by Avery Flynn
The interloper plopped down in the empty seat to Ryder’s right. “Well, when I heard the wolf of the fashion world was here, how could I miss it?” He pulled out a purple paisley pocket square and dabbed his forehead.
Devin stared straight ahead, working his jaw like a grinder. “What do you want?”
Ryder had the distinct impression that unless Nigel was looking for a swift kick in the ass, he was so out of luck. Damn, if only she had a bucket of popcorn to go with the show.
“You know.” Nigel rolled his shoulders. “A little of this. A little of that.”
“Go look for it elsewhere, then, because I’ve got nothing to say to you.”
Nigel chuckled, seemingly less than intimidated by Devin’s snarling. “So, I shouldn’t even try for a quote about how Dylan’s Department Store is circling the toilet bowl? The word backstage is that you need money—bad. I hope you aren’t so desperate for cash that you turned jewel thief. Half the people here are wearing fake jewels after thieves hit the local hotels last night.”
Ryder’s toes curled in her kitten heels. What a piece of work. It was one thing for her to be pissed at Devin, but quite another for some random dude to hurl insults at her client. She ignored the little voice whispering inside that she’d never been bothered before when that happened with any of her other clients. Her knuckles cracked as she flexed her fingers.
Standing up, Devin loomed over Nigel’s sitting form. “I always knew you had questionable taste. I didn’t realize until right now that you had questionable survival skills, too.”
“Oh my, did I annoy the wolf?” Nonplussed, Nigel leaned back in his chair and swiveled in her direction. “Is this your red riding hood? Is she in mourning for her grandmother or just sartorially challenged?”
She nailed him with her best bitch-please look. “I’m Mr. Harris’s personal assistant.”
“Ryder Falcon meet Nigel Mintus, former style maker and now… What little paper are you working for now?” Devin asked.
“I’m the fashion editor for The Daily Guardian.”
“Which comes out weekly.” Devin smirked.
She couldn’t help the giggle that escaped. That burn served the asshole right.
“An unfortunate development,” Nigel snarled, then shot back, “Does your parole officer know you’ve left the country?”
She clamped her mouth shut to keep her jaw from hitting the floor. Questions ran though her head, each led by a big what the fuck.
She’d searched Devin’s background, looking for any bit of negative information she could find, and had never come across any criminal charges, let alone a conviction. She’d even pulled in Carlos, the Maltese Security computer guru, telling him to look up Devin’s background. Carlos could hack into the nuclear defense system if he wanted, but he hadn’t found shit on Devin. Who did he know to get his record wiped cleaner than Nonni’s pantry?
“I don’t have a parole officer.” Devin stiffened and his hands formed firsts, but he kept them lowered to his sides. The effort cost him, though, because his face turned as red as Sunday gravy.
“Oh, did I strike a nerve?” Nigel stood, raised an eyebrow, and pursed his lips into a duck face imitation. “Doesn’t your…ahem…personal assistant know you killed a man and nearly destroyed another? I always forget, did you kill your brother or the other teenager?”
All of the air whooshed out of Ryder’s lungs, leaving them aching. She whipped her head around to look at Devin. All the healthy color had fled his face.
Reaching down, he grabbed Nigel by the shirt front and yanked him out of the seat. “Get out of here before I shove one of those boots so far up your ass your teeth will be bedazzled.”
Ryder sprang to her feet, squeezing between the two men. The people around them fell silent, then the buzzing began as everyone whispered and tapped their thumbs against their phone touch screens, all wanting to be the first to get out the news. Devin released his hold on the other man and took several steps backward, everything about him as tense as a lion ready to pounce.
“I’m shaking here.” Nigel buffed his manicured nails against his jacket. “You better watch your manners. I’d hate to have to tell Sarah about your boorish behavior. You know she’d feel obligated to report it up the chain to George.”
“So, where is she?” The words tumbled out of Ryder’s mouth as her gaze darted around the crowd, searching for the diminutive older woman and coming up empty.
