by Connie Mann
Cat leaned closer and spoke quietly. “Let me ask you a question, LuAn. I figure you know everything that happens in this town. If someone wanted to rent a house, a nice house, on the quiet, who would they go see?”
LuAn pursed her lips as she considered, then leaned closer and said, “Well, I heard that Avery Ames used to be in real estate before she inherited the paper and that she has connections with some big spenders.”
“Interesting. Do you happen to know if she’s rented any property recently to a gentleman of Asian descent?”
LuAn looked Cat over. “Friend of yours? Family?”
“Family. I think he was trying to surprise me, but not knowing is killing me. I want to spend as much time with him as I can while he’s here.” Which was true, as far as it went.
LuAn peered around the diner, not crowded this time of day, then back at Cat. “I did hear that Avery had rented a big place right on the Gulf. One of those mansions that were built just before the real estate market collapsed. The owners just let it sit. She’s spruced it up and is trying to sell it.”
“Do you know where it is?”
“Sure. Head straight out of town, then go north on US-19 for about ten miles, then west on Gulf Shore Trail. It’s the only place at the end of the dirt road.”
Cat thanked her, left a five on the table, and hurried in that direction, the need to find Blaze gnawing at her gut.
Please let me find her.
Chapter 25
Cat started having serious doubts about LuAn’s directions as the pavement gave way to gravel, which gave way to hard sand with bone-jarring potholes. The tree canopy overhead reached down, brushing the top of her car and scraping into the open windows. She stopped, studying the narrow track ahead. It looked like cars had come in and out of here recently. Otherwise, the whole road would be overgrown, right?
She kept going, bouncing along, until she rounded one final bend and a six-foot-high wall came into view. Along with a wrought-iron gate.
She sat for a moment, debating whether to drive up to the intercom or try to find another way onto the property. From beyond, she could hear the waves lapping the shore. The mansion she glimpsed through the fence was impressive, done in an ultramodern style that suited her uncle’s personality.
Before she could make up her mind, the gate swung inward. Cat glanced around, trying to find hidden cameras, but she saw nothing.
For all she knew, this might be Garcia’s place, in which case things would get dicey fast.
Swallowing hard, she drove forward. Never let them see you sweat. The old saying from the deodorant commercial applied well to this situation.
She climbed from the car and surveyed the place as though she were just arriving for afternoon tea. Shoulders back, chin up, she walked up the wide front steps.
Phillip swung the door open before she could press the bell.
The tension in her shoulders relaxed a fraction. At least she was at the right house.
“Good afternoon, Miss Catharine,” he said, wearing his usual impassive expression. “This way, please.” He turned and started walking.
Cat followed him down a long tiled hallway, noting the closed doors along both sides. The hallway ended in a great room with a truly jaw-dropping view of the Gulf of Mexico. Gorgeous blue water stretched as far as the eye could see, dotted with mangrove islands in the distance and waves of saw grass lining the shore.
“Your uncle will be with you shortly,” Phillip said and then quietly closed the door behind him.
For a moment, Cat simply stared out the wall of windows, her outward calm in direct conflict to her racing heartbeat. How should she play this? Would he tell her the truth?
She casually glanced around the room, trying to locate any hidden cameras. When she’d first moved into her uncle’s Miami penthouse, the fact that he and Phillip always seemed to know exactly what she’d been doing had completely creeped her out. She’d been sure they were watching her, but she’d never found any surveillance equipment.
Which didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t recording her then—or now.
She casually wandered over to the large sectional sofa and the square coffee table in front of it. A black leather satchel sat on top of the table, completely out of place in the otherwise immaculate room. The entire room looked like nobody ever used it, despite the desk in the corner and the bookshelves filled with novels and nonfiction covering everything from romance to biology.
“Ah, Catharine,” her uncle said, sweeping into the room.
Cat turned and waited while he leaned over to kiss both her cheeks. He put his hands on her shoulders, and she fought the urge to shake him off.
“How lovely to have you stop by. What can I do for you?”
Cat folded her arms. “Where is Blaze?”
She watched his expression, looking for any signs of subterfuge. “I don’t know. I take it she hasn’t turned up yet?” He frowned.
“No, she hasn’t. You said you would find her. Where is she? Are you holding her?”
He narrowed his eyes. “If I had information, I would have had Phillip deliver it to you. I already told you that I don’t have the girl.” He spread his arms. “Why would I lie?”
“Oh, I can think of any number of reasons. One of which is me.”
“Ah, but I’ve already gotten the agreement I want from you.”
Cat swallowed hard. She couldn’t think about that right now. “Maybe you are keeping Blaze to be sure I follow through with my end of the bargain.”
His eyes narrowed. “Is that a concern? Would you make such a promise so lightly?”
“You know I’ll do what I said.”
“Then I have no reason to hold the girl.”
This was getting her nowhere. “Is Garcia in town?”
He nodded. “I believe so, yes.”
“Where is he?”
“He is a man given to secrets. But then, so are you. But you are also a very clever girl.” He checked the expensive Rolex on his arm, then glanced toward the satchel on the coffee table before he looked back at her. “I have to make a phone call. I hope you will let me know if there’s anything you need.” He waved a hand around the room. “Everything I have is at your disposal. If you’ll excuse me.”
