White Heat (36 page)

No matter who he paid, or bribed, or threatened,
eventually
someone would come down here. St. Peter was buried three feet behind her, for God’s sake. People
cared.
About St. Peter.

Her? Not so much. Her mother was in a world of her own, Susanna her sister was busy with her family. And since they weren’t close, she wouldn’t miss Emily for . . . months? Years?

Max might find out that she was missing. But by then it would be too late. Throat dry, but she felt the annoying tickle of sweat running down the middle of her back. “How did Daniel go from being your buddy to a murder victim?”

Greta and Georgiou finished strapping her into the chair and moved to stand behind their boss.

“He has a son who works for T-FLAC,” Norcroft leaned a shoulder casually against the wall as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “It was only a matter of time before he spilled his guts to Max. I wasn’t going to risk all my hard work for a moment of familial bonding.”

Her left eye was swelling shut, and her lip felt fat. “How do you know Max works for T-FLAC?” God. It was hard to breathe. One strap was tight across her diaphragm, constricting her lungs. “Daniel couldn’t have told you,” she said, taking small, shallow breaths. “He didn’t know himself.”

“Oh, it all came together with perfect precision. Discovering that Daniel’s son was a member of the elite, infallible T-FLAC was an unexpected bonus. I couldn’t have orchestrated the players any better if I tried. One of my top lieutenants works for the organization—”

“Catherine Seymour.” Perspiration prickled along Emily’s hairline. She licked her dry lips, maintaining eye contact. “She’s in custody.” A bead of sweat ran down her temple, followed by another. The tiny room was getting hotter by the minute with the four of them confined together like this.

Norcroft shrugged. “And has already been replaced. As planned, the Black Rose cell is dead, and Black Lily has risen in its place.”

“What can you possibly hope to gain by killing hundreds, possibly
thousands
of people and destroying lives? Not to mention obliterating priceless works of art that can never be replaced?”

“Because it brings me almost orgasmic pleasure? Because it brings me the power that fear of the unknown and unspeakable acts of random violence elicits? Because it brings me wealth beyond imagining? Because, my dear, I
can.”
He smiled. “And the paintings I’ve used were all copies. But then you knew that, didn’t you?”

“Why did you have to kill the very people who made your plan work?”

“The very people who, if called upon, would not only identify their own work, but lead authorities back to the mild-mannered, always helpful Norcroft? You, my dear, just wouldn’t die. That was unfortunate. Because, as I’m sure you’ve realized by now, I’m a perfectionist. I tend to micromanage a little. But I’ve turned a lemon into lemonade, and am quite pleased with the results. As in any business undertaking, being flexible and rolling with the punches is part of being an excellent manager.”

He was a danm scary megalomaniac. And she, unfortunately, was a captive audience. “Why did you drag me here? Somehow I feel redundant.”

“Oh, no, no, no, my dear. Not redundant at all.” Norcroft patted her head as though she were a cute puppy. “I want to see just how much Mr. Aries loves you,” he said in an almost teasing voice that was as inappropriate as it was scary.

“Bullshit. First of all, he
doesn’t.
Second, what would it accomplish even if he
did?”

“Will he save you, or will he save all those pious people out there?”

“No contest. Them,” Emily said with conviction. The man was mad if he thought Max, or anyone at T-FLAC for that matter, would consider that an option.

“Ah. What confidence you have in him. And think how fast he’ll work to defuse the bomb when he realizes that every second he wastes will be seconds shaved off
your
life.”

“I repeat. No contest.”

“Perhaps they’ll deposit my money in the nick of time?”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

“You speak for T-FLAC, do you? Imagine the chaos in the world’s population of Catholics if their precious St. Peter’s were blown to kingdom come.”

“I speak as someone with a modicum of intelligence. After destroying churches and synagogues for months on end, do you really think people wouldn’t figure out that your final destination was the biggest, most famous cathedral of all?”

“But St. Peter’s is the
second
biggest church in the world. Hadn’t you heard about that monstrosity they built in Yamoussoukro, Côte d’Ivoire?”

She hadn’t. She didn’t even know where that was. “Is that where your bomb is?”

He grinned. “Ah . . . That would be a ...
No.”