Nigel waved his hand in the air. “She’s holed up at her family pineapple farm, recovering from the party she hosted there last night for the top designers.” He smiled condescendingly at them. “That’s right, I didn’t see you there. So sorry you didn’t rate an invitation.”
The DJ stepped into his booth and a second later, a fast-paced house beat poured out of the speakers.
“Looks like you better find your seat.” Ryder sat down, relief making her lightheaded when Devin followed her lead—for once. “Are you on the front row, too?”
Nigel peered down his generous nose at her. “No. I prefer to have a more realistic experience with the actual consumers.”
“Of course you do.” She used the same voice as when her Newfoundland, Kermit, became convinced he was a lap dog.
The insult wasn’t lost on Nigel, who bared his teeth in an antagonistic imitation of a smile. “It was so nice to meet you…Ryder, wasn’t it? Just be sure not to let him drive. It’s safer that way.”
The bastard melted into the crowd hustling to find their seats.
Devin’s profile had turned to stone, except for the throbbing vein at his temple and the twitch in his left eye that had gone into overdrive. Guilt? Or resentment over being wrongly persecuted? He hadn’t denied Nigel’s accusations. Either way, she’d get to the truth.
But first, they still had to track down Sarah Molina.
…
Devin curled his fingers around the Jeep’s steering wheel tight enough that his knuckles whitened. For the first time in years, he wasn’t sure he could turn the key in the ignition. The remembered smells of burned rubber and Jack Daniels practically hovered in the air, mixing with the real life island scents rolling in on the waves. The engine’s roar might just take him all the way back to that night, and he couldn’t go back there.
Not when so much was on the line.
Clenching his jaw, he grasped the key already in the ignition and turned it. The rental’s engine sputtered to life.
Ryder yanked open the Jeep’s passenger door and slid in, her tablet in her hands. “Okay, I downloaded a live satellite feed of Sarah’s family farm to go with the map of it we already have. I’ll navigate, you drive. It’s at the heart of the island in the De Mis Promesas volcano’s shadow. Take the main highway and then a dirt road to the farmstead. It should take about thirty minutes to get there.”
Devin made it to the turnoff in twenty, barely noticing the lush green fields of island grass on either side of the road or the volcano getting bigger in the windshield with every mile.
“So, are you going to explain what happened back there?” Ryder’s face remained relaxed, but a hard edge sharpened her tone.
He shifted in his seat and slid his gaze away from her. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t give me that shit.” She slapped her hand against the dashboard. “We’re stuck together until we get Sarah back, and I need to know what that Nigel guy was talking about.”
Everyone always wanted to know about that night. His father. The police. His so-called friends. The lawyers. Even George had asked him about it one night after the old man had had three too many. Even after a decade, Devin could recite the whole horrific episode by rote with cold, clinical detachment—on the outside. Inside, he heard the screech of tires, the girl’s scream, and the squelch of his brother fighting to fill his lungs. It never went away.
The steering wheel bit into his palms. “Why didn’t you just try to look it up yourself? You’re the investigator.”
“I did.” She tu
rned in her seat toward him, slipped off her heels, and yanked on a pair of tennis shoes she’d tossed in the Jeep earlier that morning. “Your file is so clean it’s like you’re a ghost. You don’t even have a record of a traffic ticket.”
No doubt he had his father to thank for that little gift. If you couldn’t use the connections being a billionaire offered to hush up your son’s transgressions—even the loser son who’d always disappointed you—what was the point of having all that money?
“Well, then.” Bitterness lay thick in his words. “Guess that should tell you something.”
“Such as?”
“That it’s none of your damn business.” Turning off the main road, he pulled in behind a small copse of trees and shifted the Jeep into park. He focused on the single-story house in the distance even as Ryder’s nearness called out to him. “We have a job to do. Let’s just do it and get the hell off this island.”
Chapter Ten
“Never in the history of fashion has so little material been raised so high to reveal so much that needs to be covered so badly.”
