by Emily Duvall
“Is this how you reassure your wife?” Melanie smiled back.
“My wife does most of the hunting.”
She reached back, pulled her hair up into a ponytail, and spoke to Luke. “I remember the one time you came home; I think you’d been to Tanzania looking for tanzanite. You arrived back at your apartment covered in so much dirt that I shut the door in your face because I thought you were a stranger.”
Luke laughed out loud. “I remember.”
Andry came up beside them and squinted at the ridge ahead of them. The wind picked up, forcing the dried-up branches to scratch against each other. The faint sound of an engine could be heard. “They’re getting closer.”
“We must be close to the car,” Melanie said.
“You didn’t realize…” Brent started to say.
“We already passed the point of the car,” Luke said, strained. “We kept moving without talking about it because we didn’t want you worried.”
“There’s no car?” Melanie took a seat on a rock. “We’re nowhere near the city. Nobody bothered to tell me?”
“Did you forget the car broke down? Keep going.” Luke walked ahead, refusing to let her sit on this dilemma for another second.
The aches in Luke’s lower back and knee took second place to the pounding headache. Worry filled his mind. He also knew Melanie was hurting, though she toughed through the hike. She’d done better out here than he’d expected. They needed to find shelter and water. Nobody would come looking for them. No one would try to find out their identities and times were different now for Luke. The sweetness of the hunt soured at the thought of Vivian back home. He had someone to answer to, and he wanted to watch his daughter grow up and be relevant to her life. The thought of being responsible for something happening to Melanie forced him to walk faster too. Maybe he shouldn’t have taken such a gamble bringing her along. In trying to make up for the past, he only hoped he hadn’t screwed up the future.
A narrow road appeared out of the rocks. Tire tracks indicated this road would lead them back to the city. This road turned into an even larger one; the larger road would lead them straight to town where they could barter for another car and make it back to the airport. The money left over remained safe in the bag tucked around his neck.
Without warning Andry yelled, “Get down!”
They dropped in place without hesitation. Luke looked up and saw a beat-up, discolored Jeep barrel towards them. Each small bump announced a weakness in the car, the noise alone sounded like metal ready to snap. The car stopped in front of them and four guards jumped out of the car and cocked their guns.
Automatically, Luke made unflinching eye contact with Melanie. “Don’t move,” he mouthed.
The leader of the group walked over to Luke. “I am Sedra. You know Bruno, yes? I know Bruno too.” He grinned with malice. “Get up,” he said and nudged the gun at Luke’s back pack. Without asking, he began to rifle through the pack. “Watch the others, Jordan,” he instructed one of the other men.
Luke and the others stood up slowly. The other guard, the one Sedra referred to as Jordan, stood next to Brent with a gun pointed at his head. They’d been in this situation before. Brent could handle a gun pointed at him, as could Andry. Luke glanced at Melanie and could see her ghost-white face and her teeth gnawing on her lower lip. Then Sedra’s large head obstructed Luke’s view of Melanie and he watched a fat bead of sweat bubble at the edge of his nose. Electric red veins in his eyes led to large, black pupils. “Give me all your money,” Sedra ordered in thick Malagasy accent.
Luke held up his hands. “We don’t have any.”
“Of course you have money.” He looked at one of the guards and spoke in another language, presumably his native tongue.
One of the men stepped forward and accosted Luke, checking his pockets and nudging the gun against his chest. The other hand patted down his body and any pockets on his clothes. The guard indicated for Luke to remove the bag.
Luke complied. Never had there been a more important time to remain indifferent, to act unaffected by the threat surrounding them.
The guard took over, rifling through the bag with one hand. Dried scabs decorated his jaw. The three clumps of cash worth ten thousand U.S. dollars he spotted right away, collected, and passed to Sedra.
“Tell Bruno to go to hell,” Luke said with pleasure.
The guard dumped out the rest of the bag with eyes full of concentration. Luke kept his eyes upon the bag and didn’t look at Melanie. Another moment passed and the guard looked up at Sedra and shook his head.
