Charlotte’s sense of unreality deepened. How could either of these men think they could get away with criminal behavior like this?
Dan looked at Charlotte. Instead of a gun, he held a roll of duct tape in his hands. “Come here,” he ordered.
Jackson squeezed her fingers to keep her where she was. “The Marchands aren’t going to sell, Dan. You’d be better off releasing us now—”
Richard pointed his gun toward the wall and fired.
Charlotte screamed and clapped her hands over her ears. The bullet burrowed harmlessly into the wall amid a puff of dust and crumbled brick, but the noise of the shot in the small room was deafening.
“The next one’s for your boyfriend,” Richard shouted. “Now get over here.”
Charlotte lowered her hands. “Don’t hurt him.”
“Then do what we tell you.”
She tried to slip past Jackson, but he barred her way with his arm. “She’s not going anywhere without me, Richard,” he said. “And unless you’re a damn good shot, that .22 you’re holding isn’t powerful enough to stop me from reaching you before you can pull the trigger a second time.”
“If you try anything, I’ll shoot her,” Richard said.
Jackson’s reply was eerily calm. “If you hurt her, I will kill you.”
Dan ripped off a piece of duct tape. “We’re wasting time,” he said. “We’ll bring them both.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
MIKE BLOUNT LIFTED THE wineglass to his nose and inhaled greedily. It was the good stuff, more than two hundred bucks a bottle retail, so he was going to enjoy every ounce of it. This was a night for celebration. The next time he cracked open one of these bottles, he’d be doing it from his own private table in that fancy restaurant at the Hotel Marchand. Crystal and white linen. Only the best from now on.
He took a sip and held it in his mouth, savoring the taste. Then he placed the glass on his desk, checked his watch and pointed to the phone. “It’s time, Dan.”
For once, Dan Corbin didn’t hesitate to obey the order. He picked up the phone and dialed.
Mike smiled and leaned back in his chair. The Corbin brothers weren’t good at thinking for themselves. They’d had the right idea last week when Richard had tried to abduct Anne—the threat of death was always a good motivater when it came to getting people to fall into line—but they’d chosen the wrong Marchand.
Mike slid his gaze to the woman in the corner of his office. The eldest of the Marchand daughters was the general manager of the hotel. It was mainly because of her that the Corbins’ plan to ruin the business had failed to produce the desired results. She was the most dedicated of the four sisters, she lived and breathed for that hotel, so even if her mother didn’t agree to sell now, the place wouldn’t survive long without Charlotte.
Either way, Mike was going to get what he wanted.
“Hello, Mrs. Marchand,” Dan said. “Have you signed the contract?”
Until now Charlotte had been keeping her expression blank. She had refused to meet Mike’s gaze, angling her chin in the air as if she were sitting at some tea party and he was the hired help. He didn’t know how she pulled it off—in that oversize, stained denim jacket, dusty skirt and torn hose, she should have appeared ridiculous. Yet even with a few yards of duct tape wrapped around her torso to hold her to the metal chair where she sat and more duct tape binding her wrists and covering her mouth, she still managed to look down her nose at him.
As soon as she realized that her mother was on the other end of that phone, though, those elegant green eyes of hers filled with panic.
“Yes, she’s alive,” Dan said.
Mike gestured to Richard, enjoying himself more than he had thought possible. “Remove the tape from her mouth,” he said. “Let her say hello to her mama.”
Richard’s gaze flicked uneasily to the man who was bound to the chair beside Charlotte.
His hesitation was understandable. Although Mike didn’t doubt the information Otis had given him was accurate, Jackson Bailey didn’t act like any doctor that Mike had met before. Despite the duct tape that held him motionless and the gun Richard kept trained on him, he looked like a dangerous man. It wasn’t because of his physique, although with his height and his solid build he could do some serious damage if he got loose. No, it was his eyes.
This man understood the situation. He appeared to miss nothing as he studied his surroundings and his captors. He had the look of someone who had seen death often enough to recognize it. Unlike the hothouse-flower Marchand woman, he appeared to realize that Mike couldn’t afford to let either of them leave here alive.
