Dezi’s Diamond Read online

  Dezi’s Diamond

  Heroes for Hire, Book 18

  Dale Mayer

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  About This Book

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Epilogue

  About Vince’s Vixen

  Author’s Note

  Complimentary Download

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  About This Book

  When opposites attract… anything can happen…

  Dezi was a plain-and-simple type of guy. He loved working for Levi’s company and had enjoyed the jobs he’d been given so far. When a businesswoman contacted Ice over, well, ice, … things got interesting.

  Diamond was an exclusive jewelry designer, born and raised in the industry, working within her father’s diamond company. When a custom-designed item was checked before shipment, she realized the piece wasn’t her workmanship. Somehow someone had forged her work and had slipped it in the shipment as a replacement.

  However, the theft and forgery quickly escalate to kidnapping and armed robbery. Dezi and Diamond need to figure this out fast, before something else gets added to the list: murder.

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  Prologue

  Dezi Arnold couldn’t wait for Ice to show up. She’d flown in about an hour ago. Apparently a lot of plants were arriving on this second load, and this time she would come back with Reyes and his new girlfriend, Raina. Dezi had been teasing Reyes by text since finding out the news.

  When the truck finally pulled into the gate, Dezi stopped and stared as people stepped from the vehicle. Raina’s long waves of auburn hair reached her midback. She was slim, with a hint of freckles across her peaches-and-cream skin. She never looked at anyone but Reyes.

  Stone walked up and nudged Dezi. “You’re next,” he said with a fat grin.

  Dezi shook his head. “If you could find me another one of those, hell yes,” he said fervently. “But I never seem to find them myself.” Real sorrow was evident in his voice. “Reyes said it wouldn’t happen for him, but …”

  “Yeah. You see? He went with Ice. That’s a guarantee it’ll happen. So the next time Ice asks for a volunteer to go on a mission, you might want to be the one who steps up to the plate.”

  Dezi tossed him a look. “Yeah, but Ice travels all over the world. You don’t find girls like this everywhere.”

  Stone’s grin flashed. “No, but Ice knows how to find the diamonds in the world. She may have had to go to California for Reyes to find his, but you can bet one is out there for you.”

  Dezi shook his head again. “No. All I ever see are uncut gems or high rollers who need fancy settings to keep them happy.”

  At that, Stone laughed. “That’s pretty funny,” he said. “But what ye of little faith don’t understand is the magic that’s Levi and Ice.”

  “Oh, I see the magic,” Dezi said. “I see it all the time. With every frickin’ one of you.”

  “Sure,” Stone said, “and you’re the next one to find it.”

  Vince got out of the vehicle behind Reyes and Raina, the three laughing together.

  “I see Ice decided to hire Vince too?”

  “Absolutely,” Stone said. “We’re always shorthanded. You know that.”

  “Yeah. You see though,” Dezi said with a fat grin, “Vince is single.”

  Stone turned to look at the new arrival with an assessing gaze. “Yeah, Ice will hook him up in no time too.”

  “He’ll be next,” Dezi said. “Not me. I don’t have that kind of luck.”

  Stone laughed again. “You don’t understand,” he said. “Luck has nothing to do with it. It’s all about Ice. Don’t you worry, Dezi. She’ll find a diamond just for you.”

  But Dezi didn’t look convinced. Still, he watched Reyes and Raina coming toward him and wondered if it was possible.

  Chapter 1

  Dezi was still getting used to being at Levi’s compound. He’d been on an out-of-state job for a few days, came back, and then flew out again to his next assignment. The lifestyle was both interesting and exciting but in many ways tiring because he’d yet to settle in. He’d be happy to be home here for a little bit. He didn’t know if he had the right to ask for something like that or if the constant trips would be his life until he decided he couldn’t do it anymore.

  He had barely unpacked his bag from a trip to Columbia when he heard the PA system throughout the large house, asking everybody to go to the conference room. Dezi headed downstairs, took a swing through the kitchen, grabbed a coffee, two muffins and a few pats of butter, and headed to join the others.

  The conference room was one of the newer completed rooms in the compound, located downstairs beside the clinic and the weight room. For a while no one had determined what was best to do with this large room; then the conference room had been the end result. It was a fabulous idea. Instead of filled with terribly uncomfortable chairs, this room at one end had tables and boardroom chairs around each, with the other end set up to accommodate a huge computer screen. Dezi figured the room would seat sixty in a pinch. Currently, as he walked in, somewhere in the vicinity of twenty individuals had gathered.

  He acknowledged the grins from the others and a couple high fives, then sat beside Vince. “Hey, how are you doing? You settled in?”

  Vince chuckled. “Getting there. I’ve done a couple jobs, local small ones,” he admitted. “This is a hell of a place.”

  Dezi nodded.

  Then Ice stepped forward and called the room to attention. “We have an unusual case,” she said. “Although that seems to be the norm now.” She clicked on an overhead projector and brought up a picture, filling the huge screen in front of them, quieting everyone.

