Cassidy Jones and the Luminous (Cassidy Jones Adventures Book 4) (28 page)

“Nightcrawler, you’re doing great. We’ll be parked at 7-11. Avoid looking in that direction.”

The Porsche turned into the burger joint’s parking lot. Dad drove past Deluxe and pulled into the 7-11 next store.

After Mr. Wells got his food, he parked the car to eat. By this time, Dad had joined us in the back of the van. Jared sat hunched down in his seat, giving us a great view of his knees pressed to the Porsche’s dashboard. Owen returned to his cross-examination.

“So you
borrow
my yacht to impress . . .”

The cameras filmed glimpses of the phone charger cord that Jared spun.

“Will you stop that?” Owen grumbled. His hand caught the cord and jerked it away from Jared. “Her name?” he pressed.

“Sheila.”

“Does Sheila have a last name?”

“I never asked.”

Mr. Wells chuckled. “Like father, like son.”

“Just shoot me now,” Jared retorted.

“Don’t be a wiseass. French fries?”

“No, thanks.”

They were quiet for a minute while Owen ate his food. I heard him slurp soda from a straw. Then he laughed.

“You’re going to force me to interrogate you, aren’t you?”

Jared sighed. “What
else
do you want to know?”

“Show some respect. If I had talked to my father like that, he’d have backhanded me. Sit up like a
gentleman
and look at me.”

The cameras moved upward and settled on Owen’s irate face. If Jared’s goal was to force his father to explode, he was well on his way to succeeding.

“What do
I
want to know?” Owen scoffed, tapping his chin as though thinking the question over. “Hmmmm . . . Let me think . . . How about . . . where did
you
take
my
yacht?”

“Out in the Sound.”

“The Sound?” He stared hard at Jared. “Not Lake Washington?”

My breath caught.
He knows!

“Criminy,” Dad muttered.

“Yeah, the Sound.” Jared’s voice didn’t betray him. He had to be freaking out. His dad knew about Lake Washington, which meant he knew about
them
!

“Ask him
why
,” Gavin prompted Jared.

“Why?” Jared asked.

“When did you go out?” Mr. Wells demanded, ignoring the question.

“Why do you want to know?”

“Answer me,” Owen said with a piercing look.

“Do not provoke him,” Gavin instructed Jared. “Answer him.”

“Last night,” Jared said.

“What
time
last night?”

“Around six,” Gavin fed Jared.

“Around six.”

“And Drake and Elizabeth let you go?”

“The cover story,” Gavin directed.

“No. They thought I was playing guitar at Cherry Street,” Jared answered his dad, not missing a beat. “I met Sheila there. She drove us to the marina and dropped me off at the Jones’s afterwards.
There!
Are you happy?”

“Appears I missed my opportunity to have
the birds and the bees
talk,” Owen joked.

I
really
hated him.

“Whatever. Your burger is getting cold.”

Mr. Wells lifted the burger to his mouth. “We’ll go for another round after I polish this off.”

Jared sank into his seat, giving us a view of his knees again, and released a long breath in an attempt to calm down. Gavin turned off the headset so Jared couldn’t hear us.

“Owen won’t win any Father of the Year awards,” he remarked.

“And he doesn’t have any delusions of that,” Emery added.

“He doesn’t believe Jared,” Dad remarked tensely.

“Yes, he does,” I said. I had no idea where Dad had gotten that idea. Mr. Wells had totally fallen for Jared’s story.

“
No
, he doesn’t,” Emery confirmed, and Gavin nodded.

“But he said—You saw him—” I argued, rewinding their conversation and the footage of Mr. Wells’s face in my head. “He didn’t look suspicious, and Jared did a good job! He just sounded like a kid who had gotten caught. That’s all.”

“Jared did an excellent job,” Gavin agreed. “Owen knows more than he is letting on. He dropped a noose around Jared’s neck, hoping he’d hang himself.”

Dread oozed through my stomach. I cut my gaze to Jared’s knees. “Did he—did Jared hang himself?” I asked Gavin.

