Showdown

by Cindy Dees

  “Don’t answer, Zane!” Sebastian cried. If Claude thought Zane knew the answer, maybe they would torture him instead, to make Zane talk. He would much rather take the pain himself and spare Zane.

  Zane looked back and forth between him and Claude. Sebastian pleaded with his eyes. Don’t say a word.

  “Let’s take this conversation somewhere more private, shall we?” Claude said. “Bring them along, gentlemen.” The guards glared at them, the one Sebastian had dropped mopping at his bloody nose with a handkerchief.

  Sebastian allowed himself to be prodded along behind Zane, and the two of them were taken downstairs into a low-ceilinged, unfinished basement that hadn’t been updated since this house had been built. A hot-water heater clanked in a corner, and an air conditioner rattled in another. No one would hear them scream down here. Fear for Zane began to climb the inside of his stomach. He and Zane were in big trouble. Huge. He had to think up something and fast, or they were both dead. One of them would be tortured until the other one broke, then the second plate would be fetched from Zane’s bank, and then they would both die.

  “Mr. Vanderpohl, I need to speak with your superiors. If you could pass a message along to them, I would appreciate it.”

  Claude stared at him. “What could you possibly have to say to them?”

  Ha. He’d all but admitted to working for Erebus.

  “I would like to apply for membership in the Erebus Consortium. Tell them that.”

  Zane gasped, and Sebastian flinched. Surely Zane knew he was lying. That he was buying them time and a way out of this hellhole.

  “How do you know that name?” Claude demanded.

  “Does it matter? You dropped a priceless pair of currency plates into my boyfriend’s luggage, and you didn’t expect me to investigate and figure out who was behind that? I have resources, my friend. Pass the message.”

  A snort. “What reason would they have to even speak with you?”

  “I have about a billion reasons in the bank,” he retorted, “and assets and contacts worth more than that.”

  That silenced Claude. After a minute he asked, “Who are you again?”

  “I told you. I’m Sebastian Gigoni. Google me.”

  He was faintly surprised when Claude did in fact pull out a cell phone and type into it. The man looked from the phone to him and back down at the phone. Must be comparing a picture of him to his face.

  Without agreeing to pass the message along, Claude turned to Zane. “So. Tell me where the other plate is now, Mr. Stryker. I’m sure I don’t have to explain that you will tell me sooner or later. All that remains to be determined is how much pain you will suffer between now and then.”

  Zane looked at Sebastian, clearly asking without words for guidance. Begging for Sebastian not to have turned on him, for Sebastian not to have thrown him to the wolves the minute the going got rough.

  Implacably, never breaking eye contact, he stared back, willing Zane to trust him. Play along with me. Please, please, believe in me.

  But doubt swam in Zane’s light green gaze.

  In turn, Sebastian eyed the pair of thugs, both of whom were upright, armed, and angry-looking. They had the cold, dead look in their eyes of men who could inflict pain without remorse. Especially the one Sebastian had taken by surprise and dropped. He looked eager for Zane to refuse to talk.

  Sebastian sighed. Stripping all emotion out of his voice, he said, “We gain nothing by you holding out on these low-level flunkies. Tell them where the plate is.”

  Zane shocked him by saying, “Even if I tell you where it is, I’m the only person who can access it for you.”

  Claude stared at Zane, reassessing him and realizing he wasn’t just a pretty face. “You will take both of these men with you. You have one hour to get the plate and come back here.” He didn’t bother spelling out what would happen if Zane failed to return with the plate. Billionaire or not, Sebastian would be a dead man.

  “Do as he says. No tricks. No heroics,” Sebastian said, low and urgent. “For real. Got it?”

  “I do. Trust me, Sebastian. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

  And that was what scared the hell out of him. The last thing they needed was any sophomoric rescue plan full of ill-guided heroics, attempted by an amateur.

  “Do exactly as they say—”

  Zane didn’t stick around for any more instructions from him. Instead he turned and left the room with the thugs. The last thing Sebastian heard as their footsteps retreated was Zane asking if the men had a car. He sounded shockingly calm, given the dire situation.

