Strange Tango

by Michelle Dayton

  But not with Adam.

  He cares about me. She let herself watch him for a full minute as he muttered and cleared out another drawer. But, she reflected, he never said, “Let’s both forget the diamonds. I won’t go after them anymore either.” If he wasn’t going to steal them and she wasn’t going to turn in Knoll, then Sedarno would get his jewels and have no reason to hurt her. After hearing his story about Tony and the gut-deep guilt in his voice, she truly understood—but it still stung a little. Yeah, he cares about me—but he cares about the diamonds more.

  So this was it, where they truly said goodbye. She felt the lump rising in her throat and willed it to evaporate. When he’d first appeared tonight, she was so excited. Furious at him, of course, but so hopeful. Hopeful that he might have come because he couldn’t stop thinking about her and wanted to forge a way forward together. Stupid, stupid Jess.

  Adam stopped packing and stared at her. “What are you thinking?”

  Goodbye, Adam. She nodded briskly. “My travel route. I don’t need your money. I have a small emergency fund I can use. It’ll keep me afloat until I find some sort of work.” She hoped she sounded confident, like a woman on the path to a fugitive life.

  To her shock, he reached out and stroked her cheek. “I’m so sorry, Jess.” His voice was gruff. “I never should have asked you to come to Vegas. The trip was a horrible mistake.”

  Ouch. She knew what he meant, but still.

  She pulled away and shrugged. “It was my own fault. I didn’t listen.” I’m not listening to you now either. She pointed to the window where the faintest hint of orange could be seen in the sky. “Sun’ll be up soon. I’ll call a cab and...get gone.” She swallowed. “You should go now.”

  He nodded, slowly, but kept wary eyes on her face.

  She gave him a tight smile and held out her hand. “Good luck.” Good luck to us both.

  * * *

  Three days later, Jess stood in front of the full-length mirror in her room at the Marriott and critiqued her appearance.

  The red tango dress was a halter style that left her entire back bare and tied with a bow around her neck. There was a slit on her left leg that went up to her hip bone. Her own hair was tucked carefully into a wig cap, and the glossy black hair of her expensive new wig was pulled high off her face and hung in impossibly thick curls to the small of her back. Her ultra-dark spray tan, dramatic eye makeup and red lips completed the exotic look.

  In the mirror, her face was serene and relaxed, reflecting nothing of the tornado of butterflies tearing up her stomach. She was so nervous she hadn’t been able to eat all day.

  Tonight was the night.

  After Adam left her apartment earlier in the week, things had happened rather quickly. Since they weren’t on the same team anymore, she hadn’t shared with him her big news, that she’d been able to narrow the “May” window that Knoll mentioned on the golf cart recording. For legal reasons, the University stored the travel details for all the abroad students in the database for the Office of International Programs. It was easy for her to access the database and pull the flight details for Knoll’s couriers. Not legally, of course, but she was well past that.

  Two of the courier flights arrived on the evening of May 12th and two flew in on the morning of May 13th. From the recording, she knew that Knoll would consolidate the diamonds almost immediately and then Sedarno would arrive to collect them.

  Her next step was to access Knoll’s calendar and see if anything was scheduled for the 13th or 14th. That was a little tricky, but she found a way in after realizing that he’d linked his University email account to his other accounts.

  Lo and behold, Knoll was scheduled to attend a black tie fundraiser in Evanston on the 13 th. As a key donor, he was one of the speakers. She’d snorted aloud when she read the description of the gala and learned it was tango-themed. Of course it is. But the excitement really kicked in when she saw the personal notation he’d made on the calendar appointment: AS arrival United 4588.

  Arnie Sedarno. United flight 4588 arrived to O’Hare at 10:50 pm. Knoll was programmed to speak during the dinner, which was scheduled for 8:00 pm. It made sense that Knoll would collect the diamonds earlier that day, bring them to the event, and Sedarno would go directly from the airport to the gala to retrieve them.

  Which gave a three-to-four-hour window where Knoll had the diamonds in his possession and Sedarno was still in transit. A very nice window in which the authorities could catch him red-handed.

  She’d spent hours the day before summarizing the data found on the University’s computers, dummy-proofing it so that even the most inexperienced FBI agent would be able to connect the dots. She added material about diamond smuggling, so that they’d understand what Knoll was bringing in. She enclosed copies of Knoll’s financial records with an explanation of how he borrowed the money from organized crime and needed the diamonds to pay it back. She explained about the bribe to Seymour Davies and enclosed his financial statements as well.

  It took only moments to scrub her own electronic fingerprints off the package of information she so carefully put together. The FBI would receive the package from an anonymous source, and there would be no way to trace it back to her.

  Only one thing remained to take care of—the diamonds themselves. Knoll was an extremely powerful man with the typical “friends in high places.” Her package of information might be damning, but it was also illegally obtained. He needed to be caught with the diamonds in his possession.

  And...that was the problem. He wouldn’t carry 25 million dollars of diamonds on his person, but they needed to be somewhere near the gala. Maybe in his car? Or in a bag somewhere on the estate where the tango event was held?

