by Merry Farmer
As soon as her feet hit the floor on the other side of the window, loud alarms began to blare. In the distance, dogs started barking.
“Okay, maybe that wasn’t such a great idea,” Tracy shouted over the din. “But we probably have about five minutes to search before the cops get here.”
“No!” Johan climbed through the window and grabbed Tracy’s arm before she could dash up the stairs to check out what she could of the house. “It’s too risky. You have to stop taking needless risks like this.”
“Needless?” She stared incredulously at him. “Don’t you want to find out what your aunt is up to and how Lindqvist is connected?”
He scowled at her, but instead of answering, he pulled his phone from his back pocket and clicked the screen a few times. As he held it to his ear, he searched the front hallway. He spotted the security control panel at about the same time as she did, and they both dashed toward it.
“Viggo,” Johan shouted into his phone. “If Marcia is with you, ask her what the password is to turn off the alarm at her father’s house.”
Tracy’s brow shot up. She was glad Johan had thought to call for that. She couldn’t hear the reply, but when they reached the controls, Johan flipped open the panel and quickly typed in a series of numbers. Instantly, the blaring noise stopped. Tracy breathed a sigh of relief.
“Yeah,” Johan said into his phone, frowning at Tracy. “Yeah. She’s not here. At least not that we’ve been able to discover yet.” He paused, then said, “That’d be great. We’ll be through here as fast as we can.” He hung up, slipping the phone back into his pocket, and frowned even harder at her.
“Good news?” she asked, caught between feeling sheepish under his obvious disapproval and being impatient with his sudden streak of over-caution.
“Marcia is calling the police to let them know it’s a false alarm over here,” he said.
Tracy let out a breath, shoulders sinking. “Thank God. That makes things easier for us.”
“It makes it easier for us to walk out the front door instead of crawling through windows to go back to the palace.” Johan nodded to the door and attempted to take her hand to lead her there.
“No way.” She avoided his reach and headed for the stairs instead.
“Where do you think you’re going?” He switched directions to follow her.
“What if your aunt is hiding out somewhere in this house? Don’t you want to see if we can find anything that links the two of them even more?” she asked as she charged up the stairs.
“Not when it’s this big of a risk.”
She reached the top of the stairs and turned to him. “How was it not a risk to search your aunt’s apartment but it is to search in here?”
“Because Marina’s apartment is inside the palace. A palace that my family has owned for generations. This house isn’t ours. It’s breaking and entering. Who knows what hidden security measures Lindqvist has?” His scowl was set so deep it made his whole face dark.
“Come on, Johan. Live a little. It’s not like we’re stealing anything.” She glanced down the hall to the right and left, then marched away to the right.
“This isn’t about living or not living. This is about trespassing on someone else’s property,” he said as he followed her.
“Lindqvist was arrested for kidnapping Dr. Hayes, right? So the police are probably on the verge of searching the house anyhow.”
She heard him let out a breath behind her and could feel the shift in his energy as they moved forward. “All right. But for that exact reason, we’re not touching anything. Just looking for Marina.”
“And if she’s not here, then it won’t matter anyhow,” Tracy said as she peered through an open door into what looked like an upstairs sitting room.
Johan didn’t answer. She could tell he was upset about the whole thing. But as sorry as she felt that he was upset, it wasn’t about to stop her from investigating. Her journalist instincts had kicked into overdrive since searching Marina’s apartment, since learning that she was missing, actually, and she felt as though she had a duty to see that through, no matter the risk.
The house truly was empty, though. They searched the hall, looking into rooms and finding little more than unused guest rooms and storage. It wasn’t until they reached the end of the hall and opened the door into what was clearly Lindqvist’s bedroom that they found anything of note.
And what they found made Tracy’s jaw drop to the floor.
“There’s the answer to that question,” she said softly as she stepped into the room and looked around.
Marina had had a small photograph of her and Lindqvist on her bedside table. Lindqvist only had landscape paintings decorating his room, but the dresser was scattered with women’s jewelry. Women’s shoes sat on the floor at the foot of the bed. And when Tracy peeked into the walk-in closet, it was as full of women’s clothing as it was with men’s. Most telling of all, the same scent of flowery perfume that had pervaded Marina’s bedroom filled Lindqvist’s.
“This is Aunt Marina’s necklace,” Johan said from the dresser, picking up a thick, gold chain with a jeweled broach. “I recognize her shoes too.”
“The clothes?” Tracy gestured for him to come see the closet.
When he did, he let out a breath and ran a hand through his hair. “It’s like she lives here.”
“Maybe she does,” Tracy said, glancing around the room again. “Or maybe she splits her time between the two places.”
“They’re definitely still together,” Johan said.
Tracy didn’t reply. Her attention had been snagged by a leather-bound portfolio sitting on a small table under the window, beside an overstuffed chair. She edged her way around the bed to pick it up and open it.
“I thought we weren’t touching anything,” Johan said, disapproval in his tone.
Tracy gasped as the contents of the portfolio stared back at her. “You’re going to be glad I did,” she said.
