King's Ransom: (Tall, Dark and Dangerous Book 13)

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Still, he knew Tash had been referring to the part of the movie where the hero left the injured heroine in a cave, went to get help, and instead had a massive fail, due to getting his ass locked up in prison. Spoiler alert: that did not end well for the heroine.

  An irony was that Thomas had found a cave—more like a glacial dump of huge slabs of granite and feldspar that created a cavern-like space—on the path he’d taken from the newly built hide to the ski lodge. He’d made note of it as a potential Plan B shelter—and now that he was in full Plan B mode, it would certainly be better than the hide as the temperature continued to drop.

  The sun had long since set and it was dark, but the clouds were finally thinning enough to give a hint of the moon as Thomas narrowed his perimeter circle around the hide. When he was close enough, he gave Tasha the signal they’d agreed upon before he’d left—a double owl, basic, true, because face it, his beach-boy upbringing gave him a masterful seagull, which wouldn’t play well here in the mountains.

  The clouds parted for the moonlight with perfect timing as Thomas pulled back the branches of the hide. Tasha’s relief was clearly visible in her wide eyes as he slipped in beside her.

  “I knew you’d find me,” she said. “I didn’t know how you were going to do it in the dark, but worst case you’d find me in the morning. Assuming you weren’t, you know, in prison somewhere.”

  “I’m sorry I took so long. Are you freezing?”

  “Not too badly. The rocks lasted for a while.”

  He put the branches in place overhead, and that plus a shift in the clouds plunged them back into full shadow.

  But not before she’d seen the hunting rifle he was carrying—and the boots on his feet. Boots that were too small, so he’d cut holes in the toes to give himself the needed room. She was smart, so she surely realized that meant he’d also picked up a knife.

  “Whoa,” she said. “You stopped at the 7-11, but you didn’t get me a coffee?” She put her arms around him in the darkness, hugging him tightly. “What happened? Are you all right?”

  As Thomas hugged her back, he knew what she thought—that he’d bumped into one of her abductors and took him out. He also knew that killing one of the hostiles wouldn’t put him in his feels in the slightest, but she was highly sensitive to the taking lives part of his job description as a SEAL. So he worked to clear that up as quickly as possible. “The compound was deserted—I took time to check. We were right—it’s been burned. There was only one casualty—one man, dead when I found him, in the brush near the driveway, like he was trying to fight back. Bullets to the upper chest.” It was messy, not the double-pop of professionals.

  “Oh my God, that’s terrible,” she said, then asked, “But Ted and his family got away?”

  Thomas hesitated. She pulled back and he quickly let her go as she came up with alternatives herself.

  “Or they were taken by whoever burned the place,” she said. “Or they burned to death in the fire.”

  “That last one’s highly unlikely.” He didn’t hesitate this time. “Sure, we could come up with a scenario where the entire security detail—except for one man—was taken out by, I don’t know, some kind of grenade or missile, while they were all—except that one guy—inside the lodge? Yeah, no, security leaders would have placed a team on the perimeter, a team inside, while another team took a break. They’re never all in one location at the same time, and that makes option B less likely, too. The entire security detail, what, surrendered? Nah.”

  “Unless the attackers took the bodies, and missed that one guy.”

  “There’d be blood on the ground where the others fell.”

  “Washed away by the rain.”

  “There hasn’t been that much rain,” he countered. “Believe me. Blood is...” He decided not to finish that sentence. She knew he was a hospital corpsman, and that his Believe me could be taken at face value.

  “What if it was an inside job,” Tasha speculated. “And the security team—”

  Thomas cut her off. “The entire team?”

  “Except that one man.”

  “Highly unlikely,” he said again. “Even if only half of them were working for the abductors—and I’m sorry, that’s not really possible with the vetting that’s done—there’d be a much higher body count.”

  “Unless they tied up the half that weren’t in on it, and locked them in the burning building—” She cut herself off. “Okay, clearly I had too much time to think about this. What else did you find? You said the lodge was deserted, can we go there, find the kitchen, maybe part of the building still has a roof and four walls...?”

