Accomplice (13 page)

Shit
. “Stay here, at this bar. Don’t let
your friend down there out of your sight and don’t leave here without me.” He
motioned toward the bartender.

“She’s not—“

Noah held up a hand to cut her off. “Look, I was
followed here by someone, and my money’s on Brandon Kingsbury. As soon as they
see you, they will know what you found. I’m calling for backup. If you promise
to trust me, I promise to get you out of here in one piece.”

Lindsay’s eyes widened and her knuckles tightened
around her cup. She nodded in agreement.

Ice formed in the pit of Noah’s stomach and the
wound on his shoulder itched as headed for the only quiet spot he could think
of: the john. He punched Cole’s number into his cell phone while the stalls of
the men’s room rattled with the bass of the dance music outside.

“Tell me your guys aren’t following me,” he said
without preamble

Cole voice sounded groggy. Or maybe angry. Hard to
tell. “My guys aren’t following you.”

Noah swore. “For once I hope you are lying.”

“Cross my heart. Why? Do you want someone to
follow you?”

“No time to explain. I need you to pick me and a
friend up from a bar. Now.” Noah glanced over his shoulder as the bathroom door
opened and a young guy in shiny silver pants swaggered in to the row of
urinals.

“Jessica?”

“No. The body double.”

Cole whistled. “Does she have intel?”

Shiny Pants was zipping up now, and Noah tried to
cover his mouth with his hand while he spoke. “Yes. Are you coming or not?”

“Already in the car. Give me the address.”

Noah rattled off directions while the other man
took his time lathering his hands in the sink. The guy shut off the water and
turned around as Noah snapped his phone back into his belt clip and went to
leave.

“Don’t be in such a rush, big boy. I can be your
body double.” The man ran his tongue over his lips and arched one eyebrow.

Noah considered him for a long moment. “You know,
you have a point. You want to earn a quick hundred bucks?”

The man’s eyes travelled slowly down Noah’s front,
lingering a long while at his belt. He shifted uncomfortably.

“For you, baby, I’d do it for fifty.”

Noah reached for his belt, a plan forming in his
head. “Great. Take off your pants.”

 “Were the handcuffs really necessary?” Noah
lifted up his bound wrists and rattled them towards the driver of the LAPD
squad car.

Lieutenant Thompson tossed him a look in the
rearview mirror. A smirk, probably, though Noah couldn’t make out the other
man’s features through the night shadows and the bulletproof glass that
separated the backseat from the driver.

“Standard procedure in a drug bust. Our narcs
don’t complain. If they don’t get cuffed like everyone else, then their cover
gets blown. I didn’t realize you feds had different rules. You sure have
different taste in clothes...”

Noah sat back, a half grin on his face as he
glanced at the shiny silver pants he wore. He almost relaxed as they rode
through the streets of LA on the way to police headquarters. His plan had gone
off without a hitch. True, the guy in the men’s room actually pouted when he
realized that Noah wanted to buy just his pants and not what was in them. But
he took the cash, Noah’s own plain khaki’s, plus with an extra two hundred
bucks, and happily left by the rear door.

Noah had time to return to Lindsay’s side at the
bar and take only a couple of sips of his beer before Cole and the LAPD burst
in, sirens blazing, and flipped on the search lights. Dancers halted
mid-gyration on the dance floor, and panic ensued as cops with dogs poured in and
began confiscating purses and wallets and searching pockets and other assorted
hiding places.

After reassurances from Noah, Lindsay allowed Cole
to cuff her and put her in the back of another squad car, while Thompson
grabbed Noah.

“Your partner didn’t give me a lot of details
about the operation tonight. Did you get what you needed?” asked Thompson.

Noah looked out the window. “For now. We
appreciate your help.”

“No problem. The prosecutor’s office will be busy
for months handling all the arrests.

“So, is standard procedure to book me, too?”

“If I were the fashion police, I would say yes.”

As Thompson led him through the police
headquarters to his office to give his report, Noah ignored the curious stares
of the late-night staff. Damned pants weren’t just ugly, but they chafed at his
crotch and pulled uncomfortably around his thighs as he climbed the stairs.

After hearing Noah’s re-count of Lindsay’s news,
Thompson leaned back in his chair and tucked his hands behind his head. “Are
you sure your witness will testify?”

Noah shook his head in the negative. Even if she
were willing to sit in court, Lindsay was too valuable to his own case. “Does
she have to? Your guys and mine have access to the same data. What if the
discovery came from within your department? Cop’s intuition?”

Thompson gave Noah a hard look. “I’ll be frank
with you. I know there’s more going on here than some missing diamonds, and I
know you feds aren’t sharing everything you know. One of my guys got his head
bitten off by your boss, Cutlass, last week at our joint task force meeting.
I’m not asking you to share anything that would jeopardize your case, but I ask
that you tell me anything critical to mine.”

