“We used to have to work so hard to command the magic of this world,” she said. She raised her hand higher, and Patrick rose off the floor, and she giggled. “I just can’t get over how right this feels now.”
What was she talking about? She was a crazy woman, no doubt.
Then again, he was the one floating—literally floating in mid-air, held by something he couldn’t figure out. Impossible is what this was.
“It’s exciting, isn’t it?” she said.
Patrick struggled. The gun had fallen from his hand. He wasn’t sure when he lost it, probably when he was flung into the wall like trash into the bin. He was mostly concerned with filling air into his lungs again. That part was really getting old.
Since meeting these people, he’d seen some pretty crazy things, things he’d been unable to explain. Then again, he was maybe a little more open to the idea of something extraordinary than most, considering he had the uncanny knack to sniff people out with a mere thought. But this was different. This was next level stuff. He’d never seen anyone float before, much less himself.
The woman looked about to say something else. She made a motion with her hand but stopped when the air in the room changed like the coming of a storm. She sensed it too and turned toward the doorway of the kitchen.
Before she could do anything else, Patrick watched a blue light engulf her, swallow her whole in a split second. There wasn’t even any time for her to scream. Patrick dropped. He hit the linoleum harder than he expected. He must have been higher than he realized. He stared at the woman—or what had been the woman—just barely able to make her out amidst the swirling light. What he saw made him scramble backwards, back into the plaster dust from when he slammed into the wall. The light fell away, and a bloody heap fell to the floor.
He stared, slack-jawed at the woman. Not a woman anymore. Just blood-smeared bones and bits of charred muscle.
“Patrick?”
Patrick turned to the figure who stood in the doorway. At first, he thought it another victim of whatever the light was, but then he discovered he recognized the face staring back at him. “Liam.” He got to his feet and ran over to Liam and put his hands on Liam’s blood-soaked shoulders. “What happened?” Liam was covered in blood from head to toe. “Are you hurt?”
Liam shook his head. “It’s not mine.”
That, of course, begged the question of whose blood it was. But with a glance back at the dead woman on the kitchen floor, Patrick didn’t ask.
“What are you doing here?” Liam asked.
“I was coming to rescue you.”
Liam looked up at him. “You found me?”
Patrick took a second to answer. “I guess I did.”
“Can we go now?”
“Of course.” He didn’t know how, though. “I need to find a car,” Patrick said.
“I know one that just came available,” Liam said.
Fifteen
Barrington, IL
Back in Seattle, immediately after the interrogation—the failed interrogation since they now had a dead murderer and still no answers—Zach’s only concern was to make sure his son and ex-wife were safe. The FBI had a safe house in Maine that they were going to take them to. Zach would have preferred to go there himself to be able to see them with his own eyes and to ensure, without question, that Toby was safe from harm.
But the only way to be sure of his son’s safety was to get to the bottom of all of this.
That was his motivation. That’s what he intended to do. The only way to keep his family safe was to do his job—and to do it quickly.
They did more digging into Stephen Penrose, and what they found led Zach to one conclusion, and Glenda agreed. Everything pointed to Chicago.
Stephen Penrose was employed by a company known as Tellus, Inc. Tellus was headquartered in downtown Chicago.
“What kind of name is Nona, anyway? Sounds like a name I’d call my grandma.” Glenda asked as they drove northwest of Chicago to the Barrington suburb.
Zach shrugged as he drove. “It’s a name. Means the ninth born.”
Glenda stared over at him. “Good for you, Alex Trebek. You win the Daily Double,” she said.
“I looked it up when we landed,” Zach said with a sly half-smile.
They were going to meet with the CEO of Tellus, Inc., and they were en route to the woman’s home address.
“Would you look at that,” Glenda said, her voice deadpan as they waited at yet another electric gate. “Another big house. Goddamn rich people.” She shook her head.
This one was a stone exterior with ivy growing up the facade that overlooked a reflective pond in the front of the house.
