Crissy Chance

by Douglas E Roff

  “No, if you and my partners are in, so am I.”

  Cia asked, “Do we have to get naked for the mind thingy?”

  “No. Of course not. I can …”

  “Can we anyway?”

  “Well, now that I think of it, I should do a full body and cavity search of you. Health and Safety, you know. OSHA standards of workplace safety.”

  Misti said, “We’re not in the US.”

  “Debbie downer,” said Hecate. “Eene will have to assist me. Now, how should we do this?”

  Eene said, “We all get naked in the Master bedroom. Noki and Misti will assist. We do one at a time, unless we decide otherwise. Girls only.”

  Adam walked in.

  “Did I miss anything? Shall we get started?”

  “We’re finished, the ladies are up to speed. Now we’re doing knowledge transfer. You finalize those work assignments. We’ll join you later.”

  “Going for a walk?”

  “Short walk, very slow. Long time. Back in a couple of hours, and no, you aren’t invited.”

  “Jeez, what did I do?”

  “You went for a walk without us, now we are going for a walk without you.”

  “Not fair.”

  “Quit complaining, or corporal is back on the menu tonight.”

  “And you four,” Adam said to Beata and crew. “I trusted you. And already you’ve switched sides.”

  “Not true,” said Cia. “We are being inspected in preparation for knowledge transfer. Mandatory reporting to the Master bedroom. Rules are rules, that’s what you always said. Right?”

  “Can I watch? A little? I can help too if you want. This mind surgery can be tricky.”

  “We’ll let you know. Might be fun to have you watch and you know, do your guy thing while we watch. But you have to do what we tell you if we let you in. And we all get a turn, maybe two.”

  “You know where to find me.”

  Eene looked at Adam. “And don’t you dare start without us, understand?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. I may not be able to control what I think you may be doing in there without me.”

  Eene came up to Adam and gave him a gentle kiss. Then she whispered something in his ear.

  “Really?”

  “Really. Just for you. I promise.”

  “I’ll be working here happily. Come get me if you need me. If not, I’m good with that too.”

  Misti looked at her little waif. “What was that all about?”

  “Boyfriend management.”

  ***

  Two weeks later the cabal was informed that Kalindra would be coming to Paraiso to speak to Adam and Beata. These would be separate conversations, each private, and she would not be staying. The time had come to finalize things and now was the time. Details were sketchy to everyone except Adam who knew exactly what Kalindra had on her mind. One part for him, one part for Beata to settle old histories and old wounds, then move on to a different life; the one that she always wanted. She wasn’t angry or upset; mostly sad that things had to end, but end they must.

  When they first spoke, Adam suggested that it was a long way to come. If it was as he suspected, there was no need. Two phone calls and some tears would suffice; there was no need to fly a couple thousand miles then just turn around and go home. Kalindra said that was the cowards’ way out, to send an email, text or a phone call was the modern equivalent of the old fashioned ‘Dear John’ letter. She would come to his new home and say what needed to be said, then leave.

  The band aid was coming off, and quickly.

  ***

  She arrived at the airstrip in Paraiso, met with Beata and apologized for the harm and hurt she had caused. She hoped that Beata would explain things to her partners; she had transferred funds to all four in repayment for her part in the utter destruction of their careers. Beata was equally gracious in admitting that a large portion of the fault was hers; she had fired the first volley and was sorry for her own part in the nuclear war. Had she not said such nasty things, the contest of wills never would have bloomed into all out war. It was mutually assured destruction, and they had succeeded only in hurting themselves. They did not part as friends; neither were they enemies.

  To Adam she was brief. She admitted she had always loved him but realized what her life would be like if she stayed on with him in Paraiso. She would never have the life she longed for; that was never going to be part of the deal. She had met someone, someone special who was kind and loving and thoughtful. He was no genius; he was just a regular guy who had no pretense that he was punching above his weight when he met Kalindra. He was an ex-football player, a man who had waited for her to come to her senses. He was a good man, a stable man without issues. He was a Christian man who attended Church, as did she, every Sunday with joy in his heart and a real desire to help kids.

  He had proposed, and she said yes.

  Kalindra said she could recommend lots of people to take over her duties but she was quitting her work with Adam and helping her fiancé with his dream of building futures for troubled kids, kids who just needed someone to help, to love them and to notice them. She said she fell in love with his innate kindness and generous heart.

  Kalindra said that there would always be a corner of her soul that belonged to Adam but now it was time to let go of her bodyguards, the money and the responsibility and do something else. She wanted a family and a new normal. She wanted to stop looking over her shoulder and breathe. Just breathe.

  They were leaving New York City and moving to San Francisco, the Bay area being the location of his hometown of Oakland. They said their goodbyes, and said they would stay in touch, but they both knew that was never going to happen. This was their final goodbye.

  Adam was sad but knew this was coming. He had steeled himself against the pain and would bear it. He had never loved anyone like he had loved Kalindra, so new and exciting, but it was time to part.

