Stolen Hearts

by Elise Noble

  At least they’d finished lunch. Emmy grabbed the bag they kept packed and ready in the cupboard beside the front door for this very purpose, one that contained enough cash, food, and clothing for the two of them to survive until the heat died down and also some extras for those little emergencies.

  “Tell me again how this is a vacation?” Emmy said as they strolled along the beach, arm in arm.

  “We’re together, and we’re on a beach.”

  “Tenuous, Chuck, but I’ll go with it.”

  CHAPTER 33 - EMMY

  WE HAD ONE small piece of luck on our side that Sunday. Louise Sumner, Duncan’s wife, didn’t like Captain al-Busari any more than we did. Apparently, he’d waltzed into her rented home in Assalah, interrogated her about Duncan’s tattoo, then announced he was dead while their young daughter cried in the next room. Louise was a pretty girl in her mid-twenties with dark blonde hair and a thick Scottish accent, who clenched her fists while she talked about the captain’s visit, her hazel eyes flashing with anger.

  When a nervous Khaled had called Black with her address, we’d worried she might not speak to us, but there I was, crouched on the floor handing her tissues as she sobbed her heart out. Black was outside, keeping watch for any of al-Busari’s men. According to Khaled, three-quarters of the department was still loyal to him, too nervous of missing a paycheck to step out of line.

  “I-I-I can’t believe it. They won’t even let me see his body.”

  I squeezed her hand. “Honestly, it’s not a good idea. I saw it yesterday, and that isn’t how you want to remember him.”

  “But what if they’ve got it wrong?”

  “Under the circumstances, it’s unlikely, but you could ask for a DNA test. I know that’s not what you want to hear.”

  “I always thought we’d grow old together. What am I supposed to tell Katie?”

  That left me stumped. Kids confused the hell out of me, especially the tiny ones. “How old is she?”

  “Two and a half. This was supposed to be the experience of a lifetime for all of us. You know, living in a foreign country for six months to experience a different culture. Duncan wanted to go to St. Lucia, but it was too expensive, so I convinced him to come here.” She burst into a fresh round of tears. “This was all my fault.”

  “No, it wasn’t. The only person to blame was the person who took his life.”

  “And you said you’re trying to find them?”

  I’d stuck fairly close to the truth this time. That we were two investigators who’d come to Dahab on vacation and got sucked into a mystery when we found Carmela’s body. Luckily, I’d had business cards and ID in the go-bag we’d grabbed from the villa. Well, not so much by luck, more by planning.

  “We’re trying. Can you talk me through what you remember about the day Duncan disappeared?”

  “We went on a boat ride in the morning. You know, the yellow submarine?”

  I did. It was definitely yellow, but it wasn’t a submarine, just a big glass-bottomed boat that took tourists out to look under the water.

  “I bet Katie loved that.”

  “She did. We all did. Those are the last photos I’ll ever have of Duncan.”

  “Who was on the trip with you? Anybody you’ve seen before?”

  “The boat was nearly empty. Just us and two other families. Katie played with the English kids, but I think the others were Russian and they just kept to themselves.”

  I jotted down names and descriptions just in case, but I didn’t think that would help us. Nobody else had mentioned the yellow submarine. Plus the police had a checkpoint at the jetty, and people arriving and leaving were carefully monitored.

  “Where did you go after that?”

  “Into town to get lunch.”

  “How did you get there?” It was a long walk, too far with a toddler in the midday heat.

  “By taxi.”

  “Do you have a regular driver? Or did someone just pick you up on the road?” In Dahab, every vehicle was a taxi for the right price, especially if you weren’t fussy about riding in the back of a truck.

  “We called the guy who always picks us up. He’s a bit more expensive, but reliable.”

  “How much more expensive?”

  She named a figure double the going rate. Ouch. “I’ll need his details.”

  “Uh, I’ve got his card in my purse. I’ll find it.”

  No, that name hadn’t cropped up anywhere either.

  “Which restaurant did you go to?”

  “The Flying Carpet. They do small portions for Katie, and the waiters are so friendly.”

