“The NSA hasn’t had much dealing with the man, but his name’s come up in a couple of investigations involving the FBI, the DEA, and the CIA. And one former agent with the company that we all met recently had a bit of a run-in with him. Connor Talbot and his partner at the time were assigned to a case—in fact, the case that brought him to Lusty. He was working undercover in a bid to impress LeClerc, to prove his creds and infiltrate his organization. Once they were over in Europe, however, there was some kind of a snafu and Connor’s partner, Frank Freeman, was killed. Freeman had been with the FBI for ten years when he and Connor were recruited to run this particular operation. When the damn thing went south, Connor quit the agency.”
“What does all this mean?”
Adam looked from Damion to Grant and then focused on him and his brother. “What it means is several things. The first is that, as we speak, Mel and Connor are inside Bailey’s apartment here in Lusty, waiting. Also, somewhere between Houston and here is our main suspect in two murders—Everett Forrest. We traced him to Houston, and we also know, thanks to your boss, that the man has hacked into Bailey’s credit card account. Her last purchase on that card was her stay at the Green Gables.”
“He’s closing in, then.”
“He is indeed, though we haven’t actually located him yet. If he makes it as far as Angel’s, we should know. I’ve just sent people there even though Bailey is off until tonight. They have a photo of the man. The thing is we need to catch him in the act of breaking the law in order to move on him. Everything we’ve just laid out is supposition. We need a solid reason to arrest him.”
“That’s why you have Connor and Mel at Bailey’s apartment,” Chance said.
“If Forrest breaks into Bailey’s apartment, that’s all we need.” Then he shot them each a raised-eyebrow look. “Where are your deputy badges, gentlemen?”
Chance and Logan traded looks. They each had put their badges in their pockets. As much as a part of him longed to pin it on his waistband when he’d first received it, if Bailey had seen it, she’d ask questions. Questions he’d rather not have answered.
It seemed, however, that now was the time to be up-front. Neither he nor Logan wanted to jeopardize the case by not following procedure. He didn’t regret his earlier decision, though, and he’d bet Logan didn’t either. They’d much rather explain everything and offer apologies for keeping her out of the loop after that bastard, Forrest, was in custody. In unison, Chance and Logan pulled those badges out and pinned them on.
“Everyone is moving into place now. We have Angel’s Roadhouse, Bailey’s apartment building, and the roads into town on either end under surveillance. Your house has got top-grade security, but within the hour, you’ll also have people on the ground close by, with eyes on the building. Our primary focus is keeping Bailey safe. So you two need to get back to the Big House and invite yourselves to tea. Uncle Caleb and Uncle Jonathan are good men, but I’d feel better with the two of you on hand there as backup.”
“The uncles aren’t there,” Logan said. “At least, not that I saw.”
“Then for sure you’d better get yourselves there.”
Logan chuckled, and Chance just shook his head. “Yeah, that’s so not happening. We hightailed it out of there when all those women stared us down. Apparently, they didn’t want any of us Y-chromosome carriers present.”
Adam’s expression became confused…and then what Chance could only call wary. “All what women? You said Bailey was having tea with Grandma Kate.”
“She is,” Logan said.
“With Grandma Kate,” Chance agreed. “And Aunt Bernice and Aunt Abby and your mother and your wife…hell, just about every female member of the family over drinking age, near as I can tell, is at the Big House right now, having tea.”
“Ginny never told me she was going to tea,” Adam said.
“Didn’t something like that happen one time before?” Joe Grant asked. His words came out slowly, as if he was tugging a memory from the distant past. “I’m thinking about the time y’all had Peter’s house under surveillance, believing that drug lord, Miguel Ramos, who’d put a contract out on Peter, was headed there?”
“And the women all figured differently, after a little powwow at Grandma Kate’s…over tea.” Adam frowned, his stance rigid, arms akimbo. The tension Chance could see on him didn’t make him feel good.
“What does that mean?” Logan asked.
“It means your woman, my woman…hell, every damn woman in the family, is up there at the Big House, likely brainstorming Bailey’s situation with typical female logic.”
