by A G Stevens
“Well, they weren’t ocean-dwellers, so the oyster recipe Molec used is possibly inauthentic, but still of the region.”
The others at the table buzzed at the notion of this, but it was all Blaze could do to not flip the table at the inane chatter proffered by these wealthy idiots. They have nothing better to do than blather about the oysters.
Oysters...
An idea struck him.
The plates circled around, and everyone began sampling the wares. Blaze took a small bite of his to participate, listening to their reviews and smiling politely as he chewed. He began breathing heavily, just a slight elevation at first, then a deeper wheeze, enough to bring a flush to his face. He cleared his throat as the descriptions of how meltingly edible the oysters were. Then he reached for his water glass, slurping loudly as he guzzled the entire contents.
Parrick looked in his direction. “Is everything okay, Liam?”
Helene glanced at him, but didn’t stop eating for a second.
“I...uh...” Blaze wheezed a little more and swallowed hard. “I don’t think so.”
Parrick laughed. “The mescal’s got you by the throat, I think.”
“It is...a little tight.” Blaze scratched at his throat. “And itchy.”
“Oh no,” one of the women across the table said. “My nephew has the same symptoms. Are you allergic to seafood, by any chance?”
Paydirt, Blaze thought.
“Not...not that I know of...” He reached for Helene’s water glass and drank that down, too. “But maybe?”
“You can develop food allergies as an adult, you know,” another man said.
“That may be happening...right now,” Blaze said. He loosened another button on his collar and breathed heavily.
“There were oysters in the canapes earlier, too,” Parrick said.
“Not a good sign,” Blaze replied.
“I’ll summon the medic,” Parrick said. “They have epinephrine on hand for that.”
“No, I’m...I’m sure I’ll be fine,” Blaze assured him. “I just need...a little fresh air.” He stood and laid his napkin on the table
“Should I come and keep an eye on you?” Helene asked with a wink that only Blaze could see.
“No, no...this is your grand night,” Blaze assured her. “You have other guests to tend to. You stay. I’ll be sure to let the guards know if I need more than that.”
Parrick remained concerned. “If you’re certain, Liam. I don’t want to take any chances with your well-being.”
Blaze forced a pained smile. “Thank you, Nick. No chances taken. I’ll get a few clean breaths outside, find the restroom, and stay put until the reaction passes. It might just as well have been the mescal, like you say.”
“Watch for hives,” the woman across the table said. “That’ll tell the tale.”
The rest of the table watched on with concern as Blaze stood, turned nervously, and made his way to the doors.
He walked briskly toward the beach until he was out of visual range of the guards stationed around the building, then headed back toward his room to prep for the replacement. A guard let him into the building when he explained his allergic reaction. “I’ll get the first-aid kit,” the guard said.
“No need; I have pills in my room,” Blaze explained. “I’ll be fine.”
He rode the elevator to his floor, free of security, but continuing his charade for the video cameras. He found his room unencumbered by guards as well, all preoccupied with the gala. He scanned his key card and entered his room.
He headed for the bathroom and turned on the water to mask his conversation with his handlers. “Zed,” he said into his cufflink communicator as he gathered the attaché that held the replica mask and his tools. “I lost my earpiece in the gala, so I can’t hear anything you’re saying. I’m gathering the false mask and heading toward the treasure room to make the switch now...a little earlier than anticipated, but there’ve been developments that make it necessary. I’ll explain when I have more time. it’s all under control. But it’s not under the same control as we originally thought.” Without his earpiece, he could only imagine Zed’s reaction.
Blaze left his room carefully, knowing the cameras were watching his every move. At any moment, the watchful eyes of Parrick’s foot soldiers could be drawn to movement in a corridor that should have been empty, occupied now by a guest who wasn’t in his place at the gala, the only area of the compound where any of the guests should have been per Parrick’s strict protocol. He found an exit as quickly as possible, avoiding the elevator and finishing his descent to ground level via an external stairwell that concealed him in relative darkness.
