Billionaire Blend

by Cleo Coyle

  Rather than looking disappointed, he seemed pleased. “Clare, I want to thank you for your patience with me. The truth is . . . I had very good reasons for asking my questions.”

  Finally! Here it comes.

  “I’d like to make you an offer . . .”

  I knew it! This jerk was out to steal my staff! Well, now I’ll make him an offer—

  But I never got the chance. A pounding shock wave rattled my frame. The blast vibrated through my muscles a microsecond before the noise hit my ears. Tables rocked, chairs toppled, and the windows facing Hudson Street blew inward bringing freezing winter air and deadly sharp shards of glass.

  My body reacted faster than my brain. My torso doubled over, my arms flying up to shield my face and head. As vibrations shook our wood-plank floor, I was gripped with a horrible thought. Was my basement roaster responsible for this? Had our own aging gas main finally blown?

  It was Matt’s shout that set me straight. “That was a car bomb!”

  My partner had seen his share of violent acts in his travels, which was why he knew what it was—and what more it could be. A secondary blast was possible now, an explosion as dangerous as the primary.

  “Everyone on the floor!” Matt shouted. “Drop and stay there!”

  This was one time I didn’t argue with my ex.

  I hit our plank deck.

  Five

  MY staff obeyed Matt’s command. The customers did, too.

  All except one.

  In disbelief, I realized Eric was milling around, mumbling to himself.

  “Hey, get down!” I shouted up at him. “Get down on the floor!”

  Ignoring me, he stumbled toward the shattered front window.

  Oh, man! I got up fast and went to him. “Get away from the street, you idiot! Don’t you understand? It’s still dangerous out there—”

  As I gripped his shoulder, something warm and wet sprayed my face. I touched my cheek and my fingers came away sticky with blood. But it wasn’t mine.

  Eric’s face was suddenly pale, his slate gray eyes wide. “My Charley . . . My Charley is in the car—”

  I didn’t reply. I was too busy staring at the ragged strip of broken glass sticking out of Eric’s body. The shining shard, less than an inch from his carotid artery, went right through a flap of skin at the base of his neck. The slightest jarring could move the glass and sever the vein.

  Good Lord. “Listen to me, Eric, you’re badly injured. You have to stop moving and remain perfectly still.”

  Eric’s hands moved to the area of pain. “Oh no . . .” Realizing the danger he was in, he wavered, weak at the knees.

  If he falls, he’ll die. “Stay calm, okay? Lean on me . . .” I draped his heavy arm over my shoulder. Straining under his not-yet-dead weight, Eric and I sank to the floor together.

  His skin felt cool, and I was sure he was going into shock. But when I carefully slipped out from under his weight, my first concern was that second explosion, and how I was going to protect this wounded man from the blast.

  As I looked around for help, Nancy stumbled out of the restroom, dripping wet, her hands over her ears.

  “Holy smokin’ rockets, what the heck blew up?”

  “My car,” Eric murmured.

  Matt dragged my youngest barista to our floor—just in time.

  The second, fiery blast was more light and heat than sound and fury, but was no less dangerous. It came so fast I had no choice but to shield Eric with my own body.

  Splinters of glass and pieces of wood and metal filled the air. As the shrapnel bit into my flesh, I bit my cheek. If I shouted or screamed in pain, this man could move suddenly and die, so I squeezed my eyes shut and swallowed the dozen bee stings. Then black, sooty smoke flowed through the empty window frames, filling the shop with choking smog.

  Still on my knees, I turned to look at the burning pyre, now visible through my beveled-glass front door, which hung crookedly by a single hinge. Eric’s vehicle was nothing more than a silhouette inside a red-hot inferno. My shell-shocked ears began to detect other sounds: the moans and cries of my customers, the shouting and screaming in the street, the car alarms howling up and down the block.

  “Charley, Charley,” Eric kept moaning. “What about Charley?”

  “Stay still,” I warned. “Help is coming, but you have to keep still . . .”

  I cast about for help and saw Matt, Esther, and Nancy busy giving aid to other injured customers, so I worked alone, carefully lifting Eric’s long legs and elevating his feet on an overturned chair.

