Untouchable

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  He raised the glass of brandy in his hand. He smiled a cold smile, but there was a feverish excitement in his eyes.

  “Jack Lancaster,” Quinton said. “It’s been a while.”

  “Twenty-two years, eight months and five days since you torched the California compound, but who’s counting?” Jack said. “Where is Winter?”

  “Upstairs, at the moment. I can assure you that your little meditation guide is unharmed. My half brother and his wife are with her and they are both still alive, too. No point dumping hostages until it’s over. You never know when you might need one.”

  “Your goons tell me I should call you Lucan Tazewell.”

  “When we first met you knew me as Quinton Zane. Let’s go with that for tonight. But when this is over I will become Lucan Tazewell for real.”

  Jack angled his head toward the blazing fire. “Nice little Lucifer-reigning-in-hell thing you’ve got going on here. You always were big on the dramatic touches.”

  “I enjoy a good fire. I find it soothing. Now, I insist that you join me in a celebratory drink. We have a lot to talk about.” Quinton glanced at Devlin. “Untie his wrists so that he can have a drink like a civilized gentleman.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea to release him,” Devlin said. “We made sure he’s not carrying any weapons and he’s not wearing any communication tech, but just the same—”

  “I understand,” Quinton said. “You’re right. No sense taking chances. But the least you can do is cuff his hands in front so that he can have a drink with me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Devlin stepped back a couple of paces and leveled his pistol at Jack while Victoria produced a military-grade knife and sliced the zip tie.

  “That looks familiar,” Jack said. “Same brand of combat knife you gave Kendall Moseley. Speaking of which, that idiotic plan didn’t go well, did it? Whose idea was it, anyway?”

  Quinton clenched his jaw but he did not say anything.

  Jack smiled. “Figures.”

  “Arms straight out in front, wrists together,” Victoria ordered quickly, as if she was worried that if she didn’t intervene, there would be a fight.

  Jack held out his hands. Victoria cinched a new plastic zip tie around his wrists and stepped back.

  “Lancaster is secured as you requested, sir,” she announced.

  “Excellent,” Quinton said. “You and Devlin keep an eye on him but let us have a little space. Jack and I want to have a private conversation. We’ve got some catching up to do. It’s been over twenty-two years since we last saw each other.”

  Victoria looked at Jack. “Go ahead, but don’t try anything. I really can’t miss at this distance.”

  Jack raised his brows. “You do know that Zane has a long history of murdering the women who fall for his con, right?”

  Victoria slashed her gun across his face with such speed and force that all he could do was turn his head to the side at the last instant and go with the blow. His glasses flew off. He thought he heard them land somewhere on the wooden floor. He figured he had managed to save his teeth and probably his nose as well, but there was blood. He could feel it dripping down the side of his face.

  “Shut up,” Victoria snarled.

  “Take it easy, Victoria,” Quinton said mildly. “Please pick up Jack’s glasses and give them back to him. I don’t want him to miss a thing tonight.”

  Victoria did not move. It was Devlin who scooped up the glasses and put them in Jack’s hands. Astonishingly, the lenses were still in the frames.

  “Jack’s opinion of me is somewhat conflicted,” Quinton continued. “His mother and I were quite close at one time, but she proved to be . . . untrustworthy.”

  Jack put on the glasses. “For a while you conned her into thinking you could protect her but she was never one of your women and in the end she knew you for what you are.” He glanced at the ring on Quinton’s hand. “Family crest?”

  Quinton was briefly surprised by the question. He glanced at the ring and then smiled. “Yes. I ordered it made especially for me.”

  “Can’t quite make it out from this distance but I’d say there’s a ninety-six percent chance that it’s a phoenix rising from the ashes.”

  For the first time, Quinton looked somewhat less than triumphant. The fever in his eyes got a little hotter.

  “That was a very good guess,” he said.

  “Not really. I just went with the odds.”

