by Jillian Dodd
It's not.
"I told you, I don't know that man from the bar. We literally just met. I was tipsy and walked into the wrong party."
"Yeah, sure ya did," he says. This man sounds like he's an American.
I can hear the rev of the motorcycle as it gets close to us again. The man on my left turns all the way around, tells me to duck, and gets what I assume is one of the automatic weapons out of the back.
"I'll take care of this asshole once and for all," he says.
I know, based on his body movement, that he's putting the rifle out the window, ready to take aim.
When the driver makes a sharp right, I purposefully flail my side into the shooter, but I'm too late.
"Target down," he says, pulling the gun inside. "We're clear."
The second the words come out of his mouth, the siren that has been wailing in the distance is upon us, causing the driver to swerve wildly as he races down the street.
"Red light!" the passenger yells out seconds before we are hit from the side, causing the vehicle to skid sideways. But it doesn't stop us.
It's obvious, based on the tactical maneuvers the driver is making, that the police are hot on his tail.
"Take them out!" the driver yells in accented English. "I can't shake them."
The men on both sides of me turn around. I hear them shoot out the back window as they fire away.
There's a loud bang, a whoosh, and what sounds like a car rolling across the pavement before it comes to a creaky halt.
More shots are fired in both directions before there are the sounds of tires screeching. A quick turn sends me flying across the seat as we enter a darker area, make seven tight corners, and then emerge back into the light.
"We're clear," the driver says. "Making our way to the drop point."
Getting to the drop takes about twelve minutes, during which no one says a word; we're presumably on a highway, as we drive straight the entire time.
Soon, we turn onto a crunching gravel road, making our way up a long, gently curving drive.
When we come to a stop, the driver says, "Boss man isn't going to be happy we lost the target."
"We got the girl and the backpacks. Hopefully, it's enough," the man on my right says as he tightly grips my arm and pulls me out of the vehicle.
I'm escorted indoors--well, shoved is a better way to describe it. These men are in bad moods. The good news is that the other gunmen are already here, meaning the bombs are all in one place. The bad news is, they just bound my wrists.
"What is this?" a man's voice bellows.
He has an authoritative tone, so I'm guessing he's in charge. The room they've brought me into is light-filled and spacious based on the echo.
I'm dragged forward, and the hood is ripped off with such force, it thrusts my head backward. When it bounces back into place, I see that I am standing in an ornate room in what appears to be a large mansion, staring at none other than Marquis Dupree.
Holy crap.
It's easy to pretend to be distressed in this situation, and I'm sure my fake crying in combination with the hood have messed up my perfectly applied makeup. A swollen cheek and numerous cuts and bruises highlight the tumultuous drive here.
"The mission didn't go exactly as planned, sir," one of the gunmen says, "but we reacted quickly, retrieved the backpacks, and took out Worthington's team. Unfortunately, the target escaped. We brought his girlfriend instead."
"I'm not his girlfriend," I stress. "I keep trying to tell them that."
"Silence her," Dupree says while I run kill scenarios and success rates through my head.
Fortunately, ordering me to be silenced doesn't mean shooting me. The man wraps his arm around me while slapping his hand across my face and shoving his gun into my back.
All eight gunmen are present in the room along with Marquis Dupree and me. Each gunman has an automatic rifle slung casually over his shoulder and a pistol holstered on his hip. If the men weren't armed, escape would be possible, but right now, this is a no-win situation.
"She's probably just a prostitute," the man with his gun in my back says.
"She must be a well-paid one. She had a Black card and ten thousand euros in her bag. Even her name sounds ritzy. Huntley Von Allister."
I recognize the man's voice from the drive here. Obviously, he must have picked up my purse, which I dropped on the way down the stairs in an attempt to leave some kind of breadcrumb trail.
"What did you say?" Marquis Dupree asks incredulously as he stands up and shoots the man who joked about my name in the head along with the one standing next to him, laughing.
