Chapter 15
Dane stepped back while he let Cap enter the room and read Angelique her rights again, holding the family heirloom in front of her in a sealed evidence bag. Cap placed a digital recorder on the table.
Cap rattled off their names, date and time and then began the questioning.
“Who stole the jewels—you or Bellarine?”
“Baylor Bellarine is the thief. Gabriele hired him. I gave him background information on the homes—and in particular on my family heirloom that he was paid to steal for me.”
“Is that how Gabriele convinced you to go along with all this?”
She nodded. Dane was surprised that Cap would lead her on, feed her the convenient excuse for an answer.
“I am not a jewel thief. I am an art historian and… somewhat of a computer programmer. I work with a computer security company.”
“What’s the name of this company?” Cap looked at him. They’d heard nothing of this in any of Acer’s intel about her background, but it could be true.
“I can’t tell you. It is a… dark operation.”
Cap paused and took a breath. Dane didn’t know if he believed her.
“Did you kill Baylor Bellarine?”
“No.”
“Tell me about it.”
She paused for so long, Dane wasn’t sure she would continue to cooperate. She flicked a glance at him and went on.
“Gabriel stabbed him. We met with him to get the jewels. He tried to hold back my family heirloom. And some of the other valuable jewels. To re-negotiate his deal. He took out a gun. I knocked it away from him when he shot it—he’d been aiming at Gabriele.
She stabbed him and took most of the jewels.
I took my family heirloom—it was rightfully mine. ”
“Why did you leave the Gables’ jewels in his mouth?”
“We needed to keep you all thinking I was legitimately investigating the jewel thefts for the insurance company. I wanted to simply take the jewels and hand them over to the Gables, but Gabriele… she had other ideas. She thought it would be more fun to have the police find them.”
Before Cap finished with his questions, Dane left the windowless room. He’d heard enough. He walked down the hall to the lobby where Shana waited to give her statement.
Walking slowly toward her, he tried reading Shana’s face.
It usually spoke to him. Or her heat, her energy, her essence spoke to him.
Something. Right now she was closed up tight.
Maybe she was trying to make up for her earlier lapse into vulnerability.
He didn’t bother resisting his compulsion to open himself up to her. He was too weak.
Stopping four feet from her, he let his face show how he felt.
Apology, sorrow, self-loathing, and most of all his longing for her.
He put that into his best smile and hoped he didn’t look like a forlorn fourteen-year-old.
She didn’t change her expression or move, just stared him down with icy green cat eyes, looking wise and superior.
Right now she was and he felt that knowledge like an icy sting of reprimand as if she’d lashed him with that whip.
In spite of that, and maybe because of it, because he was a sick one he supposed—something was wrong with him—he went to her, closing the gap entirely.
He came to rest in front of her, wrapping his arms around her so that they touched from head to toe.
If she hadn’t been stiff, he would have tightened and squeezed, but he’d wait.
“I’m sorry, girlie.” He whispered the words in her hair, breathing in the scent and taking in the softness. He hoped she’d heard the words. He didn’t know if he would say them again—if he could say them again.
He took another deep breath. She stirred in his arms. He tightened them then but she stiffened more. He hoped she hadn’t heard his words.
But he didn’t let her go.
And she didn’t push him away.
After he finally released her, he went outside to his Jag and retrieved the pair of sneakers he’d thrown on the floor of the back seat.
He’d meant to give them to Shana sooner but had never had the chance.
He brought them back inside, but Shana was no longer in the lobby. He left them with the cop at the desk.
*****
Shana had stayed at State Police Headquarters after he left, but he had no idea how long.
He went to his private physician on the island rather than to the hospital and got his arm tended to, bandaged up.
Then he had to give a briefing via teleconference at the shack on his secure line.
His friends Governor Peter Douglas and David Young, Director of the Scotland Yard Exchange in Boston needed to wrap up the details of the Tavares connection to the thefts and murder and decide on federal charges.
They were doing Dane a favor. David had agreed to be the go-between with the FBI and deliver his report about his role. Cap would give them an official report. But the feds wanted one from Dane too because they didn’t trust him. Dane didn’t enjoy a cordial relationship with the FBI’s Boston office.