  “What odds?”

  “You’re a card-carrying pyro. You’ve always had a thing for fire. It just seemed logical that you’d choose a phoenix for your fake family crest.”

  Quinton did not rise to the bait.

  “Nothing like fire when it comes to erasing the past,” he said calmly.

  He released his grip on the mantel and crossed the short distance to the tray that held the bottle of brandy. He poured a large glass and set it down on the tray.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Help yourself. My security people are very good but it’s probably just as well that you and I keep some distance between us. It would be a shame to kill you before we finish our drinks.”

  “Let’s stop playing games,” Jack said. “You’ve got me, Zane. You don’t need Winter and the Tazewells.”

  “You know I can’t let any of them go. They’ve seen too much and they know too much. But if it’s any consolation, I’ll make sure Victoria takes care of your little meditation guide before I torch the house. It will be quick. Can’t guarantee that it will be painless. I’ve never experienced a bullet in the head. But I’m sure it will be quick. Victoria is an excellent shot.”

  Jack fought back the tide of rage and resisted the nearly overwhelming urge to hurl himself at Zane. He could do the probability math better than anyone and he knew there was no chance that he would reach Zane before Devlin and Victoria gunned him down.

  He crossed the room to the drinks cart, picked up the brandy with his bound hands and took a sip. The stuff burned all the way down. Liquid fire. He glanced at the label.

  “This is very good brandy,” he said.

  “Of course. It belonged to my father. Only the best for dear old dad.”

  “I know.” Jack managed another smile. “I found his body, by the way.”

  Quinton tensed. So did Devlin and Victoria. Score one for me, Jack thought. None of them had seen that coming. It was time to rattle Zane; time to destabilize the situation.

  “I assume your father wised up to the fact that you were going to destroy him so he tried to kill you,” he said. “Did the Armani twins stop him or did you shoot him yourself? I could tell there was one hell of a fight in that room at the Sonoma house.”

  Quinton’s jaw flexed. A hot fury flashed through his eyes. “You really are good at reading a crime scene, Professor Lancaster. How did you discover the Tazewell connection?”

  “Solved an arson case that was going cold fast,” Jack said. “The murder of Jessica Pitt.”

  “Pitt. How the fuck did you—? Never mind. What’s done is done. I always knew you were the dangerous one.”

  “You must have been severely disappointed when you ended up killing your biological father with a gun. I’m sure you would have preferred to use fire, the way you did with the couple that adopted you.”

  “Well, shit,” Quinton said. Venom dripped on the words. “You discovered my origin story. Congratulations. I thought I had scrubbed my past very clean.”

  “Murder always leaves a stain.”

  Quinton got himself back under control with a visible effort. “I will admit I regret that Grayson Fitzgerald Tazewell isn’t here to join us for a farewell drink. But he died knowing that I was going to claim his empire and everything that went with it.”

  “Do you really think you can get away with murdering all of us? Winter, your brother, his wife and me?
”

  “Give me some credit, Jack. We both know that I can make a fire look good. This is a very old house that hasn’t been maintained in decades. The authorities won’t be surprised that it burned to the ground.”

  “Yeah, I figured that was the plan when I saw the stack of one-gallon containers of gasoline out in the hall. But what about all the bodies, Zane? How do you plan to explain them?”

  “What bodies? No one knows that the Tazewells and Winter Meadows and you were ever on this island, so it’s unlikely that anyone will go looking for bodies in the rubble. But if the bodies do come to light, the explanation is simple. The Tazewells came here with another couple to see about acquiring the old Tazewell family property. Sadly, they tried to start a fire on the old hearth and it got out of control.”

  “And my brothers?”

  “Once you are out of the picture, I can take my time with Cabot Sutter and Max Cutler. There’s nothing complicated here. I’ll pick them off one by one. When it’s over I’ll control everything that should have been mine from birth—Tazewell Global, the big houses, the yacht, the corporate jet—all of it. And I will own it all in my real name, Lucan Tazewell.”

