Blood Diamond (33 page)

“Dante’s right. Who are you? What have you done with our father?”

“I took him out back and killed him,” my father replied. “Be quiet, Elliot.”

“I think it’s time for some breakfast. I have one trick: pancakes. If you want something else, you’ll need to wait until Maggie and the girls get up,” Gerald said, digging through a drawer for a pair of frying pans. “Elliot, there’s eggs in the fridge. Fetch them for me, please. Mr. Anderson, keep playing chiropractor. Ladies, can I impose on you?”

Nicole saluted. “Yes, sir!”

“The dishes are there, if you’d like to set the table. Thank you, Mrs. Murphy.”

Amused, I watched Gerald direct his army of helpers as they made pancakes under his supervision.

Chapter Sixteen

I lost more than a few hours somewhere, which I blamed on the pancakes and the plethora of medications I had taken along with breakfast. I had no recollection of making it to the living room, let alone to the reclining armchair, cocooned in one of Maggie’s crocheted blankets. Stifling a yawn, I rubbed my eyes, wincing at the incessant throb in my skull.

“You slept right through lunch,” Gerald announced, resting his elbows next to my head, rocking the chair back. “Maggie and the girls are out shopping. I evicted the Murphys and the Andersons, who are on route to the crash site. They’ll be out of your hair for a few days. Sorry about your father; he refused to take no for an answer, and it wasn’t a battle worth fighting. Your brother is headed back to Atlanta, probably hoping to limit your mother’s rampage.”

“You knew he was coming?”

“Sure did. I told him he was welcome so long as he didn’t do anything stupid, reminding him that Amber took orders from me before she took orders from him. Considering I told her to come armed, I thought I had the situation under control. Once he sees the plane for himself, he’ll be headed back to the United States.”

“That’s something at least,” I muttered.

Gerald sighed, giving my shoulder a squeeze. “No father wants to get that call, Jackson, and he got it twice in a week.”

Sucking in a breath, I realized I understood. It took one thought of my daughter, who I had never even met, to make my chest tighten painfully. I couldn’t imagine how much her death would have hurt if I had been given a chance to hold her even once.

“Fuck.”

“Okay, that’s one of the last things I ever expected you to say.” Perching on the arm of the chair, Gerald sent it dipping back enough I lurched from the sensation of falling. “What’s going on?” he asked.

I settled back, and for several long minutes, I thought about whether or not I wanted to tell him. Gerald’s access to knowledge was invaluable, but he wouldn’t give it to me, not without my telling him about Jacqueline. Knowing that, I struggled to find the words to tell him about what Suzanne had done.

There was one way I could tell him without having to speak. “Go get your work laptop, and I’ll show you,” I whispered.

When he headed to his office to fetch the computer, I pilfered a cup of coffee, waiting for him at the kitchen island.

“You’re not supposed to have that,” he said, setting the laptop down.

“Don’t care. Give over,” I replied, patting the counter in front of me, careful to keep my coffee out of his reach. After logging in, he slid the laptop over. It took me less than two minutes to locate my daughter’s birth certificate. Drawing a deep breath to steady my nerves, I said, “Suzanne faked her death.” Once he got a good look at the certificate, I continued, “Someone killed my little girl, Gerald. I want them.”

“Oh my Holy God.” Gerald snatched the laptop, typing in commands to a prompt. I waited in silence, sipping my coffee as he worked. All of the data I had wanted was at his fingertips, and I wasn’t going to rush him. “Okay, I got a hit on a missing person report for her and her mother, dated back almost three years ago.”

“Three years ago?” I asked, frowning.

Both my daughter and Suzanne had died a little over two years ago, from what I could tell with my witchcraft.

“Jacqueline was enrolled at a daycare in Thunder Bay. One morning, she didn’t show up. Note here says her mother had showed up to work without her. An Amber Alert was issued, but there were no hits. Her mother disappeared sometime that day. Where’s Suzanne?”

If Gerald’s tone was any indication, I was pretty sure he was asking so he could find her and kill her himself.

“They killed her.”

“You don’t seem broken up by that at all,” he commented, watching me.

“The only woman I need or want in my life right now is Evelyn,” I replied, meeting his gaze without flinching.