He made his way back toward the treasure room carefully, slinking in the shadows among the tropical foliage, which gave him solid cover as he moved. Two guards stood on either side of the treasure room doors. Why did I think they’d be focused on the gala only? he thought. It made total sense that they’d be protecting the relics, but it didn’t make his work any easier. And now, he was racing against time; he had no idea how soon Dawes and Gabrielle would be making their move. His mind spun with an array of possibilities for distracting the guards. But before he had the chance, he saw them listen intently to their earpieces, then speak tersely between themselves. They tested the doors before they left to make sure the electronic locking mechanism held, then they chucked off in the direction of the dining room.
“Oh, that was too easy,” Blaze said quietly.
He knew there would be a balancing point for this. But for the moment, he had what he needed: a chance to enter the treasure room without a physical confrontation.
He stayed in shadow as he made his way to the doors, and the electronic panel that controlled the security system. “Savant will be ecstatic,” he said into his cuff link communicator. “I don’t have to knock anyone out to get to the mask.” He said this even knowing there were very likely several guards remaining inside, standing sentinel over the relics. He dropped to the ground and rooted around in the attaché for the device Zed had packed away for him. It was cold and light in his hand. He held it against the panel, heard a quick electronic pulse, and watched as the green and red LED on the scan panel flickered...then lit fully again. “Dammit,” he said. “I don’t think your magical scrambler is working, Zed,” he said into his cuff.
He pushed the button again, and watched the light flicker once again.
“Okay, guys,” he said to his unseen handlers. “This could get very ugly, very quickly. The panel isn’t deactivating.”
Blaze shook the fob and tapped it against the butt of his hand. Then he pushed the button again, and the LED turned green, and the click and pneumatic hiss of the security system deactivating sounded. The doors were now unlocked, and the digital echo that would prevent security from realizing the system had been disabled set in motion. A second click set the cameras on a previous ten-second loop. “We need to have a serious talk about the dependability of your tech when I get back, Zed,” he said as he kept low to avoid the cameras surrounding the doors and slid them open.
The illumination in the room had been reduced to nothing but nighttime utility light: cold spotlights cutting the darkness over each of the pieces, and a trail of lights along the bottom of the walls to light the walkway. And there were no guards; either they’d all been called away through the back exit like the guards in the front had been, or they were stationed at the gala instead of in the treasure room.
Blaze smirked in the darkness. Too convenient, he thought. This has to be Dawes’ doing. He realized he was walking into the open opportunity Dawes and Gabrielle had created for themselves.
And he would take full advantage.
He walked cautiously toward the case that held the Tlaloc mask. It was just as unimpressive in this setting, this cold, empty light. Blaze thought of the significance of it, how the power of the mask was more in the theatrics than in the mask itself. He thought this of Nicholas Parrick, too, of how his wife so willingly betr
ayed him, on what seemed a regular basis, in the center of his power—what would be considered his literal treasure trove, his throne room. Helene cuckolded him, one of the richest, most influential men in the world, in the place he held dearest, with his most prized possessions—and she didn’t appear to be among them. So much of what made him seem significant was an illusion cast by light and shadow. But in the cruel, empty beam of reality, there was nothing there but a thousand year-old stone face with hollow eyes, trapped in poly-plexithene and driving a continuous quest for ownership that could net its deliverer millions. No magic. No overwhelming influence over its observer. Nothing.
Power can be so fickle, Blaze thought.
He knelt and dropped the attaché to the ground, digging out the Altoid case. In the terse illumination, he removed the black wafer, and placed it in the corner of the outside wall of the case, his hand as careful as a safecracker’s. Zed hadn’t explained how the mechanism worked, if it turned on somehow, or required activation. But it was entirely obvious once the wafer attached to the poly-plexithene: the chemical-physical reaction was immediate. The solid panel trembled like the surface of water, circles rippling out from the center of the wafer as if a stone had been dropped into a still pond. “Oh, that is incredible,” Blaze whispered. “Zed, I take it back; your tech is nothing short of wizardry.”
