Secrets Of Bella Terra (15 page)

“And you let her take responsibility?” That was what stuck in Rafe’s craw.

“It was what she wanted.”

“Because you owed her?”

“Hey. At least I paid her back.” DuPey leveled an accusatory stare at Rafe. “Which is more than I can say for some people.”

Rafe watched him get in his police cruiser and drive away, and wondered whether Brooke had told DuPey all that had happened between the two of them. But no, he knew she hadn’t; whatever DuPey knew, or thought he knew, was gossip and speculation. Damned good speculation; like Rafe, DuPey was good at reading body language. He knew guilt when he saw it, and Rafe was guilty about the way he’d treated Brooke. But she was better off without him. Wasn’t she?

Wasn’t she?

S
ometimes it was easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission.

Better still if I don’t get caught.

The resort’s security room was at the end of a hall behind an anonymous door on the main floor of the main building. The lock was a good one, electronic and expertly installed, but Rafe had the gizmo to sneak through the program undetected. In less than five seconds, he was inside.

The door shut behind him with a satisfyingly solid sound. Good: It was soundproofed.

This security room was really more of a walk-in closet, five by eight, with a pressed-concrete floor. An old table retrieved from a guest room held the computer, converted from some other use to act as the server. Cables snaked from the plug-ins to the back of the computer, to the monitor, to the keyboard and mouse.

Rafe seated himself in the stained office chair, pulled his laptop and cable out of his briefcase. Following the written instructions from his own personal hacker, he plugged his laptop into the security server, typed in Darren’s access code, and when Darren’s youthful, pimply face popped up on the screen, he said, “You’re connected.”

Darren glanced at Rafe, did a double take, and stared. “Man, what did you do to yourself?” Darren’s voice echoed in the bare room.

“Shh!”

Darren paid no attention. “You look like you went nine rounds with a grizzly bear. Man.” He grinned. “I thought you were the hawt king of self-defense.”

Rafe gritted his teeth. This was the trouble with hiring a seventeen-year-old. He had no sense of what was appropriate, and no volume control. “I went out last night and had some fun.” Rafe refrained from touching his swollen ear, his split lip. “Can you access the program without a password?”

“Wow. Your idea of fun doesn’t mesh with mine.” Darren was typing while he talked. “And sure. I’ll get through the firewall. It’s not like this server is highly protected, like a financial computer or something. It’s more on the level of the U.S. government. What did your grandmother say about your bruises?”

Rafe started to ask how Darren knew he’d been to visit his grandmother, then decided against it. When the kid got interested, he knew everything, and the newly uncovered concept that his loner boss had a personal life seemed to fascinate him.

“My grandmother looked at me and laughed.”

“Really? So Nonna is cool?”

“She’s very cool. She made us—my brothers and me—have a picture taken with her, because she said that way everyone would have to believe she’d been in a bar fight. Although perhaps she was subtly saying we were stupid to go looking for the kind of injury that put her in the hospital. . . .” Come to think of it, that was exactly what she was saying. “Her doctor came in about then and we had to leave.” So whatever she had wanted to tell him and his brothers had had to be postponed. Too bad, because Nonna clearly thought they needed to know, but she’d waved them away and told them it was old news and could wait one more day. “About that password—if you want, I can guess a few things Noah might have used. His birthday, his dog’s name, the usual.”

“No, no big deal. I’m in.”

The kid was a genius. Geeky and literally living in his parents’ basement, but definitely a genius.

“Downloading.” Darren grinned. “Your brother bought this program from a vendor who customized it for the hotel. Want to have some fun? We could have every occupied guest room call for
K-Y
jelly right now.”

“It’s my family’s resort. I own some portion of it. So no.” But an amusing idea. “Just download the program, put me on as an administrator, and add it to my hard drive.”

Darren sighed. “You old guys are so boring.”

“I know. Sucks to be you.” Rafe thought it sucked to be an old guy, too. This morning when he got up (late), he had discovered his hip had a bruise on it so deep and painful, a mountain of ice wouldn’t have helped. Vaguely he remembered being thrown into the corner of one of the Beaver Inn’s fine tables; at the time he hadn’t noticed. Now . . . he noticed.

