“But a company can’t commit a crime,” Evie replied, before sashaying out.

  So, if any one of their suspects killed KK, the others would benefit? Because any insurance money sure the hell wasn’t paying company bills from everything they’d seen.

  “Yes, of course.” Talking to Matthew Gladwell, Jax tried to sound reassuring over the phone. “Nicholas is in town. I assume he can open up the store, but he says he’s not competent to create an inventory. The insurance payment has to be based on physical evidence. Videos, receipts, actual counts, all go toward proving the value.”

  His career in criminal fraud had taught him how to deal with higher end crooks than Rhonda and Matthew. They had the brains of petty smash-and-grab thieves and none of the financial skills that would have set up off-shore accounts, or even set up the company itself. KK and Lucia had probably been the brains there.

  Murder didn’t take brains. It took luck. Selling artifacts? That had to be Lucia, but if she was dead. . .

  Or maybe Lucia was the killer, hiding safely on some Caribbean island. Maybe her spirit didn’t need to be dead. He was living the Twilight Zone here.

  He only knew he had to clear this up so Dante could go home with his children, R&R could claim their reward, and he could relax knowing Evie was safe and not looking for trouble. Well, that last part was iffy even if he solved all crime everywhere.

  Jax got Matt’s agreement to meet him tomorrow at the boutique. He repeated the conversation with Rhonda, who refused until reminded her lack of cooperation could be construed as evidence against her should the sheriff decide he had to make arrests in KK’s death and/or the arson.

  Out of an abundance of caution, he called the hospital to talk to Jane the Blogger. They informed him she’d been released. Jax grimaced and checked online, but the blog hadn’t been updated since she’d insulted Larraine.

  He spent the rest of the day introducing himself to the board of directors of DVM Electronics, the voting machine manufacturing company whose majority shares he’d just acquired. A few of them even remembered his father. Standing in for the father he’d lost at age twelve had never been his goal, but it felt oddly right to be doing so, especially since it meant he could reward R&R for their loyalty. Monetarily, it might not be much, but in terms of respect. . . They’d have resumes they could employ one day.

  By the time Jax got home that evening, he was feeling pretty satisfied with himself. Always a mistake.

  As they had the previous night, everyone retired to the back porch after dinner to watch the children run off their energy before bed. Tonight, Pris passed around pumpkin tarts for a preliminary Thanksgiving taste test.

  “I need to run around with the kids to work off these things,” Evie complained.

  “Or use your bike more often, instead of the car.” Pris waved one of the tarts. “Where’s Loretta? You could follow her around all day.”

  “She’s with Gracie tonight, learning to sew. It’s hard to transport sewing baskets on bicycles.”

  Jax hugged her. “We’ll go back to starvation rations after Pris leaves. Eat your tart. Have we made any progress on the artifacts?”

  She elbowed him for the starvation remark but took a tart.

  Dante spoke up. “My colleagues have dug up a few suspicious offers on the black market. Your team is investigating, but these sorts of transactions are fairly untraceable. We’d have to set up a sting. Since all we have is KK’s necklace and Jane’s claims, that’s not enough to go on.”

  “The sheriff is poking around, stirring up nests where he can.” Evie finished off her bite-sized tart. “Maybe you can pry more out of Matt and Rhonda tomorrow.”

  “Jane is on the loose. She posted bail on the arson charge and is out of the hospital. As a precaution, I have the fire department on alert for my meeting with the Gladwells.” Jax rocked the swing. “R&R will have cameras on us, but I don’t expect much. I think Jane simply wanted to make the Gladwells suffer.”

  “Her aura is unhealthy. She needs serious counseling more than prison.” Evie perked up. “Will Troy take video as evidence if Matt or Rhonda say anything incriminating?”

  “Court might not, but what are the chances the Gladwells know that? Troy can use it in his interrogations. But admitting murder, or even theft, probably isn’t happening.” Jax hugged her sympathetically. “We might catch them in inventory fraud at best.”

  “Did anyone find out who locked Bella’s door before Jane’s arson?” Pris sat on the porch steps and wrinkled her nose at the tart she was taste-testing.

