Chapter 25
Issa circled the duplicate keepsake box warily. “You sent him pictures of the two boxes we got from my place?”
Eagle nodded. “The small one was very distinctive. Your mother said it was a matched set. Panther and Tiger have copies as well.”
Squatting, she tried to open the box, but it was locked. There was a small keyhole. She held out her hand for the key. Eagle stared at her. “How do you know I didn’t give it to Panther?”
She shot him a look and said, “I’m pretty sure Panther would have had his father cut a spare.”
He smiled and pulled out the key. “He did, indeed. They swung by his place on the way to the airport and sent this one back to me. This is hardly a safe. He said it belonged to a safe.”
“This is actually a strongbox.”
She put the key inside and turned. It didn’t open. She studied at it for a long moment, shaking her head. “And I thought this would be it.”
She turned to Eagle. “Hawk is right. Panther’s father said a safe. This isn’t a safe.” Then she stood and swore softly. “When you asked if I would’ve hidden anything down there, … well, I didn’t hide it. But I found a key behind the wood. I used to play with it all the time. But I didn’t hide it originally. I found it.”
Silently, she led Eagle back to the little alcove. She crouched down, slipped her fingers behind one of the slats, and pulled out the key. She held it up. With his fingers to his lips, they raced back to the bedroom. She walked in, holding the key out to Hawk.
He shook his head. “This is just too bizarre.”
He positioned himself between the door and Issa. She sat down on the bed, put the key into the box, and, indeed, it opened. Inside were several velvet bags, stacks of money, and more envelopes—probably containing documents.
She picked up the cash. “Well, this answers that question. It’s a miracle over all these years no one found it and emptied it.”
Eagle picked up one of the velvet bags and opened it carefully. Out fell a beautiful jeweled necklace.
She stared at it. “Now that’s not good.”
“Why?” Hawk asked.
“My mother had a picture of this. I said how beautiful it was, and she said it was a piece of the devil’s work.” She shook her head. “Didn’t you see the pictures of this in her files that we scanned?”
Eagle nodded. “Yes. I sent them off to an appraiser to see if he knew who and what the pieces were. But I haven’t heard back yet.”
“There were three or four pictures.” Issa pointed to the velvet bags. “What do you want to bet …? Let’s find out for sure.” She carefully opened a second velvet bag to find another extremely rare and extremely valuable-looking necklace with long strands of sapphires—dark midnight-blue sapphires. She fingered them gently. “So beautiful.”
“What a waste.”
“They were sitting here in a box all these years.” She opened the other two velvet bags to find similar necklaces. One was some kind of silver, although she thought it was possibly platinum, with tiny diamonds on what appeared to be a spider’s web of a necklace. In a low voice she said, “These are very valuable, aren’t they?”
“I’m afraid so.” Eagle carefully packed them up, placed them on the bed behind the box, put the envelopes off to one side, and found the whole bottom underneath was layered with cash.
“Why would your mother have taken the other box and left this one behind?” Hawk asked in a low voice. “Or did she grab the wrong one by mistake?”
“She said it was blood money,” Issa said. “Part of the devil’s work.”
“Did she become religious after she left here?”
“Not that I know of. But she never would talk about this time of her life. I don’t know how much of it she was ashamed of versus how much was just too painful to talk about.”
Eagle took out the bills and found nothing else underneath, so he repackaged everything but the envelopes. “Let’s see what these are.” Opening the topmost envelope, he pulled out paperwork. “The top one is another copy of an old will of her father’s. He left everything to his three sons. Nothing to his wife and daughter. But the will was dated ten years after his last son was born. In a court of law, that inheritance would pass to the unborn daughter.”
“Or he knew I wasn’t his daughter and didn’t bother to revise it after I was born,” she said in a low voice. “Maybe all those relatives aren’t my relatives.”
Eagle grabbed the second envelope, opened it, and pulled out more documents. “It’s your mother’s old will. It leaves everything to her husband, nothing to anyone else.”
“Well, in that case, I don’t know what will happen to her estate.”
“When you closed her estate, was there another will?”