Johan strode around the bed and glanced over her shoulder at the documents in the portfolio. It was some sort of dossier for a trip to Abidjan, Côte D’Ivoire, including bills for a resort in Grand-Bassam, and visas with both Lindqvist’s name and Marina’s. Everything was dated four months ago.
“French,” Johan said as though he’d figured out the key to the mystery. “They speak French in Côte D’Ivoire.”
“Yeah?” Tracy said. A second later, she grasped the connection. “The picture by Marina’s bed. The sign in French. That wasn’t a beach in France, it was in Côte D’Ivoire.”
“And the business Storm Holdings is involved with in Africa too.”
“Côte D’Ivoire,” Tracy said to finish his thought. They exchanged knowing looks. “Do you still think your aunt could be investigating Storm Holdings over wrongdoings?”
“With Lindqvist in a thong?” he asked, one eyebrow raised. “My gut says no.”
“So does mine.” She closed the portfolio and put it back on the table. All sorts of uncomfortable feelings were spreading through her. “Johan, I know it’s all just circumstantial evidence, but what you said about the kind of money your family earns, the jewelry your aunt owns….” She paused to lick her lips. “I think she must be connected to that Storm Holdings somehow.”
Johan let out a breath. “She has to be. But how?”
“Does she have the power to make sure their illegal activity is kept under the radar?” Tracy asked. “Could they be paying her a kickback?”
“That would explain why she’s keeping track of their finances.” Johan nodded.
“Lindqvist must have something to do with it too,” she went on. “Where does he get his money?”
“It’s old money,” Johan said. “But other than that, honestly, I don’t know what kind of investments he might have.”
“Would Marcia know?”
He shrugged. “If anyone would, it would be her.”
“Then let’s get back to the palace and ask her.” She started toward the
door.
“Now you want to go back to the palace?” He followed, hurrying her along.
“Now we have the kind of information that we needed to get in the first place.” She paused when they reached the top of the stairs and turned to him. “You might want to alert the cops to seize Lindqvist’s computers and stuff when and if they investigate.”
“I’m sure they will anyhow,” Johan said as they headed downstairs.
“Yeah, but make sure they know about—”
She was cut short as the sound of barking echoed from the far end of the hall. They reached the bottom of the stairs in time to see three Rottweilers, their teeth bared and their eyes alight with excitement, staring at them from the end of the hall. At least one of them was growling, and they all looked ready to attack.
“Go, go, go!” Johan said, shoving her toward the door.
Tracy shrieked as the dogs leapt into motion. Normally, she liked dogs. They were cute and playful. But not when you’d broken into their house, apparently. Johan rushed to the door, but Tracy bolted for the open window. She scrambled through as Johan grabbed the hat stand beside the door and threw it at the dogs. It wasn’t much, but it gave him just enough time to leap through the window before the lead dog snapped at him.
As soon as he was through the window, Tracy slammed the glass shut. By some miracle, it didn’t break, and the dogs didn’t try to scramble through after them.
“Come on.” Johan grabbed her hand and rushed down the steps and out through the gate to the car with her.
The dogs continued to bark up a storm behind them as though saying, “Yeah, that’s right! This is our house and you’re not wanted here!”
Even after they leapt into the car, shut the doors, and Johan turned on the engine, Tracy’s heart continued to hammer. “Whew, that was close!”
“Risks,” Johan panted. “That’s what happens when you take unnecessary risks. That could have been a lot worse.”
She winced as he peeled out onto the road, heading back into Solrighavn. “Yeah, but we found the information we needed.”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he glared straight forward, focused on driving.
Tracy sat back in her seat, hand over her heart. “Now all we have to do is figure out what the information means.”
5
Johan gripped the steering wheel, forcing himself to focus on his breathing and not the instinct to pull over and lecture Tracy into next Tuesday for her recklessness. Then again, her recklessness had uncovered things they never would have discovered otherwise. Nothing about the situation they were in was good. They’d set out to find Marina, but the more they looked, the more they stumbled across other things that needed investigating. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Marina was involved in something illegal. He wanted to think she was on the side of the good guys, trying to get to the bottom of things the same way he and Tracy were, but his gut told a different story. Too many details that had seemed random up until that point—Marina’s jewelry collection, the way she insisted a little too loudly that she couldn’t stand Lindqvist, and even the way she’d tried to stop the wedding earlier in the summer—were starting to add up.
“You’re awfully quiet,” Tracy said, her voice much calmer than he felt.
He didn’t trust himself to answer. Instead, he turned a corner and drove down the final street before the palace. It was an effort not to slam his foot on the gas out of frustration.
“Okay, obviously you’re upset,” Tracy went on.
His instinct was to deny it, but he couldn’t. So he continued to keep his mouth shut in a hard line.
“Is it about the things we’ve discovered about your aunt or,” she hesitated, “are you mad at me?”
He clenched his jaw, took a breath to steady his thoughts, then said, “I don’t like where this is all pointing.”
“Ah. So you’re mad at me,” she said with a half grin.
They reached the turn into the palace, which gave him a chance to glance quickly at her, his brow set in a firm line.