Noah pressed his lips into a firm line. The whole
thing came down to trust. How far did he trust Thompson? So far, the cop had
been nothing but cooperative, nothing but frank.

But on paper, so was Cutlass. He was an arrogant
asshat with a shitty temper, but Noah had no hard evidence that the man was
breaking any laws. Still, he didn’t trust Cutlass, and couldn’t trust Thompson
with his unfounded suspicions. The only two people he trusted right now were
Jessica and Cole, and he was more and more convinced that Jess herself was
guilty to some degree in helping Kingsbury with his blackmail schemes against
the Senator and his lover.

What he didn’t know was where Brandon Kingsbury
fit in to the picture. He was already embroiled in a legal battle to wrest the
Kingsbury fortune away from Jessica—including the stolen diamonds. Why break
into to the house and risk jail time when he could sit back and let the courts
decide?

Thompson signed. “I’m afraid your tip won’t be
enough for a grand jury. Brandon Kingsbury himself has a solid alibi during the
robbery.”

Noah nodded. “So he hired a thug. Have you gotten
anywhere on the few fingerprints you managed to lift?”

“Not really. There were all just partials, and all
badly smudged. I was really hopeful about one—nearly half of a thumb on a door
leading to the kitchen. But that was a dead end—a perfect match to one of the
household catering staff, so that one was legit. Whoever the thief was knew
what he was doing.”

“If I think of anything, I will let you know.”

After exchanging a firm handshake, Noah stood up
to leave. At the door to Thompson’s tiny office, he paused and stifled a yawn.
Something nagged at him, but he was exhausted from the night’s business to sort
it out. He had one hand on the doorknob when the other man called him back.

“I almost forgot. Did your partner tell you that
someone attempted to steal the second necklace as well?”

Noah’s heart clenched in his chest as he turned
back to gape. Surely Cole hadn’t told Thompson about the other copy and the
encrypted data?

The man chuckled. “Obviously not. It took some
digging, but we located the original Hearst Diamonds. The antiques. They are
safe in a vault in a museum in London. After you and Cole sent us the insurance
paperwork detailing that the stolen set was a copy, we were able to trace the
history of the real ones. Charles Kingsbury bought them years ago from a
private collector and gifted them to his last wife, Jessica. They apparently
had the copy made at that time, though we haven’t had any luck locating the
jeweler. Jessica Kingsbury then quietly donated the original antique necklace
to the museum.”

Noah let his pent-up breath out and muttered, “She
never told me that.”

Thompson quirked one eyebrow at him and continued,
“The necklace has a long and sordid history—was owned by various dukes and even
a queen or two over the centuries. A prince gifted it to his mistress once. And
someone died in a duel because of it.

“The museum is renovating the wing where the
jewels are normally displayed, so they were stowed in their vault. Someone
broke into the construction site, smashed open a bunch of empty cases,
apparently taking nothing. The curator heard of the robbery over here on the
news and made the connection, and called.”

“Did they ever catch the perp?”

“Unfortunately, no. I’ve already made contact with
someone in Scotland Yard to compare notes. Just sent them our fingerprint
analysis this morning.” He glanced at his watch. “Er, yesterday morning. I will
give you and Cole a call if we turn up any leads.”

***

The cold night breeze whipped Jessica’s short hair
around for only a moment before Earlin shoved a pillowcase over her head and
yanked her from the back of the van.

Los Angeles
. Even gagged and blindfolded,
she recognizing the smell of her home city. Smog and salt, a thin waft of
something garlicky, a tease of tropical fruit, all among a backdrop of the
rotten-egg sulphur of a place where too many humans had lived too close
together for too long.

Her kidnapper’s hands were rough, sweaty, unkind
as he half-dragged, half-shoved her into a building, across a terracotta tile
floor, and into a dark room. From somewhere outside the room, she could make
out hushed whisper and the clomping of heavy feet while Earlin sat her on a
bare mattress and bound her hands behind her with plastic. There was at least a
third person in the house, if not more.

Without a word, Earlin finished his work and left
her alone, shutting a door behind her. She sat still for what felt like a long
time, trying to make out the voices and words. Her heart raced every time
footsteps approached, but no one opened the door. After a while, the commotion
seemed to die down, and her captors quit talking.

 Earlin had left the cloth over her head, but with
her hands tied behind her, she couldn’t simply take it off. Her breath had
dampened the inside of the cloth, and the fabric clung to her nostrils. The
cloth gag kept her from getting a deep breath through her mouth. Her lungs
protested. She fought to control her panic.

She had to get the thing off her head.
Now
.