  ***

  In the weeks and months that followed, Adam talked about who he could get to replace Kalindra. There was far less to do than when they ran the St. James Mindwerks; this new gig in Paraiso was just paying the contractors and for materials, as well as food and other necessary items. They could make everything else onsite.

  One morning at breakfast, Eene said she could do the job. Everyone froze, thinking that Eene could do a lot of things, but “numbers” were probably not on the list.

  “Not true what you’re all thinking. My father was an accountant, and I was his only child. He wanted a son very badly and, as I grew up, he reminded me with fresh punishments daily what a dismal failure I was as a boy. But he was my Dad, and I loved him. So, I worked with him, learned all about the business, and could read Financial Statements by the time I was twelve. But, no matter what I did, I was never good enough. I was just a dumb girl.

  “One day after making a math error, he got out his belt to teach me a lesson. I shot him once in the head, put the gun in his hand, and wrote out a suicide note. His business was an utter failure; the only thing he was ever any good at was beating me. But I knew numbers. You’ll see I’ll be amazing when I take over. This job is really more like bookkeeping than accounting; but, if we need to generate financial statements and tax documents, I can do that too. Software for these tasks is everywhere. Leave it to me.”

  She bounded out of the kitchen at that point. Adam caught up with her and they took a long walk. They were gone all day, but when they returned Eene was happy again, and Adam had a new accountant. They had not discussed work at all that day, but how much they had in common and how much he loved his beautiful, smart and adorable girlfriend.

  A few days later he heard Eene on the phone ripping a supplier a new one.

  “Jeez, Eene, I never knew you could be such a tyrant.”

  “I know. I’m amazing and you are one lucky guy to have me.”

  “I know! I was just thinking the same thing.”

  One morning at breakfast, Eene said, “You know guys, we’re perilousl
y close to broke. We are down to three billion bongo bucks and only making about thirty-five million, net, per month. Step it up, there St. James. Wouldn’t hurt you to lay off the ladies for a while and burn a little midnight oil. Except for me, of course. I’m indispensable to your happiness.”

  A few days later, Eene announced that, other than the paltry earnings from unrelated sources, her fella and their organization, now run by all female execs, sure was making a lot of cashish.

  “Are we payin’ taxes on any of this stuff?”

  ***

  Shortly afterward, Hana returned to the delight of everyone. She was finally home.

  ***

  A month after that, Adam received the news from the FBI field office in Oakland, California that Kalindra and James Barnett had been brutally murdered in their condo. Scribbled on the wall in their own blood was a message:

  The died slowly and painfully. We cut them up, tortured them and left quite a mess.

  Let him know it was us.

  Chapter 51

  Crissy, Edward and Anna thought themselves clever in their journey from the suburbs of Paris to Oakland and back. They had spent months playing in the French Chateau with their twisted friends, bringing in fresh girls to play with every few weeks. The young Eastern European women were favored, though they brought in talent from all over the world. Edward and Crissy stuck with their fairly customary fare of deviancy; using, abusing and reshuffling the deck of victims. They were voracious in appetite and spent most of the day consuming as much flesh as possible.

  By contrast, Anna and Francesca were slower and more deliberate, acting out fantasies they studied by day in the arcane literature of past sado-masochists. Then in the evening they would descend together into the deep basement of one of the out buildings surrounding the Chateau to recreate some madness of a long-forgotten era. The ladies had outfitted their stage especially for their three, four and sometimes five act plays, all themed and costumed, directed by Francesca. These were not mere sessions; each was a work of art in the detail and arrangement of the horrors they would perform.

  Francesca now had a supplier of tools, a German medical workshop that could not only replicate ancient implements of torture faithfully, but do so using modern materials and even, in many cases, updating the effectiveness of what they asked to be recreated. The cover story was these instruments were for Grad school classes in ancient methods of torture based on Francesca’s Ph.D. dissertation and an upcoming series of scholarly papers on the subject matter.

  The four left through Paris Orly Airport for New York City after Edward received an email suggesting that the private investigators, hired to watch out for Adam as well as a list of other names, contacted him and said there was a lead. It wasn’t Adam, or his Paraiso entourage, it was Kalindra Wright making the papers in the society pages after her recent marriage to ex-NFL wide receiver Noah Carter.

  The gown was exquisite, the wedding large, even by New York City standards, and it was routinely covered by all the papers on the East Coast. But the paper hinted the glam couple were leaving New York City and bound for the West Coast to get settled, then around the world on a year long honeymoon. Details were sketchy until the PI’s found out that Noah was from the Bay area; the couple planned to split their time between San Francisco and New York City to pursue philanthropic ventures but would take life slow and travel widely. Their new Foundation was well funded and their aims both compassionate and practical.

  Edward decided to make a Grand Tour of the States, with meetings at major Universities to reveal some exciting new, but yet unreleased discoveries. Edward would renew contacts with law enforcement to make them unassailable when Adam and his lady friends were finally brought to heel, killed and mutilated. The funerals would be massive, the sadness of Anna and Edward St. James heartbreaking to watch. Crissy would dress in black for a month; after all, she and Adam had been close friends growing up. Though they were never linked romantically, the story would circulate that they had carried on passionate affairs in the past. Crissy’s tears would be the best money could buy.

