Chapter One
“Hey, sis, I’m at the boat. Hate to have to burden you with this, but, uh…
I’m in trouble.” There was a pause. “I’ve done some things and tried to rectify them.
Not sure if I can get through this in one piece.
Talk to Landon.” A deep sigh. “If it doesn’t work out, just know that I’m sorry. Love you, sis.”
The phone went dead.
Raquelle Jernigan’s heart skipped a beat. She listened to the cryptic voicemail message from her brother, Eddie, again as she hurriedly walked across the parking lot of Braedon College in Joyllis Hills, South Carolina, where she was an associate theater professor with the fall semester underway.
What have you done, Eddie? Raquelle asked herself worriedly while trying to call him back, only to have it go straight to his voicemail.
She knew that he hadn’t always walked the straight and narrow in his life’s choices.
Usually, though, it was fixable and otherwise had solutions that kept him out of jail.
But this time it sounded serious.
Almost a life-and-death issue.
And what did Landon have to do with it?
Raquelle frowned at the thought that her ex-husband, Landon Briscoe, who was a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and her brother were involved in some way. Behind her back apparently.
Now Eddie was frightened enough to leave her a message that almost sounded like a goodbye. The notion unnerved Raquelle, given that he was her only sibling and their parents had passed away.
She reached her blue Infiniti Q50 sedan and got inside, taking the moment she needed to collect her thoughts.
She ran thin fingers through thick black hair that fell below her shoulders and was parted in the middle.
The color and richness had been inherited from both parents, who, like her and Eddie, were members of the Catawba Nation, a federally recognized Indian tribe in the state of South Carolina.
They had also passed on to their children their tall, lean frames and strong jawlines.
Not to mention a streak of stubbornness and reluctance toward giving up their independence.
Raquelle started the car and drove off. She trained her brown eyes on the road as she headed to Knotter Marina, on nearby Lake Owenne in Falona County, where Eddie kept his boat.
Her thoughts turned to Landon. They had met at the University of South Carolina in Columbia when she was working on her doctor of musical arts, after getting bachelor’s and master’s degrees of fine arts in theater from the Department of Theatre and Dance.
At the time, he had been pursuing his own graduate degree.
They hit it off right away, and things seemed to move full steam ahead from that point.
Upon graduating, they tied the knot, believing that love would resolve any differences they had, no matter how subtle or large.
But the hurdles—namely, their differing career objectives and decision to hold off having children—proved to be too much to overcome.
After nearly seven years of marriage, they decided to go their separate ways.
Raquelle drew a deep sigh. The divorce was finalized four years ago but almost seemed like yesterday, with the pain from a failed marriage still resonating, even against her best wishes.
She had legally ditched his Briscoe and reclaimed her maiden name, Jernigan, in trying to move on as best as possible.
Since then, she and Landon had barely spoken, in spite of ending things on a relatively congenial note. It was as though neither of them wanted to bridge the gap for fear of reopening the old wounds that lingered.
She sometimes wondered if they had made a mistake in ending the marriage instead of going to counseling. Or otherwise putting forth a greater effort to overcome their differences.
No sense in second-guessing now, Raquelle told herself in practical terms. Things were what they were. That included being single at the age of thirty-four. Though she had dated every now and then, no one seemed to interest her the way Landon had once upon a time. How sad was that?
Especially since she had heard through the grapevine that he appeared to have no problem putting himself back out there again. No doubt that women would find him just as irresistible as she once had.
But none of that told her what business he had with her brother.
And if that had in any way led to Eddie’s present quandary.
She tried to get him on the phone again, but he wouldn’t—or couldn’t—pick up.
She thought about taking her brother’s advice and calling Landon for an explanation, but she stubbornly clung to preferring to speak to Eddie face-to-face for the scoop.
Pushing back her sense of dread, Raquelle pressed down on the accelerator, while staying within the speed limit as the marina came into view. She turned onto Knotter Marina Drive and pulled into the marina lot, where she found a spot to park.
