Kept

by Jami Alden

  “Not much,” Toni said, and Alyssa moved closer to hear her over the noise from the television. “He’s involved in everything from oil speculation to commercial real estate. And as far as I can tell, everything about Louis Abbassi and his diamond-cutting operation check out clean.”

  “The guy I met with the other night said Louis was dealing with warlords in Africa, transporting weapons for diamonds.” Everyone turned to stare at her in surprise.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this?” Derek asked, and she felt her hackles rise at the irritation in his voice.

  “Sorry,” she snapped. “I guess I got distracted by the whole getting-drugged-and-kidnapped-and-drugged-some-more thing. It’s taking a while for the last few days to come back into focus.”

  Derek’s mouth immediately softened in apology. “Sorry,” he said and caught her to him in a one-armed hug. He leaned in close and said, so only she could hear, “And it’s not like we did a lot of talking when you were awake.”

  Alyssa gave a little laugh as he pulled away. When she looked up, she saw that everyone was still staring, but this time at Derek, as if he’d grown a horn out of the center of his forehead.

  “What?” he said.

  “Nothing,” Toni said too quickly as she turned back to her computer screen.

  Ethan and Danny looked at each other, back at Derek, then back at each other.

  “You ever see that thing on Wild Kingdom?” Danny asked Ethan. “You know, where the gazelle adopted a lion?”

  “Yeah.” Ethan nodded. “I know exactly what you mean.”

  Alyssa didn’t, but Derek must have, because he blasted his brothers with a glare and muttered, “Fuck off,” before he released her. “Tell me everything you can remember,” he said, turning back to her, “starting with your meeting with—what’s his name?”

  “Martin Fish,” Alyssa replied. She sucked down the last of the coffee and poured another cup, hoping the caffeine would hone the fuzzy memories of the last few days. “He said he was a reporter—” Her words choked in her throat as her gaze caught on the TV screen, which showed a close-up of a man in his late forties with a long nose, shaggy hair, and bad glasses. The goatee was gone, but there was no mistaking the man. “That’s him. What are they saying about him?”

  Danny aimed the remote and cranked the volume. Alyssa’s stomach knotted in dawning horror as she listened to the newscaster’s voice-over.

  “The body of a man found murdered in his room at the Marina Motor Inn yesterday has been identified as Martin Fish, a freelance journalist whose pieces on international politics have appeared in national publications. At this time police believe Mr. Fish interrupted a robbery of his room late Thursday. San Francisco police are urging anyone with information to call this number.”

  Alyssa felt the coffee mug slide from her numb fingers as the anchorwoman read the number. “Someone must have followed us,” she said.

  “Did you tell anyone besides me where you were going?” Derek asked.

  “No.” She shook her head. “Andy knew I was meeting someone. She must have called Louis or something.” She pressed her fingertips against her eyes. She didn’t want to break down here, not in front of three granite-hard men and one tough-as-nails woman. But it was hard not to lose it as the full force of her assistant’s betrayal hit her. She was so stupid, falling for Andy’s act. And she’d repaid Alyssa by drugging her and handing her over to people who wanted her dead.

  “I don’t think she knew about Louis,” Derek said. “Richard’s the one who put her up to drugging you. I don’t think she realized what they planned.”

  Alyssa nodded. That softened the blow, barely. “When I met with Martin, he told me Louis’s cutting business was a way to move the diamonds into the market.”

  “Blood diamonds,” Toni murmured.

  Alyssa nodded. “Because we entered into the agreement with Louis, the Van Weldts are his largest customer. If what Martin claims is true, we’re running in a river of red.”

  “In your message you said he had information about your father,” Derek said. “What about that?”

  Alyssa dug her fingers into the base of her skull where a knot of tension had formed and was starting to throb. “He didn’t have any proof. Only that he interviewed my father shortly before his death. He asked my father some questions about where Louis got his diamonds. My dad got upset, cut the interview short. But Martin thinks maybe Dad did a little digging. And someone—Louis, I guess, and Richard—wanted him to keep it quiet.”

  “But that’s just a theory, right?” Danny said, running an impatient hand through his hair. “No proof.”