  The blood flow seemed to be increasing, and I grabbed a wad of folded towels from behind the counter. I tucked a few under Eric’s head and saved one to use as a compress. Taking a deep breath, I pressed the clean cloth to the wound, praying I wouldn’t cause more damage by applying pressure.

  “Clare . . .” Eric’s intense, little-boy stare was back, but much different now. I could see it in his eyes: I’m scared.

  I took his right hand and squeezed. “I’m going to get you through this. I promise. It’s going to be all right . . .”

  His eyes filled and he squeezed my hand back. Then his muted voice mumbled something. His left hand rose weakly, as if he wanted me to take the smartphone still in his grip.

  “Nine ones squared,” he said.

  That’s when Tuck appeared next to me, describing the scene—and Eric’s injuries—to an emergency operator.

  “Nine ones squared,” Eric repeated.

  I leaned close. “We’ve already called 911. Hang on now, help is on the way.”

  “No . . .” Eric shook his head, like I’d missed something. “Nine ones . . .” Then the smartphone tumbled from his hand and he slumped back, his breathing shallow. His hands felt like ice, and I knew he’d gone into shock.

  The next thing I heard was the wail of approaching sirens. Within minutes, paramedics were pushing through the broken door, coughing from their brush with the burning car at the curb.

  I moved aside as the medical technicians took over Eric’s care. They immediately staunched the bleeding, started an IV, and strapped him down on a stretcher a fourth man had wheeled in.

  As quickly as they arrived, the first group of medics were gone, even as a second ambulance team began to check out the rest of my customers.

  I took a step toward Matt, but a paramedic stopped me.

  “Whoa, where are you going?” she said. Flipping her short pageboy, the woman laid a gloved hand on my back. I felt a sting and yelped. Her hand came away bloody, and this time the red stuff was mine.

  “Oh, hell.”

  The medic swept debris off a chair and sat me down. Dizzy and queasy, I didn’t argue. Seconds later, I was clutching my blouse, sweater, and bra to cover my naked form while she gently probed lacerations on my bare back.

  “No deep punctures, so that’s good,” she said. “Do you remember when you had your last tetanus shot?”

  “Last summer—ouch!”

  “I’m sterilizing the wounds, so this is going to sting,” she explained, too late. Finally, the paramedic applied several small bandages across parts of my back, and a bigger one behind my right shoulder.

  “You’re going to need help changing those—”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “You don’t want to go to the ER?”

  “No, absolutely not . . .” Gritting my teeth, I scanned the chaos. “I’m staying.”

  “I need help over here!” Esther cried as she examined a tear in Nancy’s pants. “This girl has cut her knee on broken glass.”

  “I need a towel, too,” Nancy called. “When I heard the boom, the toilet kind of blew up in my face.”

  “Oh, yuck,” Esther cried, jumping backward.

  “It’s okay. There was nothing in it but water.”

  Still, Esther eyed me. “All of us deal with crap at retail, but that’s above and beyond.”

  “You’re right,” I said, tugging my clothes back over my injuries. “Nancy,
you’re getting a big bonus in your next paycheck.”

  “Wow, thanks! That kind of makes it worth it . . .”

  Tuck handed Nancy a wad of paper towels. “Miracle of miracles,” he said, “except for cuts and bruises, everyone seems okay.”

  Not everyone. One poor soul had been in that car, someone Eric knew and cared about.

  But Tuck was right about the rest of our customers. Most had come through with minor scrapes. A group of them had moved to the front of the shop, where they began talking and tweeting, cell phone cameras snapping the scene as firemen doused the blazing car with smothering white foam.

  Our coffeehouse had been lucky (if you could call it that). Eric’s car had been double-parked at the time of the explosion, so an SUV sitting by the curb had absorbed much of the blast coming our way.

  As the flames were extinguished, smoke began drifting into the shop. Working together, Matt, Tuck, and Esther herded the customers out. When the Village Blend emptied of everyone but staff, Matt approached me, expression serious.

  “Are you okay? I saw that paramedic working on you.”

  “Just a few cuts, no danger of rabies,” I said, ignoring the pain.

