by Harley Slate
Jessica
Her phone in my pocket, her hand in my hand. Quentin at the door to greet us. I yank her, perhaps a bit roughly, in his direction. Suddenly, my thoughts are tumbling out of my brain on top of each other all topsy-turvy, and there isn't any use pretending I still have control of my emotions.
I need to think. Clear my head.
Need to get her out of my sight.
“The pink bedroom,” I say, not to her but to Quentin, who knows instantly what I mean.
He lifts a single eyebrow, and I know he doesn't agree, but I'm not going to argue with the help right now.
“Go. Go now.”
And just like that, I've handed her off, and now it's his slender hand on her smooth wrist. From the way her big eyes get even bigger, he surprises her with his strength as he tugs her toward the back elevator. A service elevator. No mirrors and chandeliers in this one. Her hair swings around shampoo-commercial style as she looks back over her shoulder.
“Jessica?”
“We'll talk later,” I say. “You need to get your rest.”
“We need to be together on this,” she says.
“You need to sleep. I need to focus.” My voice turns hard, and I'm already heading for the other elevator, and then she's vanished out of sight behind me.
Was I too harsh? Maybe, but I can't think about that stuff now. She's safe, and that's what matters. Cherry Dearborn isn't safe, or maybe she isn't safe, and that's what matters too.
So. Into the basement. The security suite. There's a team working there, a skeleton crew at this hour of the night, but they're all top-notch. Billionaires are sometimes accused of pinching pennies, but we don't economize when it comes to security.
After that, everything moves fast, so fast I tell myself I don't have a single, solitary second to spend thinking about Emily.
The incident handler today is Julian of the ever-changing last names. He's very good at what he does. Like all my staff.
“Evaporative money,” I say, and he nods, knowing instantly what I mean.
We've never had to resort to this technique before, but the only evidence of concern is the tension in the line of his granite jaw. He's ex-Secret Service, ex-Department of Justice, pretty much ex-anything when it comes to counterfeiting and money laundering crimes. Sometimes Interpol helps him change his name, sometimes the NSA or the CIA. Sometimes he does it all by himself.
Yeah, he's very good. Cherry Dearborn, assuming she's the victim and not the perpetrator of this crime, is in excellent hands.
Evaporative money isn't a game for amateurs, that's for sure. It looks like real money in the digital world. At first, it'll look like I'm paying them off‒ that I'm feeding real assets into the conduit.
What Gavrolovic doesn't know is that we've installed a backdoor into the channel between us. The money will start to disappear into his black hole and then, somehow, it's going to get diverted.
So I'm feeding money in and Gavrolovic sees it going in, but it never comes out on his end.
Instead, it all comes sneaking back home to me in the dead of night.
That's an oversimplification, but it's the basic idea. I'll start feeding in the numbers, and if he wants it to keep coming, he has to release Emily's mom. By the time he finds out he's never actually getting the money, we'll already have Cherry Dearborn back safe.
That's a pretty raw plan and, obviously, there are a lot of things that can go wrong, but it's the best I can do on the spur of the moment.
I've given Emily's phone to Aysander, one of the other security experts who has a deep knowledge of telecommunications. He does something I don't understand, and then a map pops up on his center monitor. “Detail,” he says, and the map zooms in close. There's the usual glowing yellow dot in the center. Nobody has to tell me that's the mom's phone.
“It's in a warehouse on Industrial.” He says an address which pulls up a blueprint on his left monitor. “She's in a supply closet.”
Her phone's the latest Samsung with a heartbeat monitor in it. “Can you...” I don't even have to complete the sentence, and there's a pulsebeat playing on the right screen.
Seventy-two beats a minute. Not bad for a kidnap victim. Yeah, she's a cool one, all right.
“She's fine,” Aysander says. “Pulse somewhat elevated, blood pressure too, but that's pretty reasonable if you assume she's there under duress.”
