Vasile Rinescu had been a wonderful host, but his friends were getting tired of losing.
Tomorrow Hunter would move on.
CHAPTER 7
JEFF STEVENS EYED THE girl sitting at the end of the bar.
He was at Morton’s, an exclusive private members club in Mayfair, and he had just lost heavily at cards. But something about the way the lissome blonde returned his smile gave him the feeling that his luck was about to change.
He ordered one glass of Dom Pérignon 2003 and one glass of Perrier and crossed the polished parquet floor to where she was perched, her endless legs dangling deliciously off the end of a taupe velvet barstool. She was in her early twenties, with high cheekbones and the sort of glowing skin that only youth could produce. If her silver dress got any shorter it would be in clear contravention of the sales descriptions act.
In short, she was Jeff’s kind of girl.
“Waiting for someone?”
He handed her the flute of champagne.
She hesitated for a moment, then accepted, locking her dark blue eyes on Jeff’s gray ones.
“Not anymore. I’m Lianna.”
“Jeff.” Jeff grinned, mentally calculating how many minutes of flirting he would have to put in here before he could take Lianna home with him. Hopefully no more than fifteen. One more drink. He had a big day ahead of him tomorrow.
Jeff Stevens had been a con artist for as long as he could remember. He’d learned the basic skills of his trade as a boy at his Uncle Willie’s carnival, and they’d taken him all over the world, to places more dazzlingly glamorous and terrifyingly dangerous than the young Jeff had known existed. With his sharp, inventive mind, easy charm and devastating good looks, Jeff had quickly risen to the very top of his “profession.” He had stolen priceless paintings from world-famous art galleries, relieved heiresses of their diamonds and billionaire gangsters of their property portfolios. He’d pulled off jobs on the Orient Express, the QEII and Concorde, before that airliner’s tragic demise. Working with Tracy Whitney, in the heyday of his career, Jeff had pulled off some of the most audacious and brilliant heists ever accomplished in a string of cities across Europe, always targeting the greedy and corrupt, and always managing to stay one step ahead of the hapless police as they tried and failed to link him or Tracy to any crime.
Those were happy days. The best days of his life, in many ways.
And yet, Jeff reflected, he was happy now too. After losing Tracy for ten long years—after they married, Tracy suspected Jeff of having an affair, wrongly as it turned out, and disappeared off the face of the earth—they were now back in contact. Tracy had saved Jeff’s life a few years back, when a deranged former FBI agent named Daniel Cooper had tried to kill him. It was in the aftermath of that ordeal that Jeff learned he had a son, Nicholas. Unbeknownst to Jeff, Tracy had been pregnant when she took off and had raised the boy alone in Colorado, with the help of her ranch manager, a decent, sweet man named Blake Carter.
Jeff had seen at once that Blake was effectively already a father to Nick, and a damn good one. He’d loved the boy enough not to try to change that. Tracy had introduced Jeff as an old friend, and in the intervening years Jeff had become a sort of unofficial godfather to his own son.
Perhaps it was a strange arrangement. But it worked. Jeff adored Nick, but his life was way too crazy to provide a stable environment for a child, or teenager as Nick was now. This way they could be friends, and hang out and send each other stupid videos on Vine that Nick’s mother wouldn’t approve of. Jeff did want to visit the boy more. But he hoped, with time, Tracy would come around on that point.
As for Tracy, the love between the two of them was still there, still as strong as ever. But she too had made a new life for herself, a peaceful, calm, contented life. For Jeff, the adrenaline rush of pulling off the perfect con remained irresistible. It was as much a part of him as his legs or his arms or his brain. Even so, he would have given it up for Tracy, as he did once before when they married. But as Tracy had said, “If you gave it up, Jeff, you wouldn’t be you. And it’s you I love.”
So Jeff had returned to London and his old life. But this time it was different. Better.
Now he knew that Tracy was alive. And not just alive but safe and happy. Even more wonderful, he had a son, a fabulous son. Nick became the purpose of everything now. Every job Jeff took, every penny he made, was for his boy.