At the door, they were greeted by a man in a smart, dark business suit who introduced himself as Kyriakos, chief assistant to Ms. Nona Burwell. A striking man, dark eyes and a goatee. Imposing in how he greeted them with a firm handshake and an engaging stare that left Zach feeling almost violated. When he turned, both Zach and Glenda shared a glance, a silent communication that asked, what’s up with this guy?
They were invited to wait in a great room with Brazilian hardwood floors, two fireplaces, tall beamed ceilings, and a view of the back of the house, which showed another small lake and a pool off to one side. They were offered refreshments, which they turned down, then they were left alone. After being in yet another stunning mansion, however, the effect was wearing off on Zach. He sat down on one of the long sofas and waited.
And they waited for nearly two hours. Zach was beginning to think that they were being stood up. Or, as was sometimes the case when federal agents showed up on the doorstep of a CEO’s home, they were busy shredding documents that could link them to terrible things. But, without a warrant and without probable cause, all they could really do at this point was wait.
Zach did more research while he waited. He surfed to the website for Tellus, Inc., their motto written in a chrome-like calligraphic font: “We bring balance back into your life.” This seemed to be a common theme. Balance. Zach had had the chance to review the tapes of the short interrogation, and, aside from needing to see for himself how a sword came out of nowhere and tried to cut him down, one line stuck out to him, spoken by Stephen Penrose: There’s a storm coming, and the balance will be restored. If this wasn’t the thick of a shit storm right now, it’d do until the real storm got there.
Tellus, Inc. was a Fortune 100 company that produced a line of home products designed to make life easier. The kind of stuff one might find in a big-box store that tried to span the chasm between luxury and cheap—particle board made to look like expensive wood furniture. A simple search of the company showed that it gained a moderate profit every year from that part of their business alone.
But furniture making was only part of their business. They had their fingers in a number of industries, everything from tech to medical supplies to green energy supply. They were like the Google of the furniture-making world, a company who focused on one thing but who had interests across the board.
It was also a company that moved around a lot. It was founded some time ago in Denver, CO, but then they moved to Texas. Seven years ago, the company picked up and cut ties again to move to Chicago. The details of each move, at least from what Zach could find, seemed little more than a whim. That’s what struck him as odd. Companies moved because it put them in a better financial position. Moves were expensive, especially when they involved an entire corporate headquarters. This one seemed to move because it wanted to.
“You seen this?” Zach asked Glenda when he landed on a web page with a list of people involved with the company.
“It looks a lot like the names of our dead people,” she said when she leaned over to take a look.
They weren’t the actual dead bodies at the crime scenes, but their last names were the same: Stavros, Corbett, Holder, Maystone, among others. There was even a Penrose with a seat on the board of directors. “It’s some kind of family business,” Zach said.
&nbs
p; “A lot of the same families as our murder victims all working in one company.”
Then there was Nona Burwell. Among the names, hers stuck out the most, simply by how different it was.
Finally, when he’d exhausted all his internet browsing, he had enough. Zach got up from the comfortable sofa, and he strode through a doorway and into a kitchen, calling out to one of the servants who seemed too busy to listen to what Zach had to say. She waved at them and picked up speed as she hurried from the room. He wasn’t going to chase her down. Instead, he turned to go back into the living room.
There, he found the assistant, Kyriakos, as if he’d been summoned.
“We’ve been here for two hours,” Zach said.
“I apologize for the wait,” Kyriakos said, standing tall, his hands clasped behind his back in a way that made Zach nervous. He stared at Zach with his penetrating gaze until Zach shifted his weight from foot to foot.
“Your boss does realize that there are two federal agents waiting in her living room, right?”
“Of course, Agent Shepard. She was informed the moment you arrived.”
Zach pressed his lips together in a disgruntled frown. He started move toward a stairwell. “Is she up there?”
The assistant raised a hand. “If you please, Mr. Shepard,” Kyriakos said.