Mike snapped his fingers. “Richard!”
Keeping his gun trained on the doctor, Richard sidled up to Charlotte’s chair, gripped one edge of the duct tape that covered her mouth and gave it a swift yank.
Tears brimmed in her eyes, but she didn’t make a sound. It was the doctor who flinched. He looked at her, then fixed Richard with a stare that made him take a reflexive step backward.
Mike tried to contain his impatience. “Remove her boyfriend’s gag, too,” he ordered.
Richard pressed the muzzle of his gun against Charlotte’s neck, reached across her and ripped away the tape that covered Jackson’s mouth. Once he’d accomplished that, he backed away with a bravado that was close to recklessness.
The Corbins had nearly fulfilled their purpose, Mike reminded himself. Until this point they had been his go-betweens, doing his dirty work so that his hands remained clean. He wouldn’t have to put up with them much longer. “Dan?” he prompted.
Dan carried the phone to Charlotte and pressed the receiver to her ear. “Go ahead.”
Charlotte spoke immediately. “Mama, I’m all right. So is Jackson. Please don’t worry. We—”
“That’s enough,” Dan said, pulling the phone away. “As you heard, Mrs. Marchand, your daughter is alive. How long she stays that way is up to you. Now I’m asking you again, have you signed the contract?”
There was a pause. Dan lowered the phone and looked at Mike. “She wants to know why your name’s on this one instead of ours.”
Mike snapped his fingers again and held out his hand for the phone. He was going to enjoy this, too. “Hello, Mrs. Marchand,” he said. “This is Mike Blount.”
“Who are you?” The voice that came through the phone was as sweet as warmed honey in spite of the anxiety in the words. It took generations of good breeding to produce a classy accent like that, along with a lifetime of wealth. Anne Marchand sounded exactly as Mike had thought she would—he would bet if he could see her, she would be looking down her nose at him, just as her daughter was.
“I’m a business associate of the Corbins, Mrs. Marchand,” he said.
“Please don’t let them hurt my daughter.”
“I’ll do my best, but the Corbins are desperate men. They’re in financial difficulty, just like you. Simply put, they are in my debt, and to pay me back they have promised to acquire your property for me.” He smiled as he looked at Charlotte. “We do have a deal, don’t we, Mrs. Marchand?”
“Yes, yes!” Anne cried. “Let Charlotte and Jackson go.”
“And the contract?”
“It’s signed and notarized, exactly as Dan Corbin asked.”
“Excellent. Place it at the concierge’s desk in the main lobby. Someone will be there shortly to pick it up. And no cops,” he added, “or the deal is off.”
“I haven’t told anyone, I swear.”
Mike’s warning had only been for show. He knew that Anne hadn’t called the police. According to Otis, the Marchand women hadn’t said anything about the kidnapping, in spite of his questions. They’d maintained complete silence as soon as they had received the ransom demand. There was no buzz around the station or through any of Otis’s contacts either. Everyone at the hotel had closed ranks—they were following Mike’s demands to the letter.
“What about my daughter and Jackson?” Anne asked.
“A
s soon as I receive the contract, they will be released.”
“How? Where?”
“We’ll be in touch,” Mike said. “Oh, and one last thing, Mrs. Marchand.”
“Yes?”
“I expect your cooperation to continue. Otherwise…” He paused to let the threat sink in. “You have three other daughters. You have a granddaughter, as well. A lively child, from what I’ve heard.”
“What—” Her voice cracked. “What do you mean?”
“If you attempt to void this contract by claiming it was signed under duress or if you speak to the police now or at any point in the future, someone else in your family will suffer the same fate as your eldest daughter.”
“Mon Dieu.” Anne’s voice was no more than a whisper. “You can have the hotel. I won’t say anything. Please, I beg you, just leave my family alone.”
Mike terminated the connection and placed the phone on his desk. He savored the moment for a while—the taste of victory was almost as good as the wine.
