Page 50 of The Perfect Betrayal

She heard a lock click and the door opened to reveal a petite, attractive woman with brown hair. She was wearing a robe over pajamas.

“Thank you, Lana,” she said before deciding to be as direct as she could, within reason. “Have you heard about the recent murders at the yacht club?”

“Yes,” she said. “I saw something about two members being killed on the news.”

“Well, it’s now up to three,” Jessie informed her. “I don’t know if Joel told you this, but they were all friends of his. And we’re concerned that he may be the next target. In fact, we’re nearly certain of it.”

“Why?” Lana asked, her face scrunched up in concern.

"We don't really have time to go into it right now," Jessie said. "But we need your help to find him. I assume he's not at home, or he would have come to the door."

“No,” she said. “With all the legal stuff going on, he said he wanted to clear his head. He planned to spend the night on the boat.”

Jessie glanced over at Riddell, who had stiffened up. She understood why. Cisco wasn’t on the boat. If his wife didn’t know where he really was and they didn’t get his GPS data soon, they were flying blind.

“Lana,” she said delicately, “we sent officers to look for him on the boat and he wasn’t there. Do you know where else he might be?”

“Which boat did you check?” Lana asked.

“There’s more than one?”

“Yeah,” she answered. “There’s the larger yacht docked in King Harbor and the smaller sailboat he keeps up in Marina del Rey.”

Jessie couldn’t stop her jaw from dropping at that tidbit. For a moment, she was upset that Jamil and Beth hadn’t picked up on this crucial detail. But then she reconsidered. They found the boat in Redondo. Why would they assume the guy had asecondone at a different location? It was an understandable oversight.

“Mrs. Cisco—Lana,” Riddell said, turning his phone so that he was now on camera too. “I’m Detective Riddell with the L.A. Sheriff’s Department. We need the name and hull identification number for the boat in the marina. We’re going to have someone check on him.”

“Okay,” she said, “but should I maybe just call him now?”

Riddell looked over at Jessie to see if she had any objection. She nodded to indicate she was cool with it. Right now, Cisco’spotential culpability in any crime was secondary to his safety, even if it meant alerting the man that they were on to him.

“Go ahead, we’ll stay on the line so you can conference him in,” he said before turning to Jessie. “We should get down to the car and head up that way.”

They started down the hall when the man sitting on the floor called out to them.

“What about me?”

“You’re free to return to your apartment,” Riddell said without looking back.

They took the stairs down as Lana Cisco called her husband. It went straight to voicemail. She tried a second time with the same result.

“Could he be asleep?” Riddell asked her.

“I don’t think so,” Lana replied. “If he was, it would ring multiple times before going to voicemail. But I have noticed that when he leaves the marina and is out in open water, this will happen sometimes. He can’t always get a signal out there.”

Jessie looked at Riddell, concerned.

“What?” he asked.

“Hold on a second,” she said. “Lana, we’re going to hang up for now. Keep calling. The deputies will stay with you. If Joel picks up, conference us back in again.”

“Okay,” she said. “Can you tell me what this is about now?”

"We'll deal with all of that once Joel's safe," Jessie deflected. "Right now, we're going to try to make sure he is."

As they got in his car, she indicated that Riddell should hang up.

“What were you thinking before?” he asked.

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