Make Her Pay

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

WHEN LIZZIE TURNED around and saw the lights of the SUV, a scream lodged in her throat.

“Hang on,” Con called.

She clutched his stomach tighter, squashing her thighs against his. Wind whistled through her helmet and smacked her face every time she leaned around Con’s bare back to look in the rearview mirror.

She did anyway. The SUV was gaining on them. He whipped to the left, accelerating to a heart-stopping speed that made her squeeze her eyes shut. The left? They were in the left. That meant…

Lizzie opened her eyes to confirm they were on the wrong side of the street, headed into oncoming traffic. The lights were a half mile away, but in an instant they’d be hit.

She gripped tighter instead of screaming, and wished to God she’d had a chance to say good-bye to Brianna.

A car whizzed by, the horn blaring. Con flung them around another car, more horns blasting. The bike swayed left and right, braiding the oncoming traffic as if the cars were merely cones in a motorcross route. The cacophony of screeching brakes and furious horns added to the insanity, deafening even over the bellow of the full-speed motorcycle.

She stole a glance to the right. They’d outrun their pursuer by about fifteen car lengths. Con rolled them to the left again, doing another tip-until-you-touch turn that stopped Lizzie’s heart, righting them as he turned left again into a side street.

“We’re not far from my sister’s house,” she said, amazed she still had a voice. “We can go there for the night.”

The blare of horns and screeching brakes drowned out his answer. She whipped around to see the Escalade doing exactly what they’d done-crossed oncoming traffic to follow them.

Con hit the gas and they launched forward, but the SUV almost caught up. Lizzie turned to see a half-bald man stick his head out the driver’s side as he managed to pull up almost next to them.

“Give me the fucking medallion, Xenakis!”

Before she realized what was happening, Con had his gun out, the muscles of his back tensing as he shot twice at the front right tire, then, if it was even possible, increased their speed to what felt like a hundred and careened through the residential neighborhood, eventually working their way back to the highway, where he tilted the bike and took a right.

“I live in the other direction!” she hollered.

“We’re not going there.”

When he slowed down to the same speed as traffic, Lizzie breathed for the first time, still checking the rearview for that big Escalade.

Finally, he pulled into a 7-Eleven parking lot, rumbling to the back behind the building so they couldn’t be seen from the street, his bare chest heaving from the effort.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“We can’t stay here tonight. We’ve got to get back to that boat before Paxton takes something else, or blames us for this one.”

“Tonight?” He didn’t really think he could navigate that treacherous inlet at night, did he?

He pulled out his phone and hit one number. She thought she heard a woman’s voice answer.

“We need a boat. Fast. Have it at Sebastian Marina, ASAP. Paxton left us stranded and we need to get back on board.” There was a pause. “Big enough to get us through the inlet, but something fast.”

He gunned the engine again, rolling out.

“The marina’s about two blocks from here,” she called out, glancing up and down the road for the Escalade.

“Listen to me,” he said over his shoulder. “We’re going to move fast. We’ll ditch this bike in the lot and get to the dock as fast as possible. Not that I expect Dix to come looking for us, but I don’t want to take chances.”

They parked and he took the backpack from her, then they ran to the dock in silence. One of the marina workers was waiting with a twenty-one-foot twin outboard with a cuddy cabin in the bow, keys in hand.

Wow. When the Feds called, the marina workers jumped.

“That ought to get us through the inlet,” he said, taking the keys.

“It’ll be rough.” Lizzie climbed in, unafraid. “But you can do it.”

He gave her a sideways glance, probably surprised at the comment, thanked the dock man, and situated himself at the helm, as bare-chested as a pirate. “I’m going to need you on the bow, Lizzie,” he said, aiming the spotlight on the water.

She scrambled around the slender space of deck to climb on top of the cuddy and get into position, holding onto the safety rail as she leaned over to help him navigate.

Boats this size capsized in Sebastian all the time. There was a monster hole formed by the jetty, and the whitecaps ate up little crafts. Their’s was only half the size of what Flynn had brought through here earlier, but Con handled the helm with skill, avoiding the worst of the swells, managing the weight when they did hit one.

Still, even her seaworthy stomach rolled a few times as they battled treacherous waves and unexpected rocks.

