The Billionaire's Passion

by Olivia Thorne

  THE BILLIONAIRE’S PASSION

  A Billionaire Alpha Romance

  Part 4

  Olivia Thorne

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  Eve

  My name is Eve Saunders. I’m an internet security expert and former hacker.

  And I’m having a pretty shitty day.

  Billionaire architect Grant Carlson seduced me, stole my phone, and hired me to track down a serial killer – in that order.

  Then the killer lured me to a deserted art gallery before letting me go with a cryptic message.

  I didn’t know why – until Grant revealed his secret hobby.

  See, he’s not just an architect. He’s also a world-class cat burglar who takes stolen paintings from the thieves (or rich customers of thieves) who originally stole them. We’re talking Picassos, van Goghs, Vermeers – works of art worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

  While he was burgling a house he’d designed years earlier, Grant stumbled across a couple of female captives being held in the mansion’s safe room. He freed the two women… and now the serial killer has a vendetta.

  But it’s not just Grant he’s after.

  He’s gunning for me, too.

  Which is why he’s tracked both of us to Grant’s Manhattan penthouse.

  If I thought I might die in the art gallery just hours before…

  …now I’m pretty much convinced of it.

  2

  I’m standing in the almost-dark safe room with Grant, surrounded by works of art no one has seen for years.

  I consider that the last thing I might see alive is a masterpiece by Rembrandt.

  It’s not much consolation.

  “You were foolish to think you could best me, Carlson,” Epicurus’s voice booms from somewhere in the penthouse. “You were unlucky enough to stumble onto my activities, but you should have walked away. No one takes what is mine away from me. NO ONE.”

  Suddenly there’s the sound of gunshots, dim and far away.

  “Oh my God!” I shriek.

  “You’re going to pay for your lack of judgment,” the voice drones. “As is Ms. Saunders.”

  “Time to go,” Grant says, a little too calmly considering the situation. He grabs my hand and pulls me out of the art gallery and into the corridor that houses the safe rooms.

  “Where are we going?!” I ask, terrified. The gunshots have turned into the chatter of automatic weapon fire – submachine guns or Uzis or something.

  They’re moving closer.

  “We’re getting out of here,” Grant says as he presses another three panels nearby, and a second door opens in the wall.

  “Do you think that’s Epicurus with the guns?”

  “I severely doubt it,” Grant says as he pulls out a gigantic black duffel bag and secures it over his shoulder. “He likes torturing innocent women. Doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who fights his own gun battles.”

  “Then who is it?”

  “Mercenaries, maybe? Who knows? But I’m not sticking around to find out.”

  “But your security guys!”

  A pained look flashes across Grant’s face. “I know. But they were all SEALs and Special Forces guys back in the day. If they don’t make it through this, there’s no way you and I are going to. Come on.”

  He drags me down the corridor in the opposite direction from where we came, then bursts through a door into a small room I haven’t seen before. It’s the size of a large closet, and there are no doorways to connect the room to the rest of the penthouse. There’s nothing inside the room but ceiling-high glass windows, bare walls, and a single metal construction beam sticking out of the floor.

  “What’s this?” I ask.

  “The back way out.”

  Grant slides some manual locks on one of the glass window’s frames, then swings it open to the side. Immediately a horrendous gust of wind almost blows me off my feet.

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” I scream.

  He unzips the bag and takes out a body harness and a gigantic coil of thin, black rope. “Getting us out of here.”

  I look out the window from a safe distance. I can see the tops of dozens of gigantic New York buildings all around us like a topographical map of brick and steel.

  The wind is whipping through the tiny room like the beginnings of a tropical storm.

  “No,” I gasp, realizing what he’s planning.

  “Yup.”

  Grant attaches a rock-climbing carabiner to a hole in the metal beam.

  “But we’re, like, 100 floors above the ground!”

  “Eighty-eight, to be precise,” he says as he puts on the body harness.

  “How many feet is that?!”

  “From here? About 1300.”

  “You have 1300 feet of rope in there?!”

  He latches some kind of handle to the rope and tests it by squeezing it. “How would I make it to the ground otherwise?”

  “You planned this?”

  He gives me a wry look. “I’m a billionaire who moonlights as a cat burglar. Of course I planned for the day when the shit would hit the fan.”

  “Wait – what am I supposed to do?!”

  “You’re coming with me.”

  “How?!”

  “How do you think?”

  I stare at the open window. “Oh God, no…”

  The gunshots are moving closer.

  “You’re welcome to take your chances here.”

  I start to have a panic attack. “Okay…”

  “That was a joke. I’m not giving you a choice.” He throws me a small backpack that was in the larger duffel bag. “Put that on.”

  I put my arms through the straps. “But – ”

  More gunfire, now unnervingly close. As though it might be right outside the corridor with the safe rooms.

  “Come here,” he says, and loops a cord on his body harness through the backpack straps.

