by Matthew Rief
“How’d I do?” she said in a playful tone.
I assumed that she was referring to her speech.
“The room’s wrapped around your finger,” I said, feeding her ego.
She beamed at that.
“Are you here just for the party, or are you planning to stay a few nights?” she said. “I do believe you will enjoy yourself if you stay.”
She winked at me, and took another drink of her champagne.
“I have a villa for the weekend, Miss Richmond,” I said. “Your resort is very beautiful, as are you.”
Ange wasn’t the only one who could lay on the charm if needed.
“Why, thank you,” she said, her cheeks reddening a little. “I’ve decided to stay for a few nights myself. Maybe I’ll run into you again, Mr.…?”
My mind raced. I couldn’t tell her my name. No, that would jeopardize the entire plan. And she’d no doubt have one of her boys search whatever name I did give her, which meant that if I gave her a fake name, it’d blow the whole thing.
“Miss Richmond,” one of her security guards said just a foot behind her. He was a big guy with unnaturally wide shoulders, muscles that pressed firmly against his suit, and a deep low voice.
Carson smiled at me, then turned her head to look at the guy. He moved in closer and whispered something into her ear. Carson nodded, then looked back at me.
“I’m sorry, but I have some business to attend to,” she said.
“Duty calls,” I said. “I understand.” I grabbed her hand softly, brought it up to my lips. “I’ll find you later and we can chat some more.”
She smiled. “I’d like that.”
She turned and moved across the room to where two more security guards were standing beside a hallway. They followed her as she passed, then they all disappeared from view. I turned to look at Ange, but she was no longer where she’d been standing just moments earlier. I quickly scanned the room and spotted her on the other side. She was moving casually beside a row of potted palm trees, her gaze directed down the hallway where Carson had disappeared from view.
I set my glass on the counter and moved towards her, weaving casually through the group. As I moved, I slid my phone from my pocket and quickly read the message. It was from Scott, and it was just a small silhouette of a thumbs-up. He was making the conference call with Carson, which was why she’d slipped away.
Just as I reached Ange, she drew her gaze away from the corridor and looked at me. She placed a hand on my chest, then smiled seductively and wrapped her other arm around me.
“Well, I’ll say one thing about her,” Ange said. “She’s got good taste in men.”
Without another word or a reply from me, she grabbed my hand in hers and moved toward the orchestra, pulling me with her.
“If you’re not going to ask me to dance,” she said, “then I guess I’ll have to force you.”
The music had started up again, and a handful of couples were dancing on the granite floor right in front of the musicians.
“By the way, Dodge,” she whispered in my ear, “you were way too good at that.”
“All part of the act,” I said as we moved into the center of the open floor, surrounded by other partners.
We embraced and joined the others in a waltz. I recognized the song and Ange told me that it was Waltz No. 2 by Dmitri Shostakovich. I smiled, enjoying the side of her that few people ever got to see. Based on her previous occupation, it was sometimes difficult to imagine that she’d once been a rich private school girl living in Sweden.
I enjoyed the dance immensely. I wasn’t a great dancer by any means, but I could hold my own, especially with as great a partner as Ange.
“They went into the elevator,” Ange said, reading my mind as I kept glancing towards the corridor where Carson had disappeared. “Two floors down.”
We continued dancing through the next song, swaying our bodies slowly and enjoying each other’s company. Ange loved to dance, and I realized then that I hadn’t indulged her in it very much over the past year. When the orchestra stopped and the crowd clapped quietly, we made our way back to the bar. For a few minutes, I was so engrossed in the moment that I’d almost forgotten where we were and what we were doing. That while we were pretending to be guests at a party, we were there for other, more dangerous reasons.
My mood shifted in an instant as I glanced across toward the far side of the room and spotted Kyle. I focused my gaze on him and watched as he was escorted by a group of four security personnel through a door that led into the kitchen. My heart rate spiked and a timer started ticking down in my head, reminding me we’d have to move quickly. Ange and I both knew that they weren’t taking him out of sight to question him. They were going to try and get rid of him, quickly and quietly.
