Kept

by Jami Alden

  “Where?” Richard said.

  Andy breathed a sigh and picked a piece of lint from her navy cashmere sweater. “I’m going to need an extra deposit.”

  “You little bitch. Who do you think you’re talking to—”

  “Listen, Dick,” she said. “I know it’s been ages since you’ve been in school, but do you have any idea how much it costs to go to Brown these days? Not to mention, with the way Harold’s cutting Alyssa’s income left and right, I may soon find myself unemployed.” She named a figure.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Richard spluttered.

  “How much do you think the Enquirer would pay for my story, Dick? Double that? Triple? I hear OK! Magazine pays well—”

  “You’ll have it tomorrow. Now give me the address.”

  Richard hung up on Andy, the knot in his stomach tightening as he dialed Louis’s number. He hated dealing with him, had been convinced it was a bad idea from the very beginning, but as usual he was overruled. Richard existed to do whatever the Van Weldt family required of him, no questions asked, and dealing with Louis was no different.

  They were playing a dangerous game with Abbassi, and he knew if Louis found out they’d been planning to kill Alyssa all along, there would be hell to pay. But after what Andy had told him, even Louis wouldn’t be able to deny it was time to take care of Alyssa once and for all.

  “We have a problem,” Richard said as soon as Louis picked up. “We need to take care of her, and I know a way we can do it.” He quickly explained the situation, as well as their plan, as though he’d only just come up with it.

  “You know of a place to take her?” Louis asked.

  Richard had the perfect place in mind. “It’s totally isolated. No one will look for her there, especially if we tell the press she’s in treatment.”

  “Fine,” Louis said. “You bring her to me. I will take care of other arrangements.”

  Alyssa kept her head down, shoulders hunched as she slunk past the panhandler shoving an empty McDonald’s cup in her face. Even if she wanted to, she couldn’t give him any money, having spent all her cash on the cab. She rolled her eyes at her own stupidity. This part of San Francisco was not the kind of place a woman should be walking around alone, much less walking alone looking for an ATM.

  Keeping a constant bead on her surroundings, Alyssa looked at the scrap of paper in her hand and checked the address once again. She cursed under her breath. She had the intersection right, but she’d been up and down the block twice now, on both sides of the street, and still hadn’t located Zed’s.

  “What you lookin’ for, beautiful?” a homeless guy called out to her from a doorway. He was stringy and filthy, his face half hidden by his scraggly beard.

  She gave him a wide berth as she walked past. Other people looked her way. She was starting to attract attention. Sweat beaded and itched around the neckline of her sweater as her eyes darted around. Finally she spotted it, a cardboard sign no bigger than a standard eight-by-ten piece of paper, taped on the inside of a window of an otherwise innocuous building.

  It didn’t look so much like a bar as a crack den. Alyssa took a deep breath and braced herself as she opened the door.

  The bar was full, even on a weeknight, the crowd an odd mix, ranging from people who’d scraped enough together from their McDonald’s cups to buy a beer, to groups of slick yuppie types who’d ventured into the wild from their multimillion-dollar condos on the gentrified block around the corner.

  One of the yuppies looked up to see who had walked in. Alyssa dipped her head even farther, sending her hair spilling over her shoulder to hide her face, and prayed she went unrecognized.

  Apparently the patrons hadn’t gotten the memo about San Francisco’s citywide smoking ban, because the air was so thick with tobacco smoke and worse she could barely see through it enough to make out features. Not that she had any clue who she was looking for. Her heart picked up speed, and she was struck once again by how colossally stupid this was. She’d fallen for this stupid cloak-and-dagger prank, and it was probably all some ploy to get her alone and vulnerable so some psycho could do whatever he wanted to her.

  She started to reach in her pocket for her phone. A hand curled around her forearm, and she jumped about two feet off the ground.

  “Did anyone see you? Does anyone know where you are?”

  She shook her head.

  The man’s eyes darted over her shoulder and canvassed the dim room. “Head to the back. We can talk privately.”

