Chapter 13 #2
She had limited time and there was no guarantee that one of the Tavares people or Gabriele herself wouldn’t pop in. There was also the possibility that they had the place bugged. Possibly with video surveillance. She’d made it her first priority to look for that.
After going over all the walls and furnishings she found nothing in the unit. Maybe they figured Angelique had Dane hooked so they didn’t need surveillance. Angelique was their human surveillance.
And Dane was human surveillance for her and Cap.
They’d outfit him with audio/video feed before they let him come back to this room with Angelique.
Shana stood and watched the computer gizmo give a final beep and flash of green.
Then she swept the room with her eyes once more and spotted the trash barrel in the bathroom.
She hadn’t checked it, didn’t want to check it—but figured she should.
Dumping the contents of the small bin on the floor, she quickly surveyed the bits and scraps and saw one thing that stood out—in fact it screamed to her.
She reached down and picked up the one-point-five-inch-long tube of compressed fiber and turned it.
When she saw the hollowed-out center her heart raced and her stomach retched.
That she knew what she was looking at was a one-in-a-million spot of luck for the good guys.
She looked through the debris more carefully and spotted what she was looking for and picked it up.
A small tube-shaped wad of compressed fiber.
After she returned the rest of the contents to the bin and put it back exactly where she found it, she took her evidence –the small tube-shaped wad of compressed fiber—and the computer gizmo and left the room exactly as if no one had ever visited in Angelique’s absence. Except for the bug she left behind.
Her heart rate increased even after she escaped out the back hall door without being seen—no small feat in her spike heels.
Whatever they found or didn’t find on the copy of Gabriele’s hard drive didn’t matter—not to Shana.
What she found in the trash trumped everything as an indictment against Angelique in her judgment.
Excitement and dread and disgust threatened to overwhelm her as she hopped into the Jeep and sped back to the party.
Along the way she needed to make a call.
She vacillated on which speed dial number to hit.
With her phone in her hand she debated with herself on whether to call Cap or Dane.
Cap was waiting. It was his case. Dane was her partner. More than her partner. Maybe.
“This is stupid,” she said aloud. She went with her instincts and her thumb landed on number one on her dial pad. Dane answered his line.
*****
Dane was watching Angelique dance a funky dance with Gable when his phone vibrated. He was grateful to Gable for taking a turn on the floor with her. He was turning out to be more helpful than Dane had expected. He put the phone to his ear.
“How did it go, girlie? Did you get the computer copied?”
“Yes. Pay dirt. I also found her phone and recorded a voice mail and took some snapshots of her texts with Gabriele. Bad news/good news—she’s on the island with a couple of her men.”
“Good news. We’ll nail them all.”
“And I found something else.”
“What?”
“Meet me in the pool house in five minutes. Bring Cap.” The line went dead.
*****
Dane walked into the pool house last. Shana and Cap sat on lawn chairs. There was a third empty chair waiting for Dane. They looked up at him when he stepped inside and closed the door behind him, but neither said a word.
“What is it?” He sat and watched Shana. Her face was pinched closed like he’d never seen it before. Cap looked uncomfortable.
Shana told him about the texts that she’d found. Similar to the ones he’d seen before.
“This confirms that Gabriele is here. Now all we need to do to wrap them all up in an airtight package for the AUSA is find the missing heirloom jewel.”
“About the jewel—I found other evidence…” She licked her lips. “That she’s hidden the jewel in her—on her person.”
“What are you trying to say, Shana? What did you find?”
Shana pulled a small object from her purse and held it in her palm for him to see.
“The remains of a carved-out tampon.”
He looked at it. His head buzzed blankly for a beat.
“I’ve seen it before—in female prisoners hiding contraband.”
“Shit.” He didn’t need her to spell it out any further. The twisting tension in every fiber in him ratcheted up as if he were being cranked like a tourniquet.
“That woman is one sick—” Cap said.
“Taunter,” Dane finished for Cap. “She wants revenge in her own sick way—for her own sick reason—or for Gabriele. It’s starting to make sense.”
“Glad you think so. It all seems crazy to me,” Cap said. Shana said nothing.
Dane reached out in the dimly lit confines of the crowded pool house and touched Shana’s hair. She stopped herself from flinching, but he saw it—the instinctive pull back. She stuffed the evidence back in her bag.
