He went to rest while I called Angela and explained to her roughly what I had planned. She was eager to help out. I prepped for my mission. Though Kiro was in Drake Hill, we needed more information than even he could provide at this point. With vampires of this caliber, we needed a miracle, and Finn had shown up . . . but I still wasn’t sure about my chances.
We arrived at Drake Hill around noon, armed with the keys from the villa that François had taken. Angela noticed my nervousness and my pale face, but she didn’t dare question me about it until we were at the gate to the villa.
“Something horrible happened, didn’t it?”
Swallowing hard, I was actually relieved to be able to confide in a human friend who could understand what I was feeling.
“You have no idea,” I said, getting out of the car.
It was hard to find the right key, but I managed to trigger the gate’s opening mechanism and get us inside without attracting attention. Driving up the lane, I knew that Angela wasn’t expecting me to continue.
“Sorry . . . what I saw . . .”
“You don’t have to tell me, you know.”
“No, you’re the only one who can understand. All these vampires have hearts of stone and can bear the unbearable. But I have limits. I hate Karl, but I almost pity him, knowing what he’s going through right now. I’m disgusted that I’m involved, even indirectly.”
“I understand, but you shouldn’t feel guilty. From what I understand, these things are usual in the vampire world. It existed before you, and it will exist after you. You can’t do anything about it. Karl chose this, and you, you chose to save the vampires who for decades have been saving human lives in this area. I’m proud of you.”
Her declaration left me speechless, and a wave of relief washed over me. I’d been right to confide in her . . . I pulled her toward me and hugged her tight.
“You’re suffocating me,” she cried out, laughing and returning my hug.
“I’m so happy you’re here. A little estrogen in my world of vampire testosterone is good for me.”
We laughed together before getting to the heart of the matter . . .
The villa wasn’t very big, but the refined decor gave it an impression of spaciousness and relaxing Zen-ness. A large Buddha statue smiled in the direction of anyone who entered, and a long staircase led to the upper floor.
“What are we looking for?” Angela asked.
“This house definitely doesn’t belong to Karl. Search upstairs, I’ll take care of the ground floor. Look for anything that could tell us about the owners. We need to find out who they are.”
“OK.”
We split up for what seemed like a short time, but when she joined me in the office, which I’d made a mess of, it was already six o’clock. Angela had lost all her sex appeal: her eyes were red, her skin was pale, her blond hair (usually so carefully brushed and radiant) was all tangled like a lion’s mane, and she was covered in dust.
“What happened to you?” I asked, startled.
“There was a hatch in the bedroom, leading to the attic. I searched it from top to bottom and then my allergies . . . Aaa . . . Aaatchoo! All that fuss for nothing.”
She blew her nose noisily and sat down next to me.
“Did you find something?”
“No, this office is full of papers, but there are no names on the letterheads. It’s crazy,” I answered, frustrated.
“Are there any other rooms to look through?”
“I combed through the ground floor and the basement. Nothing.” I put my head between my hands. “We don’t have enough time. We have to find something.”
Tick, tock, tick, tock, the clock continued its incessant ticking to remind me that Phoenix’s end was near. Angela put her hand on my shoulder.
“We just hit a roadblock. We’ll start again, and you’ll see, this time we’ll find something.”
For two hours, we took up our search again, revisiting every last square inch that could have escaped our attention the first time. I was seriously starting to despair, knowing that July’s summer sun would set in an hour at the most. I went to massage my neck a little, but as I did, my earring fell to the ground and rolled between the desk and the wall. Already in a bad mood, that didn’t help matters, so I shoved the desk aside roughly to recover my earring. In the little space that opened up, luck finally smiled at me.
A document had fallen between the desk and the wall and must have been forgotten there by the owners. I grabbed it quickly, suddenly hopeful.
“Angela, I found something.”
She came over, and we sat down on the floor together to read what seemed like official correspondence. The addressee’s name wasn’t mentioned, but at the top was the name of the sender.
“George Stanson,” I read. “It’s a copy of a notarized agreement concerning the new residential neighborhood being built at the city’s periphery.”
“His address is in Kerington’s business quarter.”
I got out my phone.
“What are you doing?”
“Making good use of my smartphone.”
I typed in the name we’d found and let Google do its magic.
“He’s an inheritance attorney. His clients aren’t just anybody. They are celebrities and businessmen, so they must go to him for discretion. We’ll have to go to Kerington and question him.”
“He’ll be at home by now, given the time.”
“Not necessarily. These kinds of lawyers are always at the disposal of their clients. If they need him at night, he has to be able to see them.”
I was greeted by George Stanson’s secretary after dialing his office number.
“Mr. Stanson’s office, Stella speaking.”
“Hello, I’m Peter Livingstone’s assistant, and I absolutely must see your boss within the next hour.”
“I’m sorry, but Mr. Stanson has left for the evening. You must make an appointment.”
I was expecting that answer, but I had other tricks up my sleeve.
“Very well, I think Mr. Stanson will be thrilled to learn that thanks to your diligence and efficacy, you’ve deprived him of the business of a man worth half a billion dollars. I’ll call another inheritance specialist. I doubt that he will make the mistake of refusing a meeting with me. Have a good evening.”
