Beauty & the Beast (20 page)

If they think Heather knows anything about this, they’ll keep her alive.
It was not a statement of fact. It was a prayer.

As Vincent held his hands beneath the little box in case anything popped out, Cat caught her fingertip under the plastic flange and eased back the top. They both peered at it. Something metallic gleamed on a field of gray foam-like substance. A computer chip. They looked at each other. In their experience, computer chips were bad news.

“Only Ravi Suresh could’ve had access to this kind of tech and ‘Heather’s’ jacket. He tracked her to our place so we need to assume he knows the jacket is here by now. We need to assume someone aboard is looking for it.”

“We
know
someone aboard is looking for it,” Cat corrected him

They locked gazes. Did Vincent’s eyes begin to glow golden? She wasn’t sure, but the moment served as a reminder that they weren’t defenseless. Beast-Vincent was a terrifying creation brimming with fury, operating at super-speed, massively strong. He could tear the steel waterproof hatches of the
Sea Majesty
off their hinges, leap from one deck to another. When faced with one or two human assailants, there would be no contest.

But if Vincent beasted out on the ship in front of witnesses, that would blow their world wide open. However, to save their lives, he might have to do it.

“We can’t let them find it.” Cat began scanning the room for hiding places.

Every stateroom was equipped with a safe, but that would be too obvious. It had to be a place they could get to fairly easily to retrieve it without it being discovered if their room was tossed. Whoever was after it might not know that she and Vincent were onto them, and they also probably weren’t sure if the box was still in her pocket. It was small and so lightweight that Cat hadn’t even realized it had been there. Something that insubstantial could have fallen out on its own. But whoever was looking for it would want to verify that.

For a moment she considered lifting the tiny chip out of the plastic box and placing it in an envelope in order to hide it. Their suite came equipped with stationery. But she was afraid they would lose it during the transfer. For all she knew, it contained a tracking device that was beaming out its location right now. Maybe it could be used to trigger a bomb brought aboard the ship. Maybe whoever wanted it so badly was prepared to destroy thousands of innocent lives rather than allow it to fall into someone else’s hands.

Maybe they will contact me to offer a trade: it for my sister.

She wouldn’t, couldn’t think about that now.

She went to the closet and slid the box into the toe of a pair of red flats she had yet to wear. Then she straightened out her row of shoes and did the same to his. Then she second-guessed herself, took it out of her shoe tip, and grabbed up the bag Vincent had received when he’d bought all the sweets for Bethany at the candy shop. They still had half a pound of Jolly Rancher hard candies. She untwisted a rectangle of sour apple, popped it into her mouth, concealed the plastic box in the wrapper, and put it inside the sack with the rest.

She knew from experience that their steward would leave the bag alone—unless he decided that the time had come to tear the place apart inch by inch.

Then she went to the bathroom, redid her face, tucked her hair back into her updo, and put on the jacket. Vincent grabbed two umbrellas that had come with the suite and together they went outside. The rain was still coming down hard. They made it to the railing as they headed for the dining room but their umbrellas were on the verge of inverting and within seconds, were useless.

At night, the
Sea Majesty
shone bright lights on the waves and tonight was no different. Cat wondered if it was wise to let the passengers see how rough the seas had become. The
Sea Majesty
was currently moving through a trough as waves crested to its right, forming a wall of water rising that seemed to barely miss the side of the ship as it crashed back down. They both darted back under the cover of the archway.

“I can see why Rourke nixed the helicopter and the watercraft,” Cat said wanly. “We need to figure out how to play this. Let’s assume that if we’re right, and someone on board the ship is looking for the chip, they’re an underling working for someone higher up.”

“Right.” Vincent raised his chin and frowned slightly.

She swallowed down deep terror. “If that person broke into our apartment in New York, and not Ravi…” She started to lose it. “If they were following Ravi, and Ravi was trying to get to the jacket because Heather was wearing it…” Her hands shook. “If we let them know that we have the chip, their operative will try to collect and we can buy Heather some time.”

“Catherine,” Vincent said, but she held up her hand. She refused to consider that Heather was dead.