  “That was Nick,” Jax acknowledged. “Perfectly innocent. He discovered the door unlocked when he entered the empty shop and thought someone had forgotten to lock it. Since all the other doors were locked, he thought Rhonda hadn’t come in yet. He was taking a customer phone call in the back when he smelled smoke. He ran out to the alley to call 911 and had no idea people were inside.”

  “Are we believing Nick?” Pris asked from the step.

  “Unless you’re picking up anything otherwise, his aura is pretty solid. He has some iffy bits like any of us. If Jax believes him, I’m good with that.” Evie reached for another tart.

  Jax thought he ought to preen if someone as perceptive as Evie trusted his instincts, but logic prevailed. “If experience counts, then I’d say he’s telling the truth. It’s hard to know how deeply he was involved in the operation. He’s the only one who appears sad about KK’s death.”

  “Dante, what about Leo? Do you think he was responsible for the cave falling on you? Surely he had to know something?” Pris picked her tart apart, tasting just the crust.

  “The tunnel section I saw last appeared to be Victorian construction that simply crumbled. I can’t say Leo knew anything one way or another. Anyone digging through the tuff could have disturbed that concrete. Plot later. Kids now. It’s dark and they’re being too quiet.” Dante stood and shouted at the twins to come in.

  The twins didn’t answer. Instead, Honey, the golden retriever, barked frantically—from the street?

  Jax’s stomach knotted as Evie jumped up.

  “The yard is fenced.” She jogged to the weed patch dividing her yard from the neighbor’s.

  Jax trailed after her, searching the darkness for giggling, hiding imps.

  No twins.

  He beat at the overgrown shrubbery and shouted, “Nan, Alex.”

  Dante limped out carrying a flashlight.

  “KK,” Evie whispered worriedly. “In the back corner.”

  Dante pointed his light in that direction. “The bushes are bent.” The flashlight revealed the extent of the damage and the missing fence boards.

  Evie shoved through the narrow child-sized opening while Jax and Dante ripped at the boards to enlarge it. In the street on the other side, Honey wildly raced up and down, barking, as if she’d lost her best friends.

  “Limo!” Evie cried frantically. “KK is saying limo!”

  Thirty-two: Dante

  Searching for cool, calculating logic and only hearing the roar of terror in his head and the echoing emptiness in his chest, Dante tapped into his mobile. Beside him, Roark recklessly drove the utility van down a two-lane road toward the interstate, hoping to catch up with a limo. Roark’s phone beeped, and Dante grabbed that one too.

  “Ariel says stop at the abandoned gas station.” He read the message aloud, then returned to checking messages. As far as they’d ascertained so far, the ghost’s warning of a large black car in the neighborhood was correct, except no one knew its direction. All they could assume was that whoever had the children would be fleeing for an airport.

  Dante’s worst nightmare was that the children wouldn’t make it that far. What hornet’s nest had they stirred? Jax had called Matt and Rhonda. Jane was out of the hospital. Who else?

  Why the children?

  To get him to do something. What? All he knew were artifacts. They wanted the necklace? He couldn’t force the sheriff to release it.

  Focused on reaching Atlanta, Roark frowned and slowed the van down. “How she know where we at?”

  “Ariel is included in the group text. I don’t know how she knows location.”

  “Tracking calls,” Roark shouted excitedly. “My brilliant bébé learned to track the phones!” He swung the van off the road into the cracked concrete pad of an old service station.

  Dante wanted to physically shove the van down the road, but it would take him longer to climb out than for the bicyclist he assumed was Ariel to cross the road and unlatch the panel door in back.

  Ariel flung in her bike and slammed the door. “Not a plane.”

  They’d alerted the police about missing children, but not even Sheriff Troy could make the leap of faith from a ghost saying limo to some unidentified Gladwell kidnapping Dante’s children for reasons unknown. KK hadn’t been clear on the occupants of the limo.