  She was right, and we knew the owner. He had business interests in the UK too, and we often stopped to chat when he was in town. Either Black or Bob would have his number, and we could get a list of staff. But again, it didn’t feel right.

  “And then?”

  “While we were eating, somebody came in to ask if we’d seen a girl with blonde hair going past. Apparently she’d gone missing from a hotel by the lagoon, and people were out searching for her. Katie was getting tired, so I took her home, and Duncan went to help look.” Louise choked up. “That was the last time I saw him. He said he’d pick up dessert on the way home, but he never arrived. It got later and later, and he hated eating after nine because it messed with his metabolism.”

  “We were out looking for the girl too. I’m ninety percent sure we actually spoke to Duncan that evening.”

  “Really? Where? What did he say?”

  “Along the promenade between Assalah and the lighthouse. We’d found the girl by then, and he asked if it was her with us.”

  “You found her.”

  “We got a tip-off from someone we knew.”

  Louise’s shoulders dropped an inch. “That gives me hope. If you found her, you can find the person who killed Duncan.”

  “We’ll do everything we can. At that point, he was heading in this direction by the looks of it, and he wasn’t carrying anything. Which means he might have stopped at one of the restaurants along the way. That gives us somewhere to start.”

  Only one of those restaurants had been on our radar before—Happy Fish. Black had dropped Gunther down to the “unlikely” column once his sister confirmed his alibi for Gosia’s disappearance, plus he drove the wrong vehicle—I’d seen him behind the wheel of a white pickup. But this was yet another piece of circumstantial evidence. What if his sister had gotten her dates confused? Or he’d borrowed the white pickup from someone? Should we take another look? It couldn’t hurt.

  Carmela would have been familiar with the other restauranteurs nearby too, and if I recalled correctly, several of them had ordered produce from Gosia. But so far, none of them had a medical connection. At least, not one that we knew of.

  Hmm… The scenario could fit. Snatching a grown man off the street would have been tricky, even in the dark, and the only way I could see it happening was if he got shoved straight into a vehicle. But if a friendly waiter invited him into a quiet restaurant? Most people along that strip sat at the tables on the beach, not inside where the heat from the kitchen made your clothes stick to your skin. Who would notice a struggle?

  “You’ll speak to them?” Louise asked. “The people at the restaurants?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  Maybe even this evening, but if we were going to take a closer look at Bergeron, it’d have to be tonight while he was at work. Tick, tick, tick. We didn’t have much time left.

  “One more question. While you were in Dahab, did Duncan ever visit a hospital?”

  Louise gave me a curious look but nodded. “How did you know? He got scratched by a cat, and it turned septic.”

  “When was that?”

  “Right after we got here—around two and a half months ago.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve still got the paperwork?”

  “I never throw anything away. Duncan complains—complained—about it all the time.” Louise gave another hiccupping sob. “But I’
ve got a filing system. Hold on a second.” She got up, and the sound of paper shuffling came from the kitchen before she returned. “Here you go.”

  On another day, in another town, nobody would have given the invoice a second glance. But two things stuck out. Firstly, the blood test. Why was that necessary for a cat scratch? Secondly, the name of the doctor who’d treated Duncan: T Bergeron.

  CHAPTER 34 - BLACK

  DECISIONS, DECISIONS…

  THE lead on the restaurants along the promenade was a promising one, but if they didn’t check out Bergeron tonight, they’d lost twenty-four hours. And with the speed this case was moving, that could be a fatal mistake.

  Which was why Black found himself standing outside the man’s villa late on Sunday night with Emmy at his side. She’d act as sentry while he took a look around inside. He glanced both ways down the alley. Nothing. Two steps and a jump, and he was over the wall into the garden—all that time in the gym paid off on occasion, and truthfully, he much preferred being out in the field to being stuck behind his desk.

  The place was in darkness as he approached, drapes drawn tightly across every window and a dim bulb glowing over the front door. So he went around the back and picked the lock by feel. If one practised enough, light was unnecessary.

