CHAPTER FOUR
The wine helped. A lot.
They’d moved the wine and snacks into the parlor area of the funeral home. Tess had never been a big fan of the overly formal room done in shades of cream, but Miller had always liked it. She imagined the original lady of the house, corseted in her finery, serving tea to all the other ladies of Last Stop in front of the grand marble fireplace, ornate moldings, and stained glass. There was a story to be told in this room, and she always appreciated a place that had a story. She paced back and forth across the thick Persian rug, while Tess lounged back on the couch and waited patiently for her to get it all out. Her anger had only intensified since she’d left the kitchen, and she knew from experience she just had to let herself wind down. Her temper didn’t make itself known very often, but when it did it was best to steer clear of anyone who might become collateral damage.
She’d tried to go home to work off her mad on her StairMaster, but Tess had snatched her keys before she could walk out the door. Tess was tricky like that. Fortunately, she was also a good friend and Miller knew she could trust her with anything. She hadn’t had the courage to talk to Tess about Elias up until now because she was so damned embarrassed about the whole debacle.
“The nerve of that man,” she said, for probably the dozenth time. “How dare he just barge in here and butt himself into my personal business. And after what he did to me.”
“You still haven’t explained what that was,” Tess said, moving from the couch to start a fire. She stacked the logs neatly and lit the kindling beneath. Tess was always much better at getting a fire lit than she was. It probably had something to do with the fact that Tess was a hell of a lot more patient and methodical.
“I mean, how dare he insinuate that Justin’s caught up in dirty dealings,” Miller said, continuing her pacing. “He doesn’t even know Justin. And Justin wouldn’t purposefully put me in danger.”
“Baby, you have to admit it’s a bad situation,” Tess said softly. “Justin didn’t meet these guys at a church potluck. No one is perfect, and you said yourself that Justin was as obsessed as your parents were.”
“All I know is I’d trust Justin any day over someone like Elias Cole.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Tess said, “but a couple of months ago, you two were setting so many sparks off each other I thought you were going to catch fire. You went home with the man, and then wouldn’t mention him again. What happened?”
Miller paused in front of the fireplace and put her hands on her hips. “He didn’t want me,” she said.
“What?” Tess said, outraged, coming to her feet. “What an idiot. There’s no way that man didn’t want you. I saw it with my own eyes.”
“I don’t know what happened.” She shrugged and continued her pacing. “We could barely keep our hands off each other the whole drive to the house, and then once we got there, who knows how long we went at each other in the front seat of my car. The neighbors probably got an eyeful.”
“You live next door to Betsy Danforth,” Tess said. “You know she can’t see once it gets dark, and she’s deaf as a doornail. You could’ve had the most cataclysmic orgasm of your life on your front lawn and she’d miss the whole thing. Mama has told her for years she needs to go get hearing aids.”
Tess’s mother, Theodora, had once owned the Clip n’ Curl hair salon in town, and she’d been considered the hub for gossip and bad advice. She’d recently turned over the running of the Clip n’ Curl to her protégé so she could go live with Tess’s grandmother in a fancy retirement community. The two of them hadn’t killed each other yet, much to everyone’s surprise.
“I guess it’s a good thing,” Miller agreed. “By the time he got me to the front porch I was half-naked and would’ve done anything that man had asked, because holy moly, he knew exactly what to do with his mouth. And then it was like someone flicked a light switch. He set me down and pushed me away. And then he turned his back and walked away without a word.”
“You’re kidding me,” Tess said, wide-eyed.
“I wish I were. I’m pretty sure no one in their right mind would make up a story like that.”
“He didn’t say anything? Not ‘goodbye,’ or ‘my house is on fire’? Nothing?”
“Nope. Not one single word. And he had to walk home because he’d been driving my car. I don’t know how he managed to walk three blocks with a hard-on the size of Nantucket.”
Tess giggled and slapped her hand over her mouth, her eyes filled with mirth. “That was going to be my next question. I was thinking maybe he couldn’t—”
“Oh no,” Miller said, arching a brow. “He most definitely could. But I’ve got my suspicions. I think he’s married and he had a change of conscience.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s not married,” Tess said.
“Then that’s even worse. That means he just up and changed his mind as soon as he saw me almost naked. If I weren’t so awesome, that kind of rejection could play hell with my self-confidence.”
