36. Emmy

36

"How are things going?" Black asked softly. "Do you need me there?"

We'd arrived at Casa del Gato half an hour ago. Elene was still sleeping, so we'd put her in a guest room-slash-holding cell until we worked out what to do with her.

Did I want Black here? Yes, absolutely. I missed him every second I wasn't with him. But did I need him here? Did I need him here enough to pull him out of Spain, where he had a black-market arms dealer in his sights?

"Nah, I have Dan and Pale."

"Should I be jealous?"

"Relax, Hawaiian shirts don't do it for me. I'd be more likely to go for one of his girls."

"Not helping."

Winding up my darling husband was so much fun, although I was only half-kidding about the girls. I was pretty sure at least one of them was bi, and if I hadn't switched to monogamy, then maybe I would have gone there.

"I'm only here for the case, Chuck. And it's going…not great. The asshole is always one step ahead. He's smart, he knows the city, and he's had military training."

"My money's still on you. No man can hide forever. There's going to be a thread that leads you to him, and when you find it, you need to pull on it hard, then use it to strangle the motherfucker."

"And don't get caught. Yeah, yeah, understood."

"How's Ryder holding up?"

Good question. Of all the folks on my team, he was the most fragile. I'd picked up on it during the interview process, and a deep dive into his background confirmed my suspicions. But he also had an uncanny knack for compartmentalising. At home, he moped, but when he came to work, he performed as well as anyone else. It was only in the past few months, when the personal and the professional had collided, that we'd experienced a problem. That was why I'd given him the space he needed to get himself sorted out. Maybe some would call me a soft touch—not many, because I'd punch their fucking teeth out—but I cared about my people. Ryder was a good man. And Luna… Yeah, she could be the human equivalent of fingernails on a blackboard, but deep down, she wasn't a bad person.

"Ryder's shaky at the moment, but as long as we get Luna back in one piece, he'll be fine."

And Luna made him stronger.

"Any time you need to talk…"

"Yeah, I know. Always by my side. Love you, Chuck."

"Always and forever, Diamond. Give my regards to Ray and Jette."

"Will do."

All we needed was a thread. I was about to check in with Dan when I heard a commotion from the first floor—second floor, if we were speaking American—that sounded like wild animals in pain. I ran up the stairs with Tulsa and Dice right behind me.

"This is all your fault!" a woman shrieked, and I groaned inwardly as I recognised the voice.

"Let go of me! You're crazy!"

For a woman who'd bitched something chronic about Luna when they first met, Caro sure was going to the wall defending her. In a large, airy bedroom, she had Elene face down on the bed, a knee in the small of her back as she tore at her hair.

"You stole all her money, and it's me who's crazy? You're the reason she had to take that job. You're the reason she came back to Vegas, and you're the reason Ryder had to leave her on her own."

Tulsa, who was the tallest of us at nearly six feet, wrapped her arms around Caro's waist and pulled while Dice pinned down Elene, and I tried to pry Caro's fingers loose.

"You've made your point, okay? You can let go of her now."

"Oh, you think? My friend is still missing."

"And while we're here stopping you from committing murder, we're not out looking for her."

Storm appeared and began to help me with Caro's fingers.

"Thanks, honey."

She flashed me a smile. "Any time."

"If we just went ahead with the murder thing," Dice said, "that would be one less issue to deal with."

A breathless sob burst out of Elene.

"Nobody has time to bury a body today."

"We have a walk-in freezer, so?—"

"No."

"You're not my boss."

"You want me to get Priest to tell you the same thing?"

Caro's hold finally released, and Tulsa hauled her to the other side of the room as Elene sucked in a lungful of air. This day was going swimmingly so far. Already, I'd had to leave the security exercise I was conducting in the hands of Nye Holmes and call in a favour from Sofia Darke's little bro to play the bad guy. Plus I'd had to cancel dinner reservations at Arabica. The Lebanese feast I'd been looking forward to had become a Maccy D's from the drive-through by the airport and a packet of dry roast peanuts.