Sedra spoke to Andry. Andry yelled back and then translated, “He says you’re the ones going to hell.”
The other guard, the one on Andry, roughed him up. Andry put up his hands to protect his face and managed to dodge a second attack. They fought and Andry freed himself from the guard’s grasp and stumbled towards Luke.
Sedra circled around Brent. “Empty your bag.”
Brent also obeyed. A flashlight dumped out along with wrappers, a lighter, his compass, and a small case for his magnification tools. He shook the bag and the wrapped stack of cash came out and clunked on the ground. The guard swooped down and picked up the money.
Sedra jabbed the gun under Luke’s chin hard enough to leave an imprint. A fly landed on the man’s hand and he flicked away the pesky bug.
The fourth guard, the one rounding on Melanie, stopped and grabbed her arm. She yelped at the stranger’s unwanted touch and tried to wrangle free. He only jerked her closer to him.
“Bruno wants his property returned,” Sedra said.
“You have all our money,” Luke said evenly, despite his control slipping. Now wasn’t the time to budge. He stared hard at Melanie, hoping she understood this.
“Where’s the garnet?”
Nobody in Luke’s party spoke.
A restless, ominous energy oozed from Sedra’s countenance. He tore Melanie out of the other guard’s grasp. In a split second he put her in a chokehold and smashed the barrel of the gun to her temple.
Melanie screamed.
“What do you want? The girl or the garnet?” Sedra’s fingers wiggled on the trigger.
“Go ahead, shoot her,” Luke warned through a compressed jaw. The instruction fell deaf on her ears and he couldn’t stop what happened next. Melanie screamed. Her hands rose up in surrender and then she reached inside her shirt, further into her bra, and pulled out the rock. The rock dropped out of her hands and onto the ground. Everyone watched it hit the dirt with a thud. Sedra pushed her aside and one of the guards retrieved the rock.
“Bruno thanks you for doing business,” Sedra said and waved his gun in the air. “If we see you again, we will kill you.” The guards and Sedra moved at lightening pace and hopped into the Jeep and took off down the road. Their tires shot out a trail of dust down the road.
The dust settled over Luke. “You never, ever give up the stone,” he told Melanie, storming over to her.
Dirt spit out of her mouth as she lifted her head. “You were going to let him shoot me?” She looked pleading to Brent and Andry. She refused to let Luke help her up off the ground.
She took a loose, desperate swing at Luke, nothing strong or close enough to do any real damage. “Easy,” Brent said, holding her back.
“Easy?” With a quick turn of her arms she engineered her way out of his grasp. She glared at Luke. “You told him to shoot.”
“I stand by what I said.”
Incredulity overcame her face.
Now wasn’t the time to explain or justify his decision. He looked beyond her shoulder. Dust tinged his lips. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
“It’s not her fault,” Brent interjected.
Arms spread, Andry got between them. “We’re out of water, which means we have few options. We need to keep moving.”
Brent started to walk. Melanie fell in line behind him. Not once did she look back.
They did keep moving, silent and tense; ful
l of thoughts on what they’d lost. Luke in particular stewed with each step. This is what happened when other people became involved in his life. Something inevitably gets screwed up and the end result is a strong disappointment in other people. He could have fulfilled the purpose of his trip and obtained his prize if not for letting her come along and get in the way. He wished he’d never involved her.
* * * *
Exhausted and gritty from the Madagascar outback, Luke, Brent, and Melanie returned to Maui three days later. The cab ride home lacked the spirit of adventure when they’d set out days earlier. An air of defeat hung over them. Disappointment stayed around them. There would always be another hunt, another stone. But Luke didn’t like to lose. He didn’t like his property taken from him. He’d lost and he wasn’t good at accepting a setback. Melanie looked out the window of the cab and he studied her profile. The anger from the trip still emitted from her cool gaze and set in the stubborn upturn of her jaw. The beach house came into view and Luke spotted Kendra waiting for them at the curb.