“They don’t have any of the pertinent facts,” Damion Quest said. “How much of a problem can they be?”
Adam pulled out his cell phone. He sent Quest what could only be a pitying look. “Son, you have a lot to learn about the power of women.” He placed a call then held the cell phone to his ear. “Yeah, stand by there—but I’m not sure if you’re in the right place, after all. I’ll let you know, as soon as I head off what could be a real disaster.” Adam described what he believed was happening at the south end of town, and Chance was even more worried than before.
Adam ended the call, slid the phone into his pocket, and headed for the door. Neither Chance nor Logan wasted a single second. They ran out the door behind the sheriff and headed straight for their car.
Chapter Eighteen
“I can certainly understand why you got yourself out of New York.” Samantha Kendall set her teacup down on the small end table behind her.
Bailey had previously met the stunning red-haired woman—one who’d managed, according to legend, to ride herd on three husbands and five sons with amazing aplomb—a few times at Angel’s. Mrs. Kendall was Ginny’s mother-in-law, and Ginny was one of Laci’s closest friends. Yes, this town is all about connections and family and love.
Bailey had spent a part of the time giving the room a bit of her own personal background and had just finished going over the events, beginning the day Dirk Townsend was murdered and ending with the day she stepped into Angel’s Roadhouse. She put her focus back on the conversation. “Thank you for saying that, Aunt Samantha. For a while, I felt like the worst kind of coward for running away.”
“Oh, there’s nothing cowardly about you, my dear.” Anna Jessop took a sip from her cup. “Why, after what you’ve endured your whole life, I can certainly see why you’re here with us now.”
“Mom believes that Lusty draws people to her who need to be here.” Carol Jessop, married to Warren and Edward, two of Anna’s sons, sent a soft smile to her mother-in-law. “I have to agree with her, since I arrived and found my husbands and all the rest of you.”
“I nearly teared up when you told us about you and your mom being evicted and how your mother encouraged you to take one extra thing,” Chloe Jessop, Carol’s cousin-in-law, said. “We—my sister and I—barely had the time we needed after our parents died in that tornado to make sure we had special keepsakes. It wasn’t until we hired Emily Ann’s husbands to investigate the man who’d robbed us of our inheritance that we finally got photos of the four of us—my sister and me and our parents—together.”
“I’ll bet you made sure you had one extra thing with you when you left your home and headed here, to us, too,” Bernice Benedict said.
“I did, yes.” Bailey chuckled and felt her cheeks begin to heat. When she thought of her little stone dragon, the conversation and loving she’d shared with Chance and Logan right after placing Rufus on the dresser came to the forefront of her mind.
“What was it? A teddy bear? A blanket?” Ginny Kendall asked.
“No. There was this little curio in the warehouse, just a plain gray little dragon, sculpted with uneven features, clinging by his claws to a globe. I’m not even sure why I picked him up. To be honest, there wasn’t anything overtly special about him. But he seemed…I don’t know. He just touched me. I fancied he was my spirit guide. So, I set him aside to take home. I was going to ask Dirk h
ow much he wanted for the little fellow. I knew it wouldn’t be much because there’d been similar odds and ends over the years that he simply offered for free or let go in the store for a pittance.”
“So your one more thing was from the place where you worked…the place owned by your boss who was murdered?” Carrie Benedict, Chloe’s sister, asked.
“Yes. I totally forgot about him until the next day, what with all the upset of the police coming and telling me Dirk had been murdered and then being told the business was closed.”
“I wonder…”
Bailey’s attention was drawn to Kat Lawson Jessop. Kat was Carol Jessop’s sister-in-law. It was getting easier for her to keep the family connections straight. Grandma Kate had been right about Kat. There was just something so edgy about the woman. Bailey could completely believe that she’d kicked some gangbanger’s ass.
“What do you wonder, sweetheart?” Grandma Kate asked.
“Serendipity, I guess,” Kat said. “Bailey, you said the man who called you threatened you if you didn’t return his property, but never said what that property was?”
