The Curse of the Dragon God (19 page)

Read The Curse of the Dragon God Online

Authors: Geoffrey Knight

Tags: #Mystery, #Suspense, #Adventure, #Gay

BOOK: The Curse of the Dragon God
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“Has he found anything?”
“Not yet. All the excavation machinery I’ve contracted to him is still up in Shandong. The mines there are still producing, so we’re still digging.”
“The diamonds you gambled on the race, where did you get them from?”
Richard smirked. “Mr. Stone, I’m a man of money and means. I don’t have to steal to get what I want, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“Excessive spending, illegal racing, questionable friends… You don’t think you might be considered a suspect in all this?”
“My reputation and relationship with Sen and his employees is beyond measure. We’ve worked closely for many years, built empires together. I would never do anything to harm Sen. We’re like family.”
Just then, the food arrived. Large plates, small, elegant meals. As the waiter topped up their glasses, out of nowhere Richard asked Jake, “What or who is Eden?”
Jake stopped in mid-sip. “Why do you ask?”
“You said it. While we were fucking.”
Richard timed the comment for maximum impact, playing one of his games, hoping to make Jake feel awkward in front of the waiter, who was now delicately wiping the lip of the wine bottle with a napkin. Jake refused to be intimidated, though he held back his reply until the waiter left the table.
“Eden is a friend. A good friend.”
“A lover, perhaps.”
“No,” Jake took another sip of his wine.
“Although you’d like him to be,” Richard drilled deeper.
Jake didn’t respond. He began eating.
Taking the silence as victory in making Jake uncomfortable, Richard sat back with his glass of wine. “Don’t lack the vision to take what you want in this life, Mr. Stone. Don’t lack daring. Live your life to the full, otherwise it’ll be over before you know it, and the one thing you could have had…will be gone.”
IX
San Francisco General Hospital, California
ELSA SAT IN A CHAIR IN THE WAITING ROOM, CONSTANTLY praying and crossing herself while Sam paced the floor.
“This is stupid. I could be out there helping them.” Sam mumbled his feelings to himself rather than announce them. Elsa heard nonetheless.
“Sam, you’re better off here. Eden needs us.”
“How? All we’re doing is sittin’ around waiting for news. Good or bad, there’s nothin’ you or me can do to change things.”
“We can be here for him.”
“I’d rather be over there. Helping them!”
“And give me one more thing to worry about?
Nein!
”
Elsa’s patience was wearing thin and so was Sam’s. “Forget it,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I’m going for a walk.”
Elsa let him go. She stood and returned to the window into the intensive care unit. Eden hadn’t moved. Elsa thought to herself how much he would hate being connected to all those machines, a captive in a coma. Elsa knew what Eden was like—how clever and stubborn and kind he was—and the thought of that made her smile just a little. But her smile quickly gave way to silent tears as she realized Sam was right—there was nothing they could do to change the outcome of Eden’s fate.

 