  Alyssa shook her head. “That’s what I said. But he told me I needed to look at the evidence myself, see what was really happening, then see if I was as willing to cover for my family.”

  They all looked at her expectantly. “What was the evidence?” Ethan finally asked. “Photos? Documents? What?”

  “It was a Web site,” Alyssa said. “He wrote down an address and a password on a card and told me to look at it.” She paused, closed her eyes, and dropped her head. “But I lost the card somewhere between the bar and my house,” she said, not wanting to open her eyes, not wanting to see the disappointment in Derek’s eyes as he realized she was, indeed, the brain-dead bimbo the press made her out to be.

  “It’s okay,” he said, curving his hand around her neck, his fingers honing in on the knot, rubbing until she was weak in the knees. “Try to visualize the card. Can you remember any of the information?”

  Like a billboard, the URL popped into her head. “FishBait. FishBait.org,” she said, but her excitement faded immediately. “But it’s password protected—”

  “Not a problem.” Toni gave her a dismissive wave and turned to her screen. “Give me ten minutes. Twenty, tops.”

  As Toni set herself to hacking into Fish’s Web site, Derek gave Alyssa’s shoulder a last squeeze and went to where Danny was standing in the cottage’s small living room. “Any more news about”—he wasn’t sure how to phrase it—“the bodies?”

  “Nothing to help us out,” Danny said, his mouth tight, unable to hide his anger no matter how hard he tried. “Everything’s so wrecked from the landslide, it’s going to be hard to find any evidence. The older female’s teeth are so jacked up, dental records aren’t going to help us any.”

  “Shit.” Now they really were in for weeks, maybe months, of waiting for a DNA match.

  Danny nodded. “Selfish bitch won’t stop haunting us,” he said, fury turning his eyes the sooty shade of storm clouds. “And the stupid old man keeps letting her do it.” He turned his attention back to the television. But Derek knew he wasn’t really watching. Behind Danny’s unseeing gaze his brain was seething with nearly two decades of anger and resentment. At their mother who left them, and at their father who couldn’t let go.

  For all he tried to pretend he didn’t give a shit that their depressed, alcoholic mother had run out on them, Danny had turned his grief into an impenetrable cynicism that didn’t invite close relationships with anyone.

  Derek understood too well. But he’d always secretly thought himself superior to both of his brothers because, unlike those two, who only pretended not to care, Derek really didn’t care. Other than his family, he didn’t allow himself to get emotionally invested in anything or anyone.

  Or so he’d thought. Then Alyssa Miles had sauntered into his life and blown all that to fucking hell.

  The cottage was suddenly too small, stifling, and he went outside to stand on the small redwood deck that stood a couple feet off the cottage’s overgrown yard. He sucked in deep breaths, tasted the first bite of fall in the late afternoon air. Yeah, Alyssa had knocked everything askew. And in admitting he cared about her, he had to admit he cared about some other things, too.

  “Hey.” Her light footfalls sounded on the deck as she stepped out. Goose bumps rose on her arms, and her nipples puckered against the stretchy front of her shirt. He knew for a fact she
wasn’t wearing a bra. He let himself dwell on that, grateful for the distraction from too deep thoughts about losing his self-imposed identity as an iceman.

  Well, not entirely an iceman, he thought as heat pooled low in his belly.

  “You were talking about your mom, weren’t you? You and Danny?”

  Heat receded, replaced by old hurt he’d managed to keep at bay for the last eighteen years, but hadn’t stopped nagging him since that morning at the beach house when Alyssa had poked and prodded and finally sent him over the edge. He’d fractured on landing, and now little bits kept oozing out, demanding to be pulled out and examined fully before tucked back away. “Yeah.”

  She slid her arms around his waist and tucked her head up under his chin. He stiffened reflexively, not wanting to have this conversation here and now. Or ever.

  “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it,” she said, squeezing him harder, her warmth seeping into his skin. Until he couldn’t help but wrap his arms around her and bury his face in her hair.

  He would have laughed if he weren’t so afraid it would sound more like a sob. He’d never been with anyone like her, who offered herself up without reservation. He’d purposely avoided dating women who tried to have any sort of deep, emotional connection, who would ever openly profess their feelings without provocation.