He’d received assurances that he would encounter no physical damage caused by reaching through the substance, but it was an entirely different story now that he was standing before it, watching it ripple and wave. His fingertips reached out tenuously and tapped the surface. The ripples multiplied; it felt like gelatin, giving to the pressure of his touch. He pushed in further, until his fingers were all the way through and felt the empty air on the inside of the case. He pulled his hand out to make certain it would come back through unharmed. The poly-plexithene pulled back with it, then released his fingers and wobbled back into place. His sleeve was dry, and his flesh was intact. “Incredible.”
He reached in again and made contact with the mask. Had the effects of the gala still been in motion, he might have expected a lightning strike and a thunderclap as his hand touched the stone. In this setting, it was nothing but cold and smooth, and a bit heavy as he lifted it off of its cradle. He slid it carefully through the panel, watching the substance stretch as he pulled. Then it released and wiggled far more violently than it had before as it moved back in place. “Phase A, complete; Thunderhead in custody,” he whispered as he crouched and placed the real mask into the attaché. Then he removed the false mask from the hidden panel and tucked the real mask inside, stood, and slid the false mask through the wiggling substance and into the case, resting it on the cradle where the real mask had been. It was an even more forceful wobble that came from the push this time, but with a little effort, it accommodated him. “Phase B, comple—”
His report was interrupted by the clattering of the wafer dropping to the floor. The motion had broken it free.
The poly-plexithene seized instantly, locking Blaze’s arm in the case. He clenched, hoping it wouldn’t solidify through his sleeve and slice into his bicep, effectively severing it from the rest of his arm. He breathed easier when that didn’t happen...then breathed a little rougher when he realized that the wafer was out of reach, and his arm was caught in the case with the false Thunderhead mask. “Well, damn.”
It was a qualified understatement.
The wafer had rolled into the shadow, out of reach and out of sight. He leaned away from the case, stretching his leg out and sweeping the toe of his shoe along the floor, hoping to make contact with it and slide it toward him, close enough to reach it with his free arm and replace it so he could free himself. His shoe found nothing but smooth tile. “Okay, team. We have a bit of a problem.”
With no warning, the overhead lights in the treasure room came alive, and Blaze heard footsteps coming toward him from behind. “We certainly do, Mr. Keller.” Dawes’ voice rang through the space as he and Gabrielle stepped into view. “We have a very big problem, actually.”
T W E L V E
“What are you doing here, Mr. Keller?” Gabrielle asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Dawes asked. “He’s stealing Thunderhead.”
“But you’re the insurance assessor.”
Blaze was taken aback by her innocence. She seemed so naïve for someone who was participating in an antiquities theft from one of the richest men in the world.
Dawes laughed. “Who better to know the value of a piece like this, right? Who better to steal it right out from under the nose of its owner...”
“I don’t know,” Blaze said, losing his Liam Keller fumbling in an instant now that he knew who he was dealing with. “Maybe the head of the owner’s security detail and his wife’s personal assistant?”
Dawes drew his gun and aimed it at Blaze’s chest. “And who better to catch the thief red-handed before he can make off with a treasure of outrageous value.”
Blaze could only imagine how this would sound through his communicator, the audio evidence that was coming in the voices of the thieves themselves. Then he realized his right wrist was encased in poly-plexithene, and his cufflink along with it. There was no audio contact detailing what was happening or the danger he was in, and no way for his team to send in reinforcements or hasten his extraction. He hadn’t been with the House long enough to know if those were possibilities. He imagined he was unlikely to find out now, without being able to speak to them. “I’d love to let you apprehend me,” he said, “but I’m sort of in the middle of a party.”
“Well, now you’re in the middle of a robbery,” Dawes retorted. “And pretty soon, you’ll be in the middle of your own death.”
“And then you’ll do what?” Blaze asked. “Steal the mask while I die?”
Dawes laughed. “Of course we will. We were going to steal it anyway.”
Gabrielle turned roughly. “Should you really be telling him about this?”
“It’s okay, Gabi,” Dawes said, pulling her into him. “He’ll be dead shortly. And we’ll have the mask. And when we dispose of his body, it’ll appear as if he was the one who stole the mask and left the island. This gives us an incredible advantage. There’s no chance of suspicion being placed on us.”
