“I’ve done some checking, too. The rumor is that Ramon and his father are on the outs, but I don’t know that for a fact. I do suspect that Viejo is back in business, and, as much as I can determine from available information, he’s staying clean enough not to be arrested. His visa allowed him to move back to Venezuela.
“Isn’t that where his younger brother lives?” Another drug-running money launderer.
“Lived. Esteban Jimenez dropped dead of a heart attack about three days after the bust, or we’d have had him, too. Viejo lives on Esteban’s old coffee plantation outside Maracaibo.”
She closed her eyes and let out a soft grunt. “How can I possibly explain this to Quinn? He’ll never understand that I lived like that, with those animals. And that you . . .”
For a long moment, the kitchen was silent. She finally looked up at him, not at all sure what to expect. “I do have to tell him, don’t I?”
“You have to do what you think is right. And I’ll . . .” He frowned, hesitating. “I’ll go along with your decision. But in the meantime, we have to protect him. I think he should be out of here altogether while we figure out who did this.”
He’d go along with her decision, but he’d already started making his own. “He’s my responsibility,” she said. My son.
“I’ll protect him. Maggie, I respect that he’s yours and you’ve raised him. But protection is my business. I can put him somewhere safe, where no one will be able to get to him. You want that for him, don’t you?”
She nodded, looking at the coffee. “Of course I do. But for how long? How do we figure this out? Do I have to live in fear forever? First I’m robbed, then this . . .”
“No coincidence, by the way,” he said. “Neither was that break-in to my car. You have something, and someone wants it.”
A fortune? “Sorry, but the only thing of true value I have is Quinn.”
“Did you take something when you left Miami?”
“I ran away in the middle of the night during a raid on the warehouse. I took the clothes on my back.”
“Maybe your fortune is knowledge,” Dan said, locking his arms behind his neck. “Maybe all you know about Viejo’s defunct drug-running business is considered valuable.”
“I hardly paid attention,” she said, looking out the window. “And wouldn’t Ramon know far more than I know?”
“Think harder, Maggie. What could be considered a fortune?”
She closed her eyes and remembered the little piece of paper she’d held that rainy night in Miami.
“I had a fortune that night,” she said softly. “But I doubt it’s worth anything.”
“You did?” His chair inched down.
She laughed a little in embarrassment. “I got it the day… you died. From a Chinese restaurant food delivery. It said: ‘Now that love grows in you, then beauty grows, too.’ “
“A Chinese fortune?” The slight urgency in his voice surprised her.
“Yeah, I thought it was a message from the universe. I thought it was about . . . our baby.”
“A Chinese fortune you got the day of the bust?” His gaze sharpened to knifelike.
“Yes. I took it as a sign that I should—” She looked down and twisted her coffee cup, lining up the handle to the right. “Tell you I was pregnant.”
The front legs of his chair smacked on the tile floor and he stared at her, his expression stunned disbelief. “How? How did you get one? Who knows you had it?”
At his tone, she frowned. “Lourdes gave it to me.”
“Ramon’s little sister? How did she get it?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Because that’s what they want, Maggie.” He shot up from the chair so hard, the table shook, splashing coffee. “The fortune you had.”
“Have.” She blinked at him. What was he talking about?
“What?” He practically pulled her out of her seat. “You still have it?”
“I think I do. It’s hidden in my grandmother’s tarot cards.” She brushed by him and started toward the hallway. Had the thief taken it? She hadn’t even checked. “But why would anyone want it?”
“For a hundred million dollars.”
She missed a step. “Excuse me?”
“The fortune in the cookie. That’s what we were looking for the night of the bust. It was the location of a hundred million unlaundered dollars.”
“Are you serious? But it was just a phrase, a saying in a Chinese cookie.”
“It was much more than that. It was the key to where the Jimenez family was hiding too much money to dump into standard accounts without being noticed.” He followed her into the bedroom, nudging her to move faster. “You know that El Viejo not only moved cocaine from Colombia through Venezuela using that bogus shipping company, but also laundered the money his operation made all over the U.S., the Caribbean and Europe.”
“Yes, I knew that.”
“The reason we had to conduct the raid that particular night was because a message that Viejo had been waiting to receive came in that day, and we had to intercept it. It was from his brother, and it was the location of the money.”
She switched the light on her nightstand and rounded the bed to get to the dresser. He had to be wrong. Her fortune had no such information on it.
“Wouldn’t a message from his brother have been hidden in the furniture shipment that came into the warehouse? Did you look in all those furniture boxes?”
“Of course—that’s why the bust happened that night; otherwise we might have waited. But there was no message in the shipment, just tons and tons of cocaine. Certainly enough to shut them down and put them all away. But the other undercover agent in the operation found out that the message had come in a Chinese food delivery that day.”
“Juan Santiago,” she supplied, remembering him clearly. He was the one who’d testified at the trial, the one mentioned in the news. She’d fallen for his act, too, never knowing that he was an undercover federal agent in their midst.
“He discovered a fortune from a cookie in Viejo’s possession when we arrested him that night. But the best minds in the FBI couldn’t crack the code, if there was one.”