  Evie had, however, persuaded the sheriff to send an Amber alert and notify the police in three states to watch the airports—after Evie’s mother produced a neighbor who’d seen the children being thrown into a limousine.

  Dante had a suspicion that Mavis had seen that in her crystal ball and twisted a neighbor’s arm. Having learned to trust his family’s weird instincts, he was grateful any way it worked, although he was pretty certain his mother’s family didn’t lie to the law.

  Dante couldn’t figure out why anyone would want his children, unless it was Lucia and she was alive. He needed to cling to that insane hope to stay sane, which only proved he’d reached the cliff’s edge of hysteria.

  “Not a plane, then what, bébé?” Roark asked as the door slammed.

  “Marina. Beaufort. Charge on Bella credit card.” Ariel began manipulating the assortment of equipment in the back of the van.

  Before Roark could swing back to the road, Dante read another text. “Wait. Pris is right behind us.”

  “Texting?” Roark cried. “The way she drives?”

  Glad he wasn’t the only one who thought Pris drove like a fiend out of hell, Dante held his breath as a battered dual-cab Ford with a bed cover squealed into the pull-off. Roark muttered a few curses.

  Dante’s phone rang. Answering, he heard Pris’s anxious voice on the other end. “Let Ariel navigate for Roark. If the kidnapper tries to escape through Atlanta, Roark can bring him down. But if the limo is heading for Beaufort, I can beat his dinosaur van. Wanna be my navigator?”

  He’d seen Pris drive when she was on a tear and knew he was taking his life in his hands to climb in that vehicle. His children were worth the risk. Blessing her for realizing he needed to be in on this, he trusted her as his best chance of reaching the marina first.

  He swung open the van door and eased out. “Text the others with the change of plans,” he told Roark while grabbing the cane Evie had given him. “Keep the lines open.”

  “Rather you than me, bon ami,” Roark shouted after him.

  Dante hauled himself into the pickup cab and buckled in. “Why a marina?”

  Pris slammed the engine into gear and peeled off, leaving rubber on the cracked concrete. “Use your imagination.”

  He’d rather not. He was a scientist. He wanted facts.

  To take his mind off the nightmare of his imagination, he glanced at an incoming group text from Ariel. As instructed, he opened her email. Jax’s sister might not communicate much in person, but she knew how to disseminate information. The email contained lists of all the charges made recently on a Bella credit card. Those charges included first-class tickets to Atlanta from London and a rented limousine.

  Vincent. The only Gladwell left in London. But why? Nick had said Vincent had vowed never to return. But who else could it be? Lucia? As far as he was aware, everyone else was here.

  What had set Vincent off, if he was the ticket holder? The inventory Jax planned? Their visit to the sheriff?

  The recollection of the violence on the limoncello bottle kicked Dante’s terror up ten notches. “If Matt is already in Hilton Head, then this plane ticket looks like Vincent Gladwell may be meeting his son.”

  The whistle Pris emitted was not one of joy. “Beaufort isn’t far from here. . . or from Hilton Head. Either of them could have booked that boat. But why?”

  “Exactly what I’m asking myself. What did we do to stir the sleeping beast? He can’t possibly know that we suspect Lucia is dead, can he?” He followed the rapid fire texts that followed but no one had any idea.

  “The necklace,” Pris said with a question in her voice. “If he heard you visited the sheriff. . . And maybe KK had warned them of you. She thought of you just before she died, remember? Was she afraid you’d recognize the necklace? Lucia may have told her that you knew artifacts. . .”

  “And her family must know that necklace is worth a fortune. . . ” Dante shook his head in disbelief. “I cannot think like a thief. It may be possible that Vincent has discovered my contacts are making inquiries on the black market.”

  “And he’s running scared? Can Ariel follow any other credit cards?” Pris maneuvered the truck around a semi on a blind hill.

  “She’s in the back of the van playing magic computer.” Following the text on his phone, Dante blocked out Pris’s terrifying driving.

  “Where’s Reuben? That’s usually his job.”

