Michael decided he’d call Simon to see if he knew anything about Lucas, to see if his suspicions were true. It crossed Michael’s mind that Lucas had known who he was all along, that he knew Michael had been on the boat, that he was just toying with him as he asked him about his most recent job.
Michael pulled out his phone and saw no missed calls; all thoughts of the colonel and the meeting disappeared as his mind jumped to KC, wondering if she would follow through on her threat, wondering if she was walking out of his life. He looked at his watch, thought of the train, but maybe it was better to call a car service. He’d get home before she left, he’d set things right, whatever it took.
Michael walked to the elevator and hit the button. He could hear the cab coming from the floors above, and hoped it would arrive before the colonel emerged from the office behind him—he was the last person Michael wanted to be with in the elevator. He began to dial the number for home.
And the elevator car finally stopped at his floor. As the doors opened, he stepped in and watched the signal on his phone disappear. He tucked it in his pocket and looked up to see a lone woman standing there in a dark pencil skirt, a dark checkered swing coat over a white silk shirt, and a large black purse hanging on her shoulder. He couldn’t help looking in her eyes, couldn’t help reacting to her stare as she nodded a silent greeting.
She stood five-six, her jet-black hair styled in a short severe bob. Her skin was pale and pure, her appearance reminding Michael of Snow White, but this fairy tale woman didn’t seem to be pure innocence. She flashed Michael an alluring smile that seductively came more from her large brown eyes than her deep red lips. They arrived at the ground floor, exited the cab, and walked through the large lobby to the main exit. She nodded in silent thanks to Michael as he held the door for her and they emerged onto Park Avenue.
Michael stopped as she continued on. His eyes followed her into the afternoon crowd, her hips swaying within her black Prada skirt. He briefly smiled as he imagined KC hitting him in the shoulder for staring. Despite their fight, she still held his heart and was far more alluring than the black-haired woman.
He was about to turn away when a kid exploded out of nowhere, darting from the crowd. He tackled Snow White to the ground, violently grabbing her purse, and took off.
In the sudden confusion, several women leaped to her aid while others pointed and screamed at the fleeing thief. Seeing Snow White helpless on the ground, the shock on her face, tears welling in her eyes, Michael had only one thought…
He looked at the escaping thief and gave chase.
KC STOOD IN the great room, looking around, her hastily packed bag at her feet. It was just a carry-on. It was difficult for her to figure out what clothes to take. When she’d moved in with Michael more than a year ago, she’d had a single bag of clothes. Now, after all this time, she had a closetful, but as she looked at them, she was too upset to focus.
She tried to temper her anger at Michael but couldn’t stanch her sense of betrayal, realizing that we can only truly be betrayed by the ones we trust.
She placed a note on the dining room table and fought back her tears.
Her head was filled with confusion. After Michael had left, she’d questioned herself. Was she about to blow up her life? Was she about to take a step she could never take back? Relationships wax and wane, there are always highs and lows, but in order to ride those waves you must be able to trust the one you are with. She loved Michael but she knew him as well as she knew herself. When Simon had spoken to her she had felt the tug of risk just as Michael had, but she had been able to resist it. And if Michael couldn’t, she knew he would end up dead.
For all of her adult life she’d longed for a relationship, to be held by a man who would love her and care for her, something she had never known, not from a mother, a father, or a sibling. She had been on her own since her mother died; KC had been fifteen, her sister nine. She had resorted to stealing for money, the only thing she could do to support her sister, to keep them together and out of the world of foster care. It had toughened not only her character but her heart.
But then she met Michael: a man with a past, a man who understood her. She never knew her heart could feel the way it did, the way it soared, the way it skipped a beat when she saw him.
She had thought by this time they would be moving forward with their relationship, marrying, talking about having children, but Michael wasn’t ready. Though she never doubted his love for her, she knew the memory of his wife still burned in his heart. She could forgive him for that; she couldn’t imagine the pain of so much loss.
