa and sat across from his favorite chair.
“Jamie Beaumont’s eighth birthday party was today. Maddy and I went. He’s doing so much better, thanks to you.” She stretched her long legs onto the ottoman between them.
“I heard from Veronica that Josh was a match and they did the transplant a few weeks ago. I’m glad. Jamie’s a good kid.” He grinned. “How do you feel about having Veronica Beaumont as Maddy’s mother-in-law?”
“That was so last month, Flint.” She laughed and lifted her Scotch in a toast across the divide. “Maddy’s moved on.”
“Thank God.” Flint smiled and raised his glass toward hers. “Can you imagine Thanksgiving dinner with that barracuda?”
“So what’s keeping you up tonight?” She sipped and smiled with pleasure as the smooth taste lingered on her tongue. “Boyd Wilcox?”
Flint nodded. She knew he’d been ruminating on Boyd Wilcox for several weeks. He’d invited her for a fresh look at the problem, he’d said. But he already had a plan and he needed backup.
“Want to talk it through? See if something sparks?” He stretched out in his chair. He wasn’t dressed in comfortable sweats. Scarlett would have noticed. He’d get to that in a minute. “Josh Hallman said Boyd was at Wilcox Lodge the night his friends were killed.”
“The same night he saw Mark Wilcox bury his wife, and saw Aludra’s decapitated head in the plastic ice chest, right?”
He nodded again.
“You’re thinking it’s extremely long odds that Boyd Wilcox is innocent in all of this.”
“Kevin Hayes said Aludra wasn’t really kidnapped. But she went missing weeks before Hallman’s plane crash, and her husband absolutely believed she’d been kidnapped. I could tell.” Flint didn’t refill his own glass. He’d be leaving in a couple of hours. No time to get buzzed. “Hallman said Boyd was inside the lodge the whole time. He also said he was awakened during the night by a woman’s screams. He believes Aludra was murdered that night and maybe inside the house.”
“You think Boyd killed her?”
“Hallman thinks so. Boyd Wilcox is used to being in charge. Telling everyone what to do.” He paused, waiting for her to confirm his theory.
“And didn’t you say that Ruben Vega worked directly for Boyd?” Scarlett pushed her lips around as she thought about the problem. “No question Brainy Boy Boyd is in this up to his eyeballs. But that doesn’t make him a killer.”
Exactly what Flint had concluded. No way Boyd Wilcox could have been isolated from what was going on. That lodge house in the woods was large, but not large enough to insulate him from the murder and mayhem.
“Here’s what I think. The autopsy report said Aludra had sex just before she died, and she was strangled, remember? She was decapitated after death. Her body had been frozen, according to the medical examiner. It could have been angry makeup sex with Mark gone wrong, I guess. But I’ve been digging around, and it turns out that Boyd has some kinky appetites. Complaints from women have been hushed up and the women paid off.” He paused and let her think about it. “If Boyd killed Aludra, I don’t think he meant to. I think the sex simply went too far. After she died, the rest was a cover-up.”
“So the whole kidnapping thing was what, a ruse?”
“Hayes said Mark reported her missing and said that she’d been kidnapped because he believed it. That’s when he hired me.” Flint shook his head. “Boyd had to play along because I’d made sure the story got out when I was trying to find her.”
“And she was never missing at all?”
“As far as her husband was concerned, she did go missing. But that’s because she left with Boyd. Like Hayes said.” Flint nodded again. “That’s why the whole Wilcox group was acting so strangely the day Hallman’s plane crashed. They knew Aludra was there, at the lodge, when the world believed she’d been kidnapped.”
“So their plan was simply to release her?” She cocked her head and her eyes unfocused.
“Remember that Boyd had paid the ransom demand and someone had collected the money. So yeah, I think they were just going to release her and claim that the kidnappers had let her go. I think they were making a plan that weekend at the lodge. And that night, Boyd accidentally killed her. When she died, they probably panicked and concocted the cover-up.” He paused and they both considered the theory for a while. Flint couldn’t see any flaws in the timeline. Everything he knew fit together like a complicated puzzle. “If Josh Hallman hadn’t seen Mark burying the body, the plan might have worked.”
Scarlett paused a lot longer, as if she was trying to decode another answer from the data. “Boyd won’t be brought down by accusations alone,” Scarlett finally warned. “You’ll need proof. Do you have any?”
“Not enough to satisfy a prosecutor.” He shook his head and clasped his hands across his flat stomach. “No witnesses. Neither Veronica Beaumont nor Josh Hallman wants more trouble. She paid me already and made it clear that she won’t finance what she called my Don Quixote quest to nail Boyd.”
