Foreign Affairs (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order)
Page 20
And took Michelle Berri.
“Make no mistake,” Teffinger said. “He’s going to kill them both. He has to. There are too many ways for things to go wrong if they stay alive.”
“We already know that,” the man said.
Teffinger grunted.
“What’s your name, buddy?”
“Amaury.”
“Amaury?”
“Right.”
“Nice to meet you, Amaury.”
“Likewise, my friend.”
“We’re getting close,” Deja said. “Another couple hundred meters.”
They slowed to a walk, got as quiet as they could and closed in.
THE MOONLIGHT WAS FAINT, but was strong enough for Teffinger to see four men climbing up the face of the mountain. Two more were at the base. One of them held a rifle and paced. The other held a pistol and stood behind two women who were kneeling on the ground with their hands on their heads. No doubt Alexandra Reed and Michelle Berri.
Teffinger always thought the man would be alone.
He now realized how stupid that had been.
He would want to get the treasure out of there, atonight, which would take more muscle than one man had.
So which one was the killer?
Probably one of the guys climbing up.
He’d want to see the treasure with his own eyes.
Probably the top guy.
Teffinger focused on him. He looked big and strong and had long hair. He moved with agility.
Yeah.
You’re him.
Now what?
Fallon tugged at his arm. “We’re out of time,” she said. “As soon as he verifies the treasure’s there, he’s going to give the orders to shoot.”
Chapter Eighty-Three
Day Eight—July 19
Monday Night
______________
SOMEONE SHOUTED FROM ABOVE, “It’s here, just like she said. Go ahead and do it.” The man standing behind the two women stepped closer, released the safety and pointed the barrel at the back of a head.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Go ahead and take a second to make your peace.”
Teffinger charged and lunged through the air.
Not too soon this time.
Not like at the houseboat.
The man landed under him and Teffinger immediately pummeled his head with every ounce of strength he had and didn’t stop until the man went limp.
He didn’t know what Amaury did to the man with the rifle but he was on the ground motionless, maybe dead.
No shouts or questions came from above.
“Get the women back to Luxor,” Teffinger told Amaury.
They left.
Amaury.
Alexandra Reed.
Deja Lafayette.
And Michelle Berri.
Fallon was holding the rifle when Teffinger turned to her. He scouted around until he found the pistol and stuffed it in his belt.
“Now what?” Fallon asked.
“I’m going to go up and send them down one at a time,” he said. “Make them lay on the ground face down with their hands out. If they move, shoot them.”
“Why don’t we just wait for them to come down? We have them trapped—”
“Not necessarily,” Teffinger said. “They might go up once they find out we’re here.”
TEFFINGER HEADED UP.
The face was steeper and trickier than it looked. Coming back down would be a problem, a serious problem. He’d worry about that when the time came. He was almost to the cave when something bad happened.
The gun slipped out of his belt and dropped into the blackness below.
It bounced off the rocks and landed with a thud.
His instinct was to climb down and get it. But the mountain was darker below him and almost impossible to read. He pictured himself falling and breaking his back.
He headed up.
The mouth of the cave was narrow, not much wider than his shoulders. He got on his stomach and muscled halfway through. Inside, he heard voices and saw flickers of light from deeper inside. He squirmed all the way in and stood up.
Then someone shouted, “Snakes!”
Almost immediately, gunfire erupted.
Explosions of light came from inside the cave, around a corner, maybe two corners. He saw something move, five steps away, on the ground.
Bang!
Bang!
“There’s a whole nest!” someone shouted.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang, bang, bang!
Bang!
Teffinger turned to get out but suddenly a man ran his way, shining a flashlight on the ground and shooting snakes. His bullets ran out and he threw the gun at the closest one. He missed. Seconds later he screamed, grabbed his leg and dropped to the ground. The flashlight landed next to his face and lit it up as he died.
Teffinger froze.
He didn’t move a muscle.
He didn’t know where they were or how many there were.
MORE SHOTS CAME FROM DEEPER INSIDE.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Then the bullets ran out and the shooting stopped. Everything got quiet but flashlights still flickered. Teffinger knew he had to get out and get out now, but he didn’t have the guts to get down on his stomach. He stepped carefully over to the flashlight, slowly reached down and picked it up.
Then he frantically swept the area.
No snakes.
Where did they go?
SOMEONE IN THE OTHER ROOM SHOUTED, “I’m bit!” Then someone else screamed. Suddenly a man ran around the corner and headed for the mouth of the cave. Teffinger turned his light on the man’s face and saw fear like he had never seen before.
It was the big man.
The strong man.
The one with the long hair.
The killer.
“Get out of my way!” he said.
Then he dropped to his stomach and started to crawl out. Teffinger grabbed his legs and pulled him back. The man stood up and swung at Teffinger’s face. But he wasn’t fast enough. Teffinger hit him first.
Hard.
On the nose.
Blood splattered.
