Chapter 36
The old fort above Conrad had been built to watch the water.
Centuries later, it still did.
Weathered stone walls rose from the cliffside, sunbaked and salt-scored, overlooking a sweep of turquoise water so clear Everett could see the reef darkening the shallows below.
St. Felipe’s harbor curved in the distance, crowded with fishing boats, ferries, and tourist catamarans gliding over water that made the islands look far more innocent than they were.
The police station sat several blocks inland, far enough away to avoid curious eyes from Chief Simone Brown’s department.
Her uniform was gone today, replaced by linen trousers and a loose white shirt, but no one who knew her would mistake her for a tourist. Chief Brown carried authority even out of uniform, and right now, that authority had settled into the hard line of her mouth as she considered everything he had laid out.
She had listened without interrupting while Everett walked her through Donald Eastman, the insurance policy, the boat, and the conference alibi. Now the flash drive sat on the stone wall between them, small enough to fit in her palm and heavy enough to complicate two police departments.
“I thought you’d be more impressed with my investigation skills.”
“You’re a damn good investigator. That’s not the issue.”
“Then what is?”
She turned to face him, her expression giving away less than he wanted. “The issue is jurisdiction, politics, and the fact that St. Basil P.D. owns the Bobby Zaniewski case, whether I like how they’re handling it or not.”
Everett stepped beside her and looked out over the water. Sunlight sparked hard across the surface, too bright for the conversation they were about to have.
Simone continued, “There are things in what you gave me that haven’t been discovered in the investigation.”
“Then use them.”
“Like I said, it isn’t my case.”
“I know that, but none of this can come from me, and you know it. Donald Eastman has motive, means, and opportunity. Same as Detective Desmond Francois claims Remington does,” Everett said, struggling to keep his voice calm.
“Then there’s the unreleased ME report. Lois Gaston was dead long before someone stabbed her in the chest.”
Simone didn’t react. That could only mean one thing. The cops already had this information, and they were going after Remington anyway.
Everett turned his head toward her. “Explain why that doesn’t change the focus of the investigation.”
“The facts are messier than what’s in the news.” Simone removed her sunglasses and slowly folded them. “It’s clear that Bobby’s murder was personal. Whoever killed him wasn’t staging a clean execution. They were furious, enraged, and out of control.”
“Donald could’ve easily been the spurned spouse. Not Remington.”
“Maybe it was neither of them.”
Everett’s attention narrowed. “You have someone else in mind.”
“I shouldn’t be telling you any of this.”
“But you are.”
Simone glanced toward the tourists. Their laughter drifted across the fort, light and oblivious.
“I know how you feel about Remi,” she said.
“Careful.”
“You think you hide it better than you do.” Her gaze returned to him. “I also know how many years you spent on the sidelines watching her build a life with a man who never deserved her.”
Everett’s jaw tightened. “You’re rambling.”
“I’m choosing my words because I know this is going to hurt.”
“Then choose faster.”
Simone looked out at the water again. “Forensics found more than Bobby’s blood at the crime scene.”
Everett felt the shift in the air. “Whose?”
“Remi’s.”
The sound of the harbor seemed to drop away.
He remembered the night he brought Remington to the bungalow. She had a tender knot on the back of her head. He’d felt the swelling under her hair, but he hadn’t checked whether the skin had split open. He’d been too focused on helping her deal with the horror of what she thought she’d done.
“How much blood?” he asked.
“Enough to matter.”
“Where?”
“Living room area close to the foyer.”
That fit too well with Remington’s memories of Bobby pushing her away, stumbling, and hitting her head on the side table. That was right before she blacked out.
“Detective Desmond Francois has a new theory about why Remi is missing.” Simone paused, studying him, probably for a reaction he would never give her.
Everett slid both hands into his pockets. “I’m not going to like this theory, am I?”
She exhaled a long, slow breath. “Francois is still looking for her, but not as a suspect. What you found out from the ME about Lois’s death, we already gathered from the crime scene.”
The old stone beneath Everett’s palm scraped his skin as his grip tightened against it.
“Given the blood evidence, the missing weapons, and the condition of Lois Gaston,” Simone said, her voice softened. “He thinks Remi may be another … victim.”
Everett turned toward her slowly.
He had spent years lying for a living. Undercover work had taught him how to manufacture reactions, how to give people what they expected to see, how to turn his face into a door no one could open. He needed that skill now.
“No,” he said, letting the word come out rough. “That isn’t true. Remington isn’t dead.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“She’s not.”
Simone studied him, and for one dangerous second, Everett wondered how much of the lie she saw. She knew him better than most.