I think her pulse would be somewhat elevated even if she wanted to be there. Playing games with Jessica Blaire isn't the way to lower your blood pressure.
Some underling hands me a secure phone, but I don't have any secrets from anybody in this basement, so I put it on speaker to keep my hands free. The faster I transmit the information to the team on the strip, the better.
“Got it. We'll be in place in fifteen,” says a voice. Ken Cho. Head of ground operations. It's late, but nobody on my team's sleeping tonight.
“Don't be seen, and don't make a move without my order.”
“You got it, boss.”
It's time to use the dedicated line. Gavrolovic doesn't play hard to get. He picks up right away.
“I can't move that amount of money at one time without attracting the attention of Justice and Homeland Security,” I say. “So I'm going to trickle it in.”
“You did not call to tell me so little.”
True. “As soon as the money enters the conduit, I expect to see Cherry Dearborn standing outside the building where I can see her. No crappy shackles on her. She's somebody's mother.”
He grunts and ends the connection. I signal to Julian, and he signals to the system.
The scary part is that he's actually taking money from my accounts and dumping it into the conduit. There's no way to fake that part. If Gavrolovic ever found my security foxhole, or if he installed a diversion of his own that acts before my diversion kicks in, he can make away with the money, and I won't be getting it back.
There's an invisible software battle taking place, and it's beyond my control. I've set the ball in motion, I've pushed it down a mountain, and now it's going to roll downhill the way it's going to roll.
Is that the scary part? That I could lose the money?
Or is the scary part the thought of the look on Emily's face if I lose her mom?
No time to think of Emily. No time to think of anything that distracts me from acting with precision and purpose.
“She's outside,” says Ken from the speaker, at the same time Aysander says, “I see her.”
The middle monitor has zoomed in very tight on the exterior of one of those white metal warehouses. There's a woman standing outside with a pissed-off expression on her face and a man who looks like a former linebacker holding her by the elbow. The man's got an AR-7 in his other hand, so even Miss Steel Magnolia isn't inclined to make a run for it.
If looks could kill, though, he'd be dying the death of a thousand cuts.
Con artist or not, I could like this lady. She's got spirit.
The guy with the AR-7, all loaded for bear, up against a petite woman in heels... not so much.
“Take him out,” I say.
Ken says something on a different device, so I'm not clear on what code he uses, but it doesn't matter. With a minimum of three snipers taking aim from three different directions, the big guy evaporates almost as thoroughly as the money is about to.
Emily's mom makes a brushing motion using just her fingertips. Apparently, some of the mess got on her blouse.
I don't have to say, “Get her out of there,” but I do. Of course, my well-coordinated team is already moving before the words are out of my mouth.
A tone sounds on Gavrolovic's line.
“Yo,” I say.
He's laughing. “You think I am that easy. You delay me, and you get the lady. You are very funny.”
Connection ended.
I get a cold prickle on the back of my neck. It was too easy. Way too fucking easy. He could have dropped Emily's mom's phone in the Bellagio dancing foun
tains and let her talk to us on an old-school burner with the GPS disabled. We'd never have found her location in a million years.
He led us to that spot. As for the soldier guarding her... When Nick Gavrolovic decides you're no longer a useful member of his team, he doesn't hand you a pension and a gold watch.
I've been used to assassinate a man. True, he was a low-life man, a criminal, the kind of creep who kidnaps and kills for pay. The death of such a man makes the world a better place.
Still, it should be my choice who and when I kill. Fuck being manipulated by the likes of Gavrolovic. It's a blow to my pride.
And yet I couldn't have done anything else, not with Emily's mom at stake.
“Approach with caution,” I say into my devices. “He's playing some angle.” But my staff's emotions weren't distracted in the same way, and they've already figured that much out. Ken Cho probably knew there was something hinky about the set-up from the beginning.
Ken, holding a scanner pointed at Cherry Dearborn, suddenly freezes in place where he stands. Beside me, Aysander zooms in the visuals on the central monitor. Now we can read the numbers on Ken's scanner.