  Inside, he paused in the living room to let his eyes adjust to the gloom, then turned on a flashlight with a red filter over the lens. Red light didn’t have the same devastating effect on night vision as white.

  Black started with a cursory glance around each room, and on first impressions, the house was neat and clean. No bloodstains, no stink of bleach. No hacksaw sitting out on the coffee table. No handy copy of Gray’s Anatomy for reference. The bathroom smelled of roses. Roses?

  That was the first indication Black had that something was wrong.

  The second was the quiet snuffle as he paused outside the bedroom door. He wasn’t alone.

  Shit.

  This was what happened when things got rushed. He hated operating with half a fucking plan. Still, he couldn’t back out now. He tiptoed forward, careful not to let his rubber soles squeak on the tile, and peered around the doorjamb. In the gloom, he could just make out the silhouette of a woman, her dark hair splayed across the pillow. Guess that was why the woman next door rarely saw Bergeron’s visitors leave—because they didn’t. They stayed there. On the plus side, at least she was alive.

  And he’d seen enough. If Bergeron was dismembering women, he wasn’t doing it in his house. The next step would be to get Khaled or one of his buddies to run surveillance, but fuck knows how that would work with Captain Cantankerous clamping down on any actual police work.

  Black retreated the way he’d come, swiftly, silently, his gloved hands leaving no evidence of his visit. Emmy was pretending to talk on the phone when he reached the garden wall.

  “Clear?” he asked softly.

  “One minute… Okay.”

  Black vaulted the wall again and landed on bent knees with barely a sound. Paused to kiss his wife, then started walking.

  “Well?” she asked, as she always did.

  “Nothing. Unless you count the female asleep in Bergeron’s bed, that is.”

  A normal person might have gasped. Emmy merely laughed. “Sleeping? At least you didn’t have to keep passing her tissues.”

  According to Bob, al-Busari had stationed one man beside the gatehouse at the Black Diamond and another in front of Emmy and Black’s villa. Al-Busari had also sworn Bob to secrecy, but the man clearly didn’t understand the SEAL brotherhood and Bob had messaged Black the instant the asshole left.

  Bob: Villa’s out of bounds, as is the front entrance. I’ve left the north gate unlocked, and you’re in room 206 tonight. The manager of the Sinai Dreams Resort next door says you can use their parking lot.

  They were in Bob’s truck again, just one more ubiquitous white pickup amongst hundreds. The SUV was still parked outside the villa, and there it would stay until the captain admitted defeat.

  “Dinner, Diamond? It’ll have to be room service, but at least we don’t need to eat the rations you packed.”

  “Damn, I was really looking forward to a protein bar.”

  “Save your appetite for tomorrow morning. You’ll be eating at every restaurant on the promenade.”

  Because now that they were the subject of a manhunt, Black’s size made him stick out too much to be running around town asking questions. Emmy, on the other hand, was a chameleon, so she’d have to carry the load tomorrow while Black played getaway driver.

  In their temporary lodgings, Emmy grabbed a packet of hair dye from the bag and disappeared into the bathroom. Black preferred her as a blonde, but needs must. Bradley could fix whatever she did when they got back to Virginia.

  “Any preference for dinner?” he called.

  “Chicken and vegetables. But get them to leave it half an hour because I want to do a few circuits first.”

  Emmy might mess around during her downtime, but when there was the prospect of some action, she ditched the junk food and took care of herself. She’d sleep well tonight too. Her brain seemed to have an inbuilt defence mechanism that stopped her from sleepwalking when it was essential she get some rest. Which meant Black could relax too, or as close to it as possible with a pair of cops skulking around the property. He stretched his legs and did a set of burpees before calling the kitchen. Better. The burn of well-used muscles was his second greatest addiction after his wife.

  “What do you think?” she asked, stepping back into the bedroom with damp hair.

  Dark brown. She’d gone dark brown, almost black, and she’d dyed her eyebrows too. With a pair of non-prescription glasses, she wouldn’t be instantly recognisable.

