Then You Hide (20 page)

“She’s here, Miranda,” Wade said.

Miranda looked at Fletch, emotions colliding over her pretty face. “Can I talk to her?”

Silence.

“Well, she’s kind of busy at the moment,” Wade finally said. “This isn’t a good time.”

Miranda nodded as though she couldn’t quite speak, then said, “It’s fine. I understand.”

“Wade, once you find Vanessa’s friend,” Lucy said, “I can have a plane there in a matter of hours. There’s a small airport in Nevis at the northern section of the island. The town is Newcastle.”

Silence again, then, “Uh, yeah. Just a second.” After another pause, Wade lowered his voice. “Listen, we’re not getting on that plane until we know where Clive Easterbrook is and know that he’s safe. This little gimme is a lot more complicated than you thought, Luce.”

“I understand that, Wade. And you’d be doing the NYPD a big favor by finding him, too.”

“How’s that?” Wade asked.

“The Charlie French murder investigation is in full swing,” Lucy said, opening another file in front of her. “I checked into it after we talked. Even though the official statement is that it appeared to be random violence and they’re doing hard forensic investigation of her apartment, evidently some clues have them focused on an ex-boyfriend who has an airtight alibi. They’re spreading out to people at her gym and work, including Clive Easterbrook, who is on an extended vacation out of the country.”

“He’s hiding from someone or something, I have no doubt of that,” Wade said. “When we find him, I hope we’ll know what it is.”

“Oh, and Wade,” Lucy added, pulling out the business section of that morning’s
New York Times
. “Didn’t you say you were staying in Nicholas Vex’s house?”

“Not anymore. He showed up and kicked our butts to the curb. Why?”

“He’s there? In Nevis? Interesting time for a vacation.” Lucy turned the newspaper so the others at the table could see the headline. “The EPA filed a complaint yesterday charging Vexell with withholding evidence of its own health and environmental concerns about a chemical used in some of its products.”

“The EPA?” Wade sounded stunned.

“That’s who would investigate charges like this,” Lucy said. “The impact on Vexell’s stock probably cost Mr. Vex a few billion by the close of the stock market yesterday. Not to mention he’s in boiling-hot water with the press and every major customer he’s got. I can’t believe he’d leave his company at a time like this.”

“Can you find out who at the EPA is working on the complaint?” Wade asked.

Lucy frowned. “Probably. Why?”

“Remember I mentioned Russell Winslow to you? His car went over a cliff here a while ago? He worked for the EPA. It’s an interesting coincidence.”

Jack raised his eyebrow at Lucy and whispered, “And we all know how you feel about coincidences.”

When they finished up the call, Lucy excused herself, heading into her office. Dan stood at the front window, looking outside.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you angry,” she said.

He didn’t turn. “You’ve never seen me a lot of things, Luce. You’ve never seen me, say, working somewhere else.”

She walked closer. “Is that a threat?”

When he finally turned, she froze, hit by the force of the hatred in his eyes. “I can’t stay here if you bring him back.”

“I’m not bringing him back, Dan. He’s deeply involved in this case and has been from the start. We can solve it and close it faster with him, that’s all. He’s not even consulting.”

“Are you paying him?”

“I’m giving him resources to find the third sister.” She sat behind her desk. “Not that it’s any of your business. This is my company, Dan.”

He shuttered his lids and strolled over to the settee, propping his size twelves up on a table he knew she’d paid twenty-seven thousand dollars for at a Sotheby’s auction last year. He’d been with her.

The move was a big
screw you
, and it hurt.

“Dan, I’m working with him for one project. I’m not forgetting the fact that he lied about the extent of his injuries and let a bullet from his gun hit you. He’s never going to work for me again. We’re going to find that third girl. And if anyone other than the accused is behind the murder, I’d like to find that out, too—on principle.”

“That could take a while,” he said, a heavy dose of sarcasm in his voice. “Might mean you and Jack Culver working all tight together.
Again
.”

She kept her composure. “You are out of line.”

“Not denying it, I see.”

She pointed a finger at him. “Totally out of line.”

“Chill, Luce. So you’ve got a weakness for a certain someone, and you give in to it once in a while. That makes you human. Might even put to rest those Bullet Catchers rumors that you’re not.” He stood and smiled that crooked grin of his, but it didn’t light his eyes. “I’ve wondered myself, occasionally.”

She just stared at him as the door to the war room popped open. She didn’t have to turn to see who it was, because there was instantly less oxygen in the room.