  She couldn’t see any way around it. She would have to go the event herself and snoop around until she knew where the actual diamonds were. Then, she could make her call, email her evidence, and scoot out of there before Sedarno arrived.

  Piece of cake, right?

  In the mirror, her own eyes reflected skepticism. Then she called a cab to take her to Evanston.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Adam stood against the wall, nodding and smiling at the rich idiots all dressed up in different interpretations of tango-wear. It was almost hard to watch them awkwardly attempt the actual tango moves on the dance floor. Since his contact on Knoll’s staff alerted him to the party at the last minute, he’d opted for a simple black tuxedo. His hair and eyebrows were black tonight, his eyes a muddy brown. A dark mustache was the finishing touch.

  Ironic that his first real re-introduction to Knoll had come at the University black-tie event and tonight, the end, was also such an occasion. His jobs weren’t usually so symmetrically bookended. Glancing at his watch, he strolled until he was in good position to see the door. Based on the most recent text from his contact, Knoll was with a group walking through the estate’s gardens and would be arriving to the ballroom soon.

  As soon as Knoll was in the house, he needed to act. He wanted to be as far away as possible when Sedarno arrived and they realized the diamonds had disappeared. If all went as planned, he would be out of the state by the time Sedarno got to the party. If it didn’t go perfectly, he’d still be out of the city. He didn’t know what kind of effort Sedarno would put into recovering the diamonds, but he planned to be away from Chicago for quite some time.

  Away from Chicago. Like Jess. Jess. When would this godawful pressure on his chest let up? Some moments it felt like he could barely breathe. He couldn’t believe that because of him, she’d needed to flee the city. She deserved so much better. She deserved to get her life and reputation back. She deserved a man she could proudly introduce to her father. Instead, she’d gotten tangled up with him, the man who was about to deny her what she deserved.

  The fact that he’d fallen for her didn’t change a damned thing.<
br />
  Bitterly, he wondered what would have happened if he’d been a better partner while they were in Vegas. What if he’d actually treated her like an equal instead of a novice to be ignored? Maybe then she wouldn’t have gone rogue with her little golf operation and attracted Sedarno’s attention. Maybe they would have found a solution to this mess together.

  Ugh, this was all his fault. She was a brilliant woman; he should have taken advantage of that big brain of hers. God knew, it attracted him as much as her beauty. She was so fucking special, she made him dizzy. We could have been partners. In every way. Of course, his own stupid mind chose now to realize this fact. Now, when she was long gone into an existence she didn’t want.

  Would he ever live without this ocean-like constancy of guilt? He’d hoped that delivering the diamonds upon Tony’s release might lessen it, but now, he feared he’d just re-focus on how he screwed up Jess’s chance to reclaim her life.

  At least she’d be safe from Sedarno, he thought. God only knew what would happen if the mob boss suspected she had something to do with tonight, when the diamonds went missing.

  He felt the buzz of an incoming text. Knoll must have arrived. Sure enough, he heard the hostess twitter, “Maurice! Did you enjoy the tour? So looking forward to your speech.” Keeping his face angled away, he saw Knoll’s florid face out of the corner of his eye. Now all he needed to do was wait until Knoll was fully ensconced in the party. Five minutes, tops.

  He set a timer on his phone and settled himself in the corner of the ballroom next to the bar. Glancing at the array of liquor bottles, he sighed. Nope. As mopey as the situation with Jess made him feel, he needed to be razor sharp tonight. No bourbon until he and the diamonds were far, far away.

  “What can I get you?” the bartender asked a brunette in a red dress.

  “Just a club soda with lime please,” the woman answered.

  Adam’s heart stopped. He knew it wasn’t physically possible, but that’s what it felt like—that his heart literally paused between beats. No.

  He had to be imagining her voice. Jess had agreed to run. She understood the stakes, that her life was in danger. Didn’t she?

  With icy dread in his stomach, he turned his face to get a better look. Jesus fucking Christ. It wasn’t her real hair, but Adam would recognize the sleek muscles in her back anywhere in the world. He’d spent an entire day stroking it, licking it, rubbing it. Why in God’s name was her entire back bare? What the hell was she wearing? He took a long, long look at her red dress. She looked...she looked...holy hell.

  Abruptly, Adam wasn’t sure what he wanted to do first. Strangle her or fuck her against the nearest hard surface.

  Other men in the room were less conflicted. Several openly gaped at her revealing dress, their eyes lingering way too long on her legs. Adam’s hands fisted at his sides.

  The timer on his phone went off. Damn it, he should already be moving. He knew where the diamonds were, and Knoll wouldn’t be accessing them until Sedarno showed up. This was the time to go. But he couldn’t, not until he convinced Jess to get out of there.

  Jess turned so that her back was pressed against the bar. Sipping from her drink with a small smile on her bright red lips, she reminded him of the first night he’d seen her. She looked like a rich socialite without a care in the world. Silently, Adam approached. There were too many people crowded around the bar for them to have the conversation they needed to have. Fuck, there was no privacy in this entire room.

  He waited until she put her drink back on the bar. The second it was down, he grabbed her hand and steered her to the only place it was appropriate for him to talk to her privately—the dance floor.