But lying to her, breaking a vow, a promise—it had hurt so deeply to be deceived. It had forced her to step back from the euphoria of love, to look at their relationship more objectively, and it made her realize she needed to get away to see whether she was blinded by her feelings, whether she was just kidding herself that their relationship could last.
She was leaving not only to gain some distance to look at them as a couple but to look at herself. She hadn’t worked in fourteen months, leaving her former life behind. She needed to clear her head, to make a decision, and she wasn’t able to think clearly while sitting around all day in the comfort of Michael’s house.
She was thankful to get a flight out at ten; there was a direct flight tomorrow but she couldn’t wait.
And now, to compound the matter, he hadn’t called. She admitted that she probably wouldn’t have answered, but if he had at least made the attempt…
CHAPTER 3
Michael ran at full tilt across Park Avenue. Brakes screeched as tires fought the pavement, car horns blared as he weaved in and out of the midafternoon traffic. For once, Michael was doing the chasing as opposed to being pursued. The punk was twenty feet ahead, his speed seeming to part the sidewalk masses in his way.
Michael had held the door for the dark-haired woman, exchanging smiles and nods as she walked out onto Forty-ninth Street. He had no idea who she was, and it didn’t matter. There were just some things that he couldn’t let happen and this was one of them.
They were already at Fiftieth and Park, running in the canyons of the city, the glass skyscrapers tickling the blue skies around them. The punk didn’t seem so much a punk. He wore none of the trappings of a desperate junkie, of a kid looking for money for sneakers. He was running with focus, as if in a race, as if he were five minutes late to his own wedding. He was thin, broad-shouldered. His dark hair was full, falling just below the collar; he wore jeans and a J.Crew short-sleeve shirt, giving the impression of anything but a thief.
The kid was fast but Michael was gaining on him. Only two car lengths back. They darted in and out of traffic with fits and starts to the sound of blaring horns and screeching tires.
The kid came upon a black Lincoln Town Car and, without missing a beat, leaped in a fashion that levitated his body onto the hood, his ass skidding along its surface as if sliding on ice until he landed without missing a stride on the far sidewalk, where he continued uptown.
Michael couldn’t believe his eyes as bystander after bystander just watched, no one wanting to get involved.
Michael jumped over a chained-up bicycle like a hurdler and ran atop the hoods and roofs of three cars… and dived off.
With a bone-jarring tackle he caught the punk, pushing him down upon the sidewalk in a road-rash-inducing skid. Michael spun the kid around, wrapping his thick forearm across the punk’s throat, and leaned back against a parked car, the young man practically in his lap as he held him tight from behind.
A crowd immediately gathered, oohing and ahhing but offering no assistance as the kid kicked and thrashed upon the sidewalk, trying to pull away from Michael’s viselike grip. And through it all, the punk still held tightly to the purse. The sound of sirens grew. Michael wasn’t sure if they were for his prisoner, sirens beings such a common sound in the city.
Holding the boy tight, Michael realized that the person locked in his grasp wasn’t a kid but a man
, the sinewy muscles of his arms flexing like rubber bands as he struggled for release. There was a hardness to the man’s eyes, not the desperation of a kid. The girth of the man’s arms was greater than Michael had expected, greater than Michael should have been able to handle. Michael was strong, fit, in far better shape at thirty-six than most men his age. But his prisoner was far stronger…
And then, much to Michael’s surprise, she emerged from the crowd: the black-haired woman with the perfect skin, Snow White, the owner of the purse. Her dark, anger-filled eyes fixed on the thief. She leaned down and snatched the purse from the man’s hands. A hush fell over the crowd as they began to understand Michael’s heroics in his capture of the criminal.
Michael continued to hold tight to the punk, who no longer struggled. They sat on the sidewalk, the punk in his lap as he leaned back.
The woman finally looked at Michael and nodded. He wasn’t sure if it was a nod of thanks or something else. She quietly reached into her purse and withdrew a small Beretta, its flat black finish the color of her hair.