— Cecil Beaton
Pineapple plants dotted the flat ground between Ryder and the Molina farm house. Each pineapple sat in the middle of a four-foot high spiky bush with longer versions of the hard leaves on the top of the pineapple jutting out from all sides. The house itself was a simple, one-story structure on two-foot high stilts. A white tent, large enough for a fifty-person reception, was staked to the ground in front of the house. The sun glinted off of wine bottles and champagne glasses scattered around the wraparound porch.
“Looks like the cleaning crew hasn’t arrived yet,” she muttered.
Birds swooped across the sky in large looping arcs, their wide wings a dark shadow in the clear blue sky. A breeze with only a hint of salty ocean brushed against the damp nape of Ryder’s neck as she squatted beside Devin behind a three-feet-high rock wall.
Her sixth sense promised they weren’t alone with the pineapples, yet not a soul moved in the yard. “Where is everyone?”
“Still sleeping it off from the party?” Devin handed her back the small binoculars she’d stuffed in her purse before they left the hotel that morning.
“No way. This is a working farm. Look at the pineapples. They’re lined up perfectly and there’s not a stray bit of green anywhere.” She scanned the perimeter. There wasn’t so much as a curtain flutter in the window. “The question becomes, is Sarah home and waiting to spring a trap, or are we five minutes behind her yet again?”
“How do you propose we figure out which one it is?”
“Easy.” Ryder shrugged. “I’ll get a closer look.”
His fingers wrapped around her wrist, holding her in position. “We’ll get a closer look.”
Her skin burned under his touch and her heartbeat ticked a faster beat, sending a flush of warmth up her chest. “Really? Do we have to do this right now?”
“Yes.”
Yanking her hand away, she rubbed her wrist, the tingles dancing across her skin having nothing to do with pain or annoyance, which pissed her off even more. It was a wholly unwelcome reaction to being anywhere near Devin. She hated admitting he was right about anything, but he was on the money about one thing. They had to get off this island. If they didn’t, they’d just end up fighting or fucking again and, dammit all, she wasn’t sure which one of the two would be worse.
But sitting on her ass watching the pineapples grow sure as hell wasn’t helping her figure that last bit out.
“Fine, let’s go.” She vaulted over the wall and hustled down the hill, sticking close to the trees for coverage.
They cleared the pineapple field in under a minute, coming to a stop behind a whitewashed shed. She pressed her back against an outbuilding, her shirt snagging on the dried out and cracking wood. There was barely enough room for her and Devin to stand with their shoulders touching, but without any limbs peeking out from the building’s sides. Blood rushing in her ears, she craned her neck to take a quick look around the corner. Two hundred feet of dirt crisscrossed with tire tracks from at least five vehicles stood between her and the house, but no vehicles were there.
Her lips flattened and her nails bit into her palms. What she wouldn’t give to crack a teapot over Sarah’s head right about now. With practiced effort, she pushed the urge to lash out from her mind. Revenge gave a buzz for sure, but getting the job done was a high that lasted longer.
After rolling her head from side to side, she shook out her arms to relieve the tension building within her muscles. Breaking the crockery wasn’t going to do a damn thing to fix this cluster fuck. To do that, she needed to get the bitch on the Dylan’s Department Store jet.
She straightened so the outbuilding once again hid her from view. A plan started to gel in her mind. “I’m gonna sneak up to the side of the house. You stay here and watch my back.”
“No fucking way.”
“Look. I’m faster than you are, and I make a smaller target.”
“And I can be a more effective backup when I’m right next to you than when I’m two-thirds of a football field away.” He pulled her close, his face only inches from hers. “You know you don’t always have to prove what a back-in-black total badass you are.”
She stumbled back, pulling out of his grasp. That hit too close to home for her to react any way but defensively. “Have you ever not been in total control?”