“Yes. It was with the lawyers. She left everything to me.” She tapped the paperwork in his hands. “Her husband died and her sons died before her. I was her only living relative, so by rights it comes to me anyway. Should we bring the local police in on this?”
The two men turned and studied her. “It could open a huge kettle of fish, you know?”
She turned to look at Hawk. “Personally I don’t care about any of these valuables. Panther already lost a tooth. The last thing I want is for either of those men to die because of me. This is all old lies and old deceit. None of it belongs in my world.”
Hawk looked at her with respect.
But Eagle was the voice of reason. “That may be the way for you. But I have a suspicion everyone around here will not agree. Deeds done twenty years ago are probably deeds they want settled quietly and swept away forever. They won’t want the local police involved. Not to mention”—he nodded toward the box—“this is a fortune for those people. And likely the other reason you were kidnapped.”
She glanced at the floor to see a small envelope. “Did you see this?”
He looked at it and frowned. “No. What is it?”
She opened it and pulled out a letter. “It’s from Angus to my mother.”
She read it aloud.
I always loved you. I understood your reasons for not leaving your husband. That you would have raised my daughter as his is too much to be believed. I was good enough for you to sleep with but not good enough for you to wed. Even at the beginning you were mine. But he had more than I had. If our situations were reversed, I would have had more and him less. But still I am poor because I don’t have you. All these years you let me into your bed, yet you never let me into your heart. You know this weekend things have changed. He’s no longer here. Even though he tried to kill me once, I had nothing to do with his death. I implore you to please don’t walk away. Bring your daughter, my daughter, to me, and let’s finally be together as we were always meant to be.
Your loving Angus
She sighed. “A note from our star-crossed lovers.”
“Star-crossed lovebird,” Hawk corrected. “I don’t think your mother was as invested in that relationship as much as he was.”
“In truth,” Issa said quietly, “my mother wasn’t invested in very much. I think she was basically happy with whoever would look after her. She didn’t like confrontation. She didn’t like strife. And she really didn’t like hard work. Her life with my dad was just that. Angus was a light on the side for her. But I don’t think she had any intention of walking away from the life she knew.”
“I highly suggest we go into town tomorrow morning and talk to the police,” Eagle said. “I know I’m the first to argue against that course of action, but, in this situation, too many angles, people, and cases are involved. And there’s a time and a place … There’s a good chance these jewels came from a well-publicized heist way back when. They should be returned to the rightful owners, correct?” Eagle glanced at his watch. “It’s late now. Let’s get some sleep. Tomorrow things might look brighter.”
She looked at him. “You think we should go to the pub to meet everyone?”
“No, not yet. First off, we don’t even know if they’re your family.”
She winced. “Good point.” She waved at the box. “I don’t feel like we can leave this here.”
“We will return the box,” Eagle said. “But it will be empty.”
He quickly emptied the box and gave it back to Hawk with the key. Hawk disappeared out the door.
She motioned to the stuff on the bed. “How do we hide this?”
“I have room in my bag for all of it.” He opened his duffel, removed some of his clothing, and placed the money on the bottom. The bags of jewelry he tucked into the side pockets. “I don’t know what you want to do with the paperwork.”
“None of it makes any sense,” she said. “None of this is worth torturing me for, especially if they stole the money and the jewelry. Especially so if someone else had found the keepsake box and had just kept everything.”
“And that’s why we have to hit the bank to find out. We need to check out the safe-deposit box. Now get ready for bed. Hawk and I will stay up through the night on four-hour shifts. He’s next door, and we’ll be switching in and out. I need you to get some rest. You’re still healing. We can’t afford to have you get worse.”
“And what about Panther? And Tiger?”
He leaned forward. “I have to trust that the men are keeping themselves alive. But, even if they aren’t, there’s very little we can do.”
She bowed her head with a nod. “Well, tomorrow I want answers,” she said quietly. “I’ve waited a long time. This is long enough.” She got up and went into the bathroom to get ready.
*
Hawk returned just then. Eagle went over the plans for the night.
“You think she’s safe here?” Hawk asked.