  “It’s badly burned,” Thomas told her grimly. “There was definitely chemical accelerant involved, for that level of destruction. And what’s left isn’t safe. Because yeah, I was hoping to find us some food, but nope.”

  “Well, at least you got a rifle,” she pointed out.

  “We’re a little short of ammo,” he said. “I’ve got two bullets.”

  “Oh, perfect, one for each of us,” she said.

  “Don’t even joke about that,” he shot back.

  “Sorry,” she said immediately. “Sorry, I’m... scared, so I try to pretend... I’m not.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Thomas said quietly. “But I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” The good news was that the entire time he was out in the woods, he hadn’t heard or seen even the slightest sign of anyone. He’d half-expected the Ustanzian compound to be crawling with hostiles. But whoever had lit the fire and killed the dead man had bugged out. Which didn’t mean entire squads of soldiers weren’t regrouping, three miles down the road. But that was a problem for later. “We need food, we need shelter—and I’m sorry, but not in that order. It’s gonna get cold tonight. I found a cave where we can—”

  “We should go to the bomb shelter,” Tasha interrupted him. “Ted made me memorize the entry code, in case there was trouble. Seven two two eight. I thought he was being paranoid. Or at least mildly obsessed with the idea that someone would try to kill him to take power. Like, he’d watched too many episodes of Game of Thrones—”

  “Wait a minute,” Thomas interrupted her. “Back up. Rewind. Bomb shelter? This compound doesn’t have a bomb shelter.”

  “Yeah it does,” Tasha said. The moon had come out again, brightly enough this time so that he could see her face, even through the branches. She was completely serious.

  “I think maybe Ted was...” He shook his head.

  “Punking me?” she asked. “No. Ted isn’t... He wouldn’t... Look, he said it was nine-hundred and twenty-four meters from the northwest corner of the lodge—he made me memorize that, too.”

  She said it as if that precise detail proved it was true. But the best con jobs were extremely explicit with the fake info given. “It wasn’t in any of the blueprints I saw,” Thomas told her.

  “Well, it wouldn’t be if it was, you know, purposely kept secret,” she theorized.

  “From the entire security team?” Thomas couldn’t believe that. He didn’t dare, because God, a bomb shelter would be stocked with food and water and warm blankets and clothes. And it would absolutely have a working radio.

  “Ted told me his grandfather built it back in the early 1960s—during Bay of Pigs,” Tasha told him. “And his uncle—his namesake, who was the Crown Prince, but he died...? He updated it in... the 90s, I think. He used it, right up until he died—the original Tedric—as a, well, a private place to have sex with his friends’ wives. Well, I guess friends isn’t quite the right word, is it? Subjects? Victims? Uncle Tedric was a major asshole.”

  And okay. “I’m gonna go check it out.” Thomas picked up the rifle, and held it out to her.

  But she didn’t reach to take it. In fact, she leaned away from him, giving him full-on stank face. “Not a chance that I’m carrying that for you, Lieutenant, because I’m coming, too,” she said.

  “If it’s not there—”

  “It’s there,” she i
nsisted, pushing aside the branches overhead as she stood up and stepped out of the hide.

  “—our best shot has us checking out that cave. And if that doesn’t work as a shelter, we’re heading back to the airfield. I’m trying to save you a coupla extra miles of walking.” He followed her, tucking the weapon under his right arm.

  “It’s. There. Also? Hello. I’m not the one with a head injury, who hasn’t slept in two days,” she pointed out, stamping a bit to warm her feet.

  “I’m fine,” he said for what felt like the thousandth time.

  “Great,” Tash said. “I am, too. Let’s do this. Let’s go.”

  She gestured for him to lead the way back to the burned out compound, so he did, hoping like hell that Ted hadn’t been bullshitting Tash, but already finessing his Plan B, just in case.

  Chapter Eleven

  “I’ll be damned,” Thomas said, true wonder in his voice. “Ted wasn’t kidding.”

