Trespassing(104)

“Let’s consider the money a bonus. But then he disappeared during his last drop, never showed in New York. Money is just money, but there are irreplaceable artifacts. I’m interested in where he stashed the diamonds.” He steps forward menacingly. “Particularly the blue diamond.”

I shake my head. “The blue . . . what?”

Both girls are sobbing now, as is Natasha, whose temple must ache with the cold steel barrel of a 9mm still pressed there.

I bounce Bella on my lap, the way I used to when she was colicky at a few months old. “Shh . . . it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

“You need bait to catch a fish.” Mick’s lips curl into a sinister grin. “When Shell told me Micah’s kids were on Plum Lake, I assumed my men would find you there. Not the boys and the dyke.”

Wrong place, wrong time.

“And she was wearing a necklace with a blue stone—”

“It’s an aquamarine,” Natasha whispers.

“A misunderstanding. But things got a little out of hand. Lincoln had the bodies in a plane before my son even got there to tell them where he put the diamonds.”

Natasha draws in a stuttering breath over tears.

“The timing was perfect,” Mick continues. “I was overseas with an airtight alibi. The other one didn’t know enough to save her life. The question is . . . do you?”

I take a deep breath. “If I knew where to find the diamonds, the rest of the money, I’d hand it over to you. You’re welcome to search the entire house. Take whatever you find. But I don’t know where my husband is. Micah never told me anything about his business. I thought he was flying executives around the country. I had no idea he—”

My cell phone, abandoned on the counter when I grabbed hold of Papa Hemingway, rings.

I glance at it, then at my father-in-law.

But if he’s bothered by the fact that Detective Guidry is calling at this hour, he doesn’t let on.

He keeps his stare fixed on me, and finally, the ringing dies. “The blue diamond. He wouldn’t leave without it.”

Natasha’s aquamarine ring catches my attention.

Suddenly, it dawns on me: “The ring. I have the ring. It was in our box at the bank. If I give it to you, will you leave? Quietly? I found it, but I didn’t know what it was.” I swallow hard. “It’s in my suitcase upstairs, under my bed. In a blue velvet box. There’s some money in there, too.”

Mick gives the shorter, silent agent a nod, and the man disappears up the stairs.

We wait.

Natasha’s whimper is constant, as if a recording played on a continuous loop.

Bella shivers with tears and buries her head against me.

When the agent returns, he tosses the box in question onto the counter in front of me. “This box?”

With trembling fingers, I open the box.

It’s empty.

“And the money?” I ask.

“None,” the agent says.

My heart sinks. Micah must have been here again, just as Bella insisted. He must have taken the ring and the money, which means he’s not coming back.

And because I can’t produce it, and because we’re bait on a hook, waiting for a fish that’s not hungry, there’s no saving us.

“Search the garage,” Mick says to his errand boy, who quickly heads toward the front door. My father-in-law then nods to Lincoln. “How about a drink?”

Lincoln holsters his gun.

Natasha instantly gasps in relief.

Lincoln finds two glasses and pours generous shots of my welcome-to-the-island rum. He places one glass in front of me and one in front of Natasha.

I stare wide-eyed at it.

But Natasha gulps it down before I can stop her.

I know what’s in that rum.

Benzodiazepine.

And I know now who left it: The man who followed me halfway to Wisconsin in a brown sedan. The man now playing bartender in my kitchen.

“Drink,” Lincoln says.





Chapter 57

“It’s been my experience,” Mick says, “that alcohol lowers the inhibitions. So you drink until you talk. If you don’t talk, maybe you sleep. If you sleep, maybe you’ll wake up. Or maybe you won’t. And you”—he points at me—“have a lot of arrows directed at you, don’t you? Your husband has other children. Your husband is worth more dead than alive. Insurmountable debt. Enormous life insurance policy. Motive, motive, motive. The ordeal with your mother—yes, I know more about your mother than my son does—can only serve to prove your culpability, and if you end up sleeping at the end of it all, we’ll be certain to plant your empty medication bottle in your hand.”

Pieces fall into place.

I think of the rare nights I’d taken sleeping pills, the nights when Micah was traveling, and I hadn’t slept in days. I think about the time I woke up, feeling as if someone had been in the house.

My daddy doesn’t know that man in the kitchen.

I wonder if the man in the kitchen in Old Town was my father-in-law. I wonder if he came to see what went wrong at United, if that’s the night my family changed.

And if Micah’s father owns the Shadowlands house, he likely has the gate code out front, so he could have been there, too.

“You’ve been in my home,” I say.