“Not that you need her money, but that sounds like something Veroni
ca would say.” Scarlett frowned and stared at the brown liquid refracting lamplight from the crystal glass. “She’s solved her problem. Everybody else can fend for themselves.”
Flint ignored the barb. “Hallman will never testify against Wilcox, either. He went back to his life on Fiji and plans to stay out of sight.”
“That’s smart, don’t you think? Boyd can reach him anywhere in the world. He’s right about that much.” She cocked her head. “What about Kevin Hayes? We know people. Maybe we can get him some sort of deal if he testifies against Boyd, shorten his sentence by a few years?”
Flint shook his head. He had rejected that possibility a while back. “Too many ways Boyd can reach him inside, make Hayes’s life even worse.”
“Or end his life completely.” She inhaled deeply and tapped a knuckle against her lips, thinking things through. He recognized the signs of her process.
“Boyd is unfinished business. I want him finished,” Flint said sourly. “Simple as that.”
“I get that.” She nodded. “He left the country right before Hayes was arrested. Nobody can find him. I put the word out, like you asked. Nothing yet. You have any luck with your contacts?”
She drained her Scotch and rolled the empty glass between her palms. He raised the bottle in a silent offer to refill, but she shook her head.
“He’ll turn up. Soon.” Flint narrowed his eyes and stared straight ahead.
“I know that look, Flint.” She scowled from across the room. “What are you planning to do?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“What he does first.” Flint shrugged. “Look, I killed his brother. And his right-hand man. Self-defense, sure. But Boyd won’t accept that excuse.”
“Watch your back. He’s no match for you or anybody else, physically. Brainy boys rarely are. But Boyd Wilcox travels with a lot of protection.” Scarlett didn’t try to persuade him to give up. She had to know that would be a waste of breath. “I’ll keep looking. But the entire world is Boyd Wilcox’s oyster. Don’t forget that. He’s got a lot of resources you don’t have access to.”
Flint had never been afraid of powerful people. He didn’t intend to change now. Scarlett had to know how he felt about that.
“I have no affection for Veronica Beaumont, but she may be right about this,” Scarlett said. “Can’t you let it go? Just this once?”
“I know where he is. I’m going after him. Tonight.”
She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. Which he probably had.
“Boyd is a big astronomy buff. So I’ve been following that trail.” Flint nodded. “He owns a home in the Atacama Desert. In Chile. Solely because it’s one of the best places on earth for observing celestial events. He’s installed one of the most expensive telescopes in the world down there.”
She cocked her head. “And there’s some sort of rare celestial event happening soon?”
“Extremely rare, I’m told. The transit of Mercury across the sun.” Her face screwed up into a question. He grinned. “Yeah, I didn’t know what it was, either. Turns out the planet Mercury will move directly between Earth and the sun, and if you’re in the right place, at the right time, with the right equipment, you’ll be able to see it.”
“Rich men have the craziest hobbies, don’t they?” She shrugged. “So when is this transit supposed to happen?”
He grinned. “Best viewing is Wednesday, just before sunrise. In the Atacama Desert.”
“I’ve heard about Atacama. Six hundred miles of absolute desert. The driest place on earth.” She paused, thinking. “You don’t know for sure that he’ll be there. He could just catch this transit the next time.”
“Not likely. Happens only thirteen times every century. The last time was 2006. Won’t happen again until 2019 and then not until 2039. Hell, the North Koreans could blow up the world by then. Who knows?” Flint grinned again and nodded firmly. “He’ll be there.”
“Your contacts have already confirmed this somehow.” She took a deep breath. “He’s already there, isn’t he?”
Flint smirked. “You know me too well.”
She gave up the fight. “What do you want me to do?”
“What you always do. Come to my rescue if I get in over my head.” He pointed his chin toward the table beside her seat where he’d placed a small manila envelope. “There’s a thumb drive in there. It contains the specifics of my plan. Satellite shots of Wilcox’s Oasis, which is what he calls his place there. Looks like he’s got a small staff when he’s on-site. A security team and some domestics.”
She picked up the envelope and felt the thumb drive inside. She said nothing.
“You should hear from me that the job is done and I’m on my way back before Wednesday, zero three hundred hours. Otherwise, you know who to call.”
“If you die out there in that wasteland, Maddy will never forgive you.” Her voice was quiet.