  Like he had a plan.

  Oh Lord. That could not be good.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ZANE HOPPED out of the back seat of the car, armed thug in tow.

  “No funny business, Stryker. I’ve got a gun.”

  He trotted up the flights of stairs to Maya’s loft, trailed by his minder. Before knocking, he muttered, “She’s the skittish type. Let me do the talking and don’t scare her, or God knows what she’ll do.”

  The thug nodded.

  “What are you doing here?” she mumbled when she opened the door.

  “I need to pick up the plate. Let me in.” He pushed past her and took her arm, using his body to shield the grip from the thug standing in the doorway. He half-pushed her across the room. Talking low and fast, he said, “I need you to call Janice.”

  “Fuck that—”

  He cut her off. “Shut up and listen. This is life and death. I need her to find a guy named Pere Cardiffe in England. He owns a company called Wild Cards, Inc. Tell him Erebus has Sebastian and me and they need to rescue us ASAP. Have you got all that?”

  “What’s this about?”

  “I have no time to explain. Just do it. Pere Cardiffe. Wild Cards. Erebus. Can you remember all that? Sebastian and I will die if you don’t.”

  “I’m not that fucked-up. I’ve got it.”

  “Let’s go,” the thug rumbled. “Clock’s ticking.”

  “Coming,” Zane called. To Maya, he murmured, “Get me the back side plate. Only the back side. Got that? Just one plate. And hurry. I’ll take care of the guy at the door. Go!”

  His urgency must have pierced her hangover, for she nodded and turned toward a chest of drawers under her big living room window as he headed for the door. “Be patient. She’s pretty drunk.”

  Over his shoulder, Zane called, “Hurry, Maya.”

  “Sheesh. Cool your jets. Here it is. Be careful. Body heat makes it frag—”

  “I know. Hush. Love you. Thanks.” He kissed her cheek as he took the plate, unwrapped and sitting in a piece of newspaper, from her. Quickly, he slipped it into his coat pocket.

  “Got it,” he announced cheerfully. “Let’s go.”

  His heart was about to pound out of his chest and his knees were in imminent danger of collapse, but he put on his cold, expressionless runway face and strolled down the stairs beside the armed thug, exuding what he hoped was confidence and cool detachment.

  Please God let Maya make that call. And get the names right. And convey just how urgent it was that Janice pass the message to the people at Wild Cards, Inc. He could’ve asked Maya to make the call directly, but he was afraid Sebastian’s friends would think it was a crank call from some drunk. At least Janice would be sober.

  Now the trick would be to keep Matty away from this plate and to keep Claude from holding it too long, softening up the alloy, and breaking the plate.

  They arrived back at the brownstone, and the thug ushered him inside. Claude was waiting in the living room now with Sebastian and three more armed men. Crap. Reinforcements had arrived.

  But the good news was Sebastian wasn’t in the basement being tortured. And apparently the two of them got to wait in the living room now, at least until a response to Sebastian’s request arrived. That was a welcome change of status, at least.

  “Do you have it?” Claude demanded.

  “Of course,” Zane answered. “Do yo
u still have the briefcase the plates came in? We wouldn’t want to scratch them and make them unusable, would we?”

  Claude looked alarmed at that prospect and left the room, returning with the briefcase that had started this whole fiasco. He opened it on a coffee table and laid in the front side plate. Zane unwrapped the second plate and placed it in the second foam cutout, praying it would hold up to inspection side-by-side with a real plate. If not, he and Sebastian were dead.

  The two plates winked up at him, shiny and crisply carved. Claude closed the briefcase, and Zane breathed a huge mental sigh of relief. He glanced up and caught Sebastian’s quizzical look at him. The guy knew him too well. He’d figured out that Zane had done something, but he didn’t know what.

  Without asking permission, Zane walked over to the sofa and sank down on it beside Sebastian. “Are you okay, babe?” he asked.

  Sebastian nodded. “I’m fine. You?”

  “I’m fine now.”

