Sharp sense of humor but tinged by melancholy.
Missing his home in Mexico, but staying in Texas with the man he trusted most.
He felt José’s dark eyes following him, but when he whirled to face that somber gaze, José merely took a bigger bite of his pasta salad. He chewed slowly and carefully, but Ross knew he was stewing over something when he went so quiet.
“Spit it out. Call me an idiot, why don’t you? Chad pretty much has already.”
José shrugged. “If you know this, I do not need to state the, how you say . . .”
“Obvious? Why is it so freaking clear to everyone I’m closest to that I should go on bended knee before a woman I scarcely know who has proved to be a royal pain in the ass?”
“Because you wish me to state this obvious . . .” José wiped his mouth and pushed away his empty plate. “I have been your servant for almost twenty years now—”
“Mi amigo—”
José was more aware of the conventions than his boss and said steadily, “Your family retainer, I think they say on such shows as Downton Abbey. But señor, in all that time, after you have had many women companions, I have never seen you unable to sit still at the thought of never seeing a woman again.” Having said his piece, José stood and collected his plate to take it to the sink and rinse it, then put it in the two-drawer dishwasher.
Damn the man, how did he know that’s what was really bothering me? Ross asked himself. Ross took his plate and dumped the contents into the trash, then offered it to his “family retainer.” He hesitated, even with José, but the words came of their own accord. “I don’t know what to do to get her to stay. She just got this job, and with a new PhD in historic preservation, how could I ask her to come to provincial Amarillo even if she wanted to?” He saw the question hovering on José’s tongue and explained, “Provincial means small and countrylike.”
“She loves old buildings, no? You own two of them.” José smiled into Ross’s blue eyes. “Besides, it is the mujer’s choice, sí?” Placidly, José cleaned Ross’s plate, too.
With his usual ease, José had cut to the heart of the matter. Ross played with that solution, but like everything with Emm, it was complicated. For one, he didn’t own the buildings, only his share as managing member. It would be quite costly to acquire them. For another...
While he debated the pros and cons of that idea, José dried his hands on a towel and turned to face him, his mournful countenance lightened by the devilment in his eyes. “Mees Jasmine came by to give me some of her first batch of fried cheeken, and she told me about your . . . deesplay, she said, in their front yard.”
Ross’s cheeks colored a bit. “So?”
“So, if Mees Emm kissed you back, so . . . bueno, then you can show her another reason to stay.” José folded the clean towel over the towel bar by the sink. “All things between mujer y hombre lead to that, señor, and not just in Mexico. Be the jefe.” Jose gave his boss a last macho smile and exited, leaving Ross alone in his very expensive, sparkling kitchen that, God help him, he wanted more than anything in the world to be graced by Emm Rothschild, barefoot and pregnant. Mmm.
While Ross was envisioning her in his bed and his life, Emm was breaking into his forensic expert’s hotel room. Emm had earlier taped off the corner surveillance camera with black electrical tape, being careful to keep her face out of the camera angle, using the chair near the elevator to reach it, but she knew she didn’t have long before someone from security came to investigate why the camera had gone dark.
The tutorial she’d watched on YouTube didn’t seem to work very well with this old lock. She kept an ear out for anyone passing in the corridor, but this late on a Sunday she had the hallway to herself. She moved the pick she’d bought very gently from side to side, then up and down, but didn’t hear the click she was supposed to. She knelt on the carpet, looking through the keyhole, but she couldn’t see any light behind it. Like most hotels, even older refurbished ones like this, the door was opened by key card rather than key, but Emm figured it still had to have a tumbler release.
She was digging into her purse for a different pick when she heard the elevator stop at this floor. She looked up and down the hallway, but it was long, with nowhere to hide, so she could only stand up and pretend to be walking toward Abby’s room when the elevator opened and someone walked out. With her back turned, Emm didn’t know who it was, but she stopped at Abby’s door and knocked.
“I’m here, Emm.” Abigail Doyle stopped behind her. “As I informed you earlier, I was at the library, but somehow I knew my presence was urgently required.”
