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51
In the Air
Eve Shaker picked up her cell phone and dialed her home in Palm Beach. She’d tried to reach Rich on his cell, but it had gone to voice mail. Now Dorothea was her last hope. Eve herself had hired her housekeeper, Dorothea, the previous year and installed her and her three children in one of the guest cottages on the estate. Eve prayed Dorothea would know why Rich wasn’t picking up his cell phone, why he hadn’t contacted her or called her back. Her father was sure he knew why, but she still hoped he was wrong. He had to be wrong, otherwise— no, there had to be another reason.
Dorothea answered the phone in her soft musical voice. “Doulos residence.”
“Dorothea, it’s Mrs. Doulos. I’ve tried calling my husband but I keep getting voice mail. Is he there?”
“No, ma’am, he left well over an hour ago. He didn’t say where he was going only that he had to leave. Days, I think, from the way he spoke. I think he was upset.”
Eve felt her heart beat faster, felt a knot of nausea in her belly. “He didn’t say where he was going?”
“No, ma’am, he didn’t tell me.”
“Dorothea, something’s happened and I’m worried for him. Would you please go into his office and look around his desk, see if you can find out where he went? I must find him, it’s an emergency.”
Eve looked up to see her father studying his casino accounting reports, but she knew he was listening, listening and planning out what he would do next. She’d really believed he’d been wrong, but now it seemed he wasn’t. He’d been so gentle when he told her he’d had a serious talk with his pit boss, Pope’s old drinking buddy, who told him Pope bragged about leaving Las Vegas to go to a much better job with Shaker’s son-in-law, Rich Doulos, in Miami. Now Pope was dead, shot dead during Agent Sherlock and Molly’s kidnapping. Her father didn’t have to tell her what that meant, but she still wasn’t ready to accept her husband of only thirteen months had betrayed them both. Surely there had to be a reason he’d hired Pope, there had to be. Maybe it was all a mistake and he hadn’t answered his cell phone because he was dealing with his family’s business. He was a prized consultant for his mother, and his hours could be erratic.
While Eve waited for Dorothea to get back to her, she drummed her fingernails on the plush arm of her seat, listening to the low smooth drone of the engines. She knew if Dorothea found anything, she’d tell her. Dorothea’s loyalty was to her, no one else. But what could she find? Maybe there’d be nothing to find, and Rich would call her, tell her he’d closed a deal, or dealt with a client, and ask her if she wanted to jet off to Aruba with him for the weekend.
“Mrs. Doulos?”
“Yes, Dorothea.”
“I’m not sure if this is a destination, but I found a sheet of paper he’d shoved into his desk. It said only Williard House, and under that Mr. Doulos wrote 3 hours. He didn’t ask me to pack for him so I don’t know what he took or how many changes of clothes. Does that help you, ma’am?”
Eve felt hope die in that moment. Had he ever loved her? Or had she simply been his entrée into her father’s world? A world he himself wanted to run, to own? She firmed her voice. “Yes, Dorothea. Thank you. I’ll keep in touch.” She tapped her cell’s off button and closed her eyes against the enormity of his betrayal. She wanted to close out the pain, the growing rage in her belly, but it wasn’t going anywhere.
Rule Shaker raised his head from the reports he really hadn’t been reading. “Tell me, Eve.”
She said in a dull voice, “You were right. He’s left Palm Beach without even telling Dorothea, and needless to say, without telling me.” She laughed, a harsh angry laugh. “But I know where he went. I visited Williard House with him once, maybe six months ago when he bought it. It’s near Camden, Maine. It’s isolated, off an old country road, nearly buried in trees. The house itself is surrounded by a thick forest of oaks and pines and sweet gum. It’s huge and it’s really old, built back at the beginning of the twentieth century by a wealthy local family who wanted to get as far away from the riffraff as they could. Rich told me he was going to update it, he said it would make a great vacation spot to take our kids, when we had them.” Her voice fell off a cliff. She wasn’t going to cry, she’d be a fool if she did. She was going to figure out how to hurt him, hurt him bad. She was going to get even. “It’s a perfect place to take Molly and Agent Sherlock.”
Rule knew all about betrayal, knew what it felt like when a supposed friend was really an enemy scheming to destroy him. But Rich Doulos had targeted his daughter. He’d courted Eve, married her, all because he wanted to take the brass ring. Rule wondered what he’d planned, exactly. Was he behind all the assaults on his casinos? Had he ordered the arson of Eve’s casino? He couldn’t bear seeing Eve in such pain. What he felt for Rich Doulos was beyond anger. It was ice-cold rage. He pressed the intercom to his pilot. “We’re going to change course for Camden, Maine, Fin. Tell me when you have an arrival time.”
A pause, then, “Yes, sir.” Not two minutes later, Fin came back on the line. “If the winds continue as they are, we should land in about three hours, give or take ten minutes.”
“Thank you, Fin.” Rule rose and walked over to his daughter. He sat beside her, took her in his arms. “I’m sorry, Eve. It’s my fault. I should have had the man investigated more carefully.”
She was stiff, her hands fisted. “No, this isn’t your fault. Why would you think you needed even more information about him? He’s not from a crime family. His family is two generations in security, all aboveboard. There was nothing to find. He didn’t get along with his mother, but I never blamed him. She’s a snob and he stood up for me. But I should have seen it. It’s all so clear now. He took one look at me when I visited Exotica and of course he found out soon enough who I was—his ticket in, the pretty girl who was the apple of her father’s eye, the tool he used to try to take as much of it as he could. All the problems at the casino, the things we’ve never seen before, he paid to have them happen, didn’t he?”
“It makes sense. He was escalating. Did he believe we’d think it was Mason Lord?”
“Probably. Dad, I’m the one to blame, not you. I believed he loved me, believed I could trust him, so it didn’t even occur to me not to tell him our history with Mason Lord and his daughter.”
“Of course you told your husband. It was a natural thing to do. I don’t blame you for that.”
“I want to kill him.”
“I do, too, Eve. I do, too. We have proof enough of what he did, what he wanted, no matter what he says. But he’s failed.”
He pulled away, pulled out his cell phone, and began texting; when he finished, he sat back in his seat.
“Who did you text?”
“Mason Lord.”
She reared back. “Why?”