  “Huh.” Jack raised his glass in his cuffed hands to examine the brandy in the firelight. The flames rendered the color of the potent spirits a deep amber. “You really must be batshit crazy to think that no one will suspect you’re behind the deaths of your whole family, not to mention a few extra people who got in your way.”

  “You mean Ms. Meadows and yourself.”

  “Not just us.” Jack glanced at Victoria and Devlin. “I was including the Armani twins.”

  “Shut up,” Victoria hissed. She slipped her pistol out of its holster. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, come on,” Jack said. “You’re both obviously professionals. You know as well as I do that if Zane is going to make the whole phoenix-out-of-the-ashes thing work, he can’t leave anyone behind who knows the truth about what is going to happen here tonight. It would give you too much leverage over him. Talk about blackmail material.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Devlin said. “Tell him the whole plan, Mr. Zane.”

  Quinton chuckled. “Lancaster is just trying to play you, Devlin. Ignore him. The truth is, you and Victoria are the only ones I can trust. When this is over, you both become partners in the company.”

  Jack smiled a little and reached for the brandy bottle to top off his glass.

  “Isn’t it going to look a little odd when everyone finds out that the entire Tazewell clan has been wiped out except for you, Zane?” he asked.

  “Don’t worry about me, Jack. We both know I can take care of myself. When it’s all said and done, I’ll have an ironclad alibi—I was on the Tazewell yacht when the tragedy occurred. But I do have a question for you.”

  “Yeah?” Jack pretended to take a small sip of the brandy. He lowered the glass. “What is it?”

  Quinton’s eyes tightened. “How did you connect me to Jessica Pitt?”

  “Sloppy work on your part. That fire out in the Nevada desert had your fingerprints all over it. One thing led to another. Pretty straightforward stuff, really. Pyros are so predictable.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Why would I lie? Jessica Pitt was apparently very good when it came to financial matters. Obviously at some point in her marriage to Grayson Tazewell she discovered that he had gotten a woman pregnant years earlier and that the baby had disappeared in a black market adoption. When Tazewell dumped her, Jessica went looking for the kid. She hit a couple of your Darknet trip wires. You noticed and made contact. It was a match made in hell.”

  “Thanks to Jessica, I found out that the drug-addicted whore who gave me birth first tried to blackmail Tazewell,” Quinton said. “When that failed, she sold me for money to buy another fix, probably the one that killed her. I like to think it was that one, at any rate. Call me sentimental.”

  “You and Jessica Pitt must have made a good team for a while,” Jack said. “She wanted revenge almost as badly as you did. She had all the information you needed to guide Tazewell Global right to the brink of bankruptcy. At which point you stepped in to save the family business.”

  “Discreetly, of course. I knew I would never be able to move out of the shadows until I got rid of you and Cutler and Sutter.”

  “Don’t forget Anson Salinas.”

  “Salinas is an old man. He was never anything more than a small-town cop; never a serious threat. But you and your foster brothers are a problem. You have been all along. I also knew that of the three of you, I had to take you out first because you were the one who was most likely to see me coming.”

  “And I did, because you tried to use Winter Meadows to get to me,” Jack said. “Of all the mistakes you’ve made in this project that was the biggest one.”

  “I admit a couple of things went wrong early on, but now everything is coming together exactly as I intended.”

  “I want to see Winter.”

  “Certainly. In fact, I’ll enjoy watching the two of you make your final good-byes. Victoria, go upstairs and get Ms. Meadows. Bring her down here.”

  Victoria hesitated. “Are you sure that’s a good idea, sir?”

  “Get her,” Quinton snapped.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Zane couldn’t resist feasting on the added bit of drama, Jack thought. So predictable.

  Victoria holstered her pistol and went swiftly out of the room. Jack heard her footsteps echo in the hall and then on the stairs. Devlin did not say anything but something about the set of his shoulders made it clear he was uneasy with the whole situation and growing more so by the minute.