Zach stopped.
Kyriakos smiled. “Ms. Burwell will see you now.”
Zach looked over to Glenda who only shrugged. This was a test. Ms. Burwell wanted to see how long they’d wait.
“If you will follow me,” Kyriakos said.
They were led down the long hallway to a pair of double doors that opened as they approached, probably from some remote button somewhere as Zach couldn’t see anyone waiting. Once inside, the doors closed silently behind them.
They were in another long hallway with doors on either side that Zach believed were other sitting rooms or wine cellars or whatever else rich people put into all their extra rooms. The wide hallway was punctuated with paintings on both sides, a mix of genres from modern to classical. It reminded him a lot of the decor in the big houses where all the murders took place: elegant and tasteful, the kind of paintings that would probably hang just as well in The Art Institute down on Michigan Avenue of this city.
When he passed open doorways, he saw that some of them were meeting rooms, but another of the doorways glimpsed into a large dining hall. Further down, it was a sitting room with a large fireplace on one wall.
At the end of the hallway, the space opened. There was another fireplace, this one blazing with a fire, more sofas and chairs in a grouping in front of it. They had a thing for fireplaces. And, in front of a bank of windows that overlooked the lake and an expanse of green field beyond, sat a woman at a large wooden desk, presumably the woman they were there to meet—Nona Burwell.
She was not exactly what Zach had expected.
He’d always envisioned CEOs as graying, distinguished people, the type who worked their entire lives to get to the position they held. Maybe he was old fashioned that way. He liked to think that becoming a CEO meant a lot of hard work and long hours.
Nona Burwell was none of that. For starters, she was young. She couldn’t have been much over thirty. When she met Zach with her gaze, Zach’s pulse quickened. Not attraction, necessarily, though she was auburn haired and pretty. She seemed to him imbued. Her eyes were a cobalt blue, her mouth a tight red. When Zach glanced over at Glenda, the expression on her face said she wasn’t having any of it, though. At least, if she was, she was hiding it probably much better than he was.
“Ms. Burwell,” Zach said as he neared the desk, “I am special agent—”
“Special Agent Zachary Shepard,” Nona said, disconcerting in the way it reminded Zach of the interrogation of Stephen Penrose. She stood up. “And you must be Special Agent Glenda Alvarez.” She offered her hand first to Glenda then to Zach.
Zach started to say something when a flicker of something caught his attention. When he turned, she was there again. The woman he’d seen before, back in the crime scenes, in the ritual room and staring out at him from the upstairs window in the La Jolla house. She was just as Zach remembered her, the same leather jacket and dust-smeared pants.
Time seemed to be on its own run then, a second that stretched out far too long. Zach might not have realized that’s what it was until he saw the bird outside the wide expanse of window, floating. Not flapping its wings, but stuck, frozen in midflight.
Was this a dream? Had he somehow fallen asleep? Maybe he was back in the living room, snoring in a chair in front of the fireplace. But everything about this experience felt too real to be a dream.
You shouldn’t be here, she told him. Her lips didn’t move, but Zach was certain the words came from her. They were in his mind.
“What do you mean?” Zach asked her. He wanted to go to her, to ask her questions. For starters, the big one: Who are you? Followed by, why am I seeing you?
But she glitched. Standing there, it went weird, and she faded from view.
Directly behind where the fading woman disappeared stood Kyriakos. He stood in front of the window, just behind the desk where he continued to watch them. Even in that weird, drawn-out moment, Kyriakos appeared impressive. Penetrating. Not much got passed that guy, Zach realized.
The bird outside the window flew once again and sailed down out of view. Zach continued to meet Kyriakos’s gaze just as he began moving once again. The glint in his eye was subtle, but Zach couldn’t get it out of his head: Kyriakos knew something.
“Tell me, agents,” Nona said as she beamed a smile at them both, “what can I do for the FBI?”
