Kate stood up and walked back toward the window to take her mother’s call while Marcus stepped into the small, adjacent kitchen to give her some privacy. “Mom...I was hoping you’d call. How’s Rachel? Is she awake yet?”
Please, God. Please let Rachel be awake...
“Not yet. I’m sorry, Kate.” There was tension in her mother’s voice, along with fatigue. She knew her mother well. Knew that she’d be at that hospital at Rachel’s side every moment possible, even it if meant not getting the rest she needed to keep going.
“How are you coping, Mom?” Kate tried to mask the disappointment in her voice.
“I’m tired, but okay. The women at church have been amazing. Always insisting I eat and get enough rest.”
“And are you getting enough rest?” Kate asked, postponing the inevitable question about Rachel.
“Probably not, but the doctor gave me some sleeping pills that have helped. Eugenia makes sure I sleep at home at night and is even staying with me.”
“I’m glad to hear that. You need your rest, and there isn’t anything you can do for Rachel right now beyond being with her—and taking care of yourself.”
Kate had talked to Eugenia, one of her mother’s closest friends, before she left, asking if she would step in while she was gone and ensure her mother got enough rest. Thankfully, Eugenia had readily agreed.
“What about Sophie?” her mother asked. “Have you found out anything? Do you know who has her? The police have told me very little on this end.”
It was the question Kate had been dreading to answer, as she’d yet to decide how much she should tell her mom. Did she share with her that her granddaughter was being held by people involved in diamond and weapons smuggling? That she was planning to make the exchange in less than forty-eight hours? And that if they didn’t find the diamonds they might never see Sophie alive again?
She settled for leaving out the details for the moment, hoping her mother wouldn’t press for answers until she had something positive to give her. Dealing with Rachel’s injuries was enough on her mother’s plate for the moment.
“There are still more questions than answers, Mom, but they are following every lead they have.”
“I just don’t understand, Kate. Tell me this doesn’t have anything to do with Chad? He might not have ended up being the perfect husband, but I can’t see him doing anything to harm Sophie or Rachel.” Her mother paused to take a deep breath. “On the other hand, if this was just a random kidnapping...I think that’s even more terrifying.”
“Chad wasn’t behind the kidnapping, but there is something you need to know, Mom.” Kate stared at the apartments across the street with their colorful rows of flower boxes filled with hydrangeas, geraniums and roses. “I met with Chad this afternoon.”
“You saw him?”
“I don’t know how to tell you this, but he was hit by a truck after he left the church where we met.”
“What? Is...is he okay?”
Kate paused, wishing she were there with her mother. Hating the fact that she was having to tell her this over the phone. “He didn’t make it, Mom.”
“No...” Her mom’s voice caught. She was crying in the background. “How am I going to tell Rachel? Sophie and Chad...despite their marriage issues, they’re her world.”
“I don’t know, Mom. All we can do is take it one day at a time.” She needed to know more about Rachel. “What are the doctors saying about Rachel, Mom? How long until she wakes up?”
Kate waited for her mother’s answer, needing Rachel to be okay. Needing to be able to talk with her.
“I don’t know. What I do know is that she’s not doing well. That’s the real reason I called, Kate. The doctors haven’t said much, but I can tell they’re worried. I can hear it in their voices. See it in their eyes. They’ve put her back on a breathing machine, and she’s not responding the way she should. The doctors have decided to keep her in a medically induced coma for now.”
Kate bit the side of her lip as a wave of nausea swept through her. That meant they were going to have to somehow find the diamonds without her sister’s help.
God, we need Rachel to wake up. She is the only one who has answers that will help us get Sophie back.
“I want you to come home, Kate. It’s not safe. The police implied to me that Chad and Rachel were involved in something illegal, but I can’t believe that. Not about Rachel anyway. I don’t know how to handle this.”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out, Mom. And please understand...as much as I want to be there with you right now.” Kate fought the rising guilt for saying no, but there was no other option at the moment. Not if they wanted to get Sophie back alive. “I can’t leave until I find Sophie. I’m working with the authorities here and staying at a safe house.”
“I can’t lose you both, Kate.” Her mom sobbed. “You’re all I have, you, Rachel and Sophie.”
“Please don’t cry. You’re not going to lose me, Mom. I’m safe.”
For now anyway.
“What do you know about him?” her mother asked. “This agent—Marcus—you told me about?”
“He’s with the FBI, and he wants the same thing we do. He wants the men who hurt Rachel caught.”
“Do you trust him?”
“Completely.” She glanced over at him. He was talking to someone on his cell phone in the tiny kitchen. She trusted him because she had to trust someone. Trusted him because he’d never given her reason to not trust him.