Maggie opened the drawer and pulled out the jewelry box. “If Viejo had the message when he was arrested, why do you think this one has anything to do with the money?”
“Some of us, including me, thought maybe the message came in pieces as a precaution. Others thought we’d been duped entirely, and there was no money. We never found any other messages, and God knows we searched that house. We never found the money, either, even after they all went to prison.”
She lifted Baba’s precious Buckland Romani tarot cards and cut the deck in the middle, between the Sun and the Queen of Cups, where she’d long ago hidden the fortune, now yellowed with time.
“Just like I remembered.” She handed it to him. “Now that love grows in you, then beauty grows, too.”
“A typical meaningless cliché.”
Not to her. “What did you expect? A Swiss bank account number?”
“I just hoped for something more obvious,” he said, examining it carefully. “El Viejo isn’t that sophisticated, and this wasn’t the CIA.”
“What did his say?”
He just shook his head. “To be honest, I don’t remember.”
“So if this is connected to the other message, what good is it now, anyway? Plus, after fourteen years, surely the money is gone.”
“I could get the other Chinese fortune easily. I’m sure it’s still in the files in the FBI office up in Miami, since this part of the case is still considered pending. And we don’t know if the money’s gone. Viejo couldn’t even get to it until six months ago, and his transactions are closely watched. If he has it and is washing it through a system, it would have to be in very, very small amounts. Plus, the only person believed to know its exact location, Esteban Jimenez, is dead.” He turned it over and looked at the numbers. “One-zero-three-eight.”
&nbs
p; “Maybe a combination lock or a safe deposit box?” she suggested.
“Or an address. Maybe the other one has a street name on it. Although I seemed to recall it had some numbers, too.” He studied the words again before he looked at her. “Can you remember exactly how you got this?”
“There was an afternoon meeting, to plan the delivery I guess, and I was shuffled off to watch Lourdes. When I went into her room to find her, she had two fortune cookies.”
“How did she get them?”
“I have no idea. She gave me one, and after that I was totally wrapped up in my message. She was barely ten, and not really aware of the business going on in that house. I doubt she knew that she had something valuable.”
“Maybe Ramon gave her his on purpose,” he said. “Maybe giving one to her was part of the fail-safe system. Maybe he suspected someone was undercover. I wasn’t in that meeting.”
“But you were in on the delivery that night.”
He must have heard the accusatory note in her voice. “You weren’t supposed to be there,” he said. “You were supposed to be at the movies with Lourdes, both of you out of the house.”
“But Juan Santiago got sick, and he was—one of . . . you. Oh.”
Dan nodded. “Viejo decided to stay home at the last minute, so Juan—Joel is his real name—had to pretend to be sick, so Viejo didn’t somehow get word of the bust before agents got to him. I didn’t know Ramon would insist on taking you in his place. When I saw you there . . .” His brows drew tight at the memory.
“You made me run away.”
“I knew bullets would fly. I knew I was supposed to be ‘killed.’ It was the best I could do for you under the circumstances. I thought you’d go back to Viejo’s and be put in government protection. That was my plan all along, but when you disappeared . . .”
“You never tried to find me.”
“I knew you’d be fine, especially once they were all under arrest. I knew you’d survive, and if I had found you, I’d have had to tell you the truth.”
She stepped away, a wave of familiar hate rolling over him. “God forbid you’d be honest.”
“There was nothing to be gained. For either of us.”
“Whatever. It’s history.” Her history, like it or not.
“No, it’s not.” He gripped her wrist, demanding her attention. “I never wanted your role to be revealed, Maggie. I never wanted you involved in the trial. That was always paramount to me, and one of the reasons I pushed to ‘die’ at the scene, so I didn’t have to reveal to a jury where I got some of the leads. Without me testifying, it was just a matter of presenting the evidence we found at the warehouse. I never intended for you to get hurt.”
“Well, you may not have intended it, but what you did hurt like hell. Par for the course.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’ve been lied to since I was born. My mother spewed them in her once-a-year calls to me, my husband wasn’t the most honest dude to walk the face of the earth, and, of course, there was you, the granddaddy of liars in my life. So forgive me if I’m not about to shower you with trust. You have zero credibility.”
She pulled away and closed her fingertips around the fortune he held. “So, I’ll take that.” She slid it from his fingers. “Until we give this to whoever wants it, my son’s not safe. This is ransom. And they can have it.”
“You can’t turn over a hundred million dollars to a former drug cartel and known money launderer. Or to anyone, for that matter.”
“I don’t care about the money. I only care about one thing on this earth: Quinn. If this little piece of paper puts him in jeopardy, then I’m giving it to the people who want it, to be sure he’s safe.”
“It belongs to the United States government.”
“Oh, please. Don’t go all FBI on me now.” She took a step back with the paper. “I’ll text whoever wrote to me right back. That Greek guy, Ramon—hell, I’ll hand it over to El Viejo himself. I just want my son out of harm’s way.”
“Are you crazy? Maggie, do you think they’d let you live? Even if you gave that to them? Knowing what you know?”
