Hard As Ice (Fortis Series 1) (28 page)

Trying to be patient, he had used the time to review the information Raymond had sent. The agent had finally discovered a connection between Walsh and a Worthington employee. Gleason Courier, the company where Walsh’s delivery driver worked, had contracts with many large distributors in the hospitality industry. Their drivers would pick up large skids of supplies from these warehouses, then transport them to the Gleason depot to be assembled for customer orders.

One of these large warehouses was in Watertown. One of their shift supervisors was Nigel St. James.

With his heart racing, Evan did a location search of Nia’s cell phone, with confirmation that she was still in the gallery. It was now six-twenty. His gut told him something wasn’t right. He asked the driver to head into the downtown core, while he tried to call Nia’s cell phone again.

He was about five minutes away from her office when he received a text from Lucas simply stating
911.
It was their code to call headquarters immediately.

“Yeah?” he asked the moment Lucas answered the phone.

“Where are you?” Lucas immediately asked.

“Downtown Boston. Nia’s running late so I’m going to meet her at work. Why?”

“I have her on surveillance at the gallery, Evan.”

Evan swallowed, not liking the sound of urgency in his friend’s voice.

“What’s going on?”

“Did you read the report from Raymond?” Lucas demanded.

“Yeah,” Evan replied tightly.

“I got an alert from the new security system. Someone’s entered the Worthington protected zone without the right protocols.”

“Nia,” Evan stated, closing his eyes against the implications.

“Yeah. And the security guard on duty, Stan, isn’t responding to my calls.”

“How much time do I have?” grilled Evan as he reached into his duffel bag and pulled out his gun.

“Not long, a few minutes, tops. The safe zone was meant to alert security if someone enters any of the sensitive zones in the warehouse outside of business hours, including the safe.”

“I’m on my way,” Evan confirmed in a chilling tone.

“These look incredible,” Nia gasped.

She held up one of the photos spread out on the small table in her office. Her team finally had the pictures ready for the summer auction in August. With all of the beautiful shots of the jewelry and other art pieces, it was going to be hard to pick the final ones for all the marketing collateral.

“I know,” Adam added, rifling through another small stack.

“It’s almost three-o’clock now, so we have an hour or so,” Nia confirmed to him and Nancy. “Let’s get as far as we can in selecting one for each item in the auction. We can send the extra ones to the clients. They always appreciate that. If we have time after, I’d like to start working on descriptions. I think you did a good first draft, Nancy. We’re getting close.”

Her two employees nodded, and they dived into the task.

For Nia, it felt great not only to know that the Crimson Amazon and other pieces were again safe and secure, but that the time line required for the auction was not impacted. The international exhibit of the rare jewelry was an ambitious plan to begin with, usually only done by the bigger players in the industry. But it was now all coming together. The first was scheduled for Independence Day weekend in New York.

By four-o’clock in the afternoon, she and the coordinators were able to finish choosing the images needed. They set aside the selected pictures from the ones Nia would send to their clients. Once the two coordinators had left, Nia sat behind her desk to call Emma at the reception area.

“Hi, Nia,” the young girl replied, still not quite her usual bubbly self.

“Hey, Emma. Can you do me a favor?”

“Sure.”

“I’m sending several packages out tomorrow to clients. Do we have any of those padded courier envelopes?”

“I think so. How many do you need?”

Nia counted in her head.

“Fourteen, I think?”

“All right, I’ll bring them up in a few minutes.”

“Thanks, Emma.”

The receptionist walked into her office about ten minutes later while Nia was thinking about Evan and their plans for that evening. How on earth was he going to get here from Virginia by six o’clock? You can barely get through airport security and on a plane that fast.

“What’s wrong?” asked Emma as she put the envelopes on Nia’s desk.

“Huh?” Nia replied, snapping her head up with surprise. “Oh, nothing.”

“Are you sure? You look worried.”

“No,” denied Nia, relaxing her shoulders and sitting back. “It’s nothing. Just a meeting I wasn’t expecting.” Emma nodded, lingering a little. “How about you, how are you doing?”

The young girl smiled but it didn’t reach her eyes.

“I’m good.”

“Are you sure?” probed Nia. “I know things have been a little hard for you, with Chris . . . gone.”

Emma waved her hand dismissively.

“It’s fine.”

“Well, once we’ve hired a new manager, things will go back to normal. You’ll see,” Nia assured her.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Wait, Emma,” said Nia as she stood up from her desk. “Can I ask you something?”

The younger girl paused, her face sad.