The focus was on Nona Burwell, but Zach could feel Kyriakos’s weighty gaze over the group of them. The air about him was that of a colossal, a large figure who, even in his silence, made his presence known. And Zach was unable to ignore it.
“Ms. Burwell,” Glenda began. “We’re here to ask you a few questions regarding an employee of yours. Stephen Penrose. Do you know him?”
“Yes, I knew of him. He was once a faithful worker at my company.”
“Related to a member of your board of directors,” Glenda said.
“If you know that,” Nona said, moving around her desk again to take a seat in the high-backed chair to face them again. “Then you already know that this is a tight-knit company. We are all members of a very elite group of families that have worked together for centuries.”
“Centuries,” Zach repeated.
“Yes, in one way or another. Tellus, Inc. is the result of legacies.” Nona paused. “Would either of you like something to drink?”
Zach thanked her but declined. Glenda did the same. The request read to Zach like a deflection.
“So, you’re something like the Rockefellers or the Astors,” Zach said.
Kyriakos stepped forward. “More like the Khans of Mongolia, the Hapsburgs, the Medicis, or the Ptolemy families. Tellus is built from dynastic families that have been around in one form or another since before the Greeks.”
There was a pause as attention turned to him, but Zach glanced back to Nona, to read her reaction. She leaned back in her chair as if deferring to her assistant. Was this planned? A way to confuse the interview, a countermeasure to interrupt their line of questioning?
“How come I’ve never heard of those names until now,” Glenda asked, still addressing Nona Burwell. She continued unruffled.
But Kyriakos continued. “The families prefer to be discrete.”
Zach caught Glenda glancing around the spacious office. “I see discrete is a little different than I thought.” This time, Glenda addressed both of them.
“Discretion does not mean we’ve denied ourselves certain luxuries,” Nona said.
“Yes, we’ve seen your houses,” Glenda said. “Are you aware that there have been a total of twenty murders in the homes owned by members of these dynastic families of yours?”
Nona frowned appropriately. “Yes. It ha
s been an unfortunate time,” she said.
“You don’t seem too broken up by it.”
“I prefer to stay in control.” Nona leaned back in her chair.
Zach didn’t believe her. She wasn’t the one in control. He turned to Kyriakos. “Are you a member of these families too, Mr…”
“Holder,” Kyriakos said. “And yes. All of us in the upper positions of the company are related to the ten families in some way.”
Zach leaned forward. He shifted gears again. “Stephen Penrose confessed to all twenty murders.” Two can play that game.
Nona spoke up again. Too quickly. “Yes. I’m afraid the work became too much for him.”
“When you say, ‘too much for him,’ what are you referring to,” Glenda asked.
“He was a very intense young man,” Kyriakos said. To Zach, it was like watching tennis, his head moving back and forth between Nona and her assistant. “The way he handled even the simplest assignment was, shall we say, off putting. He was a man given to religiosity.”
“And what religion would that be?” Glenda pressed. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
“Ours is not a legacy built upon the Christian religion,” Kyriakos said. “We are taught, very early, truths about the world that other religions might refute. Ours is a polytheistic set of beliefs.”
Glenda turned to stare hard at Kyriakos. “Do these polytheistic beliefs involve human sacrifice?”
Zach’s gaze moved between his partner, Nona, then landed on Kyriakos. Something was going on, a power play that made him nervous. He thought about intervening. But he was also interested in the answer to come, so he kept his mouth shut.
Kyriakos barely missed a beat. “It is suspected that our ancestors engaged in some form of sacrifice, both animal and human. But today, we are far more cultured than our ancestors.”
“Stephen Penrose wasn’t.”
Nona opened her mouth to speak, but Kyriakos continued: “Stephen Penrose was a man who was someone you might call a zealot. He believed he was creating a better world by reviving the old ways.” There was a fervor in Kyriakos’s voice. Nona gave way and sat back in her chair.
The Stone (Lockstone Book 1) Page 20