Thief (5 page)

They went out into the driving snow that had already blanketed the vehicles parked outside the carriage house. There was a line of cars ahead, driven by the valets for a nervous crowd of guests standing on the walkway, trying to look nonchalant but desperate to get off the estate.

Knox downshifted, went the wrong way around the circular driveway, taking them right to the gate and that burly guard who'd checked credentials earlier. He came around to her window, knocked on it.

“Nice driving,” he said.

“I'm in a hurry,” the singer replied.

“So what's going on up there?” he asked. “Usually people stay to all hours.”

“Christmas shopping calls in the morning for me,” Knox said.

The guard ducked down to look at Monarch. He smiled weakly, said, “Stomach bug. She's taking me to my car.”

The guard stepped back, said, “That sucks. Merry Christmas.”

The gate swung open and they drove onto the main road.

As a way of getting his mind off the pain, the thief asked, “So how did Beau get his claws into you?”

Knox hesitated, but then hardened and turned into the snowy stable road, saying, “He heard me sing in a club in Chicago, and he's the deep pockets behind several recording companies. He made it all happen for me.”

“And threatened to make it un-happen if you weren't nice in return?”

“Sums it up,” she said.

“Beauregard Arsenault, model citizen.”

Knox snorted derisively, and then went quiet. It took them less than a minute to find where the valets had parked the Range Rover.

“You sure you can drive?” the singer asked.

“About to find out. Thanks for the lift.”

He started to get out. She said, “Who
are
you really anyway?”

“Sometimes I don't know myself,” Monarch said. “You leave first.”

He could tell she wanted to ask more, but he shut the door and trudged in burning agony through the falling snow to the Rover. Knox waited until the thief was inside, had the engine going, and the headlights on before pulling away.

Following her taillights up the hill to the main road, he turned right when she went left toward Greenwich. Heading north, he passed the entrance to the estate. A stream of cars was exiting like rats from a sinking ship. Blue lights began to flash far behind him in the rearview mirror.

Throwing the Rover into four-wheel drive, Monarch pressed down on the accelerator, trying to put distance between him and stately Arsenault manor. For several minutes, he thought he was going to be able to make it the ten miles to the pickup point.

Then the pain turned excruciating. The thief tasted blood in the back of his throat. Sparkling dots began to dance in front of his eyes as he peered out into the blizzard, trying to stay on the road. But soon Monarch could barely tell the difference between the dots and the snow driven in the headlights.

He was done. He knew it.

Taking his foot off the gas, he triggered the microphone on his lapel.

“Mayday,” he whispered, fighting to get the car over on the shoulder.

The thief never heard a response. The Rover's tires lost contact with the road, the shoulder, and the snow. It pitched forward and out into space. Seeing rocks and trees fly by in his peripheral vision, as if he'd driven off the side of a ravine, he was aware of plunging several seconds before smashing off something hard and then dropping again.

The thick tree trunk registered in Monarch's brain a split second before the head-on collision that banished him into darkness.

 

7

EARLY THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON …

BEAU ARSENAULT HAD BEEN
raised to believe that a man who drank before five had no real ambition in life, and a man who swore in public was destined to mediocrity. The mogul also had been taught that a man who failed to control his emotions was a fool easily played.

And yet, as his mansion echoed with the sounds of workmen moving tables and chairs in the foyer, and others in the ballroom painting over Dickens's London, Arsenault paced in his library, wanting to drink a fifth of bourbon, scream obscenities at the top of his lungs, and put his fist through a wall.

To make matters worse, he still had a colossal headache from whatever drug he'd been given. He hated that his mind felt foggy. He hated this sense of violation. He loathed being used. He despised the fact that he'd been played big time.

In my own fucking home, for Christ's sake!

And I can't say a fucking thing to the police!

For what seemed like the hundredth time, the billionaire thought about that drunk guy who'd wandered into the wine cellar, trying to see him in his memory. But the drugs had blurred things. Was he Mexican or something? The only name he and Louisa had not recognized on the list was Asa Johanson.

