Laurie almost dropped her juice. She tightened her grip on the glass, then she swallowed and looked at Emma.
“What? When? Where?” Laurie leaned forward onto the table.
“He e-mailed me, from a generic account.” Emma handed Laurie a piece of paper.
Laurie read the header, an e-mail from ‘John Smith.’ It was a rambling e-mail about gardening. Her brows knit together as she looked to Emma.
“It’s in code.” Emma nodded to the paper. “I used to play a game with him when he was a child. He would write in code. Take every third letter in each sentence and it makes a different sentence.”
Emma reached over and flipped the piece of paper. On the back, scribbled in Emma’s handwriting, were two simple sentences:
Close to Kaimi. We are fine.
“They’re okay.” Laurie breathed a sigh of relief.
The barest edge of Laurie’s tension slid away from her shoulders. She placed the piece of paper down on the table. Laurie stroked it with her index finger. Dante was okay. They were getting close to Kaimi. She hoped it were true on one hand, wanting to see the man behind bars. On the other, she wished Dante would give up this insane hunt and come back home.
“They’re just fine.” Emma said with a sneer as she walked away from the table.
Emma looked so wound with tension, Laurie thought she might explode. Every movement she made nudged her along the path of a dangerous fuse.
“What’s wrong, Emma? Aren’t you glad they’re okay?” Gabriella quirked an eyebrow at her.
“Oh, I’m glad, Gabriella. I’m very glad my retired husband and son are out hunting a killer.” Emma jerked open the pantry door, turning toward them.
“They’re going to be okay. They’re all highly trained—” Gabriella began.
“That’s what I’m worried about.” Emma came toward her. “That they all come out of this just fine, and then they’ll come back here full of their own invincibility. Then what happens next time? What happens when my husband goes running off on yet another mission and Bob and Dante aren’t around? He just can’t…he can’t keep doing this forever.”
Emma dissolved into tears, as she sat back down at the table.
Laurie reached over to rub Emma’s shoulder.
Gabriella got up to hug her.
Emma had voiced a secret fear they all had. They hated to admit it, but the men coming home unharmed was the least of their worries.
Laurie loved Dante. Yet, if he succeeded and found Kaimi, she would have to go back to Hawaii. Dante would go back with her to stand in the line of fire, ready to protect her for as long as they let him. There was no guarantee the Marshals Service would let him protect her for long. They would hide her somewhere. Who knows if they would even let her speak to him. God, she might never even see Dante again. The thought made her heart twist in her chest.
However, the Marshals Service didn’t know where she was hiding. If…no, she wouldn’t go there. When Dante returned safely, they could stay here for as long as they wanted.
Laurie pushed that thought away as well. Without her testimony, the prosecutor would have little proof that Kaimi killed Katherine and Easton, at least not enough to convict. She was the evidence that tied him to the crime. She couldn’t just let that go.
She would have to make a choice. She honestly didn’t know what she would do when the time came, so she stared at the table in despair.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Dante
The rain began to pour down, running into Dante’s open window. In the minute it took to roll up the window in the piece-of-crap rental car he was in, his arm and shoulder were soaked. Annoyed, he brushed the drops from his arm with more force than necessary.
His father sat beside Dante in the passenger’s seat. Albert hadn’t moved at all during the three hours they sat outside of the house they were watching.
Dante jumped when Albert suddenly grabbed his shoulder. Dante’s annoyance grew as he turned to his father.
Albert nodded toward the house.
Dante glanced back at the house. They had been watching it for the past four days. After culling through all of the CIA reports on Kaimi, they had narrowed the pool of potential hideouts to three. This house was at the top of the list. Owned by one of Kaimi’s long-standing rivals in the gun trade, it appeared in report after report after report, going all the way back to Kaimi’s first rise to law-enforcement attention. Though it had never been a reported safe-haven, the shear frequency of its occurrence in the documents outnumbered other locations almost two to one. Kaimi’s men had come here for numerous meetings, Kaimi had come for parties and dinners. There had been an altercation or two between Kaimi’s men and the men in his rival’s staff. It would also make the perfect hideout, since the Feds would discount it because of who owned it. The mansion was on a hill near Kukio Bay in a multimillion-dollar resort, within easy reach of a marina. The dark foliage around the walled mansion also made surveillance almost impossible. Albert had sniffed out the only real vantage point after a day or so of searching. It was the driveway of a deserted home downhill from the mansion.
Even though it was past midnight, three cars were leaving the compound on the hill. There hadn’t been anyone to come in or leave the house since they started their surveillance, except for the cleaning service and the gardeners. Albert and Dante sank down into their seats as three town cars passed by, rolling down the hill toward the marina. After they passed, Dante took out their infrared binoculars. He pointed them toward the house. There were three people around the perimeter, but everyone else was gone.
“There are three security guards left. The rest are gone.” Dante put the glasses down.
“That’s a lot of people to leave all at once.” Albert flicked his eyes at Dante.
“Yes it is,” Dante ran his hands through his hair. “We’ve got to figure out if he’s in there, Dad. The binoculars only tell us so much, and the listening devices we have aren’t working from this distance.”
“I know. I’ve been thinking a lot about that.” Albert tapped the newspaper in his hand against his palm. “I think it’s time for me to go back to work.”
“You are back at work.” Dante slid his eyes over to him.
“No, I think I’m going into the gardening business.” Albert tapped the paper again. “This paper right here says the resort is looking for a gardener, and well, I guess I didn’t save enough for retirement.”
Dante swiped the paper from his hand. He read the small advertisement that his father had circled. Then he threw into the back seat so hard the paper bounced off the seat, hitting his father’s seat before falling to the floor.
“No.” Dante shook his head. “It’s too dangerous.”
“I’ve been doing this for much longer than you’ve been alive. Of course it’s dangerous, but it has to be done.” A note of finality entered Albert’s voice.
“No.” Dante pinned him with a look. “We’ll find another way. Or I’ll do it.”
“There is no other way, and you have Fed written all over you. No one would suspect a lonely old man. I’ve spent so many years on a farm, there isn’t a plant I haven’t met. I can get on that property, and drop off some of our bugs. Then we’ll know if he’s here.”
Dante brooded for a while, thinking over the plan, trying to find any possible holes, any reason to protest. But his father was right. There wasn’t another way to find out unless they got onto the property. There were very few people coming and going. He sighed, running his hands through his hair.
“I will let you do this under one condition; you have to wear a hidden mic. If anything goes wrong, anything, I’m coming in.”
“I knew you were going to say that.” Albert smiled.