  She swallowed hard, questioning her sanity even as she let him steer her to the back of the dark, smoky bar. Alyssa slid into one side of the small booth, and the man took his seat across from her.

  “You came. I wasn’t sure you would.” His eyes were bloodshot behind the lenses of his glasses, darting around the room as he tried to see everything at once. He raised a hand to signal the cocktail waitress, and Alyssa didn’t miss the telltale tremble.

  A drunk. Or worse.

  “Who are you?” she asked. “What do you want?” Convinced by the second she’d been snowed, she wanted to cut to the chase, find out what he thought he knew so she could get the hell out of there.

  “Martin Fish. Thanks for meeting me. This is good. This is good,” he repeated, nodding compulsively. The waitress came over and took his order for a triple shot of Johnnie Walker, neat.

  “Let me guess, you’re a fan?” Alyssa said.

  “I’m a reporter.”

  She pushed herself up from the bench seat with a soft curse. “I’m out of here.”

  He lunged across the table and grabbed her arm, his grip so tight she could feel his fingernails even through the thick knit of her sweater. “Sit down. You want to hear what I have to say. And if you don’t you’re even stupider than I thought.”

  Veins stood out on his wiry forearm as his grip urged her to sit back down. Satisfied she wasn’t going to bolt, he released her. Alyssa sank back and took a good look at Martin Fish.

  Other than the rabid glint in his eyes, he was completely unremarkable looking. His hair was a dusty brown with a few threads of gray, swept back from a slightly receding hairline. His face was tanned dark, weathered as an old bomber jacket, and his eyes were deep set and dark behind round tortoiseshell glasses that had gone out of style about five years ago. His nose was wide, and a scraggly goatee framed thin lips and distracted from a slightly weak chin.

  The waitress brought his drink. He sucked down half of it in one gulp, closing his eyes and sighing as if it were ambrosia.

  “Why don’t you tell me what I’m doing here, Martin? You said you have information about my father’s death,” she prompted.

  “Do you like diamonds, Alyssa?” Martin asked, his eyebrow cocked, his lips pulling into an odd smile.

  “Sure.” Alyssa shrugged, not sure where this was going. Though in truth she was more of an emerald girl, ever since her father had given her a pendant for her twelfth birthday and claimed it was no match for her eyes. But she wasn’t about to share all that with Martin Fish, whose vibe was growing weirder by the second. “Girl’s best friend and all that.”

  “The ad campaign has been very successful, hasn’t it? Everyone loves a pretty girl draped in diamonds.” His eyes roamed over her, as if he could see through her clothes. Alyssa’s skin crawled, and she cursed herself for turning down Andy’s offer to accompany her. “Do you know where those diamonds come from? Do you care where they were before they touched your naked skin?” Martin prodded.

  This was such a mistake. She needed to get out of here.

  Then she remembered the dreams. The drugs in her system.

  Alyssa couldn’t leave, not if there was even a slim chance he had any information about her father’s death. She stared him dead in his crazy eyes and recited, word for word, the verbiage on the card that accompanied every piece of diamond jewelry sold by the Van Weldts. “While it is difficult, if not impossible, to trace the origin of our stones, we guarantee that all our diamonds ar
e legally obtained from sanctioned mines that enforce humane mining practices, pay their workers fairly, and make the safety of their employees the utmost priority.”

  “How PC,” Martin said, his thin lips stretching into a smile that left his eyes cold. “Too bad it’s a load of bullshit.”

  “What are you talking about? My father would never sell conflict diamonds.” Not only because it was unethical. As much as Alyssa had loved her father and wanted to believe in his integrity, she also knew what a hit her father’s business had taken in the wake of the Leo DiCaprio movie.