She stayed on the bow, clinging to the rail, calling out warnings. Every once in a while, she turned to see him fighting the wheel, a gleam of sweat on his muscular chest, his silvery eyes slicing through the water like the hull of his vessel.

When they finally hit open water, she went back to her seat. When Con gunned it, she stopped trying to hide her admiration and just watched him.

Her heart swelled. If only Dad were alive, he would love this guy. This is what he’d always wanted for her. Get yourself one of the good guys, Lizzie Lou.

She couldn’t get back to that boat fast enough. Tonight, her undercover agent was going under her covers.

Con peered hard into the darkness, glancing at the compass and his GPS. After a while, he was shaking his head.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, sitting up.

“The Gold Digger.”

She looked over the bow, seeing nothing but a hundred miles of black Atlantic Ocean.

“Are we in the right place?” She stood, bracing her feet and scanning the horizon.

“Precisely.”

They looked at each other and said simultaneously, “The boat’s gone.”

Something was very, very wrong. Solange paced the second floor of the farmhouse, staring out the window, past the windmill to the blackness of the endless sea. Why hadn’t he called all day and all night?

Something was wrong. She could just feel it.

“Madame Bettencourt?” a voice called up the stairs to her room.

Her new hire was a grating woman, but the pickings were slim, especially since they were all spooked by Ana’s suicide. Gabby, another transplanted American, was one of the few people not related to Ana, not in mourning, and willing to work for Solange. As much as she liked not having a nurse hovering, she wasn’t about to live without domestic assistance.

When Solange didn’t answer-because she didn’t yell in her own home, for heaven’s sake-footsteps clomped up the ancient stairs.

“Mrs. B?” God, Solange hated that. And the incessant pounding on her door.

“What is it?” she asked as she opened the door.

“There’s someone here to see you.”

Solange’s stomach tightened. An investigator? So far, not a single question had been asked of her regarding the young woman who threw herself into the sea. But surely someone would look into that death.

“Who is it?”

“Someone named Brianna Dare.”

Blood drained from her head, making her dizzy. “What?”

“I know, it’s late,” Gabby said, obviously misinterpreting Solange’s shock. “But she’s a nice girl, and she’s come all the way from Florida just to see you.”

“To see me?” This wasn’t good. This couldn’t be good at all.

“She said it has something to do with a genealogy project she’s working on about the Bettencourt family, and she’s sorry it’s late, but she just got to the island.” Gabby made a solicitous face. “Why don’t you talk to her for a minute?”

Why? Because Brianna Dare was the last person on earth she wanted to talk to-except maybe Jaeger.

“Tell her I’ll be right down.” She dismissed her with a wave, then locked the door, taking a deep breath to think.

She thought better with a drink. Under the sink in her bathroom, she pulled out the bottle of Jameson, poured a healthy amount into a glass, and knocked it back. Then she rinsed with mouthwash and stared at her pale eyes, and the circles beneath them.

The scepter sat for one hundred and fifty years under a stone stair, and no one knew about it. Then Malcolm Dare found out about it, and she’d handled that. Ana saw it, and she’d handled that, too.

Now one of Malcolm’s daughters was in on the secret? She hadn’t counted on that. Would she have to handle this like she’d handled the others?

This time, she hoped she could do so with a little more finesse.

She opened her wardrobe to choose something that would let this woman know exactly what she was dealing with. Chanel. She dressed, and then, as though she still ruled from a ten-thousand-square-foot penthouse overlooking Manhattan, instead of a three-hundred-year-old converted barn in the Azores, Solange swept across her room and carefully navigated the crooked steps down.

In the parlor-if you could even call the tiny room that-a young woman popped up when Solange entered.

“Mrs. Bettencourt,” she said, a wide smile across her pretty features. “Thank you so much for seeing me. I know it’s late, but I had a hard time getting here. This place is really out there, isn’t it?”

Solange just looked at her, and gave her a withering smile. “What was your name again?”

“Oh, sorry.” She held out her hand. “I’m Brianna Dare. And, honestly, I would have come here in the morning at a more reasonable time, but did you know there’s no hotel on this whole island?”

“I know.”

“So anyway…”

Solange didn’t make it easier with small talk. With luck, an icy attitude would scare the girl off. Unfortunately, she looked spunky and curious and not easily scared.

“The reason I’m here,” the girl continued, “is that I’m working on a family project involving the genealogy of the Bettencourt family here in the Azores.”