“No,” was the only thing Michael’s prisoner said, fear filling his voice…
And without hesitation, she raised it and fired two shots squarely into the man’s heart.
The force of the two bullets slammed the man against Michael, momentarily confusing him, causing him to believe that he himself had been shot. And Michael realized he would have been but for the man he held, who acted as a shield. Michael sat there in pure shock as the world fell silent and time slowed to a crawl. Crimson patches blossomed upon the young man’s white shirt, the last beats of his heart pumping blood from two nickel-sized wounds into a pool upon the concrete sidewalk. Despite the dead man that he held in his arms, Michael couldn’t help being thankful for the small-caliber bullets; any larger and they would have gotten two victims for the price of one.
The crowd screamed as chaos took over, jolting Michael back to the moment. People scattered in fear of the madwoman and her accomplice, who had held down the young man as she murdered him.
With a nonchalant motion, as if storing her makeup, the woman slipped the pistol into her purse, turned, and disappeared into the crowd.
And then Michael saw the barrels of two Glock 19s. The two young policemen were white-knuckling their guns as their faces expressed shock at the sight of the carnage, at the sight of the dead young man Michael clutched in his arms.
KC STOOD IN the driveway as the Town Car pulled up.
“Good afternoon,” the driver said as he got out of the car and took KC’s bag, placing it in the trunk. “JFK?”
“Yes, please,” KC said as she turned back, looking at the house, wondering if she was making a mistake. And then she thought of Michael as he’d left two days earlier. She wondered if he’d thought the same thing as he’d gotten into the Town Car to head off to “Chicago,” wondered what had gone through his head as he kissed her good-bye. Had he been feeling the regret she felt now? Had it occurred to him that he might be making a mistake?
“Will you excuse me for one moment?” she said to the driver, who stood there holding the door open for her.
“Certainly,” the man said.
KC turned and walked to the far end of the drive, where the three dogs were lying upon the large rock that overlooked the driveway, awaiting Michael’s return. She quickly dialed his cell; maybe hearing his voice would give her pause. She didn’t care if he was still in the meeting, he would answer.
But Michael’s phone was off, the call going directly to voicemail. Michael never turned off his phone except in two circumstances: when he was on a plane and when he didn’t want to talk to her. And she knew it was the latter.
She closed her phone and returned to the Town Car.
“Ready to go?” the driver asked.
“Yes.” And KC climbed in.
CHAPTER 4
The interrogation room was twenty feet square, a dark Formica table in the center, surrounded by six hardback chairs. Thick carpet, tiled ceiling, and walls covered in segmented blocks of soundproofing all combined to pull the ambient noise from the air, leaving nothing but the sound of Michael’s breathing in his own ears.
The small space was softly lit, no shadows, no windows. The heavy black door possessed no handle, making his exit difficult at best.
The cops who’d found him clutching the victim had cuffed him and led him to their car, locking him inside while they questioned the witnesses. An ambulance had arrived, but Michael was whisked away before he saw the outcome of their actions.
He had yet to be questioned, had yet to be charged, and had sat here for almost three hours without speaking to a single person.
The door finally opened and a familiar man stepped in. He held several large, thick files, which he deposited on the table, then he turned and closed the door. He took a seat directly across from Michael, pulled the first file to him. It was stamped The Kremlin. He flipped it open and quietly examined it, turning page after page of newspaper articles, eyewitness accounts, and police reports, each with an appended translation. He occasionally glanced up at Michael as if assessing him anew, condemning him with his silent appraisal. He closed it and reached for the second, this one marked The Vatican. He read through similar translations of news articles and police reports. For twenty minutes he worked his way down the pile: London, Brazil, Istanbul, Switzerland.
Michael felt the heat rising through his body. In all his years, he had been arrested only once and that had been here in New York. He’d served his time. But what he saw before him now… he had never been caught in any of his dealings abroad, had never even been named a suspect. Michael was thorough, compulsive in his preparation, in his actions and execution.