She said, “If they’re monitoring the ship, if they’ve planted bugs… or if they have someone on the payroll on the bridge, maybe even the captain… if I call Tess and tell her we have it, maybe the head of their operation will hear. They’ll know.”

“Catherine,” he repeated.

“I know it’s risky. But if they don’t know you’re a beast, they won’t know what they’re up against.” She gazed up at him. But he wasn’t looking at her. His faraway look and alert stance told her that he was sensing something that she could not.

“I smell a dead body,” he informed her. “And smoke. Lots of smoke.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“JT,” Tess said, as she picked up. She was moving through Cat and Vincent’s apartment with an ear cocked for CSU’s field test results on the blood type on the couch. They had already confirmed the presence of bullets and bone and brain tissue. Whoever had been shot on the couch, the bullets had passed clean through the skull. The room was filling with people. They had detectives from the sixth precinct here now. She was the captain of the 125th, and on top of that, she knew the potential vic. She should stand down.

No way.

She had searched through Heather’s things for more clues as to what might have happened, and to whom. Because this could not be Heather smeared all over the couch. It could not. Heather’s cell phone was missing, and there were no recent emails between Cat and Heather about anything. Like most people nowadays, they texted. There was no way for her to reconstruct what had happened here.

Yet.

“Oh, my God, it’s been so crazy,” JT said on the other end of the line. “So there was this old guy. Do you know what
Firefly
is?
Firefly
, how wild is that? I mean, no one knows what
Firefly
is.”

“JT,” she said again, her voice gravelly and tight.

“But I know where Mochi is! Or at least, I have a decent lead. I have to wait until morning. But uh, well, I’m not sure what to do. There were these street kids and…” He paused. “Tess? Are you there? What’s wrong?”

“I’m at Cat and Vincent’s.” She told him why, running it down clearly, concisely. Now that she had walked through it with Cat, she could keep her feelings out of it. Sort of.

“So there’s no body,” she concluded. “I don’t know what I’m looking at, exactly. But I know what I’m seeing.”

Death.

“Tess,” JT said after a long silence, as if her name was his mantra. “I’m on my way.”

She was moved. There had been a time—a long time— when he would not have thought to rush to her side when things went south. He had not put her first. Now he was.

“Stay there,” she said gently. “This is a crime scene now, and I may need to move fast. Wait until—”

Tess’s heart stuttered as the CSU tech glanced up from the microscope Tess had told them to bring. “Results in. Type O, Captain,” the tech announced. Tess sagged with relief.

“It’s not Heather’s blood,” Tess told JT.

“Thank God,” JT breathed. “Tess, what the
hell
—”

“Captain Vargas, there may be linkage between this and the jumper.” That was Detective Kelly Goss. When the woman could see that Tess wasn’t following, she said, “We had a jumper off the roof of this building earlier this week.”

“What?
” Tess’s adrenaline spiked. “JT, gotta go.”

“Wait, Tess, please,” JT said.

Tess cut the call and put her phone in the pocket of her jacket. “What jumper?” she asked Goss.

“A John Doe,” Goss said. “Assumed to be a suicide, so low priority.”

“John. You’re sure it was a John.” That the victim had been male, in other words.

“Yes. There were a couple of bad jokes about only being able to tell from the waist down. On account of no… well,
other
head,” Goss replied.

“No head?”

“Well, there were parts of a head. It’s a long way down.”

“No ID? Prints?” Tess asked. It was incredible to her that she had not heard about this, but really, why should she have? If Heather had already been abducted—
that’s how I’m going to see this
, she decided—and Cat and Vincent were gone, it would be a miracle if a suicide in precinct six caught any interest from anyone in the one-two-five.

“I’m not working it,” Goss said, “but nothing popped when prints were run through IAFIS. We used the NYPD database, too. And nothing.”

“Do you still have the body?”

“I’m sure we do. We’re backed up and again, this looks like a straightforward suicide. The shoes were on the roof ledge. You know that’s an MO for a jumper.”

Or a cover-up for a homicide.