After a long moment, he sighed. “We’re doing everything we can to find her, Jackson. You’re really in no condition to join the search and rescue team. I’m sorry. You’d be a liability, and the last thing I need is an angry pack of Fenerec knocking on my door because I let you go wandering out in the bush after barely surviving a plane crash. You’re staying here. We’ll find your lady and bring her to you, okay?”

I nodded my agreement, but it didn’t stop me from trying to find a way to give him the slip. It made me angrier and more anxious that he was right.

All I would do was get in the way.

“What I want to know is how you found out about this, eh?”

“I can’t say. I had a list of all of the people who were also murdered along with my girl. Unfortunately, the list was on the plane. If you give me some time, I can rebuild it.”

The names of the dead wouldn’t be forgotten so soon or so easily. I shivered. “Just give me a few hours.”

“Theodore told me you had been poking around our databases. Is there any relation?”

I nodded.

Gerald grabbed his cordless phone and punched in a number. “Put Theodore on,” he demanded. After a few minutes, he said, “I need you to pull all of the records Jackson was looking for; if he typed it in our system, I want a copy of it. Build a report and get it to me as soon as you can. Prioritize it over everything else.” He hung up. “There. All I want is a confirmation that your source won’t cause any harm to my government.”

“My information was acquired legally and shouldn’t have any legal ramifications for Canada. That said, my brother, the Yellowknife Fenerec, and a few Inquisitors left a few bodies on the
Wave Dream
…”

“I know. He gave us a call and dropped word with us not long after it happened, seeing as he had reason to believe your would-be kidnappers were attempting to take you to Canada. Your brother’s a nice guy, by the way. That’s the reason you’re with me. This place is wired and there’s security never too far away. No one gets near this house without someone being aware of it.”

“I really should be with them looking for Evelyn,” I muttered, rubbing a finger around the rim of my mug.

“Jackson, you’re the luckiest man alive right now. Your only job right now is to heal. You have a doctor’s appointment in a few hours for another CT scan and an MRI. My job is to take care of you. It’s a matter of interest for quite a few people. Give me some time and I’ll get all of the info I can for you about your baby girl. We’ll find whoever did this,” he swore.

“They’re mine,” I growled, and the roughness of my voice reminded me of Evelyn’s when she was angry. It was a wolf’s vocalized rage, and it rumbled in my throat.

“No problem, Jackson. I’ll get you a nice gun, all the ammo you could want for it, and make sure everyone’s looking the other way when you pull the trigger. Just don’t leave any evidence behind. We don’t like cleaning up messes like that.”

“Then we better keep this a secret from Evelyn,” I replied.

“Why?”

“She wants the fuckers almost as much as I do.”

“Good.”

~~*~~

I had attended enough hockey games to understand that beneath their polite and generous exterior, Canadians could be a vicious lot. While I watched him work, Gerald muttered to himself. Sometimes he complained about a slow server, but more often than not, he was inventing new and horrifying ways to kill people. His patience and focus was admirable, but it was his self-absorbed ranting that held my attention.

“Fires are too flashy,” he mumbled, scrolling through the list of names recovered by Theodore. It had taken the tech less than an hour to grab all of my queries and organize them into something usable. “Maybe a steamroller.”

“I thought Canadians were supposed to be nice, hospitable people, Gerald,” I said, careful to keep my voice soft in case he had forgotten I was with him.

Judging from the way he jumped, he had forgotten about me. “Jackson, there are almost two thousand dead witches on this list of yours. That’s almost four times the total number of homicides reported over an entire year across the entirety of Canada. It’s on par with the total number of adults reported missing for an entire year in Quebec—and that’s before considering the number who are found within a few days.”

“Most of them aren’t adults,” I pointed out.

“I was trying to forget that fact,” he snapped at me. “The real problem is that most of these reports are localized to the Montreal area. That’s going to complicate things, seeing as Quebec really doesn’t like when Ottawa gets involved in their business.”

I drummed my fingers on the island. “Tough shit. I know someone. I’ll give him a call.”

“Jackson, you know everyone. Call him after the doctor’s appointment. We need to get on the road.”

“It’ll take five minutes,” I replied, reaching for his phone.

“Fine. Try not to dig me too deep of a hole. I’m going to have enough fun when I take this one to the boss.”

Dialing Zachary’s number, I shook my head. “Last time I checked, Gerald, you were the boss.”

