Burned Hearts (17 page)

Christ.
I'd fallen down on the job with this one. I'd been so wrapped up in my web on the wall, nursery decorating, the Lux, and then having a baby that I hadn't reached out to Jackson to get him to divert my mother's bad intentions.

“Dad,” I said, feeling like a huge heel. “I'm so sorry. This is all my fault. She literally slipped from my mind with everything else going on. I promised I'd take care of this, and I will.”

“And I told you, this isn't your concern. It's mine.”

“No. We can work this together.”

With a grim expression on his ruggedly handsome face, he said, “Apparently, she has a ghostwriter. No deal has been made yet by her agent, but she's confident it's just a matter of time.”

As much as my dad was mesmerized by his grandson, I could see he fumed over my mother's scheme to publicly air all their dirty laundry.

“She said something of the probable chances of it going to auction once they submit to publishing houses, and the seven-figure advance she's now hoping to get.”

“She's such a pain in the ass. What did you say?”

“Nothing. I hung up on her.”

“Dad!” I let out a small laugh because I could imagine her huffing about that when he'd so pointedly dismissed her. Still. “That's not going to solve the problem.”

“Ari,” he said, keeping his voice level so as not to disturb Amsel as he slowly drifted to sleep in the crook of my dad's arm. “What more am I going to do?”

“Sue her?”

He shook his head. “Whatever she has to say about me isn't going to be slanderous. I didn't win a Masters. No lie there. It's already public knowledge. If anything, she should be worried about the names she's including and how their wives—or ex-wives—are going to respond. Frankly, I'm shocked anyone would touch this project. Then again, maybe some of those big names she's slinging around are getting something out of it. More notoriety. A lot of these guys are retired—this could spark renewed interest in them, give them a fresh shot of adrenaline.”

“Granted, it's not a new concept to spill bedroom secrets for cash. But, geez, she could really turn a lot of lives upside down.” I frowned. “Ours included. The media would pick this up and start contacting you, Dad. Hounding you at the club. Following you around the course.” I let out a sharp sigh. “What a fucking nightmare.”

“Sweets,” he lightly scolded, “don't swear in front of the baby.”

I nodded. “Right. I'm going to have to curb the profanity. Wait'll I tell Kyle. He'll go through the roof without his own daily dose of colorful words from me.”

“He's still here?”

“He and Amano are practically besties, and he's learning karate and all about guns and security systems and blah, blah, blah. He's totally into the ninja warrior thing. Unfortunately.”

“This worries you?”

“I don't want him to get hurt. He's my closest friend, and he's done so much for all of us. He's such a great guy. I wish he had the chance to meet someone and—” My brow jerked up. “Whoa.”

“What?”

I suddenly recalled a conversation with another friend of mine, the night Dane had flown us all to the Grand Canyon for a special dinner. Tamera Fenmore was a striking blonde who had the most elegant yet saucy British accent and was currently single since, according to her, “Mr. Right's GPS is skewed at present.”

Her eyes had bulged at Kyle's solid build, all the muscles nowhere close to being concealed in the suit he'd worn that night. And before that at my and Dane's wedding.

Speaking of weddings, my high school pal Grace, who bartended at the resort where mine and Kyle's friends Meghan and Sean Aldridge had married—the exact place I'd met Dane for the first time—had taken a liking to Kyle as well.

“Maybe I should do a little matchmaking when we're all out of this mess.”

My dad gave me a cautious look. “That can be dangerous.”

“Danger seems to be my middle name—haven't you noticed?”

“Not exactly something I'm happy about.”

“Well, it is what it is. For now. And you did have to go through two FBI agents and Amano to get to me today so it's not like I'm an open target.” I sipped my tea and tried to appear nonchalant. I didn't want my father agonizing over me. He had enough on his plate, especially with this latest flare-up from my mother.

I wondered how best to handle that predicament. Dane had written her a check—so she'd gotten the initial hefty chunk of change she'd been looking for when she'd first come to me. He'd also strongly advised her to stay away from us. That warning had been heeded, until Dane had been presumed dead. Then she'd considered me weak enough to prey upon under the circumstances. She'd been correct with her assumption.