Emm turned with a big smile. “Why, Abby . . . I was just in the area and thought I’d stop by to see if you wanted to have a late cocktail.”
Abby eyed Emm’s big bag and too bright smile, her gaze now fastening on her black pants. “Indeed? You must have fallen on the carpet because there are fibers on the knees of those lovely black pants. What a shame.” She sent a look down the hall toward the taped-over camera. When she looked at Emm again with a stern expression, Emm had the grace to flush and look away.
Abigail sighed and took a tiny remote from her purse and clicked it. The light on the key card slot flickered but stayed red. Two loud clicks sounded in sequence, and only then did Abby take her card from her purse and insert it in the lock. After a third click, the key card light turned green and the door opened to Abby’s gentle push.
Inside, stacked neatly against the wall, Emm caught a tantalizing glimpse of the same evidence file boxes she’d seen that day in Abby’s trunk. Still, she kept her smile bright, but it took an effort. Of course Hermione Abigail Doyle, former MI6 and CIA, had had special electronic locks installed, given the sensitivity of the evidence within. Damn the woman, she was one of the few people Emm had ever met who made her feel inadequate. “Oh well, it’s late and I can see you’re tired. . . .”
Abby’s noncommittal gaze went cold. “Not yet.” She waved Emm inside. Emm entered, this time reluctantly, her gaze fixed on the boxes of evidence, but Abby was angrier than she’d ever seen her.
“Don’t you think it’s time we dispensed with this roundabouta-tion? If you persist in this imprudent behavior, I will be forced to inform Mr. Sinclair, and he will be forced to arrest you. Is that what you want?”
Emm’s smile fell like the façade it was under Abigail’s full frontal assault. “No, but I don’t have many options. I’ve tried to get you both to tell me more and you won’t.”
“We are bound by law and sworn duty to keep our evidence secure. Surely you understand that there is a chain of evidence procedure here we must follow if we want to eventually bring these perpetrators to justice?”
“How much meaning will that far-in-the-future result have if both Yancy and Jennifer are dead?”
Abby waved Emm into the only chair. “Very well; if we are at an impasse, I must contact Captain Sinclair.” She picked up her cell phone, but Emm leaped to her feet and covered her hand.
“Please don’t. Can’t we do this on the QT without telling anyone? I swear on my sister’s life I won’t tell a soul if you let me look at the evidence.” When Abby stayed very still, glaring at her, Emm’s voice grew passionate. “Ross is a Texas Ranger captain, and he has to do things by the book. I’m a concerned private citizen who has tried the legal route by filing the appropriate police reports, handing out flyers, and so on. I got diddly. Once I return to Baltimore, obviously I’ll be at the wrong end of the trafficking pipeline. Call me reckless if you want, but I seem to be the only person on the face of the earth—including my mother—who is really trying to find Yancy and Jennifer. If I have to bend the law a bit to do that, I do so with full awareness of the possible consequences.”
Abby’s stern mouth relaxed a bit. “So you are willing to go to prison for a first-degree felony?”
Emm sat back down more heavily than usual, but she was suddenly very tired. “If it secures their release and return to the States, yes.”
&nb
sp; Abby sighed. She put the phone back in her purse. “Tell me why you think you might see something we have not.”
“I know who and how often Jennifer and Yancy dated, I know the foods they like, the music they listen to, and the places they’ve traveled. Any one of those things could have influenced their movements and how they were captured. A concert, a restaurant, a trip.”
Abby hesitated, but then she went to a box of evidence, opened it, and removed a file folder marked “Jennifer Russell Internet Communications.” She set the file on the table before Emm, but when she shakily reached for it, Abby held up a cautioning hand.
“The only way to make this legal is for me to interview you as a family member. As such, you would be privy to some of these communications. In fact, I’ve seen your name more than once, so here you make a viable witness.” Abigail removed a small recorder from her purse and turned it on. “Ms. Rothschild, you’ve approached me with a request to review Jennifer’s e-mails, Facebook pages, and Tweets three months before she was taken. I’m allowing this unusual exchange, given you are the person closest to both victims. The MO of the Los Lobos cartel shows fast action in their pick of merchandise, and they gravitate to beautiful young women who have little family and are imprudent in their behavior. We suspect they would have taken Jennifer Russell shortly after they became aware of her vulnerability and beauty. If there is a link you can see in these com-muniqués, it could facilitate our ability to find whoever took her.” Abby shut off the recorder. “Proceed.”
