Promise Not To Tell(81)

I’m as good as you ever were back in the day, Zane. Hell, I picked up the trail of the money that you lost, didn’t I? It’s still out there. Doesn’t look like Virginia Troy and Sutter have found it yet. You and I might be able to get to it first if we work together. We’d make a hell of a team.

A father-and-son team.

He liked the sound of that. All he needed was a new identity and a fresh start. Working together, he and Zane would be unstoppable. They would set the whole damned world on fire.

The boat glided to a stop at the end of the dock. The pilot was a dark silhouette behind the wheel. Tucker clambered aboard. He had been instructed not to ask any questions. He was to get into the boat and keep silent until the craft reached its destination.

The boat took off, slowly at first, and then at speed. The chill of the wind got a thousand times worse. Not much longer now, he thought. He wondered which of the expensive houses on the lake belonged to Quinton Zane.

The boat eventually came to a halt at the end of another dock in a secluded cove. The pilot cut the engines.

“About time,” Tucker said. “It’s damn cold out here on the water.”

The pilot emerged from the small wheelhouse. The moonlight glinted on the gun in his hand.

Only then did Tucker realize that he had made a terrible mistake.

“No,” he yelped.

He struggled frantically to scramble out of the boat and managed to get one foot on the dock.

The first shot caught him squarely in the back with such force that he was flung facedown on the wooden boards. He was vaguely aware of the pilot stepping up out of the boat.

His last conscious thought was that, like his father, he had been conned.

He never felt the second shot, the one to the head.

CHAPTER 60

Virginia awoke with a suddenness that told her something had changed in the atmosphere.

For a moment she lay still, trying to get oriented. There had been no nightmarish dream of fire, no fierce surge of urgency bordering on panic.

It took her a couple of seconds to realize that Cabot was not in the bed beside her. It came as a distinct shock to realize that after so many years of sleeping alone, she had already become accustomed to the comforting awareness of a lover sleeping next to her.

Not just any lover. Cabot.

She opened her eyes and saw him. He was at the window, looking out at the glowing night. His sleek, strong frame was silhouetted against the city lights.

I’m falling in love with him.

That brought on a deep sense of wonder. So this is what it feels like.

Her first instinct, honed by years of failed relationships, was to use logic to dampen her sense of delight and astonishment. Don’t get carried away here. Okay, we have some old childhood history and in recent days we’ve been through a lot together. He understands me and accepts the bad stuff in ways that no one else ever has. And I understand him. I trust him. And, yes, indeed, there’s a strong physical attraction. That doesn’t necessarily add up to the real thing.

Oh, yes, it does.

She pushed the covers aside and glanced at the clock. It came as no surprise to see that it was one thirty in the morning.

She got to her feet and went to join Cabot at the window. He put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her close against his lean, warm frame. She wrapped her arm around his waist.

“Thoughts?” she said.

“It’s the money angle that’s bothering me,” he said.

“Why? Seems to me that it makes a crazy sort of sense that a whack-job like Tucker Fleming would have become obsessed with what he came to think of as his inheritance.”

“It’s not that,” Cabot said. “The problem is the other money trail.”

It took her a second to realize what he meant.

“Are you talking about the rumors of embezzlement at Night Watch?” she asked.

“What are the odds that we stumbled into two unrelated financial scams that somehow got tangled up in the same case?”

“I have no idea. But you said yourself, embezzlement goes on all the time. It’s a fairly common crime.”

“True, but it rarely turns violent. Most embezzlers prefer to keep a low profile. It’s hard to conduct a profitable skimming operation when the cops are asking questions about a murder.”

“Where are you going with this?”

“There’s a connection between the embezzlement at Night Watch and the murder of Hannah Brewster.”

“I’ll bet Tucker Fleming is the embezzler,” Virginia said. “He was working his scam at Night Watch before he found out about his connection to Zane. He decided to go after that money, too.”

“I think you’re right,” Cabot said. “But that still leaves questions.”

She turned and put both her arms around him.

“You’re convinced there’s someone else involved in this thing,” she said.

“The person who posed as Quinton Zane and sent the messages to Fleming.”

“Maybe Fleming really is delusional,” she warned.

“Yes.” Cabot framed her face with his hands. “But I think we’ll know very soon if there is someone else involved in this business.”

“When the cops pick up Fleming? That probably won’t take long. As you said, he’s a loose cannon, and loose cannons have a problem keeping a low profile. Once they arrest him we’ll get all the answers.”