“You call it taking unnecessary risks,” she said as if he’d given her a full explanation for his mood, “but I call it doing what needs to be done to get what we need.”
“You could have been hurt,” he muttered, driving down the ramp into the family’s parking area. “Those dogs were bad enough, but what if there had been other security measures? What if Lindqvist had had armed guards patrolling the house?”
“Then we would have seen them and asked what was going on,” she reasoned. “The dogs were unexpected, I’ll give you that. But everything turned out all right in the end, and we discovered more important details about Lindqvist and Marina.”
“But things might not have turned out so well.” Just like they hadn’t turned out so great for Viggo after all his carrying on. Until recently, at least. The way he felt about Tracy echoed how he felt about his brother in an odd way. Probably because, though he hated to admit it, a lot of the things he loved so much about Tracy were things he liked about his brother—her sense of humor, her intelligence, and her daring. The instinct to protect her felt an awful lot like his drive to protect Viggo.
He parked, cut the engine, then turned to her, hoping the dimly-lit parking garage made him look even more serious than he was. “I don’t think I could have lived with myself if something had happened to you,” he admitted.
She blinked and flinched back. “Lived with yourself? It’s not as though you pushed me into doing anything. And you certainly couldn’t have stopped me from doing what I wanted to do.”
He huffed out a breath and rubbed a hand over his face. Again, her words reminded him of Viggo. “You’ve got to know your limits, Tracy. It’s fun when we can work together to solve mysteries—”
“Like Bonnie and Clyde,” she interrupted with a grin.
“No, not like Bonnie and Clyde.” His frown deepened. “They were criminals, and didn’t they end up being shot to death by the police?”
Her expression faltered. “Actually, I don’t remember.”
“I like working with you,” he started again, twisting to face her more fully, “but not if you’re going to keep doing things that have the potential to hurt you.” It irritated him how much he felt like he should have said the same thing to Viggo ages ago.
She let out an incredulous breath, just like Viggo would have. “I’m not some inexperienced, fainting violet, Johan. I’ve been around a few times. I know how to take care of myself.” She opened her door and climbed out of the car, slamming it behind her.
Johan scrambled to catch up to her and walked by her side as they reached the door to the palace. “I’m not saying you’re incapable, just that you need to think before you act.”
“I do think,” she snapped, whirling on him as soon as they were in the brightly lit hallway in the family’s private quarters. “I think about the importance of the information that needs finding and what it will mean to everyone involved.”
“That’s all well and good,” Johan argued, “but I just watched you break into a house, set the alarm off, then nearly get mauled by vicious dogs before just barely escaping. It wasn’t worth the risk.”
“Who do you think you are?” She narrowed her eyes. “My dad?”
Johan flinched. There was something more than just irritation behind the accusation. They’d never talked about her dad, but he sensed he was a big influence in her life. “I’m someone who cares deeply about you and doesn’t want to see you get hurt.”
She snorted and turned away, marching down the hall toward the wing where the reception was taking place. When he caught up to her, without looking at him, she said, “We found out a lot of valuable information by breaking into the Lindqvist house. Marina and Lindqvist are together. They were in Côte D’Ivoire a short time ago. Storm Holdings has dealings in Côte D’Ivoire. Now all we have to figure out is what the connection between it all is. Maybe we should go back to Marina’s apartment and look through her things again.”
Johan grabbed her arm before she could peel off down the side hall that led to Marina’s apartment. “We’re going back to the reception,” he said in no uncertain terms. The way she glared at him made him worry that she would stomp on his feet to get him to let go of her. “Someone else might have information. Mack and Gloria were headed to the police station, after all.”
She let out a breath and relaxed by a hair. “I guess.”
Her answer didn’t put him at ease. “Why is this eating at you so much?”
Her eyes flashed as she said, “Other than the fact that a member of your family who has knowingly tried to stop your mother’s wedding might be connected to the man who kidnapped Dr. Hayes, and who could also be involved in potential illegal activity with a holding company secretly selling illegally drilled oil to African nations?”
“It’s personal.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he realized there was truth to them. “You’re invested in this investigation because it’s personal to you somehow. Why?”
“I care about your family,” she said, not meeting his eyes.
“Try again.”
She snapped up to meet his eyes with a glare. “It’s your family, and I care about you.”
Of all the times for her to express her feelings like that. He shook his head. “I care about you too, which is why I can’t let you charge around recklessly anymore.” He shifted his weight, letting her go but wanting to reach for her and hold her. “Things between us have been great, Tracy. You feel so right by my side. I don’t want to lose that. I want more of it.”
A sudden guilty look came to her face as she glanced down. “I know. And it’s what I want too.” She peeked up at him. “We haven’t really talked about where things stand between us, have we.”
“No, and I hate to say it, but now is not the time.” They shared quick, weak grins. “We won’t ever get the chance to take this to the next level if you die in some high-speed car chase or fall to your death while searching for a scoop.”
“I’m not searching for scoops,” she said, half irritated, but half deadly serious. “I’m searching for the truth.” She hesitated, then said, “The truth matters to me.”