Kendra met them at the cab, paid the driver in cash, and opened the door for Luke. “Welcome back,” she said and flashed Melanie a contemptuous gaze. “I’m sorry you ran into trouble.”
“Where’s Vivian?” Luke said and got out of the cab. Brent and Melanie mulled around the trunk waiting for it to open.
“She’s with Stevie, in the playroom.” Kendra stood back until everyone got out of the cab and closed the door. “I’m glad to see everyone’s alive. I still haven’t been feeling well. The good news is no one else seems to be getting sick.”
Luke and Kendra fell into step aside each other, making their way to the house. “What have I missed?”
“Nothing major has gone on, one of our buyers, Luis Hannigan from Charlotte, contacted me with interest in obtaining an eight-carat blue sapphire. Are you interested?”
“I’ll talk to Brent. If we don’t have something in the vault, we’ll have to go back out and find one.” The loss of the blue garnet killed Luke’s eagerness to rush back out for another gemstone. “I don’t want to send Brent out again with the wedding being so close.” Luke stopped at the front door and paused. “Have you heard from Damon?”
“No; there’s been no change in his plan. Damon and Felicity are arriving in two days.” Kendra opened the door and stepped inside first. “On the other subject you asked me to research, I do have some hopeful news.”
“Go on.” Luke flashed his gaze over at Melanie and Brent, talking and walking up the steps without hurry to the front door.
“Is Melanie okay?” Kendra said. “She doesn’t look so good.”
She always looks good.
Luke stopped this train of thought. “She’s fine,” he said, void of emotion. “Tell me your news.”
“I tracked down the former owner of the apartment you had lived in while working with Mark Cahill. The man is crude and rude as they come, which worked in my favor once I mentioned I would pay him two hundred dollars for some information. The night the tourmalines were stolen, the same night Mark had tried to kill you, the manager had said he’d seen someone, a tall man, enter your apartment through the fire escape out back. He didn’t see a face but said he looked familiar, like he’d seen him before.”
The man in question couldn’t be anyone other than Mark Cahill. Luke flashed a curious glance at Melanie. There were only three people who had been to his apartment on the West Side: Brent, Mark, and Melanie. “What else?”
“The manager didn’t report anything to the detective on purpose. Something to do about paperwork or permits not being filed correctly and he didn’t want to draw attention to himself or his background. He only spoke to me because I paid him and assured him I wasn’t a cop trying to dig into his background. It’s not much, but a lead’s a lead.”
Luke’s fist gave a light pound on the doorframe. “Keep digging.”
“Luke,” she said, in a rare moment using his first name. “I also haven’t found any evidence of Melanie’s involvement with the tourmalines having gone missing. I used some of Damon’s legal contacts to check into any bank accounts and safe deposit boxes set up in her name or her sister’s name and there’s nothing. If Mark took those tourmalines he might have sold them.”
“He didn’t know how to sell. He handled the hunts and the new clients. Mark didn’t and doesn’t know how to turn rock into a product.”
A thoughtful expression dawned upon Kendra’s face. “What makes these tourmalines so special? Why are they so rare?”
“A tourmaline in any color aside from blue has elements like iron, vanadium, manganese bringing out the vivid color. Paraiba Tourmalines are different. Copper is the reason they are set apart. It’s one element not found in other tourmalines. The ratio of copper to manganese brings out a blue worth traveling around the world to find. They are mostly found in Paraiba, in Brazil and they are somewhat new to the gemstone market, within the last twenty years.”
“The copper, right.” Kendra contemplated what he’d told her and returned to their original conversation. “What if Mark did learn on his own? He could have learned without your knowledge.”
The thought bothered Luke but he didn’t see much importance in debating the credibility now. “Mark took those stones and he gave them to someone for safekeeping. He wouldn’t have had the time to sell them before the police took him for questioning. Don’t forget the night he tried to kill me is the same night I believe that he broke into my apartment. I think Melanie knows where they are, she’s certainly got good reason to take this job and suddenly make them appear.” Luke rubbed his hand at the back of his neck. The trip to Madagascar had complicated everything about his feelings towards Melanie.