“They appear to have implanted an explosive device in her right shoulder, Ms. Blaire.” That's Aysander. Nobody on Ken's side of the screen is breathing, much less talking.
Well, in a way, that's good. It tells me Emily's mom isn't in on it. So, of course, Emily can't be in on it either. I feel a stab of guilt for sending her to the pink room.
In another way... no. Not good. Not very fucking good at all. Ken, moving very slowly, raises her right arm and then scans it more carefully.
Several monitors light up all around us to display what he's reading from the implant in her bandaged bicep. The electronics come complete with a dead man's trigger. If we remove it without the code, it goes off.
Of course, if we leave it there, it goes off anyway. At the time and place of Nick Gavrolovic's choosing.
Chapter Sixteen
Emily
The pink bedroom isn't what the name suggests. It isn't pink and princessy. It isn't a satin king-sized mattress and a silver bucket with a bottle of pink champagne.
It's a private prison cell. The walls slabbed with stone. A cot with no sheets. A sink with uninspiring heavily chlorinated tap water coming out. A cheap toilet.
“What the fuck,” I say.
“I'm sorry.” Quentin won't meet my eyes. “Orders.”
“Why does she even have a place like this in her cabin?” Her fucking cabin. What a phony name. That classic old money bullshit pretense of being modest. As if she was old money. As if she was capable of being modest.
This is Jessica's castle, and I've been demoted to her fucking dungeon.
A tower dungeon though. Up the stairs instead of down in a basement. Like I'm Rapunzel or the queen of England waiting to get her head cut off. Oh, it's all very medieval.
There's a tiny shelf with a long package of rice biscuits on it. Not even bread and water. Rice biscuits and water.
It really is a prison cell. An illegal one. Who else has been held here?
Quentin lets me kick around the place long enough to let me know he doesn't intend to answer my question. Then he says, “Your mom is going to be all right. Jessica never lets family get hurt. You've got to know that much about her, right? It's going to be all right. Both of you will be fine. For now, you'll be safer stashed here out of the way.”
Like that's an excuse for Jessica locking me up in here. “I'm not sitting on my ass stashed out of the way...”
But Quentin is already gone, the door closing behind him with a decisive thump‒ an automatic lock of some kind. There isn't even a knob on this side of the door. There's nothing. In fact, the door fits back into place so perfectly the wall now looks like an unbroken slab, although I can find the join with my fingertips.
There's a bare bald curly light bulb over the sink. These days, you can pick all kinds of color tones, but somebody went with an ice-cold blue light that chills me to the bone. It's unflattering, and my face looks tired in the battered steel mirror above the sink.
Really? Not even glass but reflective metal for a mirror?
Despite the shitty look of the cell, somebody paid a lot of money and went to a lot of trouble to make it look this miserable.
Fuck you, Jessica Blaire. I trusted you, but clearly you don't trust me.
I can't even think about what's going on with my mom. It's too big.
The light blinks three times. A warning.
Shit.
I wash up, but it goes out completely before I'm finished, and now I'm in the dark, fumbling for the bed. What else can I do?
Sleep. Well, I can't do that.
Think. Plan.
Apparently, I can't do that either.
I can't put it together, how the Jessica who was so sweet to me in that Vegas hotel suite can be the same Jessica who put me in this box. There's a lot of prettier places she could have stashed me. Although, if I'm honest with myself, I'd be busy trying to figure out a way to break out of them too.
I can't stay here. I have to get out.
I need my phone back.
I need my mom.
Mom...
No windows. Utterly dark. I press both hands to the wall and began to make a blind circuit of the room, hoping to discover a different answer, but I don't. There's the join of the door. Here's the sheet metal of the old-fashioned mirror. Glass can be broken, glass can be shaped into weapons. I'm not the only person she's held in this room, and at least some of them were capable of fighting back.