  “He’s with the mayor and the cops, feeding them everything he dares. Given the probable illegality of some of this data, that’s a job in itself.” Dante read through the scrolling messages. “Reuben says Jax is on the way to Savannah on his Harley and can be diverted to Beaufort. Evie is heading for the Charleston airport. That’s apparently not far either?”

  “They’re both aimed for the coast but not as direct as the route we’re taking. Tell Rube to send them to the marina. At this hour, no one is catching a commercial flight to anywhere except Atlanta, and Roark will be talking to security there. But if Ariel isn’t finding credit charges for a plane, the boat is it. We just don’t know what they plan to do with it.” She hit the gas and passed a sedate sedan tooling along only a few miles over the limit.

  As she accelerated, Dante gritted his teeth and found the GPS map on his mobile so he could follow their route. Rather than picture his innocent children, terrified and on a boat heading into the Atlantic, he distracted himself with curiosity. “How did you learn to drive like a bat out of hell?”

  “Father’s a stock-car driver. He taught us all. You know anything about stock car racing?”

  “Not a whit. Not certain I want to know. Where is your father now?”

  Twilight had turned to a wintery dark. The two lane made a T with a slightly larger road. Barely slowing down to watch for oncoming headlights, Pris swung east and floored it. “Let us just say Dad was a better driver than a mechanic. At race speeds, engine failure is not optimal.”

  “And the mechanic for this rusted piece of junk?” Dante focused on the phone so he didn’t have to watch her whizz past traffic. But he was utterly aware of the fearless driver in the seat beside him. The devil woman really needed a red streak in her hair.

  “Understand that South Carolina probably has more mechanics than peach trees, and if I say I have the best in the business, that means you’ll find none better anywhere. Worry about human failure. I want to commit murder.”

  “I know the feeling.” Voices screamed in his head. He could almost believe KK and Lucia were here, blasting him with their cries. He didn’t even have to understand their words. He felt them in his gut.

  Children weren’t kidnapped for any good reason, and he knew without any doubt that his children had not left of their own accord. They might have poked through the fence to explore, but they would have been found by now if that had been the case. Evie’s neighbors and her dog trainer cousin were canvassing the streets, flashlights and tracking animals in hand. The dogs had found no scent.

  “You’re mentally blocking me.” Pris gunned the truck through an intersection as the light turned red. “I don’t know what that means. Most people can’t do that.”

  “I don’t know what it means either. I simply go inside my own head when outside influences are too distracting. I learned it whilst staying with my mother’s family. They’re as intrusive as you and yours.”

  “I do that too. Maybe we all learn to do that. People talk too much as it is. Tapping into their thoughts only increases the noise factor, so I don’t usually bother. But you’re an enigma, so I get curious.” Apparently spotting a police car, she slowed down through a small town, then floored it once outside of city limits.

  “Is this the road a limo would take?” he asked, not wanting to question her curiosity, because he’d have to admit his own about her. And as welcome as the distraction would be, he wanted to concentrate on his children, as if thinking about them would keep them safe. Were they sleeping? Crying? Scared?

  “Right now we’re on the main highway, such as it is, but it doesn’t go straight in the direction we want. The truck is geared for off-road. I’m taking the hypotenuse. Prepare yourself.”

  He recited the Lord’s Prayer in Latin out loud as she careened off the highway down a rugged gravel road.

  “That’s good. I like the Latin. It’s soothing, like a monk’s chant. Keep it up.” She skidded through a muddy creek and out the other side.

  Chickens scattered. Or maybe they were turkeys. He didn’t know his farm fowl.

  “You know where this marina is?” he asked, hanging onto the door grip as she swerved around a farm truck parked in the lane. They were fortunate it was after dinnertime and everyone must be home, watching their televisions.

  “Beaufort isn’t that big. Find the marina address, plug it in. We see boats, we check the name on the sign. I’m betting Vincent doesn’t know the low-end places so it’s just a matter of finding the right turn-off.”

  “I just don’t understand why.” Dante fielded more texts. Reuben apparently was keeping track of everyone’s location by some mysterious means. Roark was a long way out from Atlanta, but the others had diverted their paths and were converging on Beaufort.