The Fifth Avenue Series Boxed Set (88 page)

She came around and pulled him across the foyer with a hand far steadier than his own.
 
The man had dragged Bebe off to one side and now was placing a matching chair where she had sat.
 
Cole was led to the middle of Bebe’s spilled blood.
 
Now, the cameras surrounded him.
 

“Are you thinking about those sins, Mr. Cole?”

They’d murdered his wife.
 
They’d do the same to him.
 
If he broke now, it would be over for him.
 
He forced himself to think, to somehow remain calm.

“Are you thinking about taking that witness stand?
 
Do you remember the look on Wolfhagen’s face when you burned him?”

He ignored the man, looked at the woman.
 
Tall and attractive, thick brown hair framing an oval face of cool intelligence, her eyes the color of chestnuts and just as hard.
 
She wore black leggings and a black shirt, no jewelry.

The man moved behind her, his face partly concealed behind the video camera now poised in front of him.
 
“Get rid of his coat,” he said to the woman.

She got rid of it.

“Now the bandages.”

She ripped them from Cole, who stared into the camera’s opaque lens and saw his own ruined face floating up at him from the dark, rounded glass.
 
And he knew—Wolfhagen would be viewing these tapes.

The woman took a step back, looked with revulsion at Cole’s bloody chest, then turned that look on him.
 
“So, it’s starting again?” she said.
 
“You were there last night?
 
You let them do this to you?”
 
She shook her head at him in disgust.
 
“How could you let them do this to you?”

“Because he asked for it to get off on it,” the man said.
 
“Isn’t that how it works, Mr. Cole?
 
You and your wife asked for it, but this time, it got a little out of hand.”

Cole held their gaze and said nothing.
 
He willed himself to believe that he could get through this.
 
It wasn’t too late for him.
 
Everyone had a price, everyone could be bought.
 
Hadn’t Wolfhagen taught him that much?
 

“I have money,” he said to them.
 
“Millions.
 
I’ll triple whatever Wolfhagen’s paying you.
 
Both of you can walk out of here right now and never have to do this again.
 
You’ll be set for life.
 
Just let me live.”
 

The woman’s lips, rouged red, broke into a half-smile.
 
“Did you really think he’d let you get away with it forever?”

Cole shook his head as if he didn’t understand, but he understood.
 
He knew this day would come.
 
Still, his belief in the power and the influence of money galvanized him.
 
They would not kill him if he offered enough.
 
“Millions,” he said.

She lifted the gun.

*
  
*
  
*

Pamplona, Spain

Six Months Later

Ever since he was a child, Mark Andrews had longed to run with the bulls.

As a boy in Boston, he would sit on his grandfather’s lap and listen to the old man’s stories of his days in Spain, when he was still young and single, and traveling the world on the trust fund his father gave him upon graduating from Yale.
 

Mark would marvel at the man’s retelling of La Fiesta de San Fermin, the week-long orgy of bull worship that honored Pamplona’s patron saint San Fermin, who was martyred when bulls dragged his body through the city’s narrow, dusty streets.
 

Mark’s grandfather had run with the bulls.
 
He had stood among the thousands of men in white shirts and red sashes impatiently waiting for the first rocket to signal their release.

Even then, some thirty years ago in his parents’ home, Mark could hear the thunderous clacking of hooves as the twelve beasts came crashing down Calle Santo Domingo, through Plaza Consistorial and Calle Mercaderes, their horns sharp and deadly, their murderous rage focused on those foolish young men running blindly before them.

Now, at thirty-nine, Mark Andrews himself stood among fools in white shirts and red sashes, the early morning sun beating down on his face, the delicious anticipation of the impending event flooding his senses.

Pamplona was a city gone mad.
 

All week long, fifty thousand people from around the world had participated in La Fiesta de San Fermin, known to the locals as Los Sanfermines.
 
They paraded drunkenly through the streets with towering, colorful
gigantes
, went to the afternoon bullfights, drank gallons of wine, made love in alleyways, and rose each morning from brief catnaps to watch the spectacular running of the bulls.
 

Earlier in the week, the mayor had kicked off the festivities at noon by lighting one of many rockets from the Ayuntamiento’s balcony.
 
And now, as Mark waited along with nearly a thousand other men for the rocket that would signal the beginning of
el encierro
, he watched and listened to the cheering crowd that looked down at him from open windows, wrought-iron balconies, the Santo Domingo stairs, as well as the Plaza de Toros itself.
 

Never had he felt more alive.
 
He would run as his grandfather had.

