“Son of a Bitch!” Alfric swore. Of course she would panic. Raia had known she would.
“He set her up,” Brita said, looking at Alfric.
Alfric swore again and nodded. “He wanted me to follow her and I did. Like the gullible putz I am.”
Pleasance touched his hand and Alfric realized she was shaking. He turned his hand over and clasped her fingers. “What is Raia into, Alfric? What has he done?”
He met her worried gaze and suddenly felt reluctant to tell her. She’d been taken in by the guy too. Big time. And although he’d spent the last few days trying to get her to understand what she was dealing with, suddenly that didn’t seem as important as comforting her.
She must have read reluctance on his face. “Tell me, Alfric. I deserve to know how big a putz I’ve been too.” She smiled and, for Alfric, it was like daylight breaking through a fog.
Alfric chuckled and, unbelievably, gave in to an impulse to lift her soft hand to his lips and kiss the back of it.
Pleasance took her hand back self-consciously. Looks were exchanged around the table. Finally Brita cleared her throat. “Okay, so tell us, Alfric, what is this guy really into?”
“He’s been smuggling women out of the country. The organization believed he had a slavery ring. But I’ve suspected there’s more to it than that.”
Pleasance gasped, her hand flying to her face. “Was he going to kidnap me?”
Alfric shook his head. “Doubtful. He wouldn’t have formed a relationship with you. It would have implicated him when you disappeared.”
Pleasance nodded. “That makes sense.”
Brita fixed Pleasance with a look that could only be described as her cop look. “So what business did you have with Jon-Luc Raia, Pleasance? Were you dating?”
Pleasance shook her head emphatically. “No. I never date my clients.”
Brita’s light brown eyebrows lifted. “And you do what exactly?”
Sniggers erupted around the table. Pleasance lifted her chin with pride. “I paint male nudes.”
Angie said, “You go girl!”
The sniggers became guffaws. She glared around the table at the Honeybun men. Only Alfric refrained from laughing. He was scowling. Brita was trying to retain her professional face but was losing the battle. She twisted her lips to keep from smiling. “Nudes…as in actually naked?”
“Starkers,” Pleasance said.
The table erupted in deep, male laughter.
“Shut up you morons,” Alfric said, looking around the bar as if he expected an army of nude males to descend on them.
Edric, contributing to the conversation for the first time, cleared his throat. “So…are you saying you painted this Raia character in the nude?”
Pleasance shook her head. “No.” Glancing at Brita and Angie she grinned. “Though I won’t deny I tried to talk him into it.”
The women laughed.
Strangely, the brothers no longer thought Pleasance’s job was funny.
“Then what kind of business exactly did you have with Raia?” Alfric pressed.
Pleasance sighed. “It wasn’t very exciting actually. I did infrastructure portraits.” She wrinkled her nose as if the words were distasteful to her.
Percy frowned. “Infrastructure portraits?”
Pleasance nodded. “I painted buildings and stuff.”
Alfric and Brita shared a look. Then Alfric turned back to Pleasance. “Did you pick your subjects at random? Or did Raia assign them to you?”
“He assigned them and had me send them around the country when they were finished. It was strange. He didn’t even look at the finished paintings. He just gave me a photo and told he how he wanted it painted…”
“Wait…” Brita stopped her. “What do you mean how he wanted it painted?”
“They were kind of abstract. He had me do different things to the objects in the paintings. Sometimes he’d have me paint a building entirely in different shades of orange or blue. Sometimes there would be blow outs of a specific area.” Pleasance shrugged. “It was kind of weird, but he paid me a lot of money to do it so I didn’t question him.”
“That has to be important somehow,” Percy said, reaching over to touch Brita’s hand.
She met his gaze and very deliberately pulled her hand back. “I agree. We just have to figure out how.” Brita fixed her dark gold gaze on Pleasance. “Did you keep records of these transactions?’