“Did she go for it?” Dan asked.
Mike nodded once. “Yes. The Hotel Marchand is mine.”
Richard pumped his fist in the air and reached for the wine bottle. “This calls for a toast.”
“Put that down,” Mike ordered. “We’re not finished yet. I need you to go outside and wait for my driver.”
Richard glanced at Dan. There was an almost imperceptible nod again.
Mike slapped his palm on the desk, making both Corbins jump. “Outside, both of you. And leave the gun beside the bottle, Richard. I might need it.”
After a telling hesitation, Richard laid his gun on the desk. Dan straightened the knot of his tie and cleared his throat. “So we’re square now, right, Mike?”
“Certainly, Dan. I’m a man of my word. Once my driver gets here with the purchase contract, we can consider your debt to me paid in full.”
Mike listened to their footsteps ring on the steel staircase outside his office, then watched through the glass wall until they had crossed the warehouse floor. The Corbins were going to meet more than simply his driver, they were going to meet their fate. He glanced at the gun and smiled. How obliging of Richard to leave a clear set of fingerprints. Apart from the necessity of having Carter killed sooner than Mike would have preferred, this was all working out exactly as he’d planned.
“You’ll get what you asked for,” Jackson said. “Let us go.”
Mike took his time topping up his wineglass before he replied. “I believe you understand why I can’t do that.”
Jackson looked at Charlotte, then back at Mike. “I understand you need to demonstrate your power to the Marchands to leave them too terrorized to back out of the deal. You can accomplish that by killing me instead of Charlotte.”
After having to endure the Corbins, it was refreshing to speak with an intelligent man for a change. Mike could see that the doctor wasn’t like the Marchands, either. He was educated, but his speech didn’t have the polish of old class. The guy had guts, too.
Charlotte twisted her head to look at Jackson. “What are you doing?”
Jackson kept his gaze on Mike. “Surgeons are well paid. I donate the bulk of my income to charity, but my fees from last year are still in my bank. You can have it all as long as you let Charlotte go.”
It was tempting to take him up on the offer. Mike seldom turned down an easy profit, and one dead body could be as much a deterrent as two. “This is a first for me,” he mused. “I don’t believe I’ve ever had a man offer me money to execute him rather than someone else.”
Charlotte’s chair wobbled as she strained against the tape that held her. “Jackson, no!”
“Stay out of this, Charlotte.”
“I won’t leave here without you.”
“Yes, you will. And you’re going to swear that you won’t go to the police.”
“No, it’s me they wanted in the first place, not you.” She looked at Mike. “Let Jackson go. You don’t need him anymore.”
Mike took what he calculated was a twenty-dollar mouthful of wine and swished it through his teeth. She wasn’t looking down her nose at him now, he thought. If he asked her to, she would probably get down on her knees. Chuckling, he leaned over to open the top drawer of his desk and drew out one of the skinning knives that Otis had returned to him. “This is all very touching, but business is business.” He stroked the flat of the blade with his thumb. “I’ve waited a long time to get my hands on the Hotel Marchand. And believe me, I didn’t get where I am today by leaving any loose ends.”
JACKSON FOUGHT TO KEEP his expression impassive as he worked at his own loose end. The edge of the duct tape wasn’t flat. Dan had been in too much of a hurry to smooth it out when he’d bound Jackson’s wrists, and as a result, there was a corner that hadn’t adhered fully. After more than thirty minutes of painstaking effort, he had finally succeeded in pushing his right index finger beneath the gap.
It wasn’t much—the tape was looped around his wrists three times and would have to be unwound millimeter by millimeter if Jackson was going to free himself—but at this stage he was willing to grasp at the smallest straw of hope…even if he was unable to grasp.
He wasn’t sure how much time they had left, but he prayed it would be enough to break free. It felt as if he were touching the tape through a wall of glass shards. The ache that had been building in his strained tendons was getting worse. Muscles that hadn’t responded in weeks were screaming in protest. He could almost feel the tissue that had managed to heal ripping apart, cell by cell.