“So are you going back to the hospital after they move your grandmother into rehab?”

“How do you . . . ? Been hacking into hospital records?”

“I thought you’d like to stay on top of stuff.”

“They’re moving Nonna into rehab?” Good to know.

“Because of the concussion, they don’t want her on her feet unless she’s supported. But because of her broken arm, she can’t use a walker unless she has training.” As he talked, Darren never stopped typing.

“Haven’t you heard? We’re hiring a nurse.”

Darren ignored the sarcasm, or maybe he heard it so often he didn’t notice. “Apparently the doc has been a friend of your family for a long time, and he says Nonna’s going to hate having someone wait on her and she’ll try to get up on her own and fall, and maybe break her other arm or a hip. So they need to train her to take care of herself,
ASAP
. Plus they’re going to make sure Bao and this new nurse are trained, too.”

“Hm.” Rafe tapped his fingers on the desk, leaned back in the stained desk chair—and discovered one wheel had a glitch. He caught himself before he fell backward, muttered, “Noah, you cheap bastard,” righted himself, and said, “Darren, when you get done, would you run a profile for me?”

“Sure. On who?”

“The new nurse. Olivia somebody.”

“Olivia Kelly. I did. Good nurse. No complaints. No criminal record. Want me to dig deeper?”

“No.” Because he really was becoming a suspicious bastard. “That’s all I wanted to know.”

Once Darren had downloaded the security program to Rafe’s computer, Rafe would be able to study the resort’s layout, view the videos, and check for any anomalies. Because in his experience, common criminals weren’t any too smart, and if Nonna’s attacker was on-site, Rafe intended to pick him out of the crowd. And punish him in ways DuPey would never approve.

“Man, you look grim.” Darren had stopped typing and was staring at Rafe in fascination. “I’d hate to get on your bad side.”

“Then hurry up,” Rafe told him.

Darren went back to work.

Rafe checked his cell.

Still nothing from Kyrgyzstan.

He wanted a progress report, damn it. This silence was ominous, and there were only a few reasons for it.

The satellite transmitters were down.

His men were fleeing with the helicopter pilot, Captain Stephanie Spence, and were afraid to give up their position.

Or they were all dead.

Rafe pinched the bridge of his nose—and winced.

Yeah, Primo had landed a few punches there, too.

Out of habit, he checked the desk drawer for any kind of information: passwords scribbled on a sticky note were not out of the ordinary.

Nothing, not even a Gideon Bible.

He looked under the desk, but under there it was merely cables and tape. He ran his fingers behind the computer—

And behind him, the soundproofed door opened.

D
amn. Noah had caught him.

Rafe swung around in the chair and met not Noah’s gaze, but that girl’s. The blonde. With the tits. The one he’d gone to high school with. And groped in the library. Gemma. No, Gloria. No . . . Jenna.

Yeah. Jenna. Jenna Campbell. That was her name.

“Whoa.”

Rafe heard Darren’s heedless, whispered exclamation, and rolled the chair in front of his computer to block Jenna’s view of the gawking teenage geek. With a push of the key, Rafe muted the speakers and took Darren off the screen.

“Hi!” She recovered fast, and smiled her cheerleader smile. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“No?” He lifted his eyebrows. Had she seen him breaking in and followed him with the intent of seeing whether she could wrestle him to the floor?

But no. He’d been in here ten minutes. And either her surprise was real, or she was wasting herself working at a spa. She should be an actress.

So why was she here?

Jenna started chatting like a hostess with a reluctant guest. “I come in here when it gets to be too much at the spa. You know, when everyone is talking at me and nagging me for towels and two of the nail girls call in sick and . . . Oh.” She peered at him from large, guilty, fear-ridden eyes. “You won’t tell Noah I came in here, will you?”

“I don’t know.” She looked so worried he didn’t hesitate to attack and see whether she turned tail and ran. “How did you get in?”

“ ’Cause I’m the manager of the spa, I’ve got a master.” She showed him her key card.

“The master doesn’t work for that door.” He’d checked.

She looked shocked. “Mine does!”

Okay
. Picking the lock hadn’t been easy, he hadn’t heard her working it, and she had the key in her hand, so yeah, it wasn’t out of the realm of probability that her key had been programmed incorrectly.