I too am capable of fighting back. I promise her that.
No way you're getting away with locking me in here, Jessica Fucking Blaire.
I slap the wall several times with an open palm, an unsatisfying sound. There's some material under the stone facade that muffles the impact, and I doubt I can be heard beyond a few yards down the hall.
I ball up my fist and try again. Doesn't sound any louder, although the sting is now to the side of my hand instead of my palm.
Fuck.
I'm out of ideas.
Get some rest. Sleep is a weapon. You'll need to move fast when that door comes open...
The thin mattress proves to be as lumpy and bumpy as it looks. I toss and turn, sometimes sitting up completely to finger-comb my hair again. My very bones ache with weariness, and yet I can't find a way to turn off my head.
There are no pajamas, no sleepwear at all left behind for me. No bed linens turn up, no matter how many times I feel around the room.
I have little choice but to strip naked and pretend my loose green peasant blouse is a half-assed sheet, since my jeans sure as fuck won't do the job.
Some people count sheep when they can't fall asleep. I do something else. My legs sprawl apart, and my fingers begin to walk up the insides of my thighs.
Touching myself isn't even pleasant, not in the way Jessica touching me is pleasant.
Fuck Jessica. I won't think about Jessica.
Tight muscles tighten even more. I twitch, I throb. None of it's enjoyable. It's release, the bare minimum of what I need to loosen my body enough to let me sleep.
My weary body slumps. My brain seems to flicker on and off, the way it does when you try to sleep too soon after too much caffeine.
Jessica, why do you doubt me?
Jessica, why don't you believe in me?
Asleep, in dreams, I have no doubt about why I'm here. Jessica somehow knows about my mother, and she assumes Mom and I are working some scam. She's going to make sure my mom's safe, she's even going to keep me safe, but she's in a rage about being deceived.
I'm not my mother. Never have been, never will be. I'm my own person.
The whole concept of the Sugar Mama Seekers is something your mother would have dreamed up when she was your age.
I wake with a jerk, heart pounding at triple speed.
It's true. It really is true. The club was formed to get money‒ to
catch rich partners to get their big expensive rings on our cute little fingers.
When did it turn into something else?
When did I start to care?
Because, fuck it, I do care. Knowing Jessica doesn't trust me, knowing she's locked me away because she's afraid I might be one of the bad guys in this movie...
That twists my heart to the breaking point.
I want something else from her besides money.
Something else besides sex.
Respect.
I sit there, bare feet on the cold floor, bare arms wrapped around my trembling body, and I'm as wide awake as I ever have been.
Respect? Why do I care about her respect?
The whole point is to get her wallet.
Somehow that doesn't seem so important anymore.
I wonder if it ever did seem all that important. To my mom, it would have seemed important. But not to me.
“Jessica never lets family get hurt.” Quentin's words echo in my head.
I think about that. Mom isn't Jessica's family. Even me, I'm not Jessica's family. Is Quentin saying Jessica feels something stronger?
Am I ready for that?
My thoughts spin round and round. I should get dressed. Be ready. Do something. Because sleep just ain't happening tonight, not in this place.
It's pitch dark, so I have to feel around for everything. The soap, the sink. Roll on the mattress to dry off. Fumble around for my clothes, turn them inside out, wiggle them on piece by piece. As I slide my feet into my shoes, I fumble around again for the door. There's still no knob, but it doesn't matter because it's moving forward in my direction.
The door is opening inward.
Game on, I think. Whether the game's with Jessica Blaire or my mother or some random gangster bad guy, I don't yet know.
Maybe I'm up against all of them.
Chapter Seventeen
Jessica
Julian doesn't usually touch me, but this time he does, the lightest possible touch on the back of my hand. Very careful. Very respectful. No matter how many times the CIA helps him change his name, he keeps the attitude of respect.
“Ms. Blaire,” he says, his voice formal. “We've reached the diversion point.”