A Match for Celia

One of the voices was low, unintelligible. It sounded familiar, but she couldn’t quite identify the speaker. The other man spoke then, more loudly, his voice slurred. This voice she recognized immediately. It was Chuck Novotny, and he sounded angry. And probably more than a little drunk.

She pressed closer to the building, curious about who Chuck was so angry with.

“You said everything was ready,” Chuck was saying, his thick voice laced with accusation. “You said all I had to do was show up here, look over the merchandise, put down half the cash and then go home and wait for a delivery. What the hell is the holdup?”

The other man said something in that same low, soothing, unrecognizable voice.

“That’s your problem!” Chuck responded wrathfully. “I handled my part. I got the money. But this crap you’ve been showing me is not what I ordered. I could buy weapons like this in any back alley in Little Rock. You promised me heavy-duty artillery, damn it, the stuff from Brownsville. And I ain’t paying for anything less.”

Celia heard the other man frantically trying to quiet Chuck. She was pressed so hard against the building now that she would probably have a permanent brick imprint on her cheek.

Artillery? Was Chuck buying illegal weapons from someone at this resort? Cody had always claimed Chuck and his buddies were dangerous fanatics, but Celia had never believed him—and everyone else tended to brush off Cody’s dark claims as fanciful imaginings fueled by intense dislike.

What if Cody had been right all along?

But why here? Why at this resort? Who was Chuck talking to?

More heated words were exchanged, again in those low undertones that Celia could almost, but not quite identify. Her mind was spinning. How could all this be going on here, right under Damien’s nose, without him even suspecting anything? How could Novotny have fooled a shrewd businessman like Damien so easily? Unless…

Unless Damien was somehow involved with this.

She swallowed a moan. The men were moving now, mercifully headed in the opposite direction from where Celia crouched, hidden by thick, flowering bushes. She made herself as small as possible, just in case.

She still hadn’t identified the man with Chuck, though she could hear him making shushing noises as they departed, having only limited success at keeping Chuck quiet. Celia—or anyone else from Percy—could have told him that Chuck was a bit too fond of liquor to make a dependable conspirator. Chuck had always had plenty of money, one way or another, but brains were something he’d had in less abundance.

She stayed where she was until she was sure they were gone. The compound was relatively quiet, the noises from the lounge and the other resorts muted. The scarf forgotten now, Celia wondered what to do. It was entirely possible that she’d just been a witness to a federal crime—at least to a conspiracy. Shouldn’t she tell someone?

Her first thought was to find Reed.

He would probably be in his room, she thought. Making calls or not, he had to listen to her. Though this was no more within his realm of experience than hers, surely he would have some suggestions.

She was just about to emerge from the bush when she heard footsteps on the path ahead of her. She blended back into the greenery, her heart leaping into her throat.

She wasn’t certain that she would be in danger if anyone knew she’d overheard Chuck’s ramblings, but she was taking no chances. Illegal weapons dealers—if that was truly what she had stumbled upon—weren’t known for being kind and tolerant.

She let out a quiet breath of relief when she recognized the man who stepped briefly into a pool of light beneath a security lamp.

Reed. Thank God.

And then she noticed how strangely he was acting. Still dressed in the dark clothing he’d had on earlier, his glasses nowhere in sight, he moved quickly out of the light, his head turning as though to make sure no one had seen him. And then he melted into the shadows toward the back of the building, heading for the storage rooms Celia now suspected were being used to store much more than cleaning supplies.

Reed. Oh God, no.

Had it been Reed who’d been talking to Chuck only minutes earlier? Had he managed to ditch Chuck and was now on his way back to make sure the storage rooms were secure? Was this the reason he’d left her—to meet furtively with Chuck about a sale of illegal artillery?

No. She refused to believe it. Not Reed. He was a tax accountant from Cleveland, just as he’d told her. A history buff, for Pete’s sake. He wasn’t a criminal. She simply refused to believe it.

Or was it that she simply couldn’t accept it?

She pressed both hands to her pounding temples, remembering so many things that hadn’t added up, so many things that hadn’t made sense. Yet even with the evidence stacked against him, everything within her rejected that Reed would be involved in anything like this.

She loved him. She had no choice but to trust him.

She took another deep breath and crept out of the bush. She would follow Reed and confront him, she decided boldly. Ask him what the hell was going on, what he was doing out. And if she found out that he was anything other than what he’d told her he was, she’d strangle him. With her bare hands.

Feeling incredibly foolish—not to mention scared to her toes—she scampered from one bush to the next, trying to remain hidden but terribly afraid she might as well be wearing a glow-in-the-dark T-shirt. What did she know about secret surveillance? Stalking wasn’t something she’d ever needed on a resumé!

The storage sheds were actually one low, concrete-block building at the back of the resort lined with padlocked metal doors. The landscaping had been designed to make the building blend with the surroundings, and the lighting was muted so as not to draw guests’ attention to this less than elegant part of the exclusive resort.