  “Don’t you have some sort of secret passageway out of here?” I whimper.

  “You’re looking at it.”

  “I meant INSIDE the building!” I cry out.

  “Just think of this as the express elevator down.”

  He grabs me tightly around the waist.

  I latch onto him, too, like I’m about to die.

  Which I probably am.

  He kisses me hard. “For good luck.”

  “OH GOD!” I scream, and close my eyes as he kicks us both out of the window and into the void.

  3

  There is a horrifying moment when we are free-falling, and I think, So this is what it feels like when your parachute doesn’t open.

  Then, a second later, our descent slows and we change direction. Suddenly I hear CLANG, feel a jolt through my entire body, and we’re zooming out again at high speed.

  I open my eyes, which I probably shouldn’t have.

  The street below us is so small that the cars look like TicTac mints of all different colors. The people on the sidewalks don’t even look like ants; they look like dots.

  “AAAAAAH!” I scream, and grab onto Grant tighter.

  “We’re fine,” he yells above the wind whipping around us.

  I realize that we’re changing direction because he’s rappelling off the building. Every time we swing in, his feet hit the glass of some apartment building, and we kick off into nothingness and descend another 20 feet.

  I catch a glimpse of a wide-eyed cleaning lady as Grant kicks off the glass right in front of her face.

  “OH GOD
!” I howl, and bury my face in his chest.

  “You’re doing great!” he yells back.

  “WE’RE GOING TO DIE!”

  “Eh…”

  “THAT’S NOT FUNNY!”

  He laughs grimly as he kicks off again.

  I gradually open my eyes a second time. Below us, the cars are no longer Tic Tacs but Matchbox cars, and are becoming bigger with every passing second.

  A group of people are standing around on the sidewalk, craning their necks and looking up at us in wonder, pointing and gawping.

  “Out of the way!” Grant shouts.

  The crowd parts like the Red Sea as we jolt to a landing on the sidewalk.

  Grant looks over at me. “See? Not so bad.”

  “Yeah, right,” I say, my legs wobbling so badly that I can barely stand.

  “Hey, is this for a movie?” a twenty-something hipster dude on the sidewalk asks.

  “Exactly,” Grant says as he detaches the safety harness and throws it on the ground. “Cut – that’s a wrap!” he yells to an imaginary cameraman.

  People look around for the invisible film crew.

  It would be pretty funny if a serial killer weren’t after us.

  There’s a taxi parked at the curb; the driver is out of his door and looking over at us, watching the commotion. Grant grabs my arm and hustles me into the backseat.

  “Drive,” he tells the cabbie.

  “Whoa, that was crazy,” the driver enthuses as he gets back in. “Are you one of them extreme sports – ”

  “DRIVE!” Grant yells.

  “Okay, okay – where to?”

  “Anywhere, just go!”

  The taxi takes off into the stream of traffic, and I sit there in the backseat shaking.

  “Where are we going?” I ask unsteadily.

  “I don’t know. For right now, we just need to put some distance between us and… them.”

  I realize something alarming.

  We’re in a getaway vehicle with no way to pay.

  “Do you have any money on you?” I whisper to Grant.

  “No, but you do.”

  I’m confused. “What? No I don’t. I left everything I own back in the penthouse.”

  Grant unclasps the plastic buckles on the backpack straps, which I had forgotten I was wearing, and pulls it into his lap. Then he unzips the back.

  There’s a jumble of different things inside. I see a passport, a cell phone, a bunch of plastic credit cards, some metal tools, some putty, what appears to be a switchblade knife –

  – and multiple bundles of cash with paper bands around them.

  “Holy shit,” I whisper.

  There were five stacks of hundreds and two stacks of twenties.

  “How much is in here?” I ask, my voice rising.

  He points at the cabbie, as though to say, Careful.

  “Fifty thousand and change,” Grant whispers.

  I stare at him and lower my voice. “You had $50,000 sitting around, just in case you ever needed to make a run for it?”

  “No, I had it sitting around to help me get to the next location where I’ve got a whole lot more, just in case I ever needed to make a run for it.”

  “I don’t believe you…”

  “I’m serious.”

  “No, I mean, I believe you, but… that’s crazy.”

  He shrugs. “Wouldn’t you stash a couple of bucks here and there if you thought it might help you evade capture some day?”

  “I wouldn’t call this – ”

  I point at the stacks of hundreds in the backpack.

  “ – ‘a couple of bucks.’”

  “It is to me.”

  The rich really are different.

  “Is that where we’re headed? To get more?” I ask.

  “I don’t know yet. Maybe. I’m assuming we can’t use the credit cards.”

  “No, we can’t.”

  “They’re under different company names,” Grant says hopefully.

  “Still can’t risk it. We have no idea how much Epi – how much he knows.” I reach in and pull out the cell phone. “Please tell me this is off.”

  “It is. Please tell me he can’t track us with it.”