Luke went into the kitchen and poured himself a drink. He sat at the kitchen table, in the dark, and let the dark liquid of the Brandy he’d chosen swirl in his glass. Unsettled thoughts ran through his mind. Something he couldn’t resolve during the journey home.
The trip and all of the close calls reminded him of his position. He ran the company. He had a daughter. He couldn’t afford to take these kinds of trips for much longer. Melanie could have been hurt. She could have died and Luke sucked in an irritated breath at how much he cared for her. He didn’t want anything bad to happen to Melanie, ever. The decision to bring her along had been a mistake. The exacting judgment he typically used had faulted. He took another sip, stared out the window at the night, and realized with clarity why he was so annoyed. It’s the first time he’d ever had to choose between his gemstone and the woman who turned over his heart.
Chapter 15
The pack of birth control pills indicated Melanie had missed too many days to get her cycle back on track. Madagascar had ruined everything, even the comfort of her hormones staying on schedule. The adventure she’d wanted so bad was over. The incident with the blue garnet turned out to be a huge rock sticking between the progress she’d made with Luke, and he treated her differently now that they were back to the beach house. She sensed a looming disappointment or mistrust every time she walked into the room. The scratches on her face, arms, and legs began to heal after access to clean water, daily showers, and a pristine environment, yet on the inside she felt sore when it came to Luke ignoring her.
She could close the door on any hope of a relationship. Not after the way he’d simply stalled and done nothing with a gun pointed to her head, scheming how to keep his gemstone. The layer of fury fuming from her heart began to grow two heads at the thought of Luke picking his gemstone over her life. Worse than his messed-up actions out there, she got the feeling he blamed her for losing the garnet. Melanie walked into the bathroom off her bedroom and grabbed her swimsuit. The two-piece hung over her shower rail, dry and crisp as toast and it smelled like mildew. She touched the bikini top, growing hot at the thought of Luke’s fingers on her body. They hadn’t been able to make love in Madagascar and now she knew they wouldn’t. She didn’t want to kid herself. Luke still hadn’t shared with her anythin
g about his family or his childhood. Aside from their heated, stolen kisses, she still hadn’t learned anything new about him. What she did know, she could count with the fingers on her hand:
He would have let those men kill her.
He would never forgive her.
He would never allow her to get too close.
She’d considered quitting her job. She could see the disdain on Luke’s face every time he looked at her. There wasn’t the option of walking away from him, or from their agreement, at least not when she still could salvage her time here by getting to the bottom of those tourmalines and solving the mystery once and for all. Her brother wouldn’t lose from Luke again. The end of the summer would bring about the end to their love story. They could both walk away happy and free of each other.
Melanie stepped outside her room, dressed and ready for the day. Fresh bouquets of Orange Anthuriums shaped like hearts with stamen sticking out their lily-pad like centers had been tied with white silk bows and graced each table next to a bedroom door. The sound of her phone ringing in her bedroom pulled her back to her room—she shut the door and took the call.
“Hello?” she answered fast.
“Where have you been?” Mark barked. “Why haven’t you returned my calls?”
Melanie sat on the bed and held the phone close to her ear. “I’m in Maui.”
“Yeah, I know. Jess told me. All of a sudden you’re with Harrison, and what, too busy to remember me?”
“I don’t want to get into it.” Melanie ran her hand over her forehead. “I’ve been out of the country.”
Silence.
“You’ve been out of the country with Harrison. What gemstone was he looking for? How did he talk you into going?”
“I wanted to go. Besides, how did you know?”
“It’s not a far leap to make. He’s out there enjoying his freedom and running his company and I’m stuck in here.”
“I’m working on getting your letter of support.”
“I bet you are.”
Melanie felt her patience wane. “Don’t get upset with me for traveling with Luke. I’m working for him. We’re not a couple. We made a deal.”