Asa Johanson? That's not a Mexican name.

Who the fuck is Asa Johanson?

I don't care who he is! That weasel motherfucker is going to regret ever crossing Beauregard Arsenault. That weasel motherfucker is going to suffer like he's never suffered before.

He knew he couldn't tell the police what had happened. But that didn't mean he wasn't going to get his money back, and wreak revenge.

Count on it.

Looking out the window at the snowy landscape, Arsenault calmed himself. In the greater scheme of things, the loss of the bearer bonds wasn't that hard a hit; they represented a small fraction of the stash he'd squirreled away. No, it wasn't the money. It was the principle of the thing.

That motherfucking lowlife ripped me off in my own home at my own Christmas party, for Christ's sake! That fucker worked me, worked all of us!

“Beau!” Louisa called, rapping at the library door. “Beau, are you in there?”

Arsenault cringed. His wife's voice sounded so high, reedy, and grating that it ratcheted his headache up a notch.

“Coming dear,” he called, went to the door, unlocked and opened it.

Louisa entered and spun to face him as soon as he'd shut the door.

“I've been on the phone all morning with Evie doing damage control,” she said in a low, conspiratorial voice. “We've told people exactly what we told the police, that you were not drunk last night, that you had some kind of allergic reaction to a new blood pressure medicine, and that the idea of turning a champagne cork popping into a murder was someone's idea of a sick joke. Evie's already talked to Page Six about it, and averted total disaster. They were on to it.”

Evie Dickenson was his wife's publicist. She was supposed to guard their reputation from all press attacks, foreign and domestic.

“Evie ever hear of Asa Johanson?” he asked.

“Never,” Louisa said. “And I've already fired the two idiots who let him get on the guest list. Where's Saunders and Pratt?”

“Still downstairs looking,” Arsenault said.

His wife's voice lowered again. “I'm telling you again that I hit that man, Big Beau. Last thing I remember was a solid sight picture.”

“I believe you, sweetness,” Arsenault said.

“Then how did he get out of here without leaving any blood?”

“I have no idea,” he said, feeling a blade of pain knife through his skull so sharply that he sat down in one of the leather wingback chairs, closed his eyes, and began rubbing at his temples.

“You sure you don't want to see someone?” Louisa asked. “I can call in the concierge doctor Evie recommended. She said he's completely discreet.”

“No doctors,” he said firmly. “We are limiting exposure. Are we clear?”

“Suit yourself,” she sniffed. “Evie has no idea by the way.”

His eyes flew open. “I should fucking hope not! She's the biggest fucking blabbermouth I know.”

“Don't shout and don't be vulgar,” Louisa shot back. “I am not the enemy here. We are in this together. And Evie is on our side.”

“With what we pay her, I'm sure she is,” Arsenault griped, and hung his head in his hands. He took a deep breath and moved his mind beyond the pain, rifling through what he knew and what he suspected.

The thief knew about the safe and its contents. How was that possible? Either he had an inside accomplice, or he'd hacked into the computers. Only five people knew about the safe: he and his wife, Saunders, Pratt, and the man who'd installed it. Since the installer would have no idea what they were going to put in the safe, and since Saunders and Pratt had proved their loyalty time and again, he was left believing that they'd been hacked by an expert.

That expert had also managed to get this Asa Johanson inserted into the guest list at the last moment, and used e-mails from Arsenault's personal secretary to do it. Once inside the party, the thief kept moving with his face always angled to avoid the security cameras, which meant he knew about them. And then that woman had called his private phone, and said, “Exodus. Air-conditioner repairmen coming tomorrow morning to check the wine cellar. Exodus. Exodus.”

Air-conditioner repairmen.

Exodus.

How had they gotten those code words? Over the years he'd paid millions in bribes to top law enforcement officials in return for a promise to warn him if he was the subject of an investigation. Air-conditioner repairmen meant U.S. Treasury agents. Exodus warned of the highest possible threat, and Arsenault knew for a fact that no one had ever written these codes down. They had been agreed upon orally. Which meant that either someone deep in his back pocket had talked, an unlikely scenario, or someone had listened in.