“So, why did you come here?” he asked.

“I told you.” She fussed with her hair, then reached down and unbuttoned the third button of her golf shirt.

The webcam was still on, and Rafe could almost hear Darren groan with lust.

“They’re driving me crazy at the spa. I come in and play a little FarmVille, center myself again, and then go back into the fray.” She did that little dip like a
Let’s Make a Deal
spokesmodel.

“Really?” She was playing a game on Facebook on the computer that ran the resort’s security cameras? And no one had caught on? Ever?

Stranger things had happened, he supposed. But he was curious to see whether she accessed the Internet through some kind of glitch in their program, or if she had to work the system. He stood and rolled the chair in front of the keyboard. “Who am I to stop you?”

“So you’re not going to tell on me?” She seated herself and tugged her shirt down to display yet more cleavage.

Rafe hoped Darren’s fiery passion didn’t fry the cables.

Jenna looked up at Rafe. “What are you doing in here?”

Ah
. Her little brain had jumped through the guilt hoop and had moved on to the possibility of blackmail. “I’m checking the resort’s security program.”

“Is there something wrong with it?” She widened her eyes.

“Not that I know of. Why? Have you had any problems in the spa?”

“No . . . well, yes. Some of the girls steal the toilet paper from the storage closet. Can you make them stop?”

He rubbed the bruises on his ribs. “No. Toilet paper has a way of disappearing, and there’s nothing any security man can do about it. Now, if the girls were stealing something important, like the hot stones for the massages, I might be able to help you.”

Jenna laughed, a low, musical chime, and put her hand on his thigh. “I wish you could help me.”

“I can.” Leaning over, he pulled the keyboard closer to her. “I don’t know much about Facebook games. Do you need the mouse, too?” He dislodged her hand, walked around to the other side of her, and handed her the mouse.

She rotated her shoulders—an expensive stripper would be proud of the way those breasts swirled. Then, taking the mouse, she slowly moved it up and down on the pad.

Subtle she was not.

Taking the keyboard in her lap, she typed at an astonishing speed. Facebook flashed onto the monitor, then disappeared, then appeared again. “Oh. You make me so nervous.” She made a brokenhearted sound. “I can’t do this while you’re watching me.”

“I’m sorry. I won’t watch anymore.”

She pushed another couple of keys, then shook her head. “No, I can’t do this while you’re here. Anyway, I should go back to the spa. I’ve got an appointment with Mr. Edward Doherty. He likes me to give him his massage. He’s a boob man.” Leaning forward, she adjusted her breasts, and when she glanced up and caught Rafe watching—like he could look away—she trailed her hand down his hip and thigh. “I am awfully good on a massage table. Why don’t you make an appointment and try me out?”

He stepped back to give her room to stand. “As soon as I have a free minute, I’ll do that.”

She sauntered toward the door. Opening it, she looked back at him. “I bet you’ll make time pretty soon.”

He smiled back, and when she’d shut the door behind her, he said, “I’ll bet I won’t.”

Behind him, his computer blared, “Why not?”

Obviously, Darren could control the volume on Rafe’s laptop from his end.

“I don’t do sluts,” Rafe said. Brooke had taught him what a quality woman meant.

“Do you have every hot chick in the world after your ass?” Darren shouted. “And how do I get in on this action?”

“I guess you make an appointment for a massage.” Rafe made a note to place microphones in the massage rooms. If Jenna really was “good on the massage table,” and if word got out that the masseuses at Bella Terra resort were prostituting themselves, the resort and the spa would have a public relations nightmare unlike any since a similar scandal in the seventies.
Ugh
.

“I live in Indiana!” Darren said.

“That’s a long way to come for an easy piece of pussy.”

“Jenna? You mean Jenna? She’s not easy. Is she?” Darren sounded bewildered and hurt.

“What did you think that was all about?” Rafe looked at Darren’s crestfallen face.

Oh, no.
The kid was a virgin.

“Yes, she’s easy,” Rafe said brutally. “She’s always been easy. And she only does it with guys who have money or influence.”

Rafe could almost hear Darren’s heart breaking. “But she’s so pretty!”