The Monarch (29 page)

“What the fuck!” Lew heard someone yell, but he was too busy to figure out who it was. Arcing down, he snagged the chandelier, ignoring the pain in his damaged hands, and swung toward the wall with his momentum, bullets zipping past him as he reached the swing's apex. One of them cut through his collar and creased his shoulder. He kicked off the far wall, spinning around. The gunman's eyes widened as he saw what was coming, but realized it too late. Lew kicked hard with his boot and caught Dennis under the chin, lifting him off the ground. He slammed to the floor, either out cold or dead, but now Lew was swinging the other way with his back to the room. He braced himself for the gunshot from Claude.

At least Jonny will be able to save Natalie.

The gunshot came and went, but Lew didn't feel anything. As he swung back, he let go at the bottom of the arc and hit the ground in a crouch. He pulled his gun from his waistband and spun around to see if anything was coming at him, but all he saw was Claude lying on the floor, a hole in his forehead. Lew turned to thank Jonathan, but saw Emily holding the smoking gun, the reality of what she'd just done sinking in. Jonathan took the gun from her. Lew was surprised that, despite looking like her knees might buckle at any moment, she was holding her own. But they were so focused on Emily that they forgot about George.

Lew heard the gun's slide pull back behind him. He turned in time to see that George had grabbed one of the dropped guns. He wasn't coming at them, though. He turned toward the man he'd just called a brother, the man who had just hit him in the mouth, and returned the favor. Only George did it with three bullets into Dennis's face. He probably would have fired more, but Jonathan came up from behind him and stripped the gun away.

George turned toward them, panting with what appeared to Lew to be anger. He wiped a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of one hand, his eyes flicking back and forth among the intruders in his home. His glare finally came to rest on Lew.

“Who are you? How'd you get in my home?” George demanded.

“Yeah, you're welcome,” Lew said. “Maybe you'd like Dennis and his buddy Claude, there, back. Have yourselves a little pistol-­whipping party.”

“No, of course not,” George said, but Lew got the feeling his demeanor change was a show in reaction to his situation, not something he really felt. “My apologies. I think you can understand I'm not myself right now. Perhaps a reward, yes?”

These assholes, Lew thought. Always with the money.

“Sure,” Lew said. “How about three million euros?”

“Wait, how do you kno—­”

“What about Kring?” Lew said. The phony smile fell from George's face.

“Kring? How do you . . . wait, you're with
them
?” Jonathan pressed the still hot barrel of the gun against George's neck. “Ah!”

“The item you promised Kring. Or my friend here gets careless with the wiring again and burns this place to the ground,” Jonathan said.

“Your friend? But I thought you—­”

“We're just full of surprises,” Lew said, walking over beside Jonathan, though he wasn't sure he liked the idea of this guy knowing it was just he who had taken out his last collection. Then he remembered the image of Emily kneeling with a gun to her head. Nope, he liked this just fine.

“Nice, by the way,” Jonathan said, motioning at the still swinging chandelier.

“Thanks. I think I may need to change my pants.”

2:50
A.M.

J
ONATHAN PACED BEFORE
a massive oak desk, the automatic held slack at his side. George sat behind the desk, his hands flat on top as Jonathan had ordered after telling him to sit down. There was something odd about George's left hand. It looked natural, but its sheen and lack of movement betrayed the disguise. Jonathan could see by the myriad of photographs hung around the room showing George on various hunting parties that the prosthesis was a fairly recent occurrence.

Following the decor of the great room upstairs, the office was also a cocoon of oak and teak. The air smelled of polish and wood. High up on all four walls were mounted heads of George's kills. His hunting prizes, but Jonathan knew that, like other men he'd met over the years, George's real treasures were not on display.

“How is she doing?” Jonathan asked Lew. He was seated on the love seat beside Emily, who hadn't said much since the shooting. At least she didn't look nauseous anymore. Lew held one of her hands between both of his, which seemed to be helping.

“
She
is still trying to keep her bloody lunch down,” Emily responded.