  Maybe it was finally dawning on him that his employer was not entirely sane. An obsession with revenge plays havoc with logic and common sense. Devlin had to know that. Given his profession, he had probably worked for more than one obsessed client.

  Jack looked at Quinton. “I answered your question. Now it’s your turn. Why did you murder my mother that night before you set fire to the compound?”

  Quinton was startled. But in the next instant his face was transformed into a mask of rage.

  “Your mother was a fucking magician when it came to calculating probabilities and odds,” he said. “She could have made a fortune for me in the world of online gambling. But she betrayed me.”

  “You mean she figured out that you were nothing more than a con man. She realized that you had lied to her.”

  “She tried to kill me.”

  The words were etched in white-hot fury.

  “Wow,” Jack said. “I did not see that coming. Unfortunately, she failed.”

  “The bitch came at me with a fucking kitchen knife.” Quinton pulled himself together. “It was pure luck that I survived.”

  “You murdered her that night. And then you torched the compound.”

  “I had no choice,” Quinton said. “I had begun to suspect that some of the women were plotting against me. After your mother tried to gut me I realized that it was all coming apart. I had no choice but to destroy everything I had built so I could start fresh. I knew I couldn’t trust anyone in that compound. They were all witnesses.”

  “Including the kids you locked in the barn.”

  “Especially you,” Quinton said. “But soon you’ll be dead. This time there will be no witnesses left to haunt me.”

  “Except for the Armani twins, of course,” Jack said.

  Devlin’s face tightened. “Shut up.”

  Footsteps sounded on the stairs again. A few seconds later they echoed in the hall. Two people this time. Jack looked toward the arched opening. So did Quinton.

  Winter came to a halt just inside the cavernous room. Her hair had come undone at some point and now hung in wild, tangled tendrils around her dirt-smudged f
ace. She had every right to looked frantic and desperate—to look like a victim. She was a hostage, after all. But with the exception of her lightning-fierce eyes, everything about her radiated the cool, composed, unnervingly calm expression of a woman who could be killed but never conquered.

  She looked magnificent, Jack thought.

  “Are you all right, Winter?” he asked quietly.

  “The accommodations are less than one-star but, yes, I’m okay. So are Easton and Rebecca.”

  “Can I assume that you’ve been reading to Victoria?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact,” Winter said. “We’ve seen a lot of Victoria upstairs. Zane assigned her the job of keeping an eye on the hostages. He probably figured that was women’s work. So, yes, she knows the story by heart. Shouldn’t be any problem when she takes the test. Didn’t get the chance to read to the others, though.”

  “One down, two to go. That’s what I figured when I got your message. Nice work, by the way.”

  Winter gave him a blazing smile. “Told you I was good.”

  Quinton moved one hand in a short, chopping action. “Stop the stupid chatter, both of you.”

  A faint whop-whop sounded in the distance.

  Devlin glanced toward one of the few uncovered windows. There was nothing to be seen in the deep shadows cast by the trees and the gathering darkness of the September evening, but the whop-whop was getting louder, coming in fast.

  “Helo,” Devlin announced in grim tones. “What the hell—?”

  Quinton spared him a brief, annoyed glance. “It’s either a military helicopter from the naval air station on Whidbey Island or the Coast Guard. Just routine maneuvers. Go ahead, Lancaster, say good-bye to your little meditation instructor.”

  Jack picked up the bottle of hundred-and-fifty-proof brandy.

  “Showtime, Winter,” he said.

  “Victoria,” Winter said, “Winnie-the-Pooh.”

  The effect on Victoria was electrifying.

  She froze and gazed into some empty place in the middle of the room.

  “We have to leave now, Devlin,” she said. Her voice was utterly neutral. “He lied to us. It’s a setup. We’re here because he needs someone to take the fall.”