  To her poker face’s credit, she didn’t make a peep when he closed the iron grip over her hand. Her smiling composure didn’t waver, even though he almost yanked her arm out of its socket to get her to the dance floor as quickly as possible.

  He faced her on the dance floor, maneuvered her hands and arms in the strict tango posture before smiling down, formally, at her. “Are you trying to get yourself killed, Blondie?”

  * * *

  Adam. She willed her body to listen to her brain instead of twitching and fizzing and dissolving into a million happy pieces, which is what it wanted to do. On some level, she suspected he’d be here tonight and she’d been waiting for him, breath held. Foolish and silly given that he could only be here for one reason.

  She returned his stiff smile, but the part of her that was recklessly thrilled to see him put warmth and humor in her tone. “Nice disguise. You look like a young, villainous, Tom Selleck.”

  “Don’t try to make me laugh,” he warned, marching her across the dance floor in a series of five-steps. “I am beyond pissed at you. You lied to me. You should be out of the country by now. I don’t know where that big brain of yours wandered off to, but we don’t even have time to debate it. You need to leave now before Sedarno gets here.”

  “I will,” she whispered, holding on to him for dear life and realizing that he was doing a very good approximation of one of the routines they’d watched in Vegas. “You actually know how to tango?”

  “You would too,” he said, changing direction and tugging her along, “if you would actually just let me lead for once.”

  Poker face slipping, she raised one finger from his shoulder to stroke along his cheek. “I wish I could. But we’re not going the same way.”

  He stared down at her and even through the brown contacts, mustache and false eyebrows, he made her heart flutter. “I have Sedarno’s flight information. He won’t be here for hours. But you need to leave now. I just called the FBI and emailed them all the data I have. I was just waiting to make sure they arrived before I left.”

  How much the FBI had understood from her frantic explanation, she had no idea. But at least she’d managed to convince them to check their email—it had everything they would need, including an urgent plea for them to arrive as soon as possible before Knoll managed to transition the diamonds to someone else.

  “Don’t worry. I didn’t say anything about you. But I don’t know what their procedure will be when they get here, and...” She gave his face one last, soft caress. “I don’t want you to get caught.”

  He made a sort of choking sound, pressed his face against the length of her finger. “I won’t. I’ll be long gone with the diamonds before they get here, Jess.”

  What? No, that was impossible. How could he even know where the diamonds were? She’d assumed he was just tailing Knoll and had ended up here. But maybe not...maybe he knew, like she did, that—

  “The diamonds are in a briefcase that’s handcuffed to his driver,” he said, flatly. “And in one minute, I’ll be relieving him of his burden.”

  God damn him. How could he know that? It had taken her an hour of following Knoll around the stupid party. She’d still be in the dark if he hadn’t excused himself from the group at one point to take a call. While he talked, he walked to where the cars were parked. It was extremely difficult tailing him in her three-inch heels, but worth it when she saw him conversing with his driver. The driver who had a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist, which to her eager eyes was pretty much the same thing as a neon sign reading “Diamonds Right Here!”

  She hadn’t seen much of the driver’s face, but he was a huge guy with a buzz cut and large earring in his left ear. He looked more thug than limo driver.

  What was Adam going to do? Fight the guy? What if he took the diamonds before the authorities got there?

  What if he got hurt?

  Anxiety flooded through her veins and she stumbled on the dance floor. “This is such a mess,” she hissed.

  “Jess, what if we—” There was a new note in Adam’s voice. One that made her pulse leap. It was hope.

  She looked up, but his eyes had focused across the room. “Something’s
up with Knoll,” he said. She followed his gaze. Sure enough, Knoll’s ear was pressed to his phone as he stared down at the floor and nodded furiously, ignoring everyone around him.

  Without another word, Adam released her. “Leave right now,” he demanded.

  And then he was gone.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Knoll’s car was parked close to the house, probably so he could quickly retrieve the diamonds whenever Sedarno arrived. Glancing around, Adam noted that he and the driver were the only two people outside near the garage.

  He glanced into a window, hoping for one last look at Jess in that red dress. Something to savor in his memory for the next couple of months until he saw her again.

  Because damn it, he was going to see her again. He knew what to do now—for them both.

  Knoll’s driver opened his door and climbed out. “Hey, man.” He gave Adam a fist bump.

  “Good to see you, Dwayne,” Adam answered. “Ready to start your lifetime of luxury?”

  “Hell yeah.”

  Dwayne had been relatively easy to turn into an asset. Knoll treated his staff like crap, and Dwayne had no great loyalty to the man or his job. Adam started building the relationship with the driver by paying him handsomely for information on Knoll’s comings and goings.

  Since returning to Chicago from Vegas, Adam had met with him several times to see how amenable the driver would be to accepting $400,000 and a new identity for the ultimate betrayal of his boss. Luckily for Adam, Dwayne was single and pragmatic, with no strong ties to Chicago. Escaping to the tropics with a hefty bank balance suited him just fine.

  Once they knew the date for collecting the diamonds and transferring them was sometime in May, Dwayne made sure that he was on Knoll’s staff schedule around the clock. When Knoll brought the briefcase to him, he’d taken a photo of it and texted it to Adam.