“What’s the next step?” she asked Cap. Dane answered.
“We stick with our plan. If we haul her in and keep her, Gabriele and her people will fold up and leave. We want to give them a reason to stay. I’m the one they’re after—let’s give them what they want.”
Cap considered him. “Exactly what do you have in mind?”
Stick with the plan to nail damn Angelique Dubois.
“Bring her in for questioning tonight, we stage a disagreement, and I’ll be on her side—like good cop/bad cop except it’ll be clear I’m no cop. I’ll have a big fight with Shana—”
“Just like always,” Shana said. She folded her arms across her chest.
He ignored her, ignored the sharp stab through his shoulder blades that hit him as if she were wielding a real knife.
“I’ll help her and convince you to let her go, that I’ll be responsible for her. We leave and we’ll go back to her room. We’ll play right into her hands. I’ll wear the AV surveillance equipment as planned.”
Cap nodded and stood. “Let’s do this.”
Dane said, “You act suspicious now, here at the party, I’ll take her back to the room and tip her off that there’s a search warrant and offer to help her hide the jewels. If we’re lucky that’ll be the brass ring.”
“If not, we give you ten minutes and we’re coming in—with or without the search warrant—and we take her in for questioning.”
“There has to be an easier way,” Shana said.
“You’re obviously not thinking straight, girlie.
” He licked his lips and looked straight into Shana’s eyes.
“Besides, we need to flush out the Tavares connection. I want to gain Angelique’s trust so that she talks about everyone and everything—including the murder—on the record.
” He paused and lowered his voice. “I want to know if Gabriele or one of her thugs murdered Bellarine or if Angelique did it. I want to know exactly how dirty or innocent she is from the one person who knows—her.”
And he wanted to make Angelique pay for trying to play him because this had been a goddamn painful case to play.
“What makes you think she’ll confide all this in you?
No, never mind—” Shana turned away, but not before Dane saw it.
He saw the sparkle of unshed tears in her eyes, felt the emotion erupting from her like she could no longer hold it in.
She vibrated with it. Shards of disgust, disappointment, sadness, anger, longing, and need hit him.
Dane turned to Cap, who had gone still. He watched Shana with concern and Dane with a question in his eyes.
“Because she’s a taunter. I’ll let her think she has me. She’ll taunt me with her true self, with her heirloom and with her betrayal—” He paused for a reaction. After a beat, Shana spoke up.
“That would be extremely dangerous—you’d have to allow yourself to become completely vulnerable to her—and to the Tavares people.”
“I’ve played bait before. You and Cap will have my back.”
No affirmation, no argument, not even an acknowledgment. They didn’t like it. They didn’t defy him. They knew it would work.
Dane stood, his knees straightening with that now familiar ache like an old door reluctantly opening. Like everything else in him, his knees needed attention, needed fixing.
Shana stood and turned to him with a gaze that looked like she saw him from a great distance.
He felt the coldness go through him and was helpless against it.
Then he knew—this was not about him or something he did or didn’t do.
This distance, her new attitude was about her and her own mind. Something he could do nothing about.
“Okay,” Cap turned to the door. “Let’s put the plan to work.”
*****
“The police are coming to search your place.” He pushed past her to step inside the room. He’d driven her back to the Admiral’s Inn before the party was over. “They found out your insurance investigation background with Lloyd’s was faked. They’re looking for the rest of the jewels.”
“Let them look.”
“Smart girl. Problem is they’re going to take you in for questioning for Bellarine’s murder.”
She said nothing.
“I know you didn’t murder him. I know it was self-defense.”
“How do you know?”
“I know you’re no murderer.” That was a lie.
“Thank you, Dane.” She kissed him and said, “Then there is a chance for us?”
“More than a chance.” Lie number two.
“Maybe we will convince the police.”
Dane didn’t bother to comment on her chances.
“They’ll be here for the search soon—they won’t wait.” He looked at his watch. “And then they’ll take you into the station—where are the missing jewels?”
She smiled and put a hand up to caress his jaw. He worked at not clenching it against her touch.
“Don’t you worry about the jewels. Of course they are not here in my room.”
Bingo. She’d confessed to having them. It wasn’t a sure-thing legal-tight admission, but it confirmed his gut instincts.