  I pop off the battery and extract the SIM card. “Now he can’t. Do you have a game plan for what we’re going to do?”

  “I’m figuring it out,” Grant says dourly as he stares out the window.

  4

  We drive around Manhattan, moving aimlessly.

  The cabbie starts to get nervous thirty minutes in. “You guys sightseein’, or what?”

  Grant hands him a couple of hundred dollar bills from the backpack. “Let me know when that runs out.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  As we drive, the reality of the situation sets in. I nearly died back there. I mean, I guess I didn’t literally come within inches of dying – Grant had everything under control, and we never even saw anybody with a gun. But the possibility was there. That gunfight back at the penthouse? Jesus. It was like something out of a movie.

  In my line of work, I deal with embezzlers and hackers and Chinese dudes in a government compound in Beijing trying to break into a defense contractor’s database.

  Not serial killers with hired mercenaries.

  At one point I start shaking. Grant looks over and puts his hand on my leg.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  “I don’t know…” I whisper.

  He nods comfortingly. “You’re fine. You did great back there.”

  “We could have died.”

  “We could have. But we didn’t.” He pauses, then asks, “I can’t call my guys to find out if they’re okay, can I.”

  “No… I’m sorry. He could track us.”

  “Even from a pay phone?”

  “If we let him know where we are, he could potentially hack traffic cameras or something to follow us.”

  “I thought you needed 60 seconds or something to trace somebody.”

  “Twenty years ago, maybe. In the digital age, it’s instantaneous. The phone company knows like that, and he can get deep into the phone company’s records. You’re totally screwed unless you have several levels of encryption. And this guy is good enough that that might not even work.”

  Grant nods, resigned, and goes back to staring out the window.

  “Should we get out of the city? Maybe out of the state?” I suggest.

  “That ordinarily wouldn’t be a bad idea, but I’m working on something,” Grant says.

  “What?”

  “I’ll let you know when I’ve figured it out.”

  5

  We drive until dark, when Grant suddenly says, “Here – let us out here.”

  He pays with a fistful of hundreds, which makes the driver’s day.

  “You never saw us, understand?” Grant says, holding out an extra $500.

  The cabbie eyes the money greedily. “Never saw who, boss?”

  Grant pays, the taxi drives off, and we walk through the shadowy streets of a residential neighborhood full of brownstone apartment buildings.

  “What are we doing?” I ask him.

  “Going to ground for the night.”

  He looks at the buildings carefully as we pass, then selects one. I know immediately why he chose it: the three newspapers piled at the doorway. A pretty good indication that no one is home.

  “Let me see the backpack,” he says. I hand it to him, and he pulls out a small box full of metal picks. Within seconds he is using them on the three different locks on the door, one by one. All three unlock.

  He opens the door and pauses for a second, listening.

  “What are you waiting for?” I ask, glancing around nervously at the semi-deserted street, afraid we might be seen.

  “A dog or an alarm.”

  “Oh…”

  “I don’t hear either,” he says, and walks inside. I follow quickly behind him, and he shuts the door.

  Then he starts to walk around, looking at wind
ows, searching the different rooms.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Casing the joint. Making sure there’s not a silent alarm or surveillance system. Figuring out where to run if we get found out.”

  “Oh… makes sense…”

  I reach for a light switch on the wall.

  “Don’t,” he warns me. “If the neighbors see a light and they’re not expecting one, they’ll call the cops.”

  “Are people really going to know if their neighbors are away? This is New York City, you know.”

  “First rule of breaking and entering: never take a chance you don’t have to.”

  That was actually a really good rule for computer hacking, too.

  Evidently my mad skillz on the internet don’t translate so well to the real-world art of cat burgling.

  I stay in the den as he walks through the house. I’m freaking out, worried about every creak of the floorboards, every police siren in the distance.

  There’s a computer over on a desk near the television. It would be so easy to boot it up, hack into Grant’s security network, and find out what’s going on…

  But I can’t.

  Too dangerous.

  Grant comes back five minutes later, his hand behind his back. “You want the good news or the bad news first?”

  I swallow, my throat dry. “What’s the bad news?”

  “No turning on any lights or TV while we’re here. And we’re out at daybreak.”

  “That’s not so bad. What’s the good news?”

  He brings his hand out from behind his back. He’s holding a bottle of cabernet. “They’ve got a couple of bottles of wine.”

  “Is getting drunk really a good idea right now?”

  “Two glasses for you, two for me – that’s hardly my idea of drunk.”

  “Yeah, but – ”

  “We got out alive today. Second rule of cat burgling: celebrate the little victories.”

  I relax a little and decide, I’ll drink to that.

  6

  The refrigerator is virtually empty – another good sign that the homeowners are away for awhile – but there’s canned food in the pantry. I’m so hungry, I would have gorged myself on stale saltines. Fortunately we’ve got canned spaghetti, and we’re able to warm it up on the stovetop.