One-Eyed Royals

by Cordelia Kingsbridge

  “It can’t be a coincidence!” Royce exclaimed. “Look, after Ms. Nguyen’s kidnapping, my superiors took notice of how many large claims had been filed so quickly and demanded an explanation. Either the policyholders conspired with each other to kidnap their policies’ subjects, or a competing agency got a hold of our client information and is sabotaging us by overloading us with enormous claims. What else could it be?”

  “KIG is a national agency with hundreds of offices all over the country,” Levi said. “But you—you’re the director of Management Liability Insurance for the entire company, right? Meaning you’re directly responsible for the K&R policies.”

  “Yes . . .”

  “And you hold those policies on people throughout the United States?”

  “Of course.”

  “But the only ones who were kidnapped were living in or visiting the Vegas area—where you, the one person who definitely has access to the policy information, quite conveniently has his home office?” Levi leaned back. “That’s a little suspicious, don’t you think?”

  Royce blanched, then drew himself up with air of flustered self-righteousness. “I don’t know what you’re implying—”

  A knock sounded on the door, and it opened to admit a stunning young woman who could have walked straight off a Hollywood red carpet—Juliette Dubois, Royce’s executive assistant. Dominic had met her twice before in his previous visits to the office.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” she said. “I have your coffee here, Mr. Royce.”

  She tossed her lustrous bronze hair behind one shoulder and sauntered over to set a mug by Royce’s hand. His entire demeanor softened as he watched her like she was the only person in the room.

  “Can I get your guests anything?” she asked, scanning the table with perceptive eyes. “Coffee, water?”

  Royce brushed his hand against her arm. “We’re fine, Juliette, thank you.”

  She graced him with a dazzling smile and stepped out, quietly shutting the door. Already rolling his eyes, Dominic looked to see if Levi and Martine had arrived at the same conclusion he’d drawn the very first time he’d observed Royce and Juliette interact. He wasn’t disappointed.

  “You’re pretty sanctimonious for a guy having an affair with his assistant,” Levi said.

  “What?” Royce blinked rapidly, fiddling with his wedding ring as if by reflex. “I—I’m not— You don’t— How dare—”

  He took in their expressions, seemed to remember he was facing two experienced detectives and a private investigator, and gave up.

  “It’s not what you think. My wife and I aren’t monogamous. We just . . . keep things discreet.” With a frustrated grunt, he waved both hands. “But that’s neither here nor there. I would never have any part in these terrible crimes. And even if I were that kind of person—which I’m not—it would make no sense for me to sabotage my own company. My job’s on the line.”

  Levi only smiled. Dominic knew what he was thinking. The payout from five huge ransoms could be more than worth a lost job—especially if Royce was considering riding off into the sunset with his beautiful young girlfriend.

  “Mr. Royce,” Martine said, “once you realized that subjects of your K&R policies were being targeted, why didn’t you warn them?”

  “Warn them?” He looked honestly shocked by the suggestion. “I can’t do that. It would void the policies.”

  The room went silent as they all stared at him.

  Dominic was the first to speak. “Are you serious?”

  “Very serious. The K&R language explicitly states that the subject cannot know of the policy’s existence, or it’s immediately voided. Even if we only alerted the policyholders to the threat, they would tell the subjects—it’s human nature. It would look like KIG was trying to deliberately sabotage the policies to avoid claims. We’d be opening ourselves up to huge lawsuits.”

  His voice thrumming with poorly controlled rage, Levi said, “So you’re willing to put God knows how many people at risk of kidnapping, mutilation, and murder just to protect your company’s bottom line?”

  Martine put a hand on his arm. He took a deep breath but didn’t appear to get any calmer.

  Royce had shrunk back in his seat. “No, I . . . It’s not like I did nothing. This is why I hired a private investigator. To fix things quietly behind the scenes without anyone needing to know.”

  “Except you didn’t tell me the full story,” said Dominic. His own anger was mounting quickly. “If I’d known the truth from the beginning, I may have been able to stop this. Joel Buckner might still be alive.”

  “Why isn’t he alive?” Martine asked. “Ms. Barnes told me they couldn’t pay the ransom. Why would that matter if they had insurance?”