Gabrielle didn’t look very happy about that. “But you said we were leaving after this anyway.”
“And we will be,” Dawes assured her. “But now we don’t have to run. We can finish our own plan without arousing suspicion.”
“But the cameras...” She pointed to the corners.
Dawes reached into his pocket with his free hand and pulled out his phone. “I received a notification of Mr. Keller’s clever deactivation of the locks.”
“So much for having tech that’s one step ahead,” Blaze said.
“It also deactivated the cameras and set them on loop,” Dawes continued, “so there’ll be an entire swath of missing time during which Keller smashed the case, took the mask, and fled. Since none of it will be caught on video, it’ll be important that we have the head of security on hand to discover the event and report it back to Parrick instead—after we drag the thief into the jungle and bury his dead body, that is.”
Gabrielle looked at Blaze, her eyes brimming with sympathetic tears. “Nobody was supposed to get hurt.”
“And nobody will,” Dawes told her, looking back at Blaze. “Someone will die, though. We’ll take the mask, and once everything is settled with the Parricks, we’ll leave in the dead of night, just as we planned. But we’ll have better control of our escape.”
Blaze turned his head, scanning the shadows for the wafer that would free him from the case.
“I know it’s painful to hear, Liam,” Dawes said coldly, mistaking Blaze’s turning away for cowering. “And it has nothing to do with you personally. You shouldn’t be involved in this at all. But here we are. And we’d be stupid not to seize the opportunity you’ve afforded us.”
Gabrielle was suddenly dr
awn to what should have been the most obvious aspect of the whole scene. “How did you get your arm stuck in the case like that?”
“Stuck like what?” Blaze taunted.
She circled around, examining the display to see what sort of illusion he’d pulled to get his arm encased in the poly-plexithene. “That’s impossible.”
Dawes followed behind her, drawing in close to see there was no break in the surface, just a clear panel with Blaze’s arm embedded in it, his hand moving freely near the mask on its cradle. “How did you do that?”
“It wasn’t difficult. All it took was...” His voice drew down as he mumbled the last few words.
Dawes leaned in to hear. “All it took was what?”
“A thunderbolt.” Before Dawes had a chance to draw back, Blaze hammered him in the jaw with a left hook. Dawes righted himself immediately, aimed his Glock, and drew a bead on Blaze’s chest. Blaze grabbed his wrist, digging his fingertips forcefully into the tendons below his palm. Then he swept his leg with tremendous force and knocked Dawes’ feet out from beneath him. Dawes fell on his back, firing his gun over Blaze’s shoulder as he landed. Blaze ducked, then slammed his foot into Dawes’ hand, knocking the gun across the floor. Dawes swung his leg around and clobbered Blaze’s cheek with a rounding kick that forced him back, but his encased arm kept him from falling entirely. He balanced and righted himself as Dawes sprang to his feet and wiped the blood from his lip.
“Not bad for a one-armed insurance assessor,” Dawes said with an edge.
“Davenport-Frasier likes their representatives to be well-rounded,” Blaze said.
Dawes came at him, ready to swing again, but Blaze balanced on his right foot and brought his left leg up and out with a powerful piston kick aimed at Dawes chest. Dawes leapt back a step, leaving Blaze’s kick in mid-air. He grabbed Blaze’s foot and tried to pull it upward, to flip Blaze back. Blaze could feel the stress on his arm, the poly-plexithene cutting through the tuxedo sleeve and digging into his bicep. A forceful push in the wrong direction, and his arm would snap or pull entirely out of the socket. He gripped the case with his free hand, brought his right foot up into Dawes’ forehead with incredible power. Dawes stumbled back and landed against a neighboring case, while Blaze fell against the Tlaloc case, his arm in searing pain. His eyes searched the floor again, hoping the wafer that could free him had slid closer in the scuffle. It was there, a small black capsule in the light. He crouched, reaching with his free hand while Dawes got to his knees first, then to one foot, then to the other.