The Book of the Seven Delights (37 page)

LaCroix halted and abruptly drew a veil over the hatred simmering in him.

"That would have been difficult indeed, since someone had already beaten me to it. It seems their honorable neighbors had stolen their lands from them in life-leases they didn't realize they could reclaim.

Half of the family lands—rich olive groves and vineyards—had been swindled from them. Along with interest in a shipping company and valuable property on the island of Mallorca. Sometimes it takes a thief to catch a thief He gave a light, chilling laugh. "Of course, sometimes it takes lawyers."

"So you found enough to make you a rich man," Apollo concluded.

"I am
already
a rich man. What I found was incentive to go home and do what needed to be done. A bit of poison here, a tumble down the stairs there. My father and his brother were old and feeble… no one was the wiser."

"And your sister."

"Ah, yes, Jeanne Marie. Her death. I cannot take credit for."

"You killed her as surely as you killed the others," Apollo spat, welcoming the surge of energy that anger poured into his blood. "Writing her that I had died, only months after my father's death… the shock stopped her heart."

"Always such a delicate thing." LaCroix oozed congenial malice. "Everyone's favorite. But the little bitch couldn't keep her mouth shut—couldn't wait to tell on me—they'd never have known about that stupid girl if she hadn't—" He halted, teetering on the brink of losing control yet again. "My sister betrayed me.

She deserved to die thinking her son was dead." He licked at the spittle collected on his lips, then again became the cool, genial taunter. "However, it's only a matter of a few months difference. You'll be dead all the same."

"Not necessarily." Abigail's voice floated out over the warehouse, causing LaCroix to jerk back and look frantically around.

"Boston?" Apollo followed LaCroix's narrowing gaze and found her stepping from behind a stack of cargo, holding a gun. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm here to offer you a deal," she said to LaCroix.

"Don't be absurd," he glanced around the rest of the warehouse, looking for others and finding none.

"You're too late. He has to die and stay dead in order for me to inherit. Now, unfortunately, so do you."

He motioned to his men, who relieved her of her gun and tossed it on the floor.

"Are you all right?" she asked Apollo.

"I'll live," he said.

LaCroix barked a laugh.

"I said I came to make you an offer," she said to LaCroix. "I found a treasure."

"Did you indeed? How pleasant for you."

"It's priceless—one that museums will pay a fortune to display."

"Don't Abigail—" Apollo said furiously.

"Not to mention, a cache of priceless gold artifacts," she continued. "It can all be yours…"

LaCroix studied her intensity, but then seemed to sweep it aside.

"I suppose you feel compelled to try to save him, Miss Merchant. But really." He winced. "Such an obvious lie."

"I'm not lying. I have six amphora filled with treasure in my hotel room at the Exeter. All you have to do is send your men to fetch them. They're yours." She held up a key on a ring attached to an engraved brass disk and let it dangle.

"You would say anything to save him, wouldn't you? How touching." LaCroix strolled to his chair and finished the wine in his glass. "How futile."

"He doesn't believe me," she said to Apollo. "I can't believe I'm going to have to do it again." Then she turned to LaCroix with a fierce expression. "You want proof?"

"No, Abigail—" Apollo nearly strangled on his own juices.

"I'll give you proof."

She ripped off her jacket and tossed it onto the floor beside her gun. Then she began to undo the buttons of her blouse. LaCroix glimpsed what she was doing and turned to watch with astonishment.

"I went into the desert for books." One button.

"But instead, I found a whole city and an ancient temple." Two buttons.

"Artifacts of pure gold. Altar pieces, chalices, jewelry." Three buttons.

"You don't believe me, LaCroix?" She ripped her blouse apart and shouted, "
Look
."

Stunned silence reigned for a minute as LaCroix and his men stared at a pair of ornate golden breasts set in a web of golden scales… women's breasts… elegantly rendered… in pure, dazzling gold…

She stood with her blouse open and her chin high, challenging LaCroix to inspect this unique bit of treasure. But her eyes focused on Apollo with such intensity that he felt himself coiling inside, sensing, anticipating…

LaCroix reached to touch her golden breasts, the light in his eyes approaching a whole new level of greed. Apollo was able to nudge himself back a few critical inches, without being noticed. Every eye in the warehouse was on her chest as Apollo took a deep breath, then jackknifed his legs up and slammed his feet into LaCroix's spongy bulk, sending him sprawling.

