Kept (27 page)

It was like he’d told her: He didn’t talk. He didn’t share. He didn’t let people in his head or his heart.

I love you. I wanted to be sure to tell you.

Somehow she’d wormed her way in there anyway.

He topped her by a foot and outweighed her by a hundred pounds, but right now her slim arms were the only things keeping him from blowing apart.

“They still don’t know anything,” he said, his hands tightening convulsively around her back. “We’ll have to wait a while for the DNA tests to come in.”

She nodded against his chest.

“Danny hopes it’s her. Ethan does, too.” He didn’t want to talk about it but couldn’t stem the flow. “I don’t know what I want. I don’t blame them, I guess. They want it to be done. To know once and for all.”

“And you don’t?”

He swallowed hard. “If it were just me, yeah. I’m sick of having to wonder what happened. I convinced myself she drank herself to death a long time ago. But now that we might know for sure…”

“Your father believes she’s still alive, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah, and that’s why part of me hopes the body turns out to be someone else. Searching for her has taken over his whole life. I don’t know what he’ll do if we finally confirm she’s dead.”

“Maybe it will finally set him free. Give him closure, same as for you three.”

Derek wanted that to be true. He wanted to believe his
father was capable of moving on. But never in a million years had he expected his father’s life would stop when his mother left. Derek didn’t hold much hope that he’d get a new lease on life if Anne Taggart turned up dead, even after all this time.

The sliding glass door slid open behind them, and Derek turned to see Ethan. “Toni’s in.”

Alyssa leaned over Toni’s shoulder so she could get a closer look at the screen. At first look, FishBait.org was a news site, featuring articles by Martin and other journalists that covered war zones and natural and manmade disasters, seeming to focus on the harsh reality of life in forgotten parts of the world.

But Toni quickly found the password-protected section where Martin stored his notes, pictures, and any other materials related to his stories. Toni made an exasperated noise in her throat. “This is going to take days.”

Alyssa scanned through the endless list of folders until her eyes locked on one labeled
DFA
.

“Try that one,” she said, pointing to it on the screen. “DFA. ‘Diamonds for All.’ That’s the campaign tagline.”

Toni shrugged and clicked it open, and Alyssa felt a tiny spurt of triumph when the folder opened to reveal a dozen subfolders with labels like
OSCAR VW
,
ALYSSA M
, and
MINE CONDITIONS
. She may not be a computer genius or a security expert, but she wasn’t completely useless. “Click there,” she said, indicating the mining conditions with her finger. She wanted to see for herself the deplorable conditions Fish accused them of supporting.

“Here, why don’t you drive,” Toni said, scooting her chair back so Alyssa could sit.

For a second Alyssa was afraid she’d pissed the other woman off with her backseat surfing. But while Toni’s ex
pression held a hint of impatience, there was no trace of irritation. “You know what you’re looking for better than we do.”

Alyssa sat down and clicked open a picture of an African man, his dark, weathered skin clinging to bones, covered in mud as he worked in the mines. The caption read
NKUDA MINE
,
OUTSIDE MBUJI-MAYI
,
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
.

She swallowed hard. Alyssa knew some of the diamonds the Van Weldts sold came from mines all over Africa. She even knew some of them provided better working conditions than others. She’d accepted it as a fact of the business, swallowed it without ever questioning the morality. But she’d never seen conditions like those depicted in Fish’s photographs. Men, women, children covered in mud, their bellies bloated with malnutrition, surrounded by armed guards who looked no older than teenagers.

One photo in particular made her heart ache like a giant bruise. It was of a girl, no more than fifteen or sixteen. Extraordinarily beautiful with her smooth skin, high forehead, full lips, and sculpted cheekbones. She was tall and slender. Except for her belly, which bulged in the late stages of pregnancy. The caption under it read,
MARIE LAURE MWANDEKO
.
TAKEN FROM HER VILLAGE OUTSIDE BUKAVU
.
CHOSEN AS FIRST WIFE BY MEKEMBE
.

“Isn’t there an embargo on diamonds from the Congo?” Toni asked.

Alyssa nodded and clicked on a file marked V
IDEOS
. “But it’s easy enough to sneak them over the border and pay someone to write false certificates of authenticity.” Again, a widely known and accepted fact of the business, another thing she hadn’t even had to ignore because she’d never really given it much thought.

