Connor paused, expectant, but Seth was struck speechless.
He grunted and went on. 'That's not all. Sean tailed Lazar’s Mercedes around all morning, listening to his cell phone. There's going to be one of those depraved VIP shindigs out at Stone Island tonight. Victor's been calling members of his club of illicit collectors, plus his favorite exclusive escort service, for the late-night entertainment. Sounds like a big deal. It'll be interesting to see who comes “
Seth struggled to follow him. “Uh, yeah. Real interesting.”
“And the most interesting tidbit of all was a phone call to Lazar's supposedly secure private line in his office. Love that little drop-in bug you slipped into his phone. Davy monitored a twenty-five second phone call from an unidentified person who simply said that the meeting for the 'heart of darkness' would be on Monday morning.”
Seth rubbed his hands over his stinging eyes. “No location?”
“Nope. Bummer. Mystery caller said more details would be forthcoming.”
“Shit” Seth muttered.
“Yeah. We're going to have to improvise, like I always figured. Anyhow, back to Blondie. I can't follow her to the Cave. I'm no good for covert surveillance down there. I've asked Sean to cover—”
“I'm on my way,” he cut in. “Don't let her out of your sight.”
“But she knows you,” Connor objected. “She doesn't know Sean. Come on, Seth—”
“She won't see me.” He cut the connection and shoved the phone into his pocket with trembling hands. He had to play it cool. No red haze. It would run him off the rails, and he would be fucked.
Victor Lazar's niece. Holy shit.
Right now would be a good time for his inner cyborg to take over and run the show, but there was nothing left of him but a pile of parts. Circuits blown, wires smoking, all tangled together with flesh and bone and pulsing blood. Raine Cameron Lazar had taken him to pieces.
“Lucky that you came when you did,” Bill Haley told her. “I'm retiring, you see. This time next week, I'll be salmon fishing up in the Inside Passage. Please, sit down.”
'Congratulations on your retirement. I'm glad I caught you,” Raine said. Bill Haley was a twinkling-eyed man in his sixties, with chubby, Santa Claus cheeks, bushy brows and curly iron-gray hair.
“No need to prove that you are who you say you are,” he said. “Damn, but you look a lot like your mom,”
“I've been hearing that a lot lately” Raine said.
He steepled his fingers together and gave her an affable smile. “So, Ms. Cameron. What is it that you think I can do for you?”
I heard that you took an interest in my father's death,” she said. “I'd like to know why.”
Haley's smile faded quickly. “You don't remember much of that time, huh? How old were you? Nine, ten?”
“Almost eleven,” Raine said. “And I remember just enough to make me really nervous.”
Bill Haley studied her face. “You should be nervous,” he said bluntly. “It was very convenient for Victor Lazar that his brother had that accident Victor had his fingers in all sorts of pies back then. Peter had finally agreed to testify against him.” Haley tapped his pen against the desk, studying her reaction. His eyes no longer seemed to twinkle. They had taken on a sharp, metallic glint.
Nausea clutched at her belly again. She willed it to subside. “Please go on,” she said resolutely.
“There's not much more to tell. With Peter's testimony, we could have nailed the bastard in ‘85, but Victor ran off to Greece, and before we knew it, Peter was floating facedown in the Sound. Uh... sorry, miss.”
“It's OK.” She waited.
Haley shrugged. “After that, Victor got smart. He cleaned up his act, went mostly legit. We haven't been able to get a hold on him since. He's very slick. Very careful. And very connected.”
She clenched her hands together in her lap and braced herself. “Do you believe that Victor had my father killed?” she asked bluntly.
Haley's face lost all expression. 'There was no proof that Peter's death was anything other than a boating accident That’s just the way it is sometimes. Nothing we could do. Particularly since Peter's wife and daughter vanished. We never got to question them.” His eyes fixed on her in a cold, probing gaze. “But here you are. Did you see or hear anything on that day, miss?”
There it was again, the swirling, nauseous panic, the blur of green. Screams, echoing. She swallowed hard and fought it down. “I... don't remember,” she faltered. “My mother insists that we weren't there “
“I see.” He tapped his pen against the desktop, a rapid tattoo. “Your uncle, does he know you're asking around about Peter?”
She shook her head.
Haley shrugged. “Be a hell of a lot better for you if he never found out, if you ask me.”
“I know that,” she said stiffly.
“You watch your back, miss. People who take too much of an interest in Victor Lazar's business have a bad habit of dying young. And being closely related to him isn't much of a safeguard. Obviously.”
“Obviously,” she repeated softly.
The grim silence that followed signaled a close to the conversation. A faraway, mechanical part of her brain dealt with the business of shaking hands and thanking Bill Haley for his time. The same part kept her from walking into the people in the corridor outside.
She finally had something concrete to corroborate her dreams. That was progress. But if trained agents of the federal government, with all their experience and all their vast resources had thrown up their hands in defeat, what could she possibly hope to accomplish?
Raine bumped into someone, and veered away, mumbling an apology. She had to keep on as she was. Infiltrating. At least she wasn't crazy or delusional. She was on the track of something horribly real, no matter how elusive. That was something to cling to. A man was turning to stare at her as she walked past. She shot him a brief glance, just long enough to register information without seeming interested. A split second after she looked away, her stomach began to roll.
There was no reason for it. She'd never seen him before. She reviewed everything she had caught in the swift, photographic glance. Tall, protruding belly. Thinning dark hair, clean-shaven, bifocals. Nothing particular about him, other than his expression. Not one of masculine appreciation. He'd looked horrified.
She turned to look again. He was striding down the hall away from her, very fast Almost running. Ducking into a doorway, the same one she had just exited. Bill Haley's office.
She turned around and kept walking, shivering with the rising panic. It was like a whirlpool inside her, a sick, out of control feeling. The green blur, the screaming. This was sense- less. Why was she having a panic attack after catching a glimpse of an innocuous middle-aged man? Maybe she really was going nuts.
The best option was the simplest and most direct one, she told herself. She could go back to Haley's office, knock, and ask the man if they knew each other from somewhere. Either they would or they wouldn't. Raine turned, and took a slow, reluctant step in that direction.
There was a loud snap. She felt a stabbing pain in her hand. She pulled it out of her coat pocket She'd been clutching the frog glasses so tightly that one of the earpieces had broken off. The metal joint had dug into her palm, hard enough to draw blood.
Chapter 15
“Ah. There you are. Harriet told me you were absent for a doctor's appointment. I trust you're feeling better?”
Raine looked up from the cell phone into which she was trying to punch a message to Seth. She slipped it into