He stumbled and fell onto this back.
Teffinger got on him and pounded his face.
Movement caught his peripheral vision.
Snakes.
Three snakes.
Coming at them.
On the ground behind the man’s head.
Teffinger jumped up at the last second and stepped back until the wall stopped him. The flashlights were on the ground. None of them pointed directly at the man but they gave off enough light to show three snakes sinking their fangs into his face.
Vomit shot into Teffinger’s mouth.
He swallowed it.
The man twisted in agony for a few moments and then grew silent. The only sounds left in the world were the rustling of snakes on the ground and the beating of Teffinger’s own heart.
Ba boom.
Ba boom.
Ba boom.
Chapter Eighty-Four
Day Nine—July 20
Tuesday
______________
TUESDAY MORNING, after debriefing the Luxor police, Teffinger and Fallon boarded a train for Cairo. It was hot and stuffy but rolled through spectacular scenery and couldn’t drop out of the sky. The man with the long hair turned out to be Nicholas Ringer from Nice, France—a shipbuilder, a very rich shipbuilder to be precise, a very rich shipbuilder who wanted to possess the greatest treasure on the face of the earth to be even more precise. Teffinger had a bad feeling about the man ever since last night because he was anything but a caveman.
Tuesday afternoon, Targaux called.
Teffinger didn’t think the news would be good.
He was right.
It wasn’t.
Ringer was in Amsterdam during the entire week when Amanda Peterson got her eyes gouged out in Denver. There was no question abo
ut it. Several disinterested witnesses placed him there, not to mention credit card receipts, cell phone records and all the other circumstantial evidence, meaning he didn’t kill Amanda Peterson.
Damn it.
“Back to square one,” Teffinger said.
Fallon patted his hand.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “He gouged out Tracy White’s eyes as an exact copycat of what someone did to a different woman thousands of miles away a year earlier. It doesn’t make sense.”
Fallon agreed but had no brilliant ideas.
“In hindsight, all he really wanted to do was kidnap Michelle Berri, so he could put pressure on Alexandra to make her use her archeological skills to either find the map or find the treasure,” Teffinger said. “I don’t see why he even needed to kill Tracy White at all, much less in such a weird way.”
“Maybe she came home while he was inside, waiting to abduct Michelle,” Fallon said. “Or maybe he did it to put a sufficient scare on Alexandra so she’d take him seriously. Who knows?”
Right.
Who knows?
Ringer knows, but he wasn’t talking.
“To me, just taking Michelle would be enough to get Alexandra to jump through hoops,” Teffinger said. “Maybe killing the roommate gave him a little more credibility, but not much, especially when compared to the risk.”
“Then maybe Michelle came home at the wrong time, like I said.”
“Right, but if he had to kill her, why gouge out her eyes?” Teffinger ran his fingers through his hair. “I just don’t get it. I feel further away from solving this case now than I did at the beginning.”
Fallon tilted her head.
“That’s called negative investigation.”
“Negative investigation, huh?”
“Right.”
“Maybe I’ll teach that at the university someday,” he said. “Negative investigation. No one does it better than me, that’s for sure.”
Chapter Eighty-Five
Day Ten—July 21
Wednesday
______________
TEFFINGER AND FALLON DIDN’T LAND IN PARIS until after midnight, then took a cab to the houseboat and fell into bed too exhausted to make love.
The wind kicked up.
The Seine got choppy and lapped against the hull.
Teffinger had too much caffeine pumping through his nervous system and tossed from side to side to prove it.
Then something happened.
A light flickered.
Teffinger opened his eyes and focused.
Nothing.
No light.
He concentrated harder.
Nothing.
He turned on his side, fluffed the pillow under his head and closed his eyes. He was almost asleep when it happened again; a flicker of light. He opened his eyes and saw it this time.
A flashlight was coming down the steps.
Before he could get out of bed, the light entered the room and shined in his eyes.
“Don’t move!” someone said.
TEFFINGER KNEW HE SHOULD OBEY.
Don’t move!
Stay calm!
Bide your time!
But something snapped in his brain and made him charge. A heartbeat later, white-hot pain came from his upper chest.
From a knife.
Teffinger swung his fists.
They landed but not squarely.
Then another pain came, deeper and more intense, so agonizing that he stepped back. His foot caught on something and he fell onto his back.
Then the man was on top of him.
And said, “Die asshole!”
Teffinger swung, missed, and then shielded his face with his arms.
POP! POP! POP!
Gunfire.
Coming from Fallon.
The man’s muscles lost their intensity.
Then he made a terrible noise and fell.
His face landed on Teffinger’s and felt like bloody meat.
FALLON TURNED ON THE LIGHTS and Teffinger muscled out from under the body. All three bullets landed in the man’s head, but there was enough of it left to make out the face.
It wasn’t a caveman.