The good news is, this ups my odds of survival.
"Do I know you?" I ask Dupree.
He closely studies me more. "What is your brother's name?"
"His name is Aristotle Allister Bradford--Von Allister technically."
Marquis Dupree squeezes his eyes shut and balls up his fist, looking completely pissed off. "What were you thinking? Idiots!" he yells, shooting another man, still shaking his head as he drops dead to the floor.
One thing is certain; Dupree is a crack shot.
"Why did you take her?" he asks one of his remaining men.
"Because she was with Worthington. When he escaped, we thought we could use her as leverage."
Dupree moves out from behind his desk and stalks toward me, placing his still-smoking gun against my temple. He gets in my face, spitting as he speaks, "Why were you with Worthington? And I suggest you think very carefully about your answer."
"I was at the pub for Wesley Windsor's birthday party. I had too much champagne ... because, because"--I start to cry--"Lorenzo is going to marry Lizzie!" The man gives me a confused look, so I keep rambling, "And I went to the bathroom, and when I came back out, I think I got confused and went to the wrong party room. And then I started crying when I realized I was in the wrong room, but the man whose party it was, was nice to me. He told me I was pretty and gave me some vodka. But, when the men with guns came in, he pushed me down and ran behind the bar."
"You are fools," Dupree says, shooting two more of his men before shoving the gun back against me.
The man has killed more than half of his team and hasn't even broken a sweat. The amazing thing is, the other men, who should be running from the room or firing back, haven't moved a muscle. This indicates that their boss is not only ruthless, but also has a long reach if crossed.
Dupree chuckles and shrugs a shoulder at me. "Good help is hard to find."
"I didn't know you could just shoot them when they were dumb. I'm new to the whole having-lots-of-money thing."
My comments make Dupree let out a genuine laugh as he points toward the corner of the room where I spy the eight backpacks lined up across the floor.
"Do you know what those are?" he asks.
Even though he's casually speaking to me, he still has the gun firmly planted against my head, and I know, if I say the wrong thing, I'll be dead. He's already proven his willingness to pull the trigger.
Part of me wants to play dumb, but I decide to go with the truth, hoping what I say will anger him and make him kill more of his men.
"I heard them talking when they were unloading the truck. They were telling each other to be careful with the nukes. Even though I was scared to death, it made me laugh because we had just been in a shoot-out with someone on a motorcycle and then chased by the police."
I get the reaction I was hoping for. Dupree pulls the gun from my head and saunters over to the driver of the vehicle I was riding in.
"Why was I not told of this? You could have led the authorities here!"
"We got away clean, sir," he says, clicking his boots together and standing straight, as if he were in the military.
Dupree responds by shooting him as well. Obviously, these men are disposable to him.
Dupree is using a Glock 19 Gen4 Pistol. You would think the nineteen referred to the number of rounds it holds, but in reality, it refers to the
order in which the gun was patented. This magazine holds fifteen rounds plus one in the chamber. Since he's fired just six times, he still has ten rounds left.
"Did you steal those bombs?" I ask, bringing Dupree's attention back to me.
"I had a contract to purchase them, but Worthington got a higher offer and was going to renege."
"You should probably be more careful with who you deal with," I quip.
"And you should probably be more careful with whose parties you crash," he replies.
"I don't suppose you stole the bombs to keep them out of the hands of terrorists and are going to turn them over to the authorities."
Dupree laughs, causing me to sigh.
"You're going to kill me, right? Just like you did with your men?"
"Allow me to introduce myself," he says, waving his gun at me. "I am Marquis Dupree, and I knew your father. He knew how to keep a secret. Do you?"
"Marquis Dupree. I know your name. You donate millions to children's charities. Your foundation recently gifted funds to the Von Allister Fund Against Human Trafficking. Even if I told someone about the bombs, let's face it; no one would believe me. Are you a bad man?"
"History will be the judge of that," he says.
"Are you going to blow up London?"
