The Sapphire Affair (A Jewel Novel Book 1) Read online

  Jake knew the name. Everyone in his line of work—recovering stolen goods—knew the name. Need art moved illegally? You called Constantine. Want blood diamonds? He was your guy. Hankering for some ivory tusks? Constantine was the middleman.

  “The luxury-goods trafficker,” Jake said as Andrew unfastened the clasp on the envelope. “I know of him. He can move anything.”

  “Evidently. That’s why our radar went off. In this e-mail, Eli references a payment for ten million dollars. That’s the amount that’s missing. Well, to be precise, it was $10,003,597. We can document that as the money that’s missing from the investments in the fund over the last five years. It was incredibly calculated as far as I can see. The missing money over time added up to the money cited in this transaction, which also references the need for safe transport, for a grand.”

  Andrew handed him the paperwork. Jake read the e-mail carefully, as well as the related documents. That was some damning evidence right there in black and white, but Jake still wanted his sister Kate to vet it. In the years since he’d started this business, she’d developed and honed her expertise in all sorts of document verification, and he relied on her eyes and her analytical mind to confirm that the evidence added up. What Jake brought to the table, besides the on-the-ground work, was his possession of an excellent bullshit detector, and so far it wasn’t ringing in concern. The man seemed legit.

  “You have digital copies, too?” he asked, handing the papers to Andrew.

  “Yes. I can send them over immediately.”

  “You said you think the ten million he embezzled from the fund went into art. Into a painting. Why art?”

  “His fiancée runs an art gallery that sells high-end art to discerning buyers in the Cayman Islands. And,” Andrew said, taking a beat, “because art is portable and it requires safe transport.”

  “For a grand?”

  “Evidently.”

  Jake nodded, letting the details soak in, from the amount, to the parties involved, to the methodical level of planning.

  “Question for you. Tell me why I should care. Tell me why I should get on a plane and go to the Caribbean and track down your guy and his painting. Tell me something other than the fee you’re going to pay me. Because money isn’t my only motivation. I need to know why this matters.”

  Jake had nothing against money, and he definitely enjoyed the way dollars he earned paid for college for his younger brother, Brandt, who was applying to law school, and his little sister, Kylie. The baby of the family, she’d been struggling in a few classes but, fingers crossed, was starting to turn her grades around. But he wasn’t in this line of business for the greenbacks.

  He was in it because he craved the chance to right a wrong.

  “Here’s why,” Andrew said, rolling up his shirtsleeves. “The whole average Joe and Bob in Middle America approach of our firm? That’s true. That’s who we serve. We built this company with Eli on the premise of making a hedge fund accessible to the guy who runs a body shop in Ohio or to the woman who operates her own booth at a hair salon. Real people, saving money for retirement, saving the money for their kids’ college funds.” That hit close to home, making Jake’s chest twinge with both anger and memories. His parents had been Middle Americans through and through. Dad was a retired cop in Tampa, and Mom had worked in dispatch. They’d been tucking money aside for both causes and never had the chance to see either retirement or any of their four kids go to college—not Kate, not Jake, and not the two younger ones, Brandt and Kylie.

  “Those are the people who got screwed by Eli’s cocoa bean farm that didn’t pan out,” Andrew said, jabbing his finger against the wood post. “I don’t care if you get the money back for me. I truly don’t. I’ll survive just fine. But I do care about the hairdresser. And I do care about the mechanic. And I do care that Eli ‘Cocoa-Beans-are-the-New-Coconut-Water’ Thompson made off with their money. We want to locate the painting, or paintings, he bought with the fund’s money, sell the art through legitimate channels, and put the money back into the fund. This is the rightful property of the Eli Fund, not the rightful property of Eli Thompson.”

  That was compelling enough, but Jake had more questions, similar to ones he’d ask any client. “Why not go to the cops? The SEC?”

  “We’re a private firm, so it’s not an SEC matter. Plus, we want to see if we can resolve this as quietly as possible, keep our existing clients, and restore the money to them.”