“What do I know? Only what you’ve told me, and that’s always questionable. And even if you are telling the truth, they have no idea you’re alive, let alone standing in this room.” She turned away. “This is mine, and Quinn is mine, and you can’t just waltz in here and take either one. No.”
“He’s my son, too. And you know damn well neither one of you would ever be secure. Don’t you remember what those people are like? El Viejo is ruthless and brutal. Life means nothing to him. Not yours and not Quinn’s.”
She couldn’t deny the truth of that. “But until they have what they want, Quinn’s not safe.”
“Oh, he’ll be safe. I’ll take him to Miami tomorrow, where he’ll be surrounded by ten-foot walls and under the constant watch of a personal protection specialist with the size and disposition of a grizzly bear.”
That sounded really good at the moment. “And then what?”
“If someone wants this fortune that bad, it confirms one thing: the money is still there. I’m going to find it and then turn it over to the FBI in a very public announcement, letting Viejo and anyone connected with him know that it’s gone. Then you can rest easy.”
His approach made sense, it was safer, and he was right about Viejo. He’d never let someone live who had that kind of information on him. “How can you do that? And how long will it take?”
“By ten o’clock tomorrow, I’ll have every single public and private record on the background of Constantine Xenakis. By noon, I’ll be in the 1A files at the FBI office in North Miami Beach to get the other fortune. With the two fortunes in hand and the resources of my company, we can have the code broken in hours. By tomorrow night, we could be home free.”
He made it sound so easy. “What if they want retribution? What if they want to hurt Quinn just for vengeance?”
He reached for the memory box in her open drawer. He lifted the lid, the golden curl and baby tooth looking absurdly small next to his masculine finger.
“Then I’ll find every damn one of them and kill them myself.” His expression was dark with emotion, surprising her with the force of it.
She really had no choice. “All right. I’ll go with your plan. But if anything happens to my boy, I’ll kill you myself.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
QUINN POPPED OUT his earbuds when Dan pulled up to the guard gate at the entrance to Star Island, the boy’s eyes wide and his jaw slack. Dan couldn’t help watching his expression of shock and delight in the rearview mirror.
“Dude. This place is insane. We’re really staying here?”
As if he sensed the excitement in Quinn’s voice, Goose lifted his head and uncurled from the comfort of a tight leather seat in the back of the Porsche.
“We are,” Dan said, handing his license to the guard.
“Awesome. I bet they have a ballin’ pool.”
Dan and Maggie shared a look that silently said they had no idea what ballin’ was, but it must be good.
“They have twelve thousand square feet of mindboggling luxury stocked with a theater and an aquarium and plenty to make sure you’re not bored.”
Quinn let out a low whistle, leaning forward as they drove through the gated entrance, looking far more like he was headed into a vacation hotel than a 24/7 secure compound.
As the Porsche purred down the island’s only road, Maggie and Quinn tried to see the houses blocked by large walls and thick foliage.
“Who is this Cori again?” Maggie asked. “And how much does the universe love her?”
“I don’t know about the universe, but Max Roper sure does. She’s on the board of her deceased husband’s mall management company, and after she married Max, they moved to wine country and Max runs the West Coast operations of my company. A couple of times a year, they have to come here for board meetings. We’re lucky this is one of those weeks.”
They pulled into the wide drive, and Dan entered the code on the keypad. The iron gate opened slowly, inviting them into lush grounds. As the driveway curved, the stunning expanse of a contemporary Spanish-style villa came into view.
Quinn choked. “Holy crap.”
Before Dan had even stopped the car, the front leadedglass doors opened and Max stepped out, looking almost comical with a two-year-old in his arms.
“The size of a bear, maybe,” Maggie said. “But not the disposition. Not the way he’s looking at that child.”
“Fatherhood has mellowed him, it’s true. But he’d still kill you for looking sideways at his principal. Believe me, I’ve known the guy since he gave me a black eye in kindergarten.”
Seconds later Cori stepped into the morning sunshine, her long dark hair pulled up in a youthful ponytail, her wide smile genuine as she darted to greet Dan with a hug the minute he climbed out of the car.
“A woman, a kid, and a dog,” he whispered as she gave him a kiss. “I owe you for this.”
Before she could answer, Goose bolted out of the back seat and jumped on her.
“He’s harmless,” Dan assured her, going for the collar as Maggie came around the front, commanding Goose to sit. Over the barking, Dan made the introductions as Quinn unfolded himself from the backseat.
“Hi,” he said, a little unsure of himself. “Sorry Goose jumped like that. He’s really a good dog.”
“It’s all right,” Cori said, reaching out a hand. “I’m Cori Roper.”
He shook it and then looked at Max. “Hey. Cute kid.”
Normally that’s all it would take to turn the big guy into a ball of mush. A compliment to Peyton usually resulted in Max’s goofiest smile and a five-minute dissertation on his son’s latest accomplishment.
But Max merely stared at Quinn. After an awkward beat, he reached out his hand. “Max Roper. And this is Peyton.”
“Hey, little dude.” Quinn reached up and stuck a playful finger in the baby’s face, and instantly had it grabbed and giggled over.