The room was silent for five whole seconds. The warden gave me a look that said I was off my nutty, and began, ‘‘That was
some
magic trick, but I’m afraid I don’t have time—’’ when all hell broke loose. Alarms went off inside his office and his phone lit up with incoming calls as shouting rang out from the grounds outside.
The warden jumped up from behind his desk and ran to the window, and just as he turned his back to us, I grabbed Candice’s hand and boogied to the door. We were out in a flash and bolting down the stairs when a shot rang out behind us. ‘‘Shit!’’ I said as I ducked low.
‘‘This way!’’ she said and pulled me down a corridor.
‘‘How are we going to get through the gates?’’ I asked as we ran headlong down the corridor toward the first set of security gates.
‘‘Leave it to me!’’ she said.
The guard was already wearing a look of panic as he saw us running toward him. The alarms were ringing so loud that it was hard to think, let alone speak. Candice pounded on the door as the guard began to raise his walkie-talkie to his ear. She screamed, ‘‘Fire! There’s fire up in the warden’s office!’’ The guard’s eyes became huge and he hit the buzzer to let us through. When we cleared the other side, she worked herself into hysterics and said, ‘‘The warden! He’s trapped in the fire! You’ve got to rescue him! He’ll
die,
man!’’
‘‘Get down that hall and take a left!’’ he shouted to us as he hit a button on his console, then reached for his phone and punched in three digits. ‘‘It will lead you to an emergency exit and I’ve just unlocked that door!’’
With that, the guard bolted through the door and ran down the hallway toward the warden’s office. The moment he was a yard or two down the corridor, Candice pulled her purse off her shoulder and ran the straps through the loop in the door handle, knotting them so that the door could be opened only about six inches.
We took off running as hard and fast as we could and just as we’d covered about a hundred yards we heard, ‘‘Halt!’’ behind us. I looked back and saw the guard and the warden struggling to open the door.
‘‘Go!’’
Candice commanded, pulling at my sweatshirt and forcing me to run faster. I could see the emergency exit fifty yards ahead. I dug in hard and put on some speed as I matched her stride for stride. We were closing the distance when another shot rang out behind us and a window splintered off to my right. I ducked low but kept going. We were twenty yards away, then ten, then five, and that’s when the door opened and a huge, beefy guard stepped through, blocking our escape.
I put on the brakes, but Candice made a kind of growling sound and charged ahead. The guard barely had time to reach for his Mace before Candice was suddenly airborne. In a move that would have put Jet Li to shame, she karate-kicked him in the nose, which sent him spinning to the floor. We dashed through the emergency exit and out into the open, gaining ten more yards before a dozen rifles cocked and a booming voice yelled, ‘‘Halt! Get down on the ground. Now!’’
Candice grabbed my arm and pulled me to a stop. We dropped facedown in the dirt, our hands over our heads. I was panting so hard and my heart was racing so fast I thought I was going to pass out, but something leaked through the fog of my exhaustion that made my skin crawl. I heard uproarious laughter.
I wanted to turn my head to Candice, but I was truly too scared to move. The laughing continued. And then it sank in that I knew that laugh and knew it well. It was thick and throaty and oh-so-sexy. Very slowly I turned my head and looked up. Standing over me were six feet two inches of solid Greek god.
‘‘Dutch!’’ I yelped and got to my knees. ‘‘Ohmigod! Thank God it’s you!’’
‘‘Did you start all this?’’ he asked, pointing up to the sky, and I slowly took in the three helicopters circling the prison and an entire squadron of state and local police emptying out of police cars, not to mention the SWAT teams and FBI filing around the perimeter.
‘‘Me?’’ I said innocently and forced a laugh. Candice also got to her knees and looked up at Dutch. Turning to her, I said, ‘‘Can you believe this guy?’’
She forced a giggle. ‘‘I know!’’ she said. ‘‘Thinking we had anything to do with a prison riot—that’s just
crazy
!’
Dutch helped us both to our feet and gave a signal for the other FBI agents with their big scary guns to stand down.
‘‘Want to tell me what you’re doing here?’’ he asked.
‘‘Candice?’’ I said to her. ‘‘Show the man.’’
Candice reached up to her lapel, turned it back to the tiny pocket, and pulled out her itty-bitty recorder. ‘‘It’s all on this microchip, Agent Rivers,’’ she said. ‘‘I’m pretty sure you’ll be delighted to hear that Warden Sinclair has confessed to killing Walter McDaniel, and you’ll also have enough there to put Dick Wolfe away for a very long time.’’