Self-disgust burned bitter at the back of her throat, feeling very much the useless, ignorant party girl the press made
her out to be. The girl, Marie Laure’s, huge dark eyes haunted her. At sixteen Alyssa had been partying it up all over Los Angeles, Miami, the south of France, feeling sorry for herself at her parents’ neglect. At the same age this girl had been kidnapped, raped, and would bear a child. Alyssa didn’t know much about medical facilities in southern Africa, but she knew mother and child would be lucky if they survived the birth.

The first file video opened to show the interior of a tent. Four men sat around a table, huge machine guns propped within easy reach as they played cards and drank from sweating beer bottles. An argument broke out, and while Alyssa and the others couldn’t understand the words, it was clear one man was accusing the other of cheating as he slammed his own cards down and made a grab for the other’s hand.

Then the accuser picked up his beer bottle, smashed it on the corner of the table, and slashed the jagged edge across the other thug’s face. A ragged tear opened in the man’s cheek, soaking his face in blood as he stood and staggered from the table.

The table erupted in laughter, white teeth flashing in dark faces as the accuser tossed aside his broken bottle. He turned in the direction of the camera and shouted something. Most of it was unintelligible, but Alyssa understood one phrase: “Marie Laure.”

The girl from the photo. Fish had hooked her up with a hidden camera. As she watched, the camera drew closer to the table. A slender arm and a hand holding a fresh bottle of beer appeared in the frame.

It took over an hour to go through all the video footage. By the time they were finished, Alyssa was sick to her stomach, hunched in her chair, her arms wrapped tightly around her waist. At some point Derek had brought her a soda, but even a sip of it made her want to vomit.

Fish hadn’t been lying. Not only had the Van Weldts been selling illegal diamonds, they had gone into business with an arms dealer. There was Louis, clear as day, making a weapons exchange in front of Marie Laure’s hidden camera.

But the horror came next, when Mekembe saw Marie Laure. The picture skewed, fell, until all they could see was the red dirt of the ground, hands, arms, fists, feet, flailing. The sound of cries, yelling, the meaty thump of fists meeting flesh.

That was the last video, dated three weeks ago. Right after Alyssa’s father was killed.

“He’s so brazen,” Alyssa said, still struggling to accept the reality. “Why would he do this? How does he think he can get away with it?”

“In his mind, these two worlds will never cross. He has enough money, enough power; he doesn’t think he’ll ever get caught,” Ethan said. “Classic megalomaniac.”

“Thanks, Dr. Phil,” Danny said. “So your father found out about Abbassi, and Blaylock and Abbassi had him offed before he could tell anyone Blaylock made a deal to sell Abbassi’s blood diamonds through Van Weldt Jeweler.”

Alyssa shook her head, her mouth pulling tight as the truth became brutally clear. “He has to be working with my uncle. Harold has always been in charge of dealing with suppliers. And even though Richard is involved in all the deals, he doesn’t have the authority to do one on his own. Especially something as big as the exclusive agreement they signed with Louis.” She shook her head; a cynical laugh exploded from her throat. “He was always going on about how I tarnished the family image. Meanwhile he was the one doing business with arms dealers.”

“What about Kimberly?” Derek said. “Could she be involved?”

“No,” Alyssa said with a vehement shake of her head.
“She worked with our dad on the retail side. She didn’t do any business with the suppliers.”

“But she works closely with Richard, and she and Abbassi looked pretty friendly at that fund-raiser,” Derek prodded.

Everything in her rejected that possibility. “Kimberly wouldn’t do that to me,” she said, springing from her chair. “Ever since I moved up here, she’s the only one who’s been completely supportive. Even when my dad wanted to keep me pushed to the side of the business, she’s the one who tried to get me more involved.”

“She didn’t believe you were being drugged,” he snapped.

“Neither did you,” Alyssa shot back, “and I gave you a second chance.”

Danny, Ethan, and Toni watched, eyebrows raised, waiting to see how this would play out.

Alyssa took a deep breath, trying to rein in her temper, and held up her hands. “Trust me, Kimberly wouldn’t involve herself in something like this. Forget about me—she was so close to our father. She wouldn’t be involved in his murder. Not in a million years.”

As they read through the rest of Martin Fish’s documents, Alyssa felt a rage like nothing she’d ever felt in her life take root. Her uncle had known about this, or at least had a strong suspicion about Louis’s diamond sources. Why else would he kill to keep this secret?