“I know Matt and Chris were friends. Were they into anything dangerous together? Like doing drugs?”

Emma looked down and then away.

“I’m not trying to criticize, I promise,” Nia insisted. “But if you know something, it might make you feel better to talk about it.”

Emma’s face crumpled, and her eyes filled with tears.

“It was harmless,” she whispered. “Matt and I like to do a little blow on the weekends. That’s it. Matt would always have some around. So Chris thought he could make some money on the side, supply other people. Nothing major. Just a little here and there.”

“Oh, Emma,” Nia whispered, expecting something like this but still surprised to hear it confirmed.

Emma wiped at her eyes and brushed her wrist across her nose.

“And now they’re both dead,” she ended in a whisper.

Nia rubbed her back soothingly until the young receptionist stopped crying.

“I’m okay now,” she finally stated, but her voice was still a little shaky.

“You’re going to be okay,” Nia reassured her.

Emma nodded.

“Thanks, Nia,” she added before she left to go back down to the gallery.

Nia let out a deep breath, glad that Emma had finally told someone what had been going on. Now, Evan and his team could determine if Chris had really been involved in the robbery, or not.

Then remembering her dinner plans, she got back to work.

It was hard to suppress the bubble of excitement in her stomach. But Nia tried to stay grounded. She couldn’t assume that Evan was flying into Boston just to see her. In fact, it now seemed likely that he had been headed there anyway. He was probably already sitting in the airport when she called him, right?

She also tried not to think about what this evening could mean. As much as she missed Evan and wanted to see him again, nothing had really changed. He still wanted something more, and she still could not trust him with her heart.

Forcing herself to focus, Nia went back to the task at hand. It was hugely satisfying to put together the client packages, particularly for Aubrey Niknam. Just four weeks ago, there was the real possibility that Nia would have to inform Aubrey and others that the unthinkable had happened. That their valuable assets had been stolen from Worthington, despite the state-of-the-art security measure they had been promised. The appraised value would have been covered by the company’s insurance but that was often much less than what it could fetch at auction. So, as Nia wrote out the courier parcels containing the beautiful photos of each item in the auction, it felt pretty satisfying.

The only hiccup was that she had miscalculated the number of shipments to be sent and was short by one envelope.

A few minutes before five-thirty, she was shutting down for the day, ready to take a taxi home in order to get there a little early. Nia packed up her laptop, grabbed the prepared packages and remaining photos. The only thing left to do was stop at Emma’s desk to write up the final envelope. Then the whole stack would be ready for pickup tomorrow morning.

Downstairs, the large gallery area was empty. Though the doors closed at five o’clock each evening, the operations team typically worked for another hour to lock down the building. With Chris gone, Emma was managing on her own with some part-time help. Nia waited by the reception desk for a few minutes for Emma to return. Getting impatient after a few minutes, she went into the warehouse and looked around. The receptionist was nowhere in the immediate vicinity, and Nia was running out of time.

Checking her watch, she turned to head back into the gallery when she saw a discarded shoe near the back door that led to the alley. It looked like the one Emma had been wearing today. Nia stopped to look around. Then she took a few steps forward until her path was suddenly blocked by the man who stepped in front of her.

“Hi, Nia.”

She screamed in surprise, then covered her mouth, feeling foolish once she realized who it was.

“Nigel! What are you doing here? How did you get in?”

Nia glanced around again, still searching for Emma and wondering about the discarded shoe.

“Nia, I need your help,” he stated.

The serious, nervous tone of his voice made her look back at him.

“Did Emma let you back here? Do you know where she is?”

“Nia, listen to me!”

He grabbed her arm tight, causing her to stumble forward.

“Nigel. What are you doing? Let go of me!”

Her heart was now hammering in her chest as the confusion turned to fear. Something wasn’t right. Nigel had never been to her work before, now here he was in the warehouse, and Emma was missing.

“Listen to me. Listen to me!” he insisted in an urgent voice. “I’m in trouble, Nia, and I need your help.”

He still had a strong grip on her arm and Nia grimaced from the pain.

“You’re hurting me, Nigel,” she implored, looking into his eyes. They were dark green and dull. “Please, let go of me.”

He released her suddenly, turning away to pace in front of her.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Nia. That’s the last thing I want to do. But I need you to help me.”

“Help you with what, Nigel? What are you talking about?”

“I need to get out of town. Fast,” he stated, still walking back and forth with agitation.

“Why?” she pleaded. “Please, Nigel. You’re scaring me. Just tell me what’s going on.”

