Kim finished off the whipped cream with a slurp that she would have restrained with anyone else besides Braydon. “So what were you doing in the Arizona desert last night?”
“The question is, what was Baltasar Contreras doing in Arizona last night?”
“Haven’t you heard?” She pursed her lips. “Contreras wasn’t there. He was dining with none other than the New York Chief of Homeland Security Rambitskov, going over the details of tonight’s sword presentation, like you should have been. Contreras is making you look like a fool, Fox.”
“Impossible,” Braydon said, unless Rambitskov was in on the faked alibi.
“Don’t say what you’re thinking,” said Kim. “You implicate Chief Rambitskov and the President, himself, will fire you.”
“Contreras has a private jet. He could still have gotten to the desert after this alleged dinner.”
“Contreras is a charming, uber-successful businessman who is funding this banquet tonight. You’ve been on his back, how long?”
“Nine months,” Braydon said. “Since the theft from the San Francisco Museum of Culture and History.”
“You figured the perpetrator was Adlai Stonington, that high-end jewel thief that you’ve been building a case against.”
“I’m sure of it.” Within hours of the discovery of the theft, Braydon had boots on the ground. By the next day, when it was discovered that all that the thief had snatched was a set of four stones, called the Abraxas collection, leaving behind a Faberge egg, a Rembrandt sketch and other pricey booty, his team was speedily reassigned to a high profile art theft from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. “Contreras met with Stonington in San Francisco the day after the Abraxas theft,” he said.
“As I recall, our illustrious FBI Director personally kicked you off that case.”
“We both know that the Director is positioning himself for the Secretary of State.” Braydon had figured Contreras for a collector who could afford any whim for stolen art or cultural gems, and a man who was used to getting what he wanted. The millions he filtered into high stakes political campaigns didn’t hurt. He no doubt promised the FBI Director to throw some of his weight his way.
“The Director didn’t want to listen to any nutty ideas about Contreras being tight with a suspected thief like Stonington.”
Which is why Braydon had cashed in his personal chits, and got his off-the-grid guy, Torrino, to go in deep undercover. He had taken a bullet for Torrino, saved his life, and, more importantly, killed the bad guys before they could kill his pregnant wife.
It proved remarkably easy for Torrino to get close to Contreras, thanks to Contreras’s odd preference for beefy men and the alarming attrition rate of his “enforcers.” Torrino had become Contreras’s go-to guy for anything that required his ample brawn, apparently unshakeable loyalty, and bulldog persistence. Torrino had slipped Braydon evidence that Contreras was a nut who fancied himself a Prophet, a megalomaniac who had designs on starting a new religion, which was terrifying, but not against the law. In fact, if Braydon tried to stop him, then he’d be the criminal.
“It was a bunch of old stones that was stolen,” said Kim, finishing off the last of her hot chocolate, “not the Crown Jewels.”
“Exactly why I think there’s something else going on,” said Braydon, “something big. Or Contreras wouldn’t waste his time.”
“Neither should you. These Abraxas stones aren’t worth it. Even the museum curator admitted the value of the Abraxas stones was more historical than material. So what if Contreras met with a jewel thief. It won’t be the first time some billionaire maneuvers to buy something that’s not for sale.”
“True, and the second time was last night, in the Arizona desert.”
Kim pointed the clipboard at him. “I took a big chance, Special Agent Fox, trusting you when you begged me to take on the security of the Lux et Veritas sword. I know you did it because Contreras is hosting the banquet tonight. I figured a suspicious agent would be more diligent than an ass-kissing one, but a paranoid agent could kill both our careers.”
“It’s not our careers that concerns me.”
Kim shook her head. “It’s about her, isn’t it? Christa Devlin,” she said. “Just like Iraq. You were sent over to track down the gems looted from the museum. Instead, you defied orders and risked your life for your informant, an Iraqi, no less, who got himself caught by the bad guys. Or taking that bullet for an expendable snatch and grab snitch. You’re falling into the same trap with Devlin. You can’t save everyone who dives in over their heads. Use them, then lose them. You’ve got courage and you’re a damned good investigator, but rogues don’t last long under my watch, Agent Fox.”
“Neither will Christa Devlin,” he said, “if I don’t get to her, now.”
“I saw her photo on the Princeton’s history department’s website,” she said. “I’m telling you this as a friend, Braydon, not the boss. Don’t do this, not for the wrong reasons.”
Of course Emerson would have checked the website, and seen the resemblance to his partner in work, and he had hoped, in life. But nothing was going to bring her back. Nothing was ever going to settle the score. “I’m doing this because it’s my job,” he said. It was all he had left.
CHAPTER 15
Baltasar Contreras cracked open the lobster claw with a satisfying snap. He relished the day when he’d do the same to Torrino’s neck. For now, he had to twist only his manhood, to find out if his failure was idiocy, or destiny.
“Percival Hunter shot at me.” Torrino paced as he spoke, his beefy Italian arms gesticulating wildly. “What the hell was he doing with a gun? I had the journal in my hand. I had to get out of there, or kill him. And you told me not to kill him.”