  The issue of blood diamonds wasn’t a new one. It was an open secret that every year a certain amount of illegally mined diamonds were smuggled over the borders of civil-war-torn countries, and their proceeds were used to support the armies of the various factions. But after the success of the movie, the issue of blood diamonds was on everybody’s radar, and now everyone wanted to make sure the diamonds they bought were from legitimate sources. Major diamond dealers—her father included—did whatever they could to assure their customers their diamonds were from “clean” sources. “My father would never risk the company’s image that way,” Alyssa insisted.

  Martin’s lips peeled back from his teeth in a disgusted sneer. “People will do anything for money.”

  Alyssa shook her head. “He knew everything about the business. He only bought diamonds from reputable cutting operations.”

  “Like Louis Abbassi?”

  “Yes,” she said cautiously as she waited for the trap to spring.

  “How well do you know Louis?”

  Not as well as he’d like to know me. “We’re friendly,” she said cautiously. “As were he and my father before he died.”

  “What if I were to tell you that Louis Abbassi is helping to arm some of the most brutal warlords in southern Africa?” Martin said, cocking his head as he waited for her reply.

  Alyssa shook her head. “That’s ridiculous. Louis is a businessman. His mines are all sanctioned—”

  She jumped when Martin’s palm slammed onto the table. “You want to believe that, don’t you? Want to ignore the fact that Abbassi’s planes are moving more than rice and bandages in and out of the jungle.” His face grew flushed, lines deepening as his expression radiated contempt. “You have no clue what goes on in the world. Just want to sit here on your useless, privileged ass, and you don’t give a fuck that girls are raped and children are forced into combat.”

  Alyssa shook her head. “Of course I care, but Louis isn’t—”

  “You know why they’re called blood diamonds, don’t you?”

  “Of course,” Alyssa replied, “but my family would have nothing—”

  He leaned over the table and lowered his voice to a bone-chilling whisper. “Let me spell it out for you. Louis gets guns to local warlords in exchange for mining rights and uses his cutting operation in South Africa to get them into the distribution chain.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Louis has certificates for all his stones—”

  “Really? Do the certificates mention that he sometimes pays for the stones in Kalashnikovs?”

  Alyssa shook her head. This was insane. He was insane. A ranting conspiracy theorist with a grudge against Louis and the Van Weldts. “So tell me what this all has to do with my father’s death,” she said. “Don’t tell me—Louis drove my stepmother to commit murder suicide.”

  Martin’s face grew somber, and for a moment he looked almost sane. “I talked to your father a couple weeks before he died. He got very defensive when I prodded him on Louis and kicked me out of his office. But I think after that he went back for a closer look at Louis’s operation.”

  “And you think my father found out, and Louis had him killed before he could tell anyone. Is that it?”

  Martin nodded, fingering his scraggly goatee. “It’s a little more complicated, but that’s it in a nutshell.”

  “More complicated, how?” Tension wrapped cold tentacles around the base of her neck, coiling and tightening until a headache took root. Alyssa brought her hands up to rub at her temples.

  “Someone made the deal with Abbassi, someone with as much authority as your father.” Martin’s already deep-set eyes went squintier behind his glasses. “I guarantee whoever that was had a pretty good idea Abbassi wasn’t completely legit.”

  Her gut clenched and twisted in concert with the pounding in her head. “Are you saying my uncle had my father and stepmother killed?”

  Martin held his hands up, fingers spread. “It all fits, right?”

  A harsh laugh erupted from her throat. “Maybe in crazy-town this all fits. You can’t prove any of this. You just come out spewing these wild accusations about my family. What’s your problem with the Van Weldts, Martin? Did they screw you over? Sell you a piece of jewelry that still wasn’t enough to convince some poor woman to sleep with you?”

  His lips again pulled into a sneer. “You’re so quick to jump to their defense. This family that wanted nothing to do with you until they figured out a way to use you.”

  The blood drained from her face as the blow hit home. “I’ll sue you for libel before I let you destroy the company my father worked so hard to build.”

  “It’s only libel if it’s not true.”