  “Send me the paperwork today. Kate will handle it and we’ll get back to you with a decision,” he said.

  Andrew grabbed his cell phone from his back pocket. “I’ve got it all in a draft for you. On its way to you and Kate,” he said, swiping the screen.

  Jake nodded a thanks, then held up a finger. “One more thing. If there’s a raisin grove in Jamaica I’m thinking of putting some cash into,” he said, stroking his chin as if in deep thought, “would you tell me that’s a bad idea? My financial advisor wants me to drop a cool grand into it. Says raisins are the new grapefruit diet,” he said, keeping a straight face.

  Andrew eyed him seriously for a split second, then cracked up, pointing playfully at Jake. “You almost had me there for a second. You really had me. And, by the way, the answer is yes. Raisins are a very bad idea.”

  After Andrew left, Jake and Mason played in the waves for a bit.

  “Want to get some raisin ice cream?” Jake asked his nephew as they toweled off.

  Mason crinkled his nose. “Eww.”

  “How about fig sherbet?”

  The kid laughed and shook his head.

  “I know. Why don’t we try chia seed gelato?”

  “Gross!”

  “Fine, fine,” Jake said, pretending to relent as they headed to grab chocolate peanut-butter-cup cones. By the time he returned to the office two hours later, with a conked-out Mason sound asleep in his arms, Kate said everything from Andrew checked out, so Jake booked the next flight to the Caymans.

  “What did you learn about Eli Thompson?” he asked his sister as Mason snoozed on the couch in the corner of the office.

  “He studied art history in college before he moved into finance. His fiancée has made some pretty impressive art deals over the years,” Kate said, her blue eyes as fierce as he’d ever seen them. Kate shared the same drive, the same motivation as Jake. No surprise there. She’d practically raised Jake and the younger siblings after their parents were killed in a car crash when he and Kate were teenagers. “Her name is Isla, and the gallery she runs is pretty classy. I checked out its location. There’s a bar down the block from the art gallery she works out of if you want to stop in and ask around.”

  “Always start at a bar,” he quipped.

  “You might meet a pretty woman in a bikini there, too,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows. Typical Kate—she wanted to play matchmaker for him. A nudge here, a push there, and she was sure she’d have Jake at the altar. Not likely.

  He scoffed. “Not going to the Caymans to pick up women at bars.”

  “Then maybe the beach,” Kate added, egging him on.

  “Not there, either.”

  “You need to check out his club, too. See if there’s a connection between the money, the art, and the club. And”—she mimed dancing—“maybe you’ll do a little dirty dancing with a nice island gal.”

  “Get out of here. Work and women don’t mix and you know that,” he said, and there was a damn good reason for that golden rule. He’d made the foolish mistake a few years ago of getting involved on a job with a stunning brunette named Rosalinda with a penchant for high heels. He’d been on the trail of a stolen Medici artifact in Venice that had been lifted in a larger heist. She was on the hunt for a different piece of the collection, so they’d joined forces, formed an ad hoc business partnership on one of the biggest gigs he’d ever had—it spanned months, and cities, and many hotel bedrooms where they’d spent their nights together.

  Until the day he finally got his hands on the artifact,
and she stole it from under his nose that evening. His jaw clenched as he remembered the way it felt to have been played like that. Turned out she’d been working with some big criminal syndicate that was trying to steal the entire collection. Good thing he was smarter and faster than she was, and he’d learned her habits and weaknesses. He’d managed to catch up to her in a shoe boutique, of all places, and steal it back on behalf of his clients, the rightful owners.

  Taught him a damn good lesson, though.

  Don’t get involved on a job. There was too much on the line.

  His livelihood. His family’s well-being. He took care of all of the Harlowes through this job, and no woman was worth that risk.

  Especially a backstabbing thief of a woman.

  These days, his focus was work and only work. That’s exactly what he intended to do in the Caymans. Nothing would get in his way.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Ah, dive bars were the best.