  “So, what did he say to you, Clare?”

  “What did who say?”

  “Your Quiz Master.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Matt scooped up the fallen baseball cap. “The guy who owns this hat.”

  “Eric?”

  “Yes. What did he say to you?”

  “Not much. I stopped him from going outside, that’s all. He went into shock after that and didn’t say much of anything, except that his Charley was in the car.”

  A thin ribbon of blood trickled from a cut above Matt’s hairline. Frowning, his eyes scanned the shop’s shattered interior. “Whoever blew up the billionaire’s car sure did a number on our Village Blend.”

  “Wait. Who are you talking about? What billionaire?”

  “Clare, the man they took away in the ambulance is Eric Thorner, founder and CEO of THORN, Inc.”

  It felt like a second bomb.

  Apple, Google, Facebook, Thorn; everyone, including me, knew those names.

  “Your Quiz Master is an Internet wunderkind, Clare, a billionaire. And you just saved his life.”

  “What?”

  There was no time to say more, not with the crash that ensued.

  Three burly guys, axes in hand, burst through what remained of our door. For a crazy moment, I thought some wild barbarian horde had invaded Manhattan, but the helmeted men weren’t Vikings. They were members of our city fire department.

  “This area is being evacuated!” announced one of them. “Everyone out, now!”

  Six

  WITH our door off its hinges, Matt stayed behind to keep an eye on our place while I herded our staff into a nearby pub. Huddling our group together, I treated them to a few rounds of warm apple cider until we were allowed to return to the coffeehouse. Then we crunched across the broken glass and went to work cleaning the mess.

  By now, the boxy, blue and white trucks of the New York City Bomb Squad had joined the knot of emergency vehicles. With the fire out, these specialized detectives were gathering evidence.

  For a time, all of us were silent, unnerved by the violent explosion that had occurred just steps from our front door. Finally, Esther hugged herself against the tiny snowflakes drifting through our broken windows and cried—

  “It looks like The Hurt Locker out there!”

  I couldn’t argue. Outside, a bomb technician in a padded suit and space helmet examined the smoldering wreckage of Eric Thorner’s luxury limo; inside, my shop exemplified the word trashed.

  The French doors were shattered, leaving glass everywhere, along with a lot of broken crockery. Tables and chairs were overturned, the shop’s shutters were scorched, and so was the woodwork on the façade facing Hudson—which did look somewhat like Kandahar, but with a fairy dusting of snow over the debris.

  Even more distressing, Con Edison had cut off our electricity because of damage to the lines. While insurance would cover many of the repairs, my head spun thinking about all the red tape, the cash-flow problems, the construction, and the fact that I lived upstairs—now without electricity for lights or even my refrigerator.

  I tried hard to think of a silver lining, but . . .

  Nope. Nothing.

  As Matt set the front door back on its hinges, he continued the discussion we’d begun earlier. “Clare, I can’t believe you didn’t know who Thorner was.”

  “Honestly, Matt, I doubt I would have recognized Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerman if they’d come into the Blend arm in arm.”

  “Gates isn’t a boy wunderkind anymore,” Matt said. “And Zuckerberg isn’t one of Money and Finance magazine’s Most Eligible Bachelors of the Year. That honor went to Eric Thorner.”

  “Sorry, that issue of Money and Finance eluded me.”

  “Yeah, I missed that one, too,” Esther added. “Along with Investor’s Daily, Hedge Fund Fun, and Fat Cats ’r’ Us.”

  Suddenly Nancy stopped sweeping. “Holy smokin’ rockets! Are all of you forgetting about Pigeon Droppings?!”

  Pigeon droppings? I frowned. “We’re going to board up the broken windows, Nancy. No birds will get in—”

  “Not real pigeons! I’m talking about the app game!”

  Esther knocked her own head. “Of course! I should have remembered! I see that stupid ThornE barbed-wire logo every time Boris plays Pigeon Droppings, which is constantly, by the way, because my boyfriend is absolutely obsessed with that game.”

  Nancy’s head bobbed up and down. “So are a million, billion other people. It’s like the number-one entertainment app.”