“Not once, no. The police didn’t seem to know, either. They thought most likely cash or drugs…but I never saw large quantities of cash around Townsend’s Treasures. I can tell you for certain his business wasn’t booming, though it was in the black. Never saw any drugs, either.” She shrugged. “Maybe he did take money from loan sharks. There were no missing crates, according to the police who checked the contents of the warehouse with the manifest that had accompanied the last shipment. Every crate was emptied, and all the items were accounted for. At first, the cops thought he’d owed money to some local gang and that was that the man who threatened me was after. But you know the NSA is involved, and I can’t see them getting involved over something as petty as loan-sharking. Honestly, I’m completely out of ideas.”
“Hmm. And yet someone did threaten you—and apparently killed your other co-worker, too.” Kat was silent for a moment. “Where did Townsend go to get these ‘treasures’ he brought into the country?”
“He didn’t always say where he was off to,” Bailey said. “He had his cell phone for absolute emergencies, but he also had left instructions that, in cases where I needed anything and couldn’t get a hold of him, I was to contact his lawyer…the same man I called after the police informed me of his death.”
“Fair enough. But what were some of the places he traveled to?”
“Oh, I thought he went practically everywhere. Paris, London, Rome, Brussels, Berlin…all those exotic cities I’ve read about and never even hoped to visit. Oh, and Africa. He went to Africa.”
“Africa?”
“Yes, I think Dirk liked Africa best of all because he went there so often.”
“Did he ever mention a particular country?” Kat asked.
A sense of…something swirled around Bailey. All the other women kept silent, their gazes switching from Kat to her. Bailey didn’t understand it, but apparently, the women understood, as she did, that Kat had an idea.
So Bailey closed her eyes, the question foremost in her thoughts, and tried to recall conversations she’d had with Dirk over the last year or two. There was something…was it when she mentioned an upcoming National Geographic special on television?
Bailey opened her eyes. “Oh! The Ivory Coast. I think he went there a few times.” She nearly went on to explain how the memory had come to her, but the gleam in Kat’s eyes kept her quiet.
“The NSA is involved, so that means something to do with national security, which could be anything. But I’m thinking terrorists or, as investigations around the country have been unfolding, the aiding and abetting—as in financing—of terrorists. So maybe Dirk was involved in something like that. Maybe he was helping to supply terrorists.”
“But I told you, there weren’t any large crates that might have contained weapons.” Bailey sat forward, as if doing so would impress the woman across the room she was being sincere.
“There wouldn’t have to be, Bailey. The Ivory Coast is, unfortunately, a source for a resource used to finance despots and warlords alike—diamonds.”
“Diamonds?”
“Yes. And a tiny handful of uncut diamonds, sold to the right people, could be worth millions of dollars.”
Diamonds. Bailey thought back to the way her things had been smashed and slashed back in the storage locker. She’d thought the murderer had thrown a tantrum when his boxes of guns or wads of cash or bales of drugs weren’t there. But what if he’d been looking for his diamonds and believed they’d been concealed in the furniture?
But she had never seen any diamonds. She’d only…the idea exploded in her brain, bright, shiny and oh, so obvious.
She gasped, as did practically everyone else in the room. But not because she’d suddenly understood where those diamonds were.
No, she’d gasped because someone had just pulled her hair, hard, so that her head was yanked back, cruelly so.
The sound of chairs crashing, of women jumping to their feet and shouting kind of slid into the background. Something cold and foreboding rested against her neck.
“Here is how the next few minutes will play out, Miss James. You give me my diamonds and I won’t slit your throat in front of all these nice southern belles.”
The British accent was unfamiliar, but Bailey didn’t pretend not to understand. A murderer held a knife to her throat, and she very much feared that she wouldn’t be his only victim.
* * * *
Logan had never been more scared in all his life. It wasn’t until they arrived at the Big House, no more than ten seconds behind Lusty’s sheriff, that Logan and Chance found out Uncle Jonathan had called Adam just moments before, alerting him to a hostage situation that had just, apparently, developed.