He gave up drinking, only gambled occasionally and started turning down any jobs he perceived as too high risk. It wasn’t just him anymore. Jeff could no longer afford to be so reckless.
On the other hand, he thought, resting a hand on Lianna’s buttermilk thigh and feeling himself growing harder by the second, a man must have some pleasures in life.
Jeff would never marry again. He would never love again, not after Tracy. But asking Jeff Stevens to forsake women would be like asking a whale to live without water, or commanding a sunflower to grow in the dark.
Leaning forward, he was about to ask for the bill and bundle the lovely Lianna into a cab when a tall, thin, older man stepped angrily between them.
“Who the hell are you?” the man asked, glaring at Jeff. “And what are you doing pawing my fiancée?”
Jeff raised an eyebrow at Lianna, who flashed him back an apologetic half smile.
“Jeff Stevens.” He offered Angry Man his hand but was met by another withering glower. “She never mentioned she was . . . that you were, er . . . congratulations. When’s the big day, Mr. . . . ?”
“Klinnsman.”
Jeff swallowed hard. Dean Klinnsman was probably the biggest property developer in London after the Candy brothers, and he allegedly ran a sizable organized crime operation. He had a small army of Poles, building contractors by day, whom he used after hours as enforcers paying the kind of visit to Klinnsman’s enemies and business rivals that Jeff Stevens definitely did not want to receive.
“A pleasure to meet you Mr. Klinnsman. I’ll be on my way.”
“You do that.”
Dropping a wad of fifties on the bar, Jeff practically ran for the door.
“What was his name?” Dean Klinnsman growled at his young fiancée, once Jeff had gone.
“Madely,” the girl answered without blinking. “Max Madely. He’s here on vacation. Isn’t that right, James?”
She looked at the barman, who went white with fear.
“I believe so, Madam.”
“He lives in Miami,” the girl went on. “I think he makes, like, coffee machines. Or something.”
“Hmmm,” Dean Klinnsman grunted. “I don’t want you talking to him again. Ever.”
“Oh, Deano!” Lianna coiled herself around the famous developer like an oversexed snake. “You’re so jealous. He was only being friendly. Anyway, you needn’t worry. He flies back to the States tomorrow.”
JEFF’S CAB RIDE HOME took longer than it should have, thanks to the driver’s taking some stupid detour around the park. As they crawled past the grand, stucco-fronted houses of Belgravia, Jeff found himself tuning in to the talk show debate on the driver’s radio.
Two men, both politicians, were arguing heatedly about Group 99 and the ongoing but so far fruitless search for both Captain Daley’s killer and the American hostage, Hunter Drexel.
“It’s the Americans we should be blaming for this,” one of the men was insisting. “I mean, if you’re going to throw your weight around, trample international law and go guns-blazing into someone else’s country, the least you can do is A: make sure your hostage is actually there and B: shoot the right bloke when you arrive. Instead, we now have Daley’s killer on the loose, Hunter Drexel still being held somewhere, and a bunch of murdered teenagers lying in a Bratislavan morgue.”
“They weren’t ‘murdered,’ ” his opponent shot back, apoplectic with rage. “They were military combatants, killed in action. Justified action I’d say, after what they did to Bob Daley. They were terrorists.”
“They were kids! The fella w
ho shot Bob Daley was a terrorist. But he’s not the one with a bullet in his skull, is he?”
“They’re all part of the same group,” yelled his opponent. “They’re all responsible.”
“Oh really? So are all Muslims responsible for ISIL?”
“What? Of course not! The two situations are not even remotely similar.”
“ ’Ere we are, mate.”
To Jeff’s relief, he saw that the cabbie had finally reached his flat on Cheyne Walk. Tipping the man more than he deserved, Jeff stepped out into the cool night air. The breeze coming off the river, combined with the softly twinkling lights of Albert Bridge, soothed his nerves.
Like many people in England, Jeff was gripped by the twists and turns of the Group 99 affair. On the one hand he found the lazy, anti-Americanism expressed by the first politician on the radio show to be both insulting and wrongheaded. Jeff had lived in England long enough to know that if it had been the SAS going in to rescue a British hostage, they’d have been hailed as heroes and Bratislavan territorial integrity be damned.