“Honestly I’m not sure. If I thought I could spirit her back into town, hide her away in a different hotel, I would. We might still have to leave in the middle of the night. Do you have anybody you know in the local area or some nearby police department? Even Interpol might not be a bad idea. I’m pretty damn sure those gems will be on somebody’s radar.”
“You think that’s what’s behind this?”
“I don’t know. But, when you talk money, and as many deaths as we know about, … either somebody wants what is in that box or wants to make sure it stays hidden.”
Hawk nodded. “I’ll send some messages, making sure we have somebody watching over us tonight and following us tomorrow.”
“You do that. I’ll take first watch.”
Hawk left then.
Eagle sat down on the side of the bed. He went over the paperwork once again, searching for Angus’s full name. Finding it, he sent out the name to several people who could help track him down.
Issa came back. Sleep was the best thing for her. She crawled under the covers, rolled over so her back was against him, and closed her eyes.
He gently stroked her shoulder and whispered, “Good night.”
She mumbled a response, but he was grateful to hear it was sleep-blurred. It had been a devastating two days for her. He knew it would get a hell of a lot worse.
When his phone rang a few minutes later, he bounded off the bed and to the far side of the room so as not to disturb her. “What’s up?”
“Angus is in jail, convicted on four counts of first-degree murder, killing four men of one family,” his contact Charlie said quietly.
Eagle sent out a silent whistle. “I might have his daughter, who is also the remaining member of the family he killed.”
“Now that would be very interesting. Angus had a lot of land. It was seized by the locals. Apparently he attempted to bring the police in on a father and his three sons’ smuggling operation. The police were delayed. Plans went awry, and he ended up killing the family.”
“Not quite. The wife and daughter survived. The daughter might possibly be the lover’s—Angus’s—daughter, though, so it’s quite a love triangle.”
There was a long whistle on the other end. “He’s already served seventeen years of a life sentence.”
“And he might very well be guilty. As far as I understand, one of the men he killed had been up on criminal charges against Angus himself.”
“According to Angus’s trial testimony, they were betrayed, but he doesn’t know by whom. He was supposed to be outside on lookout. He heard shots and raced to the cove to find Rory McGuire already dying with a bullet to his chest. Two of McGuire’s sons were dead, and another one was dying. The police arrived just in time to find Angus, the only one left standing, and charged him for the whole lot.”
“Weren’t there other men involved?”
“Yes. Two other men were killed by a different gun. I believe by Rory, the father. Actually I think four other men were killed. Several escaped and disappeared in the chaos. Apparently the men who escaped were also badly injured. The few that lived said Angus had come in and shot up the place.”
“So, in other words, they were all Rory’s men?”
“Yes, and that’s what Angus’s defense team said. But something was always fishy about his story. And he had no alibi. There were only dead men left standing—and Angus.”
“Why was his story fishy?”
“He was supposed to be on the lookout. But, since he obviously didn’t give them a warning, the others believed he’d been waiting for the opportunity to come in for the kill.”
“When instead he was actually banging Rory’s wife at the time.”
“Really?”
“Yes, the daughter saw them.”
Charlie snorted. “Wow. Angus did mention he was involved with another woman, but nobody could find her.”
“No. She bolted for America. Walked away from everything with the daughter, Angus’s daughter. But the mother died a month or so ago. The daughter was kidnapped and tortured for information she couldn’t possibly hand over, and then two of my friends came over here to retrieve belongings left behind for her. They’ve been kidnapped. Now we’re sitting here in a hotel room, figuring out what the hell’s going on.”
“Wow, when you get involved, you really get involved.”
“I know, and I remember saying I wouldn’t get involved in this kind of shit anymore,” Eagle said. Charlie was yet another one of the men from his unit. Childhood friends, they’d known each other for decades. “But when it comes to your door, like she did in my case, and I believe the circumstances were beyond strange, you have to do something.”
“Isn’t that the truth? My brother, Duncan, remember him? He’s in law enforcement in Dublin. I’ll give him a quick call.”
Charlie hung up, leaving Eagle to ponder this turn of events.
“What was that all about?” asked Issa, her sleepy voice beside him.
He winced and walked closer. “I’m so sorry. I tried not to disturb you.”
