Authors: Suzanne Ferrell
“You’re a well-respected photographer in your profession,” Doyle continued. “Even though you’ve lost your parents, you’ve managed to build a solid life. I also know you’re highly trustworthy.”
“Really? How do you know that?” she asked, both brows lifted in question.
“Two things. You were chosen to be the photographer for an Edgars’ family wedding. Given all their jobs and the security clearances they’ve had to undergo, that’s very telling.”
“And the second thing?”
“You made the marshal—” Doyle said, nodding his way “—forget safety protocol long enough to lock lips with you on my front porch.”
“Give it a rest, old man,” he said. Last thing he needed was for either of them to speculate just how much she affected him.
“And my brother? What did you learn about Ian?”
Doyle glanced his way.
Leaning back against one of the desks, arms crossed in front of him, Frank nodded, his gaze meeting Sydney’s. She shot him another of those slant-eyed looks. He didn’t blink. He’d made her a promise. From now on he wasn’t keeping secrets from her. No matter how much he wanted to protect her, she deserved to know everything their investigation uncovered. It was her life on the line, after all.
“Your brother likes to walk the edge,” Doyle said, pulling Sydney’s attention back to him.
“Walk the edge? What do you mean?” she asked, leaning in, her hands folded between her knees.
“Do you know he has a gambling addiction?”
Her shoulders slumped slightly, and she heaved a sigh. “Yes. For years I would give him money. He’d tell me it was just a loan, but he never paid any of it back. I finally realized he never would, and cut him off last fall.”
“It didn’t stop him.” Doyle spun around and hit a button on one of the computer keyboards. A spreadsheet popped up on one of the huge monitors. “Currently, these are all the bookies around the country he owes money to.” He clicked on the bottom right corner. It enlarged. “This is the total.”
“Two hundred and fifty thousand?” Sydney whispered. She covered her open mouth with her fingertips. “Dear God.”
Frank met Doyle’s gaze over her head and his anger grew. The older man had more bad news for her.
“How in the world is he ever going to pay that much back?” Sydney said just above a whisper.
“It isn’t the first time he’s owed this large of a sum,” Doyle said. He picked up a file. “Jake did a little snooping through the FBI databases, too, and what we found suggests your brother has been taking on side jobs while traveling for his photojournalist assignments.”
“Side jobs? And what do you mean,
suggests
?”
“Your brother would be in trouble with both local and foreign betting syndicates. Then, after a trip abroad, he’d suddenly have enough money to pay off his debts.” Doyle paused to be sure he had Sydney’s attention. “Very large amounts.”
“And I’m assuming you and Jake Carlisle think he didn’t earn the money, or hit the lottery?” she asked, an edge to her voice.
Doyle simply nodded.
“How exactly do you surmise Ian got the money?”
“Probably acting as a courier,” Frank said, drawing her attention.
“You mean a smuggler? Of what? Drugs?”
Frank shrugged. “Could be. Could be something easier to conceal in his camera cases.”
“Like what?”
“Technology on flash drives. Even some pure heroin to be cut and sold in the area. One ounce of pure heroin can bring thousands of dollars on the streets.”
“Diamonds.” Doyle hit the keyboard again and a montage of images popped up. “On at least four occasions, right after your brother returned from a trip to Europe, a flood of blood diamonds hit the East Coast. New York, Baltimore, and Boston.”
“We’ve been through my camera bag,” she said. “We didn’t find any diamonds in it or the extra tub of film. You’re wrong about that. You’re making assumptions without any evidence.” She jumped up and stalked from the room.
Frank started after her.
Doyle rolled his chair out to block his path. “Stay put, Marshal.”
“She’s upset.” He glared down at the other man.
“You would be, too, if you were just told the only member of your family was involved in illegal smuggling and that might be why your life is now in danger. She needs a moment to process it all.” He pulled out the other rolling chair. “Take a seat. She’ll be back in a few minutes. In the meantime, I’ve got something else you might want to see.”
Still worried about Sydney, but curious what else Doyle found, he sat in the chair as Doyle turned on a news report.