“Sorry,” Jonathan said.

“Hell, she's doing better than me,” Lew said, stretching his neck. He reached under his collar, winced, and pulled slightly bloody fingers away. “Ain't serious but hurts like a . . .” Lew stopped himself with a side glance to Emily. “Just hurts. We'll both be better off once we get out of this freak show.”

Jonathan nodded. He'd never seen Lew affected by a woman like this. Lew had certainly had his share of dalliances, but his behavior and manner never faltered. In fact, it was usually magnified. Emily was special to him. And it seemed to be mutual.

“I hear that,” Jonathan said, offering Emily a slight smile. He turned back to the desk, rapping on it with the barrel of the gun. “Let's go. The item. Now.”

“This desk was a gift from a British earl. It's over three hundred years old,” George said to Jonathan, though he kept looking at Lew. Jonathan easily distinguished George's South African accent, a smattering of lightly rolled r's and hard consonants.

“Is that so?” Jonathan said. He raised the gun and fired a bullet into the wood, garnering George's full attention. The South African shielded his eyes from the explosion of splinters. “The item!”

“
Kak!
You're insane. How do I know you won't kill me the second I give it to you?” George said, looking at the ruined corner of the desk. A darkness slid across his eyes and Jonathan knew if given the chance, George would kill them all without batting an eye, which of course had been the plan all along. This was not a man used to being told what to do.

“You don't.”

“Give us the item or we'll call the authorities and you can explain how you helped kidnap a little girl and launch a terrorist attack on New York,” Jonathan said, playing the only hand he had. If George played hardball, they'd have to find the vault themselves and break into it. That would take time. Lots of it. Time they didn't have—­time Natalie didn't have.

“I had nothing to do with that. That was all Kring. All I did was tell him what I wanted. His methods were all his own. The man is diseased and unstable.”

“And you took advantage of it,” Jonathan said. “But he's not just crazy, he's motivated-­crazy. You had something he wanted. Something he thinks can save his life. He created a phony serial killer to find The Monarch. Killed dozens of ­people in the process. All so he could hand The Monarch over to you. But no matter what Kring paid or gave you, I'm guessing you wouldn't have given him what he wanted.”

George's stoic mouth formed what might be a smile. Jonathan hated men like this. Men who thought their power and money made them invincible and godlike. No matter what they did, their hands would always stay clean. They were just the orchestrators, the manipulators. Men like this were why he and Lew had created The Monarch in the first place.

“You're a monster,” Emily said. “You and Kring, both.”

“I say we kill him and get out of here,” Lew said, after whispering something to Emily.

“I've got a better idea,” Emily said. “Why don't we call Kring and see what he'd be willing to offer for his friend, here. I'm guessing he'd pay even more than he has already. And I'll bet there's a pretty good chance he knows where you keep the item.”

Jonathan nodded, understanding their ruse. He picked the phone up off the desk and pretended to dial Kring.

“Wait,” George said. Jonathan kept dialing. “
Ag
, wait, goddamn it!” George slammed his hand down on the receiver.

“Change of heart?”

“If I show you my vault, I need assurances you'll just take Kring's item. Nothing more.”

Jonathan looked at Lew and Emily. Lew nodded and shrugged.

“Deal,” Jonathan said.

3:20
A.M.

C
ANTON
G
EORGE LED
Lew, Jonathan, and Emily down a staircase hidden behind a gun display. The passageway was tight and smelled moist.

“How do you know Kring?” Jonathan asked as they walked down. After Kring's psychodrama of sending him in here, Jonathan had no idea if all, part, or none of what Kring had told him was true. Not that he thought he could trust George any better.

“We were business partners—­friends, actually. It was many years ago and we were both very different men back then,” George said. Jonathan detected something else in George's voice—­regret?

“You boys have a lovers' quarrel?” Lew goaded.

The billionaire gave that little almost-­smile again, showing he despised the fact someone would talk to him like this. Especially Lew. He stopped, turned, and looked Lew dead in the eye over Jonathan's shoulder.