As she walked across the dock, wearing a new pair of gray wide-leg pants to go with a multicolored split-neck top and flats, Raquelle gazed out at the lake dotted with boats, making for a pretty picture.
She barely noticed the tall male who was moving briskly past the marina general store near the end of the dock—other than that he was wearing dark jeans and a blue hooded sweatshirt with the hood over his head and sneakers.
She turned her attention to the various boats of different sizes lining the dock, each undoubtedly carrying an interesting story about the owners and those otherwise occupying the vessels.
The same was certainly true for Eddie and his boat.
As she came close to it, Raquelle strained her eyes to see if she could see her brother aboard.
She thought that she spotted some movement. Or maybe not.
“Eddie,” she called out to alert him of her presence when she was a couple of boats away. “Are you there?”
Getting no response, Raquelle got to within one boat of her brother’s when suddenly his Crest Savannah 250 SLSC exploded and burst into flames before her very horrified eyes.
She screamed in utter shock. For a long moment she was frozen, as if stuck in quicksand.
But when this passed, she somehow felt compelled to try and go onto the boat to rescue Eddie, even at risk to her own safety.
Just as she headed in that direction, her pulse skipping a beat, Raquelle felt strong hands holding her back from behind. She looked over her shoulder and into the chiseled heart-shaped face of her ex-husband.
Below black hair in an attractive crew cut, his stone-gray eyes peered at her as he said resignedly, “There’s nothing you can do to save him.”
In spite of hearing his voice of reason, Raquelle furrowed her brow defiantly, as the enormity of the moment that her brother had been burned alive hit her like a ton of bricks.
Beyond that, the fact that Landon happened to be at the scene without her phoning him left her all the more disturbed, in light of Eddie’s implication that her ex was instrumental in the circumstances that led to the inferno they were both witnessing like a horror film that was all too real.
And much scarier than Raquelle wished to contemplate.
* * *
Two Hours Earlier
Columbia, South Carolina
FBI SPECIAL AGENT LANDON brISCOE felt the adrenaline rush as he and another agent from the Bureau’s Art Crime Team were about to execute a search warrant on Choi’s Art Gallery on Main Street in the central business district of downtown Columbia.
It was the culmination of a six-month investigation into the theft and illegal trafficking of expensive Asian art by a gallery owner, Nicholas Choi, and his associate, art dealer Sheila Hanee.
First reported by law enforcement to the National Stolen Art File, or NSAF, the FBI’s database of stolen art and cultural property, the missing art belonged to the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of Asian Art.
And will soon be returned to its rightful owner, Landon told himself, feeling confident.
At thirty-six, he stood tall at six-three—much of his body muscular beneath the FBI blue vest and professional clothing.
He lived for moments like this, ever since joining the Bureau’s Criminal Investigative Division’s Transnational Organized Crime unit three years ago and taking on TOC operations involved in art-related crimes.
The work had him moving between field offices in Charlotte, North Carolina; Las Vegas, Nevada; and his current location, the FBI Columbia field office based in Lexington County, in Lexington, South Carolina.
Prior to that, he’d spent more than six years dividing his time between the Bureau’s Environmental Crime and White-Collar Crime programs.
Landon had attended the University of South Carolina, where he majored in criminology and criminal justice at the College of Arts and Sciences and came away with a BA, MA and PhD.
Not to mention a wife—until she wasn’t one a few years later.
Just the opposite of his own mother, who had recently become a newlywed after being on her own for years, ever since his father’s unexpected death from a cardiac arrest.
Landon returned to the moment at hand as he regarded Special Agent Katie Kitagawa.
Katie was nearly thirty and slim, with a brunette flipped-out bob and wore round glasses over hazel eyes.
“You ready to do this, Kita?” he asked, using the nickname she had been given by others in the Bureau as a short to Kitagawa and play on Katie, which she had eventually warmed up to.
He already had the answer to the question, knowing full well that she was always prepared to slap the cuffs on any deserving suspect once they had the goods to work with.
“Absolutely.” Katie flashed her teeth. “Let’s put Choi and Hanee out of business before they can sell any more stolen paintings!”