“The body of police detective, Don Abrams, was found early this morning inside the trunk of his car,” the reporter said, giving the name of the street where the car was found. The same street that the townhouse where Frank and Sydney had met him sat. “The actual cause of death is yet to be determined, but the body had been shot, according to our sources.”
The cameraman zoomed out, taking in the crowd and the entire car. The front driver’s side fender hood and fender had a dent in it.
“Isn’t that the car that hit you?” Sydney said from behind them.
Frank turned to find her standing in the doorway, the tub of film in her hand. Her mouth was pressed into a thin line of determination, her body so stiff a touch would break her in half. The urge to scoop her up and carry her far away from all this mess hit him harder than the car had last night. But he knew she wouldn’t want that.
“That’s the one.”
“And they found Detective Abrams inside? Dead?” she asked, never taking her eyes from the monitor screen.
“That’s the report.”
“So, whatever my brother is mixed up in has cost me my home, nearly gotten you killed, and cost one good policeman his life.” It wasn’t a question. Although she’d left out the part where she’d been the intended target for the hit and run, she’d sized up the situation in a nutshell.
“None of this is your fault,” he said, rising from his chair to go to her.
She held her hand up in a stop sign and shook her head. “Don’t. I know you’re right. It’s Ian’s. But whatever happens from here on out will be my responsibility. How we stop whoever is doing this. How we stop my brother. So it’s time to find out what’s on this film he left me. I don’t need your comfort, Frank. What I need is a darkroom.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The total black of Doyle’s darkroom settled the anger that had been coursing through Sydney’s veins. Realization that Ian’s selfishness and self-centered actions had put her and others in danger had smacked her hard. She’d wanted to hit him, over and over. Or if not him, someone or something. She wanted to curse and rail, raise her fist to the sky and call down Armageddon on his head. None of that would solve anything. She knew it.
As always, now it was up to her to figure out what he’d done, clean up his mess, and stop anyone else from dying.
Slowly, she inhaled then exhaled, letting the comfort of the darkroom fill her. Since the day her father had brought her into his darkroom and taught her how to develop film she’d always found a peace, both in the process and the solitude.
Just like he’d taught her, she’d laid out everything she’d need to develop the film in the dark before turning out the lights. Searching for items in the pitch black could risk her destroying the images on the film or injuring herself in the process.
Taking the roll of film, she used the bottle opener to pry the top off. She set the opener back in the exact spot on the counter where she’d set it earlier. She pulled the film out by the leader section, reached for the scissors, and cut the tab away without nicking her fingers. As a teen, she’d learned that maneuver the hard way—had the scar on her index finger to remind her.
Setting the scissors down in its spot, she picked up the film spiral. Carefully, she slipped the film onto the pegs on the edges and slowly wound the exposed film out of the cassette and onto the spiral. Once she had it completely in place, she sealed the entire thing tightly, placed it in the developing canister, and switched on the room’s red light.
A knock sounded on the door.
“Is it safe to come in?” Castello asked from the other side.
She almost laughed. Was he asking about the film process or her mood?
“Yes,” she said, realizing it was probably safe on both counts. Her anger at her brother wasn’t Frank’s fault, and it wouldn’t be fair to take it out on him, either.
The door opened, and he slipped into the room. His presence made the space seem suddenly smaller, cozy even.
“I’ve seen red lights in darkrooms in movies. Didn’t know you really use one,” he said, a hint of awe in his deep voice. “So darkrooms really aren’t dark.”
“Oh, they’re completely dark for the first few minutes. You have to open the film in complete darkness or risk ruining them,” she said, focusing on pouring the developer solution into the canister.
“Bet it takes practice.”
“At first, Dad let me practice opening the rolls of old film in the light until I could do it with my eyes shut. Then he let me open film in the darkroom for him. I didn’t ruin even one frame of film.” She gave him a quick smile over her shoulder.
He returned it. Damn if her heart didn’t do a little flutter. A relaxed and smiling Castello was a very dangerous thing.