“You’re nuts if you don’t know how many bounties are out on your head. Every law enforcement agency in the world is searching every dark rat hole looking for you right now, it doesn’t matter how little time is left on your clock.
Someone
will stop you before your bomb explodes.” No matter how convincing she sounded, even
she
didn’t believe her.

“Well I hope for your sake you’re right. Unfortunately for you, the bomb will be activated via a remote controlled device. So even if they find me, which I can assure you they
won’t,
unless the money is transferred into my account, the bomb
will
detonate. Either way, I’ll take myself off now, and observe the happenings from a safe distance.”

“Coward.”

“With as much money as I’ve accumulated, I don’t have to be a hero.” He laughed. “I’m going to be even wealthier and a good deal more powerful than anyone can imagine. With facial reconstructive surgery, I’ll be able to walk up and shake the president’s hand. Or marry into royalty. Or marry a beautiful artist with soulful brown eyes, and beautiful breasts. I’d thought to offer you the chance to join me, once. With my brains, and your beauty and talent, the possibilities and opportunities would be endless.”

She shuddered. “Thanks, I’d rather be blown to bits.”

Norcroft pushed away from the wall. “That’s what I concluded, as well. I’m afraid we have to run, my dear. But don’t worry, you’ll have the camera to keep you company. See there near the ceiling? When the red light comes on, it will beam your picture around the world. Be sure to tell them you’re a guest of the Black Lily organization and this will be just the beginning if they don’t meet my demands. They have under an hour to make that deposit.”

He turned to look at the Greek. “Ready?”

Holding up what looked like a garage door opener, the Greek nodded.

“Excellent. Please don’t move,” Norcroft told Emily pleasantly.

“The device strapped to your chest has a liquid level on it to maintain stability And now that the bomb has been activated, we wouldn’t want it to detonate early, would we?”

“WHAT DO YOU
MEAN
BLACK LILY HAS HER?” MAX SNARLED INTO his lip mic as Dare informed him of Emily’s abduction.
“Where
do they have her?”

“Switch to channel three, Max.”

Dare never called him by his first name.

Max shifted the image layers on his HMDGs, moving the countdown numerals to the back, and bringing the image on channel three forward.

“Jesus.”

Emily.

He flipped down the other lens. And saw her as a stereoscopic image, a 230,000-pixel resolution video. Full color. No sound. “Jesus,” he said again.

Motionless, she stared up at the camera. Max forced himself to track his gaze down her body, forced himself to ignore the blood on her face, her puffy bleeding lip, her big, terrified brown eyes.

Strapped to her chest was a small, sleek bomb.

The timer on the face of it synchronized with the timer on the image layered behind hers on the HMDG glasses.

15:35:01

TWENTY-ONE

“DON’T PASS OUT DON’T PASS OUT DON’T PASS OUT.” WITHOUT moving her head, Emily cast down her eyes to read the blinking red LED numbers on her chest upside down. Hyperventilating, her head spun and black dots danced in her vision. Perspiration trickled down her back. Blinking, she forced her eyes to focus on the individual numbers.

Three seconds later than the last time she’d looked.

Thirty-one minutes, thirteen seconds to go.

Shifting just her eyes, she redirected her gaze back to the small red eye of the camera. If it really
was
a frigging camera. For all she knew, that son of a bitch Norcroft had lied about it. She clung to the hope that he’d told the truth. That someone out there would see where she was and show up to save her. She had tried saving herself and only gotten into more trouble. But, oh, God. Even if people
were
looking right at her, even if there
was
someone out there that could put two and two together, there was nothing, absolutely nothing that would identify
where
she was. She could be in any one of a
million
small rooms with stone walls.

“I’m in the Necropolis under the Basilica:’ she told anyone who was listening. “I love you, Max,” she told the blinking red eye, not caring if the entire universe knew it. “I love you, and we would have made it. And as badly as I want to talk to you, feel your arms around me, if I’m going to die, there are more important things that you need to know.”

Thirty-one minutes.

Emily used up six of them repeating everything Alistair Norcroft had told her.

Twenty-five minutes.

TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES.

“Navarro? Daklin? With me. He has her down in the Necrop. ohs.”
Hang tough, sweetheart.
He ran. Faster than he’d ever run before, touching the earpiece as he went. “Dare? Get me Levine.
Now.”
There still was no sound on the video feed, and he couldn’t read Emily’s lips as he ran flat out. Levine was one of their lip- reading translators.