Abigail dove for her gun, LaCroix's men raised their weapons, and LaCroix tried to drag himself—gasping—over to one of his thugs.

"Stop where you are, LaCroix! The rest of you—drop your guns!" Joe Flynn shouted as the Legionnaires sprang up from the stacks of cargo with rifles trained on LaCroix's men.

Everyone froze except for Abigail, who at Apollo's urging scrambled over to turn the crank lowering the cargo hoist and his arms. Just as she was wrapping her arms around him and helping him over to a seat on a crate, LaCroix grabbed for the nearest gun.

The Legionnaires caught the movement and aimed a shot at the weapon, knocking it out of LaCroix's hands, but igniting a hail of gunfire. The Legionnaires dropped onto their bellies and LaCroix's men dove behind nearby crates, trading fire at will.

Abigail and Apollo scrambled behind a stack of barrels as bullets whined past. "Are you all right? You're not hit?" she demanded.

"I'm all right," he said, grimacing with the pain of just breathing. "Where's LaCroix?"

She stuck her head up to see over the edge of the barrels and spotted him crawling toward the steps that let to the upper floor. "He's over there"—she pointed—"heading for the stairs."

"Stay here." Apollo popped his head up long enough to spot LaCroix, then ducked back down to move in a crouch through the stacks and around pallets of cargo.

"What do you mean, wait? He has a gun, Apollo!" she cried, peering up over the crates to fire a shot at one of LaCroix's men who spotted Apollo's movement and took aim at him. The man dove back behind the crates again, and she headed after Apollo, trying to keep her head down and run at the same time.

The shooting slowed to occasional shots and Flynn called again: "Lay down your guns and come out with your hands on your head."

The answer was the bark of several more rounds, followed by a pause. Flynn signaled his comrades to use the lull to reload, counting that LaCroix's men wouldn't carry additional ammunition and would soon have to either surrender or flee. If they ran, it would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

But their employer was already in full flight… crawling up the several steps to the main level of the warehouse. When LaCroix reached the midpoint of the stairs, two shots rang out and he curled into a ball. Realizing he wasn't hit, he lunged up the rest of the steps… but then tripped on the splintered wood of the top tread.

By the time he was on his feet again, Apollo was close enough to snatch at his ankle. LaCroix kicked him off and headed for the doors, before frantically remembering something in the railed-off office and wheeling to grab it from one of the desks. It took one heartbeat too long. When he turned back, Apollo loomed between him and the door.

"You're not going anywhere," Apollo said moving slowly forward.

"I should have killed you that first night"—LaCroix spotted a knife used to open packages, picked it up, and brandished it at him—"instead of having you dragged off to prison."

Apollo felt his grip on reality must be sliding; he gave a strangled laugh.

"Prison. Before you die—I should probably thank you for that."

His reaction disarmed LaCroix for a second… but a second was long enough to allow Apollo to lunge at him. For a long time they stood braced, opposing, grappling for control of the knife. LaCroix, for all his appearance of softness, was surprisingly strong and he had weight enough to more than resist Apollo's force. But Apollo had the advantage of height and slowly bent LaCroix back over the railing until he could slam that knife-wielding arm sharply against the edge of a desk. The knife went flying to the floor.

LaCroix sensed his only hope was to get Apollo below him and press with his bulk. He rolled from the desk, taking Apollo with him. They landed on the floor straining and thrashing, grasping for advantage—until Apollo abruptly yanked his arm back and surprised LaCroix with a blow to the side of the head.

The Frenchman was a second slower responding to the next blow, and suddenly the tide had turned. An instant later he was atop LaCroix with his hands sinking into that red, corpulent neck.

The fury of prison sweatbox days and endless desert nights broke free in him. His vision narrowed and washed crimson. The pain of years of cascading losses bore down on him. His father… his mother… his family… his youth… innocence… prospects… dreams… friends… the years he could never replace…

the time and opportunities that had been stolen from him…

He was beyond reason, beyond knowing that he was shouting those losses into a purpling face as he choked the life from the man responsible for them.