I glanced over at Ange, then motioned toward the door as the guards led Kyle through. Before I could take a step in that direction, Ange grabbed me by the arm.
“No,” she said. “I’ll go help Kyle. You get to the computer.”
“Ange, we—”
“We need to split up,” she said. “It’s almost kind of cute the way you try and protect me. As if you’ve forgotten what I’ve been doing for a living for most of my adult life.”
“Just be careful, alright?”
She grinned. “I knew you were going to say that. You’re getting too predictable, Dodge. You know I like a guy who can surprise me now and then.”
As she started to walk away, I grabbed her hand softly and pulled her back towards me. Pulling her body close to mine, I looked deep into her beautiful blue eyes and smiled.
“Will you marry me?” I said, just loud enough so that her perfect ears were the only ones to hear me.
She paused for a moment, returning my smile. For a second, I could tell that she thought I was playing with her, but my eyes soon convinced her that I was serious. She gasped, then brought me in for a quick, passionate kiss.
“Well, that did it,” she said into my ear.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Ange pressed her right hand against my chest, shot me one more sexy look, then walked past me. She made a beeline toward the door where the four guys had escorted Kyle moments earlier. I took off just a few strides behind her, then turned towards the corridor where Carson had gone earlier. At the end of the hall, I spotted a gold elevator, and as I moved closer, I saw that the red digital numbers were counting up from negative two.
I cut a sharp left, turning on my heels and entering what looked like a library. There were shelves of books from floor to ceiling, old-style couches, and a fireplace that would probably never be used. I took cover behind a potted cat palm and peeked through the thin leaves down the corridor towards the elevator. The shiny gold doors parted when the red number indicated zero, and Carson stepped out, flanked on either side by one of her security guards. I adjusted my position as they walked by, keeping myself covered behind the plant as I watched their every move.
My cellphone vibrated to life again, and I slipped it out of my pocket. Scott again. “We’re go,” was all it said. I watched as Carson moved back into the main room, her high heels clapping against the granite floors. I moved out of the library toward the elevator. After pressing the button, I waited just a fraction of a second before the doors opened, then stepped inside. Once in, I quickly pressed the button to shut the doors, followed by the negative two. The doors shut, and I could feel the elevator take me down. I debated grabbing my Sig but decided against it. I still had the element of surprise on my side, a valuable ally that I didn’t want to compromise. Nevertheless, when I reached the bottom floor and the doors slid open, I had my right hand hovering over my Sig just in case. A habit, I suppose.
The doors opened to reveal a hallway that was far less glamorous than the one upstairs. The floor was polished concrete instead of granite. The walls were freshly painted and new but lacked any fancy artwork. It was also silent. There appeared to be nobody home.
I stepped out and took a quick look a
round. I had two options, left or right. Both ways appeared to turn ninety degrees after fifty feet, and both had the occasional closed door. I spotted two security cameras and knew that if anyone was watching those, they’d send a guy after me any second. Right about then, I wished that the plans we’d received of the resort had shown the lower floor. I hadn’t even known there was a floor this far down. I looked at the ground and, seeing that there were more shoe smudges heading right, chose right.
I moved quickly and took the sharp left. Up ahead of me, I spotted a pair of large wooden double doors at the end.
Must be it, I thought.
I took one step forward, then one of the doors slammed open in front of me. A security guard stepped out, cutting me off. He was about my height, had pale skin, and probably had thirty pounds on me. In the dark room he’d stepped out of, I could hear radio chatter and saw rows of flat screens showing various locations in the resort. I couldn’t tell how many more guys were in the room but could see the outline of at least two other guys.
“Hey,” the guy said, his right hand hovering over his holstered Ruger handgun. “Where do you think you’re going?”