Sam burst through the emergency doors and spilled out of the hospital, an angry, tired, frustrated young man. He began walking the night.
Lately there was always frustration. Hell, things were supposed to be looking up. They were supposed to be getting better. He had left life on the streets of New York in an effort to take control of his life. And yet now, he had no control over anything whatsoever.
The Professor had been kidnapped, Eden’s life was hanging in the balance, and Jake and the others had taken off and left him behind—to do what? Pace hospital halls? Watch Elsa pray? What good was that? The only person who had any control, any power to see Eden through, was the doctor.
He was Eden’s only real hope. The only one with the answers.
Suddenly Sam stopped in his tracks and did an aboutface. Suddenly he wanted to talk to Dr. Dante, one to one, find out exactly what Eden’s chances were. He needed to know unquestionably what the truth was. He told himself he wanted to know for Elsa’s sake. But deep down, he wanted to know for himself, to protect his own emotions—emotions he had unwittingly laid on the line when he decided to join the Professor’s “family.” Like all street kids, he was used to taking risks with his life—but not with his heart.
He returned and found Dr. Dante’s office on the third floor of the hospital. He knocked on the closed door. When there was no answer, he knocked again and called through the door, “Doctor, are you there? I want to talk to you about your patient, Eden Santiago.”
When there was still no answer, Sam tried the doorknob. It was unlocked, and so—he entered the office.
There was nobody inside the small, tidy room. Since Angelo Dante was a visiting doctor, this was not his permanent office. Yet the Italian doctor had quickly surrounded himself with his own possessions. Medical texts and numerous bound notebooks neatly lined the shelves. Several small organs sat solemnly in the bottom of preservative-filled jars. Degrees and honors hung on the wall. Sam tried to read them, but most were written in Italian. He quickly decided he was wasting his time here, and felt his frustration levels rise once more.
He was about to go when he decided to leave Dr. Dante a note, telling him he wanted to see him as soon as he could spare a minute. Sam walked over to the doctor’s desk, sat down, and searched the desktop and the drawers for a piece of paper and a pen. The first drawer contained only an array of medical equipment. In the second drawer he found several pens in a tidy stationery tray. He grabbed one, and in the third drawer he found a notepad. He pulled it out and began to write when he noticed something was paperclipped to the pad, several pages down. Sam flicked through the blank pages until he found the paper clip.
A donation check was attached to the page, from an anonymous source, made out to San Francisco General Hospital in the sum of $250,000. Sam’s eyes lit up at the sight of all those zeroes and for a moment his survival instincts kicked in. Pocketing the check and getting the hell out of Dodge seemed like easy money. He’d find someone who could cash it, no problem; he knew plenty of people in the fraud and laundering game who could pull off a trick like that for a cut of the profits. He started to slide the check loose. But then he thought about Elsa and the Professor and Eden and Jake, and with clenched teeth Sam reluctantly bit back the urge to grab and run.
Then something else caught his eye. Something written on the pad.
He thumbed the check over, and there on the page, circled in heavy pen, was the name
Eden Santiago
, followed by the words
Sone Sher Ka Ashru
.
“Can I help you?” The words were short and firm, clipped with an accent and filled with annoyance.
Sam slapped the pad closed and looked up to see Dr. Dante in the doorway. “I was just…I wanted to see you…I couldn’t find you…I was looking for a piece of paper, to leave you a note.”
Dr. Dante stepped up to the desk, took the pad from Sam’s hands, and eyed him sternly. “This office is full of confidential patient files. I suggest next time you want to see me, rather than invite yourself in, you simply ask to have me paged.”
“The door was unlocked,” Sam said with a shrug.
“That’s because the previous occupant still has the key. Now please leave, I have work to—”
Like an alarm sounding, the pager clipped to Dr. Dante’s belt started frantically beeping. The doctor snatched it in his hand and read the message, his expression switching from anger to alarm in a heartbeat.
“It’s your friend,” he said, his voice rushed, his tall frame already turning for the door. “He’s gone into cardiac arrest.”

 