Teffinger had seen the man somewhere before but couldn’t place it. Then it came to him. This was the man who had been sitting on the bench down the walkway, working on his laptop—the one Teffinger walked over to and asked if he’d seen anyone suspicious hanging around the boat.
Suddenly a motion caught his eye.
Something was coming down the steps.
A rattlesnake.
Then another one.
Two rattlesnakes.
Chapter Eighty-Six
Day Ten—July 21
Wednesday
______________
TEFFINGER THREW A BLANKET over the snakes and got Fallon safely upstairs, then off the boat and onto the walkway, where he collapsed. Fallon put pressure on his wounds and called an ambulance.
Sirens and flashing lights showed up three minutes later.
Teffinger got a frightening ride to the hospital where he was treated for two stabs to the upper chest, both of which were deep but missed the heart.
“Probably because you don’t have one,” Fallon said.
Daylight was just starting to break over Paris when they got back to the boat and found Targaux processing the scene.
He gave Fallon a long hug and said, “You okay?”
She nodded.
Yes.
She was.
A woman walked off the boat carrying a bag. “Got two of them,” she said, referring to snakes. “There could be more though, so we better fumigate.”
Teffinger and Fallon gave their statements.
Fallon had never seen the man before.
She had no idea who he was.
Suddenly Teffinger needed coffee, needed it bad and needed it now.
WHILE TARGAUX PROCESSED THE SCENE, Teffinger and Fallon walked down the street to drink coffee and eat croissants at a sidewalk café under a sun that didn’t bake them to death on impact.
So nice.
“The only thing I can figure is that this is fallout from our bait plan,” Teffinger said. “The caveman is still trying to get you. Only now he’s shy because I almost caught him once. My guess is that he hired the dead guy to take you out.”
He looked at her for a reaction but she looked vacant and shrugged.
“That makes sense,” she said. “But I don’t know. It’s too complicated.”
TEFFINGER FROWNED. “That bait plan was the worst idea I ever had. If I could go back in time and change one thing, that would be it.” He hesitated, then took her hand and said, “There’s probably never going to be a perfect time to say this, so I’m going to just get it out in the open. I know we’ve only known each other a week, but I don’t ever want to wake up in the morning and not find you next to me. I like Paris. I like you. So I’m thinking I should move here.”
She looked stunned.
Then her eyes got moist and she squeezed his hand.
“I really wish you hadn’t said that,” she said.
“Why, you don’t want me to?”
“No, I do, more than anything,” she said. “I feel the same way, more even.”
“So what’s the problem? I don’t get it—”
“The problem is that I always pictured you going back to Denver,” she said. “And when you did, that meant I wouldn’t have to tell you certain things.”
Teffinger wrinkled his brow.
“I’m not following.”
“I couldn’t let you move to Paris unless I gave you full disclosure,” she said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I haven’t been completely honest with you about a few things.”
She was on the verge of tears.
Teffinger put 20 euros on the table, grabbed Fallon around the waist and headed for somewhere private. They walked for ten minutes and ended up sitting on a bench by Notre Dame.<
br />
“Now talk to me,” he said. “What the hell’s going on?”
“OKAY, BUT JUST REMEMBER, I’m not perfect and never said I was,” she said. “Let me start at the beginning. About a year ago, I was out with some friends doing some clubbing, down at Rex, actually.”
Rex?
That’s where the caveman DJ worked.
“Right, but this isn’t about him,” she said. “I was at the bar minding my own business when a woman walked over and kissed me on the lips like I was her love slave. I was just about to slap her when I looked into her eyes. That was my big mistake. She wasn’t just striking, she was beyond description, raw and compelling and mysterious. Maybe it was the alcohol or the music or the lighting or a time in my life where I was curious, but I was totally hypnotized. I wanted her. I wanted her badly, right from the very first second.”
Teffinger grinned.
“I totally understand,” he said. “And for your information, so far I’m liking this story.”
She punched him on the arm.
“You would,” she said. “Anyway, she took me to the dance floor and got me hot. She kissed me and felt me up and grinded on me. People stared and we didn’t care. Then she took me to the ladies room. We went into a stall and she pulled out a small bottle of cocaine and a little spoon. She took a sniff. Then I did. That was the first time I’d ever done that.”
“Do you still—?”
She shook her head.
No.
That was the one and only time.
“But it got me in trouble,” she said. “Big trouble.”
“How?”
“Well, at that point, I wouldn’t have left this woman’s side if she was falling off the edge of the earth,” Fallon said. “Then she got a phone call. She talked in private for a second, hung up and said she had to go.”
“Go where?”
“To do a gig,” Fallon said.
“What kind of gig?”
“A sex gig,” Fallon said. “It turned out that she was a high-priced escort who just started working for a group called Blue Moon, which I had never heard of at the time. This was going to be a bondage gig that would last an hour or two. She said she’d come back afterwards but I knew she wouldn’t. Then I did something stupid and told her to take me with her. She said fine and off we went.”