“Do you know the name of the ships coming in? Their captains?”
Val hated that all he could do was narrow his eyes toward Margaret.
“Let me guess,” she said. “You have people for that.”
“All good questions, cara. Ones I will ask when we get home.”
She picked up the pen, scribbled on the paper. “Mislabeled wine travels from Italy, to where? Then it makes it to your island. All to impress a girl? I don’t buy it. There has to be more.”
“Bootleg wine is big business.”
“Not when you’re giving it away for free,” Margaret reminded him. “No, Alonzo needed you, Gabi . . . the island . . . I’m starting to think the wine is insignificant. Or a decoy for something else.”
Val’s head went straight to the image forever burned in his head . . . the one with Gabi willingly holding out her arm for a needle.
“The island limits eyes by the nature of it. How do you keep the authorities happy? Who regulates you?”
“The health department passes off on us yearly. Same with the hotel commission and regulating parties. I don’t have complaints so I don’t have many problems.”
Margaret pushed back in her seat and tapped her fingers against the armrest. “So you could be doing nearly anything on the island and no one would know. You’ve buttoned down Internet activity, sworn your guests to secrecy, cut out photographs that are an everyday part of every twenty-first-century life . . . you could be trafficking slaves, drugs, sex . . . no one would be the wiser.”
Val started to lose feeling in his fingers as he gripped the edge of the armrests. “Jesus.”
“Alonzo is trafficking something . . . something better than a few bottles of wine. If he marries your sister, she won’t call him out. If he blackmails you, you have to go along with him—”
“The hell I do!”
Margaret offered the first smile of the hour. “Or so he thinks. Bottom line, he thinks he’s safe by being family. Then before he can marry your sister, Michael and I show up and notice something funny about the wine.”
“Alonzo flips,” Val suggested. “Sees his plan falling apart.” The map of probability started to surface in Val’s head.
“He has a plan set to take photographs to compromise your efforts on the island.”
Val squeezed his eyes shut, swore in Italian. “One of Alonzo’s men said he was ill the week you were on the island. Said he couldn’t travel on the yacht until he was better.” Val met Margaret’s gaze. “He stayed when Alonzo wasn’t there.”
“The guy that cornered me in the hallway?”
“Maybe.”
Val ran his hand over the growing beard on his face. “Then you leave with Gabi.”
“After Gabi and Alonzo fought.”
News to him. “They were fighting?”
“She was questioning marrying him. Right before we left the island, he kissed and made up. A couple of days later, Alonzo makes a grand gesture to whisk her away for a romantic weekend . . . that is going on a week now. At the same time we chase the wine lead . . . someone he knows sees us, or maybe a search on Michael shows that he’s in Italy . . .”
“Damn, Margaret . . . we’re assuming a lot here.”
“Are we? What part isn’t true?”
“We don’t even know if Alonzo has Gabi . . . something else might have happened to both of them.”
Margaret laughed . . . a full-throat chuckle with a shake of her head. “I know for a fact that Alonzo spends more money than he makes. I know the winery makes next to nothing. If he makes money legitimately, it’s not on any books. What does that sound like to you, Val? And Gabi left with him and now nasty pictures of her follow a threat that we leave Italy immediately. There’s only one person who should be threatened by us being there . . . he’s guilty until proven innocent in this case.”
Val started to shake. “I introduced them, cara.”
Margaret’s voice softened. She moved to the seat beside him and took his hands in hers. “The man played both of you . . . my guess is he knew who you were before you said hello. There are a lot of sick people out there.”
If anything happened to his sister . . . if the pictures were any indication, it already had. “I’ll kill him.”
“Save it, Val. You’re not a murderer.”
“Watch me.”
Margaret shook her head. “They don’t offer coed bunking in prison. I’d be an accessory . . . it could get messy.”
Val tried to smile and failed. “You don’t do sleepovers.”
“I really don’t do sleepovers with Bertha in the top bunk. So let’s put killing talk out of the conversation. Let’s find them and pool the resources we have to get Gabi away from him.”
“My resources are limited. I can pay ransom . . . pay the help to get her back . . .”
Margaret tilted her head to the side. “Our resources, Val. Rick is on this like stink on Alonzo’s skin. Why? Because he works with Blake. The pictures of Michael can threaten Samantha’s business, which Alonzo knows nothing about . . . he’s stepped in something deeper than he’s prepared to understand. I don’t know if Alonzo is working with anyone else, but I doubt they have hands that reach as far as my boss and her friends. I have serious strings to pull . . . and the best part . . . these are decent people who would be thoroughly pissed that an innocent woman was at risk because of some asshat.”
He wanted to believe Gabi would return home unharmed . . . but that was looking less and less likely.
Seemed every time Michael returned, his childhood home shrank. The four-bedroom, two-story house seemed big enough growing up. The quiet street housed the same people since he was born. On occasion, someone would grow old and one of the kids would either take over the house, or move an aging parent in with them in the neighboring town.