"Not right now. These bombs won't be used unless needed. They are for what you would call a slight of hand."
"And then you're going to rub your hands together with an evil chuckle and take over the world?" I'm completely out of character now, but at this point, I don't really care. It's pretty clear I'm not getting out of this one alive.
Dupree laughs again, making me wonder if he's losing it.
"You are your father's daughter," he says, wrapping his arm around me from behind, pushing me to my knees, and shoving the gun into my temple. "Ares had a fearless curiosity."
I was going to use this moment to make a move in an attempt to control the situation, but when his hand flashes by, I'm distracted by the ring on his finger--a green pear-shaped stone with gold scrolling in a design I recognize.
"That's Lorenzo the Magnificent's personal crest," I blurt out.
"Your father had a ring just like it. Do you recognize it?" He doesn't wait for my reply; he just presses the gun harder against my head. "It's my own fault really. They said it would work without the devices, but I insisted on a backup plan. When the world goes kaboom, you can quickly get governments' attention." He lets out an villainous laugh. "Your passive father would have fully disapproved, and the rest of them will never forgive me for this mess. It's really too bad you got caught up in it. You were destined to marry Lorenzo and become the Queen of Arcadia while your brother would have taken his rightful place at our table."
He's pushing the pistol against my temple with so much force, it brings tears to my eyes. At least when he pulls the trigger, it will be over fast.
At Blackwood, they taught me how to prepare for my inevitable demise. How I would feel only a flash of pain if I were lucky enough for it to be over quickly. Or how I would have to block out the pain, trying to leave my body, if it were slow and torturous. What they didn't tell me was that all I would see in front of me was the man I love. Although they were right about one thing. In the end, we're all reduced to beggars.
"Please, don't do this," I beg.
"I have no choice," he says, taking a resolved breath. "To Arcadia."
I slam my eyes shut as the sound of the gun firing fills my ears.
Ari is hurting but still pacing. He was nicked by a bullet while chasing the SUV and knocked off the motorbike. He's got serious road rash, two broken fingers, and numerous bruises, but they don't compare to the pain in his heart. He understands now why Huntley was trained to have no emotional entanglements. He should have been able to stop the men from taking her. He should have stopped their car.
Instead, he lost her.
He wasn't armed for the party, only had a Glock 43 subcompact pistol holstered at his ankle for backup.
Because it wasn't supposed to be that kind of night.
All they needed was a little reconnaissance. For Huntley to flirt with a man, go home with him, and retrieve information.
He knows he needs to call Lorenzo and tell him what happened. He knows even Intrepid thinks they've lost her. That the men will kill Huntley as soon as they find out she's not important to Worthington, who somehow managed to escape.
Intrepid has been trying to rally the entire British intelligence agency into searching for any sign of Huntley, but with the backpacks still in play, it's not their top priority.
Ari picks his phone off the table, takes a deep breath, and makes the call.
"I was hoping to speak to you in person," Lorenzo says when he answers. "For I have something important to discuss with you."
"What do you need?" Ari asks, anything to stall the inevitable.
"I know it's old-fashioned of me, but I'm planning to ask for your sister's hand in marriage, and I would appreciate your blessing."
"You can have my blessing if we find her," Ari blurts out, feeling sick to his stomach.
"What happened? She told me it was just an intelligence gathering."
"It was, but then men burst into the pub, and it turned into a shoot-out."
"Are you talking about the terror attack at the pub in London? The one on television where they are reporting eighteen dead?"
"Yes, that one." Ari gulps. "It wasn't a terrorist attack but rather a team of men with automatic weapons. A turf war or a drug deal gone bad, we assume."
"And those are the men who have Huntley?"
"Yes, they kidnapped her. The man we were targeting managed to slip away. Huntley was speaking to him at the time, and we think they assumed she was his girlfriend. She was the only woman in the room at the time."
