Illicit Intent, page 17
Painter-Man came at Tox, and Calliope shouted a warning, but Tox was ready. The knife came around in a swipe at his midsection. Tox dodged it, moving with the motion of the weapon, then spun, and in a series of lightning moves that looked to Calliope like Judo, he peppered the attacker with quick sharp strikes to his eye, his solar plexus, and finally his windpipe. Tox was pure poetry, hitting and retreating like he was moving in fast-motion. The brute dropped the knife and fell to his knees clutching his throat, gasping for breath. Tox kicked him in his stomach and looked at Calliope with a placid expression.
“You, okay?”
Calliope gave him a jerky nod.
“Can you scare up some twine or rope?”
Another nod and Calliope opened the junk drawer, nudged aside the broken disposable cell phone and a tape measure, and retrieved a spool of packing twine. Tox secured the two men as the wail of sirens sounded in the distance. After some convincing, Coco released her captive and Tox hogtied him as well. The police announced themselves and Tox waved them in just as the oven timer sounded with a bing.
Once they had explained what had happened and the police had taken their statements and hauled the three intruders away, Calliope went to Tox and wrapped her arms around his waist. Tox returned the embrace. Neither spoke. They simply stood in the middle of her kitchen in the circle of each other’s arms, Tox’s chin on her head, her cheek on his chest. Finally, Calliope spoke.
“How’d you get here so fast?”
“Forgot my wallet.” He nodded to his jacket hanging over a chair.
“Thank God.”
“I didn’t get your nutmeg.” As he intended, Calliope laughed.
“They wanted my old phone, but it got lost when I ran from those jerks the first time. Why would they even want it?” Calliope thought for a moment about her life, her family. Was something more going on here? She dismissed the thought as quickly as she had entertained it.
She set about straightening the mess in her kitchen. She picked up the plastic tube. Just as she was about to finally toss it in the recycle bin, something caught her eye.
“Hey, Tox?”
“Yeah?”
“There’s something in this tube.”
She held up the cylinder, and Tox saw what she meant. The edge of a paper was just peeking out.
“That creep must have jarred it loose when he banged it on the table.”
Tox fought back the rage he felt at the thought of someone threatening Calliope and reached out, running his finger along the edge of the paper.
“Let’s take it in the dining room and see what we’ve got.”
Calliope started to follow him out of the kitchen, but Tox remained where he was.
“Don’t forget our treat.”
Calliope gave him an exasperated eye roll and quickly put the sugar and water in the pan to do their thing. Moments later she added an orange rind and a touch of cinnamon, then poured the syrup over the baked custard. Tox deftly moved around her and grabbed plates and forks, correctly guessing the cabinet and drawer where they were stored.
In the dining room, Calliope set the galaktoboureko on the table, the cylinder next to the pan, and cut a small slice. Tox forked the portion, before she could transfer it to the plate, and ate the entire square. He chewed and swallowed. He didn’t say anything for a long moment, then he cupped her face in his big hands and kissed her. “That tastes like heaven.”
He could have been referring to the dessert or the kiss.
She didn’t reply, but he noticed her blush as she set about cutting him a square the size of his plate, then reaching for the plastic tube. It was a true testament to his curiosity that he forewent another bite to watch her extract the contents.
“It’s attached to the inside.”
Tox took the tube and examined it. “Some sort of temporary adhesive.” He carefully detached the paper. Papers, actually. He unrolled the two pages of very old, very fragile drawing paper, each a little larger than a standard sheet of printer paper. He set them side by side on the dining table and carefully weighted the edges with candlesticks.
“Huh.”
