London sat back in her seat, amazed. He seemed to actually care about her. About her self-esteem, her growth, her happiness—at least to a degree. Because he wanted her to succeed? His intent stare made her wonder if it might be something more personal. She felt ridiculously lucky to work for such a kind, experienced executive. The fact that he was incredibly hot was just another perk of the job.
“Thank you, sir. I’ll learn and do better next time.”
“I know you will. I have faith in you.” He stood and glanced at his watch. “Normally, I would take a new assistant out for lunch on her first day, but I have an urgent, somewhat personal meeting that can’t wait. He’s due here at noon. Please be gone before he arrives. Don’t return before one.”
As Javier turned his back to her, she reared back and watched him close the door and return to his desk, breezing through his e-mails as if he hadn’t just built her up with one sentence, then shut her out with the next. She looked at the time in the lower right corner of her laptop. Ten minutes until Javier’s appointment showed up. She should probably get ready to go and try to talk herself out of feeling hurt by his sudden dismissal. It wasn’t like they had a relationship beyond boss-assistant. He owed her nothing but a paycheck.
As she put her computer to sleep and gathered up her things, a thirtyish man entered the office, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt that read WELCOME TO SHIT CREEK. SORRY, WE’RE OUT OF PADDLES rippling across his considerable chest. Muscles bunched with every casual swing of his arms as he crossed the floor. Was Lafayette just populated with hot men? The first time she’d come here, she’d imagined it would be all swamp people and lots of crawfish stew. She liked this reality much better.
London gathered up her purse. “You are . . . ?”
“Nick Navarro, private investigator. Javier is expecting me.”
“Mr. Santiago is in his office. I’ll let him know you’re here.”
He reached across the space separating them and cupped her elbow. “Wait. Is he sober?”
She sat back in her chair, her thoughts racing. How long had her new boss been drinking? “Completely. I’ll be back at one.”
“You’re his assistant, right?” At her nod, he sighed. “You’re new, aren’t you? Look, don’t go too far for lunch. After I’m done here, he’s going to need all the assisting you can give.”
The thought of eating her sack lunch at her desk drifted through her mind, and she’d nearly decided to do just that when Javier stepped out of his office. “Hi, Nick. Thanks for coming. London, you may go now. Good-bye.”
He stepped back and admitted Nick into the inner office. The door shut behind them again. They shouldn’t, but Javier’s words stung. After all, his private business was none of hers, but it bothered her that he’d disregarded her completely. She could help him if he’d let her, listen and offer a sympathetic ear. She’d been through tough times, too.
But why would he confide in a girl he barely knew? He’d probably been blowing smoke up her ass earlier with all the talk about her self-esteem. Most likely, he saw her as being barely competent enough to walk across the street without someone holding her hand. She was a warm body he’d hired to answer his phones for five weeks, nothing more.
She would prove him wrong.
Shaking her head, London stood and made her way out the door. There was a drugstore down the street. Javier would likely need a few items this afternoon. She could shop there and eat her sandwich while she did, maybe call Alyssa and check in.
The problem was, all of that only took her twenty-five minutes. Then she found herself facing another thirty minutes or more of hundred-degree heat with ninety-five percent humidity. She even walked back to the office slowly, but made it to the door with half her lunch hour to spare. Javier wouldn’t be happy, and she was sorry for it, but she stepped into the air-conditioned comfort of the professional suite with a relieved sigh.
“Say that again,” she heard Javier snap.
“You heard me, man.” The other man hesitated. “All right. Go on torturing yourself . . . I’ve identified your late wife’s killer as a paid assassin. The images captured on the hotel’s security camera match this criminal. His actual name isn’t known in law enforcement circles, just his face.”
“An assassin? You’re absolutely sure?”
“Yep. A French national. He struggles to step foot on European or American soil without being arrested. Disguises don’t help much with facial recognition software these days. So he’s taken to living most of the year in Cuba. He spends summers in Laos, except when he’s working, of course.”
“Two huge shitholes. How would this man have met Fran? And when?”
“As far as I can piece together, they met in a bar a few weeks before he killed her. He took a rental house in Aruba that May and probably orchestrated the meeting because she’d already been marked. They became lovers the night they met. She returned home for a bit, and they started corresponding through Facebook. Then e-mails and Skype. She used her next trip to Aruba, ostensibly to hunt for a vacation home and hang out with her girlfriends, as an excuse to see him again.”
London watched through the little window as Javier sucked in a breath, reeling back as if Nick had physically hit him. She held a death grip on her purse. Javier’s late wife had been unfaithful? Had he known that before today? Why would she cheat on him? He had to be one of the most gorgeous men on the planet. Kind yet commanding. Rich, educated . . . What the hell else had the woman been searching for in a husband?
“The assassin used the alias Jacques Valjean,” Nick said.
“Like the last name of that character from Les Misérables?”
Nick smiled wryly. “Yeah, that one. Clever, huh?”
She peeked again through the interior window of the office to see Javier pacing. He looked agitated, furious. He grabbed a bottle of Cîroc. It was already over a third empty.
“What else?” he demanded.
“We’ve narrowed the time of death to somewhere between two and three the morning of June fourth last year. The cause of death was strangulation with a rope, as you know. As best we can piece together, her killer carried her body in a large suitcase down the back stairs, made his way to her rental car, then drove it and her into the ocean.”
“And how did he disappear afterward?”