Damn, he wished he had two good hands. Not so he could be a surgeon. No, he couldn’t care less whether he ever held another scalpel or tied another bandage. He wanted his nerves to mend so that he could save one life, not hundreds.
“I’m sorry, Jackson.”
The whisper was so faint he wasn’t sure that he’d heard it. He turned his head and saw that Charlotte was looking at him, her eyes blurred with tears.
There were so many things they both could apologize for, it made no difference what she meant. He shook his head quickly—he didn’t want her to waste the time they had left with regrets—but the motion made the ache from his concussion worse. He gritted his teeth to bring the pain down to a manageable level.
“This is all because of the hotel, and you never wanted any part of it,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry you got dragged into—”
“Stall,” he whispered.
“What?”
Jackson flicked his gaze behind his chair meaningfully. “Get Blount talking again. Keep him distracted.”
Charlotte glanced at where Jackson’s wrists were bound behind his back.
“What are you two whispering about?” Blount demanded.
“I remember you now, Mr. Blount,” Charlotte said.
Jackson resumed his efforts to unwind the tape. Although Charlotte’s face was tight with tension, she had gone into her tea-in-the-parlor mode again, her voice steady and politely detached. He was relieved to hear her back in control. Her stubborn pride was one of the things he loved about her—it had killed him to see her plead.
“You came into the hotel lobby last week,” she continued as if it were completely normal to be having a conversation with a man who was brandishing a skinning knife. “I saw you talking to our concierge.”
“I’ve been in the hotel plenty of times,” he responded. “You just didn’t see me.”
“I’ve been kept quite busy lately.”
Blount laughed as he put down his knife and poured himself another glass of wine. He displayed no signs of inebriation, though—his celebration appeared to be as calculated as everything else about him. “I bet you have,” he said.
“Were you behind all the problems we’ve had? Or was that the work of the Corbin brothers?”
Blount narrowed his eyes. “Why are you asking me about this now?”
She lifted her chin. “I understand that you plan to kill us. What harm could there be in satisfying my c
uriosity before you do?”
Jackson wanted to hug her. In spite of her fear, she’d injected just the right amount of haughtiness into her request. Blount was probably eager to boast. He appeared to enjoy feeling in charge.
“For a classy woman, you sure are gullible,” Blount said. “Most of those problems you had were caused by your pretty-boy concierge.”
Charlotte drew in her breath. “Luc?”
Blount sipped his wine, evidently relishing her shock. “He’s been working with the Corbins for months. That’s how they operate. When they want to acquire a hotel, they plant someone on the inside to sabotage the business until the owner is forced to sell at a bargain price. They’ve been running that scam in Asia for years. Luc Carter was their guy on the inside at your place.”
Charlotte faltered, her chin quivering. “No,” she whispered.
“It was a good setup they had going, until Carter grew a conscience.”
Jackson could see how hard this was on Charlotte. He, too, had been fooled by Luc. The man’s distress during the fire had seemed genuine—if he’d been having second thoughts then, it was no wonder he’d appeared so troubled. This also explained his vehemence against the Corbins during that drunken conversation at the hotel bar. “Is that why you killed him?” Jackson asked.
Blount carried his glass to the office doorway and looked into the darkness. “He wanted out and tried to go to the cops. He made the mistake of underestimating my reach.”
Jackson took advantage of the lapse in Blount’s attention to give his hand a sharp twist. A two-inch section of tape suddenly pulled loose, making a distinctive hollow ripping sound.
Charlotte wriggled against her bonds, using the creaking of her chair to mask the noise Jackson had made. “You’re not a hotelier like the Corbins, are you, Mr. Blount?” she asked.
He turned. “No. I have other interests.”
“Then I don’t see why you’re going to so much trouble to get my hotel.”
“It’s my hotel now, Miss Marchand. You people never saw its potential. It will be the perfect location to expand my business. With a prestigious address like that and all those rooms to run my games and girls—”
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