“I’m all set here, Luce,” Jack said. “Sage was able to give me some excellent leads. I’ll be in touch.”

“All right,” Lucy said. “And Dan will work the arson angle with the Charleston P.D.”

Jack didn’t look pleased, but nodded to Dan. “I’ll show myself out.”

“I’ll come with you,” Dan said, looking at Lucy. “As it turns out, I can’t stay today.”

Lucy sat very still for a few minutes after they were gone, staring at her desk, her antiques, her library. All perfect. Elegant. Structured. Orderly. Controlled right down to the last molecule in her world.

Weaknesses threatened that control. Was Dan right? Was she “giving in to a weakness” for Jack? She despised weakness in her company, in her life, and in herself.

She threaded her fingers through the streak of white hair, a constant reminder of the price she’d paid for losing control. She’d never make that mistake again. Ever.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

WADE PEERED THROUGH
the deluge obscuring the windshield. Parked two miles above EdenBrownBay on the easternmost side of Nevis, all he could see was a muddy road toward the beach, almost obliterated by the rain forest. The boxy Honda Element was sturdy, but it would take a bulldozer to get through there.

He turned to Vanessa. “We’re not going down there—”

“What?” Vanessa hit the dashboard in frustration. “We’ve come this far. We have a satellite image that shows us his location to within a quarter-mile, and you’re going to let a little rain and mud stop us?”

“—in this
car,
” he finished, shaking his head in disbelief. “Do you honestly think I would even suggest not going in? We go on foot. Unless you want to wait here, and I go down alone.”

Behind the glasses she didn’t need but insisted on wearing, her eyes narrowed. “Like that’s gonna happen.”

“Okay, then. It isn’t going to be easy,” he warned. “Especially dressed like that.” He dipped his finger into the strap of her maroon tank top, and even just that millisecond of contact with her skin warmed him.

“It wasn’t raining when we left,” she said. “And I wore sneakers.”

And cutoff jeans so short he could see that inner thigh muscle he’d gotten so friendly with a few hours ago. “Yeah, you’re dressed for boot camp, all right,” he teased, then looked at the soupy sky. “This storm came out of nowhere fast, and it could clear just as quickly.”

“I’m not waiting.”

He laughed softly. “They’ll chisel that on your gravestone, you know that?”

She grabbed the door handle. “On that lovely thought, let’s go.”

“Hang on a sec.” He turned her face to him and slid her glasses off, folding them neatly on the console. “They’ll just make it harder for you to see in the rain.”

“Thank you.” She threw the door open, and he did the same, getting instantly soaked in the downpour.

He locked the car and jogged around the back, coming up behind her so he could talk into her ear over the deafening pounding of the rain.

“You follow me when we’re going downhill; you go first when we’re uphill. Anything else, we stay side-by-side.”

She gave him a salute, and they started off.

The first quarter-mile was pretty easy, a flat, muddy, narrow path with some rocks and roots hidden in the muck. They reached a small incline, slid down, and followed the path under a canopy of thick trees, protecting them from most of the rain. The air was steamy in the darkened tunnel, and staying very close to each other seemed the most natural thing in the world.

“How the hell does someone find a place like this?” she wondered. “And why?”

Wade held some palm fronds back for her so the sharp blades wouldn’t slice her skin. “To hide.”

“Do you think…” She wiped some water from her face and looked up at him. “This firm you work for…do you think they can help him out of whatever trouble he’s in?”

“Maybe. I’m not a full-time employee, just a consultant. Couldn’t say how Lucy’d handle that. She could probably help, but her price is steep.” He shrugged and remembered the income reported in Vanessa’s file. “You could probably afford it, though.”

“Why are you just a consultant?”

He laughed. “That’s what Lucy wants to know. I’m sure you’ll be amused to hear that this assignment was a ‘gift’ to sway me to sign a full-time contract. A cushy job in the Caribbean on the tail of a pretty blonde on vacation.” He snorted. “Some gift.”

She gave him a friendly elbow to the ribs. “Some vacation. Seriously, tell your boss I’m sorry I made it more difficult for you. But when we find Clive, maybe…”

“You can try. She’s as good a negotiator as you are, and she wants something from you, Vanessa.”

“Yeah, I know. Marrow.” She waved her hand, the way she always did when she hated a subject and wanted it changed. “Why don’t you want to work full-time for her?”

“I’m considering it. Looking at all my options. I’ve been thinking I’d like to do something that didn’t involve bullets.”