Pleasance set her wine glass on the table and nodded. “Very thorough records. I have his initial instructions, along with any changes he fed me along the way. I have a picture of the finished painting and the address where he had me send it when it was done.”
Alfric stood up and reached for Pleasance’s hand. “Come on.”
Pleasance grabbed her purse as Alfric pulled her to her feet. “Where?”
“To your office.
Brita stood too. “I’m going with you.”
Percy stood. “Me too.”
Godric and Edric stood and Godric threw a fifty-dollar bill on the table. “Will we all fit in the H2?”
Alfric and Pleasance shared a look. Then Alfric looked at his family. “I don’t have the H2 anymore. I had to get a rental.”
Brita cocked her head. “What happened to the Hummer?”
Alfric sighed, still feeling the sting of his loss. He’d loved that car. “It’s a long story. Basically it’s a big, smoking pile of rubble on the side of the road.”
Godric slapped him on the back. “Raia’s work?”
Alfric looked at Pleasance and they shared a grin. “No, actually I was taken out by Coyotes.”
Edric frowned as they headed toward the door. “Coyotes? This far from the border? There are Coyotes mixed up in this mess?”
Alfric laughed. “Not that kind of Coyote. The furry, four legged kind.”
Percy added. “Like Wile-E-Coyote?”
Alfric chuckled, wrapping his arm around Pleasance to usher her through the door. “Exactly. Think of me as the Road Runner.”
“Bleep, bleep,” added Pleasance.
“Someone’s been here,” Pleasance whispered, her voice caught in her throat.
Brita held her gun down by her side, her wide, golden eyes taking in the excessively tidy studio. “How can you tell?”
Pleasance shrugged. “Things are just a little…off.” She walked over to a canvas covered by a large square of white cloth and tugged it straight over the painting. “They touched my things.” Her voice quivered and Alfric was suddenly standing behind her, his hands on her shoulders.
Pleasance shivered and found herself leaning into Alfric’s comforting warmth.
“May I?”
Pleasance turned to where Percy stood with his hand on top of her file cabinet. She bit her bottom lip and nodded. A single tear slid down her cheek.
Alfric leaned over her shoulder. “Are you okay?”
She sniffed, trying to smile. “I’ve always thought of this studio as my special place. A place I’d built for myself, that belonged only to me. I was really proud of what I’d created here.” Her beautiful blue eyes lifted to his face. They swam with unshed tears. “I feel as if I’ve been personally violated.”
Alfric nodded, pulling her into his arms. “I understand.”
“Well, Pleasance was right. They’ve been here.”
Everyone turned and looked at Percy. He was holding a manila folder in front of him, open and empty. From where Alfric stood he could see the word ‘Raia” written across the tab in strong, black letters. “They’ve taken her records on the paintings.”
Alfric’s cell phone rang, emitting the strains of Mission Impossible into the quiet room. “Honeybun.”
“Why are you still involved in this case, Honeybun?”
Alfric frowned. “I don’t have much choice, sir.”
“You always have a choice, son. You need to walk away from this. Now! That’s an order.” The caller hung up and a dial tone replaced his voice.
Al
fric pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it.
Pleasance placed a hand on his arm. “Alfric? What is it?”
He hit the disconnect button on the phone. “What? Oh, nothing. It was my boss. I just thought he sounded strange.”
Alfric shook it off. He looked at his watch. It’s after four in the morning. “I’m beat. What do you say we get some sleep?’
Pleasance forced a smile. “That sounds wonderful.”
The Seattle skyline rose brightly in the distance, a dense morning rain causing it to flicker softly as the highways around the city started filling up with morning commuters. In a small, dark room at the edge of the city, powered solely by a generator, a dark figure bent over a computer and glanced at his watch. At precisely five o’clock in the morning, the figure hit send on a special virus meant only for the city’s electrical grid. A moment later, the virus had done its worst and lights all over the city started to wink off. Until, only ten minutes after the virus had been sent, the City of Seattle was cast completely into darkness. A heartbeat later, a few weak lights returned, powered by individual generators. The generator powered lights threw off a paltry glow, like watered down beer through a thick glass.