I’d played my last hand, but the biggest lies were often the most useful.
“Uh, wait!” The secretary’s voice had lost all its arrogance, and she seemed much tenser than before. “One moment please.”
She came back on the line less than a minute later.
“The offices will be closed in an hour, but we’ll inform security. Mr. Stanson will be waiting for you, Miss . . . ?”
“Jones, Samantha Jones. All right, I’ll be there in an hour with my secretary.”
Without further ado, I hung up on her. Rich people didn’t bother with niceties. I looked at my watch and then up at Angela.
“Let’s go.”
We rushed to the car, toward Kerington, toward George Stanson.
Stanson’s offices were situated in the business quarter downtown, on Marc Orsa Avenue, the richest and most valuable property in Kerington. Being well established here meant guaranteed success.
Despite my dangerous (and well over the speed limit) driving, during which Angela somehow managed to clean herself up, we didn’t arrive until about nine thirty. I asked Angela to call François to tell him not to worry, but unfortunately Finn picked up the phone. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but given the way her face fell, it couldn’t have been nice. Indignant, I held out my hand.
“Give me the phone.”
She complied, visibly relieved.
“Finn, it’s Samantha. I . . . No, we’re not being imprudent . . . No, I haven’t forgotten Phoenix, why would you think that . . . Oh, shut up!”
Creator or not, it wasn’t polite to keep cutting me off like that, and I had to update him. In any case, he didn’t say anything more after I sho
uted at him.
“Stay close to your phone and try to grill Karl on a George Stanson. He may know something. No vampire is going to let us humans into Talanus and Ysis’s house, so we’ll continue our search right to the end,” I said.
He hung up on me. Well, I hadn’t received any cursing or insults, so I concluded that I had carte blanche.
“Are you ready?” I asked my friend one last time as we left the parking garage.
“I’m the secretary to the assistant of Mr. Livingstone, multimillionaire, who wants to put his estate in the hands of a finance guru like Mr. Stanson.”
“Perfect. Ah, just so you know, I wear a gun and several knives, don’t be afraid if you see me get them out. If this guy knows more than he lets on, I won’t hesitate to frighten him.”
“Don’t worry about me. If there’s need, I’m prepared to give him a good beating myself . . . I hate lawyers.”
The elevator brought us to the thirty-fifth floor, after the security guard checked my identification. Smartly, I’d dissuaded him from asking to see Angela’s as well, because we couldn’t give him her real name. Before the elevator doors opened, we both exhaled to give us courage. George Stanson was waiting for us.
I’d hardly taken a good look at him when I felt an immediate and firm aversion to him. His small stature and portliness would have given him a friendly demeanor without his smarmy smirk.
“Miss Jones, I’m pleased to make the acquaintance of the assistant to such an important and . . . discreet . . . man. I must admit I’ve never heard of him.”
I looked at him with a disdain that surprised even me.
“Perhaps you don’t have the right connections. Anyway, my boss is not the kind of man who holds meeting in public. He employs a number of people to ensure his activities and interests are handled discreetly.”
The message couldn’t have been clearer: stop asking stupid questions or we’ll send our hired guns. Well, perhaps not that clear, but from the look on Stanson’s face, he’d understood that he’d been put in his place.
“Uh . . . Follow me to my office. We’ll be more comfortable there.”
He opened the door and invited us to sit down. Of course his eyes followed the gracious movements of Angela’s hips, and when he lifted his eyes and realized that I’d caught him, he blushed.
I intentionally imposed silence between us and gave Stanson a very severe look; he shifted from side to side in his seat, uncomfortable. My strategy was working: he was taking us seriously. I had to discover the identity of the villa’s owner, for my instinct was screaming at me that that’s who we’d been looking for from the beginning. My plan was nothing more than a bluff. I had to frighten him enough to get him to talk, without going so far as hurting him . . . I wasn’t a monster.
“I only have a little time, so I’ll cut to the chase. Mr. Livingstone is an important man whose wealth amounts to nearly a half a billion dollars, and he wants to pour some of that into real estate. It’s obvious that discretion is of the utmost. We don’t wish to attract attention.”
“Are you proposing that I launder your money?” he said, offended.
I smiled at him, shrugging my shoulders.
“Come on. If I’m here, it’s because I know all about you, so don’t pretend to be offended.”
He looked at me suspiciously. He must be wondering if I was a police informant.
“Fine. We’re not going to spend the night here. I’m not police, if that’s what you think,” I said.
He seemed calmed by that, and he relaxed into his chair, ready to do business.
“Tell me what you want to invest in and what type of buildings, and I’ll see what I can do for you.”
“Mr. Livingstone likes Drake Hill and that whole posh neighborhood. Are there any properties there of interest to us?”
I didn’t fail to notice the shudder that came over Stanson at the mention of Drake Hill, but I had to be sure he really knew something before revealing anything more.
“Hm . . . of course, an entire residential neighborhood is being constructed right now, and the city means to put more land on sale two months from now. It’s ideal for investing.”
