Chapter Twenty-Five
They picked up groceries on the way to the townhouse, and Dan was confident he could navigate the high-tech grill he found on the deck.
Jenna did a load of laundry, pressed a few clothes, and returned calls and emails. She broke the news to her staff she would be away at least another week, maybe two. She promised her editors her article would be turned in on time. She didn’t mention the article she was writing about her experience—not yet.
Dan fussed with the grill, finally declaring it conquered.
An hour later, she looked up from her laptop, blurry eyed. As she finished her columns about the events at the senator’s party, she saw Dan was putting the steaks on. Man of many talents, she reminded herself. Her phone pinged—a text from Kerri. She finished reading Kerri’s text with a glass of wine in one hand and phone in the other.
Dan came inside. “Luc said Harper got in this morning. She is at her main house in Paris, at least for now.”
“Not for long, I found out from Kerri just now via text, Marta is wearing the necklace at the thank-you party, and the news is going out to the fashion world as I speak. Harper will know about it in twenty-four hours or less.”
“Well, at least Kerri is still speaking to you. So, great, it gives us time to set our trap.”
Jenna closed her laptop “Which is what, oh, master mind?”
“Harper will go for it at the party. She has nerves of steel. I think she will also try to plant some of her previously stolen jewels on me while she is here. She knows we will be there, but she has no way of knowing how long we will be at the party, so I expect she will pay me a visit beforehand. I’d be willing to bet she had us followed when I picked you up. She knows we are here. This is all based on what we know about her and what I would do if I were her.”
“Oh, Dan…she’ll never leave us alone, will she?” Jenna ran her hands through her hair.
“Now don’t worry, she wants us in jail, disgraced and ruined. She wants us to suffer like we caused her stepfather to suffer. She can only do that by pinning the robberies she has done on us. The only way is to let the FBI or local police find something on us or on our property that was stolen in one of the big heists she did.”
“I suppose you’re right. If she wanted me dead, they didn’t take their opportunity, and they wouldn’t have just left me in the dirt and unconscious. And wow, did she truly care so much about her stepfather to do all of this? She’s putting everything on the line. Or is this all about losing what she would have inherited when he died if we hadn’t knocked his empire into rubble before she got her chance?” Jenna sat, trying to calm herself.
Dan nodded and put his phone on the charger. “I think her stepfather was the only person she cared about at all. And of course, that makes her even angrier and even more dangerous. The money was important, too, of course, but not the driving factor, in my opinion. But Jenna, I have a theory about her partner.”
“Great, another theory. Let’s hear it, who do you think is our bad guy, or girl, not Brock surely? I sent him a text, by the way, saying I hope he was okay. No response.”
“No, I told you it can’t be him; he’s not the type. I think it’s Gail for sure, especially now that she is AWOL.”
“You didn’t seem totally convinced before, so, why now? And why on earth would Gail hook up with Harper? Was it their joint hatred of you they bonded over?”
“Well, maybe part of it, for sure. But I can give you about five million better reasons,” Dan said.
Jenna frowned. “But I wouldn’t think Gail is the type. Teaming up with an international jewel thief after all she knows. Look at all those she has seen brought down, and some because of her. I’m having a hard time believing it. She’s been on the other side for years.”
“Exactly, and now she has seen how the other half lives and spent years tracking those living the high life all over the world. Poor, hardworking Gail, well, she’s only getting the crumbs via a bonus now and then. She’s so smug about her expertise. She’s thinking she knows all the pitfalls so she can’t be caught,” Dan said.
“You make a good case, but I’m not totally sold. If they got caught, they would spend many years in prison. They are both still relatively young. Why chance it when Harper has tons of money, according to what we know, and Gail has a lucrative career?”
“Look, Jenn, it makes perfect sense if you are thinking from their point of view. You are thinking logically from your point of view. It has gone way beyond that for Harper and Gail. I’d bet Gail is just about now wishing she’d not hooked up with Harper, but it’s too late to turn back. Harper’s psycho side is well hidden—until it’s not. Besides, who else could it be?”