Miles away, headlights swung across the thick, concrete uprights and steel beams that hid a shadowy figure from sight. He instinctively ducked more deeply into the shadows, his nervous gaze swinging downward, to where the small boat, painted black so that it disappeared in the darkness, waited for his return. He attached an electric detonator cap carefully to the trunnion seat, wrapped the leg wire, and spooled it toward the other seat on the same side. He repeated the process on the other side of the bridge, creating a large, deadly circle of wire.
He attached two, less sensitive, caps inside the exposed trunnion bearings but didn’t tie those to the outside circle.
Finished, the figure returned to the knotted rope dangling from the lowest beam toward the dark waters below. He descended quickly and silently, moving toward a target he couldn’t see, rolling on the dark waves below.
When he came within a few feet of the rope’s bottom, he finally saw the boat, and heard movement from the black-clad person inside. A voice came to him, husky and urgent, “Is it done?” the accent was distinctly French.
He grinned. He’d never get used to the idea of French terrorists.
He dropped the last couple of feet into the boat and nodded, moving quickly to the front of the small boat. He picked up the satellite phone he’d left on a pile of towels on the front seat and pressed a button. After a moment a guttural voice came on.
“It’s done.”
“Excellent. Get out of there.”
The inboard motor roared to life, sounding impossibly loud in the silent hours of very early morning and the boat headed away from the bridge. Above them, the rope fell silently into the water, as another dark figure cut it away and then clambered back up, sliding onto a motorcycle he’d abandoned at the railing.
In the near distance, from the ornate bell tower of St. Peter’s Cathedral, the bell tolled out the hour of six o’clock in the morning. Traffic continued to thunder across University Bridge, blissfully unaware of the nightmare waiting beneath their wheels.
“Are you sure it’s safe, bro?” Godric asked as Alfric and Pleasance slowly extracted themselves from his sporty little car.
Alfric bent down and smiled across the car at his older brother. “We’ll be fine here, Dric. I have special security in the place and it’s not listed as my residence anywhere Raia could access.”
Godric nodded. “Call if you need anything.”
Alfric closed the door to the little sports car and watched his brother shoot down the dark, quiet streets. Glancing around, his dark blue gaze quickly assessed the warehouse area, looking for trouble.
Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, Alfric turned to find Pleasance staring at his building with worried eyes. He came up behind her, barely resisting the urge to put his hands on her tiny waist and pull her nicely rounded behind up tight against him. He settled instead for an arm around her shoulders. “You ready?”
She turned those startlingly blue eyes on him and frowned. “Are you sure you want to stay here?”
He laughed softly. “It’s not as bad as it looks. I promise.”
She shook her head and allowed him to lead her toward the unlit, red brick warehouse building. He pushed open a tattered, wooden door with gang graffiti slashed across its face and they stepped inside.
As their feet hit the filthy concrete floor a light flashed on over their heads. Pleasance looked up and saw a huge, industrial type light hanging from the ceiling above, probably thirty feet high. Something moved in the shadows and Pleasance jumped and squeaked. At first she thought it was a horse. But as it ran toward them she saw that it was just a dog.
A really big dog.
“Clancy, my man,” Alfric said with a wide smile. “I’m glad to see you.” Alfric crouched down and took the enormous dog’s head between his hands, ruffling the floppy ears affectionately and scratching the huge animal’s scruffy fur behind the ears. In response, Clancy closed his eyes and slipped a two-foot long tongue out to slather across Alfric’s face.
Pleasance grimaced. “Eewww, dog spit.”
Alfric chuckled, standing up. “You’ll get used to it. Clancy believes kisses are a necessary part of life. He won’t be denied.” His pretty blue eyes fixed on hers. “I share that opinion by the way.”