Things didn’t change in Hilton, Utah.
Which was why Michael had chosen to leave as soon as he could.
He ran from his demons and put the truth on hold.
Now it was time to reveal everything to the two people who above all others deserved to know.
He exited his rental car, made his way to the front door as if he were walking in quicksand.
He waited until after his father had closed up the hardware store for the night to make sure he only had to have this conversation once. Surviving it twice might prove impossible.
Someone inside clicked on the porch light before he made his way to the door. He hesitated, not sure if he should knock or walk right in. His parents were empty nesters now. Hannah, the youngest, was off in college. His oldest sister, Rena, lived across town with her husband and two kids.
The house was virtually empty.
He vacillated on that thought when his mother opened the front door with a surprised gasp. “Mike!” She scrambled out of the door and wrapped her arms around him. “Sawyer,” she called into the house. “Look who’s here.”
“Hey, Mom.”
She pulled him inside, her smile genuine and filled with surprise. “I can’t believe you’re here. Why didn’t you tell us you were coming? I could have put fresh sheets on your bed.”
They stepped into the living room that hadn’t changed since the eighties. The couch with the bad spring still sat in the middle of the room, his father’s favorite chair to the side of it. The television Michael had bought, and he and Zach had hung above the fireplace, was one of the only modern pieces in the house.
His parents liked it like that. Comfortable, familiar.
“Last-minute decision,” he explained.
Heavy footfalls moved down the stairs. Michael’s father had always been a robust man, a real man’s man who worked with his hands, liked crawling under cars, and would disapprove beyond any doubt of Michael’s sexuality.
The two of them had come to an understanding in the past few years. His father hadn’t completely approved of his profession in the beginning, but seemed to come to terms with it after Michael’s fake marriage to Karen.
<
br /> Michael had returned to Utah a few times since his divorce. Holidays and weddings always drove those visits, and there was plenty of family to buffer any adversity.
There was none of that now.
“Hi, Dad.”
A greeting that used to be a simple handshake was now a short hug. “What brings my youngest son home unannounced?”
“I can’t stop by to visit?”
Sawyer shook his head. “Unannounced? Do movie stars do that?”
“I’ve been your son longer than I’ve been on the big screen. I hope it’s OK I’m here. I would hate to interrupt poker night.”
“That’s Wednesday,” they both said at the same time.
They laughed, sat, and his mom asked if he wanted something to drink . . . and no he wasn’t hungry. The pleasantries of conversation quickly drifted to silence, making the crickets outside fill the sound on the inside.
Janice asked first. “Is everything all right, honey? You look like you have something on your mind.”
“There is . . . and I’m not sure how to say it.”
His mother reached for her husband’s hand. They weren’t a touchy couple and the gesture wasn’t lost on him.
“You’re not sick, are you? Zach? Judy?”
“No. I’m fine . . . we’re all good.” At least as far as he knew.
Sawyer narrowed his eyes. There was no smile on his face.
“Remember when I told you the reason behind Karen and me getting married?”
They nodded in the silent room.
“I offered you half the reason . . .” Michael reflected on the moment when his father asked if money made through his career was a reason to sell his soul. It was easy to put his father in his place then. Karen didn’t deserve his disapproval and Michael was more than willing to offer a buffer for her.
Michael stood, unable to sit during this conversation. He crossed to the mantel, looked at the photographs there. It would only be a matter of time before his siblings added more grandkids to the shelf. He wouldn’t be the one to do that . . . not in the traditional sense, in any event. “I never wanted to disappoint you, either of you.”
“You haven’t,” Janice said.
He didn’t look at her as he straightened an askew frame. I’m about to.
“Karen and I agreed to a paper marriage because Hollywood likes their leading men on the arm of a beautiful woman. Marriage was a perfect diversion from the truth.”
The room grew heavy with the sound of crickets from outside. Did they actually get louder?
“What truth?” Sawyer asked.
Michael turned, met his father’s eyes. For better or worse, he needed to see his dad’s reaction to his words. “Hollywood wants their leading men to be heterosexual. And I’m not.”
It took two seconds for the words to register. Sawyer’s nose flared as he sucked in a deep breath. “What are you saying?” he asked, his teeth grinding together.
“I’m gay, Dad. I knew long before I left Utah.”
His mom squeezed his father’s hand and a strange look of calm washed over her.
She knew . . . all this time.
“Jesus.” Sawyer moved from the chair and straight to a liquor closet across the room.
Without asking, his father poured whiskey into two glasses and handed one to Michael without looking at him. “Janice?” he asked.
“I’m fine.”
OK . . . they aren’t yelling . . . no one is telling me to get out.
The whiskey felt good burning the back of his throat.
Then his mother spoke. “After your divorce, we . . . we wondered.”
“You knew?” Michael nearly choked on the liquor.
“We wondered,” Sawyer corrected.
“Your father didn’t want to discuss it,” Janice told him.
