Page 70 of Ravaged With You

“Thanks for meeting us,” Red said. “Sorry to interrupt your day off.”

“Not a problem,” Ryan assured them. “I was doing some work around the house, killing time until Jamie gets home. She’s been on set since four am.”

“I overheard someone talking about that at Abby’s shower,” Jo says. “She’s in a Carson Donnelly film?”

The wattage of Ryan’s smile could power all of Santa Monica. “The second female lead. I’m so fucking proud of her.”

“That’s great,” Jo says.

“It is,” Ryan says. “It’s also not why you’re here. What’s going on?”

“Two things,” Red says, then tells Ryan about the cops and the life insurance.

“Hardly enough to arrest on, but who knows what else they have? If someone’s setting you up,” he adds, his attention on Jo, “they’re probably parsing out the information slowly.”

“Lucky me.”

“You want us to look into it? See if we can trace the source of the policy?”

“Hell, yeah.”

“Not a problem. But that’s not worthy of a trip to Santa Monica. We could have set that up with a phone call. What’s the bigger issue?”

“These,” Red said, plunking the fake book on Ryan’s desk, then opening it to reveal the diamonds, now sparkling under the fluorescent light.

“Yeah,” Ryan said, his brows rising. “Definitely a conversation to be had in person.” He looked between the two of them. “This is what they want, then.”

“We assume so.”

“Can you hold onto them?” Jo asked. “MacGuffin or not, I’m not comfortable carrying around millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds. You must have a kickass safe here, right?”

“We do, and we can. But you’re really here to see if we can trace them.”

“Can you?” Red asked.

Ryan leaned back with a sigh. “Odds are slim, but there’s a chance. Hang on.”

He punched a button on his desk, and a moment later the new agent, Simon, came in. Red could tell the man was not only strong, but well-trained simply by the way he held himself. “What’s up?”

His eyes darted to the diamonds, but to his credit, he didn’t ask and his face registered no reaction at all. Red had to give the man props.

“Sorry to pull you away, but we have a quick question.”

“No worries. I was about to pack it in anyway. Too many pages of useless data. I need sleep and a fresh look tomorrow.”

“We won’t keep you long, but unless I’m misremembering, Devlin mentioned that you participated in a couple of operations surrounding conflict diamonds.”

“You know you’re not misremembering, Hunter,” Simon said. “I can’t imagine you ever misremembering anything.”

“What are conflict diamonds?” Jo asked.

“Same thing as blood diamonds,” Simon told her. “Pretty much boils down to diamonds mined in a war zone to support an insurgency. A lot of people die for those diamonds,” he added. “Thus the blood moniker.”

“We’re wondering about these,” Ryan said, nodding at the diamonds. “Can we trace them to a source? Tell if they’re conflict diamonds? Can we get any information about them at all?”

Simon bent for a closer look, then shook his head. “Once they’re cut and polished, it’s impossible to tell. But reputable diamonds will have a pedigree. Paperwork showing where they were mined, cut, polished. All that stuff. My guess? These are either conflict diamonds or stolen. If they’re blood diamonds, tracing them will be next to impossible. But I have some contacts in the gemstone world. I can ask around and see if there’ve been any major heists in the last year or so.”

“We’d appreciate it,” Red said. “Especially if they have any leads on who might have pulled off such a thing.”