He stood in front of me like a wall and I stopped just a foot away. I no longer had Ange by my side to help diffuse them. There was nothing I could say that would allow me to get by while they were still standing. Carson probably had a strict rule that only she was allowed inside her office. I glanced to my right and was able to see the inside of what had to be their main surveillance room. There were three guys inside, one standing and two sitting in front of a row of monitors. All four pairs of eyes were locked on me.
I needed to make a move, and I needed to do it quickly and efficiently. Strike fast and hard. No hesitation, no time for them to call in backup.
I took a casual step closer to the guy in front of me and he gripped his Ruger. Before he could pull it free, I grabbed the lapels of his jacket with a firm grip, muscled his upper body towards me, and slammed my forehead into his nose. His fragile nose was no match for my thick skull. It crunched as the guy’s body fell backward, blood spewing out. The blow had caught him with such force that he collapsed unconscious as I stormed into the room, shifting my attention to the three other guys.
Faster than the standing guy could blink, I reached down and pulled my dive knife from its sheath under my left pant leg. He swung a big meaty fist straight at my face as I lifted the blade, and just as it was about to make painful contact with my right eye, I weaved to my left and stabbed my knife straight into his flying knuckles. The sharpened tip of the titanium blade cut deep into his fist, cutting bones and severing veins as the guy grunted in agony.
He froze for a fraction of a second, in awe of what had just happened. I grabbed his wrist, ripped my knife free, then manhandled his body around and sliced a gash in the back of his neck. His body jerked forward as one of the seated guys spun his chair towards me and tried to jump to his feet. Before he could extend his knees, I spun and side-kicked my right heel into his neck, causing his trachea to crunch audibly.
He struggled desperately for breath, and I saw that the fourth and final guy had already grabbed his Ruger and was raising it towards me. He was too far away for me to reach him without getting shot, so I hurled my dive knife through the air with everything I had. The blade soared in a blur and struck him in the chest. His eyes grew big and he fired off two shots as he fell back. The sound was deafening, and I hit the deck as one round slammed against the wall behind me while the other put a hole in the ceiling. As he jerked back, his roller chair flew out from under him, causing his back and head to slam against the hard floor.
With all four guys down, I took a few seconds to ensure that they wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon. The guy whose neck I’d sliced and the guy with my knife sticking out of his heart were both goners, but the other two had a chance if they received medical attention within the next hour or so. I stepped across the room, pulled my knife free, and wiped the blood on the guy’s suit. After putting it back in its sheath, I grabbed my Sig, stepped to the doorway, and fell silent for a few seconds.
They had to have heard the gunshots, I thought. Someone had to have heard the gunshots.
I held my Sig at the ready as I strode towards the wooden double doors at the end of the hall, assuming that at any moment, an army of footsteps would storm towards me. Halfway there, I noticed that the door required a badge to enter, so I turned back and pulled the badge off the guy whose nose I’d crunched and who lay passed out in a pool of his blood in the hall. Once I scanned the card, the light turned green and I pulled the right door open. Once inside, a few overhead lights turned on automatically, illuminating a decent-sized office with a large oak desk on the side across from me. There was a large desk chair and a leather couch along the wall to the right. Like the rest of the resort, everything looked and smelled brand-new.
I moved around the desk, where a seventeen-inch laptop sat folded shut on top of the desk. Knowing that it wouldn’t take long for the rest of Carson’s security to realize that four of their guys were down, I went to work as quickly as possible. I pried open the laptop, then watched as the main screen came up, prompting for a password. Grabbing the Plague from my pocket, I stuck it into the USB drive on the left side of the laptop. After a few seconds, the screen went blank, then displayed intricate lines of code. I remembered what Kyle had relayed from Murph, that it could take up to fifteen minutes. With my Sig firmly in hand, I kept my eyes on the door, knowing that I wouldn’t have that long.