“If you won’t come home, then you must promise me you’ll be careful, Kate. Promise me that. Please.”
“You know I will, Mom. And I love you, Mom. You know that.”
“I love you, too, Kate. Bring Sophie home as soon as you can.”
* * *
Marcus hung up his cell phone in the small kitchen, then started pulling out plates and silverware for dinner while Kate spoke to her mother. He wished he could ignore the lingering feeling of her lips against his...and the light touch of her hand against his arm. Because she’d been right. They were too different, and he was fooling himself to think that whatever was happening between them could ever turn into a serious relationship beyond Paris.
But for some reason that knowledge hadn’t been enough to stop him from kissing her. Which had him questioning his decisions. Relationships were complicated and messy, and ending up hurt wasn’t a place where he wanted to go again. But on the other hand, Kate wasn’t Nicole. And just because Nicole had hurt him, didn’t mean there wasn’t someone else out there who could love him wholly and unconditionally.
Someone like Kate.
Shoving his turbulent thoughts of Kate aside for the moment, he pulled out four plates and set them on the counter. Whatever feelings had passed between them were going to have to wait, because what mattered right now was getting the information they needed from Rachel. The clock was ticking, and they needed to know where the music boxes had been sent. Without Rachel, it was going to be a shot in the dark unless Kate was able to decipher her journal and figure out the truth.
As for the exchange, he planned to talk to Pierre and Jocelyn about their plan, but as far as he was concerned—assuming they had the diamonds by then—he didn’t want Kate anywhere near it.
He pulled open the silverware drawer as Kate stepped into the kitchen. The smile she’d had earlier had vanished and her face had paled.
“Kate...what’d your mom say?”
“It’s been rough.”
“And your sister? Is she awake yet?”
Kate shook her head. “They’ve had to put her back on the ventilator. She’s still in a coma.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“So am I. Because unless we find those diamonds...”
She didn’t need to finish her sentence. They both knew what was at stake.
“If you don’t mind, I need to freshen up a bit.”
He caught the fatigue in her eyes and nodded, wishing he could make things right again for her.
Ten minutes later, Pierre and Jocelyn walked into the apartment with takeout for the four of them. The smell of garlic and spices permeated the apartment as they set the food onto the small dining room table. Kate had washed her face and freshened her makeup, but a hint of redness still registered in her eyes as she greeted them.
“Hope you both love Chinese,” Pierre said.
“I didn’t think I was hungry, but it does smell good,” Kate offered.
“Not very Parisian, but I hope it will do. Beef with scallions and ginger, fried rice and cashew chicken.” Jocelyn smoothed down her tan skirt, then started pulling the food out of the sacks. “And, Kate, I don’t know what to say about your brother-in-law, except I’m really, really sorry.”
“Thank you, though I don’t think the reality of the situation has completely sunk in yet,” Kate said.
“They know they need to keep her alive and well if they want the diamonds,” Pierre added.
“I hope, but I have so many questions. They already have Sophie. Why the need to grab me off the streets? It doesn’t add up.”
“We keep asking ourselves the same thing, because you’re right. It doesn’t add up,” Jocelyn said. “What about your sister?”
Kate glanced at Marcus before answering. “I just got off the phone with my mother a few minutes ago. She’s still unconscious.”
“So we still don’t have any idea where she sent the music boxes,” Pierre said.
“Marcus thinks there might be a clue in her journal.”
“It’s worth a try.”
“I have to try. She sent those diamonds to someone. If I want to get Sophie back, I need to find out who.”
* * *
Marcus set the journals and albums onto the table beside the food. “I hate to make this a working dinner, but time isn’t exactly on our side.”
Kate started with the latest journal, turning pages between small bites of beef and fried rice. Journaling—along with her own version of shorthand—was a habit Rachel had picked up during high school.
“You can read that?” Marcus asked.
Kate held up her phone, where she’d looked up a cheat sheet to help decipher some of the phrases. “Enough to get the gist of most of it. We used to send notes to each other like this. It’s a mixture of typical shorthand, using symbols and abbreviations for words and common phrases, along with our own ‘language.’ Rachel kept at it, though, and always used it when writing in her journals. It used to drive my mom crazy when she found one of our notes.”
“You told me that she uses nicknames for everyone. Ace is the one I noticed a number of times from her time in Paris that you didn’t know.”
“I’ll look for that name and see if I can put it in context.”
She read through the pages, trying to sort through Rachel’s shorthand, while the others looked through the photos. Setting aside the guilty feeling that came with it was proving to be impossible. A guilt over feeling as if she were trying to pry into her sister’s private thoughts.
An hour later, Kate dropped the journal back onto the table, needing to take a break. Jocelyn and Pierre had already cleared away dinner, giving them more room to work on the small table.