Several days later Dutch and I were sitting on my couch and he was pumping me for information. ‘‘You
promise
me this is off the record?’’ I asked.
‘‘Scout’s honor,’’ he said, holding up his hand pledge-style.
‘‘Fine,’’ I said after checking my lie detector. ‘‘Right before we made it to the prison, I had Candice pull over and check a few things on her computer so I could put the final pieces of the puzzle together.’’
‘‘What things?’’
‘‘Well, first I had her look back into Dillon’s financial records, because the box on the loan applications was checked for private mortgage insurance and I wanted to see when the balances of the loans were paid off.’’
‘‘When were they paid off?’’
‘‘They were paid in full about two months after his father’s death.’’
‘‘So he knew going into it that his father was a target?’’
‘‘That I can’t say for sure, but I do know he had a lot of guilt over it.’’
‘‘How do you know that?’’
‘‘In his house is this huge portrait of King Edward the Seventh. I did a quick Google search on Edward and it turns out that one of the biggest stories about him was that when his father, Prince Albert, died, Edward’s mother, Queen Victoria, accused her son of patricide. She said that it was the stress he’d caused by being such a deviant from the family that had killed his father.’’
‘‘That boy’s in need of some serious therapy,’’ Dutch said, shaking his head.
I nodded. ‘‘Anyway, the next call I made was to Selena. I told her that it was imperative that she contact her brother, Nero—he’s that inmate at Jackson I told you was being beaten up—immediately and have him call us.’’
‘‘Why do I think I’m not going to like where this is headed?’’
I smiled. ‘‘Remember,’’ I sang, ‘‘we’re still off the record.’’
Dutch sighed and looked like he was bracing himself. ‘‘Go on.’’
‘‘So we talked to Nero, and he’s a really nice guy, it turns out—’’
‘‘If you like criminals,’’ Dutch interrupted sarcastically.
I rolled my eyes. ‘‘Anyway, he was more than willing to help us with a little, er . . . distraction, if that meant it would stop the blackmail against his family and bring the guys who were doing it to justice.’’
Dutch tapped me on the head and said, ‘‘You are just damn lucky no one was seriously hurt by your ‘little distraction.’ ’’
I gave him a big grin. ‘‘All part of the plan,’’ I said. ‘‘I knew the warden would agree to meet with us. He’s that type of guy, very egocentric.’’
‘‘
Was
that type of guy,’’ Dutch corrected, and that caught me off guard.
‘‘What?’’ I asked.
‘‘He hanged himself late last night. I didn’t know if I should tell you or not.’’
I blinked at him a few times, but I honestly couldn’t feel sad. Sinclair was one bad dude. ‘‘Probably took the easy way out,’’ I said. ‘‘As a former prison warden, he would probably have been doomed to much worse in prison.’’
‘‘Exactly,’’ said Dutch. ‘‘So I’m assuming that when the tape ends at the part about you asking the warden if he believes in magic, that’s when the riot broke out?’’
I smiled again. ‘‘Nice timing, don’t you think?’’
Dutch shook his head. ‘‘I’m taking you to Vegas, Edgar. You’re too lucky for words.’’
I snuggled closer to him and changed the subject slightly. ‘‘How’s Bree?’’
‘‘She’s good,’’ he said. ‘‘I stopped by her house on the way here to check in on her. She’s even found a new job that pays better money, if you can believe it.’’
‘‘Really?’’ I asked, my tongue firmly in my cheek.
‘‘Yeah,’’ he said as he squeezed me tight and gave the top of my head a kiss. ‘‘Turns out someone put in a really good reference for her at that bank you used to work at.’’
‘‘You don’t say,’’ I said.
‘‘And she’s got a pipeline of loans to refinance too,’’ Dutch added. ‘‘She’d been taking the top page of every loan application home with her for the past two years, just in case she was ever cut loose.’’
I giggled. ‘‘Good for her,’’ I said. ‘‘My radar says that she and her hubby won’t be worrying about their finances for much longer.’’ Then I thought of something else and asked, ‘‘What happens now with your boss?’’
Dutch gave a sigh that blew wisps of my hair around. ‘‘As you know, when I walked in and accused the SAC of misconduct, I got my ass handed to me.’’
I gulped. ‘‘You may have mentioned that.’’
‘‘But in a way it was good, because now I know the SAC’s on my side. He’s going to be overseeing the investigation, making sure that I’m given clearance on my end to come up with proof, while leading Robillard in the opposite direction.’’
‘‘But Robillard’s still going to be working at the Bureau?’’