  “Wow,” Dezi murmured to Vince. “She’s impressive.”

  “This jewelry store is owned by the woman in the photo, Diamond Liechester,” Ice said.

  At her name, Dezi quickly turned toward Stone. He just shrugged and raised his eyebrows.

  “Diamond herself is part of the family who started and owns the worldwide Liechester Diamond chain. She’s made a name for herself as a jewelry maker and struck out on her own to establish her own business. This is her only storefront, and it carries her designs exclusively.”

  Silence ensued as everybody absorbed that.

  For Dezi it was a fascinating insight into a famous jewelry lineage. Diamond was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, and it was a natural gravitational move on her part, if she was creative at all, to start making jewelry. But he could imagine it was not the easiest thing to set up her own business in direct competition with her family’s business, which she likely had shares in. So the lady’s got guts and brains besides her creativity. Not a bad mix.

  “Some of her designs are sold in her family’s stores, but this is her own store.” Ice walked back and forth, as if collecting her thoughts. “I’ve known her for a few years.” She held up her left hand, showing a large engagement ring. “Levi had her design my ring.” She smiled. “Obviously we have a personal connection with her, and we’re willing to help her out now that she’s in a spot of trouble.”

  Nobody asked any questions, knowing Ice would work her way around to what the real issue was. Dezi had seen Ice look at her engagement ring many times since he had arrived here, always
with a soft smile on her face as she studied it. She and Levi hadn’t set a date for the wedding yet. Dezi knew it would be one hell of a party whenever it happened, and he was happy for them. In the meantime maybe the wedding ring itself—and Ice by extension—would be in jeopardy if the creator’s reputation were in trouble. But then all of the people here in the compound were often targets due to the work they did. Still, most people were smart enough not to engage anyone who was part of Legendary Security.

  Dezi broke one of his muffins in half, buttered it and munched away as Ice continued.

  “A bit of backstory about Diamond and her three sisters. All of them are named after jewels. We have Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire and Diamond.” Ice gave a quirky smile. “To be expected, I suppose, when you’re part of the Liechester Diamond chain. Diamond herself is the youngest and a bit of a rebel. All the others went into the family business one way or another, whether sales or management, but Diamond appears to be the one with a creative bent and was always working in the back, designing jewelry. Their parents fostered her creativity, and she’s world-renowned for her work. Up until now, she has never seen any forgeries of her work, although there have been attempts at copying her designs. However, her style is unique, and, just like any good-quality antique, it’s fairly easy to identify her work.” She dropped a stack of papers on the first table. “Spread these around.”

  She walked back to the front of the room and clicked on another image to reveal a necklace. It had several small diamonds, inlaid in what appeared to be platinum strands, with both elements woven together into a heart shape.

  Dezi studied the necklace, struck by the originality and beauty of the piece. “She’s extremely talented to do work so intricate. That’s a very delicate-looking piece,” he said.

  “Delicate, yes,” Ice said with a head tilt. “But almost all her pieces have that same almost-filigree look to them. She is adamant they are meant for long-term wear, but, of course, most women do not wear pieces like this for more than one evening at a time.”

  “Is that a single piece? An exclusive piece?” Dezi asked, assuming this had something to do with a heist.

  “Yes,” Ice said, surprising him. “A custom order for a client—something Diamond does almost exclusively now. She also designs pieces for her store to sell. Not to say she has anything mass marketed though, thus each piece is still unique.” Ice glanced at her engagement ring. “People pay for her work, and they pay big.” She lifted her gaze to the room, pointing to the photograph on the screen. “This necklace itself is worth over a half million dollars.”

  Dezi’s heart slammed against his ribs. “Wow. Okay, so any piece somebody can steal would have a huge market resale value, particularly on the black market.”

  “Exactly,” Ice said quietly. “And that appears to be what’s happening.”

  He continued to eat his muffins as he listened to the details.

  “In this case, Diamond went to pack up the piece, since payment had already been received, but she noticed something on the design. Something she hadn’t done. She appraised the piece top to bottom and then called me.”

  “It’s a forgery, is it?” Stone asked.

  Ice clicked on the screen again; this time two images came up side by side. Identical images but obviously taken at different times, different angles. “You tell me,” she said to Stone. “She swears the one on the right is the one she made. The one on the left is the one she was left with to mail out.”

  Stone, being Stone, got up and walked closer to the images. The screen itself was a good six feet tall by eight feet wide. He took several steps back and forth, turned to look at Ice and said, “There’s one spot on the top diamond.” He pointed to what he was talking about. “But, other than that, it is a pretty damn perfect copy.”