  It was like he’d told her: He didn’t talk. He didn’t share. He didn’t let people in his head or his heart.

  I love you. I wanted to be sure to tell you.

  Somehow she’d wormed her way in there anyway.

  He topped her by a foot and outweighed her by a hundred pounds, but right now her slim arms were the only things keeping him from blowing apart.

  “They still don’t know anything,” he said, his hands tightening convulsively around her back. “We’ll have to wait a while for the DNA tests to come in.”

  She nodded against his chest.

  “Danny hopes it’s her. Ethan does, too.” He didn’t want to talk about it but couldn’t stem the flow. “I don’t know what I want. I don’t blame them, I guess. They want it to be done. To know once and for all.”

  “And you don’t?”

  He swallowed hard. “If it were just me, yeah. I’m sick of having to wonder what happened. I convinced myself she drank herself to death a long time ago. But now that we might know for sure…”

  “Your father believes she’s still alive, doesn’t he?”

  “Yeah, and that’s why part of me hopes the body turns out to be someone else. Searching for her has taken over his whole life. I don’t know what he’ll do if we finally confirm she’s dead.”

  “Maybe it will finally set him free. Give him closure, same as for you three.”

  Derek wanted that to be true. He wanted to believe his father was capable of moving on. But never in a million years had he expected his father’s life would stop when his mother left. Derek didn’t hold much hope that he’d get a new lease on life if Anne Taggart turned up dead, even after all this time.

  The sliding glass door slid open behind them, and Derek turned to see Ethan. “Toni’s in.”

  Alyssa leaned over Toni’s shoulder so she could get a closer look at the screen. At first look, FishBait.org was a news site, featuring articles by Martin and other journalists that covered war zones and natural and manmade disasters, seeming to focus on the harsh reality of life in forgotten parts of the world.

  But Toni quickly found the password-protected section where Martin stored his notes, pictures, and any other materials related to his stories. Toni made an exasperated noise in her throat. “This is going to take days.”

  Alyssa scanned through the endless list of folders until her eyes locked on one labeled DFA.

  “Try that one,” she said, pointing to it on the screen. “DFA. ‘Diamonds for All.’ That’s the campaign tagline.”

  Toni shrugged and clicked it open, and Alyssa felt a tiny spurt of triumph when the folder opened to reveal a dozen subfolders with labels like OSCAR VW, ALYSSA M, and MINE CONDITIONS. She may not be a computer genius or a security expert, but she wasn’t completely useless. “Click there,” she said, indicating the mining conditions with her finger. She wanted to see for herself the deplorable conditions Fish accused them of supporting.

  “Here, why don’t you drive,” Toni said, scooting her chair back so Alyssa could sit.

  For a second Alyssa was afraid she’d pissed the other woman off with her backseat surfing. But while Toni’s expression held a hint of impatience, there was no trace of irritation. “You know what you’re looking for better than we do.”

  Alyssa sat down and clicked open a picture of an African man, his dark, weathered skin clinging to bones, covered in mud as he worked in the mines. The caption read NKUDA MINE, OUTSIDE MBUJI-MAYI, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO.

  She swallowed hard. Alyssa knew some of the diamonds the Van Weldts sold came from mines all over Africa. She even knew some of them provided better working conditions than others. She’d accepted it as a fact of the business, swallowed it without ever questioning the morality. But she’d never seen conditions like those depicted in Fish’s photographs. Men, women, children covered in mud, their bellies bloated with malnutrition, surrounded by armed guards who looked no older than teenagers.

  One photo in particular made her heart ache like a giant bruise. It was of a girl, no more than fifteen or sixteen. Extraordinarily beautiful with her smooth skin, high forehead, full lips, and sculpted cheekbones. She was tall and slender. Except for her belly, which bulged in the late stages of pregnancy. The caption under it read, MARIE LAURE MWANDEKO. TAKEN FROM HER VILLAGE OUTSIDE BUKAVU. CHOSEN AS FIRST WIFE BY MEKEMBE.

