Page 30 of Renegade

I couldn’t help but frown back at them as my heart began to race. “Who’s your father? Is he…ah, was he CIA?”

Jarrett chuckled. “My daddy is Mark Evans, former Associate Director of Military Affairs for the CIA.”

I felt my eyes bug out of their sockets. “Are you shitting me?”

“The Associate Director of Military Affairs,” Raven parroted. “Is that a powerful position in the government?”

I turned to glance at him. “You could say that, Raven. Mark Evans’ job was to advise the president in the Situation Room, so yeah, I’d say Jarrett is right, his father really does have friends in high places.”

Raven gaped at me, but I turned back to the three men standing before us. I swallowed hard, feeling a lump in my throat, as real hope filled my chest for the first time; I realizedthat maybe we’d lucked out and all our questions would be answered. I held out my hand.

“I don’t know how to thank you all.” I shook their hands. “If it’s okay, I’ll text you the coordinates where we last saw John.”

“Better yet, you should meet my daddy,” Jarrett replied. “That way, you can give ‘em to him in person.”

“Jarrett’s right,” Mac said. “Best not to text anything in case the guy you met is monitoring your phone. If he is CIA, we both know he’s capable of doing that.”

“Tapping our phones?” Raven said. I could hear the alarm in his voice.

Mac shrugged. “You said you thought he was following you this morning. So, yeah, there’s a good chance he’s been looking into you hard since you’ve been trying to recover that ruby he wants to get his hands on.”

“What’s so special about a ruby except that it’s worth a lot of money?” Thayne asked.

“I never thought about that,” I said. “I just figured he was after the money, but maybe there is something else.” I glanced at Raven who was looking back at me. I nodded to him, almost reading his mind.

“There is something else,” Raven said as I turned back to the men. “Did Miguel ever tell you about how we first met?”

“Yeah, the day he first met us,” Jarrett said, “at the restaurant.”

“It was on a job, right?” Thayne asked, looking at me. “If I remember correctly, you told us you and Raven were both after the same bounty or something, right?”

“Yes,” Raven said. “We were both trying to recover a half million-dollar diamond which had also been stolen.”

“The Mulberry diamond,” I added.

“Do you think the recovery of this pigeon’s blood ruby is related to that?” Mac asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t know, Mac.” I glanced at Raven. “Clearly, you’ve drawn the same parallels I have. Two pieces of jewelry with high-value stones…both stolen here in L.A. It may be a coincidence but doesn’t feel like it, does it?”

Raven shook his head. “No, it doesn’t feel like a coincidence at all and they never recovered the diamond even after the thief was found dead.”

“Wait. The thief…died?”

Raven nodded. “Yes. The Mulberry diamond was insured by the company I worked for at the time I met Miguel,” he explained. “When it was stolen, I learned that the thief was a lowlife by the name of Lyle Trench who had been a long-forgotten talent on American Idol a decade ago. He was seen running from the scene of the crime…caught on traffic cams.”

“Wait, the thief of this diamond you’re talkin’ about was an American Idol star?” Jarrett asked. He sounded very interested in this.

Raven nodded. “He’d gotten accepted onto the show singing under the stage name of Angel Gabriel and after he was eliminated from the show, his stardom fizzled. He became a heroin addict and a petty thief. I could never understand how a low life like Lyle Trench ratcheted up his petty theft to suddenly learning that Charlotte Mulberry would be collecting the stone from her safety deposit box in the bank.”

“That was kind of a stretch,” I said. “I always wondered how he could have access to the kind of information he’d need to know…who owned that piece of jewelry…where she’d be. It just never made sense to me. Anyway, he robbed her as she walked out of the bank. He was identified on traffic cameras, just as Raven told you. We both thought he’d planned on selling the diamond. When we took the guy down at the Capitol Records building, he didn’t have the diamond on him, and although the police checked all his hidey holes, it never resurfaced. He died in jail of a fentanyl laced heroin overdose a few weeks after.” Raven glanced over at me. “After seeing that guy today, I’m wondering whether the two cases are somehow linked.”

“Maybe someone was coverin’ their tracks,” Jarrett said.

I shrugged as I looked between Raven and Jarrett. “Anything’s possible and Raven’s right. I never thought it made sense that Trench could get a hold of information about the diamond either.”

“It’s entirely possible that the CIA is involved,” Thayne said. “Who knows?”

“I’d be interested to know if the cases are linked,” I said. “It’s really odd that the two biggest cases Raven and I have been involved with, just so happened to have very expensive jewels at their center. Coincidence? Maybe, but we all know the CIA had a large contingent on the ground in Iraq as well as Afghanistan. I know a big chunk of the money the U.S. government sent overseas to advance our interests by paying off warlords and the like, disappeared.”

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