“I can’t. You wouldn’t understand, okay,” he shot back heatedly. “Just give me what I need and I’ll be gone.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she finally yelled.

“You do. You know exactly what I need, Nia.”

He took a step forward, staring at her hard. There was a fierce determination on his face that she had never seen before. And suddenly, she knew.

“No,” she whispered. “No, Nigel.”

“Yes. I need you to give me whatever is in that safe that’s untraceable,” he said with chilling clarity.

She could only shake her head, now speechless.

“Loose stones, money. Anything,” he continued.

“No,” Nia croaked, stepping back from him. “Nigel, I don’t know what’s going on but I can’t do this. You know I can’t do this. Please! Just tell me what’s going on. I’ll help you, I promise. I have money. Let’s go to the bank and I’ll give you whatever I have. Then I can cash in some of my stock. Whatever you need. But not this.”

“There’s no time, Nia. This is the only way,” he replied in a hard voice.

He wasn’t going to back down, she realized. It was written in the hard bite of his jaw and the tight clench of his fists.

“No. I’m not going to steal anything, Nigel. Not even for you.”

“You owe me, Nia,” he spat. “You owe me!”

She was shaking her head back and forth while bile rose in the back of her throat.

“Nigel, please. I know what you went through . . .” Her voice broke. “I know what you did for me. But I can’t do this. Don’t make me do this. Please.” The last word came out in a hoarse whisper.

“Sorry, Nia, but you don’t get a choice.”

In a flash, he had a small gun pointed right at her forehead.

Everything stopped for Nia. She was frozen. Nigel, the man who had protected her, whom she loved like a brother and lived with for over five years as roommates, was threatening her life.

“Now, you’re going to open that safe for me.”

She could only stare at him, unable to process a response.

“Why?” she finally whispered. “Why, Nigel?”

“Walk, Nia!” he insisted, removing the safety latch on the gun in a slow, deliberate step.

Nia stepped forward toward the large safe in the back of the room. He approached behind her to follow.

“Nigel, please. Just tell me what’s happened. Why are you doing this?”

“Jesus, Nia. I kept telling you to just mind your own business and keep your head down. But you just couldn’t do it, could you?” he spat, shoving her at the back of the shoulder, suggesting she should walk faster. “If you had just done what you were told, none of this would be happening. So like I said, you owe me. And I’m going to get all the compensation I deserve. Those fucking rich assholes took three years of my life, and I’m finally going to get mine.”

It was really hard for her to concentrate, to make any sense of his rambling while he pushed her toward the safe with a weapon at her back. But something finally clicked.

“The robbery,” she gasped. “It’s the robbery, isn’t it? You knew something all along, didn’t you?”

He let out a dark, harsh laugh.

“Yeah, I knew something.”

Nia turned suddenly to face him, too stunned to remember the gun.

“What? Why didn’t you tell me? What does any of this have to do with the robbery?” she shouted. Then found herself gasping for air as Nigel grabbed her around the neck and squeezed just enough to make her panic.

“You stupid, stupid bitch. Who do you think set the whole thing up, Nia? Who do you think made it happen?” he growled into her face, his harsh breath filling her nostrils as she struggled to breathe. “I did! I had it all planned. It was flawless, my biggest job yet. And you fucked it up, Nia!”

He shoved her away, so hard that she fell backward, landing on her behind.

“Two million dollars,” he yelled down at her. “I had almost two million dollars in a hidden bank account, and half of it was mine. And you led that guard dog and his goons right to me.”

Nia was coughing, then she was backing away from his stiff, threatening stance, her eyes still locked on the gun in his hand. Everything he was saying was painting the worst picture she could have ever imagined.

“Nigel, how could you?”

“How could I not, Nia? It was the perfect opportunity. I had a buyer looking for the red stone, and you had access to it. It was perfect, like winning the lottery!” he screamed. “Then you had to go and fuck it up.”

He suddenly leaned down and dragged her to her feet.

“Now, you’re going to fix it,” he spat, shoving her toward the safe, now only a few feet away. The gun was back up and pointed at her.

Nia swallowed, frantically trying to think through her options. Somewhere in the distance, she heard her phone ringing. She had left it on the reception counter in the gallery.
Evan.
She was late to meet him at her house. Would he think she stood him up? Would he leave, go back to Virginia?

Nia stumbled forward from another push to her shoulder. They continued for another few steps in silence. It seemed to take forever, and her mind raced to find a way out of this situation. He shoved her hard again, and this time it was right up into the safe.

“Open it, Nia,” Nigel demanded.