The heart rate monitor let out a piercing wail as the flatline spilled across the screen. Three nurses raced around the room, one yanking the tiny electrodes off Eden’s chest, one administering an injection of epinephrine, while the third hurriedly pulled the defibrillator unit to the side of the bed and flicked several switches. The soft whine of the charge competed with the sound of the flatline.
As Dr. Dante ran into the room, he seized the defibrillator paddles and ordered the first nurse to close the curtains, shutting out the sight of the nearly hysterical Elsa on the other side of the glass.
Dr. Dante shouted,
“Clear!”
Eden’s body jolted violently.
“Elsa!”
With more strength than he realized, Sam pulled Elsa back from the window, hauling her into a tight embrace.
X
Hong Kong, China
WILL STIRRED GROGGILY, A SMILE ON HIS FACE. HE HAD woken up like this before: a splitting headache, a raging hard-on, and the flesh of a seriously hot guy pressed against him.
But as his eyes slowly opened he heard an urgent whisper close to his ear. “Will, wake up! You have to wake up now!”
Alarm set in instantly. He blinked back the pain, blinked away his blurred vision, and tried to make sense of his disfigured surroundings, realizing at the same time that he couldn’t move his arms or legs. All he could do was wriggle and squirm.
He surmised that he was lying down. No, he was lying
on top
of someone.
“Will, wake up!” It was Bradley.
As he squinted and finally managed to focus, Will saw that he was in the boardroom of the Zhang Diamond Corporation. Or more precisely, he was in the boardroom, on top of the boardroom table, with Bradley writhing naked and nervous beneath him. The two men were facing each other, arms wrapped tightly around each other, both tied securely together but not with ropes—with their own clothes. Their clothes had been coiled tightly and were now looped and knotted around their torsos, wrists, and ankles, binding them together in a captive embrace.
“What the hell’s going on?” Will asked, their faces so close that their noses touched.
“I think they plan on killing us.”
“They?”
Will cocked his head and saw Mya, Xi, and Chad standing around the table, grinning disdainfully. Beyond the panoramic boardroom window, Will noticed night had fallen and Hong Kong’s skyline glittered and sparkled. The light in the boardroom, however, was dim.
And flickering—with the flames of dozens of candles.
“Romantic, isn’t it,” Chad said, lighting another tall wax stem with a lit taper. He made his way from one end of the boardroom table to the other, kicking Will’s and Bradley’s discarded shoes out of the way, setting candles aglow as he walked.
“Chad, what are you doing?” Will demanded in a level voice.
“I’m setting the mood,” was the lyrical reply. “Candles. Two naked men. A forbidden romance.”—Suddenly his fingers tipped one of the candles over—“And an accidental blaze that killed them both.”
The candle fell from the table and hit the carpet of the boardroom. A small pool of wax and fire spread outward.
Instantly, Will began tugging at the knotted clothes.
Bradley spoke sternly, alarm in his voice. “Chad, don’t do this.”
“Too late. It’s as good as done. Not even the smoke detectors and sprinkler system can save you, as, unfortunately, there’s a glitch in the system.” At that moment, Mya walked up to Chad with his laptop in her arms. She opened the computer for him, and he tapped a few keystrokes. “Or at least there is now. That’s the privilege of rank. I know the manual override code for every one of the building’s operating systems, including the fire protection system.”
He hit ENTER, then looked up and smiled as the small red light on the smoke detector in the ceiling blinked and died.
“You’re forgetting I’m the same rank,” Bradley responded.
“And you’re forgetting that your hands are tied,” Chad smiled. “By the time you get out of those knots, every computer within reach will have been destroyed by the fire. Rest assured though, Xi tied you up nice and tight. We would have used rope, but the nylon fabric of your clothes will give the police something to puzzle over. I intend to eliminate both you—
and suspicion
.”
Bradley watched with growing dread as the pool of small blue and yellow flames spat and crawled across the carpet, growing rapidly in size. “Chad, don’t destroy something you’ve helped build. This is your home. It’s Sen’s home. It’s our corporation’s heart.”
“Not anymore. After tonight, my heart belongs in San Francisco. We’ll be focusing all of our efforts on the Montana Project and consolidating the entire North American market before selling into Europe and the rest of the world. As for China, well, once the Beijing Project is complete, I think the only efforts they’ll be concentrating on will be disaster relief.”
Will glanced from Mya to Chad, then said with grave certainty, “You’re going to blow up Beijing. You’ve got a zidium device.”
“As a matter of fact, we’ve got two,” Chad said gleefully. “But we’ll only need one to raze greater Beijing to the ground. The other one is for the Zhang diamond mines. We need to obliterate all evidence that the company’s trade has all but dried up. You see, we’ve been covering it up for three years now, drip-feeding demand, staggering the last remaining exports to make it look like we still had a viable business. When in fact the Shandong mines are now little more than a facade.”

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