Return (Matt Turner Series Book 3) (19 page)

Not anger
, he corrected as they reached Joss’s door to the hallway.
Worry.

It killed his focus. She killed his focus. Beyond mere extra baggage, curbing his speed, she was a full-fledged handicap, fog on a windshield, an open wound on his palm.

Matt stopped at the door and motioned for her to wait. Her hand tightened around his. He closed his eyes, inhaled slowly.

Akel al-khowf.

33
^rd
Precept:
“Consume their fear.”

The Nizari—a league of elite Spanish Muslims with whom Matt had spent years training via Haeming’s imprints—observed eighty such precepts for the effective
“supernatural warrior,”
the
mohareb khareq.

Consuming the fear of one’s enemy had initially seemed to fall under the Nizari’s more spiritually based concepts, such as the types of prayers required before and after killing, or like the superstitious custom of rubbing cucumber on one’s armor. However, Matt later grasped the meaning, and very real phenomenon of
Akel al-khowf.
In battle, if a warrior sensed their opponents’ fear, it fueled an empowering force. The same held true of innocents in need of protection. Frightened women and children could be used by the warrior as a source of inner strength and fearlessness against attackers.

In Matt’s case, he’d found the precept’s truth when his ex, Isis Meier, was freaking out, begging for him to kill a spider in her bathtub. Matt feared and detested spiders just as much as his girlfriend, but observing her terror prior to seeing the offending
hell-spawn
had emboldened him to handle the situation. He’d consumed her fear.

Matt turned to Joss and flashed a tranquil, confident smile. “It’s going to be fine, okay? Security won’t know we’re leaving until we’re already gone. Just be cool for this hall camera. I’ve come to get you to show you something in my room. Yeah?”

Joss blinked, wide-eyed, took a deep breath, and nodded. “I’m good.”

“Great. I’m going to let go of your hand now, okay?”

“Oh, of course, yeah.” She shook her head as she released her grip.

Matt relaxed his body, opened the door, and strolled across the hall to his suite. Joss closed her door, a little too purposefully, with two hands on the knob, but nothing anyone should’ve noticed. She smiled as he waved her in, and he shut the door behind him.

“This way,” he said, leading her to the bathroom.

They walked to the far end of the bathroom, to the locked door beside the linen closet. The little sign above a keypad and knob read
Staff
in multiple languages. Matt punched in a six-digit code and twisted the knob. The door swung open.

“I have one of those button pads, too,” Joss said. “I thought it was cleaning supplies or something.”

Matt raised a
“just wait, there’s more”
finger, crouched to the floor, and pulled up a flap of carpet, revealing a silvery ring. He slipped two fingers into the ring and lifted. The closet’s square floor rose smoothly on two hydraulic rods. Joss arched over him, gawking at the short flight of stairs leading down to the tunnel.

“No way,” she hushed. “I’m shocked! Shocked, but I guess not surprised.”

Matt grabbed the small duffel he’d left by the door, slinging it across his chest, and walked down the stairs. “Please close the door behind you, and pull down that hatch until it clicks.”

Joss followed him down, observing the dimly lit cement tunnel. “Where does it lead?” She ducked to close the hatch above.

“All over the house,” Matt explained as he led her down the narrow passage, head crooked slightly to avoid hitting the low ceiling and sporadic lights. “Goes to most rooms, and also to the staff and security buildings.”

“Security buildings? I didn’t-”

“There’s a lot we weren’t shown on the island. What we need to do right now is stop real quick in the master suite to grab something-”

“Do we have time for that?” Joss interrupted. “If we’re in a hurry-”

“We have time. We’re making our exit a day earlier than I’d planned. I’ll explain everything later. Anyway, besides the service staff, there are eight security officers, all former Ukrainian military, that I’d just as soon avoid on our way out.”

“Well, yeah.”

“Except …” Matt turned a corner and stopped at the foot of another cement staircase. “Right now, all but one of them are eating lunch in the staff building. And guess where our second stop is?”

“The staff building. Jesus, why?”

“I have the Taria you fetched in my bag—not part of the original plan, but we’re taking it with us. Now I need to get the other one. You’re going to stay in the tunnels though. Got it?”

“Whatever you say,” she replied, and then murmured, “Stealing from Ostrovsky seems like a super idea.”