I pointed at Caro. "You're here to support Luna when we find her, nothing else. If you pull another stunt like that, I'll have zero qualms about cuffing you to something solid for the duration."

"But she started all this."

"I didn't mean for anyone to get hurt," Elene sniffled, combing through her hair with her fingers to see how much was missing. "I just wanted to save my nephew."

"By sacrificing somebody else?"

"Ronnie said he had a property portfolio worth hundreds of millions, so I didn't think he'd even miss what I took."

"Well, he doesn't, and it wasn't his money, so?—"

"Enough!" I held up my hands. "Arguing gets us nowhere. We'll deal with Elene later, but right now, we have to focus on Luna."

And I also had to look at the bigger picture. Yes, Mark Antony had fixated on Luna when she came to perform at the Nile Palace, but the chances were, she'd have returned to Vegas anyway. It was her home. After the bust-up with Ryder, she wouldn't have gone to Richmond. And the theft of the money had given Luna the push she needed to strike out on her own. She'd had less to lose. With her mom still in control of the millions, it would have been far easier for her to fall back into her old life.

And now? Now, we'd get most of the money back from Elene. She'd probably spent less of it than Amethyst would have wasted in the same time period, and on a more worthwhile cause. Nobody needed a massage every fucking day. Liberating the cash from Amethyst would have been ten times harder.

As for Elene's nephew, I had a plan for that. I wasn't a huge fan of kids, but I wasn't about to let a boy suffer for want of medical treatment. And Hill… Once we were sure we had no further use for him, we'd let him go on the proviso that he kept his mouth firmly shut. I didn't want him confessing all to Amethyst. Better for her to think the money was still missing than in Luna's hands. And Khatia would just have to manage without a house-elf.

Caro huffed out a sigh. "Fine, I'll keep away from her. For now."

Good. "Elene, you're staying in here. Someone will bring you food, and after we've dealt with the current situation, you can return the money and we'll see about getting in touch with your sister."

"But—"

"You will be returning the money. We'll discuss the logistics later." I pointed at the door. "Right. Caro, out. The rest of us need to get back to work."

Caro didn't look back as she stomped out, and as Dice filed past, she ignored me too.

"Black sends his regards," I told her.

She hesitated. "Say hi to him, I guess."

This was progress. For most of her life, she'd blamed Black for her father's death and refused to speak with him at all. He'd had to funnel money for her mom's medical bills and later her boarding school fees through Pale because she didn't bear him the same grudge. It was only years later when she'd somehow gotten hold of the bodycam footage of that night—which I suspected Echo had helped with—that she'd found out the truth and thawed a little towards Black and me. We weren't exactly best buddies, but she hadn't hurled any knives in my direction recently, so that was a win.

Downstairs, Tulsa sat Caro in the kitchen with Marcel and ordered her to keep her ass on the stool for the remainder of the night. Or was it morning? Between the jetlag, the lack of sleep, and the distractions, I had no idea what time it was. I checked my watch. Coming up to five a.m. Luna had been gone for nearly twenty-four hours, and we weren't much closer to finding her than we had been yesterday morning. At least Ryder was too busy bugging Echo in her basement lair to notice the drama upstairs.

"Any news?" I asked when I found them.

Echo glared at me like she was channelling the Dark Lord Sauron and Horus combined. Hmm. Horus? The gold cuff Hebert had sent to Luna included the Eye of Horus as part of the design. Did that mean anything? Or had he just bought it because it was pretty? I wasn't an expert on Egyptian deities, but my assistant's boyfriend waffled on about them whenever he was around, and I was almost certain Horus was god of the sky.

"Newsflash: I work faster when people don't ask me questions every seven seconds. If you want to help, bring coffee. I haven't slept in twenty-six hours."