“Francois thinks Bobby drugged Lois and killed her,” she said. “Then he did the same to his wife. Francois thinks he has Bobby’s motive for both murders, but he hasn’t shared it with me.”
“You expect me to believe that Remi is missing because Bobby killed her.” Everett stared toward the water, letting the glare off the waves burn into his eyes. “And then, what? Someone else swooped in and killed Bobby? Who and why?”
Simone didn’t answer immediately. She turned the sunglasses in her hand, the hinge clicking once beneath her thumb.
“Remember, St. Basil has Remi’s phone.”
“I know.”
“Ace Spade called her on the way home that night. Some of the workers at Black Spade overheard the conversation and told the cops he was pleading with her to leave Bobby and to come back to the farm.”
Remington told Everett about the call. He also knew why Ace had made it. Bobby was hours away from being voted onto the PC-5 death list, and Ace wanted his daughter as far from Bobby as he could get her.
Simone continued. “When Desmond questioned Ace, he didn’t deny it. Said he was tired of Bobby flaunting his affairs across the islands. He claimed they had calls regularly and that this one wasn’t unusual.”
“That sounds like a father worried about his daughter.”
“But Ace Spade isn’t the typical father, is he?” Simone’s expression tightened.
Everett looked away first, not because he disagreed, but because the truth of it complicated everything.
“Francois believes Ace went to The Bluffs to force Remi to leave Bobby once and for all,” Simone said.
“He finds Bobby had killed his baby girl, and loses control. In that version, he butchers Bobby, takes Remi’s remains somewhere safe, and plans to use his old PC-5 connections to erase his crimes.
But the cops arrived before he could do the cover-up. ”
“No, I don’t believe that.” The denial came fast. He turned back to the harbor and let the wind hit his face while the theory worked its way into places he didn’t want it to fit.
Ace had shown up at the bungalow like a ghost, having found them from details most people would never have noticed. He had the skill to move through the islands without leaving the wrong kind of trail. He was trained by the PC-5 and knew every ugly method a man might use to make evidence disappear.
If Ace had walked into The Bluffs and seen Bobby hurting Remington, what would he have done?
The man had been a professional killer, but professionalism had limits. Training could keep a blade steady. It could not make a father detached from the sight of his daughter, unconscious on the floor.
Everett’s stomach tightened.
If Ace had killed Bobby with the machete, cleaning the scene would take more than one man.
He wouldn’t use the PC-5. He’d have to scramble, calling in old favors or threats to get help to erase what he’d done.
Moving an unconscious Remington would’ve taken planning, time, and nerves as cold as a cartel assassin.
It’s conceivable Ace left to get help to do that, then came back to find the cops swarming the mansion and Remington gone.
Everett hated that his mind was doing this.
He hated Simone for planting the possibility.
Most of all, he hated that Ace had known about Bobby’s death-list vote before the Marengos ever stepped into that house.
He knew Bobby was a dead man. Ace wasn’t a Vadaj killer anymore.
He wasn’t bound by PC-5 rules or their enforcers’ code.
He was a father who hated his son-in-law and wanted him out of his daughter’s life one way or another.
“Why didn’t Francois release any of this?” he asked.
“Because he doesn’t want Ace to know how much attention has shifted toward him.
Despite being out of the PC-5 for a decade, he still has power in criminal circles.
” Simone leaned against the stones. “It’s in Francois’s best interest to keep the media distracted by Donald Eastman’s media blitz to rebrand his wife as a respectable woman, while bashing Remi at the same time. ”
“How long have they been focused on this new theory?”
“A couple of days.”
The words hit hard. Ace had found the bungalow in the Tango Lowlands during that window, unaware that he was under surveillance as a possible suspect in Bobby’s murder, or maybe Bobby’s real killer.
“I’m not going to stop looking for Remington. I don’t believe she’s gone.”
“I hope for your sake that Francois is wrong.”
Everett pointed to the flash drive resting on the stone between them, full of evidence against Donald Eastman that he wasn’t sure mattered anymore. “What are you going to do with that?”
“Still viable. The evidence matters. I’ll make sure Desmond gets it.” Simone turned and leveled him with a serious stare. “And if you’re right. Let’s say Remi is alive and she didn’t kill Bobby or Lois, then she might be in the most danger of all.”
Everett picked up the flash drive and pressed it into her palm, then turned toward the worn steps that led down from the fort.
The tourists were still laughing near the archway, but he barely heard them.
Mistrust moved through him now, deep and unwanted, circling Ace and what had happened at the mansion in The Bluffs that night.
One thing he knew for sure … he needed to get Remi away from the Tango Lowlands and to the new safe house.
Now.