He lifted his head, said, “What phone were you using to talk to Evie?”

“I'm not stupid, Beau,” Louisa said. “It was a disposable.”

“Don't use your regular cell or the house phone for anything until Saunders can sweep them.”

“You think they bugged us?”

He nodded.

His wife turned grim and then suspicious, looking around the library saying, “You don't think…”

He understood, agreed with her thinking, but said, “I don't know.”

Louisa's eyes flared and she hissed, “We're not having Christmas here then. I won't spend another day in this house until we know for certain.”

“Grandkids will be disappointed, Big Mama,” Arsenault said. “They wanted snow.”

“Big Mama will make it up to them,” Louisa said. “We're packing. I'll call Windham to get the jet ready. We're going back to Twelve Oaks.”

Before the mogul could remind her that their plantation outside New Orleans could have been bugged as well, there was a sharp knock at the door.

“Yes?” Louisa demanded.

“It's Billy and Meg,” said Saunders. “We've got something.”

Arsenault got up fast and opened the door. His security chief and attorney entered, dressed casually, and holding paper bags. When he closed the door, Louisa whispered, “Is this room safe, Billy?”

“Swept three days ago,” he replied.

“That doesn't answer the question, does it?”

The security chief reddened, and then shook his head.

Louisa let her displeasure show, and crossed to a cabinet and opened it, revealing the components of a stereo system. She plugged in her iPhone, and cranked the volume up on Miranda Lambert singing about the fastest girl in town.

They had to stand close to hear one another.

Saunders said to Louisa, “You hit him. We found a speck of blood on the carpet on the staircase.”

“And he made a mistake,” Pratt said. “There are prints on the shards of a champagne glass that he threw against the wall in the game room.”

Arsenault brightened at the idea of quick retaliation. No matter what the Sicilians said about revenge being a dish best served cold, he favored striking back as soon as possible. “How fast can you run the prints? The DNA?”

“Prints by tomorrow,” Saunders said. “DNA minimum is four days.”

“How did he get out of here?” Louisa asked.

The attorney and the security chief exchanged glances, before Saunders said, “He left the grounds with Cassie Knox, in her car.”

Louisa was instantly irate. “Why that little ungrateful bitch!” She stared at her husband. “After everything you've done for that girl?”

Arsenault blanched, thought of Cassie Knox naked in a bed at the Four Seasons in San Francisco the week before, and said, “Let's not jump to conclusions. I would imagine he forced her to help him.”

“Perhaps,” Pratt allowed. “But it appears she dropped him at his car, a Range Rover that was parked down by the stable.”

“And never called us,” Saunders said.

“Maybe she didn't know he was wounded,” the mogul said.

“Maybe,” the security chief replied. “You want me to call her?”

The mogul thought about that, said, “I'll talk to Cassie. I'm supposed to meet with her Tuesday in Chicago.”

Louisa looked at him sidelong. “For?”

“Her producers asked me to the meeting,” he said quickly. “Her entire team will be there to discuss her coming year.”

His wife hesitated, glanced at her husband again, and then said to Saunders, “It sounds to Beau like they bugged our phones and computers. How is that possible?”

Looking uncomfortable, Saunders said, “I don't know. With what we paid those IT security guys, the computers should have been bomb proof.”

“A dud is more like it,” Louisa said. “I want every computer we own checked and fixed. Am I clear?”

Chagrined, and knowing better than to cross her, the security chief said, “More than clear, Mrs. Arsenault.”

She nodded sharply, said to her husband, “I'm packing.”

Big Beau waited until his wife had closed the door behind her before leaning toward Saunders and Pratt.

He showed them passion, a rare thing, said, “I don't care if it costs me another twenty million, we're getting this motherfucker. Whatever it takes. He's going down, and he's going down hard.”