Before Cat could formulate a response, he was gone, the door closed behind him.
She hurried over and opened it, relieved when it swung inward. For a moment, she worried he might lock her up, too.
But she couldn’t leave yet. The black satchel caught her eye. Why had it been left there, and why had he looked at it before he’d walked out?
Cat stepped over to it and pulled the zipper open. Somehow, she wasn’t surprised at the packets of neatly banded twenties inside. She took one out and fanned the bills, guessing there was about a thousand dollars in each packet. The bag was filled with them.
She glanced toward the doorway again, but no one burst in demanding to know what she was doing.
Rifling through the rest of the bag, she wasn’t really surprised when her hand touched the cold metal of a gun. She pulled it out, then tucked it back where she’d found it. She really didn’t like guns. The knives she carried gave her far more security.
She had to think. Had her uncle left the bag sitting out on purpose? For her? Otherwise, why would he have offered her anything she needed before he walked out? He never said things plainly. There were always layers of nuance, and Cat never felt she quite understood the conversation.
She glanced at the bag again. If her uncle was telling the truth and he didn’t have Blaze, that meant Garcia did. What if she used the money to buy Blaze’s freedom? Was that what her uncle intended?
Men like Garcia understood money, and there was a lot of it in the bag.
She zipped it closed and headed for the door. Nick’s face flashed in her mind, his look disapproving. Technically, she was stealing. Maybe. Probably. Or at least Nick would think so. Although she could argue that her uncle had left the money for her
. Hadn’t he?
Swallowing hard, she decided she’d think about that later. If her uncle had her arrested for taking the money, then she wouldn’t have to live up to her end of the bargain. Which was good, right?
Except it wouldn’t help her get Blaze. Confusion swamped her, tried to paralyze her into indecision. Now was not the time to hesitate. Blaze needed her.
She gripped the bag and hurried down the hall, relieved—and a bit suspicious—when she didn’t encounter Phillip along the way.
As she approached the front door, he stepped out from a small library and held the door for her. “Have a nice afternoon, Miss Catharine.”
“Thank you, Phillip,” Cat said and walked to her car.
No one snatched the bag from her hand. Or shot her in the back.
She didn’t draw a full breath until she was safely on the main road.
When a dark sedan showed up in her rearview mirror, she wasn’t surprised. She only wished she knew if the driver worked for her uncle. Or Garcia.
The sound of the gunshot ricocheted in Blaze’s head and conjured up all sorts of scary images. Based on the housekeeper’s reaction, Blaze hadn’t mistaken what she’d heard.
Someone had been shot. They’d begged and pleaded, and it hadn’t done a bit of good.
Blaze squeezed her eyes shut and tried to block the images.
Oh God. She was so scared. What if they came for her next?
She’d hoped that keeping the hood on was a good thing, but what if it didn’t matter? What if they were going to shoot her no matter what she did?
Panic made her heart pound and her hands shake. She wrapped them tighter around her knees and told herself to calm down. Think.
Even though she felt alone, she knew that Nick and Cat, and probably Sasha and Jesse, too, would be searching for her. She might be a total pain in the butt sometimes, but she knew they loved her.
Which, when she thought about it, was pretty dang amazing.
They’d come find her. All she had to do was stay alive until they could get her out of here.
She pulled up the hood far enough to wipe her nose on her shirtsleeve. Then she tugged it back down and forced herself to take slow, even breaths.
She’d get a grip on herself and think. And listen, so she’d have information that could help when her family came to find her.
At the word family, thoughts of where she’d come from, of where she’d run from years ago, tried to sneak into her mind, but she shoved them away. As always. That part of her life was gone. She swore she’d never think about it again, and she wouldn’t break that promise to herself now.
She was Blaze, not Bethany, the scared little girl. Blaze was tough. And she was a fighter.
That’s what she had to remember.
She looked heavenward. “God, a little help on your end would be good, too, you know? Thanks.”
She’d be smart. And she’d wait. Nick and Cat would come.
Feeling a bit steadier, finally, she climbed up onto the bed and fell asleep curled into a little ball.
Nick stared at the report on his computer. The fire chief had finished his investigation. He’d found pieces of a homemade bomb in Nick’s living room and indicated he thought it was detonated by a cell phone. Which meant someone had been in his house while he was out.
JD had talked with all of Nick’s neighbors, and no one remembered seeing anyone suspicious, but maybe the response would be different if Nick asked, instead of that “youngster.”
Wanda answered a call, then looked at him over her shoulder. “For you. Line one.”
“Safe Harbor police, Nick Stanton.”
“Hello, Officer Stanton. This is Fred Sanders, one of your neighbors? Well, almost neighbor. I live on the next block.”
Nick grabbed a pad and pen. “What can I do for you, Fred?”
“Well, now, it might be nothing, but I found the darndest thing this morning when I let Alice, that’s my bulldog, out to do her thing. Alice is deaf and almost blind, but she’s a fabulous companion, don’t you know.”