After the briefing, Dane had finally crashed.
He’d wanted to wait up for Shana. He blamed it on whatever meds his doctor had given him.
He slept until the next morning. Shana had come home at some point, but she slept in the second bedroom.
He only knew this because when he checked, the bed clothes were rumpled. She was gone.
But she couldn’t have been gone too long.
He could smell the wisp of her scent in the air still.
When he went back out to the hallway, the smell of coffee drew him quickly to the kitchen.
She’d left him a note stuck to the coffee pot that said she’d gone to the Gables for a nine a.m. appointment to pick up their fee.
It was 8:55. He pulled on some pants, poured the lukewarm coffee from the pot into a mug, and rushed out the door. She’d left him the Jag.
It was then that he realized the air felt cool and dry. The heat wave had broken. He jumped in the car and went after her.
*****
Shana couldn’t believe what a coward she was. She looked at her feet as she got out of the Jeep. She wore her sneakers. The sneakers Dane had left for her at the station desk. A bubble of excitement rose in her gut to burst in her heart.
“It didn’t mean anything,” she said out loud.
The tightness in her chest did not relent.
She had to control the bubble of hope, not get carried away by one small gesture.
She looked up at the Gables’ mansion and the sparkling blue sky and forced herself to take a deep breath.
There was no heaviness left in the clear sea air.
It felt odd to search for the heaviness in her heart and find none. The ripple of nerves through her gut made her shake like a schoolgirl anticipating a date with the class stud. Did the gesture really mean something?
Clamping down with the emotional self-discipline of a woman who’d suffered disappointment courtesy of the most important man in the world to her, she slammed the Jeep door shut, rattling the old frame. Fitting. She knew how it felt.
Leaning against the car, she could swear she hadn’t taken more than a minute or two to try and recapture her adult-woman poise, but it must have been longer.
Otherwise, Dane wouldn’t have had time to blaze up the drive to a screeching halt before she had a chance to ring the bell.
She spun around to see him jump from his Jag and turned back to the bell.
She raised her hand to press it, to escape from the moment of truth, or so she fancied. Her hand shook.
Then she pulled her mantle of hard-won womanhood around her and straightened her spine as she turned back to him. She self-consciously put her hands on her hips and felt the heat of his eyes boring hers as she raised her chin. She knew what he was thinking. He was right.
He would disarm her the minute he touched her.
Unfortunately—or fortunately—she was too confused and overwhelmed to determine for sure. The door behind her opened before he reached her.
“Shana, Dane—congratulations on another successful case…” Gable went on. Shana hardly heard him. She turned from Dane’s eyes, the eyes of his boyhood self, the open, riveting, needy eyes speaking of everything that was good, everything that she wanted.
Gable swept her into his ridiculous entry hall and she felt Dane follow them to his library.
Laura Gable followed and even the butler.
Laura hugged her. Mr. Gable—she refused to call him or even think of him as Bill—shook her hand.
He’d fallen back from the impulse to hug her after flashing a glance at Dane.
Shana could barely contain the anxious buzzing inside her, feeling Dane’s possessive presence.
She needed to pull herself together. Dane had always been like that. Why should she overreact now?
“Please sit. Tell us all about the excitement—the news reports were typically short on details,” Gable said. He poured a cold drink that looked like lemonade and handed it to her. She took a long sip. She was stalling, hoping Dane would speak. He didn’t disappoint her.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for the official press conference later. We’re not at liberty to talk—”
“Press conference? Who—”
“The US Attorney’s office, the FBI, the governor.”
“So it involves the feds.” Gable nodded. Shana saw the gleam in his eyes and worried this exchange might take longer than she could maintain her semblance of professional cool.
“Of course it does, darling—it’s international after all.
Isn’t that right, Dane?” Laura held out a drink for Dane.
Shana watched him eye the drink. She knew he was wishing it was tequila.
She smiled. It came without effort. It felt good.
It was the first crack in her neurotic anxiety-induced armor.