Tox forked and ate bite after bite of their dessert as he examined their discovery. They weren’t “doodles,” per se. Tox thought they looked more like practice. As if an art teacher asked a student to draw an elephant and the kid tried a couple of times on scrap paper before actually turning it in. Strangely, both sketches were almost identical. Each section of the paper had different things drawn: in the lower-left corner, which had been badly damaged on both pages, there were ship masts. Churning smokestacks were drawn in the bottom center. Above the ships, a dancing couple. In the lower right was what looked to be the beginning of an orchestra pit; the top of a harp and the head of a musician peeking out. Tox imagined the artist had been about to paint a scene from a fancy party or a royal visit, and this was what he or she had sketched on. He liked the drawings; he liked their potential: the fact that they were incomplete but hinted at something wonderful. Still, he acknowledged, even if Da Vinci himself had drawn these, they wouldn’t be worth much. The charcoal had smeared, one was torn and the other looked like something had spilled along the bottom.
“What do you make of them?” Tox asked.
“They’re pretty beat up, but so cool. It’s like getting a peek into an artist’s mind. All these scattered thoughts…”
“They have to be important. I mean, someone went to a lot of trouble to conceal them.”
“There was another painting in there, a cheap replica according to Phipps,” Calliope added.
“Let me call Ren. If anybody knows what these are, it’ll be him. I’ll update Nathan as well.”
Tox walked to the corner of the dining room. He held the phone to his ear with one hand and drummed the wall with the other, those long thick fingers thump thump thumping on the plaster. Calliope tugged on her lower lip with her finger and thumb and drank him in. Can talking on the phone be sexy? She flashed to those martial arts moves, his ferocious defense of her. He hadn’t erupted, but the lava beneath the surface had sputtered and spewed. God, how she wanted this man.
He pocketed his phone and returned to her side.
“Ren’s on a job. Back in a couple days. We’ll keep an eye on them until then.”
They stood shoulder to shoulder staring at the two drawings side-by-side on the table.
Calliope sighed. “They’re pretty trashed, but there’s something about them that’s kind of …”
They spoke simultaneously. “Magical.”
Stop, stare, smile.
Then Calliope cast a bashful glance back to the table, scanning the drawings, the pan of pastry, their plates.
“Hey, Tox?”
“Hmmm?”
“Did you eat the entire thing?”
New York City
April 25
Roman Block entered the lobby of the Peninsula Hotel like he owned the place and strode to the elevator. He was registered under his own name; he had a legitimate reason for being in Manhattan. He had never attended a National Builders’ Conference dinner, but it was a well-timed reason to be in the City. As he rode the elevator to the seventh floor he sighed wearily, imagining the tedious speakers and presentations he would have to endure, but it was a small price to pay if someone connected the dots. He entered his perfectly average $1,100-a-night room and sank onto the sofa in the small sitting area. His men had no doubt been subdued by the giant and his attack dog. He wasn’t worried about them, though. He always made sure he outsourced work of this nature to men with loved ones; the veiled threat to their families would keep their mouths shut tight. Calliope Garland, however, was a problem.
He hadn’t planned on letting her survive the home invasion—a woman living alone falling victim to violent crime—so now…He had a problem. Roman seethed. She had the phone he needed. She just didn’t know its value; her desperation when she mentioned it proved that. This woman had the photo, the key to millions, possibly billions in assets, but she had seen him. She could identify him. He’d find the phone, but a witness could do so much more damage than the lost assets. She was a loose end that was unacceptable. Fortunately, Roman knew exactly how to deal with loose ends.
Somewhere outside Beaufort, South Carolina
April 26
Charlie Bishop, Nathan’s uncle and mentor lived in the quiet fishing hamlet of Royal Beach, South Carolina located on the northwestern tip of Pritchett’s Island, a South Carolina barrier island. It was Charlie who had found the location ten miles inland that would be the new home of Bishop Security. The school, built in a farming community in the sixties, had been abandoned when districts consolidated and mandatory renovations were deemed cost-prohibitive.