Heat swamped her and she found herself licking her lips as Alfric’s gaze devoured her face. In self-defense Pleasance crossed her arms over her chest and looked around the huge space. It looked like your average abandoned warehouse, filled with crumbling, rusted equipment and debris. It smelled like mildew and dirt. “So where’s my room?”
Alfric grabbed her hand. “This way.”
Chapter Nine
The cool, morning air was heavy with moisture. A light fog lifted, swirling from the river below the bridge. On one side of the structure, a long line of cars slowly made their way across the bridge, the drivers heading into Seattle for classes at the University and waiting jobs.
Just before entering the bridge, a young woman reached for her pink, bling covered cell phone to call her husband and remind him to let the dog out to pee. She didn’t notice the battered pickup truck slowing down in front of her until it was too late. Her cute little Smart Car plowed into the rusted bumper of the truck. Traffic screeched to a halt behind the Smart Car, and the traffic in front continued on, moving toward the other side of University Bridge at a steady rate of speed.
Right about that time, in the darkened room at the edge of the city, the hacker hit send on the fix for the virus he’d planted on the electric grid and, only seconds later, the power flashed back on in the city.
The electricity surged as it came on, igniting the highly sensitive detonator caps on the sides of the bridge. As the concrete around the trunnion seats blew away, it removed vital support from the crossbeams holding the girders and counterweights balanced in place.
The bridge’s crossbeams began to shift violently.
Five cars and a semi were still on the bridge when the explosion occurred. All six vehicles screeched to a stop as the decking beneath their tires started to shift.
Suddenly, the tip section broke loose and the Seattle side of the bridge began to rock, teeter-tottering so violently that the semi, which was piled high with enormous logs, began to slide forward and backward with the motion, smoke billowing in black clouds from the truck’s tires as the driver tried to keep from being thrown toward the gaping hole twisted into the metal grating on the bridge’s surface. The semi finally stopped sliding when it caught on the upended grate and hung, teetering dangerously in the foggy morning air. Ironically, the heavy truck served as a counterweight to hold that side of the bridge suspended at about a thirty degree angle.
On the other side, the second leaf rocked back, bouncing against the teeth in the hydraulic brakes and setting off the
secondary explosion. The result of this explosion was much more dramatic. The second leaf sprang open, shooting upward at a terrifying rate, and threw the remaining five cars off the bridge.
Horrified witnesses, including the long line of traffic that was stuck behind the fender bender on the Eastlake side of the bridge, watched as cars catapulted over their heads or were flung into the choppy, gray waters of Portage Bay. Screams of horror and fear, dampened eerily by the heavy mist, filled the morning air as the cars shot past, their drivers riding a real-life roller coaster to the ground.
Two cars landed in the gray chop of Portage Bay.
Three others catapulted over the line of cars waiting to get onto the bridge. Of these, two managed to land in the grass in a fairly upright position and rock to a flat stop.
The third car, a shiny, red Jeep Liberty, hit the ground nose first and slammed over onto its top, skidding about twenty car lengths before finally crashing into the side of a green mini-van in a wash of smoke and sparks.
A long moment of shocked silence followed, as witnesses to the horrific event stood slack jawed and stunned, waiting for the next phase of the nightmare. The young woman who’d saved so many lives by crashing into the unsuspecting truck in front of her, stood outside her Smart Car, her mouth hanging open in surprised horror and her sparkly little phone drooping forgotten down by her side. From the phone came a tiny voice, as her husband repeatedly called her name in an effort to discover why she’d stopped talking to him. Squatting behind him at home, unseen, the couple’s two year old York-a-Doodle squatted and happily saturated the young woman’s favorite kitchen throw rug, and then returned to chewing her favorite toy.
The air around the bridge suddenly filled with sirens as people shook off their shock and started to move. Boats were launched from both sides of the Bay and rescue vehicles screamed to a stop beside the churning waters, lights flashing like strobes through the thick mist clinging to the water’s surface.
Life Liberty and the Pursuit of a Honeybun Page 7