“Failure is weakness,” said Contreras, as his own father had taught him, “and weakness is unacceptable.” It was the cornerstone of the family’s pharmaceutical fortune. It had built this estate, this leafy orangery where Contreras enjoyed taking his lunch on Princeton’s wintery days. As a boy, this garden was his Eden. Father had even introduced a variety of highly poisonous dart frogs to the garden, to teach his son a lesson in fear, and to remind him of his family’s destiny. “It is a good maxim, don’t you agree, Mister Torrino?”
“I was expecting a math geek,” said Torrino, “not a marksman.”
Contreras smiled crookedly at Torrino’s stab at wit. Part of him liked Torrino. He could not deny it. He breathed in the invigorating aroma of citrus from the nearby lemon tree and the fertile scent of the wet, dark earth from which it grew. So much more promising than the arid Arizona desert of last night. Upon arriving home, he had washed away his fury along with the pervasive red sand. He told himself to remain calm, especially now. He tamped down the ember of anger that threatened to flare inside him.
“Percival Hunter is the weak link,” said Contreras. “All you had to do was pilfer his wife’s journal. Then you were to wait to see if Christa Devlin showed up with the Turquoise and take that from her.”
He laid the nutcracker on the glass topped, wrought iron table and extricated a juicy bite of lobster from its crusher claw. As his greasy lips circled the meat, a drip of juice fell from his chin onto his custom-tailored lapel. He didn’t bother dabbing the spot with his linen napkin. The suit was now imperfect, ruined. He gestured to his butler. “Get Mister Lee out here from Manhattan,” he said. “I need to replace this suit.” He squeezed his thumb into the waistline of his slacks to ease the binding tightness. “Tell him he is off in his measurements. I will not tolerate it.” Fool. Didn’t Lee understand that in religion image is everything?
Contreras made sure Torrino understood. He charmed this disenchanted former altar boy with a power that towered above earthly laws. Contreras caught his own reflection in the glass table top. His thinning hairline and soft belly just made him all the more resistible. It showed Torrino that if a man like him could rule others, then he could rule him, and, oh, how Torrino wanted to be ruled.
Like all
the men who followed him. Deliberately, Contreras had stayed the course set by his father, and his father before him, hiring only those who would fear him completely. Surely his father would see that he had succeeded in that, at least. “You know, Mister Torrino, what God did to those who failed Him at Sodom and Gomorrah.”
Torrino swallowed. “Destroyed them with fire and brimstone.”
“That was the work of the true God, the Old Testament God, before mankind in their hubris corrupted the divine power into something more earthly, more human, more,” and he laughed when he thought about it, “loving.” They needed a teacher, these pretenders to the heavenly throne. The time had come to put himself fully into the service of God. “You know why they have named me the Prophet,” he said.
“Because you will know God’s true command,” said Torrino.
Contreras nodded. “So I have taught you.” He took another sip of his espresso, the aroma almost as strong as the liquid was hot on his tongue. “God wants me to have the sacred stones,” he said. “Percival Hunter risked his life for the journal. Perhaps he knows something after all.”
“He didn’t know nothing,” Torrino stammered, his eyes darting between the two men on either side of him. Their hands, as if synchronized, eased inside their sport coats to rest on their pistol butts.
Torrino should be shot for his bad grammar alone. But Contreras needed men like him, beefy, ruthless men, the T Rex’s of their business. “So he must know something.”
A perplexed look crossed Torrino’s face. “Listen. He’s in the library, standing by the side window, squinting at some old letter, all weird-like. I’m telling you. It was dark. The guy doesn’t have the sense to turn on the light. As if light’s going to come through that side window. It was like night out there on the side of that house.”
Contreras tented his fingers. Curious. Why was this letter important? “And yet, perhaps, he had seen the light,” he muttered. Others might overlook this detail, shrug it off as a misguided diversion. Others did not have his genius to weave these thousands of details into a master plan. Others were meant to be ruled, not to rule.
“He didn’t see the light,” said Torrino. “He saw me, and the minute he did, his eyes shoot over to the book on the table next to him. It was old, leather, no title. I figured it had to be that plant lady’s journal you wanted. Hunter would make a lousy quarterback.”
“Describe the letter.”
“The letter was old, yellowed, like it had been around awhile,” he said. “That’s when your driver panicked and texted me. I grab my cell from my pocket. ‘Bug out,’ it says. Hunter is looking across the room. The wall safe is open, couple boxes of ammo in it. He’s eyeing the twenty-two pistol on the desk.”
Contreras leaned forward. “Hunter had removed his gun from the safe. He was anticipating an immediate threat.” This could mean nothing, or everything. How much had his wife told him? Had Christa Devlin reached him? His landline was down, Contreras had made sure of that, but the cell phone was not so easily controlled.
“Then all hell breaks loose.”
“Not all of it,” said Contreras, “not yet.”
Torrino lunged forward, his fists clenched. “Hunter goes for the gun on the desk. I shove him aside and snatch the journal. I figured that letter could be important, so I grab that, too. I take off, and Hunter starts shooting at me.”