When stories about so-called blood diamonds had first hit the news nearly a decade ago, the industry had taken a hit. Many companies had suffered bad publicity, but they’d all recovered. Primarily by paying lip service, promising to adhere to regulations about certifying mines and diamonds.

Because it was almost impossible to prove that any jeweler had knowingly acquired or sold conflict diamonds, the scandal had blown over, and the industry had recovered.

But what Harold Van Weldt and Richard Blaylock had
done could never be glossed over. When this came out, it would destroy the business and family her uncle had been so eager to protect.

Alyssa didn’t consider herself a vengeful person. But after what he’d done to her father and herself, she couldn’t wait to deal the death blow to everything Harold Van Weldt held dear.

“I
DON’T KNOW what you expect me to do.”

Louis’s fingers tightened around the phone. “You are supposed to be very smart. You will figure it out.”

“Why should I figure it out? It’s your men who let Taggart take her in the first place.”

“And they have paid for their incompetence,” he said, sparing a moment’s regret for Catherine, Damon, Peter, and Andre, who now rested in the cold depths of Lake Tahoe. They had served him well, but they would serve as an example to others to never let down their guard, no matter how easy an assignment seemed or how isolated the location. “And now I am depending on you to get her back to me.”

A scoffing laugh. “Taggart has her hidden somewhere. And even if we did know where she was, how am I supposed to get past him?”

“Kill him. I don’t care.”

“Right, I’m really going to get the drop on a former special-forces sniper.”

“I grow tired of arguing. You will do as I ask.”

“Or what?” The voice rose a notch as anxiety escalated to hysteria. “You’ll tell? This is all going to come out. We’re screwed any way you look at it, so I don’t know what I have to lose anymore.”

“You have your life,” Louis said. “A life I should take for what you did to her, after I told you I wanted her unharmed.” He could hear the swallow through the phone.

“It wasn’t my idea—”

“Bullshit. I know you are the brains of this. The others would not have acted without you. Now, you find a way to get Alyssa to come to you, or you will find yourself as dead as your lover. If you are successful, I will give you everything you need to start a new life elsewhere.”

“Everything?” Curious now, intrigued. Greedy.

“A new identity, an authentic passport, and fifteen million dollars in a numbered Swiss account.”

“All for her?” Disbelief, disgust was evident in the reply.

Louis looked at the magazine on the table before him. It was open to an advertisement for Van Weldt’s featuring Alyssa, naked but for sparkling jewels covering the tips of her breasts and the triangle between her thighs. Her skin was so smooth and creamy. He couldn’t wait to mark it with his fingers and with his teeth. His hand twitched at the remembered feel of her tit under his hand. Next time would be so much better, with her fully awake, aware that she was in his control. That pleasing him was the only way to survive.

“I want her. And I will do whatever it takes to get what I want.”

Danny cruised his jeep past Alyssa’s Victorian as Derek scanned the sidewalk from the passenger seat. “There,” Derek said. “Across the street.”

“What?” Alyssa asked from the backseat. She peered through the window. “That guy in the trench coat?” A large, squarely built man stood across the street from her house, his bulk draped in a gray coat. With his blond crew cut and hard, angular features, he was a poster child for the Aryan nation.

“Yep,” Derek said. “Ten to one that’s one of Louis’s boys.”

“Not much for discretion, are they?” Danny said.

“I knew we should have left you with Ethan and Toni—” Derek started.

Alyssa cut him off before he could get wound up. “No way was I staying back at the house doing nothing when I can help you. Case closed.”

Toni had easily hacked into the Van Weldt corporate computer network, but because it was after business hours, several computers were shut down and not connected to the network, including Richard’s and Harold’s. While Toni could access shared documents and e-mails archived on the corporate server, they needed to access deleted files on her uncle and Richard’s hard drives if they wanted a complete picture.

Derek had been adamant that Alyssa stay back at the house while he and Danny went first to her house to retrieve her pass key to the Van Weldt office and then to the office to retrieve the computers.

Alyssa had been just as adamant that she go. “I can’t remember where my pass key is, but if I can look at my stuff, I’ll remember quicker. Trust me, it will be faster than having you search my room.”

When their argument escalated, Danny cut it off with a short, “Shut up, both of you, and get in the car. This is better. I can keep a lookout and take care of anyone who comes along while you two retrieve the key and the computers.”

Derek had looked like he wanted to punch Danny in the mouth, but instead he’d turned to Alyssa with a hard look. “You follow my lead and do exactly what I say.” The only reason Alyssa hadn’t snapped back was that he’d softened his harsh command by giving her a quick, hard kiss before opening the back door of the jeep so she could climb in.