“I’m not sleeping at all until this is over,” she announced. “So tell me. What was that about?”
He sat down on the bed and said, “Apparently Angus is in jail.” He quickly relayed the rest of the information.
“And my mother didn’t come back and defend him? Seeing that she’d been with him at the time?”
“It may not have made any difference. If your dad had any idea where Angus really was, it makes sense he might’ve opened fire on him. In which case, Angus probably did shoot him. But how it ended up that he shot all three of your brothers, I don’t know. But what we do know is that some people were there that night and lived to say that Angus did it.”
She snorted. “Of course they did. My dad paid them all.”
“Sure, but, if he was dead, who would pay?”
She frowned. “I don’t know, but, in theory, they had the goods they’d smuggled in that night. Maybe dividing that up and taking Angus’s share was enough. There were a lot of people in the house for the next couple days. Then suddenly we were gone.”
“And did you leave during the day?”
She frowned, casting her mind back as she thought about it, then shook her head slowly. “No. She woke me up in the middle of the night, and we walked out.” She turned her gaze toward the dark window. “We walked down the hillside to the road and into the pub. There we got a ride.”
“Any idea who drove you?”
She looked up at him. “No.”
“Well, she obviously had one person on her side.”
“Or somebody she paid very well.”
“As in money from that box? And how is it that nobody found the box? The money would have been easy to spend. The jewels not so much.” He hated to see the fear and pain in her eyes.
“Haven’t enough people suffered for whatever the hell went wrong twenty years ago?” she asked as she shook her head. “It’s just too much.” She rolled over and closed her eyes.
He frowned, helpless to ease her suffering. Seeing her shoulders shaking, he realized just how badly she was hurting. He put his phone down, lay on top of the covers, and wrapped himself around her. He slid his arm around her ribs and tucked her up close.
There was a catch in her breathing.
“It’ll be okay,” he murmured.
“How can you say that?” she whispered. “It’s your friends hurting right now.”
“Because I have faith in them. Panther is a serious badass, and, even if he’s been tortured, it won’t have been the first time, and it would just make him all that much more eager to get retaliation.”
She sniffled.
He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Sleep. It’s the best thing for you.”
She shook her head. “I can’t shut off my mind. Needing sleep doesn’t mean it’s easy to come by.”
He gently stroked her arms up and down, soothing the edges of her soul—hoping the comfort would help her to sleep. When finally she took a deep breath and let it out slowly, he smiled. “Do that a few more times,” he urged.
Obediently she took a deep breath and let it out and repeated the action. Finally she sagged a little deeper into the mattress and whispered, “Thank you.”
He shook his head. “How can you thank me? I haven’t done anything.”
“You came with me,” she said simply. “I would not want to be here alone.”
Just the thought of it filled him with rage. They would’ve picked her up at the airport and turned her into chopped liver again. He knew one thing: the men who had done this to her would have to answer to Eagle before this was over. He didn’t know how all this played into one person, Issa, but somewhere, somehow it did. Eagle just didn’t have all the pieces yet. All he wanted to do was get her home, back to his place, where she could rest and heal.
“I want this over with,” she whispered in a raspy voice. “I want to go back home and have a normal life again.”
He pulled her tighter against his chest and said calmly, “I’m not sure I can let you go home.”
She snorted. “You’ve said that several times in one form or another. But, if push came to shove, you’d let me go.”
“What if I said I didn’t want you to go? That I wanted you to stay with me? To heal and stay at my house until we had a chance to get to know each other—like really get to know each other—and see if maybe something is here we wanted to nurture? What would you say to that?”
Slowly, ever-so-slowly, she rolled her head to look at him. He was once again amazed at her beautiful midnight-blue irises.
She gave him the sweetest smile and whispered, “I’d say, what the hell took you so long?”
He looked at her in surprise. “I’ve only known you for just over a week. I didn’t want to push you.”
“And yet, in many ways, I’ve known you forever,” she said simply. She stroked his face, her hand slipping around his ear before she pinched it gently and tugged him toward her. “I’m pretty sure there are a lot of ways of getting to know each other.”
And she kissed him. The minute her lips touched his, he was lost.