  “How did I never hear of this?” I asked no one in particular. “What’s the point of a pigeon dropping game, anyhow? I mean, how do you even win?”

  “You get points when your pigeons drop all over people,” Nancy explained. “Sometimes you miss. Sometimes the person opens an umbrella, splats your dropping, and you lose points. It’s really fun, and in the premium version you can add phone photos of yourself or your friends, and have the birds drop all over them, too.”

  Esther snorted. “Talk about a photobomb.”

  Photobombs? Crap-loaded entertainment apps? Wow, was I out of touch.

  “Come on, boss,” Tuck said, “don’t you remember that mess at the Clothing Corral stores last summer? They made a whole line of Pigeon Droppings kids’ Tshirts with vaguely vulgar slogans printed on them.”

  I blinked. “Define ‘vaguely vulgar.’”

  “Let’s see . . .” Tuck tapped his chin. “‘My teacher is full of drop.’ ‘This is bull drop.’ And my favorite, ‘I used to give a drop.’”

  “That’s not vaguely vulgar, that is vulgar.”

  “Parent groups agreed,” Tuck said, emptying a dustbin into a plastic bag. “Teachers were outraged, too—”

  “And ThornE made a fortune,” Esther noted.

  Matt finally finished fixing the door while I’d closed the shutters against the draft. I had yet to find the chiming bell that had hung over the entrance for the past five decades, and asked everyone to keep an eye out for it.

  Together Matt and I began to right the overturned café tables. When he realized the legs were bent and wobbly on one of them, he grabbed our toolbox from the pantry and set to work adjusting the ancient bolts.

  “What were you and Thorner talking about before the blast?” Matt asked.

  “Coffee. He quizzed me, like everyone else. I thought he was a competitor out to steal our staff.”

  Tucker perked up. “Really?”

  “Forget about it. I would never have let Eric Thorner poach you.”

  “Well, not for nothing, CC, but there are worse fates than pulling shots at a billionaire’s espresso bar. Imagine the tips!”

  “I don’t know,” Nancy said. “His games are fun, but that guy was a royal pain at our counter. Every day, another weird drin
k order! Why? What for?”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” Matt replied. “Given the fireworks outside, I doubt you’ll be seeing the Quiz Master back here anytime soon.”

  “Coffee’s ready,” Esther called from the counter.

  Miraculously (or more like ironically), the century-old gas lines I was most concerned about had held fast against the blast, which meant we had boiling-hot water for a French-pressed pot.

  While Esther poured, I dug out every last treat in the pastry case. (Why not? We weren’t going to sell them anytime soon.) And Matt coaxed our fireplace into giving up more heat. Then we all huddled up.

  Hungry hands reached for cookies, muffins, and tarts. After a few quiet minutes of famished chewing and swallowing, my curiosity got the better of me.

  “So how do you know so much about Eric Thorner?” I asked Matt around a mouthful of happiness—a Cinnamon-Glazed French Apple Cake Square (a new addition to the pastry case thanks to a recipe from my aspiring-chef daughter).

  “I went to one of his product launch parties last fall,” he replied between bites of Pumpkin Spice Latte Bar.

  “Really? You never mentioned it.”

  Matt shrugged.

  “Why didn’t he recognize you?”

  “The party was held at Versailles, Clare. I was there with fourteen hundred of the man’s closest friends.”

  “But if you were invited, he must have known your name.”

  “My wife’s name—and her European trends editor’s. Bree and her employee were really the invitees. I went as Guest.”

  “So what exactly was this lavish party for? Not another bird-poo game.”

  “No . . .” Matt touched the screen of his smartphone and handed it over. “This is Thorner’s latest product.”

  I looked at the logo. “App-itite?”

  “Enter the zip code on the right. Use those three dropdown menus to pick a cuisine, a specific dish, and distance you’re willing to travel, and you get the details about every eatery that serves what you want.”

  “So it’s just a restaurant guide?”

  “More than a guide. You can make reservations, read reviews, write reviews, link to the eatery’s website, get directions from a Google map link, and ask the app questions about the menu. Don’t recognize an exotic dish, an oddball cocktail, or fine wine? Thorner’s app makes you an expert on it in seconds.”