After tightening the lid, she set the timer and inverted the cylinder and tapped it on the counter four times over the first ten seconds. Then she set the canister on the counter to rest. At the one-minute mark, she repeated the inversions and taps.
“Why do you do that?” Frank asked. Even though he stood against the closed door, it felt like he was right beside her.
“It knocks off any air bubbles that might’ve formed on the film. We want the entire thing coated in the developer, so we’ll see everything that was in the camera’s lens when it was taken.”
She continued this process for nearly twelve minutes, pouring off the excess developer into the small sink Doyle had in the room just as the timer went off. Quickly, she poured in the stop bath solution, inverted the canister a few times, then poured that, too, down the sink. Finally, she added the fixing solution and set the timer once more.
“Do you mind me being in here? I don’t want to distract you.”
Really? The man had been a distraction since the moment she laid eyes on him next to the taxi at Abby and Luke’s wedding. Now he was worried about disturbing her? It was odd, but she got the feeling he truly was interested in what she was doing. Like it meant something for him to try to understand part of her work. Considering how much he supposedly hated photographers, the gesture touched something deep inside her.
She shook her head. “No, I don’t mind. I usually do my developing alone these days, but I used to help Dad a lot when I was first learning, so it’s not that unusual to have someone in here while I work. Besides, I could probably do the whole process in my sleep.”
Again, she inverted and tapped the canister every minute until the timer went off.
She dumped the fluid, and flooded the canister with water from the rubber hose Doyle had attached to the faucet for just this purpose.
“When will we be able to see what’s on the negatives?”
“When they’re dry,” she said. Pulling the negatives from the canister, she clipped them to a hook to hang on the wire Doyle had strung on one side of the room.
“How long will that take?” Frank said, suddenly standing right behind her, his warm breath tickling her ear and the sensitive skin of her neck.
“About twenty minutes, depending on the humidity in the room.”
As she reached for the squeegee, his big hands settled on her hips. She swallowed hard and tried to concentrate on running the squeegee tongs down the strip of film.
“I love how focused you are when you work,” he said, before his lips captured her earlobe and gave it a tug, sending shivers of awareness over her body. “It’s very sexy.”
As his lips traveled down her exposed neck, a moan escaped her. She laid the squeegee down and gripped the counter to keep herself vertical, not sure her wobbly legs would do the job. He pressed in closer, his erection settling between the globes of her ass. Slowly, he slid his hands up beneath her shirt to cup her aching breasts.
Dear God, he might be a man of few words, but his actions left no doubt what was on his mind.
Even as she knew how inappropriate it was to be making love in Doyle’s darkroom, she was quickly calculating just how much space they’d really need, especially if she sat on the other counter.
She moved her head, opening her mouth to tell him it wouldn’t work. He swooped down and captured her lips with his, stilling her protest. How could she fight the need coursing through her with no more than his kisses? Especially when he considered her work sexy?
His hands moved her hips until she was facing him. Lifting onto her tiptoes, she slid her hands up his arms and over his wide shoulders to sink her fingers into the thick wavy hair that just barely touched his shirt collar.
A deep moan rumbled in his chest, thrilling her as much as his kiss and touch.
She’d made him do that.
Suddenly, he gripped her by the hips and lifted her, setting her down on the empty side of the counter. Pushing her legs open, he stepped in to cradle himself against her, groin to groin.
The man read her mind.
He slid his hands beneath her sweater, her skin heating by his calluses.
Calluses? Probably from working on restoring his house. The man liked to work with his hands.
The notion was gone as quick as it came when he scooped her sweater up, breaking the kiss to pull it over her head. Cool air sent more shivers over her.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he murmured, dropping his head and kissing a trail down her chest and into her cleavage.
Her nipples tightened immediately.
A buzzer sounded like a cannon blast in the room.
She let out a yelp.
“What the hell?” Frank moved back, one hand steadying her on the counter, the other automatically settling on the butt of his gun in the holster.
“If you’re finished developing things down there. I’ve got something to show you,” Doyle’s gravelly voice sounded from the far wall where an intercom was mounted.