Nick curbed his impatience. “What happened when Alice went out?”
“She didn’t come back right away when I called, which does happen now and again, so I went out and found her nosing around next to my neighbor’s trash cans. When I got there, she was sniffing a hamburger wrapper. But there were pieces of a cell phone with it, as though someone had smashed it all to bits.”
Nick stilled. “Can you give me the exact address, Fred?” Nick jotted it down. “What made the broken cell phone catch your attention?”
“Well, now, for one thing, it was lying next to the trash can, not in it, as one would expect. And if it had broken, wouldn’t you put it in a plastic sack before you put it in the bin outside? This one lying in pieces gave the impression that someone had deliberately destroyed it. And that got me thinking about the explosion at your house, and how on the shows on television, the detectives always look for a cell phone detonator, so . . .” He paused to draw a breath. “I thought I should call you.”
Nick grinned. “Thanks, Fred. You’ve been most helpful. I’ll be right over to collect those pieces.”
“Oh, well, ah, I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”
“Why not?”
“Well, Captain Barry lives there, don’t you know, and when I showed it to him, he went into the house straightaway, grabbed a Stuff Mart sack, and scooped up the pieces. He put them into the bin just before the trash truck came by.”
Nick squeezed his eyes shut. Of course he did. “Thanks, Fred. I appreciate you calling.”
“I sure hope you catch whoever blew up your house, Officer.”
“We will. Don’t worry.” Nick hung up and then turned to JD, who had been listening to the conversation. “The good news is that my neighbor may have found the cell phone used to detonate the bomb.”
JD narrowed his eyes. “And the bad news?”
“The trash pickup just went by and grabbed it.”
JD sighed. “Let me guess. You want me to chase down that dump truck.”
Nick hid his grin. Trash duty was never fun. He’d done his share as a rookie cop in Tampa. “Yes. Fred said the pieces are in a separate Stuff Mart bag. If you hurry, you can catch the truck before it gets to the dump.”
JD nodded and hurried from the station.
Maybe, if they were lucky, they could get fingerprints off the broken phone, or trace the number. Something. Anything.
Since the bomb had been put inside his house, he figured he was the target, that he was getting close to solving this investigation, and someone was getting very nervous. Had the bomb been thrown through the window, then either he or Cat could have been the target.
But Cat had gotten a text that said Nick had answers. Which told him someone wanted the two of them to stop asking questions. The whole two-birds-one-stone thing.
What was he missing? The nagging worry they were running out of time clawed at him. He went to the locked storage cabinet to get the box with all the evidence on Teddy’s death, but it wasn’t there. He rummaged around, moving other boxes, but he couldn’t find it. He checked JD’s desk, but it wasn’t there, either.
“Wanda, did the chief take the Winston evidence for some reason?”
“Couldn’t tell you. But I did see him take a box into his office earlier.”
Sure enough, the box was sitting on Monroe’s desk when Nick went to check. Even though the lid was on the box, leaving it out unattended was a total breach of protocol, especially since Monroe had left his office door unlocked. He’d also left his computer on, which told Nick he’d left in a hurry.
Curious, Nick went behind the desk and moved the mouse. The screen came to life with the search browser open. The chief had run several searches on scopolamine, including doses, toxicology, and anything related to death caused by the zombie drug.
Nick opened the lid of the box, then sifted through the bagged evidence to find what he was after. There it was. The button he
’d found on the ground not far from Teddy’s body.
He laid the plastic evidence bag on the desk, pulled out his phone, and snapped a picture before he put it back in the box. Something about that button kept nagging at him.
“What are you looking for, Stanton?”
Nick glanced up as the chief entered the room, expression bland. “Same thing you are, I expect. Trying to figure out who wanted Teddy Winston dead. And why.”
“Anything new?”
“Not yet. You?”
The chief set his Stetson on the corner of the desk, then eased into the chair. “No, and it’s making things that much harder for the Winstons. They need closure. They call me constantly for an update.”
“We’re doing everything we can—”
“I know, Stanton. That’s what I keep telling them. Anything new on who blew up your house?”
“Not yet, but JD is following a lead. One of my neighbors found pieces of a cell phone by another neighbor’s trash can.” If Nick hadn’t been watching closely, he would have missed the flash of surprise in the chief’s eyes. “Captain Barry’s house, to be exact.”
“Were you able to get any prints from it?”
“Trash pickup just went by, so JD is trying to chase down the truck.”
The chief grimaced. “That’s always a good time. But he’s a rookie. He’ll deal with it.” The chief met his eyes. “What’s our opinion of him as a cop?”
Nick was surprised that the chief asked his opinion. “JD’s shaping up to be a great cop. Still a little green, but he’s honest and hardworking. Pays attention to the details. He’ll do well.”
The chief sipped at the coffee sitting on his desk. “Has the Martinelli girl turned up yet?”
The question dug deep into Nick’s gut. “Not yet. But we’re working on it.”
“No chance she just got tired of this town and ran off? Same way she appeared a while back?”
“The family is pretty adamant that is not the case. Especially because she and Teddy were good friends. They suspect she’s off trying to investigate on her own.”