Matt ignored her as he twisted the knob on the hatch to Ostrovsky’s room, turning it without resistance. He’d intentionally broken the lock while scouting the night before and, presumably, no one had yet discovered his excursions. In the closet up the stairs, Matt punched in another code on a keypad. The door eased open before him.

A backward glance to Joss at the foot of the stairs, justifiably nervous. “Peek in if you want, but don’t leave the closet, okay? I’ll be right back.”

She nodded and whispered, “There’s no alarm or anything?”

“No, these are all isolated keypads. The only alarms are on room doors and all the windows. Sit tight.”

Matt strode from the bathroom, straight through Ostrovsky’s bizarre bedroom—a column-filled expanse with an imposing curtained bed atop a staired pedestal; it was
Emperor
Ostrovsky
, evidently, or perhaps he thought of himself as some Greek God. Matt entered Ostrovsky’s study, walls lined with dead things, furs, bookshelves, and weapons. He peered up at the apparent pièce de résistance: an elephant’s head, dominating the room from up high, eyes glaring black, and roaring mouth, as though it’d just crashed through the wall.

Matt went to the opposite wall, adorned with weapons ancient and new: a tommy gun, Zulu spear, .45 Beretta, feathered blowgun, long sword, short sword, katana, .44 Magnum revolver al a Dirty Harry. He grabbed what he’d come for and returned to the bathroom, where Joss’s sideways head poked from the closet floor.

“A stick?” She gawped. “That’s what you came for? Wait, is it a toy sword?”

He motioned her back down the stairs as he replied, “
Bokken wakizashi
—a short, wooden, practice sword. I needed a weapon.”

Joss didn’t further voice her skepticism, but her face was sufficient.

“Trust me,” Matt said, grabbing her hand. She wouldn’t understand why it was a better option than the alternatives.

A right turn, a left, and then the tunnel stretched out in the distance for as far as they could see, and with no more breaks in the walls for branching passages. Their breath and steps echoed, amplified in the corridor. After a couple hundred feet, the passage ended at a T, and Matt stopped and set down his duffel bag. He slid the short sword into a belt loop on his side. Joss maintained her grip on his other hand.

He faced her and whispered, “Two minutes, maybe three. Don’t be scared, okay? We’re pretty much done.”

Joss’s grip tightened on his fingers. “You’re leaving me here?”

“Veerrry briefly,” he said, once more smiling reassurance.

He left her at the T-junction, and headed down the slightly sloped passage to the staff quarters. Matt had never been this far, and wasn’t positive about which room the stairs would put him in. Walking the grounds above, counting steps and paying attention to his position relative to the main house, Matt had estimated the tunnel ended somewhere in the front portion of the staff building.

The passage ended at a grate-covered drain hole and a metal ladder leading to another hatch. Matt peered up the passage to Joss—a barely-lit orange blur. He probably should’ve had her pick a different shirt. He waved, in case she could see him, and then pressed his fingertips to the hatch above.

My name is Circe Sarkis, female, thirty-eight, from Piraeus, Greece…

Circe’s office, next door to Markus’s. It made sense for the tunnel to lead there. Unfortunately, from what Matt had observed over the past few days, Circe rarely left the staff building and there was a strong possibility she was in her office at present. Matt gathered the office’s full layout through a few of Circe’s imprints, discovering the hatch lay in a corner, only half-concealed beside a filing cabinet, and at least six feet from Circe’s desk. Fortunately, the desk faced a wall, and if Circe was in her chair, she’d have her back to the hatch.

Matt gently twisted the knob, applying light upward pressure with his free hand. It didn’t feel right. Something sat on top of the door. He put his back into it and the hatch popped up suddenly, emitting a horrible, piercing scritch of metal slicing into metal. And right there, six feet from his intruding head, sat a gaping Circe, frozen in shock.

As she babbled, unsuccessfully searching for the muscles required to call for help, Matt forced the hatch out of the way and scurried up the stairs, wrapping his arms around Circe’s head, and drawing her face into his abdomen.

“Wait, wait,
o-hee,
no!” Came her muffled protest as Matt dragged her from the chair.

As he pulled her to the hatch, she clawed at his sides and back, feet kicking wild-yet-noiselessly on the carpeted concrete floor. Halfway down the stairs, her teeth gnashed into his belly skin, and he let go. As he fell backward, he clapped both hands against her ears—not with enough force to burst her eardrums, but delivering sufficient pain to incapacitate. Scrabbling to his feet, the wooden sword clacking against the floor and wall, Matt climbed over Circe and pulled the hatch shut above them, hoping no one had heard the struggle or the horrible shriek of the scratching metal.