Dutch nodded and his chin rubbed my head. ‘‘Yep. For the time being, I’ve got to pretend like nothing has changed. I’ll still be reporting to him, but when I give him a status on Frost’s murder it will be the same as all the other investigators, bubkes.’’
‘‘I don’t like that you have to work for such a dangerousman,’’ I said, twisting around to face him. ‘‘What if he finds out you’re investigating him?’’
Dutch smiled confidently. ‘‘He won’t, babycakes. Trust me.’’
The worry in my heart only increased. ‘‘Please be careful, Dutch. Okay?’’
Dutch stroked my cheek. ‘‘Always,’’ he said. ‘‘And speaking of investigating, have you gotten any other feelings on those two college kids who disappeared?’’
I frowned. ‘‘You know, I looked at that file again yesterday, and there’s just nothing new. The creepy thing is that I know we’re not done with it. Something else is coming. It just hasn’t happened yet, but trust me, when it does we’ll know.’’
‘‘Sounds ominous,’’ Dutch said with a smile that didn’t quite touch his eyes.
I nodded. ‘‘Tell me about it.’’
We fell silent for a moment and then he said, ‘‘Hey, you feel like coming for a drive with me?’’
‘‘Where’re we going?’’ I asked.
‘‘I have a surprise,’’ he said coyly. ‘‘And no tuning in on it before I show it to you!’’ he demanded sternly.
My eyes widened and I let out a laugh. ‘‘Okay, okay!’’ I said, holding up my hands in surrender. ‘‘I promise. If the radar buzzes I will not tune in.’’
Dutch pulled me up off the couch and Eggy followed us to the door. I looked from my dog, whose tail was wagging furiously, back to Dutch. ‘‘Bring him,’’ Dutch said with a grin.
We piled into Dutch’s SUV and had driven only a short distance when Dutch reached into the glove box and pulled something out. ‘‘Here,’’ he said, handing me a sleeping mask.
‘‘You’re kidding me,’’ I said, looking at him like he was crazy.
‘‘Come on,’’ he replied with a big grin. ‘‘I want you to be surprised.’’
‘‘Fine,’’ I said. I donned the mask. ‘‘But it’s messing up my good-hair day.’’
We drove for a little longer. Then I felt the SUV come to a stop. I heard Dutch’s door open and he said, ‘‘Hang tight. I’ll come around and get you.’’ I waited for another couple of seconds and heard my own door open. ‘‘Here we are,’’ he said as he reached in and picked me up by the waist to help me down.
‘‘Can I take off the mask now?’’ I asked.
‘‘Almost,’’ he said. He swiveled me around and had me walk awkwardly forward for a few steps. ‘‘Okay, you can take it off now.’’
I whipped off the mask and opened my eyes. We were at Dutch’s house, but the structure was almost unrecognizable. Construction had completely overtaken the bungalow and there was a huge addition where the bedroom window used to be. ‘‘What are you doing to your house?’’ I asked.
Just then the front door opened and Dave stepped out onto the front porch. ‘‘Afternoon, boss,’’ he said jovially to Dutch.
‘‘Dave.’’ Dutch nodded and grabbed my hand to take me up the rest of the walkway. ‘‘Congratulations, by the way,’’ he added, indicating the shiny new band of gold on Dave’s left ring finger.
I gasped and looked down at Dave’s hand. ‘‘You did it?’’ I said.
‘‘I did,’’ he grumbled, working hard to conceal a grin. ‘‘My old lady and I are officially hitched.’’
‘‘Dave, that’s fantastic!’’ I squealed. ‘‘Tell me all about it!’’
‘‘I will, but first I’m supposed to show you around,’’ he said and waved us in.
Dutch’s living room and dining room remained untouched, but that was about the only space that wasn’t currently under construction. ‘‘Over here is the new kitchen,’’ Dave was saying as we stepped over several pieces of lumber.
I did the appropriate ‘‘ooohing’’ and ‘‘ahhhing,’’ admiring the increased size and the new cabinetry. ‘‘It’s amazing, guys.’’
‘‘But wait! There’s more,’’ said Dave happily. ‘‘This way, lady and gentleman.’’
We followed him back through the living room and up the stairs and I stopped in my tracks as I saw the huge master suite open up in front of me. ‘‘Ohmigod!’’ I exclaimed. ‘‘This is huge!’’
‘‘Yep,’’ said Dave. ‘‘We pushed out several feet to create room for a walk-in closet and, over on that side, a new bathroom.’’
I walked into the closet and said, ‘‘This is bigger than my study!’’