But my mother wasn't my only current dilemma. The distance between me and Amano was palpable. It ate at me, because he'd felt horrific about keeping from me the fact that Dane was actually alive—and I'd used that guilt against him.

I wasn't proud of that. Or happy with the outcome. But approaching him with an apology wasn't as easy as one might think. He was a strong, resolute man who didn't like to show emotions or vulnerabilities. The fact that he was wracked with remorse over how deeply I'd been wounded because he hadn't shared with me that Dane had survived the Lux blast was his weakness. When I was pretty sure he felt he shouldn't have one.

There wasn't just a web growing on my office wall. One was woven throughout this entire house. And the strands continued to grow despairingly tenuous.

After my dad reluctantly relinquished his hold on Amsel, he left us to return to the golf club. I fed the baby and put him down for a nap. As I was heading toward the inner portion of the house where the office was, Amano approached from the opposite direction, his long stride purposeful.

“I have news,” he said.

My stomach tightened at the way he glowered. His jaw was set and his eyes were dark and flat.

I followed him into the office and he turned up the sound on CNN.

Cameras were trained on the Vegas hotel being carefully dismantled until it was safe for an implosion.

“What's up?” I asked, shooting for amiable, not tense. I wasn't sure I succeeded.

“Bodies,” he caustically replied.

I started. “Excuse me?”

“There are bodies in the concrete.”

My clenched stomach now roiled. “Care to elaborate?”

“When it was determined the rebar was substandard or improperly placed or whatever the hell happened to make the structure unstable, concrete was used in the center to fortify the tower. Which you already know. However, as they've taken apart the hotel, they've begun to closely inspect the crutch in place by chipping away at the concrete pillars. A body wrapped in plastic tumbled out. Followed by two more.”

“Holy shit.” I gasped. “That's scary as hell.”

“It gets worse.”

“How?” I demanded. “Because that's plain sick and wrong.”

“The bodies are intact and identifiable. Names have been released. Jess Nichols. Mike Donaldson. Xander Horton.”

“Horton?” I stared at him, deeply perplexed.

“Wayne's brother. He worked for me. He was the one who told Wayne about the openings at the Lux when we first started hiring.”

Kyle had joined us, standing behind me initially, then moving around me to be included in our small conglomeration. He'd quickly caught up with the discussion, if the
oh, crap, here we go again
expression on his face was any indication.

Amano said, “There's another connection.”

“Of course there is,” I mumbled. Though I wasn't sure I wanted to hear it.

“Nichols and Donaldson were employed by the Lux, too. They were a couple of our original hires. Then they quit—out of the blue. And right around the time Wayne Horton came on-property.”

A chill ran through me.

Kyle asked, “What'd they do at the Lux?”

“Nichols worked with the grounds crew. Donaldson was on the security team and Xander was the one to build the resort's Web site.”

“All key positions for the mayhem Wayne created,” I said. “And that explains how he ended up being the self-proclaimed jack-of-all-trades.”

With a nod, Amano continued. “I suspect he disposed of the three once he gleaned all of the information he needed from them to do his damage. Or they were on to him and he had to eliminate them.”

“His own brother?” I knew I shouldn't be so shocked—not when it came to anything involving Wayne Horton. Still, the bile rose in my throat.

“The timing all fits, falls into place perfectly,” Amano explained. “If he killed these three, right around the time they left for undisclosed reasons, it was also the same period when the concrete was being poured at the Vegas hotel. He had access to that property as well.”

“Why the hell is that monster still on the streets?” I hissed out.

Kyle said, “He hasn't been on the FBI's radar—not at high alert, anyway. Like Strauss said. As far as they've been concerned, he's small potatoes, the marionette. They've been going after the puppet masters.”

“He's not some dummy in a ventriloquist sideshow,” I insisted. “He knows what he's doing. And I'm willing to bet he really is acting on his own more so than taking direction. Power trip to the extreme.”