TWENTY-NINE
Angelina strode confidently through a swinging door, narrowly colliding into a waiter as he passed by balancing a round tray of appetizers. She’d entered a busy and seemingly chaotic kitchen. Chefs were hard at work cooking up massive amounts of tantalizing food, while waiters and waitresses shuffled in and out of the doors. Ange watched as the four guards escorted Kyle towards the back of the kitchen and down a set of metal stairs. She followed, keeping her distance and avoiding the occasional staff member who asked her if she needed anything.
When she reached the top of the stairs, she leaned against the railing and glanced down. The group was just walking out of view below, so she moved forward and headed down, her heels landing softly against the steps so they wouldn’t hear her. She continued to follow the group past the doors of a large walk-in refrigerator and shelves of stored food. The farther they went, the quieter it got as the sounds of chatter and footsteps from the floor above became indistinct background noise.
Angelina watched as the group rounded a corner and entered what appeared to be a storage room. It was dark at first, but one of the guys flicked on a row of overhead lights. There were wooden crates on one wall filled with various kitchen essentials; garbage bags, cleaning supplies, mops, and so forth. On the far side of the room were what looked like massive hot water tanks with pipes that tangled up through the ceiling. The room had two concrete support columns that extended floor to ceiling for structural support of the building. They led Kyle over to the far one, uncuffed one of his wrists, and reconnected it so that he was bound to the column. Kyle noticed Angelina out of the corner of his eye and suppressed his urge to fight back.
One of the guards, a big Samoan guy whose face was covered in tattoos, grabbed a pair of pruning shears from his pocket. Holding it in front of him so that Kyle could see, he stepped towards his captive and growled at him.
“No fucking games, Quinn,” the big guy said. “We’re going to kill you. That’s a fact. But you have a choice as to whether it’s quick, or long and drawn out.” He moved another step closer and stared deep into Kyle’s eyes. “Where is the plane?”
Kyle tilted his head in surprise, then laughed.
“You’re telling me that Drago didn’t tell you guys?” Kyle said, not intimidated in the slightest by his captors. The Samoan guy’s face burned with rage. Kyle shrugged. “What the hell does it matter? That asshole destroyed the important stuff.”
Without a second
’s hesitation, the Samoan guy slammed his right fist into Kyle’s abdomen. It knocked the air from his lungs and caused his body to lurch forward. The pain was immense, but nothing he couldn’t handle. He brushed it off as best as he could, caught his breath, and looked back up at the guy.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what he did,” the Samoan guy barked. “You’ll fucking tell me where it is or I’ll cut you apart, piece by piece, starting with your fingers.” He glanced over at one of the other guards, who carried a leather bag over one shoulder. “We brought plenty of zip ties and even a few tourniquets. We can do this all night, Quinn.”
Angelina watched and listened intently as the scene unfolded. Knowing that a confrontation was imminent, she reached down quietly, slid out of her high heels, and stepped barefoot onto the cold floor.
Kyle paused a moment, then shot the big guy a cocky smile. “Then what the hell are you waiting for?”
The anger within the big guy boiled over. He grabbed Kyle’s right wrist and pressed it forcefully against the column behind him. Holding it in place with his left hand, he brought the pruning shears up with his right, placing the sharp edges on either side of Kyle’s thumb. Angelina knew she couldn’t wait any longer. It was time for her to make her grand entrance and introduce herself to the guards.
She reached under her dress and grabbed one of the throwing knives strapped to her right thigh.
“Have it your way, Quinn,” the Samoan guy snarled.
Just as he began to squeeze the shears, Angelina’s knife caught him in the neck, its sharpened blade stabbing through the soft tissue and sticking out the other side. The big guy gagged, his eyes grew wide, and his head snapped back as blood flowed out from both sides of his neck. He dropped the shears and toppled over as Angelina ran into the room.
The guard closest to the door froze for a split second, then turned to look towards the door. He was barely able to focus his gaze on Angelina before she jumped and slammed her elbow into the side of his head. The powerful blow caused his body to twist uncontrollably. His eyes shot up and he collapsed, his lights knocked out before he’d even known what was happening.