  Pink Pelican rocked that vibe like nobody’s business. He could picture this spot fitting in perfectly in Key Largo. Hell, he could practically be in the Keys right now. The wood walls were lined with seashells. Jack Johnson played from a stereo system. A dartboard hung on a wall at the far side of the joint. The whole place smelled of beer.

  Translation: heaven.

  Add in the talkative Marie, and this stop had been nothing but good news. The bartender with a long mess of brown hair braided tightly was friendly and chatty. With a few well-placed questions that didn’t give him away, he learned some key details about the nightclub at the end of the block—info that couldn’t be gleaned online. Jake would visit it later when the moon rose high in the sky and see if he could get a bead on whether Eli was hiding his art there. Hell, the guy might have turned the art into cash already and fed those greenbacks into the club.

  Either way, he couldn’t sniff around now at five in the evening. Stopping by a club at this early-bird hour would make him stick out like a sore thumb, so it was break time. Blending in was essential on a job like this on a small island, and Jake did his best to look like a man on vacation in the Caymans. He’d contemplated playing the part of the finance man, but he didn’t seem like a guy who worked in the shade. He was a man who worked in the sun, so he’d decided on the easiest cover-up of all—one that could be true. He was thirty-year-old Jake Harlowe, former soldier, now in the “recovery” business, and here on a fishing trip with his buddies. Marie was an avid fisherwoman, so they’d exchanged tales of the ones they’d caught and the ones that had gotten away.

  “Tomorrow should be a great day on the water,” Marie said as she wiped the counter. “I bet you’ll have a fantastic haul. Marlins and groupers galore.”

  “Excellent. That’s what I want to hear.”

  “What else will you do while in town? Snorkel trip? Dive? Stingray kiss?”

  He arched an eyebrow at the last one but quickly answered her, resting his elbows on the bar. “Let me tell you something. I’ve always wanted some island art. Gonna just come right out and admit it,” he said, as if he were confessing, even though he was clearly teasing. “It’s kinda like a thing of mine. Some painting of a fish jumping out of the water,” he said, gesturing to the right, to indicate the art gallery run by Eli’s new woman. He’d wandered past it earlier and gotten an eyeful of unframed canvases of angles, squares, and trapezoids in a showing of modern geometric art by an artist name Lynx. Yup. One of those one-name-only artistic types. A bunch of the frames had SOLD signs on them with a price tag of either $5,000 or $10,000. Too hard to tell from his quick visit if any of those canvases were the ones Eli had ferried out of the United States or, frankly, if said art would even be hanging on the wall at a gallery. But he wanted a local’s opinion on the gallery, and no one was more local than a bartender. “Is that what I can get a few doors down?”

  She whipped her head back and forth. “No way. You find that kind of stuff at cheap little tourist shops—” She clasped her hand on her mouth. Her brown eyes widened in embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to seem like I’m saying bad things about tourists.”

  Jake laughed and reassured her. “You’re all good. You’ll have to work pretty hard to offend me.”

  She wiped her hand across her brow. “Phew. I’m always just saying whatever comes to mind,” she said, then dropped her voice to a whisper, since the bar was starting to fill up with other customers. “Not always the best trait for a bartender. Anyway, that gallery is more for fancier things.”

  Privately, he wondered precisely how fancy. Like $10 million fancy.

  “Like my Renoir?” he asked drily.

  She shot him a curious stare. “You better be joking. You don’t really have a Renoir, do you?”

  “Maybe I do. He was famous for his fishing scenes, right?”

  Marie picked up the baton easily. “I believe the Louvre has some of those, don’t they? Anyway, the gallery sells some fancy stuff, but nothing on that level. If you decide you want to turn that Renoir into diamonds instead, we’ve got plenty of shops for that, too.”

  “You’ve got a big diamond business on the Islands, right?”

  “That we do. The great thing is when you buy one in the Caymans, it’s tax-free. Business here is booming. All along the main street, and even the little shops on the side streets near the banks. Down on Wayboard Street—those guys have the best deals,” she said, washing some glasses.