“He's still slipping through the cracks,” Kyle said, “because nothing has firmly been connected to him.”

“That ought to change after the FBI gets all the facts,” Amano said. “Associating Horton with the Vegas hotel and his brother's death will help to break this piece of the syndicate wide open.”

I shook my head. “He's a total weasel. The FBI needs
more
than a brotherly connection. They need a confession. Wayne has to admit to everything he's done since he started at 10,000 Lux. Because if you hired him, Amano, I'm sure he had impeccable credentials. And still does.”

“Clean as a whistle.”

“What if the Feds view him as above reproach, with the exception of his aliases? Can't really find anything significant—
significant enough
—to pin on him?” I asked. “Won't they just back-burner him as they've been doing?”

“This is serious stuff, Ari.” Amano gave me a sharp look. “They're not going to discount all the intertwining variables.” He tore his gaze from me and gestured toward my wall of webbing. “You pieced it all together, but only because you've had up-close and personal experience with Horton. You've been caught in his traps.”

“Traps the Feds believe were set by Vale.” This from Kyle. “So we're not really in danger in their minds when it comes to Horton—he's just a nuisance who may or may not have aided Vale.”

“And since Vale's dead,” I concluded, bringing it all back around to the inevitable, “Wayne's not of concern at the moment.”

“Yeah, but what about his potential involvement with Tom Talbot?” Kyle countered.

I fumed. “We have to
prove
he's a key player in this game.”

“He blew up the Lux,” Kyle contended. “Come on. We're all sure of it. So it'd be a damn shame to let him get away with something evil of that magnitude.”

Amano glared at us both. No doubt, the conversation he'd walked in on at the estate, when Kyle and I had first plotted to get a confession from Wayne, flashed in his mind.

“We could get him to admit that he's brilliant at setting people up,” I said, a thought forming in my head. “That
he's
our Heisenberg—not Vale.”

Amano scowled at the fact that I'd all but OD'd on
Breaking Bad
. “Perhaps a little less Netflix in the future,” he muttered.

I grinned. That he was snarky with me was a good sign. “Sometimes we miss the tree for the forest, right? And let's face it, Wayne Horton is one squirrely bastard. He's operating in the shadows, with the exception of one weakness. We know some of the places he frequents.”

I wagged my brows. Amano continued to scowl.

Kyle chimed in. “Bubble burster: Horton hasn't been at the casinos or in Sedona lately. He was in two poker tournaments in Reno that were moderately publicized. I caught the news online.”

“That's perfect,” I said, perking up. “Good job keeping tabs on him. With the bodies being discovered there, he's not going to stick around Nevada. He's too wily for that kind of exposure. And where does he always return?”

“Here,” Kyle said.

“And where does he gamble when in town?” Excitement now swept through me, chasing away the chill.

“Cliff Castle,” Kyle answered again.

I gazed up at Amano, giving him a hopeful expression. He stared me down.

But I wouldn't be deterred. Not even by his biting expression—the
oh, hell, no
stamped across his hard features.

“You're the one who tracked him down in the first place,” I reminded Amano. “Really, it wouldn't be out of the ordinary or suspicious at all if I accidentally ran into him at the casino. He hasn't been seen or heard from since that day at the estate—that was nearly three months ago. Out of sight, out of mind is how we could play it. Plus, it would be easy for us to come off as not considering him a threat, since his
el jefe
is
el muerto.
”

The dark eyes narrowed on me. “You are getting way too excited about this.”

“Amano, Vale is dead! Wayne is in
our
crosshairs. Why wouldn't we take the shot?”

My bodyguard groaned. “You know what this is? Out of hand.” He turned and stalked off.

I shifted my attention to Kyle. “It's not exactly crazy, admit it. We have two FBI agents outside. You don't think that if I pulled them in here, showed them my wall and the Breaking News on TV, they wouldn't back us up? Hell, they'd wire me in a heartbeat!”