I was about to make a witty retort, but then I figured I'd be a bitch without coffee too. So I shrugged and headed for the kitchen, ignoring Dice's snickering as I passed. Although my efforts were futile. Marcel had a fit when I headed for the coffee machine and waved me onto a stool next to Caro.

"Sorry," she muttered as I sat down. "I'm just pissed at her, that's all."

"Everyone's under stress; don't add to it. Make one for me too, will you?" I called to Marcel.

"Sugar? Cream?"

"No and no. Do you have any snacks?"

"Of course." He acted as if the suggestion that he might not was mortally offensive. "Veggie trays are in the refrigerator, fruit is in the bowl, potato chips are in the basket over there, and homemade cookies are in those jars." Marcel waved towards three jars on the counter, pink, yellow, and green. "Don't eat the green ones."

"Why not?"

"Those are Dusk's special cookies."

Ah. "Plant-based?"

"Sometimes she doesn't sleep so well."

I was familiar with that feeling. If we stayed here for long, at least I knew how to relax. Dusk, meanwhile, was still with Nola Jiminez, wide awake and waiting for news.

"Hey!" Caro complained. "You just gave me three of those cookies."

"You looked as if you needed them, chérie."

"Give her a couple more," I suggested as I picked up the tray and headed for the door with two kinds of cookie, three bags of chips, the coffee, and a token apple.

Which Echo completely ignored.

"I have Hebert's Army records," she announced. "His DD 214. Surprise, surprise, he was sketchy when it came to his résumé."

That didn't exactly shock me, but even the lie hadn't shown him in a great light. He'd claimed that he left as an E-3, which told a story in itself. Why hadn't he been promoted to corporal when he had enough time in service?

"Go on."

"He claimed he got an honourable discharge, which is sort of true, but what he actually had was a separation under Chapter 5.13."

I knew the DD 214 was his discharge form, but the ins and outs of US Army regulations weren't my strong point.

"Refresh my memory."

"Separation due to personality disorder. And that was after he filed a request for correction and the board granted it. Before that, he got a dishonourable discharge for dereliction of duty." Echo scanned the screen. "Seemed he continually disobeyed orders. Only minor violations, but he wouldn't do his duty because…hoo boy."

"What?"

"He thought he knew better than his superiors because in a previous life, he was a general who commanded an army in Rome's war against Parthia."

"Pretty sure Rome lost that fight," Pale said from his spot in the corner. He was sprawled in a chair, half-asleep. On jobs like this one, you had to grab a bit of shuteye whenever you could. "But I guess that explains a lot."

"He spent time at Fort Jackson, Fort Irwin, and Camp Humphreys in South Korea. His next of kin is listed as Candice Hebert of Alexandria, Minnesota. His mom. Maybe he went back there?"

"She died," Tulsa said from her spot beside Pale. She was stretched out on the floor.

"Right." Echo's fingers flew over the keys. "Four and a half years ago. Liver failure."

"One year ago. That's what he told Romeo. He took time off to go to the funeral."

"Nuh-uh. Four and a half years ago. The Minnesota Department of Health doesn't lie. Well, it does sometimes, but you really need to know your way around the system to make it do that."

"He knows about computers," Tulsa reminded her. "He sabotaged the security system at the Nile Palace."

"Oh, please. He shoulder-surfed for an admin password and changed one setting."

"Could he have two moms?" I asked. "Did his biological mom have a female partner?"

"No mention of that, but there's no father listed on Hebert's birth certificate."

"What happened to Candice Hebert's property?"

"I'll look into that."

And I'd ask Dan to dig around too, once she'd finished with the vehicle. The Mark Antony thing had clearly been festering in Anton Hebert's psyche for a while. Maybe even back to his childhood?

I was about to call her when Tulsa's phone rang. She listened for a moment.

"Are you fucking kidding me? No, we're on our way."

"What happened?"

"Hebert just called Jiminez. He says he left the kid at the Wonder Burger near Woodlawn Cemetery."