“Anything?” Marcus asked.
Kate began flipping through the pages of one of the photo albums. “Nothing that seems to relate to what’s happening now. Their marriage was clearly in trouble, but I don’t think she knew anything about what Chad was involved in. In fact, she makes it very clear that she wanted to save their relationship. I know Rachel. If she knew what Chad was involved in and the danger it posed to her family, I think she’d have considered walking away before endangering Sophie’s life.”
Marcus tapped one of the photos of her and Rachel together. “Is that you and your sister?”
“Yes.”
“You really do look a lot alike.”
Kate took the album from him and smiled, feeling nostalgic over the shot. “I took her to the airport that day. She was on her way to Paris, hopeful she could work things out with Chad.”
“Would you like some café?” Jocelyn asked, setting a tray of coffee cups and a pot onto the table. “It’s decaf.”
“I’d love some. Thank you,” Kate said.
“I would, too,” Marcus said. “Thank you, Jocelyn.”
“What about Chad’s relatives?” Pierre set down a plate with an assortment of petits fours from the bakery across the street and sat down. “Parents? Siblings? I know the police are still trying to contact his father, who lives here in Paris. His name is Andre Laurent.”
“I don’t know a lot about his family. Chad is—was—an only child. His mother died from breast cancer a few years back if I remember correctly,” Kate said. While the fear still lingered, at least they were trying to find a solution. “His father came to their wedding in Dallas. He was a nice man, and he seemed happy to have Rachel as a part of his family.”
“Have the police been able to speak with him yet?” Marcus asked, pouring himself a cup of coffee.
Pierre shook his head. “He’s not picking up his cell phone, and he’s not at his apartment.”
“As soon as they find him, we need to question him,” Marcus said.
“Here’s another question.” Kate took a sip of the coffee Marcus had poured her. “I think I understand how Chad stole the diamonds, but how was he intending to sell them without getting caught? You can’t flood the market with diamonds without someone noticing.”
“It’s the same question every thief has to answer,” Pierre said, eyeing the dessert tray, before picking up a small square piece of cake covered in pink fondant. “It seems like every few years or so someone tries to walk away with a fortune, but when they try to unload it...well, that’s where they get caught.”
“Pierre is right,” Marcus said. “If it’s a famous painting, for example, you can’t exactly sell it on eBay. You have to sell it on the black market, where someone will hide it away among their private collection. And diamonds are the same. You can have them cut and polished, but flooding the market will ultimately raise questions.”
“But isn’t there a difference between breaking into a jewelry shop,” Kate said, “and what Chad did? He might have been wrong, but he assumed no one knew what he was doing.”
“True, but I’d think he’d still want to lay low,” Jocelyn said. “If it were me, I’d have them cut and polished so there would be no way to trace them, but you’d still need to be careful. He wouldn’t have wanted anyone to know—his bosses especially—what he was doing.”
“So he was in no hurry to sell the diamonds,” Kate said.
“Exactly. For the most part, thieves have two options. They can hide their spoils for months or even years, or the other option is to fence them.”
“To whom?”
“He might have tried to cut a deal with an illegal wholesaler. Chad would sell the diamonds at a loss, but still make money, which in turn makes everyone happy.”
“So that explains why he sent them to Rachel.” Marcus picked a lemon tartlet from the tray and took a small bite. “He assumed they’d be safe there, and that Rachel would never discover she actually had the diamonds.”
“What he didn’t expect was that she would decide not to keep the music boxes,” Kate said.
“And when someone discovered what he’d been doing and wanted the diamonds back...he had nothing to give them,” Jocelyn said.
“So someone clearly knew what Chad was doing,” Marcus threw out. “His boss? A coworker? Maybe whoever cut the diamonds for him?”
“His boss makes the most sense to me,” Jocelyn said, picking up her second small piece of cake. This one was covered in bright lime-green fondant. “They would be the ones ultimately losing money from his buying and skimming.”
“What about Rachel?” Pierre asked as he sat back in his chair, holding his coffee. “Is there a chance she found out what he was involved in? Or maybe was involved in it with him?”
The question stung even though it wasn’t the first time the possibility had been brought up. But no matter how she looked at the situation, she couldn’t bring herself to believe Rachel was involved.
“Like I said earlier,” she said, “I couldn’t find any mentions of the diamonds in her journal—”
“That doesn’t mean she didn’t know what was going on,” Pierre pressed.
Kate frowned at the implications.
“We have to look into everything, Kate,” Marcus said, setting down his coffee.
“I know, it’s just that...you don’t know Rachel the way I do. She was horrible at keeping secrets. I can’t see her sitting on a fortune and not breathing a word to anyone.”