  Ice snorted. “That’s the spot Diamond found herself. So we need to look for high level forgers. Even if just to rule them out.” Ice walked over to stand beside Stone. “This is the original. She takes photographs of every piece at every stage. She says it’s part of her insurance policy. And I don’t mean that is required as part of the insurance requirements for her policy, but she’s quite paranoid about anybody stealing her work, so she takes photos after she has completed her day’s work. It allows her to check every step of the work in progress. And, if any piece comes back to her, she can see if somebody has modified it. She guarantees her work. But, if another jeweler works on it or makes any kind of change or adaptation, she won’t touch it. In this case, she didn’t need a photograph to determine something was off about the piece. When she weighed it, it was slightly lighter than her original piece—also something she documents—and the quality was, of course, nowhere near the same. The diamonds themselves—yes, they are real—are not the quality of her own. She would estimate the value of this necklace at about fifty grand. One tenth the cost of the necklace she was due to mail out. One tenth of the cost of the necklace she made every step of the way by her own hands.” Ice turned to look at them. “However, the damage to her reputation, should this have gone out, and potentially other forged pieces that may have already been delivered, well, that’s devastating.”

  “So this is an inside job then?” Dezi asked, mumbling around another bite of muffin. He dispatched the last of his second muffin as he waited for Ice to answer.

  “Not sure,” she said. “Diamond has top-of-the-line security. She has worked with two full-time staff members for the last four to five years. She swears they are not involved. On top of that, she has several part-time employees.”

  “But somebody close to her has to be involved,” Stone objected, “because they’re stealing her design in progress, making it side by side as she makes the original, and then somehow switching out the product.”

  Ice nodded. “Exactly. We’ll start with the assumption that her computer network has been hacked, and potentially the design sketch itself was stolen. We cannot prove that the fake piece was created in the same time frame as hers, but obviously it needed to be completed before hers was done so the switch could be made before it was sent off.”

  “And that implies somebody inside,” Stone said. “How many employees in total does she have?”

  “Five,” Ice answered. “Diamond has taken a deeper look at their histories, had already hired a private detective. He found nothing.”

  “Why didn’t she come to you first?”

  Ice chuckled. “Because I’m also a customer, so she didn’t want to do anything that would stop me from coming back to her. Which is understandable. But she lives in a world and operates with jewelry at a level way past my expectations, like we are some of the best in our particular business, so she finally decided she had to talk to me.”

  “The detective found nothing?” Dezi asked.

  “Correct. He’s gone through all the histories of the employees and everyone’s families as much as he could. Potentially a Liechester family factor is involved. Although Diamond herself hasn’t mentioned it, some jealousy exists among the sisters. However, all three of the sisters live abroad. Di’s the only one who has the creative bent and has made a success in her own right. The others still work for the family company in various countries, which is a massive success, but that doesn’t have the same cachet as being your own jeweler and making that kind of money off your own designs. Diamond has worked extremely hard to get where she is, and she’s young, not quite thirty yet, and likely, due to her connections and to her own talent, has created a multimillion-dollar business out of her work.”

  “This still has to be an inside job,” Stone repeated, “for anybody to have made that switch.”

  “Maybe not,” Ice said with a chuckle. “The original piece was occasionally off the premises.”

  “Where was it offsite? And someone inside would still have known,” Stone said.

  Dezi grinned. He really liked that everybody here had the opportunity to challenge anything Levi and Ice said. Sure, today only Stone spoke up, but Dezi had seen previous argumen
ts fly hard and fast. It was always done with respect, but there was absolutely no I’m the boss, so you’ll do as I say type orders. They all understood the company functioned by having a boss at the top. But, when it came to the individual cases, everybody was entitled to ask questions and to offer suppositions, all coming from their particular areas of expertise. And Dezi had to admit. It appeared like this had to be an inside job. How could it not be?

  “She got an email alert from one of her part-time staff, who was archiving the documentation for the latest custom piece, asking that Diamond rephotograph that piece before it was shipped out, as a few of the pictures Diamond had taken hadn’t turned out. Only the necklace had already been packaged and delivered to the courier company.”

  “Courier company …” Stone rolled that around in his brain.

  Dezi knew where that could lead. “So somebody who works for the courier company could have easily made the switch.”

  The others stared at Ice, stumped.

  Merk asked the questions on everybody’s mind. “How could Diamond not know, with all her safeguards, that she wasn’t shipping her original? On the other hand, hasn’t she vetted her courier company and its employees?”

  Ice nodded. “I know that’s a little confusing. After just telling you how she takes all these photographs and is very meticulous about that, she didn’t check a couple of them before shipping the piece. I believe something was wrong with the lighting. Anyway, seeing those defective pictures, Diamond wanted the piece back, so she could retake the photos. Then to reship the piece.”

  “So, hang on. Somebody told her to check the design? Or to check the photographs?” Harrison asked.

  “Somebody checked her photographs,” Ice corrected, “saw they weren’t up to Di’s usual quality, told Diamond to contact the courier, and they stopped the delivery at the last moment. Apparently it was already on the truck heading for the airport. But, because she does such a regular business with the courier company, and she’d paid for the shipment already, they returned the parcel to her. She brought it home, opened it, was quite prepared to finish the photographs and send it out again when she noticed it was not her original piece but a forgery.”