He felt a hand on his arm.
 
Mark turned and faced a stranger.

“Do you have the time?” the man asked.
 
“I left my watch at the hotel.
 
They should be firing the first rocket any minute now.”

Mark smiled at the man, delighted to be in the company of a fellow American.
 
He checked his watch and said:
 
“In a few minutes, we’ll be running like hell from twelve very pissed off bulls.”
 
He extended a hand, which the man shook.
 
“I’m Mark Andrews,” he said.
 
“Manhattan.”

The man’s grip was firm, his teeth bright white when he smiled back.
 
“Vincent Spocatti,” he said.
 
“L.A.
 
What brings you here?”

“My grandfather,” Mark said.
 
“You?”

The man looked surprised.
 
“Hemingway,” he said, in a tone that implied there could be no other reason why he had traveled thousands of miles to be at this event.
 
“I even brought Lady Brett with me.”
 
He pointed down the barricaded street, toward a building where a young woman stood at a second-story balcony, her dark hair and white dress stirring in the breeze.
 
“That’s my wife, there,” he said.
 
“The one with the video camera.”

Mark looked up and caught a glimpse of the woman just as the first rocket tore into the sky to signal that the gates of the corral had been opened.
 

He felt a rush.
 
The sea of young Spaniards and tourists lurched forward.
 
A cheer went through the crowd and rippled down the narrow streets, reverberating off the stone walls, finally blooming in the Plaza de Toros itself.
 
Moments later, a second rocket sounded, warning the crowd that the chase—which usually lasted only two minutes—had begun.

Mark ran.
 
He heard the bulls galloping behind him, felt the earth trembling beneath his feet and he ran, knowing that if he stumbled, if he fell in the street, he would be trampled by the men running behind him and then by the 1,800-pound beasts themselves.

He moved quickly and easily, suddenly euphoric as he shot past the Calle La Estafeta and the Calle de Javier.
 
He thought fleetingly of his grandfather and wished he could have been here to see this.

The crowd of spectators was screaming.
 
Shouting.
 
The terrific pounding of hooves filled the morning air with the intensity of a million small explosions.
 
Mark shot a glance over his shoulder, saw the American, the crush of young men behind him and the first of the twelve bulls that were rapidly closing the distance between them all.

He was delirious.
 
He was beyond happy.
 
He knew that not even the day he testified against Wolfhagen could compare to the rush he experienced now.

He was nearing the Plaza de Toros when Spocatti, fan of Hemingway’s lost generation, reached out and gripped his arm.
 

Startled, his pace slowed for an instant and he looked at the man.
 
Now, he was running alongside him, his face flushed and shiny, his eyes a shade darker than he remembered.
 
Mark was about to speak when Spocatti shouted:
 
“Got a message for you, Andrews.
 
Wolfhagen sends his best.
 
Said he wants to thank you for ruining his life.”

And before Mark could speak, before he could even react, the man plunged a knife into his left side.
 
And then he did it again.
 
And again, sinking the knife close to his heart.

Mark stopped running.
 
The pain was excruciating.
 
He looked down at his bloody side and chest, and fell to his knees, watching in dazed silence as the man named Spocatti leaped over one of the barricades and disappeared into the jumping, thrashing crowd.
 

He had fallen in the middle of the street.
 
Hundreds of men were darting past him, jumping over him, screaming as the bulls drew near.
 
Knowing this was it, knowing this is how he would die, Mark turned and faced the first bull as it loomed into sight and sank its lowered horns into his right thigh.

He was thrown effortlessly into the air, a rag doll tossed into the halo of his own blood, his right leg shattered, the bone jutting from the torn flesh.
 

He landed heavily on his side, so stunned that he was only dimly aware that more bulls were trampling him, their hooves digging into his face, arms and stomach.
 

The men rushing past him tried to move him out of the way, tried to grasp his shirt and pull him to safety, but it was impossible.
 
The beasts were upon them.
 
There was nothing anyone could do but watch in horror as twelve running bulls ripped apart a former prince of Wall Street.

When it was over and the bulls had passed, the thing that was Mark Andrews lay in the street—its body bruised and broken beyond recognition, its breathing a slow, clotted gasp.
 
It looked up at the narrow slit of blue sky that shined between the buildings on either side of it.
 

In the instant before its mind winked out, its failing eyesight focused on Lady Brett Ashley herself.
 
She was standing just above on one of the building’s wrought-iron balconies, smiling as she filmed its death with the video camera held in her outstretched hand.

CHAPTER ONE

Day One