"And what about the high-speed chase with the authorities?" Lorenzo asks, watching the live coverage of the aftermath on a London news channel. "So, you're saying, if she managed to survive a bullet-ridden, high-speed chase and a car crash, they will probably kill her when they discover she's not who they think she is?"
"Basically, yes."
"She can handle herself quite well," Lorenzo argues, as if saying it will make it true.
"It's her against eight armed men. No one is that good."
"Chances of survival?" Lorenzo dares to ask, but Ari can't say anything. He can't speak the words. "You are working under the assumption that she's already dead?"
"Intrepid wants to at least be able to recover her body," Ari says, defeated.
"Was she wearing the necklace I'd recently given her?"
"The golden heart?" Ari asks. "Yes, she was."
"It has a tracking device in it, if she didn't take it out."
"Can you pull up the program and see what it says?"
"Uh, yes. Give me a moment." He puts Ari on speakerphone and then yells for Juan, quickly explaining the situation. Together, they open the program on Juan's iPad.
"We have a last location," Juan says, "but then it's like she disappeared."
"You mean, she stopped moving?" Ari asks.
"No, I'd say there was some kind of equipment malfunction," Juan replies, "or they entered a countersurveillance zone."
"How big could the zone be?" Lorenzo asks. "She must be close to her last location."
"Maybe," Juan says hopefully. "Ari, I'm texting you the coordinates."
"Thank you. I'll let you know anything I find out."
After the call ends, Lorenzo drops to his knees and prays.
I open my eyes when I feel Dupree's grip on me loosen. I touch the side of my head where the gun was a few moments ago, expecting to feel a hole.
When I don't, I move my hands in front of my face, looking for blood but finding none.
I get a glimpse of pooling red in my peripheral vision, making me turn my head to the left, as I quickly put together what just happened. My mind speeds up, knowing there are still two gunmen in the room, both with assault rifle
s. I assume they are standing there, wondering why Dupree just shot himself instead of me. I'm pretty sure I already know the answer, but it's the least of my worries right now. The men are well trained and will recover quickly, probably deciding to seize the opportunity to take off with the backpacks and sell them to the highest bidder.
I slam my hands onto the once-pristine white marble floor, causing the spike to pop out of the black diamond ring I'm wearing. With the way my wrists are bound, I can't quite reach the trigger on my dad's watch. So, as I stand, I stamp my left foot, popping the blade out of my shoe.
Then, I scream.
This seems to take the men out of their trance. One rushes toward his boss to see if he is indeed dead. It's funny, the tricks your mind can play when you see horror and gore. The man knows without a doubt that Dupree is dead. No one can survive when their brains are literally splattered across the room, but the man bends down, putting his hand on Dupree's neck, checking for a pulse. I give him a quick jab with my ring.
He looks up at me, his face quickly frozen in paralysis, and then drops over.
Dead.
"What the hell?" the other man says, heading toward his fallen comrade.
When he's close enough, I kick my leg, roundabout-style, sending the blade sticking out of my shoe across his femoral artery with precision. His first reaction is to cover the wound. When he does, I strike my palm into his face, shattering his nose and sending him falling backward. He tries to reach for his gun, which is now behind him, but his hands are slick with his own blood.
I pick up the gun that Dupree used to commit suicide and point it at the man.
"What was Dupree's plan?" I ask, watching the color drain from his face as he bleeds out.
"Bombs. Multiple cities. Martial law."
"What's the real plan? Come on, don't you have people you love? People you care about?"
He nods slowly at me, his eyes showing nothing but regret.
And I know how he feels.
I almost died. And, for the first time in my life, I didn't want to.
I slip the ring off Dupree's finger, find my purse on the floor by one of the dead men, and try to use my phone. For some reason, I have no signal. With the stuff that he was involved in, the house probably has countersurveillance built in.
Fortunately, there's a landline that I use to call Intrepid.
While I'm waiting for it to connect, I see a map on Dupree's desk, marked with eight locations.