  “Isn’t there an embargo on diamonds from the Congo?” Toni asked.

  Alyssa nodded and clicked on a file marked VIDEOS. “But it’s easy enough to sneak them over the border and pay someone to write false certificates of authenticity.” Again, a widely known and accepted fact of the business, another thing she hadn’t even had to ignore because she’d never really given it much thought.

  Self-disgust burned bitter at the back of her throat, feeling very much the useless, ignorant party girl the press made her out to be. The girl, Marie Laure’s, huge dark eyes haunted her. At sixteen Alyssa had been partying it up all over Los Angeles, Miami, the south of France, feeling sorry for herself at her parents’ neglect. At the same age this girl had been kidnapped, raped, and would bear a child. Alyssa didn’t know much about medical facilities in southern Africa, but she knew mother and child would be lucky if they survived the birth.

  The first file video opened to show the interior of a tent. Four men sat around a table, huge machine guns propped within easy reach as they played cards and drank from sweating beer bottles. An argument broke out, and while Alyssa and the others couldn’t understand the words, it was clear one man was accusing the other of cheating as he slammed his own cards down and made a grab for the other’s hand.

  Then the accuser picked up his beer bottle, smashed it on the corner of the table, and slashed the jagged edge across the other thug’s face. A ragged tear opened in the man’s cheek, soaking his face in blood as he stood and staggered from the table.

  The table erupted in laughter, white teeth flashing in dark faces as the accuser tossed aside his broken bottle. He turned in the direction of the camera and shouted something. Most of it was unintelligible, but Alyssa understood one phrase: “Marie Laure.”

  The girl from the photo. Fish had hooked her up with a hidden camera. As she watched, the camera drew closer to the table. A slender arm and a hand holding a fresh bottle of beer appeared in the frame.

  It took over an hour to go through all the video footage. By the time they were finished, Alyssa was sick to her stomach, hunched in her chair, her arms wrapped tightly around her waist. At some point Derek had brought her a soda, but even a sip of it made her want to vomit.

  Fish hadn’t been lying. Not only had the Van Weldts been selling illegal
diamonds, they had gone into business with an arms dealer. There was Louis, clear as day, making a weapons exchange in front of Marie Laure’s hidden camera.

  But the horror came next, when Mekembe saw Marie Laure. The picture skewed, fell, until all they could see was the red dirt of the ground, hands, arms, fists, feet, flailing. The sound of cries, yelling, the meaty thump of fists meeting flesh.

  That was the last video, dated three weeks ago. Right after Alyssa’s father was killed.

  “He’s so brazen,” Alyssa said, still struggling to accept the reality. “Why would he do this? How does he think he can get away with it?”

  “In his mind, these two worlds will never cross. He has enough money, enough power; he doesn’t think he’ll ever get caught,” Ethan said. “Classic megalomaniac.”

  “Thanks, Dr. Phil,” Danny said. “So your father found out about Abbassi, and Blaylock and Abbassi had him offed before he could tell anyone Blaylock made a deal to sell Abbassi’s blood diamonds through Van Weldt Jeweler.”

  Alyssa shook her head, her mouth pulling tight as the truth became brutally clear. “He has to be working with my uncle. Harold has always been in charge of dealing with suppliers. And even though Richard is involved in all the deals, he doesn’t have the authority to do one on his own. Especially something as big as the exclusive agreement they signed with Louis.” She shook her head; a cynical laugh exploded from her throat. “He was always going on about how I tarnished the family image. Meanwhile he was the one doing business with arms dealers.”

  “What about Kimberly?” Derek said. “Could she be involved?”

  “No,” Alyssa said with a vehement shake of her head. “She worked with our dad on the retail side. She didn’t do any business with the suppliers.”

  “But she works closely with Richard, and she and Abbassi looked pretty friendly at that fund-raiser,” Derek prodded.

  Everything in her rejected that possibility. “Kimberly wouldn’t do that to me,” she said, springing from her chair. “Ever since I moved up here, she’s the only one who’s been completely supportive. Even when my dad wanted to keep me pushed to the side of the business, she’s the one who tried to get me more involved.”