“Actually, I left him for dead in the Papua New Guinea jungle. But the man just doesn't know when to die,” George said. Jonathan recalled his discussion with Sophia and knew what George meant.

“Move,” Jonathan said, shoving George ahead.

“Why the hell would you . . . Holy crap,” Lew said as they rounded the corner at the bottom of the stairs. At the end of a short hallway was the door to the vault. But this was unlike any private vault door Jonathan had ever seen. The door was round, six feet in diameter, and made of some kind of blue-­green metal, trimmed with copper. The metal shone even in the dim lighting. There were two combination tumblers set into the door, and a standard vault wheel. It looked more like the door to a bank vault. George's smile grew slightly, obviously proud of the impact his baby had on his unwanted guests.

“I hope you understand if I ask you to wait here while I open it,” George said. Jonathan didn't see the harm and stood with Lew a few feet back while George approached the behemoth. From the looks of it, the door weighed in at over a ton, so there was little chance George could pull the door open faster than they—­or their bullets—­could traverse the space between them.

Jonathan looked at Lew and nodded toward George. He wanted Lew to continue their conversation about Kring, prying out every morsel of information that he could. Lew got the message.

“So you were saying, you left your best friend to die in the jungle. Why?” Lew said.

“It wasn't quite that simple,” George said as he spun the first combination lock. “We were best friends back then and we'd made the same mistakes. We'd both played the part of billionaire playboy, ignoring the companies our fathers left to us. It was almost a competition to see who could destroy their family heritage first. As it turned out, we tied.

“Nathan heard about a cache of gold lost in the Papua New Guinea jungle during the war. If true, it was a treasure that could have saved both of us. Seeing our way of life coming very quickly to an end, we teamed up and went after it, spending every dime of what we had left. It was a foolish endeavor and I don't think we really expected to find anything. It was more a final adventure before reality came crashing down,” George said, moving to the second combination lock.

“Let me guess, you found the gold and left your friend to rot so you could keep it all,” Lew said.

“You're partly right,” George said, turning to face Lew. “We found the gold, all right. But what I didn't know was that Nathan had made an arrangement with our guides. Halfway down the mountain, tribesman surged out of the jungle. They spirited Nathan away and then proceeded to kill everything that moved. I lost most of my party, but our firepower managed to turn the tide. When it was over, I assumed Nathan was either dead or doomed—­the Papua New Guinea tribes back then still heavily practiced cannibalism—­and I wasn't about to wait around for the tribe to regroup so they could attack again. We left with the gold.

“Two years later, Nathan surfaced. He wanted his share. By then I'd learned what he'd tried to do, so I told him to go to hell. The only thing he had left was that island of his. I figured he'd retreat to it and die like he should have done years ago.”

“But he didn't,” Emily said.

“He found his father's collection,” Jonathan said.

“Yes,” George said, his face showing he was as surprised as Lew and Emily that Jonathan knew that part of the story. “The collection was more valuable than all the gold we'd found.”

George finished opening the second lock and then spun the vault's pegged wheel, clanks and scrapes echoing in the small space.

“You can imagine my surprise and delight when Nathan came to me six months ago. Apparently I had something he needed. He offered me millions, but I turned him down. Then I realized a man like Nathan, his network, and how he did business, was the answer I was looking for.”

“What was the question?” Lew asked.

“How to get revenge on The Monarch,” Emily said.

“Exactly,” George said, pulling on the massive vault door. Perfectly balanced, it didn't seem to take much effort at all to open it. As it swung open, lights inside the vault flickered to life. “But if I can't have that, I'll take solace in helping you destroy Nathan.”

“The enemy of my enemy,” Jonathan said, not really buying it. You didn't spend the time and money George had, just to suddenly abandon your goal for something else entirely.

“Maybe not friends,” George said, stepping into the vault. Just inside the door, he turned around and spread his arms. “But I'll settle for cohorts.”