The other man shrugged. “It wouldn’t have been too hard. And he was long gone, his lease on his rental house expired, before he became a suspect. Aruban investigators . . . not known for their prompt, quality work.”
Javier clenched his jaw, and London’s heart ached for him. He’d loved this woman, and while he’d believed she was searching for a vacation paradise they could share, she’d been unfaithful? Strangled and dumped like garbage by a professional assassin? The shock of her infidelity would be enough, but to know she’d been murdered by her lover who’d marked her for death all along. . . What agony Javier must be enduring.
“None of this answers my real question: why? Why was an assassin paid to target Fran in the first place? She was the daughter and wife of an executive. She knew nothing important. If her murder is related to corporate espionage, why not hit the direct target, me? I doubt whoever hired her killer wanted her Versace handbags. So what could he have wanted?”
“I’m still digging for a logical explanation. All I know is that this assassin is expensive as fuck and works in secrecy. He’s been hired in the past by some unsavory governments to off high-profile dictators and military officials. But I have no idea who might have hired him to take out your wife. I’m wading through all the correspondence with his Aruban landlord to see if we can determine a real name or permanent address—quietly. I don’t want to alert him or give him any reason to trace this back to you through me.”
Absolutely not. Fear lumped in London’s stomach at the thought of Javier dealing with this cold-blooded killer. She barely knew her boss, but already she was attached—probably more than she should be. The idea of him in danger made her faint and anxious. A part of her wished they would stop this investigation altogether. If Nick dug into this assassin’s life to find out who’d hired him, the killer might figure it out. What if he came after Javier?
“I’ve got another new piece of information.” Nick said, his voice thick with tension. “Sit.”
“I can face bad news standing, thank you.” He took another swig of vodka.
“I think it’s a mistake.”
“If I wanted your advice, I’d ask for it.” Javier raised a brow at him. “Tell me now.”
“The Aruban coroner was paid to hide the fact that your wife was pregnant, about four weeks.”
London bit her lip to hold in a gasp. He hadn’t just lost a wife, but a child, as well? God, no wonder that man was broken. Everything inside her wanted to soothe her boss, tell him that she would help however she could, stand by his side, do anything to help him heal.
Of course he wouldn’t care. She was his assistant, not his girlfriend or his lover. Still, she made the silent pledge to herself to try to put him back together personally somehow, just as he was guiding her professionally.
She doubled her pledge to herself when she saw Javier retreat behind his desk and gulp down nearly half of what was left in his bottle.
“Anything else?” he asked Nick. The voice was dispassionate, but she saw the strain in his profile evident in his pinched mouth and clenched jaw.
“Not now. If I make any progress in finding the identity of the assassin or the person who hired him, you’ll be the first to know.”
“You’re keeping this very quiet, I trust?”
“A mouse is louder, man. I promise.”
Javier nodded. “Thank you. London will show you out.”
As Nick turned in her direction, she scrambled to roll her chair back under her desk. She opened the folder Javier had given her earlier this morning with the complaints about the excess log-ins and pretended to study them.
“You can stop eavesdropping now,” Nick said wryly, stepping out of Javier’s office and closing the door behind him.
She looked up, grimacing guiltily. “His secrets are safe with me.”
“I hope so,” the private investigator murmured. “He needs someone in his corner.”
London studied the man. Shaggy dark hair, a faded tee, slightly disreputable jeans . . . He didn’t look like prime private investigator material, but he was making painful progress with the case. And he cared about Javier on some level. She had to respect that.
“How long have you known him?” she asked.
“About five years. He only calls me when the cases are tough. He’d been cutting through red tape and bureaucratic bullshit about Francesca’s murder for the last eleven months. I stepped in a few weeks ago.”
“Has he always been a drinker?”
“Never.”
London wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or a bad one. She let out a shuddering breath.
“He needs someone to care about him, and I’m only answering your questions because I’m hoping you’re that person. You double-cross him, and I’ll cut you up into tiny pieces and bury you around the four corners of the Earth. No one will ever guess what happened to you.”
Nick didn’t crack a smile, so she didn’t take it as a joke.
“No worries about that. He took a chance on me when he hired me. I already owe him a debt I can’t repay.” She clenched and unclenched her fist nervously, then decided to go for broke. “Why don’t he and his brother talk?”
Shrugging, Nick shook his head. “I don’t know much about his relationship with Xander. I know Javier doesn’t suffer laziness and excess easily. As far as I can tell, Xander has devoted his life to wine, women, and song . . . and not necessarily in that order.”
Maybe that had caused their rift, but she sensed it was something deeper. “Thank you.”
Nick thumbed toward Javier’s office behind him. “Watch out for him. I have a feeling this case is going to get uglier before I solve it, and he’s unexpectedly heavy on the vodka.”
She couldn’t drive him home since she didn’t have a driver’s license, but she’d figure it out. “I will.”
With that, Nick left. And London sat glued to her seat in indecision. Stay here and pretend that she’d heard nothing or knock on his door and see if she could lend an ear?
In the end, Javier took the decision from her hands. He left his desk, opened the door with one hand. The other held an empty bottle. He swayed on his feet, and he stared at her with accusing eyes.
“You came back early.”
“I-I had nowhere else to go. I didn’t realize . . .”
“I give you directives for a reason.” He pounded his fist on her desk, his face contorted with anger. But she saw the pain beneath.