  They would wind up in the Bay area for a week or so; Edward and Anna, had many academic lectures to give along with training for western field offices of the FBI dealing with the theft in antiquities. This would lead to an exciting series of announcements culminating in the biggest of all: Edward and Anna were retiring. Edward’s forensic practice would fall to Crissy Chance who would forego standard law practice for the full-time pursuit of a new field combining law and forensic archeology. She would continue the ground-breaking work of Anna and Edward St. James, ably assisted by newcomer Francesca Genetti on the anthropology side. Both would teach on a rotating basis at the most prestigious Universities in the United States.

  In reality, they would set up a parallel system of side deals, extortion and outright theft of goods for sale to private collectors. They would cut out the middle man and keep the circle small. They already had an impressive list of buyers and agents; why give a hefty cut to people and organizations that would flip on you in a heartbeat. Many old financial and distribution associations would cease operations rather suddenly and with terminal consequences.

  They thought themselves so brilliant; they had no idea what awaited them. Long time relationships can’t be terminated that easily without consequences. They had thought it possible to eliminate old colleagues on a “Black Friday/Knights Templar” plan; all dead in one day. Unfortunately, they did not think through who would do the killing and what they might want later to keep quiet.

  The Kalindra/Noah Carter murders would be just the thing Edward needed to draw out Adam, maybe even the whole lot of his female harem. Adam would have to come out of hiding for the funerals and memorials. Kalindra was always well liked by her associates and clients; the same could not be said for Adam. He would show up, and when he did, another tragedy would be discovered. His death and the announcement that Nocera Lee and Misti Suarez, possibly others, were also dead would be tragic.

  Business deal gone wrong? Some nefarious activities? Who knew what they were really up to. Social media would go crazy with the speculation fuelled by false media reports sourced from Edward’s surrogates.

  The problem with making decisions based on unknown risks and behaviors is that you tend to have more confidence in your plan than you should. For most detail-oriented individuals, this plan was shoddier than most. It was based on incomplete information, greed and false assumptions.

  They did not know that Misti had fully recovered; information from the Island incident about her was sketchy and the Russian had told Edward that she seemed unaware of her recent past. In addition, Edawrd was positive that Laura knew where the Marco Polo Cache was; she didn’t. They thought they could torture the information out of Gaea; she was dead. They thought that Franco di Pietro was alive; the real guy was dead, and the fake guy was probably in possession of the Cache along with the mysterious James Wong who had given Laura clues but who did not really exist.

  Adam too had many details wrong, but none of them mattered because Adam had no interest in the Cache. He simply wanted to find the four, kill them, then move on with his life. The four did their work in Oakland, sent out the “Helter Skelter” message to catch Adam’s attention, and sent him a warning: no one you love is safe and we’re going to kill you all.

  They decided to return to the safety of London and wait for Adam to surface. When he did, specially trained mercenaries would track down Adam and his entourage and kill them all. They were home in Knightsbridge the morning following the murders of Kalindra and Noah Carter. The closed casket funeral was set for a week after the deaths of the newlyweds; followed by cremation, ashes scattered half in Oakland and half in New York.

  They settled in quietly and went out later the next day for dinner, walking from their flat. Outside the building were Adam’s paid snoops filming the new arrivals. Adam knew within hours that the four had returned. He failed to suspect that Misti’s torturer could be a woma
n in addition to Anna and Crissy. He assumed this kind of gender hatred had to be a man. Maybe a surgeon; maybe some one who trained as a physician and never finished Med School.

  Adam was on the phone instantly as he reassembled his American strike teams and brought them all to London, joining his local teams headed by James and Raoul Bentley. Adam and Hecate arrived at a private landing strip just north of London.

  Within twenty-four hours, all were assembled at James and Raoul’s facility in the City, then went over the plan. The building was sandwiched between two other buildings, and was expected to have false doors and hidden escape routes. The old stairwell to the basement garage was noted; it had probably been updated and led somewhere other than what the building plans showed, but if so, it was not in the official plans on file with the City.

  James, Raoul and their attractive American partners, Vera Capri and Hannah Parker, had gone over all possible escape routes, even dangerous routes unlikely to be possible given the ages of Anna and Edward St. James. They had watched the building for security and knew where everyone would be, the tech they used and the ways to jam any communications in or out of the building. They would cut power, trap the four in their residence on the top floor, take out security and gas the place to immobilize the residents before they could flee.

  The operation would be quick, surgical and hopefully injury free. All backup security mechanisms at the building were accounted for and would be disabled. The crew would then swoop in, pick up the four and take them to a residence outside the City. Adam would do his thing, then leave. No torture, no lectures just a bullet in the heads of the St. James Gang, and a quick departure home.

  They planned to go at night, that night, and be back in Paraiso by early morning.

  ***

  Hecate snuggled close to Adam on the plane as she was not allowed to air express him with her directly to London. This was alone time, and something about the plan was bothering her; bothering her a lot. Adam had asked her advice on many things except one thing. If the answer was what she expected, she would have no problem with it. If not, she would.