Nathan Bishop stood in the back of what was once the Samuel Henry Dickson High School, watching the workmen hang the cargo net for the obstacle course. After nearly a year of planning, additions, and renovations the Bishop Security compound was nearing completion. His self-appointed foreman, Hercules Reynolds, directed the men carrying fitness equipment into the gym. Herc was a recently discharged marine sniper who had been instrumental in helping Nathan and his team bring down an arms dealer. He also happened to be his Uncle Charlie’s step-grandson. So, that made him Nathan’s...first step-cousin once removed? Step-second cousin?
What it made him was Nathan’s employee. Herc was an exemplary Bishop Security operative: taciturn and good-natured but with the laser-focus and intelligence of an elite sniper. His nickname in the Marines, Shorty, derived from his love of his grandmother Maggie’s shortbread, and Herc, at just under six feet, endured endless ribbing about it. He was an easy guy to be around. Plus, he could send a bullet through a garden hose at three hundred yards.
The old school was in the final stages of its transition to becoming the Bishop Security base of operations. Nathan had purchased the eighty acres of land surrounding the structure on three sides, and the three-story brick building was expertly tailored to their needs. The first floor housed a reception area, gym, locker rooms, full-service dining hall, non-weapons equipment room, and a game room. There was also a basketball court, mixed martial arts ring, pool, sauna, and training simulation pods. The second floor held offices and conference rooms, and the third floor had temporary apartments, a visitors suite, a medical center with full physical therapy, lounge, catering kitchen, and formal and informal dining areas. Every inch of space had been designed to Nathan’s specifications. His favorite part of the building, a nearly nonexistent feature in this part of the country, was the basement.
Designed as a bomb shelter in the sixties, the full basement had walls of three-foot cinder block, and while it couldn’t withstand the nuke for which it was designed, it was a fortress. Nathan assumed the Red Scare prompted the architect and engineers to attempt excavation rather than build upward, which was the conventional regional design.
Despite hurricane-related flooding and sandy soil, the basement remained sound. It currently housed a weapons room, a lab where a team could run their own DNA and evidence analysis, a secure conference room, an indoor gun range, and their cybersecurity center. Twitch had already purchased a cozy bungalow nearby with a room over the garage, known locally as a frog—family room over garage—for her apprentice/surrogate little brother, Teddy.
The facility’s security made the Pentagon look like a shopping mall. The perimeter was marked by cameras, thermal scanners, and guard posts. The building was circled by a twenty-foot-high interchange fence comprised of alternating sections of smooth stone and laser-cut steel. Nathan’s wife, Emily had chosen it after Nathan had given her his requirements; she said she wanted to make sure the place didn’t look like an asylum. The gated interior perimeter had duplicate measures. The building itself was equipped with biometric scanners—retina and palm, full-body millimeter-wave scanners, coded room entry, cameras, and motion sensors. Twitch had been given free rein to design the cybersecurity, and she had gone to town creating a virtual Vietnamese jungle of landmines, trip wires, and booby traps ready for any hacker arrogant enough to take her on.
Nathan was interrupted from his supervision by the vibration of his secure encrypted cell phone. He fished it from his pocket and, assuming it was Emily, answered without checking the screen.
“Hey, love.”
“Nathan, I like you tremendously, but that’s going a bit far.”
“Clemente?”
“How are you, my boy?”
Clemente Acosta was the former Portuguese Prime Minister and current Ambassador to the UN. He was also one of Nathan’s all-time favorite people. Bishop Security had been protecting Acosta for over fifteen years. He was accommodating and cordial, quick with a story, and always seemed to squeeze every ounce of enjoyment out of life. How a man like him had survived five decades in government, Nathan would never know.
“Never better.” Nathan turned his back on the work crew to focus on the call.
“So I hear. I don’t speak to you for eighteen months, and you go from o devasso to a family man.”
Nathan chuckled. Clemente was absolutely right. He had been a playboy, but behind the false front lived the man he was today, a committed husband and father.
“Guess I found the right girl.”
“I’d say so. You know I was married three times before I found my Elara. Fifteen years of bliss.”