“The clients you’ve already given this information to, what do they think?”
“Why do you want to know that?”
He seemed worried, but I had to keep pushing.
“It’s normal that I would want to know if your clients are happy with your services.”
“You’ve already investigated me, so that question is superfluous,” he said, dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief.
“Come on, don’t work yourself up. You could be working for vampires for all I care.”
That time, his look of fear betrayed him. In a flash, I got out my gun from my bag, and Angela went to block the door to make sure he couldn’t escape. Undeterred, Stanson jumped on his desk and tried to use his momentum to push my friend out of his way. What he hadn’t considered was how well trained I was: he collapsed when I delivered a blow to the back of his neck.
Angela looked at me with a mixture of protest and astonishment.
“You killed him!”
I sighed. “Of course not, but in two minutes, he’s going to wake up with a severe headache. I’ll take care of him. You go through his drawers and see if you can find any reference to the Drake Hill villa.”
She quickly complied, which allowed me to turn my attention to our shady lawyer. To tell the truth, I was impressed by the leap he’d made despite his corpulence. He must have been scared out of his mind to be able to fly like that, trying to escape in spite of the gun aimed at him.
I managed to get him back in his chair and positioned myself in front of him, knives out. As expected, he woke up shortly after. Noticing that the woman he took for a secretary was emptying his drawers and the other woman was playing with silver knives under his very nose, Stanson trembled with fear, his face white as a sheet.
“Who . . . who are you? Are you vampires?”
“So, you do know about vampires . . . which means that in exchange for your life, you helped one of them,” I said, moving closer and showing off the gleam of my blades.
“You . . . you’re human? What do you want from me?”
“I want to know what vampire you’re working for and what he or she looks like. If I don’t get the information I want, I’ll be happy to bleed you out like the stuck pig you are,” I growled, imitating to perfection my boss’s own threatening and velvet-wrapped voice.
I didn’t know that human skin could turn so pale. Stanson became so white you would have thought he was a corpse.
“You won’t find anything here. If I tell you anything, they’ll kill me anyway.”
I gave him the cruelest smile, taking Karl as my model.
“That’s not the issue. Everything depends on the way you’ll be killed. Vampires aren’t the only ones who know deadly, slow, meticulous techniques, you know,” I murmured, signaling him to follow the trajectory of my blade.
He jumped in horror, seeing my hand mime the cutting up of his masculine anatomy, located below the belt.
“It’s time to choose, George. If you help us, we’ll eliminate your boss, and then we’ll be in a position to let you live.”
He stared, searching my face for a sign that I was bluffing. Luckily for me, he didn’t find any.
“So, George, freedom . . . or slow and painful death?”
Angela had joined me, and together we held our breath, waiting for him to decide . . .
He finally cracked and told us the identity of the vampire who was holding him hostage, as well as the extent of that vampire’s investments in this region and beyond, and he showed us to a well-hidden safe where there was proof of his accusations. I had to pinch myself to stay in character. The whirlwind of emotions threatened to make me lose all self-control.
I didn’t know how, but I played my part until the last moment, not forgetting to threaten George Stanson with the worst torture if he ever dare
d talk to anyone about our meeting and the existence of vampires. I must have been extremely convincing, for the poor man wet his pants.
Once we’d left the building, taking precautions that there weren’t any curious ears around us, we jumped into the car as if the devil himself were in hot pursuit. After I peeled out of the parking garage, Angela dialed the phone and handed it to me. Finn was on the other end, and in the background I heard Karl’s screams; he hadn’t had a moment of respite between yesterday and today.
“Stop everything. You must meet me. Fly as fast as you can to Talanus and Ysis’s house. François can take the car. Make sure he brings Karl, and tell him to step on it. I know who’s behind all this!”
Once again, Finn hung up on me. But I wasn’t angry at all, quite the contrary. There was an hour and a half drive between Scarborough and Kerington, and it was almost eleven o’clock. In an hour, by hierarchical order, Phoenix would be the first to die . . . and I hoped that his flying creator would arrive in time to stop all this.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Revelations
I was speeding so fast to get to Talanus and Ysis’s house that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t been pursued by the police. I parked a block away from the master vampires’ house and cut the engine.
“Angela, I’m going to get out and wait for Finn to arrive. Only he can get me inside. As for you, I want you to drive back to Scarborough.”
“What?” she exclaimed, outraged. “I’m staying with you whether you like it or not!”
I shook my head and grabbed her by the shoulders.
“Listen to me. Finn can’t get us both in. Besides, they know me. Don’t forget that the mission of the Greats is to silence anyone who threatens to reveal the secret of their existence, so I have no guarantee where you’re concerned. François would be inconsolable if something bad happened to you.”
My implacable logic made its way to my friend’s mind, but she wouldn’t admit defeat.
“I don’t want to abandon you.”
“You aren’t. And I didn’t do all this just to die now. Believe me, I’ll get out of this.”
“I feel like I’m leaving you to enter the lion’s den all alone.”
Samantha Watkins: Chronicles of an Extraordinary Ordinary Life (Samantha Watkins Series Book 1) Page 36