“Mmmm.”

“You are a Bettencourt, right?”

“By marriage.”

“But still, a Bettencourt.” The girl tucked her hands into her tight jeans and gave her another winsome smile. “Well, I’m a Dare.”

Solange didn’t react.

“That name doesn’t mean anything to you, does it?”

“Not at all.” Solange launched a brow north. “What exactly are you looking for, Ms. Dare?”

“Some answers to a really old mystery. Evidently my great-great-great-plus-more grandfather and your… probably about the same grandfather-in-law had a business arrangement that might have never been… completed.”

Oh, this girl knew far too much. Far, far too much. Who had she told?

Finding out might require her to be a little friendlier. “How interesting,” Solange said, finally indicating the settee under the window. “Why don’t you have a seat and tell me all about it.”

Brianna beamed at the sudden change. “Thank you, I’d love to.”

“Something to drink? Some tea or something stronger, perhaps?”

“No, that’s not necessary.”

Solange settled in a chair, sizing up her opponent. Small, but wiry. Guileless, too. Clearly not expecting… danger. “So, tell me, however did you find me?”

“A genealogist in Lisbon helped me. She’d been helping my father, who started this project.”

“Oh, did he come with you?”

“No. He passed away a few months ago.”

Solange gave a solemn nod. “So sorry.” There was probably a special place in hell for people who offered sympathy for a death they caused. But she wasn’t worried about hell; it couldn’t be much worse than this. “So you came all alone? You traveled here without anyone else?”

“Oh, yes,” she said brightly. “But I’ll pay for it when my sister finds out.”

“She doesn’t know?”

“She’s very protective, and I thought it was better not to let her know I was taking this adventure. But I don’t need to waste your time telling you about my family. It’s yours I’m most interested in.”

No one knew she was here. “How exactly can I help you?”

“Well, since this home and this property have been in the Bettencourt family for so many generations, I was hoping that you might have some old documents, maybe some paperwork that would detail a business transaction that took place between my ancestor, Aramis Dare, and yours, a man named Carlos Bettencourt, back in the 1860s.”

“What kind of documents?”

“I won’t really know until I see them. Aramis, I believe, purchased some items in Cuba and brought them by ship to Carlos, here in the Azores. I’m trying to find proof that Aramis was paid for the items.”

She smiled. “I would think that whether he did or didn’t, a transaction that old would be forgiven and forgotten.”

“Oh, I’m not looking for money, Mrs. Bettencourt. I’m just trying to iron out some ancient history. I want to clear my ancestor’s name. It’s been kind of sullied by this.”

“That’s it?” She didn’t believe it, not for one minute. “You’re worried about the reputation of someone who lived a hundred and fifty years ago?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Brianna said, relaxing a little and leaning back. “You see, my father was a marine archaeologist, and he was very close to uncovering some artifacts involved in the business arrangement.”

Artifacts-plural. “What kind of artifacts?”

She hesitated, taking a breath. “Some very valuable ones.”

“Whom did they belong to?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

“This sounds like it might be more involved than just some documents. Is this something you’re working on all by yourself, Ms. Dare?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, my sister is working a salvage dive right now, where the artifacts are believed to be buried undersea.”

“Really. Are you in touch with her?”

“Daily.”

She tamped down the fury inside. No one should be in touch with anyone on that ship. “This is utterly fascinating. I’d love to know more.”

“Then you’ll help me? Can you search the house, the town, any historical archives for paperwork?”

“I wouldn’t want you to get your hopes raised, only to be dashed. The chances of anything surviving all those years is very small, don’t you agree?” What had she been told by her own expert? “Paper doesn’t survive that long.” Unless it’s buried in a cold, stone cave. “But I must admit, I’m absolutely captivated by your story.”

She hadn’t spent nineteen years married to the shrewdest man in America and not learned anything. Keep your enemies close. Very close. And then destroy them without leaving a shred of evidence.

“Why don’t you stay here with me for a while so we can search together?” Solange suggested. “As you said, there is no hotel in Corvo, so you are at the mercy…” She smiled benevolently. “Or the kindness of strangers.”

Her eyes glistened with gratitude. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Bettencourt.”

“Please, call me Solange.”

“And I’m Brianna.”

Solange reached out a hand. “I’ve no doubt we’ll become good friends.”