With her heart racing and her breath coming in
stifled gasps, she worked the fabric with her chin and head, bending over to
shake it free from her face. When at last it fell to the floor, Jess sat up and
took a deep breath of cool air. The effort left her dizzy and stars clouded her
vision.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Finally her vision cleared, and the panic slowed
to the slow, hollow fear she had felt since she first saw the van door open in
St. Louis.

She sat in a bedroom of a house, with a small high
window fitted with iron scroll bars. A sliver of yellow light from a
streetlight pierced the darkness, illuminating only fragments of the room. Tile
floors. Plaster walls. Two doors—one that must lead back the way she came, and
another that could be a bathroom or a closet. The only furniture in the room
was the stark metal bedframe with the bare mattress on which she sat.

There was nothing else. No tools. No sharp edges
to break her bindings. Even if she could get free, she would never get past
Earlin and Harry and their weapons.

She could scream her head off and hope the house
had neighbors.

Her mouth felt sticky and dry around the gag. Her
stomach churned with an ache that was half hunger, half nausea. Her shoulders
protested the binding, and the plastic ties bit into her wrists. She wriggled
back and pulled her legs up, then tried to stretch out and conserve what
strength she had left.

Dozing was difficult, with no pillow to rest her
head on and no way to curl an arm up to support her head, but doze she did.

The heavy banging of doors and footsteps echoing
through the rooms beyond her door startled her awake. The light outside had
brightened to the smoky gray of early dawn. It wasn’t bright, but it revealed
walls painted a syrupy marigold and an old glass light fixture in the center of
the ceiling. The light switched on, casting the room in a glaring brightness
that made her wince.

She sat up as the door opened and a middle-sized
man with a shining bald head and a hefty paunch walked in. His white
shirtsleeves were rolled up, revealing beefy hands, and leather straps from a
shoulder gun holster dug into his arms, wrinkling the shirt around his armpits.

“You’re a lying bitch.” He spat the words at her.

Jess waited, gagged and motionless. He looked
vaguely familiar, but with her brain fogged from hunger and exhaustion, she
couldn’t place the man.

The man yelled back over his shoulder, “Harry, get
in here and take that thing off her mouth. I can’t have a decent conversation
with someone who can’t talk.”

Harry ambled in, rubbing at his belly like a man
who had just woken up from a deep sleep. He knelt on the bed next to Jessica,
dipping the mattress so low that she fell into him. She recoiled. He smelled
like stale smoke and beer and bitter sweat.

“Easy, little girl. I’ll take care of you,” Harry
crooned, as he carefully untied the cloth from behind her head. He smoothed her
hair down and let his fingers linger on the tops of his shoulders.

Jess shivered in revulsion at the unwanted touch
as she spat out the loosened gag.

“Now out,” ground out the bald man.

Harry gave her what he must have meant as a
reassuring rub on the back and then rushed back out as the other man shut the
door behind him.

He curled his lip upwards in a sneer. “You should
know that I don’t normally make deals with filth like yourself. Criminals
belong behind bars or dead, not in a position to cut a deal.”

Bound and captive, she didn’t think she had much
to bargain with. She pressed her lips together and didn’t answer, wetting them
as best she could with a sticky tongue.

“Don’t fuck with me, you whore. Out with it.” The
man strode forward until he was just inches from where Jess sat.

She had to crank her neck upwards to see the man’s
face.

A vein throbbed at one of his temples.

Her voice cracked as she tried to speak for the
first time in days. “I don’t know what you want.” The words came out as more of
a whisper that ended in a cough.

“Like hell you don’t. You might be a good enough
actress to fool those idiots back in the living room, but I know the truth. You
didn’t turn anything over to the FBI. Not information, not your necklace. And
we sure as hell didn’t offer you protection.”

She lifter her chin a notch. “What..what makes you
so sure?”

His eyes glittered with self-righteous anger and
distaste as he looked down on her. “Don’t you know who I am? Noah Grayson works
for me.”

            She recoiled as bits of
his spittle hit her face.  “I don’t understand.”

            “Then I will say this
in small words so that you do understand. Where is your necklace? Tell me, or
you are dead.”

            Jess drew in a
shuddering breath and tried to remember what Noah had said about his boss. Not
much, really. “I told Tallie the truth. I gave one necklace to Noah. The other
one was stolen from my house. If Noah really works for you, then you would know
he was investigating the robbery.”

            “The FBI doesn’t do
robberies, bitch. Noah was working on a blackmail case. You and your husband
extorted hundreds of thousands of dollars from my friend, Senator Wilson. We had
enough evidence for a grand jury. All we needed was to haul your round little
ass into custody.”

            Jessica frowned. “Why
waste your time with having me kidnapped? Why not just arrest me?”