Chapter Fourteen
Knoll’s car was parked close to the house, probably so he could quickly retrieve the diamonds whenever Sedarno arrived. Glancing around, Adam noted that he and the driver were the only two people outside near the garage.
He glanced into a window, hoping for one last look at Jess in that red dress. Something to savor in his memory for the next couple of months until he saw her again.
Because damn it, he was going to see her again. He knew what to do now—for them both.
Knoll’s driver opened his door and climbed out. “Hey, man.” He gave Adam a fist bump.
“Good to see you, Dwayne,” Adam answered. “Ready to start your lifetime of luxury?”
“Hell yeah.”
Dwayne had been relatively easy to turn into an asset. Knoll treated his staff like crap, and Dwayne had no great loyalty to the man or his job. Adam started building the relationship with the driver by paying him handsomely for information on Knoll’s comings and goings.
Since returning to Chicago from Vegas, Adam had met with him several times to see how amenable the driver would be to accepting $400,000 and a new identity for the ultimate betrayal of his boss. Luckily for Adam, Dwayne was single and pragmatic, with no strong ties to Chicago. Escaping to the tropics with a hefty bank balance suited him just fine.
Once they knew the date for collecting the diamonds and transferring them was sometime in May, Dwayne made sure that he was on Knoll’s staff schedule around the clock. When Knoll brought the briefcase to him, he’d taken a photo of it and texted it to Adam.
Now, having had a few hours to examine the picture of the lock, Adam whipped out his tools and was able to quickly disengage the lock mechanism from the handcuff.
Dwayne flexed his wrist. “Cool, let’s get out of here. You’re still giving me a ride to the station, right?”
“Minor change of plan,” Adam grunted, now aiming his tools on the combo lock of the briefcase itself. “Just need a few more minutes.”
Previously, Adam planned to hit the road with Dwayne with the briefcase full of diamonds locked. Escape was the first priority. He’d have all the time in the world to actually open the briefcase once he’d put enough distance between himself and Sedarno.
But seeing Jess tonight changed all that. He was going to split the diamonds. Sure, it would have been nice to set Tony up like a fucking king for the rest of his life. But $12.5 million would still be a hell of a “welcome out of prison” gift. Maybe Jess’s documentation to the police saying that Knoll smuggled $25 million of diamonds into the country via Ignatius’s study-abroad programs would be a little off. But Knoll would still have a hard time explaining $12.5 million in anonymous diamonds. It would have been nice to have Knoll tortured at the hands of Sedarno, but maybe Tony would see poetic justice in Knoll being hauled off to prison.
Sedarno was still a worry, but he might well believe that Knoll had been betrayed by his driver and his driver alone. Disloyal and backstabbing employees were a constant problem for the families.
He and Dwayne would leave the suitcase with half the diamonds in the car for the FBI to find, he decided. Ignoring the laughter from the party, the sound of cicadas in the night, the ping of an incoming text on Dwayne’s phone... Adam focused solely on the lock. Shit. Knoll had splurged on a solid model, and one Adam hadn’t worked with before. It might take ten or fifteen minutes to open.
“Dude, we have to bounce now,” Dwayne said, shoving his phone over for Adam to read. “Boss wants me to bring the suitcase in the house ASAP.”
“What?” Adam read the message and craned his neck to look through the house’s window. That didn’t make any sense. Why would Knoll want his driver—conspicuously handcuffed to a briefcase—in the party?
Crawling into the expensive landscaping, he prowled along the windows trying to catch a glimpse of Knoll or Jess in the ballroom.
Another ding from Dwayne’s phone. “Says to bring my piece and meet him in a bedroom on the second floor.”
Adam changed direction, finding a window that showed an angle of the staircase. For the second time that night, his heart stopped.
On the third marble stair, Knoll held Jess by her right elbow, his face a mask of anger and confusion.
Sedarno held her left elbow. He was gazing down at her like she was an interesting puzzle made of spiders. The two men quickly half guided, half pulled her up the stairs. A bodyguard of Sedarno’s followed.
“Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck. He’s early. She’s been made.”
Heart racing, Adam climbed out of the bushes and scanned the driveway. Where the hell were the authorities that Jess called? Why weren’t they here yet?
Ping on Dwayne’s phone. “He wants me to double-knock on the door when I get up there and then stand guard. Not to come in the room unless he comes to get me, no matter what I hear.” He whistled. “Someone’s in trouble.” Oblivious to Adam’s panic, he started walking to the lot where most cars were parked. “Someone’s getting hurt.”
Adam looked between the suitcase of diamonds and the marble staircase that led to Jess.
He said goodbye.