“I hate to remind you, but a man was holding a gun to my back, not a woman. Though I didn’t see him, I certainly heard him, and he was Sal Amato, I’m sure of it. Why not him as the other real partner? It sounds as if he is already in the role.”
“No, he is just one of her hired hands, Jenna. Though you can say he’s family, but he isn’t really. He married into it. Besides, he would volunteer to help her just to hurt me. But she has contacts all over the place. We can’t rule out another partner if it’s not Gail Wells. Remember who we are dealing with here. She learned from the best of the worst and a true master criminal, Roget.
“I’d feel better if we knew where Gail was. How can we find out?”
Before Dan could answer, his phone pinged with a text message. After reading it, he looked up and smiled. “I know where she is, already back at work. My contact at the police department in New York just told me. But it doesn’t mean anything. She can’t afford to go off to Paris and disappear like Harper. She must go about her life until they make this big score, and she takes her cut of whatever Harper has promised her. Then she’ll disappear.”
“So now we wait. Again. I hate waiting.”
“I can think of some things we can do while waiting.”
Jenna pointed towards the grill. “For now, let’s have steak.”
“Oh, the steaks!” Dan ran out to the grill, flipped them, and gave Jenna a thumbs-up.
Apparently, he saved the steaks.
They spent the next few days sailing, walking, talking, and repairing their relationship the best they could. Though they had not spent a lot of time verbalizing it, they both realized they belonged together.
At least, Jenna was hoping Dan felt the same. She thought they each seemed to be processing how they might merge together as a couple. No matter the challenges, she thought they both were finally on the same page.
Jenna refused to entertain the idea this could all blow up in their faces and they could get caught with stolen jewels and go to jail. She told herself all the jewels they had stolen years before were taken from a thief. They returned what they could to Roget’s victims…though they were forced to do it anonymously. The process was much too complicated to explain to anyone. The insurance company took care of those Roget and his team had ripped off, so Dan had sold what they couldn’t return. The money currently remained in four bank accounts in Switzerland, in both their made-up names that matched their fake passports.
They both had some guilt about all the money sitting in the banks earning interest, but neither wanted to make the insurance companies any richer. They knew if they gave the money back, they would likely end up in prison. It would take a lot to explain that the jewels they took, and later sold, were stolen property taken back from a criminal. And this particular criminal had caused both their parents extreme pain, and even death for Dan’s dad. The idea was to give it all away some day to some worthy causes. So far, neither touched the money. They didn’t need it since they both inherited from their fathers. The history of the money, the memories attached to it, made them try to ignore it. Even though they knew they must deal with it someday, neither seemed ready for it to be the day just yet.
Every now and then, Jenna thought about the money sitting there, growing, and wondered what she should do with it, but so far, nothing tempted her. She knew Dan did the same because he had said so. Somehow, she still thought of it as her father’s money and his father’s money. But she knew no one else would see it that way, and to leave it in the bank was a ticking time bomb. So, she was trying to decide how to give it away. Something else for them to work out—the sooner, the better.
The day finally came she was dreading, the day before the final party, and before the senator and Mrs. Roseland hit the campaign trail. With only minor hesitation from the couple, she and Dan managed an invitation, thanks to Kerri. They had promised to stay low profile and stay out of the way of the police and FBI agents who would also be there.
Dan’s friend in the local police department asked the FBI to send in two agents to guard the necklace or rather to catch the thief in the act. The senator’s security was not trained for such things, so he was in complete support of all the efforts.
To Dan’s surprise, the local police department was cooperative. They were as anxious as anyone to nail this now-infamous thief, who was making them look bad in their own backyard.
The party was for an elite fifty guests, with Dan and Jenna making fifty-two. This time, taking no chances, the senator agreed for it to be held in one of a downtown hotel’s ballrooms. This was a last-minute change on the advice of the FBI, due to the cameras stationed everywhere.
When they arrived, Dan and Jenna staked out a place near the entrance so they could see everyone coming and going through the main doors.