"You took everything!" He half-growled, half-sobbed. "You took my whole life! You took my life—you took my life—"

"Apollo! Stop! You're killing him!" Abigail's words barely registered through the blood roaring in his head. But the cool reason those sounds poured into the heat of his fury started to slowly pull him back toward reality. "Stop—please God"—she grasped his wrists but couldn't dislodge his hands—"you can't do this, Apollo! Stop—"

His fingers slowly loosened around that thick porcine neck. But it still took Abigail and Flynn and Crocker all to pull him off of the Frenchman's inert body. Lost in a morass of emotion, he sat on the floor feeling disoriented and repeating over and over, "he took my life"… until a cooling, reassuring presence reached him.

Suddenly
she
was there, all around him. Real. Consoling. Stroking his hair and murmuring wordless reassurances. He looked up into her dove gray eyes that were filled with love, shared anguish, and comfort.

"He took my life," he said, seeing the truth of it more clearly than ever before, "and you gave it back to me."

He pulled her fiercely against him and murmured a wordless prayer of gratitude. For in that moment, he understood the depth of a bond between two souls that was indeed the beginning of wisdom and the start of a whole new life.

Abigaill saw Crocker kneel to check on LaCroix and asked, "Is he… ?"

"Not dead," he responded, sounding disappointed.

"Too bad." Flynn gave the unconscious LaCroix a prod with his foot.

Crocker spotted LaCroix's ledger on the floor and picked it up… then turned to look at the piles of records stacked all around.

"Every piece o' paper is another poor sap who lost 'is shirt."

"What'll we do with 'im?" Flynn asked. "And them?" He gestured over his shoulder to the men being tied hand and foot on the floor of the warehouse.

"A pity," Ravi said, "that we could not just hand him over to those men at the trading company. They would see he received his just reward."

As Apollo got up slowly, leaning on Abigail for support, the thought struck him.

"Good idea. We'll turn him over to the Sultan." Apollo clapped Ravi on the shoulder. "You speak the dialect… head for the palace and explain our situation here to the head of the Sultan's guards. I suspect they've been hearing quite a bit about Ferdineaux LaCroix of late."

The office was full of papers detailing LaCroix's larcenous dealings. It became clear as they looked through the record books for references to property in France, that LaCroix had positioned himself as a broker between European concerns and the Moroccan leaders, including the sultans themselves. And he managed to misrepresent both sides… insisting on the requirements of "gifts" and inflating prices and fees in order to skim funds from the transactions.

By the time the Sultan's men arrived, LaCroix was making small movements that indicated he was waking. The captain tossed water on him and had the guardsmen drag him to his feet. He was groggy at first; it took him a few minutes to appreciate what was happening to him. Then he looked at the men holding his arms, and at the unmistakable uniform of the captain of the Sultan's guards, and finally understood that his worst nightmare was coming true.

"You cannot do this to me!" he cried. "I am an important businessman—a citizen of France! You have no authority over me. You have no right—"

"I believe you gave them that right, sarr," Flynn said with a smile, "when ye went an' tweaked the Sultan's own nose."

"Look at the bright side," Crocker said as they wrenched LaCroix's arms behind his back and bound them. "This'll likely the last time they'll be binding yer
hands
."

"Oh, yes," Ravi said with an exaggerated lilt. "And the captain was saying on the way here that the Sultan is particularly fond of the press… that he sets aside one day a week to witness executions done in that manner."

LaCroix alternately threatened and wheedled, demanding release and then begging for mercy as they dragged him out into the Moroccan night.

The Sultan of Casablanca was so pleased by the way the French Foreign Legion assisted his valiant guardsmen in the capture of the thief and criminal Ferdineaux LaCroix, that he presented each of the Legionnaires involved with a beautiful gold-handled sword. The men of Apollo's old company went straight from that royal audience to the nearest sword-seller to trade their reward for cash to spend on their extended leave in Casablanca… courtesy of a proud and grateful Legion.

Apollo and Abigail were given the finest accommodations the Exeter had, compliments of the Sultan and several prominent and grateful merchants. They slept well and ate even better. Apollo's ribs continued to heal, and at night he was able—even eager—to help Abigail continue with her validation of the Seven Delights.