Emm fell on the file like a rabid dog.
Ross glanced yet again at the clock on his bedside table. He’d resorted to brandy and cigars to calm his nerves, but they were not as effective as usual. He’d resolved to go to bed early—he had a full day tomorrow. It was almost ten, but he remembered Emm also had problems sleeping. Every urge in his body bade him to go to her now, to stake his claim, but if he did that, he’d be creating a clear conflict of interest. Maybe no one else would know, but he would.
He pounded his pillow and tried the other side of the bed, but thirty minutes ticked away. He was rising to warm himself some milk when his cell phone vibrated. He looked at the text. It was from Abigail Doyle and only said, “Sorry for the hour, but we have a possible new evidence vector. Can you come straightaway to my hotel room to meet with me and Ms. Rothschild?”
Ross was reaching for his clothes before he finished reading.
Thirty minutes later, Emm and Abby were sitting in an uncomfortable silence. After she’d highlighted several of Jennifer’s e-mails as possible clues, Emm had asked to also look at Yancy’s file and been denied. Abigail said only Ross Sinclair would determine how to proceed from this point, but first he had to hear why Emm thought these e-mails could lead to a key piece of evidence on how the women were snatched.
A firm rap came at the door.
Abigail got up and unlocked the door. “Thank you for coming so late.”
Ross was scowling when he entered, and Emm noted that he hadn’t taken time to comb his hair, which was mussed. His shirt was even buttoned crooked. This evidence of his haste and concern might have touched her at a less tense moment, but at the look in his eyes, she had to force herself to sit very still rather than defend herself. She let Abby do the talking and was touched when, to some degree at least, the woman covered for her.
Abby said, “Ms. Rothschild came by late to see if I’d care for a cocktail, and when I invited her in, she asked about Jennifer Russell’s Internet communications. Given I’ve seen Ms. Rothschild’s name many times in both victims’ e-mail accounts, I thought it might be of use to interview her. Forgive me if I overstepped my bounds and should have brought her to your office tomorrow, but . . .”
Ross waved an impatient hand. “I trust you to do what’s right, Abigail, and I’m also sure you know how to conduct an interview. You recorded it?” When Abby nodded, some of his sternness was piqued to eagerness. “What did the two of you find out?”
Abby spread out three different pages of the printed Internet communication file. “There are three e-mails from an account we previously dismissed as junk mail from one of the many bars Ms. Russell frequented in downtown Baltimore. A flyer announcing live music, another inviting Ms. Russell to karaoke, and a third advertising a St. Patrick’s Day party.” Abby looked at Emm. “Please tell him what you told me.”
“I was at that St. Patrick’s Day party a bit over a year ago,” Emm said. “The bar owner has his own publicity firm—they did the flyer and e-mail blast—but that was the night Jennifer met him. His name is Brett Umarov, a former rock star whose stage name was, I think, Reefer Marty and the Stoners.”
Ross’s eyes narrowed. He looked at Abby. “That’s a Chechen surname. You cross-reference it?”
Abby nodded, showing him the master list of the users of each IP address. “There is no e-mail account under either of those names.”
“I’m not surprised if Jennifer kept her contacts with him mostly quiet,” Emm inserted. “The night she met him, she was swept away by his guitar playing and stayed out all night, the first time ever, upsetting Yancy. I’d forgotten about this until I saw the flyer. Jennifer was an honor student, and Yancy tried to get her away from this guy, a former rock star who opened his own bar and introduced her to the wrong crowd, but Jennifer was at the rebellious age and wouldn’t listen to her mom.”