She nodded, understanding. “Do you want to go back to…what
is
south of Alabama, anyway?”

“Ebro, Florida. I like to visit my family, but no, I’m not going back there. In the meantime, I don’t actually have a job.”

“After what happened to Vexell stock yesterday and our little run-in with the CEO last night, I might not, either. We can go on unemployment together.”

“This news is huge for your company.”

“God, yes. That stock is in every hedge fund and portfolio we manage.” She shook her head. “No wonder Nicholas Vex was a total bastard when he found us at his house. He’d just lost a billion dollars. More. God, I wish I could reach Marcus.” She shot him a dark look. “And I’m sorry, but your sources are wrong. That number you got from New York is not Marcus’s cell phone, because he would no sooner disconnect his phone than he’d cut his arm off.”

“It’s the right number. Lucy’s team doesn’t make mistakes like that.”

“They did this time. I just wish to hell I had my phone. And what if Clive tries to call me? He’ll get Vex, a pissed-off client. Former client, maybe.” She wiped some wet strands from her face. “What a freaking mess.”

“Don’t you think it’s funny that of all places on earth, Nicholas Vex would show up here?” he asked.

“Not funny to me.”

“Just a few days after someone who used to work for the EPA was killed in a hit-and-run?”

She slowed at the implication. “I actually thought of that when you told me about the stock tumble.”

“What about Charlie French?”

Vanessa stopped completely. “What about her?”

“You said she did a lot of deals with Vexell.”

Water drizzled down her cheeks, but she didn’t bother to try to wipe it away. “You think her murder is related to this, don’t you?”

“I think it’s possible.”

She gave him a little push. “Come on. We can’t waste a minute.”

He broke through another deep thicket of branches, and they pushed through the last of the overgrowth, just to find that the road abruptly ended at a cliff, with a mile-wide vista of treetops that spread all the way to a deserted beach.

“Looks like mother nature is stopping us,” he said.

“Shit.” She kicked at mud and surveyed the view. “But we know the signal came from somewhere in this quarter-square-mile area.”

“And I don’t know how he’d leave, unless he has a helo or a boat.” Wade walked a few steps away, testing the wet soil of the cliff. “Let’s keep going this way. There isn’t a path, but we could probably slosh our way down there. You might end up on your butt, though.”

“Then I’ll start that way.” She lowered herself to the ground, steadied her hands, and rode down the mud hill in a controlled slide, pulling an impressed smile from him.

He made it down on foot, and they went on, silent again because of the pouring rain, until they were fifty yards from the beach. Even with the rain, they could hear the surf and smell the salt.

Wade spotted a small stone structure with a thatched roof tucked into the trees. “There it is.”

She followed his gaze. It took a few seconds for an untrained eye, but she found it, too. “Let’s go.”

“No.” He snagged her arm before she got three steps.

“Okay, okay. I know,” she said, ready to bolt like a racehorse at the gate. “You want to make a plan. So make it. Fast.”

“You have no idea what you’re walking into, what his state of mind is, if he’s there alone, or if he’s armed.”

“Armed? Clive?” She shook her head. “Even if he was holed up with an Uzi, he wouldn’t hurt me, Wade.”

She knew nothing of what desperation could do to people. “You stay back here until I’ve cased the house and determined if he’s there. After I come back, you can call out a warning to him. Got it?”

She nodded, and he inched her back into the deepest cover he could find. “Don’t move, Vanessa. I mean it.”

“I promise. Just come right back, no matter what you find.”

“I promise.”

He jogged soundlessly to the house, drawing his weapon as he came around the back, where an empty cot sat on a stone patio, a table next to it with an ashtray loaded with soaked brown cigar butts. He quietly rounded the side of the structure, glancing into a window to see a single room with a kitchenette in the corner, a sofa in the middle, and a simple wooden table with chairs.

In the front, the door was ajar.

He held his weapon with two hands at the ready and called, “Hello?”

Silence.

He shouldered the door open, getting a whiff of stale air. The room was dim, shadowed, and messy. There were dishes in the sink, clothes on the floor, and a can of mosquito repellent on the counter on top of a small piece of paper.

Wade moved toward it, sensing that no one was there, but still alert while he read the note.

Gideon—

I know this is going to make things worse, but it has to be done. I can’t let what happened to Charlie happen again.

And if they kill me first, don’t let V. get away.

Clive

He heard a distant thumping, and he spun around, ready to fire.