A beep in his ear. He switched channels. “Aries.”

“Guerrero, Seville Cathedral.” The man ID’d himself and his location in Spanish. “Want us to stop searching here?”

“Nobody stop,” Max replied in English so everyone was clear on their orders. “We don’t know if this is the only bomb. Keep locations clear of civilians, and
keep looking.
Someone bring me Norcroft’s head on a platter. Son of a bitch is watching this from a safe distance. Darius? Calculate the acceptable blast distance, and broadcast it to our network.” He closed the universal corn as he ran.

Past the ninety-foot-tall
baldacchino,
the monumental canopy sheltering the papal altar. Christ. Emily was right beneath his feet here. Forty feet below him. He wanted to stop watching the video feed but he couldn’t. Her terrified face kept him moving.

Running balls-out across the transept, Max hauled ass up the right aisle, past the small chapels and statues of past popes. Heading toward the massive bronze front doors, he was pissed to see there were a few stragglers, and he yelled at the them to “Move it! Get out.
Now!”
as they turned, giving him disapproving glares as he ran by. He spotted Navarro and Daklin converging near the
Pietà.
“Go, go, go!”

They went. Through the wide doors, down the steps and out into the Piazza di San Pietro, Max closing the gap behind them. Thousands of people still milled around the base of the tall, red granite Egyptian obelisk supported by bronze lions in the center of the oval created by colossal Doric colonnades, four columns deep. They were moving, albeit slowly, but they were moving. Some of them wouldn’t make it. He wanted to yell at them, but he kept moving, faster. Faster. Faster.

Every goddamned second counted.

His earpiece beeped. “Aries. Yeah? Thanks.” Clicked Darius off, and the lip-reader, Levine, on. “Go.”

“Max, I love you,” Levine said for her. Max didn’t give a flying crap that Emily’s words, repeated in his ear were in a baritone instead of the soft, lilting sound of her voice, the same tone that haunted his sleep. “Stupid not to have told you when I had the chance. I— I didn’t want to put you in an uncomfortable—I was scared. Okay? I was scared that you’d—I don’t know what I thought.”

Her left eye was swollen almost shut. Her lips puffy and bloody. “Bottom line? I love you with all my heart.”

Seeing her like this Max felt a killing rage sweep over him. This kind of anger was something he’d rarely felt before. He tamped it down. Kept his focus.

“I’ve only got twenty-nine minutes, so if anyone’s out there, here’s what I know. The bomb isn’t in any of the museums or the Basilica. It’s here.” Her lashes fluttered down as she indicated the location of the bomb with her eyes.

No wires. Where the hell were the wires? Max wondered as he took three wide steps at a time without pause.

She looked back at the camera. At
him.
“It’s me.”

Max’s heart seized. Not a painting. Emily.
Puck.

“You have to get everyone away,” Emily continued, her eyes blank and staring off into space. “I’m scared, Max. I’m—there’s so much I haven’t done. So much I should have done. I should have told you how I felt. Being strapped to a bomb kind of puts things in a new perspective. In retrospect, it was really stupid of me to keep my feelings a secret.”

Max picked up speed, each step fueled by desperation and determination. “Hang on, sweetheart.” Unfortunately she couldn’t hear him any more than he could hear her. And she didn’t have Levine lip-reading in her ear.

“Norcroft is certifiable,” she said. “Even if you send the money he’s demanded, I’m not sure he’ll keep his word. If you ever have the chance, kill the son of a bitch for me, would you?”

“You bet.”

“If you were standing in front of me right now, I’d tell you how much I love you. I’m sorry I let Daniel’s skewed perceptions of you color my opinions. Dumb, right? I should have trusted my own instincts and seen through all his lies. You’re a good and decent man and I was never happier than I was when I was in your arms. You always made me feel safe, and special and wanted and needed. If I had it to do over again, I’d make you see that it could have worked between us. We could have found a way. I would have found a way. You probably don’t want to hear any of this:’ she looked right at him and smiled her sweet smile, “but I’ve got the whole captive audience thing going on, so . . . well, I love you. Did I say that already? I don’t care. I like saying it.”