“But she knew something was off with her husband.”
Kate closed her eyes for a moment. “She’d been distant the past few months, and I assumed it was because of the problems in her marriage. When Chad moved out of the house, she more or less became a single mom. It was hard for her.”
Kate shook her head as snippets of their conversation the morning Rachel had been shot resurfaced. “The morning I found her—after she’d been shot—she told me that the last time she saw Chad, he was scared.”
“About what?” Pierre asked.
“I don’t know. She just said that the last time she went to see him in Paris, he’d told her he was scared. She’d hinted she was afraid he’d gotten himself involved in something illegal.”
“Like smuggling diamonds. I’d lose sleep over getting caught, as well,” Pierre said.
“She said he wouldn’t tell her, but that it wasn’t something she needed to worry about.”
“What if they were in it together?” Jocelyn threw out. “What if she knew exactly what was in those music boxes because he told her? What if she was a part of the plan and they were waiting until they could sell the diamonds and buy an island or a house in Belize?”
Kate’s head began to pound. “Then why not just keep the music boxes? I saw her mail those packages to someone.”
“Maybe she wasn’t returning them to him like you assumed, but hiding them so he wouldn’t be able to find them,” Pierre added.
“And betray Chad? No.” While she couldn’t believe Rachel had been involved in something illegal, neither could she believe she’d betray Chad.
Marcus reached out and squeezed her hand. “Unfortunately, we won’t know for certain until she wakes up, so I think this is enough for now. Until we can speak with Rachel, everything we come up with is just speculations. What we need to focus on right now is simply finding those diamonds, and I think the place to start is Chad’s father.”
Kate nodded, grateful for his stepping in. He was right. Until Rachel woke up—if she woke up—he was right. They were simply grasping at straws.
“What else do you know about Chad’s father?” Marcus asked.
“Like I said, I only met him twice. The first time was at Rachel and Chad’s wedding. His English is pretty good so we chatted for a bit after the ceremony. He visited one other time in Dallas a few weeks after Sophie was born, but that was almost five years ago. I haven’t seen him since.”
Kate continued flipping through the photo albums, trying to remember what else she knew about the man. As with everything she did, Rachel had meticulously taken photos, labeled and organized them. Her last trip to Paris was no exception. Chad had taken some time off, but on days he had to work, Andre Laurent had taken her and Sophie around the city, but not to just the typical tourist destinations. Instead, he’d taken them to the Place des Vosges, the oldest square in Paris, where Victor Hugo had lived; the famous Berthillon ice cream shop for raspberry and mango ice cream; and one of the traditional, outdoor Le Guignol puppet shows for children.
She started to turn another page, then paused as the pieces of the puzzle began popping into place. “What if she sent the music boxes to Chad’s father?”
“Why would she do that?” Jocelyn asked.
“I don’t know, but the journal entries where she talks about Ace fit into the time period of this trip. Ace could be Chad’s father. And look at this...”
“What is it?” Marcus asked.
“It’s a photo of Chad’s father from Rachel’s last trip to Paris. They spent the morning at the Louvre. I remember now that she told me that he is a copyist.”
“A what?” Marcus asked.
“Haven’t you ever visited a museum in Paris, Marcus?” Jocelyn asked.
Marcus frowned. “Of course.”
“He goes to the Louvre every day and studies how to paint by actually copying the masterpieces.” Kate nodded and handed him the photo. “He’s especially interested in Renaissance artists.”
“So what are you thinking?” Pierre asked. “That we might find him there?”
“It’s worth a try,” Kate said.
“The copyists arrive at 9:30 a.m., five days a week,” Jocelyn explained. “And I suppose it’s as good as any place to start looking for Monsieur Laurent if the police can’t track him down sooner.”
“And if we find him?” Kate asked.
“We?”
“I’m going with you, Marcus.”
“Kate—”
“There is no way you can expect me to stay cooped up in this tiny apartment. Besides, if he knows something about the diamonds, do you think he’ll just tell you or hand them over to you?”
“We’ve been over this before, Kate.”
“She’s right, Marcus.” Jocelyn set her coffee cup on the table. “Kate’s much more liable to get the truth out of him than you will be.”
“Thanks, I thought you two were on my side. I can’t take care of Kate and run this investigation.”
“We’ll be there as backup,” Pierre said. “If they come after you, your job is to keep Kate safe, and we’ll take them down.”
Marcus shook his head, clearly not liking the idea.
“You know I need to be there,” Kate started.
“No sneaking off and trying to do things on your own.”
Kate nodded her head. “I promise.”
“Then we’ll need a layout of the museum and a detailed security plan,” Marcus said, still not looking 100 percent convinced. “If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right.”