“Wade!” Vanessa came flying around the front, her face bright. “A helicopter! It just took off about a mile from here, not far from where we left the car. I heard it, and I saw it. Was it Clive? Is he gone?”

He held the note out to her.

She seized the paper, read it, then flipped it over to see a much lighter pencil had been at work on that side. “Oh, my God.”

She held it up for him to see a stick figure hanging from a hangman’s noose. One word, capital letters, each underlined.

V-A-N-E-S-S-A

“So the V is for Vanessa?” She turned it over again. “That’s who he doesn’t want to get away?”

“There’s one other V,” Wade said, pulling her out of the hut. “Vex.”

Vanessa put her heart and soul into digging through mud, clawing around trees, and fighting her way to the Honda as fast as possible.

Neither said a word as they heaved their way up the cliff, retraced their steps, and made it back to where they’d parked. Her lungs were aching, her legs were shaking, and her head was ready to explode.

Soaked and muddy, she slithered into the car and pressed her hands against her chest to stem the pain in her lungs. Wade threw himself behind the driver’s seat, stabbed the key into the ignition, and tore the hell out of there.

He really could be fast when he wanted to, and as soon as she could talk again, she’d thank him. As her heart rate slowed, all she could think of was Clive. And Russell Winslow. And Charlie French. And Nicholas Vex.

She looked at the waterlogged note to Gideon Bones more closely.

“Look at this paper.” She lifted it up. “It’s the very same notebook paper someone used to send me here in the first place.”

“Are you sure that’s Clive’s handwriting?”

“Absolutely. Both sides.”

She dove for her tote bag, finding the note she’d been given in the bathroom hallway at the Ballahoo, and held them side-by-side. “Look at this. Not the same writing but definitely from the same notebook.”

Wade stayed focused on the road. “Either Clive sent you the note that said he was in Nevis to throw you off, or whoever owns that notebook was there in the house and is up in that chopper with him.”

She read the note to Gideon again. “I can’t believe he’s involved with that big, creepy guy.”

“That’ll be our next stop,” he said. “Right after we talk to Nicholas Vex.”

“We can make the afternoon ferry back to St. Kitts,” she said, closing her eyes as exhaustion hit hard. “I don’t know where else to go.”

“How about to the police?”

Well, yeah. There was that. Her eyes popped open. “I just remembered something: Clive had lunch with Russell Winslow the day Charlie was murdered. I remember because he invited me along, saying he might want moral support since it was the first time they’d seen each other since they split up.”

“How’d that lunch go?”

“I never heard. He had a meeting with Marcus right afterward. I don’t know what it was about, but I remember calling his office to hear about his lunch, and his assistant said he’d gone to see Marcus.” She tried to recall exactly what had happened that afternoon. “I had a meeting with a client. Made some calls. Watched the closing bell, worked out, and went home. I never saw him again that day.”

“Was that unusual? Not to see him all afternoon?”

“No, we were crazy busy with client meetings and shareholder conference calls. And the next day, the entire office was only talking about one thing: Charlie French. Except I never talked to Clive about it—not alone. We saw each other in the hall, and there were lots of people around, all kinds of tears and hugging and disbelief and speculation. Rumors were rampant. The police talked to some of the people who worked closely with her.”

“Clive?”

“He never said if they’d talked to him. And he left two days later. If they wanted to talk to him, he couldn’t leave, right?”

He just shrugged. “If he wasn’t a suspect and wanted to get the heck out of Dodge, he might. Where was he the night Charlie was murdered?”

She closed her eyes. “I don’t know. The next day, he was right there with everyone as the news went around the office. He seemed as upset as everyone else, but we never sat down and had a heart-to-heart about it. He called me that night and told me he’d booked a cruise.”

“And you didn’t think that timing was odd?”

“I thought taking a vacation was odd,” she said. “We had this running bet over who could go the longest without taking a vacation. So when he told me, I was surprised—but not stunned, with all that was going on. He avoids conflict and controversy, because it can send him spiraling into depression.”

“So you just figured he was warding off the blues.”

She nodded. “He doesn’t get the blues. He gets positively black.”

“So you never talked to him about Charlie? Or his lunch with Russell?”

“You know, I didn’t. I never had a chance, because we just talked about the cruise. I did suggest he push it back a week so he could come to Charlie’s service, but he said he couldn’t get on another one for the rest of the summer because that clipper-ship cruise was so exclusive and hard to book.”