Page 116 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

They were go­ing to the king with her the­ory? Quinn drew in a deep breath. “First, Paris keeps show­ing up. Ko­dra men­tioned it more than once. Ricci got black­mailed for some­thing he did in Paris. His blind­folded trip to per­form the surgery works within the time frame to get to Paris and back. Odette lives and works there.”

Mikel nod­ded.

“As we just heard, Ricci has a con­nec­tion with Odette through his wife. Odette also has ties to Cal­eva that go back decades. First, her touchy his­tory with the king. Sec­ond, her friend­ship with the Duchess of Bruma. Third, she de­pends on the Cal­e­van lilies for her prof­itable skin cream.”

“The lat­ter two facts could also sup­port the ar­gu­ment that she wouldn’t want to jeop­ar­dize the good­will be­tween her and Cal­eva,” Mikel said.

“It would only be jeop­ar­dized if she were caught.” Quinn pushed her glasses up on her nose. “She wouldn’t have or­ches­trated such a high-pro­file crime if she ex­pected to be iden­ti­fied. In her mind, there would be no dan­ger to her. Be­sides, if she were con­victed of the kid­nap­ping, the other is­sues wouldn’t be a con­sid­er­a­tion.”

“Granted,” Mikel agreed.

“There are two other data points I’ve drawn lines be­tween.” Quinn tapped at her lap­top screen and turned it to­ward Mikel. “You know the Lily Ca­bal that’s been giv­ing the king”—and Gabriel—“such grief? Can­di­dates sup­port­ing it have been run­ning well-funded cam­paigns to win elec­tion to both the leg­isla­tive con­se­jos. We’ve tracked most of the money they’re us­ing to the Cay­man Is­lands. Guess when it was de­posited there?” She pointed to an item on the com­puter.

Mikel leaned for­ward to read the screen. “Joder! Three weeks af­ter the ran­som was paid.”

“Right now, Odette’s com­pany gets a tiny per­cent­age of the lily sap crop. If the no­bles take back own­er­ship of the lily fields, she might get more sap be­cause it would put more money in the pock­ets of the duques and mar­quéses.”

“But do the can­di­dates know the source of these funds?” Mikel asked, al­most to him­self.

“My guess is that some­one knows they come from Odette or her com­pany, but they as­sume it’s a nor­mal busi­ness-bribe sit­u­a­tion. I don’t think even their greed would tol­er­ate such a vi­cious at­tack on the royal fam­ily.”

“They had bet­ter hope you are right.” Mikel’s mouth tight­ened to a grim line. “You said there is an­other data point.”

“I keep look­ing for the trig­ger. Why did Odette sud­denly de­cide to strike at the royal fam­ily roughly eigh­teen months ago? I’ve been comb­ing through her ac­tiv­ity from two years to fif­teen months ago. I found one anom­aly.”

Mikel raised his eye­brows when she paused.

Quinn ad­justed her glasses again. “Five and a half months be­fore the ab­duc­tion, Odette trav­eled to the United States, some­thing she does about three times a year. How­ever, af­ter she made what were her usual busi­ness calls, she booked a flight to Des Moines, Iowa. She rented a car there and drove about ninety miles be­fore she re­turned the car two days later. Why would Odette Fontaine go to Iowa?”

“There have been no fol­low-up vis­its? No part­ner­ships with com­pa­nies in Iowa?” Mikel asked.

“Nada. I can’t find any rea­son for her to be there as a one-off.”

Mikel frowned. “It’s not much to hang a kid­nap­ping on.”

“It’s the tim­ing that caught my at­ten­tion, based on what Dupont said. It’s also to­tally out of pat­tern for her.”

“So what­ever drew her to Iowa dis­tressed her so much that she de­cided to have Prince Raul kid­napped?” Mikel’s tone was skep­ti­cal, and Quinn didn’t blame him. It sounded crazy.

“Maybe?” Her Spidey sense was tin­gling, though. Odette hung out in ma­jor met­ro­pol­i­tan ar­eas. Des Moines was a small, pro­vin­cial, mid­west­ern city. The cos­met­ics CEO had no rea­son to go there.

“You’re ac­cus­ing a long-stand­ing friend and a trusted busi­ness as­so­ciate of the king and the Duke and Duchess of Bruma of kid­nap­ping a mem­ber of their fam­ily and then mu­ti­lat­ing him. Your data points are only cir­cum­stan­tial ev­i­dence.” Mikel shook his head. “I trust your in­stincts, but I hes­i­tate to ap­proach His Majesty with…this.”

“You know that Odette is com­ing to Cal­eva?” It was a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion. Of course Mikel knew. “It’s our best op­por­tu­nity to pro­voke her into do­ing some­thing that proves her guilt. She missed her tar­get the first time and got only half the ran­som she wanted, so she’s got to be pissed off. We should use that.”

“You’re sug­gest­ing that we use the crown prince as bait?” Mikel looked less shocked than his ques­tion would in­di­cate.

Gabriel had told her that Raul suf­fered from ter­ri­ble guilt about let­ting his cousin be taken by the kid­nap­pers. The prince would jump at the chance to cap­ture the per­pe­tra­tor. “It’s not like Odette can bring a gang of bad guys with her to Cal­eva. You’d know.”

Her boss tapped a fin­ger­tip on the ta­ble as he con­sid­ered this. “Write me up a very con­vinc­ing re­port. Af­ter I read it, I will de­cide whether to speak with the king.”

Mikel would check with his own sources as well, which was fine with her. Ev­ery ex­tra bit of in­for­ma­tion would help build her case.

“In the mean­time,” her boss con­tin­ued, “I got in touch with the right peo­ple about Dupont’s stolen Ver­meer, and Ko­dra’s ex­tra­di­tion is be­ing fast-tracked. I’m sure he can be per­suaded to flip on his as­so­ciates.”

“Will you of­fer him a re­duced sen­tence?” That would sur­prise her. The king had made it clear that the per­pe­tra­tors would be se­verely pun­ished.

“No,” Mikel said with­out hes­i­ta­tion. “There are other ways to per­suade him.”

---