Emm tapped the next e-mail listing Abby had highlighted. “This was the karaoke event Yancy invited me to, but I was preparing for my orals and didn’t go. I don’t know precisely what happened, except that she and Brett had some type of confrontation and Jennifer moved out of Yancy’s apartment and into his.” She looked at the date. “This was only a month or so before she was grabbed. The last event I missed, too, for the same reason, but I know it was a big rock music concert, and Jennifer dressed entirely inappropriately.” Emm showed Ross her cell phone. “I e-mailed these pictures to the Baltimore police, but they seemed clueless. They told me they interviewed the employees at this bar but didn’t find anything that led to a person of interest, even though Jennifer disappeared a few days later. I believed them and didn’t realize how key the dates were until I saw these e-mails.”
Ross looked down at the photo of Jennifer in skintight jeans with holes and a tank top that revealed her slim waistline and impressive cleavage. “E-mail me these pictures, please.”
Emm nodded. “Anyway, Yancy told me after Jennifer disappeared that she thought Brett had introduced her to cocaine at that concert. She said the powder was everywhere like snow, and that she suspected he might be a dealer as his band had never sold a bunch of CDs, yet they seemed to have very expensive equipment and played gigs nationwide that she was pretty sure they had to pay for. She’d enlisted me to go with her to Brett’s place to try to talk Jennifer away, but by the time I could schedule it, Jennifer was gone.” Emm’s eyes filled with tears. If only she’d put that meeting first, before her own ambitions . . . Emm started when Abby put a gentle hand on her shoulder and squeezed.
“It’s not your fault,” Abby said. “This is indeed a very viable lead, and we should have questioned you earlier.”
Ross skimmed through the rest of the e-mails. Emm saw his strong throat flexing from some emotion, but she wasn’t sure what. She got control of herself, blew her nose fiercely on the Kleenex Abby offered, and then asked, “Now what?”
Tossing the e-mail list back, Ross said, “Now you come into the office tomorrow for an official finding. Abigail, would you please bring Yancy’s Internet communications also, so we can get Emm to take a look at those? And I’ll put my best people on, making follow-up phone calls tomorrow, do some more digging on the activities at this bar, see if we can come up with some witnesses at these events. And I’ll ask the Baltimore police to interview this Brett character again in more depth.”
Emm frowned. “Don’t you have someone besides the Baltimore police who can interview him? They already did and said they got nothing. I don’t fully trust them.�
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“That’s obviously out of my jurisdiction, but I can make a couple of phone calls. You think they’re incompetent or . . . ?” Ross trailed off, obviously not liking what he was hearing, but drug and trafficking money turned a lot of formerly good cops into crooks.
“I don’t know, but the older cop—Ruiz, I think his name is—makes me uneasy. He was very . . . dismissive and cursory in his analysis, so far as I could see,” Emm replied. “I asked about Brett specifically at one point, and he said they’d interviewed him, but he seemed clean and genuinely upset at Jennifer’s disappearance.”
“I see. One of my colleagues is high up in the DEA on the East Coast, and I know he’s also trying to track the Los Lobos cocaine pipeline. If this Brett character is involved in distributing, as it sounds like he might be, there’s plenty of probable cause here to collar him for a more in-depth interview.”
Emm took a deep breath, feeling for the first time in over a year that there might actually be a breakthrough imminent. “Thank you. Both of you.” She stood and kissed Abby’s cheek.
Abby reddened, and Emm realized the brilliant forensics expert was far better at tearing cases apart than accepting physical affection. Emm offered Ross a tentative smile and got one in return that brought red to her own cheeks.
“Don’t I get a kiss, too?” His drawl this time was pure Texas, with no hint of a New York accent.
Emm said before she could correct herself, “I think you’ve had enough of that for one weekend.”
Abby’s eyebrows shot to her hairline as Ross laughed.
Emm scurried for the door. “I’m available for an interview the day after the survey. Thanks for listening.”
Ross’s taunting laugh and its promise of more to come followed her through the door, into the corridor, into her car on the short drive to her hotel room, straight into her dreams.
CHAPTER 9
The next morning, Emm dressed very conservatively for the survey, as if that could make up for the eroticism of her dreams. Ross Sinclair spent most of the night making love to her in front of his roaring fire, then doing unspeakably sensual things to her in his bed, then . . .
Sinclair Justice Page 13