The Sapphire Affair (Jewel #1)(43)

He nearly bit his tongue, holding in the whoop of both shock and triumph he was tempted to unleash as the amount registered, and he added up numbers. “That so?”

“It is indeed,” she said, her dark eyes fixed on him, as if she were studying him. “I can handle the transaction for you if you’d like. We have handled a few of these diamonds recently. Every time we receive a new one, we can easily find buyers all over the world. I can give you full value today, sir. Are you ready to get started?” she asked, sounding way more eager than he’d expected for someone forking over cash, rather than being on the receiving end. Her gaze remained locked on his, and her stare was intense.

And, admittedly, a little odd. Like she was ready to pounce on him if he said yes.

“Let me talk to my sister, and we’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Excellent. I look forward to seeing you. I’m Monica. You can ask for me. I’ll be looking forward to helping you.”

He saluted her as he pocketed the gem with his other hand. “Great talking to you, Monica.”

Two minutes later, he climbed inside Steph’s Jeep and handed her the five-figure gem. “Your stepdad is generous. That bad boy is worth ten K. You’re going to change the combination on your safe tonight, Ariel.”

Her eyes widened to the size of moons. “Are you kidding me?”

He shook his head. “I assure you I’m not,” he said, then told her the details of the mine as they stayed parked on the side of the road, the afternoon sun shining through the window. “So Eli gets them from this Canadian mine, from a merchant who sources from there, probably through Constantine Trevino. That’s the guy he was in contact with back when he was still at the fund. He gets all the diamonds while he’s still in the United States working with this guy,” he said, though the part that worried Jake was what Eli was doing with the stones now that he was here in the land of do-whatever-you-want-with-money. Was he selling them all off and converting them back into cash? Was he selling them in small chunks? Wilder had said someone had brought a small batch of these blue diamonds into International Diamonds recently. Did that mean Eli had already turned a few stones into greenbacks?

Jake doubted it. Eli was cunning. He was probably cashing them in bit by bit, stone by stone, so as not to draw undue attention. Time was of the essence.

Later today, he’d call Andrew and update him on this latest discovery. See if his client had any new intel on those e-mails he was trying to decode. Especially given that the diamonds were watermarked, Jake had no interest in hunting diamonds that were highly traceable. He needed to know that point A led to point B—that the stolen money was used to buy the gems from that mine. The clues added up, but facts were awfully nice, too.

“Once he gets the diamonds from that mine, all he has to do is get on a plane to the Caymans with a pocketful of diamonds,” Jake added.

Steph arched an eyebrow. “A pocketful? I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t have as many as you think. Maybe he’s giving them away as gifts. For his fiancée, for me. We have no idea how many he actually has,” she said, her voice rising as she once again tried to poke holes in the possibility of what her stepfather had done.

It was noble, and sweet, in a way, that she wanted to believe the guy. But she was also dead wrong.

“I guarantee he has more than a few. A lot more. In fact, I know exactly how many he has,” Jake said, his lips twitching in a confident grin.

She knit her brow together as she cranked the AC button, since the car was heating up. “How do you know?”

“Because it adds up,” he said, tapping his temple. “Math.”

“OK, Mr. Math. Tell me how two plus two equals a lot more.”

“The e-mail from the merchant. It said safe transport for a grand.”

Her jaw went slack. “Seriously?”

He nodded. “Two plus two,” he said, his tone gentler, even though excitement was coursing through him as he worked with her to assemble clues. He’d nearly forgotten how fun it could be, now and then, to work in tandem.

She shook her head, a flicker of sadness in her eyes as she spoke. “It does add up. Ten million divided by ten thousand is indeed one thousand,” she said, her tone heavy, as she divided the missing money by the cost of one stone. “Otherwise known as a grand.”

Safe transport for a grand.

“It seems the safe transport reference wasn’t about the cost of the transport, but how many they were making plans to move,” Jake said.

She ran a hand through her hair and sighed. “I just wish—”

Her eyes snapped away from his. She pointed and slid down in the driver’s seat. He glanced around. A man with salt-and-pepper hair headed down the block.

“What’s wrong?”

“Tristan,” she whispered like a hiss, then peered out the window. “Shit.”

In a blur, she unbuckled her seat belt, slid out of the seat, and climbed on top of him. “Kiss me so he doesn’t notice me.”

No time to think. Just follow orders. Ex-military, Jake knew how to do that, and this was the easiest order ever. He cupped her face and sealed his mouth to hers. He looped his hands in her hair and swept his tongue across the seam of her mouth. She moaned quietly and parted her lips for him.

To hide her more, he grabbed the ball cap from his head, gathered her long blonde hair in his hand, and covered it up with the hat on her head. He could feel her smile as he tucked her hair into the cap while barely breaking the kiss.