Now they circled the block to make sure no one else was watching the house. But instead of turning right down her
street, Danny took a left and drove a few blocks before stopping in front of a twenty-four-hour convenience store.

“Be right back,” he said as he slammed the car into park and jogged inside.

Danny was back before Alyssa could voice her confusion. She recognized the bulge inside the brown paper bag.

“I think I have something in my liquor cabinet if you’re that desperate for a drink,” she said.

“Don’t worry, sweetcheeks, I’m not going to get hammered—not now anyway. This is just for diversion.”

“Did your brother really just call me sweetcheeks?” she asked Derek as the car pulled away from the curb.

“He’s an asshole. Don’t pay any attention to him.”

Danny merely grunted and pulled the car up to the curb around the corner from her house, where Louis’s thug wouldn’t be able to see them.

“Give me a couple minutes,” he said.

Alyssa watched in confusion as Danny got out of the car, cracked open the bottle, and poured the contents down the front of his T-shirt and canvas work coat. Whiskey fumes permeated the air as he took a couple steps down the sidewalk. Within a few yards, his gait changed from an athletic, predatory stride to that of a lumbering lush. If Alyssa hadn’t known what he’d done, she never would have questioned that Danny had staggered his way here from one of the nearby bars.

Derek took her hand, and they followed several yards behind. His other hand slid back to rest along the waist of his cargo pants. Her stomach clutched when she saw the butt of a gun sticking out of his waistband. He rested his fingers against it, ready to move if the meathead didn’t fall for Danny’s act.

The blond guy stiffened as Danny approached, but he didn’t acknowledge the big, stinking drunk weaving in his direction.

Not until Danny called out, “Hey, dude, do you know if thersh any cabsh around here?”

The man didn’t answer.

“Yoo-hoo, buddy, talkin’ t’you.” Danny was now within a few yards of the guy. “I need a cab, man.” He gave a convincingly drunk chuckle. “I’m so fucked up, man. Jus’ started a new job. My buddy bought me shots….” He paused, wavering directly in front of the thug. “Fuck, I don’ even know where I am. What fuckin street—”

“Listen, friend, I can’t help you,” he said in a clipped accent, his words so low Alyssa could barely make them out.

“Hey, come on, dude, help me out.” Danny staggered forward and gave the guy a sloppy pat on the shoulder.

“Fuck off, man.” The guy slid his trench coat to the side.

“Whoa!” Danny jumped back and threw his hands up as if startled. “No need to get mean, here, dude.” He staggered back and then righted himself as the thug took a menacing step forward.

Without warning Danny’s fist flew out and caught the guy square in the face; then he landed a hard, martial-arts-looking jab into his chest. As the thug pitched forward, gasping, Danny reached in his coat and snatched the gun from his holster. A knee to the guy’s crotch brought the thug’s head down within easy striking range. Danny clipped him on the back of the head with the gun, and the thug was down for the count.

“Go on up,” Danny said, barely breathing hard as he tucked the gun in his waistband and relieved the thug of his wallet, cell phone, and pager. “I’ll take care of this clown. When he comes to, he won’t be too eager to tell Louis he got rolled by a drunk.”

“Wow, I’ve only seen that in the movies,” Alyssa said.

Derek shot her a dirty look. “We’re all trained to fight.”

She patted his arm, purposely widening her eyes. “Oh,
honey, I’m sure you would have kicked his ass, too, given the chance.”

Danny gave a half laugh, half grunt as he hoisted the thug over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. “That’s right, sugardick, don’t go getting all jealous.” He shot Alyssa a grin. “But if you’re ever looking for a real man…”

Derek flipped him the finger and tugged Alyssa across the street. “Let’s find the pass key and get the hell out.”

The house was silent as they went up the stairs to the living room. Alyssa breathed a sigh of relief that Andy was gone. She went into her bedroom and gasped. It looked like it had been tossed. Drawers hung open, clothes and shoes littered the floor.

“I think Andy did a little looting before she left,” Derek said as he came up behind her. Sure enough, most of her dresser drawers were empty. And when she entered her walk-in closet, she saw a sea of empty hangers and shelves where rows of designer clothing and shoes used to be. “That bitch,” she breathed. Andy had helped herself to tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of her stuff. The final insult—

What was that smell?