  The bulkhead door, a smallish rectangle of metal surrounded by a bulwark of concrete, was built directly into the side of the hill. It had a simple pull handle and no obvious lock.

  He tried it, but it didn’t open. It didn’t even budge.

  “There should be a keypad around here somewhere,” Tasha said.

  The heavy clouds were finally thinning enough for the moon to go from hazy to bright and back as she searched the edges of the concrete for...

  “Here it is.” It was old-school, with a flip-up cover—the kind of keypad you might see on the outside of a garage, to access an automatic garage door opener. And suddenly the low-tech four-digit security code made sense. Tasha opened the cover and keyed the numbers in.

  Nothing happened. No light switching on, no whirring motor—nothing but a very small, barely audible click.

  That seemed to be good enough for Thomas, who pulled on the handle again. This time, the door creaked open. “I’ll be damned,” he said again. “Thank you, Ted.”

  Concrete steps—five of them—led down to what looked like a small concrete landing. Tasha ducked her head and stepped inside. Her movement triggered a motion sensor, because low-level lights clicked on, revealing another set of stairs—a longer than full set—leading down toward darkness.

  “Tash, wait for me,” Thomas ordered, twisting his shoulders to get himself through the hobbit-sized opening, and then pulling the door closed behind him.

  There was another keypad on the wall by the door, and as he flipped that cover up, Tasha told him, “Seven two two eight.”

  “I remember,” he said, already done keying in the numbers.

  There was another small click—slightly louder from in here. Thomas tested the door, and yes, he’d locked it behind them.

  For the first time since the roadblock, they were at least marginally safe, and Tasha’s relief was immediate. Which left her yawning hunger front and center—more powerful even than the pain from her blister. “Please God, let there be a pallet of survivalist supplies in here.”

  She started for the stairs, but Thomas caught her by the arm. “I’m on point,” he said, which was SEAL-speak for Me first.

  It made sense because he was carrying their only weapon. Still... “I’m pretty sure we’re alone in here.”

  “I agree,” he countered. “But until we’re both absolutely sure, I’m on point.”

  She stepped back, letting him go ahead, which was just as well. If there were spiders, he’d meet them first.

  Except, this place was cobweb free. In fact, for a dank hole in the ground, it was very clean. The concrete had been recently painted. No dust, no dirt. And it was much warmer than she’d expected. Even if these stairs led nowhere, they could sleep on this landing and not freeze to death.

  As Tasha followed Thomas down the rather steep stairs, more lights powered on. Now she could see another smaller landing about twenty more steps down, with a door that was far more bomb-shelter appropriate than the little metal thing that let them in from the outside. This door was heavy and thick, with a lock that looked suitable for a bank vault.

  It was shut, but not locked, thank goodness. It creaked loudly as Thomas pushed it open.

  “That’s a sound that makes you wonder if you’ve accidentally become a character in a horror movie,” she whispered.

  Thomas might’ve laughed—it was hard to tell, because he’d jacked up the already high volume of his inner Navy SEAL. As she watched, he went through the open door in full kick-ass mode: weapon up, his body tight and ready for whatever was lurking there in the darkness.

  It was hot as hell, even with him dressed in... what had he called it? His clown clothes.

  But his movement triggered more of those sensors, and lights flickered on, revealing...

  Graceland...?

  The avocado green shag carpeting was missing, and there were other obvious updates, but the modest-sized room definitely had an Elvis’s-finished-basement-rec-room feel. It held a huge leather sectional sofa that must’ve been built down there, and a 90s-era projector TV with an entire wall dedicated to the screen. Another wall had a built-in bookshelf filled with VCR tapes, DVDs, and paperback novels.

  The floor was gleaming hardwood with a few area rugs here and there, and all of the lighting was romantically dim. Tasha found the switch and turned it up, brightening the room as Thomas methodically went through each of the four doorways that lined the two farthest walls.