“Your body is awesome. And I’ve never known you to have issues with your self-confidence unless you’re talking about your books. Writers are so weird.”
“Thank you.” Miller dropped down on the couch and wrapped her arms around a pillow. “I’m just pissed off, but I’ll get over it. I’ve never felt that kind of chemistry with a man before in my life. I don’t have time to analyze it to death. Clearly, I’ve got bigger issues to deal with than Elias Cole. He can go straight to the devil for all I care. Justin is my priority. This Cordova guy sent a finger, so there’s a chance Justin is still alive. And Justin’s a SEAL. He knows how to survive.”
“It’s too bad you couldn’t see that half-written letter Cordova said he found in Justin’s backpack. What do you think he meant by saying there were clues in the letter?”
Miller stood up suddenly and let the pillow drop to the floor. “Justin’s letter,” she said. “There’s a letter at the house. It came in the mail a couple of days ago, but I was working, so I just saw it on the table this morning. I’ve got to read that letter. I need to go.”
“I’m coming with you,” Tess said, leaving the food and drinks on the coffee table in a very un-Tess-like move. “You still haven’t mentioned how you’re going to handle Cordova’s offer to help him find King Solomon’s table.”
“Well, I’m going to go home and read Justin’s letter,” she said. “And then I’m going to pack a bag so I can go find my brother.”
“I’M GOING TO get in huge trouble for this,” Deacon said, pulling up the camera for the parlor when Tess and Miller had moved from the kitchen.
“Afraid of your wife?” Elias asked. His stomach was in knots. He’d spent the last two months trying to forget Miller Darling ever existed. He’d been doing an admirable job until he’d seen the terrified look on her face when she’d walked into Tess’s kitchen.
“You bet,” Deacon agreed, grinning. “I don’t like sleeping alone. I’m just saying I don’t like intruding on their privacy like this.”
They’d escaped to Gravediggers headquarters below the carriage house, and Levi and Axel were already downstairs, waiting for them. Dante had left for his weekend of debauchery.
“That was certainly an unexpected turn of events,” Axel said once they’d coded their way into the secure room. He and Levi were already at the computers, the poker game clearly not of as much interest as the information Miller had given.
“No kidding,” Deacon said. He immediately went to one of the high-tech computers and took the finger from the box. He pressed it to the scanner and waited as the fingerprint image was displayed on the computer screen so it could find a match.
“Justin Darling,” Elias said, shaking his head. “That son of a bitch.”
“Know him?” Deacon asked.
“Very well. We were both on the same SEAL team. Went through BUD/S together. He’s got the training, but being a SEAL wasn’t his first love. He enjoyed the allure of Solomon’s treasure like his parents did. He missed a couple of ops that got called early because he was off doing God knows what. Nothing like going into a high-tension situation with a man down. He’d get called on the carpet, and he lost rank a couple of times because of his irresponsibility, but it never made much of an impact. He did his own thing. And now he’s dragging his sister into it.”
Axel whistled. “Mate, after seeing the way she treated you just now, she’s going to be right pissed when she finds out you knew her brother and didn’t say anything.”
“I didn’t have anything nice to say,” he countered. “Besides, I couldn’t blow cover by letting her know I was a SEAL. She’s too damned curious. She’d want to know how I ended up at a funeral home in the middle of nowhere.”
“Somebody turn up the audio on the surveillance,” Levi said. “All I can hear is Miller’s mumbling.”
Deacon winced, but turned up the volume. Elias knew Tess wasn’t a fan of the surveillance system inside the funeral home, but she also knew it was a necessity, just like the dozens of cameras they had on the exterior, and the main entry points of Last Stop so they’d always be aware if they were under attack.
“Tess is not going to be happy about this,” Deacon said. “We made a deal never to listen during private conversations.”
“There’s always an exception to the rules,” Elias insisted. “Miller might know something she didn’t say in front of us at the table. Justin has gotten her into a hell of a mess.”
“No kidding,” Axel said. “Listen to this.”
His fingers moved quickly across the keyboard and an image of a man came up on the big screen. He looked like someone you’d never want to cross. He was distinguished, his black hair peppered with gray and his mustache trim and neat. He might pass for handsome if it weren’t for his eyes. Anyone who had a lick of sense and saw those eyes would run the other direction.