“Don’t touch me!” Circe shouted before he reached her. “What is this? What are you to do with me?”

Matt pried one of her hands away from her ear as he helped her up. “Nothing, just be quiet. Go.” He nudged her down the dark tunnel toward Joss.

Circe, still frightened, shambled along, blathering. “You cannot possibly think you’ll get away with whatever this is. They’ll kill you. You know this, yes? Security? They’ll kill you.”

Joss was understandably shocked. “
She’s
what you had to get? I thought you said-”

“No,” Matt said, unclipping the shoulder strap from his duffel bag. “Please lay down, Circe. Face down.”

She dropped slowly to her knees. “You both they will kill. The two of you.” Matt pulled her hands together, and her words abruptly lost their venom. “You should simply stop now, I’ll not say anything. No one will have noticed me yet gone.”

He extended the strap and tied Circe’s wrists. “Is Markus in his office?”

“Markus? I believe so. Why?” Then, suddenly angry again, “What
is
this? Release me now!”

Matt crossed Circe’s ankles and wrapped them tight with the remaining strap, leaving her hogtied at Joss’s feet. “Watch her,” he said to Joss. “If she gets loud, step on her face.” He felt his T-shirt where Circe had bitten him. Cold and wet with saliva and blood. “And watch out. She bites.”

Uncertain, Joss nodded, and Matt rushed back to the hatch.

Back in Circe’s office, Matt slid the sword from his side and pressed his ear to the wall. He heard voices from a speaker in Markus’s office, and a muffled snicker. Was Markus watching YouTube videos? Matt went to Circe’s door, cracked it open, and peered down the hall. Men’s voices around a corner. Three voices. Greek. Stationary. He poked his head out farther and scanned the rest of the hall, toward the kitchen.

The three men laughed and walked away, continuing their discussion about which of them would marry “ScarJo.” Matt stepped into the hall, crept the short distance to Markus’s door, and knocked with three quick taps. The sound from Markus’s computer halted.

“Nai?” Markus answered, audibly annoyed.

Matt adjusted his voice down and replied “A moment, sir?” in Greek.

A chair rattled. A second later, the door opened. Markus went from irritated to dismayed in an instant. Matt lunged forward, clasped a hand over Markus’s mouth, and wrapped the other arm around his neck, pressing the smooth wooden blade just beneath Markus’s Adam’s apple. Matt drove him back, shutting the door behind them with his heel.

“Where’s Taria A?” Matt said, and the stiff Markus only glared.

Matt’s wrist against Markus’s collar provided the answer he sought. Matt glanced back at the corkboard over the desk, behind which hid a large combination safe. “Thanks,” Matt said. “Are you going to make noise if I release you, or do I need to knock you out?”

Matt squeezed the bokken a little tighter, lifting the Adam’s apple and pinching Markus’s trachea enough to make breathing an effort. Markus, with cold eyes locked on Matt’s, shook his head. He was telling the truth, and, interestingly enough, felt
hurt
by this assault, and not physically.

“Stay close to me,” Matt said as he released him, and then stepped to the desk. “Away from the door.” He slid the sword back into his jeans’ belt loop.

The corkboard rose with ease, aided by springs or counterweights, and remained in place as Matt touched the thick black dial on the safe. He twisted out the combination from Markus’s memory: 13 – 58 – 40. The latch handle turned and Matt pulled the heavy door. He ignored the small black cases and stacks of various foreign currencies, grabbing the metal Taria case, and setting it on the desk.

Matt glanced at Markus, standing with his usual rigid posture, hands crossed before him, and almost
eerily
calm face, flat smile, indifferent eyes.

Matt wrapped the Taria in its cloth and shoved it in his pocket. “Now, where’s the package?”

Markus directed his eyes to the set of drawers in the side of his desk. Matt slid open the top drawer, finding only pens, pencils, paperclips, and other small office supplies. He closed it and opened the next drawer.

“The small box,” Markus said, but Matt already recognized it from previous imprints.

He picked it up and popped it open. A man’s ring, immediately recognizable as Damascus steel by the wavy patterns. Matt swiped a finger across it to check its authenticity.