  A perplexed frown quirked between Sebastian’s brows, and Zane smiled back encouragingly, trying to convey that he had things under control. Now he could only pray that Janice didn’t think he’d had a psychotic break and that she’d done as he’d asked. Lord, he hoped that call was enough to get a rescue ball rolling. It had been all he could think of in the heat of the moment.

  There had been no way he could call the police. No sane law enforcement official would believe that counterfeiting plates had just shown up randomly in his luggage and that he was an innocent victim in this whole mess. And if Erebus was even half as powerful as Sebastian said it was, he and Sebastian might get free of Claude today, but they’d still be dead men. Erebus agents would find them eventually and take them out. This thing had to be finished and Erebus destroyed if he and Sebastian were ever to be safe.

  Sebastian had asked to meet with the senior Erebus officials to interview for admission to the consortium. If they actually gathered, maybe the Wild Cards could send in some kind of cavalry and take out the lot of them. It was out of his hands now.

  Oddly enough, he wasn’t all that concerned for his own safety. Well, he was scared stiff, but his fear for Sebastian’s safety was so much greater than his own jeopardy that it overwhelmed his personal terror at the notion of dying. What was up with that? Was this love?

  Hell, even the money didn’t matter anymore. When faced with a choice between a million dollars and Sebastian’s safety, he couldn’t give a crap for the cash. When they got out of here, he was going to tell Sebastian everything. No more secrets ever again. He made a silent vow to himself to that effect.

  “You okay?” Sebastian muttered.

  “Yeah. Just thinking.”

  “About what?”

  Claude interrupted. “Quiet, you two!”

  Was he in love with Sebastian? Truth be told, he’d never been in love in his life. He’d been in lust and had crushes, but this feeling was something entirely different. It wasn’t rainbows and hearts and warm fuzzies, although he did feel those things when he thought about Sebastian. This was something else entirely. It was a knowing. Recognition of Sebastian as the one meant for him. It was solid, more fact than feeling, as if a fundamental truth of the universe had revealed itself to him. He loved Sebastian. And in knowing that, he also knew he would do anything—anything—to protect Sebastian and keep him safe from harm.

  It wasn’t a choice, wasn’t a revelation. It was just the way the universe was wired. Sebastian was his, and he was Sebastian’s. And with that reality came unquestioning, matter-of-fact willingness to die for the man he loved. Huh. Who’d have thought love would be this simple when he finally found it?

  He surreptitiously squeezed Sebastian’s hand. Sebastian’s eyes lit with warmth. Oh, his gaze was still concerned and filled with a promise to get Zane out of there safely, but Zane recognized that glow in Sebastian’s eyes. It mirrored the glow of love in his own heart. He mouthed, “I love you.”

  Sebastian mouthed back, “I love you.”

  Brilliant joy exploded in Zane’s chest. As declarations of love went, it was the quietest one in history, but it was plenty for him. They sat silently on the sofa together, fingers linked between their knees, reveling in the moment. There might be guns pointed at them, and there was no guarantee they would make it out of this mess alive, but to Zane it was arguably the happiest moment of his life.

  He’d found the One. And Sebastian loved him back. Deep urgency to get out of this mess safely and spend the rest of their lives together nipped at his heels, but he also felt an underlying peace unlike anything he’d ever experienced. It was strange as hell to be scared to death and deliriously happy all at the same time.

  He understood now the concept of having found a person worth living for and fighting for.

  As the wait stretched out, he had plenty of time to think back to all the times in his life when he’d been self-destructive and angry, had taken stupid risks and not cared if he lived or died. If only his younger self had known this extraordinary man was out there waiting for him, he would have done so much so differently.

  He supposed he couldn’t regret whatever path had finally led him to Sebastian and Sebastian to him. But as he sat there, facing death beside the man he loved, he felt that past version of himself falling away and passing into the ancient history of his life before Sebastian.

  Claude declared himself hungry and left the room to head for the kitchen. The guards stirred, and there was discussion of who wanted what to eat among the thugs. Zane took advantage of the movement and noise to mutter under his breath to Sebastian, “I got a message to a friend to call Wild Cards.”