“Emilio Cordova, age fifty-one, born in Portugal. Mother is the only one listed on birth record. No father. Was in and out of juvenile detention until the age of sixteen. Then seemed to get smarter because he didn’t get caught again until he was twenty-two. Minor drug charges. Theft, battery, assault. And then at twenty-nine years old he meets a woman named Ana Cortez.”
“You’re fucking kidding me,” Deacon said. “The Black Widow?”
“One and the same,” Axel said. “If Justin has put Miller in the Black Widow’s line of sight, she won’t have a chance. She needs protection.”
“Don’t look at me,” Elias said. He’d never felt panic, even during the most harrowing missions, but the thought of being alone with Miller for a prolonged period of time was enough to send him right over the edge. “She hates my guts.”
“I noticed,” Deacon said. “I don’t suppose you want to shed some light on that. The last time I saw the two of you together it was everything I could do not to tell you to go get a room.”
To make things more awkward, Miller’s voice rang loud and clear through the monitor, and Elias dropped down into one of the seats at the conference table. He should’ve gone with his gut and turned the monitor off the second Miller had driven up. He’d still be playing poker without a care in the world.
“All I know is I’d trust Justin any day over someone like Elias Cole.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but a couple of months ago, you two were setting so many sparks off each other I thought you were going to catch fire. You went home with the man, and then wouldn’t mention him again. What happened?”
“He didn’t want me.”
Three pairs of eyes turned in his direction and stared incredulously. He didn’t squirm under the scrutiny, but he felt his skin flush hot. It would do no good to try and explain why he’d done it. It wouldn’t matter that walking away from her had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. All that mattered was that he had walked away.
“Any other information about Cordova?” he asked. “He said Miller would be met in Baltra. What’s the connection there?”
Axel quirked a brow, but he didn’t say anything about the conversation happening inside the funeral home.
“A few years back, the Black Widow and the Sinaloa Cartel in Colombia had a territory disagreement that led to millions of dollars in missing drugs and a hell of a lot of dead bodies. She ended up with a price on her head, so she fled to Europe and has mostly stayed there since then. But she instructed Cordova to move the organization and do whatever he had to do so they became the most powerful drug cartel in the world. He’s damn near accomplished that goal too. Cordova is a hell of a businessman.
“He moved their main operation to the Galápagos Islands. It’s run by the Ecuadorian government, and they need the money the cartels can bring in. And the thing is, the Ecuadorian people love him. He’s like Robin Hood. And the islands aren’t overrun by tourists, so they don’t have the U.S. Embassy breathing down their necks if the occasional tourist goes missing. The island airports make it easy for drugs to come in and out and be dispersed where they need to go. They’ve basically got control of the entire country, and several other pockets of South America.”
“. . . I don’t know how he managed to walk three blocks with a hard-on the size of Nantucket.”
Elias groaned at the sound of Miller’s voice again. Tess’s laughter was easily heard through the speakers, and there were various snorts of laughter from his brothers as they stared at him again like he’d grown a second head. Assholes.
Tess’s next comment just added insult to injury.
“That was going to be my next question. I was thinking maybe he couldn’t—”
“Oh no. He most definitely could. But I’ve got my suspicions. I think he’s married and he had a change of conscience.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s not married.”
“Then that’s even worse. That means he just up and changed his mind as soon as he saw me almost naked.”
“I’m throwing a punch at the first person to say one word,” he said.
“I agree with Tess,” Deacon said, grinning unashamedly. “I think you’re an idiot.”
“I’ve got my reasons, okay? Just leave it alone. And leave me out of this whole mess, come to think of it. Justin and Miller Darling aren’t my problem.”
“. . . I’m going to go home and read Justin’s letter. And then I’m going to pack a bag so I can go find my brother.”
“Of course she is,” Elias said, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “Because it makes total sense for her to walk into cartel territory with that body and smart mouth, without any viable survival skills. I’m not getting involved in this mess. I’m going to take my boat out and go fishing.”
“Keep telling yourself that, brother,” Deacon said. “In the meantime, I’m going after my wife. I’d rather not find out the hard way that Cordova doesn’t trust Miller to come to him of her own free will.”
Elias dropped his head back against the chair, and then did it again for good measure. “Well, fuck,” he said.