“Do you know any other details? Missing person reports? Was this apartment canvassed?”
Did anyone answer the door? If so, who?

“I don’t know, Captain.”

“Kelly, footprint,” the other detective called. Tess walked around the bloodstained couch with the detective. “A partial.”

Tess bent over with Detective Goss. It appeared to belong to a woman’s heeled boot, judging by the shape and size. And she was pretty sure it was bigger than either Cat’s or Heather’s.

“Hold on,” she said, and went into Cat’s bedroom. She retrieved a heeled boot and then went into Heather’s old room, where a suitcase lay open. Heather was working for a temporary agency, which meant packing a number of different styles of outfits for various jobs. There were no boots, but she did have some heels. Tess selected a sampling and carried all of them back to the two detectives and the photographer, who was snapping pictures of the partial.

She gave each detective a shoe. As she had anticipated, Cat’s boot and Heather’s high heel were smaller than the partial. So another woman had been in the apartment during or after the shooting.

“I don’t think you caught a suicide,” Tess said. “I think it was a homicide.” She ran down a mental list of precinct captains. “Is Devon Frost still your boss?”

Goss nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

“I need his home phone number.”

Goss gave it to her. Tess placed the call. It was late but Frost picked up on the second ring, just as she would.

“Captain Frost, Captain Vargas, one-two-five,” she said, and ran it down. Then she said, “This is personal. This is the apartment of one of my detectives, Catherine Chandler. She’s on a cruise with her husband, and I’ve notified them. But her sister was housesitting, and she’s missing.”

“And you think the body we scraped up off the street was a guy named Ravi Suresh.”

“I don’t know. Suresh has no prints on file but we can get them at his apartment. He works at Chrysalis. If you can get us a warrant—”

“Of course. Let me call the judge. I’ll call you as soon as the warrant’s issued. Is Goss there? I’ll send you with her. She’s good. Has a little sister, too.”

Heather
is
like my little sister.
Again, tears threatened her professionalism.
I’ve got to stop being so emotional.

“Detective Goss,” Tess said, and put the detective on. Goss listened, slid her glance toward Tess, and nodded at her.

“Yes, sir,” Goss finished, and hung up. “Captain Vargas, Chrysalis is close and we don’t have Ravi Suresh’s home address yet. My captain is calling the warrant in for Chrysalis. Let’s take my car. If Suresh has any kind of security clearance— and we both know he must—he’ll have prints on file there. We can get them.” As Tess began to object, the detective raised a hand. “We can get his home address at Chrysalis too.”

Tess said, “As soon as we have the address, Captain Frost will send detectives to his apartment?”

Goss shrugged apologetically. “Or you and me. The sixth is on a big case—
another
big case,” she corrected herself. “So we’re a little short on extra hands. But by the time Captain Frost calls with the warrant, we can be halfway to Chrysalis.”

“We’ll be at the front door if you let me drive,” Tess said.

Goss inclined her head and fished the keys out of her pocket. She explained the situation to her partner, a guy with a haircut close to non-regulation, who replied, “Happy hunting. I’ll keep you in the loop.”

“Likewise, Steinberg,” Goss replied.

On the way out of the apartment, Tess remembered to explain the situation to her own partner. She called JT and told him about the jumper.

“Sit tight,” she told him. “Go look up everything you can find about Ravi Suresh and Chrysalis. I think he was the murder victim. See if you can connect him to anything. If there’s a woman in the story somewhere. I mean a woman besides Heather.”

“You want me to go look up everything,” JT repeated. “On my computer. At my place.”

Tess furrowed her brow. “That’s where you can hack into the…”
Good stuff
, she was about to say, but Goss had just caught up to her. “Call me if you find anything.”

“Okay, remember how I was talking about the street kids?” JT said.

Goss handed her the keys and they got into the elevator. “This call is probably going to get cut off,” Tess told JT. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” JT said quickly. “I’m just fine. No worries. I’ll go do my Robin thing.”

“Good.” Tess hung up.

We make a good team
, she thought. Before she realized what she was doing, she pressed a protective hand over her abdomen.