Sawyer took a healthy sip of his drink, poured more into his glass, and returned to his wife’s side. “Before you look at me like that . . . I didn’t want to discuss it not because I thought less of you. I just didn’t want that life for you. Maybe when you were a kid I would have tried to beat it out of you . . .”
His father never used his fist so the past threat wasn’t real.
“You can’t—”
“I know.” Sawyer met his eyes. “I know that.”
They drank in silence . . . letting the words digest.
On a sigh, Janice patted the space beside her on the couch. “This must have been hard for you to do.”
Michael blew out a long breath, parked his ass on the couch. “You have no idea. You’re taking it really well.”
His mom leaned in. “Your father hasn’t touched that bottle since Christmas.”
Michael laughed.
Sawyer grunted. “Why now? What prompted this?”
Without many details, Michael told them about Val’s island and about pictures that should never go public possibly making a debut. He touched on Gabi’s fiancé being behind the photographs.
Meg had sent word to Michael that more information regarding Gabi and her fiancé was pending and that she and Val were headed back to Florida. In the meantime, Michael had to deal with his own drama . . . then he’d be back wherever his friends needed him to help.
“So let me get this straight. Someone might have pictures of you and . . . ?”
Ryder . . . but that wasn’t his story to tell . . . not yet anyway. “You’ll know soon enough,” Michael told his mother.
She smiled and patted his hand. “Fine. But the man who has these pictures is trying to blackmail you? Blackmail your friend, Mr. Masini?”
Michael thought of Gabi. He didn’t know her well, but couldn’t imagine what Meg had described in her brief e-mail. “I think he just wants me to stop looking into him. It’s Masini’s sister who is in trouble right now.”
“You just met this Masini and his family. How is it you’re involved?” Sawyer asked.
Michael finished his drink, set it aside. “It started with the threat of being revealed. But it’s so much more than that now. Val and his family are good people. This asshole playing them is the ultimate scumbag. The perfect villain for a movie, only it’s not a script. And right now Gabi is in danger.” Michael spared his parents the details.
“Yet you’re here talking to us . . .”
Michael leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees. “I couldn’t have a tabloid telling my parents about my real love life. That wouldn’t be right.”
There were tears in his mother’s eyes as she laid a hand to his back and pulled him in for a hug.
Did a mother’s love ever grow old? He didn’t think so.
“Thank you,” she said. “For making us a priority.”
There was pride in his father’s eyes when Michael met them with his own.
“In the morning,” his father started, “you get out of here and help your friends.”
Michael smiled.
A massive weight lifted from his life. “We’re good?”
Sawyer tilted his drink in Michael’s direction. “I might need a new bottle for Thanksgiving. Be sure and bring the good stuff.”
“I’ll do that.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Val was a wreck, and Meg was close behind. Between desperation, jet lag, and fear, they exited the plane just before dawn and dropped into bed. They acquired three hours’ sleep before they forced their eyes open to tackle the day.
Meg finished her shower and padded around Val’s home in bare feet.
There was a handwritten note on the coffee pot. I’m in my office. Rick will be here by noon. It was signed, Val.
Copious amounts of black coffee were in store for the day. Meg poured her first cup and opened the notebook she and Val had taken notes in during their long flight home. She sent a text to Val while she scribbled circles around their notes. Any news?
Nothing.
Not what Meg wanted to hear. Should I meet Rick on the airstrip?
He’s coming on the charter from Key West.
Meg didn’t think that would happen. Alonzo was behind all of this, she felt it deep in her gut. The same gut that was sick with worry over Gabi.
Instead of letting her head move to the dark side of what may or may not be happening to Val’s sister, Meg dialed Sam’s number and listened to the phone ring.
“Hey, Boss,” she said when Sam answered.
“Have we heard anything?” Sam asked before saying hello.
“Nothing.” Meg glanced at the clock clicking on the kitchen wall. “Three hours until deadline. Have you learned anything?”
“Blake and his team are following up on a strange lead. Looks like Picano is shipping the majority of his wine into Mexico.”
“What’s strange about that?”
“I have yet to find one retailer buying the wine for their restaurants or stores.”
“Why is the wine shipped to Mexico if no one is drinking it there?”
Sam sighed. “That’s the strange part. Blake should have an answer from his people in that part of the world by noon. Is Rick there yet?”
“No. Is anyone coming with him?”
“Neil is. He’s staying on Key West and chartering a boat to follow Alonzo, should he show up.”
It sounded like something was happening, but still, without word about Gabi, none of it mattered. “Have you heard from Michael?”
“Roundabout. Karen called to let me know the conversation with his parents went well. He has a PR team ready to spin whatever might happen.”
The thought of Michael’s life falling apart sliced inside of her. “What about Alliance?”
“Stop, Meg. I’m fine, we’re all going to get through this. Concentrate on Gabi.”
“That makes me even more crazy. I can’t get to her, Sam. It’s like watching someone drown a mile offshore and my feet are knee-deep in sand.”
“It’s awful, I know. Stay strong and don’t worry about anything here. Call if you need me.”
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