  Surprise and something fierce ignited in Sebastian’s gaze. “This could work. While you were gone, Erebus agreed to interview me.”

  “Who all’s coming?”

  “No idea. Hopefully a chunk of their top brass.”

  “About the plate I brought—” Zane broke off as Claude came back into the room carrying glasses of water that he set down on the coffee table in front of the two of them.

  Claude announced, “One of the men is making sandwiches for everyone. If you need to use the restroom, you two, the men will take you up one at a time.”

  Apparently Sebastian’s request to become a member of Erebus had forced a temporary upgrade in their status and care by their captors.

  The sandwiches were dry, the water was tepid, and they spent the afternoon forbidden from speaking to one another and entertained only by a few magazines. Zane read them all cover to cover. Twice.

  He spent an uncomfortable night sleeping on the sofa. He leaned right and Sebastian leaned left, and they dozed fitfully, waking each other up every time the other one moved. And yet every time Zane woke and felt Sebastian’s thigh pressed against his, a little frisson of happiness soothed him back to sleep. All in all, it was a terrible night’s sleep and one of the best nights he’d ever had.

  The next day passed in sheer boredom and discomfort. They had no cell phones, and he’d read all the magazines four or five times now. Etienne had to be losing his mind. Frankly, Zane was surprised the Frenchman hadn’t stormed the house, or at least called the police to storm it. The good news was that Etienne knew where they were. He’d dropped them off.

  Now that he thought about it, Zane suspected Etienne was outside, nearby, keeping an eye on this place to make sure they weren’t moved to some other location.

  He hoped desperately that the lack of a rescue by now meant that Janice had indeed gotten a hold of the guys at Wild Cards, and they and Etienne were planning some sort of major rescue operation.

  He could use a shower and a shave, and he smelled himself getting a bit ripe. A change of clean clothes would have been nice too. But at least they weren’t getting tortured or left tied to chairs in that nasty basement. As captivity went, he supposed this wasn’t bad.

  About suppertime, if the pinkening light coming in the front window was any indication, Claude came into the living room to announce, “Erebus will hear your
petition, Mr. Gigoni.”

  “When?” Sebastian asked.

  “A meeting place will have to be arranged, and one more person has to arrive in the city,” Claude replied with markedly more respect in his voice than up to that point.

  “I know the perfect place for a meeting,” Sebastian offered. “I own the building. The room is ultraprivate and secure and can hold a hundred people easily, so the Erebus representatives can bring all the security they’d like, and the guards can stay with their principals the whole time. Totally private access. No one will see your people coming or going. The authorities don’t even know it exists. Your guys can go ahead and vet it if they’d like. And besides that, it’s the coolest place ever for a meeting like this.”

  Zane grinned. The speakeasy. It was indeed the perfect place for a secret meeting of crime lords plotting something big. The thugs were all nodding in approval at everything he was saying about the meeting site.

  “Where is this place?” Claude asked. The man actually sounded reasonably civil. The prospect of Sebastian becoming an Erebus bigwig had done wonders for Claude’s attitude.

  “Lemme give one of your men the address. I’ll write a note for the manager to let him go downstairs and check it out. It’s underground.”

  The note was duly written, the address passed over, and instructions for how to open the secret bookshelf in the back office relayed to the security man Claude chose for the reconnaissance mission.

  Sebastian looked well satisfied with himself as the guy left the room.

  Zane risked whispering when the two remaining guards were distracted, chatting together. “Won’t it be dangerous for us to be down there alone where they can just kill us?”

  Sebastian’s eyes twinkled. “Pere knows all the secrets of the room.”

  “Hey, you two! No talking!” one of the guards called out.

  Zane sat back. All the secrets? What did that mean? Obviously Sebastian had something up his sleeve that depended on Wild Cards being at the meeting too. How were they going to get word to Pere and his reinforcements that the speakeasy was the site of the meeting? He thought about it for the next two hours but still hadn’t come up with any ideas when the guard came back from his expedition.