His face went dark. “Yeah, and it ended up with a kid dead.” He rubbed his palm against his close-cropped hair as if he could scrub away what must be an unpleasant memory. “I’m coming with you.”
Something about the way he made his declaration shivered its way up her spine. There were moments in the ring when she had to make a split-second decision based on nothing more than training and her gut feeling. This was one of those moments.
“Just don’t fuck this up.” Without waiting for his reply, she took off at a jog around the outbuilding.
Her tennis shoes thumped across the hard-packed dirt driveway. With her gaze flicking from the house to the pineapple field to the line of trees behind her destination, she listened for any sound. Only Devin’s surprisingly light steps behind her pierced the thunder of her heartbeat.
Avoiding the front window, she ran to the side of the house. Devin stopped next to her a second later. She held a finger to her lips then jerked her chin at the first of three windows. He pointed at himself. Nodding, she soft-pedaled it to the second window. Pressing her fingers lightly against the scarred wood, she stood on her tiptoes and peeked inside.
After blinking rapidly to adjust her eyes to the dimmer interior, she squinted and tried to decipher what she was seeing. Floral wallpaper in the kind of pastels that her sister, Alessandra, loved. A white porcelain claw-foot tub. Stacks of petal-pink towels.
She sank back on her heels, turned to Devin, and mouthed the word “bathroom.” He nodded, pointed up, and mouthed “kitchen.” In tandem, they approached the third window. A thunk sounded and a woman yelled in Spanish. Sarah Molina. The name ran through Ryder’s mind, calming the mad beating of her heart.
Adrenaline numbing any bit of healthy fear, she stood so she was eye level with the window. The yelling continued, but the only thing she could pick out in the interior’s soft glow was a cat sitting on the arm of a rose-colored couch. The cat lifted a paw, shifting in the process, and the woman’s yelling was replaced by a man singing. The corner of a black remote stuck out from under the cat’s fuzzy butt.
Ryder’s Call of Duty kick-ass mentality fizzled into a grin at the sight.
“Everyone hates missing their favorite shows,” Devin whispered.
She choked back a giggle as her pulse returned to normal. “You should have seen my Nonni when they moved Judge Judy’s time slot. Sicilians are serious about their curses.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
The crunch of many tires killed the light mood.
They scurried to the corner and peered around.
Catching Devin’s gaze, she pointed up, then toward the trucks. He nodded and pivoted on his haunches so he would be ready if any of the men came around the corner.
She inhaled a deep breath through her nose and exhaled from her mouth before rising. Five men were in the living room. The oldest one, who must have been in his late fifties, lifted the flaps of one of the boxes and pulled out a teapot.
So much for the Sopranos of The Andol Republic.
Then he pulled off the kettle’s lid and reached inside. What he retrieved put rainbows on the walls. Focusing her attention on his hands, she tried to make out what he held. No luck—until he lifted the object for the rest of the crew to admire. A diamond choker dangled from his fingers.
Shit.
Ryder sank down below the sill. “We’ve gotta get to the cops,” she whispered.
“Drugs?”
She shook her head. “Stolen diamonds.”
“Huh?”
Before she could answer, a furry flash appeared as the cat leaped out and sailed over their heads. A second later, a man stuck his head out and hollered at the feline.
Double shit.
He glanced down and his lips formed a smile that would have made the devil hesitate. “Hola, Americanos.”
Acting on instinct, Ryder reached up, curled her fingers around the man’s shirt front, and tugged. He tumbled out of the window and landed with an audible umph at her feet. He popped up and yelled for his compatriots just before her fist connected with his windpipe. The man’s eyes bulged and he dropped to his knees like an anchor tossed overboard. He flopped over to his side, knocking his head on a rock. Lights out.
“Nice job.” Devin nudged her and pointed to the window. “But there’s more work ahead.”
She whipped around. Two muscular men were staring at them from the other side of the window. Footsteps thundered through the house. A screen door creaked, then smacked against the siding. At the same time, the two guys leaped over the paint-cracked window frame.