Alyssa’s nose wrinkled as she took another deep inhale. “What is that? That’s awful.” Her gaze locked on an oversize leather duffel bag in the corner of the closet. Everything went still, and suddenly she
knew.
Still, she took a step closer. She had to be sure.

“Alyssa, don’t.” Derek’s voice was calm, too calm as he grabbed her arm.

She shook him off and lunged at the bag. She tugged the zipper down and choked on a scream at the sight that greeted her.

It was Andy, nearly unrecognizable with her mottled, swollen face. Her tongue stuck halfway out of her mouth,
the whites of her eyes crimson with burst blood vessels. Nearly black bruises ringed her throat.

“Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God.” Everything seized inside Alyssa as she staggered back, would have fallen if Derek hadn’t grabbed her by the shoulders. He steered her out of the closet, through her bedroom, and into the bathroom, barely making it before her meager dinner heaved into the toilet.

Derek held her hair as she retched and offered her a paper cup of water when the dry heaves finally passed. “I’m sorry,” he said as he stroked her hair, his mouth pulling into a grimace. “I should have seen that coming.”

She gulped the water, shaking her head as she took a seat on the closed toilet lid. “How could you have known she was murdered? I mean, she was murdered, right?” God, dumb question. People who died of natural causes didn’t end up in duffel bags in the closet.

Derek nodded. “They’ll do an autopsy, but it looks to me like she was strangled.”

“Louis?”

“That would be my guess.”

Alyssa nodded, bile searing her throat as her eyes burned with tears. “Poor Andy.”

His dark eyes narrowed dangerously. “Poor Andy was slipping you drugs.”

“I know.” She sniffed. “But that doesn’t mean she deserved that.” She closed her eyes, but all she could see was Andy’s frozen, grotesque stare.

“She helped Richard and Abbassi kidnap and drug you,” Derek snapped. “Don’t make excuses for her.”

Alyssa nodded, though her stomach still roiled with a mixture of fear and confusion. “The police will want to talk to me.” Oh, God, the press was going to have a field day with this. Her father’s murder, her own drugging and kid
napping. She would be headline news for the next six months.

She shoved the thought aside. She couldn’t worry about that now when she needed to focus on getting her uncle, Richard, and Louis caught and punished.

He nodded. “We’ll call in an anonymous tip about the body. We can probably hold off talking to them for another day, but not more than that.” He knelt on the floor in front of the toilet and pulled her to him. “It’s going to be okay.”

She nodded and stifled a sob against the thick fleece of his jacket. She had to hold it together. She couldn’t fall apart on Derek, not yet. She pulled back, sniffed, and gave him a resolute nod. “Let’s find that card so we can get the hell out of here.”

“That’s my girl.”

Alyssa blocked everything out to focus on her search for her access card. Several times she cursed herself for not being organized, not being like—oh, God, Andy—and keeping track of things like keys, phone, ID, and office access card. But as soon as her gaze snagged on her small black clutch, she knew she’d find the key. She gave it and her phone to Derek while she packed a small bag of essentials.

Danny emerged from an alley as they exited the house. “Did you get the card?”

Derek nodded, and they started down the block to their car. While driving, Danny’s expression turned grim as Derek told him what they’d found. He pulled over next to a telephone booth while Derek called in the anonymous tip. Alyssa closed her eyes and swallowed back bile. By tomorrow morning the dead body in Alyssa’s house would be all over the news. Hopefully the cops would do as he recommended and look first and hardest at Louis Abbassi and Richard Blaylock.

From Alyssa’s house it was a short drive to the Van Weldt
offices on Union Square. Derek and Danny slipped in through the alley entrance. In the time he’d worked with Alyssa, Derek had made himself familiar with every nuance of the Van Weldt security system, and she was impressed by how well he’d cataloged every flaw and vulnerability.

Alyssa’s mouth pulled into an ironic smile. Harold had blown Derek off when Derek had offered to go through his list with their in-house security team and suggest improvements.

Now she was glad the bastard had refused Derek’s offer to help. For Gemini men, sneaking into Harold Van Weldt’s offices was child’s play.

By the time they got back to the safe house, it was after two in the morning. Ethan and Toni were still up. Toni got to work running a decryption program on the hard drives. “We’ll let these run overnight and get to them in the morning,” Toni said, stifling a yawn. “And, Alyssa, I went ahead and changed the log-in and password on Fish’s Web site if you want to get back in. The new log-in is
alyssa
all lower-case, and the password is
diamonds.
”