Again, nothing.
Were they snoozing, or dead? Had Tory turned on his masters? Had he killed them in prelude to robbery? I could see no outward signs of violence. No bullet wounds or bludgeon marks, and the water wasn’t bloody.
I’d worry about them later.
Skylar was my primary concern.
I carried her into the house in search of a couch. After spotting a chaise longue, I was startled by a set of double doors that opened automatically as I drew near.
When nobody walked through, I pushed a paperback off the plush upholstery and set Skylar down. As the novel fell to the floor, I noted with some surprise that it was the same one I’d been reading at Berret’s. Apparently, Aria and I had the same taste. I wasn’t sure what to make of that.
Skylar’s eyes opened as the double doors slid closed.
“Hey there. Can you hear me? How are you feeling?”
She blinked a few times, then spoke. “My head hurts. What happened?” Her voice was soft, but steady.
“We ran into Tory. He threw a briefcase at me. I ducked and it hit your head.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Just as well. Can you sit up?”
“Your face is a mess.”
“It’s nothing. Just a bit of blood and vomit.”
“Is that all?” she said with a smile.
It was a proper response to my whimsical tone. She was going to be all right.
“Where am I?”
“I just brought you into Aria’s house.”
“Where’s Tory?”
“He’s dead. It appears he’d just looted the island when we bumped into him. He was hauling a five million-dollar stash.”
“You’re not hurt?”
“I think I fractured a bone or two in my left hand. Nothing serious.”
Skylar took my hand and began to study it. “What about Aria?”
“I’m not sure yet. I haven’t had the opportunity to look for her. The other two we saw are still in the pool, either drugged or dead.” I studied Skylar’s eyes while we spoke.
She suddenly sat fully upright. Rubbing her temples, she asked, “Did you say you found five million dollars?”
“I did.”
“Presumably taken from the people who tried to burn me alive?”
“Almost certainly.”
“And you killed Tory?” The tone of her questions was more excited than inquisitive.
“I did that, too.”
“So why aren’t we back on our boat at this very minute, speeding someplace far from here? Like to one of those Bahamian banks that doesn’t ask questions?” She gripped my hands hard enough that I had to wince. “Sorry. But surely you don’t have a problem skipping the lawsuit and going straight to assessing damages for our pain and suffering?”
No brain damage there. She was firing on all cylinders. “Your health was my primary concern.”
Her expression broke. She leaned forward and kissed me quickly on the lips before rising to her feet. “I think I’m fine. Let’s go.”
Apparently waving five million dollars under someone’s nose worked better than an ammonia ampule.
I gave Skylar my arm and guided her outside, but instead of turning toward the yacht, I stopped at the pool. “Let’s just check.”
She rolled her eyes in response. Yet one more sign of healthy brain function.
While she sat on the edge of a chair, I crouched and leaned to grab the toe of Lars’s lookalike. I tugged the doppelgänger to the water’s edge, then checked his pulse. “He’s dead.”
Skylar grimaced but didn’t gasp. “Where’s Aria? Do you think she did this in cahoots with Tory?”
“I think Tory works alone. But I can guess where Aria might be.” As we rose, I again linked her arm. “Come with me.”
Skylar resisted as I turned toward the house. “Let’s just leave. Someone has to be coming back, right? That go-fast wasn’t Aria’s. It’s clear now that it was Tory’s. That means her staff took her yacht out. Probably shopping. They’re not going to leave her stranded for long. They’ll likely be back any minute, so we should already be gone.”
I favored another hypothesis but decided to keep it to myself for now. “This won’t take long. And I think the risk will be worth our while.”
“I agree that closure is worth a lot, Chase. I’m just not sure I’d risk five million dollars for it.”
“Give me five minutes.”
Skylar relented.
I wasn’t familiar with the layout of Aria’s house, but I knew where to find her bedroom. I led Skylar back into the grand room and then through the automatic double doors I’d activated when carrying her inside.
“Wow!” Skylar said. “Talk about a fairy tale gone awry.”
The master suite of Aria’s estate was something the designers at Disney would draw, complete with canopy bed and breathtaking view. But at the moment, it looked like a beast had just visited the beauty. Every painting had been pulled from the walls and all the furniture stood askew.
I took that as a good sign.
Noting that nothing had been revealed by the rearrangement, I walked toward the closet doors. They were also automatic. They too slid silently aside as they’d undoubtedly done a thousand times before. As if everything was normal. But it wasn’t.
Aria’s bikini-clad body lay sprawled face down on the floor. Dead. That much was immediately apparent. The rest of the scene took a second to process.
The walk-in closet was enormous. Bigger than most bedrooms. Clothes had been scattered and shoes tossed aside. One section of the back wall had been hinged inward, revealing a vault. Its thick steel door had also been opened. Aria lay in that doorway.
“You think Tory forced her to open the vault, then hit her on the back of the head?” Skylar asked.
I felt the back of Aria’s head before answering. It wasn’t warm or damaged. Pointing to the glass rectangle embedded in the exposed wall, I said, “I think she died beside the others in the pool. Some kind of drug overdose.
“I think Tory made the mess searching for the safe he knew had to be hidden somewhere. Once he found it, and the palm reader, he hauled her up here.”
“And used her dead hand to unlock it,” Skylar said with a shudder.
We walked around the heiress’s body and stepped inside the stainless steel room. The first thing to catch my eye was a Glock sitting atop a pedestal. Tory’s gun. This confirmed my theory. He had set it aside while packing his bags and forgotten it amidst the excitement. Or figured he’d grab it on the last run. Either way, that single, simple lapse of professionalism had saved our lives and cost him his own. I’d be pondering that blessed piece of luck for years to come.
“Look at all this! The five million you saw was just the beginning.” Skylar turned to face me, her eyes wide with excitement and understanding. “This was what you meant when you predicted that the risk would be worth our while.”
“Don’t ever doubt me again,” I said with a wink.
She kissed me.
Epilogue
Six months later
London, England
SKYLAR STOOD before the big black door with no number, hesitant to knock. She raised her hand, knuckles flexed, but paused to reflect—on her past, her present, and her future. A series of simple questions had started the complex cascade that led her to this dark doorway—and the ironic ending on the other side.
The first question had been, “What do we do now?” She’d asked it while standing in Aria’s vault, surrounded by treasure-laden shelves and the owner’s cooling corpse.
Chase had hesitated to answer, but only for a heartbeat. “We load all this on the boat. Then I close the vault door, wipe our prints, and put Aria back in the pool beside her friends.” His head and eye movements told her he was thinking out loud.
She didn’t interrupt.
“I’ll put Tory on the bow of his boat and send it off into the open ocean. The go-fast may never be found, much less the body.”