Tinsel In A Tangle

To Sedarno, he continued. “So she has all the cards.”

Chapter Fifteen

After a taut moment of silence, the room exploded with noise. Sedarno started laughing and gestured to his bodyguard to lower his gun. Knoll’s face turned an ugly shade of purple, “Where did you get that briefcase? Where’s Dwayne? Those are my goddamn diamonds!”

“Are they, Maurice?” Sedarno wiped away actual tears of mirth. “Yours? I believe you emancipated them from whatever back world mine they were in, and now these folks have freed them from you.”

Knoll’s purple face darkened as he looked between Sedarno and Adam, but he didn’t seem to know what to do.

Adam ignored Knoll and spoke to Sedarno, his voice smooth and low. “Here’s the deal. Jess and I give you the diamonds. Right here, right now. You let us walk away. There’s no way Jess can implicate you because she herself is now involved in handing off illegally retrieved diamonds to a reputed crime boss. She doesn’t say a word about tonight, and you let her live.”

Jess stayed silent, her eyes locked on Adam’s calm face. He had the diamonds? He could have taken them and run, but he’d stayed. He was giving them up for her. Not only that, he was putting his own life in danger to save hers.

Man, if she lived through this, she had a lot to think about.

Sedarno laughed again, clapped his hands together. “I must say, I like this plan quite a lot. Spunky Nancy Drew lives to play another round of golf, I get my diamonds, and Maurice still owes me another 25 mil. I accept your terms.”

Knoll screeched. “What?”

Sedarno shook his head. “You’ll still owe me 25 mil. You haven’t delivered me the payment you owe. I just happened to make an outside deal with these fine folks.”

He flicked his fingers, now the third person in the room to make Knoll irrelevant.

“Hand over the case,” he said. Adam carefully handed it to him and took a step back, careful to keep between Jess and the bodyguard.

“I trust you used the combination I advised, Maurice?” Sedarno kept chuckling as he worked the lock.

Knoll’s lips curled and his eyes narrowed. He suddenly looked more like a brute than a befuddled businessman.

Even though the tide in the room seemed to be turning in her favor, Jess felt a shiver go up her spine.

Sedarno raised the lid of the case. “Ah. Beautiful.”

Both Adam and the bodyguard leaned forward, unable to keep from taking a peek at the dazzling pile of jewels.

But Jess kept her eyes on Knoll’s changing face. Which is why she saw him grab the bodyguard’s gun from his limp hand.

Which is why, when he screamed, “Those are mine!” she knew what he was going to do.

Knoll raised the gun and pointed it at Adam.

“No!” Just as he pulled the trigger, Jess threw herself in front of Adam.

Something slammed into her upper body with the force of a sledgehammer. Fuck! Ow! Bam! Now, her face smacked into something: hard, stiff, fibrous. Am I on the floor?

In the distance, she could hear Adam roaring her name. No, that couldn’t be Adam. Whoever was shouting sounded terrified.

Warmth pooled over her then. So strange. Her temperature was all over the place. She felt cold, but her shoulder was burning. Tepid liquid was making her dress feel clingy and gross.

Hey, there were sparkly, shiny stones all over the floor and tangled in the curls of her silly wig.

“Pretty,” she mumbled, before the entire world went black.

**Adam would re-live those few minutes in his nightmares for years.

...Sedarno opening the briefcase while Knoll bellowed about the diamonds

...Jess screaming “No” before a strange, blasting-clicking sound