  “Okay, fine,” she said, clenching her teeth and crossing her arms. “If you’re so convinced my stepmother didn’t kill my dad before offing herself and that the Van Weldts are buying their diamonds from an arms dealer, why tell me? Why keep it secret? Why wouldn’t you go to the police, or Interpol, or whoever it is that tracks down international arms dealers?”

  An eager gleam glowed in Martin’s eyes. “Because you’re going to help make sure everyone knows the truth. Like you said, I need proof that someone in the company knew about Louis and wanted to keep it covered up. I know your father left you a significant stake in the company in his will. You have the kind of access I need.”

  She gave an involuntary snort. “You overestimate me,” she said, remembering her uncle’s disdain when Alyssa had suggested she be involved in the marketing strategy meeting. “I’m just the face in the ads. They don’t let me mess around in the actual business. Besides, why in the world would I help you?”

  “Are you kidding me? We live in a world where Britney Spears making a Starbucks run is headline news on CNN. No one cares about miners suffering in Africa or teenage girls getting raped.” He paused, and for a moment real despair flashed across his face. It disappeared in an instant. “Stories like that are relegated to two columns in the back of the world-news section. Even if I do link the Van Weldts to Abbassi, without proof someone knew what was going on, it’s a minor PR problem for the company. But if Alyssa Miles, the hottest celebutante since Paris Hilton, helps me find the proof and break the news, we’ve got the hottest story of the decade.” His eyes glowed with a mercenary light. “We’re talking about exclusives with the networks, a book deal; you could even play yourself in the movie. Don’t try to tell me you don’t want to be a part of that.”

  Alyssa swallowed hard against the nausea churning in her gut. “You think I would accuse my family of something as horrible as this just to get my face on the news?”

  “It’s a hell of a lot more dignified than leaking nude photos of yourself.”

  She reached out, grabbed his drink, and threw it in his face. “You’re disgusting,” she said and stood up. “And you’re crazy. I don’t believe any of this,” she said, ignoring the doubts clamoring in her head. She was twenty-four years old, for Christ’s sake. Too old to be this stupid and impulsive. “If you try to contact me again, I’ll have you arrested for stalking.”

  She started to slide out of the booth. Martin was on her in a second, pinning her by the shoulders to the wooden backrest. His breath was hot on her face, stinking of whiskey. “We have to tell people. We have to make them see the truth.” He released her as abruptly as he’d grabbed her. “Don’t leave,” he said as he pulled out a pen and paper and scribbled something do
wn. He shoved the paper into her hand. “Go to this Web site and enter the log-in and password I’ve written down. You’ll get a small taste of what I’ve seen. When you’re done, call me at the Marina Motor Inn.”

  Alyssa stalked out, ignoring the quizzical stares and whispers of “Is that…” from the other patrons as she walked by.

  Paranoid, delusional freak. Not that she was any better, thinking she was going to get answers from some weirdo calling out of the blue. She paused under a streetlight and squinted at the scrap of paper. www.FishBait.org. Login: mARfiSH669. Password: MAlaurRe85.

  Fishbait. She shook her head. What a tool. It was probably like his own amateur porn or something equally freaky and disgusting. She crumpled the paper and shoved it in the front pocket of her jeans, calling herself an idiot as her angry strides ate up block after block.

  But her initial fury faded, leaving room for the niggling doubts to creep in. What about the dreams? What about the drugs? Someone was slipping them to her, she had no doubt about that.

  Was it all related? Was it possible she really had seen something that night but didn’t really “know” it? And someone wanted to make sure she never found out for sure?

  She trudged up the last hill to her house, skirting around the block so she could sneak in the back way. Dressed as she was, this time of night, even people who knew she lived around here didn’t recognize her as the glammed-out creature from the tabloids.

  Making sure no one was watching, she keyed in the security code for the back gate and walked quietly across the Victorian’s small backyard. Maybe she should take a look at the Web site. Just to be sure.

  She walked up the stairs to the living room and found Andy perched on the edge of the couch as Anderson Cooper played on the TV. Andy jumped up and rushed over to Alyssa. “Are you okay? I was so worried.”