As the clock ticked on, and Harper or Gail failed to turn up, Jenna began to think Dan had this all wrong. Anxiety mixed with exhaustion washed over her. She was ready to go home and leave it to the real professionals, and she turned to Dan to say so, when she saw Harper.
She wore a short black wig with silver streaks running through it, a conservative black dress, and was wearing large, round, black-framed glasses—and she was on the arm of an elderly gentleman.
“Dan, look.” Jenna pointed discretely toward Harper and her date. “So now we know how she got her invitation, she has hooked onto some poor soul with no clue about who she really is. He looks familiar.”
“That’s the former mayor, Arthur Mason, I think. He just published a. book last year. He must be eighty now.”
Jenna couldn’t help but stare. “Wonder how she got hooked up with him?”
“Something we can ask him later maybe.” Dan said, as he kept his gaze on Harper as she and her date walked directly toward Marta Roseland. “Okay, show time. Be right back. Stay put.”
Jenna watched Dan go over to the bar, where he was immediately joined by a tall, black man who stood beside him.
They said a few words, then Dan returned with two drinks.
“What was that about with the guy at the bar?” Jenna asked.
“I told him who his target was, the real thief, and what she looked like today in her disguise.”
Jenna smiled. “You missed your calling. You should have been FBI or CIA. Maybe you should re-join New York’s finest.”
Dan shook his head. “No, they all work too hard for too little. Besides, I don’t think New York City Police Department would think I’m so fine anymore.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I could be a reference. Oh, no, Dan, look, there she goes trailing right behind Marta down the hallway! She’s headed toward the restroom. Where is Marta’s protection?
Before she and Dan could follow Marta Roseland, everything happened at once. Harper came rushing out of the ladies’ room and ran out through the emergency exit leading to the alley.
“Look, it’s the FBI.” Dan pointed to a tall man running hard out of the meeting room and into the main lobby of the hotel.
The agent Dan met earlier came over and was clearly agitated. “We have an agent with Mrs. Roseland now.”
The senator approached. “Hey, what’s going on?” The senator barely spoke the question before Mrs. Roseland and the FBI agent who found her in the ladies room came over.
Jenna could see Marta Roseland was beyond stress—she was furious. Her eyes blazed, and her fists clenched.
Marta looked at Jenna and then her husband. “My necklace—my necklace. She got it. That bitch really got it. She followed me into the bathroom.”
Then things went into warp speed, and it all happened in seconds.
Jenna ran to the front of the hotel and looked out the glass doors.
An FBI agent caught up with Harper outside.
But she didn’t have the necklace on her as far as Jenna could tell, and she was very upset about being stopped.
She was putting on a big show, slapping at the agent’s hands as he searched her, and then she broke into tears and sat on the sidewalk, head in hands.
Dan and the Roselands followed Jenna to the front of the hotel.
“You missed Harper’s big performance. As best I can tell, they found nothing,” Jenna put a hand on Marta’s. “I couldn’t hear all that was being said, and the FBI won’t let us in the area, but it was an Oscar-winning performance out there. Look, they found Gail, and she seems to be putting on her own show and resisting being searched. Does it mean she has handed it off? What the hell?”
“Why are they not searching her? They will not get away with this again,” Dan said.
“She’s stalling but it can’t last long. They will search her when they get through the legal stuff.” The senator put an arm around his wife. “Don’t worry, they will.”
“Surely, they handed it off somehow, if she doesn’t have it,” Jenna turned to say, but Dan was gone. Then she looked back outside and saw him going for Gail.
He pinned her on the ground in the parking lot and reached into her pocket, pulling out the necklace and holding it up.
And then, everything went quiet, and it was over—just like that. Dan handed Gail over to the FBI agent who took the necklace and then cuffed her. The other agent handcuffed Harper and put her in the backseat of his unmarked car.
Dan was all smiles as he joined Jenna and the Roselands. “Well, I had no legal barriers to searching her, did I?”