  “So Wayboard Street is where I should go after I sell my Renoir to the lady next door?” he said with a wink.

  “Absolutely,” she said, pointing far off in the distance, as if to show him the street. “You pass this swank restaurant Tristan’s, take a right, take your next right, and”—she stopped to issue a dramatic pause, fluttering her fingers like she was onstage—“and prepare to be dazzled.”

  He laughed and filed that data in the mental banks.

  A group of new customers walked in, so Marie scurried to the tables, and Jake took out his phone and entered some notes. He finished his beer, tossed some bills on the bar, then some extra for Marie. That woman was a gold mine so far.

  When he stood up to leave, he spotted a dartboard on the wall. Satisfied with his work so far today, he ambled over to it, picked up a few darts, then backed up several feet. Narrowing his eyes as if zeroing in on a target, he mimed tossing the dart once, twice, then a third time.

  “You’re shooting too high. You’ll miss.”

  As he let the dart fly, his brain registered adjectives.

  Sexy. Pretty. American.

  He turned his head in the direction of the voice and . . . holy smokes. His assessment needed to be revised.

  She was . . . beautiful.

  Dark-blonde hair. Killer body. Legs a mile long and sculpted to toned perfection. Standing at the bar, knocking back a glass of whiskey. Totally at ease in her element.

  He snapped his gaze to the dartboard. The dart was nowhere to be seen on the board. He’d missed by a mile, as predicted. The effect of a gorgeous woman. He turned his focus to her. “Seems I’m in need of a dart coach,” he said, quirking up the corner of his lips, his acknowledgment that she’d bested him.

  Setting her glass on the corner of the bar, she strolled past him and bent down.

  Don’t stare down her shirt. Stop gawking at that ass. Look away from the most perfect pair of legs you’ve ever seen.

  As she plucked the dart from the ground, he tried to follow his own orders. He really tried. But he was failing on all accounts. Especially when her short little tank rode up and he caught sight of a sexy-as-sin belly button piercing.

  Ah hell. That was just too tempting.

  He drew a quick breath, as if that would settle the blast of lust threatening to camp out in his body right now. As she stood, she flashed him a bright smile, the kind that only an all-American girl could pull off. She looked that way, too—athletic, blue-eyed, and fresh-faced. Her hair was piled high on her head in some sort of ponytail contraption.

  Sh
e handed him the dart. “I’ll see if I have any openings in my schedule, Tommy,” she said, roaming her eyes over his Tommy Bahama shirt. Another attempt to fit in. This shirt was so not his style.

  He returned the favor, taking his time scanning her shirt with its smiling turtle illustration in the center. “Ah, so I was right. You’re Happy Turtle, the dart coach, correct?” He tilted his head to the side in question, and she laughed lightly as he bestowed a shirt-derived name on her, too.

  She lifted her chin. “If you hit a bull’s-eye, I’ll give you your first dart lesson free, Tommy.”

  “Can’t back down from that kind of offer.”

  She leaned against the bar and took a drink as she eyed the board. She gestured to it, as if to say, “Go ahead—impress me.”

  Jake was no dart pro, but he’d spent enough time in bars and enough time with men killing time that he knew what he was doing. He’d only missed the first shot because of her. Now he’d need to land it because of her.

  Instinct kicked in. The instinct that told a man to impress a pretty woman. Such a simple force, but a driving one for nearly any red-blooded male. He raised his arm, took aim, and let the dart fly. Straight down the middle. Landing the shot.

  She cheered. Thrust her arms high above her head and hooted and hollered. “Admit it,” she said, shaking a finger at him and narrowing her eyes. “You’re a dart ringer. You’ve been sent by the National Federation of Dart Experts to infiltrate island bars and impress women with your dart skills.”

  “I’ve impressed you, then?” he asked, wanting to pump a fist and cheer at having accomplished his goal. Man, some days he was so damn simple. See pretty woman; impress pretty woman.

  “You have indeed.”