And yet here, against all reason, was a stack of files, each marked with a location he had visited for reasons having nothing to do with tourism. If he was convicted for even one of the crimes he’d executed in any of these foreign cities, he’d spend the rest of his life in prison.
His mind was a jumble. There were only three people who truly knew of each and every one of the jobs he’d pulled: Busch, Simon, and KC.
Busch was his best friend, Simon would never tell a soul, and despite the current status of their relationship, Michael knew KC would never divulge Michael’s past dealings. His confusion and anxiety grew as the man before him continued to read, finally closing the last file and slowly placing it upon the stack for effect.
“So, Michael,” the man said, his face devoid of emotion, except for a hint of martial triumph in his eyes. “Where did we leave off this afternoon?”
Michael just stared at Colonel Lucas, who was still in his dark suit.
“Have you ever been to Macau?”
KC WALKED THROUGH Terminal A at Kennedy airport, her long blond hair and lithe legs drawing the eyes of everyone she passed. At five feet, nine inches, KC had the appearance of a model, possessing the honest confidence that so many women lacked. No matter where she went she could not help exuding charisma, something that had proven difficult in her prior life, a life where remaining invisible, disappearing at will, was essential to success.
KC’s earlier life had had a singular purpose: caring for her sister, Cynthia. Since the death of their mother, KC had taken on the responsibility of raising her while she was still a child herself. KC had imbued in her sister a moral compass, an understanding of right and wrong, lessons of the consequences of a less-than-honest approach to life, all of which were illustrated by their absent father, a man whose crimes ran from extortion to thievery to outright murder, a father who was ultimately consumed by the darkness within his own heart.
KC’s accomplishment in raising her sister, seeing her off to Harvard, Oxford, and finally to her own private financial consulting firm in London, was not just admirable—much of it was illegal. That she had paid for her sister’s education with money acquired through less than legal means was a secret she’d managed to keep until one year ago.
While both KC and Cynthia
had grown up hating their father, hating his criminal way of life, KC knew early on she was following in his very footsteps. She had resorted to stealing to support her sister and had been taken under the wing of a man who imparted the kind of knowledge one doesn’t find in books or schools. Iblis taught her how to pick locks, fence stolen artwork, hide the monetary fruits of her labor. He taught her how to use a gun and a knife, even though she refused—and fortunately had never needed to put her training to use. He watched over KC in a Fagin-like way until she realized he was obsessed with her and wanted more than a friendship with her.
Cynthia never knew of KC’s “occupation,” thinking that she was a consultant for the European Union. She never imagined that KC was a criminal like their father until Iblis, out of spite, anger, and jealousy, revealed the truth.
Once Cynthia learned KC was a thief, she lashed out, hating KC for deceiving her, despite the fact that KC did it not out of greed for herself but out of love for her. Only after they’d faced death did they reconcile, realizing that despite everything that KC had done, everything that Cynthia had said, they were sisters and shared a bond only sisters could understand.
KC hadn’t been back to London in nearly a year, her mind, heart, and life so entwined with Michael’s that she’d forgotten what she had left behind. And as she thought of England on her impending journey, she realized she missed Cynthia, missed her house in Essex, missed her old life where she could take off at a moment’s notice to ski the Alps, to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, to scuba-dive the pristine waters of Fiji. She missed the freedom she had known for so long. But above all she missed the adrenaline rush she had grown so accustomed to. She loved the planning, the execution of penetrating a private museum, an embassy. Her targets had always been those she felt were deserving of some misfortune, those who had escaped judgment for less-than-moral deeds, whose money and power rendered them untouchable: dictators, unscrupulous businessmen, criminals… lawyers. She had never taken a life, had never physically injured a single person in her dealings. She would snatch her prize, selling it off quickly, and disappear back behind a façade of normalcy until the need for income returned once again.
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