Then again, the SAS might not have made such a total balls up of the whole thing.
On the other hand, there was a part of him that agreed with the first politician, when he characterized the men shot dead at the Bratislava camp as “kids.” Up until Daley’s slaying, Group 99 had never been violent, and were rarely if ever referred to as terrorists. Was everyone who had ever joined the organization now to be tarred with the same brush as the monster who shot Daley?
Jeff Stevens knew he made an unlikely apologist for the Group 99ers. Back when it was trendy to admire them, Jeff had always found their politics crass and their so-called mission wildly insincere. These young men from Europe’s broken states might justify their actions under the banner of social justice. But from what Jeff could see, what really drove them was envy. Envy and anger and a growing sense of impotence, fueled by leftwing firebrands like Greece’s Elias Calles or Spain’s Lucas Colomar. Maybe Jeff was getting old. But in his day, the idea was to earn one’s wealth and then enjoy the hell out of it. True, Jeff had broken plenty of laws in his day. Technically, he supposed, he could be described as a thief. But he only ever stole from genuinely unpleasant people. And he did so at great personal risk to himself, boldly and daringly; not by sneaking into the back end of somebody’s computer system. To Jeff Stevens’s way of thinking, hackers were just a bunch of whining cowards who happened to be good at math. And as for targeting the fracking industry? Really! If there was one thing guaranteed to put Jeff’s back up it was a sanctimonious eco-bore. If Nicholas ever turned into one of those entitled, embittered little nerds, Jeff would die of shame. Not that that was likely to happen.
Taking the lift up to his penthouse apartment, Jeff felt glad to be home. The vast lateral flat was his pride and joy. With its elegant sash windows, high ceilings, parquet floor and spectacular views across the river, it felt more like a museum than a private residence. Over the years Jeff had filled the place with priceless antiquities, treasures from his travels, both legally and illegally acquired. The shelves were crammed with everything from ancient Egyptian vases, to first edition Victorian novels, to mummified pygmy heads creepily pickled in jars. There were coins and statues, fossils and burial robes, fragments of arrowheads and an entire Nordic rune stone mounted on a plinth. There was no rhyme or reason to Jeff’s collection, other than these were all unique items, things with a history that he loved. An ex-lover once suggested that Jeff surrounded himself with things to compensate for the lack of human closeness in his life, an observation that irritated him deeply. Probably because it was true. Or at least it had been, before he found Tracy again, and Nick came into his life.
Wandering into the kitchen, Jeff slipped a Keurig coffee packet into the machine and walked out onto his terrace while it brewed. Since giving up drinking, coffee had replaced whisky as his nighttime ritual. For some reason it never seemed to keep him awake, and childishly he enjoyed the gadgetiness of the new generation of coffeemakers, all the shiny chrome and buttons to press and the perfectly frothed milk.
It was the week before Christmas, and London was in the grip of a cold snap that covered everything with a sparkling gray frost. There was no snow, yet, but the park still looked like a Victorian Christmas card, timeless and peaceful and lovely. Jeff had always loved Christmas. It made him feel like a kid again, dreaming of candy and presents with his nose pressed against the store windows. Then again, as Tracy used to remind him, Jeff had never really stopped being a kid. The only difference was that as an adult he’d exchanged gazing through store windows for breaking in through the roof. “You’ve become a permanent fixture on Santa’s naughty list,” she used to say.
Smiling at the memory, and still half thinking about Nicholas—he missed him at Christmas more than usual—Jeff pulled out his phone and, on a whim, called Tracy’s number. Irritatingly it went to voicemail.
“It’s me,” he said awkwardly. Jeff had never liked leaving messages. “Look, I really want to see Nick. I know we said to give it some time, but I want to come out there. It’s been too long and I . . . I miss him. Call me back, OK?”
He hung up feeling annoyed with himself and went back inside to retrieve his coffee. He should have waited for Tracy to answer. Things always went better when they spoke in person.
A loud buzz from the doorbell made him jump.
