Page 90 of Wicked Intentions (Wicked Games 3)
“Curse?” Connor says, intrigued. “What curse?”
Tabby answers as if she wrote the leading book on the history of the stone.
“The one put on it by the priests who discovered it was missing from their Hindu temple in India in the seventeenth century. Jean Baptiste-Tauvernier, its first recorded owner and the man who stole it from the temple, came down with a raging fever soon after. His body was later devoured by wolves. King Louis XIV bought the stone in 1673 from Tauvernier, then died—painfully—of gangrene. Louis XVI inherited it, and he Marie Antoinette lost their heads during the French revolution. It was stolen from Versailles during the revolution and lost for a while, but surfaced many years later when a Dutch jeweler, Wilhelm Fals, recut it and sold it off in two parts. Fals’s son murdered him…and then killed himself.
“There was a Greek merchant who later owned the diamond and then killed himself, his wife, and their child by driving off a cliff. The heiress who owned the Washington Post had the diamond for a while, and everyone in her family died in tragic circumstances—including her—broke and owing huge debts. That heiress’s kids sold the diamond to Harry Winston, who donated it to the Smithsonian by mailing it—and the mailman who delivered it had his leg crushed in an accident right after. And his house burned down. And finally, Sergei Karpov, the Russian oligarch who arranged for the stone to be stolen from the Smithsonian, was poisoned by a business rival. His wife died in a mental hospital. His son and daughter-in-law suffered four stillbirths before finally giving birth to a healthy girl…who wound up getting kidnapped by a brutal gang of thugs.”
“And saved by me,” Ryan says, tidily summing up the tale.
Connor corrects him drily. “Us.”
“Oh. Yeah. That’s what I meant. Us.” He shrugs.
Connor shakes his head and sighs.
“Capo won’t hand off the diamond to anyone,” I say. “He will be curious about why I want to meet at the Palace to give it to him instead of him picking it up from Reynard’s like he usually does and meeting him there afterward, so I’ll have to come up with something plausible.”
I look at Tabby and Connor for ideas. Tabby answers first.
“Because you’re worried Reynard’s place is bugged. Yes, this is good,” she says, warming to the idea as the rest of us stare at her like she’s been drinking. “It will appeal to his paranoia, make you look trustworthy, and deflect suspicion, all at once. You can say you saw a man who looked strange hanging around the utility box down the street, heard an odd click on the phone when you last spoke, whatever. It’s a classic hide-in-plain-sight diversion technique. Look at this suspicious thing over here so you don’t notice this even more suspicious thing happening right under your nose.”
“If I tell him that before the meet, he’ll just send his guys over and sweep the shop for bugs.”
“So tell him you can’t discuss over the phone why you need to change the meet spot. Make it sound like you think your call is being monitored. Then use some kind of code only he would know to suggest the Palace.”
“That won’t work,” Ryan interrupts. “He’ll suggest a meeting place of his own, somewhere he can control, somewhere probably on his turf.”
My brain turning, I say slowly, “Unless I give him a more compelling reason to meet me at the Palace. A reason he won’t be able to resist.”
Ryan and I lock eyes. When he reads what I’m thinking, he says loudly, “No.”
“I’d be able to get him away from his men that way, too.”
Another no, even louder, punctuated by an index finger pointing at my face and a thundered, “DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!”
“I feel like I’m missing something,” Connor says.
“Mariana wants to use herself as bait,” Tabby responds.
“She’s already doing that.”
“No, honey.” She looks at him meaningfully. “Bait bait. The kind a sadist with a yen for virgins can’t resist.”
“Ah. Gotcha.” Drumming his fingers on the desk, he glances at Ryan, at me, then back at Ryan. To me, he says, “I can’t sign off on that unless your man does.”
“He doesn’t!” Ryan hollers, rattling the framed picture of the American flag on the wall.
Connor leans back in his chair and laces his hands together over his flat stomach. “Any other ideas?” he asks me mildly. “’Cause that one’s not gonna fly.”
I hold Ryan’s supercharged gaze for a moment. Finally, I say, “I’ll think of something. Let’s talk about the rest of the plan. What happens after the FBI has Capo in custody? Won’t they want to keep the diamond and return it to the Smithsonian? How are you going to explain that?”
“The FBI doesn’t give two shits about the diamond,” Ryan says. “They want Moreno.”
“Why do you have to bring the real thing to the meet?” Tabby asks. “Wouldn’t a fake suffice if he’s not even going to keep it?”
I shake my head. “He can spot a fake a mile away. Gemology is one of his passions. He’ll have a jeweler’s loupe to magnify it, but there are a dozen easy ways to test a phony diamond without bringing it to a lab. He’ll know as soon as I set it in his hands.”
“We need to put her in body armor,” Ryan says abruptly. “She’s gonna be in a room with six armed assassins, then the FBI’s gonna blow down the doors—”