He knew what she was saying. To be careful. Not to take crazy risks. To come back safely because he was the only family she and Maddy had. He nodded and said nothing because there was no acceptable response he could make.
“Meanwhile, I’ll keep at it. There could be some trace evidence against him they haven’t found yet.” Scarlett stood, empty glass in hand. She slipped the envelope into the pocket of her jacket. “When you bring him back here, we’ll still need evidence to lock him up forever.”
“Maybe so.” But he wasn’t counting on it. Crime techs had been sifting through the evidence for weeks. They’d found nothing incriminating Boyd for Aludra’s murder yet. No reason to believe they ever would. If there had been positive proof at one time, it was likely destroyed long ago.
She placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed as she walked past him on the way out. He heard the back door close and lock behind her.
Briefly, he second-guessed his decision not to tell her about Marilyn Baker. About how he believed Baker was his biological mother. About her murder and the man who was accused of killing her.
He shoved the thoughts aside. There would be time to deal with all that when he came back.
He thought again about the Romanov pendant and his client who had risked lives to retrieve it. He shook his head. The only family he really had was Katie and Maddy Scarlett. He liked it that way. He didn’t need to know anything more about Marilyn Baker. No reason to dredge up a dead woman’s past.
He glanced at his watch. He had a few minutes yet before Drake arrived. He pressed the remote to turn up the volume on his music, closed his eyes, and let his head loll back on the chair. He did some of his best thinking when he was relaxed like this.
He visualized Wilcox Lodge at Red Maple Lake. The patio, the one with the newer pavers, had been torn up when authorities searched for Aludra Wilcox. They’d found the body parts in several small holes under the foundation, like Hayes had said they would.
They’d matched the body parts and the finger in the purple satin box to her DNA. No doubt, the woman Mark Wilcox buried was his wife. Which didn’t mean he’d killed her. Hallman thought Boyd Wilcox killed Aludra, and from what he knew of the two brothers, Flint was inclined to agree.
They were still processing the crime scene, even after all these weeks. They might find forensic evidence against Boyd Wilcox somewhere. Maybe he’d handled that sword his brother had used to hack up the body. The one Flint had seen in the shed. Which wouldn’t mean much, either.
Hayes took care of the loose ends to get the plea deal. He’d admitted nothing incriminating about Boyd Wilcox. He’d said Mark beheaded Aludra. Hayes and Vega helped him conceal the crime. They would have succeeded, too, if Josh Hallman had been a better pilot, Hayes said. He’d been pissed off about that, as if Hallman was the cause of all their troubles.
Of course, none of this would have happened if Hallman hadn’t crashed the Cessna. His friends would be alive. Flint wouldn’t be on his way to Atacama.
But none of that mattered.
Flint had spent his ent
ire life accepting everything as it came, when it came. He dealt with reality, here and now. He spent no time wishing for events to be different from what they were.
If Flint failed, Boyd Wilcox would keep walking around as if he was untouchable. He’d keep doing exactly what he pleased, when he pleased. He’d get away with murder.
Simple as that.
And Flint would never let it happen.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Atacama Desert, Chile
Tuesday
Sixteen hours of travel time from Houston south to Antofagasta, Chile, which was on the Pacific coast. During the flight, he and Drake slept six hours and spent the rest of the flight reviewing the location and his plan of attack. Preparation was key. He had one chance to make this work and no room for error.
The satellite images Flint had obtained showed Wilcox’s Oasis built into the side of a mountain. He’d used the famous ESO Hotel at Paranal as inspiration. Wilcox’s Oasis was much more luxurious than the ESO housing for scientists, but it borrowed the design elements intended to eliminate light pollution. Scientists required absolute darkness.
From the east side, the roof looked like a dome buried in the sand. The dome was a huge skylight with a retractable shade that, when deployed, held all interior light inside the building. On the west side, the wall of the house was exposed. Windows were fitted with blackout shades. The entire residence was enclosed from the inside to completely eliminate exterior light at night.
Small trees and greenery surrounded the exterior, irrigated as only unlimited wealth could afford. There was an indoor swimming pool for recreation and to provide much-needed humidity. Water was trucked in and recycled.
A few hundred feet up the mountain from the house was Wilcox’s private state-of-the-art observatory, equipped with his own VBT, or “very big telescope.” He alone used the VBT and spent his nights in the observatory without interruption.
They landed in Antofagasta midmorning. Flint preferred to attack in the dark hours before dawn. The approach had worked well for legions of armies and clandestine operations. But it wouldn’t work here. All serious astronomers and scientists were awake all night for the celestial show.