Contreras’s gaze swerved up to meet Torrino’s. The sight of the big man’s eyes widening with fear filled him with a warm satisfaction.
Torrino’s eyes darted away. He hunched his shoulders. The man was hiding something. Torrino chanced a sidelong glance to the body guard to his right. The guard maintained his granite edifice. Contreras had trained him well. “I’m not going to let no crazy man shoot me,” Torrino said.
“No,” Contreras replied. “That should be left to a sane man.”
Torrino pointed at him, then withdrew the gesture and shoved his hands into his pockets. “It was the girl, from the desert. She was coming up the front walkway.”
“So Christa Devlin arrived, as I suspected she would,” Contreras said. He wasn’t about to let Braydon Fox’s gambit in the desert delay him. Within minutes of the unfortunate encounter, Contreras had called in a helicopter using his satellite phone. His private jet had been fueled and ready for wheels up. He’d been back in his Princeton estate for hours, analyzing Christa Devlin’s next move. He smiled. As he had hoped, Fox’s annoying charms hadn’t won her over. She had gone racing straight to Gabriella, except her sister wasn’t there. The woman had gone missing, and he hadn’t disappeared her. It was infuriating.
Torrino nodded. “She looked different than in the desert, wore this short skirt, tall boots. In the daylight, I could see those amazing green eyes. Who knew a history professor could be so hot. Man, I wished I’d gone to Princeton.”
Not many statements left Contreras speechless. This one did. He leaned forward. “And Devlin’s pack, the one she had in Arizona?”
“Yeah, she had it.”
“And yet you returned here without the journal, nor this mysterious letter, nor Devlin’s pack, Mister Torrino.” He said it more as a threat, than a question.
“When I crashed into Devlin, the journal fell into the damn bushes. Letter, too.” Torrino dared to point at him, then thought better of it. “Your driver panicked,” he said. “He must have seen Hunter come out, with that gun, because he starts driving off, leaving me there. I figured I’d better clear out. If Hunter didn’t shoot me, then that FBI guy might show up. And you said I shouldn’t let them take me alive.”
“That’s what the cyanide is for, dear Torrino.”
Torrino jabbed his trigger finger in Contreras’s direction. “Not that I’d talk, Mr. Contreras. I’d never tell them nothing.”
“Your double negatives are not reassuring.” Contreras smacked the lobster juice from his lips, then dabbed them with his linen napkin.
Contreras signaled for his butler to clear the lunch dishes, but placed his hand over the nutcracker so it would be left on the table. Christa Devlin. In his mind, his fingers picked up her strings, toyed with them a bit. She would be desperately alone, with her father and sister unreachable. And yet she hadn’t given in to Agent Fox. That took courage, and loyalty to her father. Contreras smiled. It was time to twist tight the tragedy of her mother’s murder, to spin her destiny in a new direction, like his destiny had been. He almost hated doing it, but she’d thank him in the end.
The butler placed a generous slice of lemon meringue pie and a chilled dessert fork on the table. Contreras carved out a bite and waved it at Torrino. “You shoot with your right hand, don’t you, Mister Torrino?”
Torrino stepped back. The bodyguard on his right gripped his elbow to hold him in place.
Contreras filled his mouth with the bite of pie. The meringue fairly melted on his tongue and the lemon had just enough punch to invigorate his cheeks. He put down the dessert fork and picked up the nutcracker. “Left hand, then,” he said, beckoning to Torrino.
“I did everything you told me to,” said Torrino
Contreras pursed his lips impatiently. The bodyguard on Torrino’s left pulled his pistol from his shoulder holster. Torrino hesitated, then leaned forward, stretching his left hand over the glass table towards Contreras. It trembled gratifyingly. Contreras grasped it gently, such strong fingers, rough and calloused, but so very warm. He did not want to hurt this man. He wanted to save him, to save humankind. Why was he forced to always prove his power? He folded Torrino’s hand closed, but tugged out the man’s beefy pinky finger, pulling it straight. He encircled the finger with the nutcracker, pressed, and he twisted until the bone snapped. Torrino’s cry, give him credit, was loud, but brief. Torrino cradled his pinky with his other hand and pulled it close to his chest, grimacing at the sight of the finger, its middle bone bent grotesquely at a right angle, pointing accusingly at his own ring finger.
Contreras tried another bite of pie, moaning in delight a
t the blend of flavors and textures. “Fenton,” he addressed his butler, “tell Pierre that he has truly outdone himself. The meringue is exquisite.” He leaned back in his chair. “Mister Torrino, what exactly did Percival Hunter say?”
Torrino unclenched his mouth. “Nothing. He didn’t tell me nothing.”
Contreras leaned forward, tenting his fingers, catching Torrino’s reddened eyes in his razor sharp gaze. “Surely, amongst all this gunplay, he must have said something.”
“Just crazy talk,” Torrino answered.
Contreras reached for the nutcracker. “My patience is limited.”
Torrino cradled his injured hand closer to his chest. “He was chasing me. He thought I was getting away with the goods. He said Devlins never give up.”
Contreras smiled. “Oh they will, dear Torrino, they will.”
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