* * *
Oh, this was bad. Very, very bad. They recognized her and they knew she was up to no good. As Knoll and Sedarno frog-marched her down the second-floor hallway, Jess tried the bimbo routine one more time. “Maurice! Arnie! What’s the matter? It’s so nice to run into you! I don’t understand why you’re angry.”
Knoll flung open a bedroom door and yanked her inside. Sedarno and his bodyguard followed at a leisurely pace contradicted by their reptilian eyes and steely jaws.
“Coincidences, Jessica,” Sedarno replied. “You see, I don’t believe in them.”
“What does that mean?” she asked, fear pitching her voice high.
“After our golfing meet-cute, I did a little research on you,” Sedaro replied. “Turns out, you’re connected to the same University at which Maurice, here, is a trustee.”
Half-blotchy, half-pale, Knoll looked between them, clearly not understanding Sedarno’s implication. “You’re a fucking idiot, Maurice,” Sedarno said, conversationally. “She’s here to cause trouble for you.” He sat down in an armchair near the wall, and his bodyguard flanked his side. “Normally I’d find that amusing, but not tonight. Not in advance of my payment.”
There was a sharp double knock on the door.
“That’s your payment.” Knoll’s voice was eager. “You can take it right now.”
No. Goddamnit, where was the FBI? She needed to stall. But how?
Well, for one, she needed to stop acting like a bimbo. The gig was up on that anyway. She looked at Knoll, then focused on Sedarno. He was the power in the room.
She let the expression of confusion drain off of her face and gave Sedarno a wry smile. “You’re right, of course. I have nothing against you, sir. But I was hoping to put Knoll in his place before you got here tonight.”
“Fascinating,” Sedarno said. “Go on.”
Since he seemed relaxed and truly interested, Jess did. “He ruined my life,” she said, matching Sedarno’s casual tone. “I found out about some of his illegal activities at the University and was about to blow the whistle when I was fired and disgraced. Now I’m broke, no one will hire me, and my family will barely speak to me.” She jabbed a thumb in Knoll’s direction but kept her gaze on Sedarno. “I was trying to expose him so that I could change all that.”
“How?”
Poker face, Jess. “I was going to take the diamonds from him and alert the authorities.” All three men stiffened at the mention of law enforcement and from a quick glance exchanged from Sedarno and his bodyguard, she suspected they may not quite believe her last statement.
She hastened to clarify. “I never intended—and still don’t intend—to implicate you, Mr. Sedarno. I only want to show proof of Knoll’s illegal activities so I can exonerate myself and reclaim my life.”
Sedarno pursed his lips and steepled his fingers. Leaning back in the chair, he epitomized a powerful man in repose.
But then his thoughtful expression devolved into one of studied regret. “I feel for you, Jessica. I really do. Maurice’s unnecessary blundering has been your downfall.”
He paused, wagged a finger at Knoll. “Shame on you, Maurice.”
Knoll looked like he didn’t know if he should laugh or look contrite. In the end, he just looked constipated. Unable to stand still, he paced across the room and stood fidgeting near Sedarno’s bodyguard.
Sedarno gazed at Jess again. “You seem like a lovely, intelligent girl. But you got in over your head, young lady. You know too much about Knoll and the diamonds. I’m taking them, and I can’t let you lead the ‘authorities’ to me.”
He sighed, a long wheeze through his nose. Shaking his head, he said, “Really a pity. I mean, my goodness, you hit your driver like an Amazon! But...” He nodded slightly at his bodyguard, who removed a gun from his jacket. The gun was elongated with an attachment that Jess had seen in movies—a silencer.
So much adrenaline flooded through Jess’s system that she literally couldn’t blink. They’re actually going to kill me. Adam had been right. She wished, suddenly and fiercely, that he had gotten the diamonds and was far away with them by now.
The bodyguard raised the gun. Interesting, Jess thought, in a detached kind of way. In her last seconds on Earth, she would have expected to picture her family. But instead, she saw Adam’s bright blue eyes, the way they crinkled when she pulled an unexpected laugh out of him.
She held up pleading hands. “Please don’t—”
Frowning, Sedarno just shrugged. “I wish I didn’t have to,” he said. “But at the core, I’m a businessman. If only you had another card to play.”
The door to the hallway flung open. Sedarno, Knoll, and the bodyguard all flicked their eyes away from Jess.
Adam strode into the room like he owned it.
For a moment, Jess was sure she was hallucinating, that she’d conjured him out of thin air.
Carrying a black briefcase in one hand, a gun in the other, Adam walked until he was angled between Sedarno’s bodyguard and Jess. “I’m her partner and I have the diamonds.” He met Jess’s wide eyes briefly, did a brief scan up and down her body as if to make sure she was unharmed.
To Sedarno, he continued. “So she has all the cards.”