“That depends on what Owen knows.”

~~~

“Uh, where are we going?” Jared asked his dad. I fumbled out at the same time: “He—Mr. Wells—passed the street to his apartment!”

Jared turned to look at Owen. His father’s face held a small smile.

“I’m introducing you to an old family friend,” he answered casually, keeping his eyes on the road.

My stomach flip-flopped.

“Here we go,” Gavin said, assuming as we all had that Owen was taking Jared to Patrick Grimm. “Emery, bring up the building plans for Grimm’s residence again.”

I pressed my hands over my pounding heart and glanced at Dad. His furious eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. Was Mr. Wells serving his son up to Grimm?

“Who?” Jared’s voice pitched with alarm. I winced and prayed his dad hadn’t noticed.

“It’s a surprise,” Mr. Wells replied. Quickly glancing at his son, he gave him a disarming smile. “Relax, Jared. Trust me. He isn’t the bogeyman.”

“Trust
you
? Seriously, with everything that’s happened lately?”

“Fair enough. Any more barbs you’d like to throw my way?”

“Whatever,” Jared muttered, then turned forward again. The cameras angled toward the passenger side of the car. I concluded he was looking out his window, trying to sort through the distressing turn of events.

“Why?” I fretted. “Why is he taking him to Patrick Grimm?”

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Emery said, plucking away at his keyboard. “But I’d guess he isn’t making a social call.”

“Shouldn’t we stop him?”

Emery’s eyes scanned blueprints on his laptop. “Why would we do that?”

“You’re so . . .
callous
,” I spat with a measure of shock. Sometimes I didn’t feel like I knew Emery at all. “Dad?” I beseeched the one person who might put an end to this madness.

Conflict on his face, Dad opened his mouth to speak. I waited for him to tell Gavin enough was enough and we had to rescue Jared. But the words never came.

In the rearview mirror, I watched his eyes narrow on the road in resigned frustration. “We have to stop this, Cassidy,” he said. “Jared will be safe. Gavin knows what he’s doing.”

“Cassidy, we won’t let anything happen to him,” Gavin promised.

I looked at him squarely, fire burning in my belly. I’d make sure of that.

Tall iron gates pulled apart, giving entrance to a stone driveway that looped through a lush lawn, gradually curving up to a sprawling mansion that boasted arched windows and natural stone veneer. Beyond the ostentatious home, I could see the dark, lapping waters of Lake Washington sparkling in the moonlight.

The Porsche drove through the gates, which immediately closed behind it, snapping together like jaws. The bluesy tunes flowing through Jared’s transmitter created eerie background music, as though the scenes on our monitor were part of some Alfred Hitchcock film. Mr. Wells had turned on the car radio, selecting the jazz station, when Jared had grown quiet.

“Nightcrawler, She-Ra and I will be close by,” Gavin assured Jared through the headset, using our codenames in case our signal was picked up. Dad parked the van in front of Grimm’s neighbor’s house. “Cable will instruct you from this point on. You’re doing great. We’ve got your back.”

Gavin slipped off the headset and handed it to Emery. “Any security guards?” he asked Emery. He rolled his ski mask on. I’d donned mine five minutes beforehand.

“So your friend’s loaded?” Jared observed, breaking the silence in the Porsche.

Dad squeezed between the seats to join us in the back. Gavin pulled a sling holding a semi-automatic gun onto his shoulder. He had other weapons tucked inside concealed holsters.

“Patrick has done well for himself,” Mr. Wells confirmed. “He’s looking forward to seeing you again. Last time he saw you, you were about three.”

“Negative,” Emery answered his dad, studying a live satellite image of the property.

“Did you hear that?” I asked. “Jared met Patrick Grimm before.”

No one appeared to have heard me. I guess it wasn’t earth-shattering information anyway.

The van’s monitors, displaying footage from the cameras in Jared’s jacket and necklace, showed him climbing out of the car.

“Nightcrawler, walk to the other side of the vehicle. Pretend to look around, turn a slow one-eighty,” Emery instructed.

Dad hugged me. “Please be careful.”

Gavin and Emery scrutinized the panoramic view Jared gave us of the estate’s front grounds. I tapped my foot with impatience.

“Stop,” Emery told Jared.

The image on the screen paused on a cluster of trees.

“What do you think?” Emery consulted Gavin.

Bending toward the screen, Gavin squinted. “Zoom in.”

“For heaven’s sake!” I exclaimed, exasperated. “I can see it fine. You’re looking at a bush, not a person. Let’s go!”