  “Kitchen and supply pantry,” he announced, before moving on to, “Bedroom—whoa,” and “Bathroom,” and “Utility room with more storage—all clear.”

  Tash beelined for the kitchen, which despite being small was fully appointed and very high-end 90s, with white cabinets and appliances, dark gray granite countertops, and a stainless steel sink. There was a built-in wine fridge that was fully stocked and running, and when she turned on the kitchen tap, water came rushing out.

  “There’s running water!” she announced loudly as she moved to open the larger fridge—how on earth had they gotten that down there? During the renovations in the 90s, they must’ve opened and then rebuilt the concrete bulkhead.

  The light came on as the refrigerator door opened. It was sparkling clean and mostly empty, except for an unopened, recently-dated bottle of orange juice and a box of Ted’s favorite brand of almond milk. Ugh. She opened the freezer—nothing but ice.

  “Don’t drink from the tap until I check the water supply,” Thomas shouted back. “I saw some cases of bottled water in the pantry.”

  Tash turned off the faucet, where—holy crap!—the water was actually starting to come out warm, and went into the separate pantry, which was a larger room than the actual kitchen. It had rows of shelving, again mostly empty, but not entirely.

  And there it was—four full cases of spring water. Tasha tore open the heavy plastic cover. “I found the bottled water!” she shouted to Thomas. She grabbed, opened, and chugged, even as she turned to survey the rest of the supplies.

  One shelf had an entire very-top-shelf-of-a-five-star-hotel-bar’s worth of gin, vodka, whiskey and more, plus mixers in every flavor. Another had paper goods—toilet paper, paper towels, napkins in all sizes, plus feminine products that were definitely leftovers from the 1990s, an extensive first-aid kit in a plastic container, and yup, a large supply of condoms, tucked neatly away behind the TP. Those were in new-looking boxes with expiration dates far out into the future, which was another rather large clue that her Ted had kept this place going as a... a... sex-pod long after his decadent Uncle Ted had died.

  Which absolutely made sense, considering.

  The last occupied shelf held drink stirrers and an actual package of little drink umbrellas. Ah! Jars upon jars of green olives and peanuts. Tasha cracked a peanut jar open and eagerly ate a handful, and then another. It was possible nothing had ever tasted so good.

  “I’m not finding a lot of real food,” she shouted with her mouth full, “but we’ve got peanuts, hallelujah! Also, we’re good to go if we want cocktails.”

 
Maybe there was some real food stored in the kitchen cabinets, to go along with that OJ and almond milk that had been in the fridge. Tash grabbed another bottle of water and went back into the kitchen and opened cabinet doors one by one to find dishes and mugs and glasses of all varieties from highballs to martini glasses to the most delicate, long-stemmed wine goblets.

  A cabinet with spices—getting closer...

  The next cabinet was her holy grail. It held one of those large, round containers of instant oatmeal, an unopened box of corn flakes, several more packaged boxes of almond milk, a small tin of English breakfast tea, and some Starbucks instant coffee packs—medium roast.

  Ted had definitely been down here very recently, no doubt prepping for an early morning rendezvous, complete with his idea of the perfect—i.e. easy—breakfast.

  “I haven’t found a radio,” Thomas said, coming into the kitchen. “Have you seen one?”

  “No, but I haven’t been looking.” Tash handed him the bottle of water she’d grabbed for him.

  “Thanks,” he said, and immediately drank it as she ate more peanuts from the jar, rattling them at him enticingly.

  “Oh, my God,” he said, coming up for air, the water bottle drained. “Yes, please.”

  Tasha handed him the peanuts. “There’s also this.” She showed him the cereal, and then opened the fridge, too, before quickly going through the rest of the kitchen. But each new cabinet was as empty as the last. “Other than that, it’s peanuts and olives. Do olives count as vegetables, in terms of preventing scurvy?”

  “No one’s getting scurvy.” Thomas handed her back the jar and went to look for a radio in the pantry. “Besides, wasn’t that OJ in the fridge? I think we’re safe.”