He wanted to do nothing more than to storm into the house, scoop his woman into his arms, and keep her safe. One look at the way Chance stood next to him, practically vibrating, and he knew his brother felt the same way.
Unfortunately, they couldn’t do that at all. How had the situation gotten so completely out of control? They’d done everything they could think of to protect their woman. And now…Logan couldn’t finish the thought.
“I couldn’t risk getting any closer,” Jonathan Benedict said. “When I was about to come out of the barn, I saw movement that looked sudden and jerky, and that naturally drew my attention to the large bay window. I took as good a look as I could manage, and then I called you.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Damn it, Adam, we have to do something. Our women are in there!”
“We’re going to do something, Uncle Jon. But I need you to reconstruct the scene for me. You saw a single man, with a knife that he was holding against Bailey’s throat. Can you show me where everyone was situated?”
I’d like to take back that wish that this situation would be over soon. Logan would do anything to go back to that morning. He’d tie Bailey to the bed and never let her go.
At the moment, he wanted to shout that they were wasting time. Couldn’t they just do something? Damion Quest came to stand beside him and Chance.
“Hang on, guys. We’ll get your woman out of there. We’ll get all the women out of there.”
Adam retrieved a brochure from the car and opened up it up. He turned it over revealing a blank side and spread it on the hood of the cruiser. He handed a pen to Uncle Jonathan. It didn’t take the older man long to draw the great room and show where everyone was sitting. He also marked the one door into the room, giving a clear idea of what he’d seen. Fortunately—or maybe unfortunately—Bailey had been sitting in a chair in the arch of that doorway, where the dining room flowed into the great room. All the rest of the women were in the great room itself, facing her.
“There’s one more thing you should know, Adam.” Jonathan looked a little embarrassed when he said that.
Adam narrowed his gaze. “All right. What should I know?”
“They’re armed.”
“You said there was only one intruder,” Logan said.
“And that he was holding a knife on our woman.” Chance sounded as upset as Logan felt.
“Who the hell else is armed?” Logan nearly shouted that. Then he saw the look on Adam’s face.
“Uncle Jonathan doesn’t mean the intruder.” Adam closed his eyes for one moment. When he opened them again, he was focused on the older man. “You mean the women.”
Jonathan nodded. “The family wanted to show Bailey that she wasn’t alone, that they all had her back.”
“Um…I’m a little confused.” Damion Quest spoke up before Logan could. “Which women are armed?”
“All of them, except Bailey,” Adam said. “Every last wife, cousin, mother, and grandmother in that house is packing heat.”
Logan didn’t know how to describe the expression on Adam’s face as he said that.
“We need a plan, and we need it right now,” Joe Grant said. Urgency fairly shimmered in the man, and Logan decided his stance matched Adam’s expression perfectly.
“Yeah.” Adam scanned the men around him then nodded. “I have an idea.” He looked at Damion Quest. “Are you sniper qualified?”
Quest held the sheriff’s gaze for a moment and then nodded. Logan had the sense the man had just admitted something he’d rather not have.
“Don’t sweat it,” Joe Grant said. He clapped Quest on the shoulder. “When this is over, we’ll forget you admitted that.”
“Come with me.” Adam led the way to the trunk of his cruiser, which popped open as they approached. He reached in and pulled out the most wicked-looking long gun Logan had ever seen.
“Holy shit. An M24.” Quest actually looked as if he were in love. He took possession of the weapon and the ammunition Adam passed him.
Logan could tell just by the way Damion Quest handled the gun that he was very familiar with it.
“This will work through the glass. Uncle Jon will show you the best spot to set up, just inside the barn. You’ll be close enough, the angle should be damn near perfect, and at this time of day with the sun shining down the way it is, no one in the room will be able to see you. You’re our fail-safe. I’m going to go join the party. If I know the women in there as well as I think I do, you may not need to use that at all. Watch for your opportunity. You’ll know it if it presents itself.”
Love Under Two Accountants [The Lusty, Texas Collection] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 15