Gavin snapped up his other gun, a Glock something-or-other. Dad slid the van’s side door open for us, sticking his head out and looking both ways to make sure the coast was clear. We already knew it was, thanks to the van’s cameras. Before Dad had a chance to give the go-ahead, I squeezed past him and hopped down to the sidewalk. We had wasted enough time.

Gavin stepped down next to me, and we booked it to the stone wall that enclosed Grimm’s estate. We had decided in the van to scale this portion. There were trees on the other side that would give us some cover.

At the wall, I cupped my hands, creating a step for Gavin.

“Clear, Hawkeye,” Emery told Gavin.

“Copy that,” Gavin whispered in response.

Gavin planted his foot into my palms, and I lifted him up. He gripped the top, hoisted himself over the wall, and disappeared. Leaves rustled on a limb he’d grabbed to climb down. I looked up and down the street for good measure. Not a living soul in sight. Luckily for us, the homes were spread out and the street wasn’t a main thoroughfare.

Gavin landed with a soft, solid thud.

Taking a few steps back, I took a running leap, caught the top of the wall like a pommel horse, and flipped up into a handstand. Balancing, I assessed the area below, making sure Gavin had moved out of the way and that I wouldn’t land in a blackberry bush or something. Seeing an open landing spot, I allowed my straight legs to drop the fifteen feet into a back flip. My feet planted in redwood chips.

“Nightcrawler is inside,” Emery reported. “A housekeeper let them in.”

“I smell dogs,” I whispered to Gavin.

Squatting down, Gavin nodded and asked Emery, “Do you have a visual on dogs?”

A pause, and then: “Negative.”

“Copy that.” Gavin motioned with his gun for me to follow him.

Once we’d reached the tree line, we commando-crawled across the lawn to an elegant marble fountain that had three scalloped tiers. The sound of the ever-flowing water pouring into the large basin was mesmerizing. While we’d made our way to the fountain, Emery had kept us updated. The housekeeper had taken Jared and his father down the far west corridor to a set of double doors, located on the right side of the hallway. She’d opened the doors to a den, where Patrick, Constance, and Ashlyn waited and were now greeting Jared.

“Two rottweilers have been let out from the back of the house,” Emery warned.

Gavin groaned. “I hate rotties. You don’t know they’re there until they go for your throat. Upside, they won’t bark and alert anyone.” As Gavin said this, he unhooked a holster on his calf where he had a knife stashed.

“You’re going to kill them?”

“Only if they try to kill us first,” Gavin replied, peeking over the fountain and watching for the dogs.

“Nightcrawler, after you shake hands, make a casual three-sixty. I want to see what’s around you,” Emery instructed Jared, not flipping off the transmission for us. He wanted us to hear what was going on in the house. “Good. If you saw or heard anyone else in the house, aside from the Grimms and the housekeeper, clear your throat.”

There was a pause. Then Emery said, “He hasn’t seen bodyguards or any other staff members. The dogs are headed toward you, on your three o’clock.”

I pointed right at the house, asking if that was the side Emery was referring to. Steely-eyed, Gavin nodded and placed an index finger to his lips for me to stay quiet. He pulled up into a crouch, like a black panther preparing to spring. I followed suit.

“The dogs see you,” Emery calmly informed. “They’re running at you, full throttle.”

Emery didn’t have to tell me the dogs had seen us. I had heard them break into a run, their sharp nails scraping the cement driveway.

Gavin took the safety off his gun and checked his knife again. Before he could get into position and put an unlucky dog in his crosshairs, I sprang to my feet and stepped out into the open. I hadn’t anticipated their size. Rottweilers are huge!

“Stay down,” I commanded Gavin in a guttural voice that I barely recognized, my eyes locked on the dogs.

Snarls escaped through bared teeth as powerful legs carried the dogs over the grass, muscles rippling up their shoulders. My skin reacted to the threat, turning granite-hard.

The rottweiler on the left lunged at me. I caught it by the jaw in one hand, twisted around, and slammed it into the grass on its back. Down on one knee, I pinned its throat to the ground with one hand as the other dog jumped on my back. I could feel it trying to bite into my shoulder, but its teeth couldn’t get a grip on my skin.

I reached around with my free hand, grasped a handful of spiky hair and loose skin, and flipped my attacker onto its back, trapping it by the throat next to its friend.

I stared into the stunned dark eyes of the first dog and growled. The dog relaxed, resentfully submitting to me. Cutting my eyes to the other dog, I growled again. It blinked at me, as though unable to believe its predicament, but made no effort to challenge my authority. I was the alpha.