Nathan smiled. Clemente Acosta’s wife was a renowned beauty, twenty-three years his junior. By all accounts, they were deliriously happy. Nathan turned to business.
“You’re coming to see us I take it?”
“Yes. The UN summit on art and antiquities smuggling. I also have several meetings. Do you have a team available?”
“Knowing your propensity to call at the last minute and your passion for the topic. I took the liberty of setting it up when I saw the summit on the UN calendar.” In addition to his public service, Acosta had an art collection that rivaled many small museums.
“You’re like a son to me, Nathan.”
“I appreciate that, sir. I’ll reach out to your assistant for your agenda and forward the security parameters accordingly.”
“Obrigado, meu filho.” Thank you, my son.
Nathan ended the call and waved Hercules over. Herc dropped the tire he was placing in the obstacle course and jogged over.
“What’s up boss?”
“Long time client, Clemente Acosta. You know who he is?”
“Sure.”
“He’s also a personal friend. You’ll take point on his protection detail. I’ll email you the information.”
Herc stood a little taller, his pride of purpose evident.
“Copy that.”
Nathan watched Herc jog back to his task while he called Emily.
In lieu of a greeting, she said, “Can you come home?” A faint, repetitive beeping in the background concerned him.
Without hesitating, Nathan jogged to his old jeep. “What’s wrong?”
“Jack ate a pint of strawberries, and now he’s all flushed—his belly, his face; he’s all red. While I was getting Benadryl, Charlie climbed onto a chair, grabbed a bag of flour off the counter, and proceeded to spread it all over the kitchen floor. I forgot about the cookies in the oven, and the smoke detector won’t stop beeping, and future baby number three is giving me vertigo again. Also, I read this thing online that said the brand of car seat we use may not be safe because there’s a design flaw in the buckle that secures them to the seat.”
Her level of hysteria increased with each detail.
“I’m three blocks away, texting Doc Hardy now about the strawberries. Open a window to let the smoke out. That should stop the beeping. I’ll clean up the mess while you lie down, and maybe we’ll take another stab at the cookies after dinner. If the boys need new car seats, we get new car seats. Sound good?”
“Yes. Thank you.” Her voice had calmed, but now she was crying.
“Emily.”
“I just hate dragging you away from work for this stupid stuff. Moms all over the world do this no problem. I can’t seem to get my act together.”
Nathan parked in the driveway and loped up the front steps.
“Your act is totally together. You’re like the perfect…”
Nathan stopped talking when he entered the house. The front hall was a minefield of tiny sneakers and rain boots, jackets, diaper bags, and animal crackers. Reggie, their mastiff, was just finishing up the last of the little cookies. The entire back of the renovated Victorian was an open kitchen/family room. Emily sat on the carpeted floor with Jack in her lap, very red and naked but for a diaper. Charlie had set down the bag of flour and was making footprints and shapes in the dusting on the kitchen floor. Emily cast him a pleading glance, and he dropped on the floor next to her.
“You’re the perfect mother, Emily, because your love has no limits and no conditions. I never would have thought I would come home to this destruction and feel like the luckiest guy on earth.”
She kissed him, tears flowing anew.
“Doctor Hardy said Benadryl was the right thing to do and to call him in an hour if he’s still flushed. You go lie down. The boys and I will handle this.”
The moment Emily disappeared down the hall, he pulled out his phone and called for reinforcements: his Uncle Charlie’s indomitable wife, and Herc’s grandmother, Maggie Malloy Bishop. Nathan swore if Mary Poppins and General Patton had a daughter, it would be Maggie.
She answered on the first ring. “What’s up, sweetie?”
“I need you.”
The dramatic desperation in his voice drew a laugh. “Be right over.”
When he ended the call he looked around at the destruction and sighed. “I’ve seen SEAL platoons leave insurgent camps in better shape.” He looked down at his phone again and realized he had forgotten to tell Emily about Clemente Acosta’s visit.