  Quite literally, Captain al-Busari wouldn’t know what hit him.

  CHAPTER 35 - EMMY

  “IS THAT SUPPOSED to be…whistling?” Black asked on Monday morning.

  I couldn’t whistle. I couldn’t sing either, but thankfully my shooting skills more than made up for my lack of musical ability.

  “Shut up. This is gonna be a good day—I can feel it in my bones. What’s the plan, kemosabe?”

  “First, I need to get ahold of Bob and ask him to get my good camera from the villa. If we come across anything interesting, a phone camera won’t cut it.”

  “No need. I’ll go.”

  “There’s most likely still a cop sitting outside, who may or may not be awake.”

  “Then I’ll just wear my handy burka. Trust me, Chuck, I’m good at this.”

  “You have a burka?”

  “We’re in the Middle East, and I packed the go-bag. Of course I have a burka. Won’t be long. Do me a favour and order breakfast, yeah?”

  Two days left in Egypt, and we were so fucking close I could taste it. Duncan’s murder had felt rushed, careless. The killer was rattled, and when people were rattled, they made mistakes. We just had to keep pushing. Bergeron, Gunther, or someone else? Before Black’s shenanigans last night, I’d have said Bergeron, but now I was leaning towards Gunther. Right now, Mack and Dan were digging into their lives from afar, hunting for anything that could either finger them as a suspect or give us leverage in our questioning.

  The cleaning cart outside room 104 was unattended, so I borrowed it and pushed it slowly through the hotel grounds, hunched over the handle. Most of the hotel staff wore a uniform, but we had a few Muslim women working there who preferred to wear traditional dress which included covering their faces, and we respected it as long as they were in non-customer-facing roles. My name badge said I was Menat, the goddess of fate, which seemed quite appropriate today. Although I strived to create my own path, there was always an element of unpredictability on any job.

  “Sabah al-khair,” I muttered to the cop slouched on my sunlounger. At least Zena had fed Crash. The run beneath the hutch was full of salad.

  “Sabah al-noor,” the guy replied, then focused on his phone again.

  Inside, I fetched Black
’s camera and the battery charger that went with it, then raided the floor safe in the bedroom for goodies. My gun, a spare knife, enough cash to buy off a stable of informants…

  The cop didn’t even glance up as I trundled the cart past him again. Nope, he just sat there. A coiled fucking spring.

  Down on the beach, the wedding preparations were well underway. Lynn and Chris would tie the knot tomorrow in a gazebo by the water, and a florist was busy securing flowers to every inch of the framework. The gauzy curtains reminded me of Zena’s second dress.

  Poor girl.

  The prospect of taking an hour out of the case to watch Lynn and some jackass from Seattle commit to each other until their inevitable divorce didn’t exactly fill me with glee. What if that hour meant the difference between solving the case and handing it over to a man who couldn’t find his dick with two hands and a hooker helping?

  Think positive, Emmy. We had two reasonable suspects.

  “What did you get?” Black asked when I arrived back.

  “The camera, a Glock 19…” Not my favourite gun—that was a Walther P88—but we’d left the best stuff in a concealed lockbox on the jet. “An extra knife, comms gear, sunglasses, the coffee machine.”

  “You brought the coffee machine?”

  “I have a feeling it’s gonna be a long day. Doesn’t appear that the cops have been inside, which means they haven’t seen your wall. You really should consider doing everything electronically.”

  “Let them look at it. Al-Busari needs the education.”

  My first destination was Happy Fish, but the place was dark. Silent. The guy sweeping the path in front of the Sweet Dreams Hotel next door said Gunther never got there before ten, which meant I had at least an hour to kill before I could tackle our new number one suspect.

  Should I find a way in and snoop around? As well as the beachside seating area, Happy Fish occupied a two-storey building across the promenade that held the kitchen on the ground floor, together with a few indoor tables and a counter for picking up takeout. Fuck knows what was on the next floor up. A slaughterhouse? The windows were filthy, covered with years of dust and grime. No cobwebs—spiders were one thing you rarely saw in Dahab.