“I have committees to answer to—and the Prime Minister, plus his gaggle of minions, should I screw this up.”

“I’m paying, if that matters.”

Gerald snorted. “I don’t think so. There have been two thousand murders. If anything, we owe you a bounty for the tip off and the names. You’re not responsible for that level of investigation.”

Instead of connecting the call with Zachary, I cocked my head and arched a brow at Gerald. “What I want to know is how two thousand deaths, mostly teenagers, slipped under your radar.”

“Falsely recorded suicides, accidental deaths, and runaways? There are a lot of potential explanations, unfortunately.”

“Possibly.” I pressed the call button and put the phone to my ear.

“Zachary,” my friend answered in a grumble.

“Hey. I’m not dead take two. I hear you got to babysit my brother and Alex. Thanks for that.”

“You’re killing me, Boss. Elliot did let me know. I got saddled with escorting him home. How are you doing?”

“Tolerable. Apparently I’m due for a CT and MRI in a few minutes. I need a favor.”

“What’s up?”

“Call Cameroun. Tell him Gerald’s going to be stomping all over his turf. Toss down Jacqueline’s name and the fact there are two thousand victims needing justice. I don’t care how you do it, but get his cooperation.”

Zachary hesitated. “You’re asking a lot, Boss.”

“Tell him I’ll meet with him personally to discuss that equipment he wants from the Americans, and that I’ll shave off ten percent of my cut as incentive. That should get him moving.”

“Ah, good old corrupt Quebec. Money talks, and he’ll do anything to save a few pennies.”

“Pretty much. Can you do it?”

Zachary sighed. “I won’t like it, but I’ll take care of him one way or another. I got some interesting news for you, though. The hire for the medical research cargo didn’t show. Since they didn’t come to claim the stone I found in their stuff, I had it sent to the lab. It’s come back as a diamond. I won’t tell you what it’s valued at; our guy can’t tell if it’s synthetic yet. That said, he was giggling when I spoke to him last.”

“Just toss me the estimates. What’s it worth if it’s real and what’s it worth if it’s a fake?”

“If it’s natural, you could buy the Hope Diamond for cheaper. Let’s put it this way; the Moussaieff Red is its much smaller sibling, and it’s worth a cool twenty million.”

“The what Red? Never heard of it.”

“Used to be called the Red Shield before it was sold. It tends to change names. Anyway, if they’re natural, the two stones are priceless.”

I shivered at the memory of so many dead imprinted on the gems. I touched the leather pouch hanging around my throat. “I have a feeling that they aren’t, and someone killed a lot of people making these stones.”

“I’m inclined to agree with you. What do you want me to do with all of this equipment?”

I thought about it for a few moments. If the one stone had been found with the research equipment, how were they connected? “Keep it and find a scientist to have a look and see how any of it might be used in synthetic diamond creation—or with whatever they call researching blood.”

“Blood? Why blood?”

“It’s somewhere to start. The stones are blood red, aren’t they?”

“That’s fair enough, I guess. I’ll get in touch with a few people and see what I can dig up. Elliot told me you were alive and okay, but nothing else. What happened?”

I sighed. “Richard dumped the plane in a lake and crashed it into a tree. I’ve got a concussion, a sprained wrist, and a few cuts and bruises, but I’m otherwise fine. Could have been a lot worse.”

“Sure, you could be dead. How about the others?”

“Missing. I’ve been told they went wolf. Richard’s wife, her witch, and a few others are out looking for them.”

“Evelyn left you in the wreckage?” he asked, his tone sharpening.

Before I could reply, Gerald snatched the phone out of my hands. “Zachary, it’s Gerald. Leave him alone. I’m having enough problems keeping him contained. All he wants to do is go hunting after his woman. Don’t push his buttons right now. Anyway, the Fenerec did the right thing. It took the rescue people twelve hours to reach him and cut him out of the plane. I have to get him to his doctor’s appointment. Call my cell if you need me.” After giving Zachary the number, Gerald hung up. “We’re going, Jackson. March.”

“Let me change,” I grumbled, not looking forward to yet another round of tests at the hospital.

“Jeans and t-shirt is perfectly acceptable attire. We’re going to a hospital, not a date, to a business meeting, or a wedding.”