Who the hell could that be at this time? Jeff’s stomach suddenly lurched. Surely not even Dean Klinnsman could have tracked him down that quickly. Or maybe he could. Someone at the club could have given him my address. It would only take a phone call.
Jeff darted into his bedroom, unlocked the drawer on his bedside table and pulled out a handgun. Keeping his back to the walls, he edged towards the front door of the flat and peeped nervously through the spy hole.
“Jesus,” he exhaled, opening the door. “You scared the crap out of me.”
Lianna stood alone in the hallway, wrapped up in a dark gray cashmere coat and winter boots.
“I thought it was your fiancée. Or one of his henchmen. Come to finish me off.”
“No,” Lianna smiled lasciviously. “Just me.”
Undoing the belt of her coat she opened it slowly, her eyes never leaving Jeff’s. Other than the boots, she was completely, gloriously naked.
“Where were we?” she asked, advancing towards Jeff like an Amazon goddess, her pupils dilating with lust.
For the tiniest fraction of a second, Jeff thought about how very, very foolish he would be to sleep with Dean Klinnsman’s girlfriend. Then he grabbed Lianna around the waist with both hands and pulled her into the apartment.
As long as Tracy Whitney was alive, Jeff Stevens’s heart was spoken for.
The rest of his body, however, was quite another matter.
CHAPTER 8
TRACY LOOKED AROUND THE familiar walls of David Hargreaves’s office. Christmas cards from staff and grateful former pupils covered every available surface. School would be out in a few days.
If only Nick could have controlled himself a little longer, Tracy thought desperately.
She’d gotten to know the principal of Nick’s middle school almost as well as she’d known his elementary school head, Mrs. Jensen. Poor Mrs. Jensen. It was a wonder the woman wasn’t in a sanitarium somewhere, banging her head quietly against a padded wall, after everything Nicholas had put her through.
“The thing is, Mrs. Schmidt, it’s not simply a question of money. What Nicholas did was a blatant act of disrespect.”
Tracy nodded seriously and tried to rid her mind of the image of Mr. Hargreaves farting loudly into what he believed to be an empty corridor.
Nick, seated beside his mother, adopted a hurt look.
“What about artistic expression? Our teacher told us only last week that art knows no boundaries.”
“Be quiet!” Tracy and Principal Hargreaves said in unison.
Nick’s decision to break into the faculty recreation room after
school hours and paint a series of cartoons on the walls, depicting various teachers in caricature, was likely to mark the end of his career at John Dee Middle School. He and an unnamed accomplice had painted the teachers engaging in different “humorous” situations (the mean, overweight math teacher, Mrs. Finch, was re-imagined by Nick as a hot dog, lying in a bun and being squirted with ketchup by the football coach). As a piece of art it actually wasn’t bad. But as Principal Hargreaves said, that wasn’t the point.
“I’ll talk to the board over the weekend,” the principal told Tracy. “But to be frank, I don’t see that we have much wiggle room here. Nicholas has had a lot of chances.”
Principal Hargreaves didn’t want to lose the beautiful Mrs. Schmidt as a parent. Tracy’s son might be a tear away, but she was a lovely woman. More importantly she’d donated very generously to the school over the years, and was offering to “more than compensate” for the damage Nick had caused to school property this time. But his hands were tied.
Tracy said, “I know. And I appreciate your even discussing it. Please let the board know that I’m grateful.”
After the meeting, Tracy waited till they were in the car and safely off campus before turning furiously on Nick.
“I don’t understand you. You have to go to school, Nicholas. It’s the law. If they kick you out of here, you’ll just have to go somewhere else. Somewhere farther away, and stricter, where you don’t have any friends.”
“You could homeschool me,” Nick suggested guilelessly. “That would be cool.”
“Oh no.” Tracy shook her head. “There is zero chance of that happening, mister. I’d rather stick pins in my eyes.”
Homeschooling Nicholas would be like trying to teach deportment to a newly captured chimpanzee.
“I could send you to boarding school,” Tracy countered. “How about that?”
Nick looked aghast. “You wouldn’t!”
No, Tracy thought. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t live without you for one day.
“I might.”
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