crooned a few nonsense words, pleased when she heard Tucker’s directions echoing from the front of the house.
The paramedics moved in, and she stood up to give them access. A large man, his dark blue T-shirt stretched tight against his chest, took charge immediately as he knelt next to Mrs. Beauregard. Cassidy gave the team room to work and took a spot beside Tucker.
It was several long minutes later that she looked down to realize her hand was firmly clenched in his.
* * *
Tucker and Cassidy followed the paramedics from the house. The ambulance had just pulled away, the team having confirmed the emergency room where they were taking Mrs. Beauregard, when Max pulled up in his sports car. The two-seater was anything but practical, but Lilah and Violet didn’t seem to notice as they tumbled out of the passenger seat.
Questions carried across the yard as the women raced toward Cassidy before they surrounded her in a tight embrace.
“What the hell’s going on?” Max’s gaze stayed steady on the trio of women before giving Tucker his full attention.
“I’ll be damned if I know.”
“Did you get anything from their landlady?”
“She was pretty out of it.” Those first few moments in Mrs. B.’s kitchen rolled through his thoughts, the shock and horror of finding the woman. “I’m just glad she’s alive.”
Max’s face set in stoic lines, concern etching his tanned skin. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking this was a coincidence.”
“I’ve never put much stock in coincidence.”
“I fiddled a bit more with that panel in the floor.”
“And?”
“Nothing. It’s cemented tight and won’t budge.” Max paused a moment before pressing on. “I stopped short of jackhammering it but it smacks of something curious.”
“So why now? Unless they’re damn good actresses, Cassidy and her partners obviously weren’t aware of the hole. Besides, they’ve been there for a few years already. If they were responsible, they could have dug it up at any point and without destroying things. So who suddenly decided to go digging for whatever’s been hidden?”
Snippets of the conversation between the women floated toward them on the rising heat of the day. Their concern for Mrs. Beauregard had faded to speculation on what might have happened. Tucker missed the specifics of their discussion, but he didn’t miss Cassidy’s hard head shake or the shrug of her shoulders in response to her friend’s questions.
He suspected she didn’t believe in coincidences, either.
“They make quite a sight.” Max’s voice was low, hovering in the register he’d perfected when they were on active duty. Only this time there was a layer of intrigue that spoke of anything but the enemy.
“A beautiful trio.”
Tucker wasn’t sure if he realized it, but Max mentioned Violet every time he came back from one of the Design District’s business meetings. He’d never mentioned the other women, but now that he’d met them all, Tucker saw what a team they made.
A competent and beautiful one.
Their conversation faded as the women moved toward them as a unit.
“We’re going to head to the hospital. Would one of you mind taking us?” Cassidy’s brow furrowed. “Mrs. B. doesn’t have any children and we don’t know who else to call. We don’t want her to be alone.”
“I’ll do it.” Tucker ignored the subtle lift of his friend’s eyebrows, satisfying himself that his quick reaction was tied to the knowledge his SUV offered better transportation than Max’s two-seater. “Max can follow us with the keys after the locksmith gets here.”
In minutes they were loaded back in his car, Max’s lone figure left standing on the porch. As he took in his friend’s speculative gaze, Tucker instinctively knew Max’s thoughts matched his own.
Someone thought Mrs. Beauregard was sitting on a secret. What bothered him was what that nameless, faceless threat would do to possess it.
* * *
Charlie McCallum slammed the door to his apartment and stalked toward the bottle of bourbon that sat on the bar divider between his kitchen and living room. Heat radiated off him, the thick, long-sleeved sweatshirt he’d donned for the job a bitch in the Dallas heat.
Debating between pouring his drink and stripping, the heat won out as he dragged the sweatshirt over his head. The thick ski mask bulged from his back pocket and he threw that across the living room after the rest of his clothes.
Damn old woman. That crotchety old biddy was a useless dead end. He hadn’t gotten a single thing out of her and had shaved about ten years off his life in the process.
The moment when he’d let himself in her door and had come face-to-face with her, shock and horror lining her features...
It’d nearly had him running in the other direction.
He grabbed a glass from next to the sink and poured a generous portion of the bourbon with shaking hands. Damn it, he had the stones to do this.
He did.
He slugged back the drink and let the heat of the liquor wash through his system as the list of his sins piled up. When had it gotten so bad?
And why weren’t the pieces where he’d been promised?
His late wife had been vague, the rumor of a cache of jewels something she’d heard as a child. But he’d done his homework. Had hunted up that old appraiser and knew what he was looking for. Jo Beauregard was sitting on a boatload of jewels, and they were all hidden in the floorboards of his former sister-in-law’s shop.
And what were the freaking odds of that?
Charlie poured a second glass, calmer now as he worked through the problem.
Cassidy didn’t know he’d been in her shop. She had no reason to suspect him, and after the number he’d done on her dresses there was no way she’d think it was anything but a standard break-in.
Mrs. B. didn’t know it was him today, either. He’d seen the fear in her eyes and not a single moment of recognition it was him under the wool. He knew he could have gotten the location out of her if she hadn’t panicked and slipped in her kitchen.
Calming, he nodded as the liquor went to work on his system. He was okay. Fine. Better than fine.
He was clean with Cass and he was clean with the old bat. There was absolutely nothing to tie him to either place. Add on the fact that no one in the Tate family had seen him in three years and he was golden.
Of course, since the damn hole he’d finally found was shut solid and he hadn’t gotten a whiff out of Mrs. B., he was going to have to find a way to play buddy-buddy with freaking Saint Cassidy or lure her away from the shop somehow.
On a sigh, he figured he’d better start thinking up a good way to get her and her friends out of the shop. Attempting to contact her needed to be a last resort.
She’d never liked him and was certain not to have lost any sleep over him these past several years.
Especially since he was a living reminder of what she’d lost.
* * *
Cassidy noted the detective’s sharp gaze as the man scribbled another note into a small black folio. Detective Reed Graystone had arrived about an hour after the doctors had wheeled Mrs. B. back for tests and had quickly commandeered a private room from the information station.
Where Cassidy had initially appreciated the privacy and the detective’s ready attention to details, they were going on hour two and the repetitive questions had grown tedious.
“Please