  “Um . . .” Royce wrung his hands, his gaze darting everywhere around the room except their faces. “Mr. Buckner’s company has been struggling financially for some time, and the premiums for kidnap-and-ransom insurance are quite expensive. At the time of his kidnapping, his policyholder had missed several payments, and his company couldn’t put together the money to cover those overdue premiums. You have to understand, we can’t honor a lapsed policy.”

  This new deathly silence was even worse than the one before. The only sound Dominic could hear was Levi’s labored breathing. He’d seen Levi like this before—unmoving except for a fine tremor of rage, eyes fixed unblinking on the target of his wrath—and it always meant Levi was about to explode.

  Martine was as dumbfounded as Dominic had ever seen her. “So you knew Buckner would die and did nothing to help?”

  “That’s not how insurance works—”

  Levi shot to his feet and slammed both hands on the table so hard the entire thing rattled. “You piece of shit.”

  “Levi!” Dominic and Martine said at the same time, though in different tones—Dominic astonished, Martine stern.

  Levi’s nostrils flared as he reined himself in, though he didn’t sit down. Martine shot him a worried glance, then turned to Royce and said, “Why don’t you give us a list of your K&R policyholders, and we’ll warn them ourselves? It’ll still void the policies, but it should remove the question of liability on KIG’s part.”

  “That’s proprietary information,” Royce said, displaying his first sign of backbone despite the wary way he was eyeing Levi. “I’m not authorized to share those names.”

  “Right,” Dominic said with a snort. “And I’m sure the millions of dollars in annual premiums you’d be losing has nothing to do with your decision.”

  Royce clenched his jaw.

  “You . . .” Levi stopped and swallowed harshly. When he spoke again, his voice was unsteady with the effort of curbing his anger. “Let me be clear. This is now an official homicide investigation. If you insist on a court order, we can get one, but if anyone else is taken while we’re waiting, that’ll be on you.”

  Guilt flashed across Royce’s face, but he said nothing.

  “In the meantime, if you’re not going to help us, stay the fuck out of our way.” Levi arched an eyebrow at Dominic. “That means amateur hour is over.”

  Dominic had been on board with Levi’s tirade until that point. “Whoa, hey! You have no right to tell a private citizen he can’t hire an independent investigator, as long as I don’t obstruct law enforcement.”

  “You can’t walk down a sidewalk without obstructing it,” Levi retorted.

  Dominic opened his mouth but could only splutter indignantly.

  “Do you two know each other?” Royce asked.

  Martine stood as well, put a hand on Levi’s back, and said, “It’s time for you to step outside.”

  Levi walked out of the conference room without another word.

  Because Martine had turned away from Royce to watch Levi go, Dominic was the only one who saw the shattering exhaustion that seized her. By the time she returned her attention to Royce, her expression was as professionally neutral as ever.

  “He’s right, you know. We will get a court ord
er for those names, and if you do anything to hinder our investigation, I have no problem charging you with obstruction.” She passed him her business card. “This is all going to come out sooner or later. It might be best for you and your company to get out ahead of it. We’ll be in touch.”

  She squeezed Dominic’s shoulder on her way out. Royce gave Dominic a helpless look, and Dominic scowled back.

  “Stay here,” he said. “You and I aren’t finished.”

  Leaving Royce alone in the conference room, Dominic dug in his messenger bag as he pursued Levi and Martine. He caught up with them in the parking lot right outside the office.

  “Levi!”

  When Levi turned, Dominic tossed him his phone charger. Levi caught it, stared at it blankly for a second, and then went absolutely incandescent with fury.

  The aggrieved glare Martine sent Dominic could have drawn blood, but he barely noticed. He only had eyes for Levi.

  Sure, it was petty, but Dominic couldn’t bear for Levi to walk away without acknowledging him. Even Levi’s anger was preferable to his indifference.

  Levi didn’t shout, though it seemed to be causing him a significant amount of strain. “Have you just been carrying this around with you?”

  “I knew we’d run into each other eventually.”

  Levi flung the charger at Dominic’s face; he just managed to catch it in time.

  “I already bought a new one,” Levi said.

  “Must be nice to just write off a perfectly good charger and buy a new one without a care in the world,” Dominic shot back. “Some of us can’t be so casual about how we spend our money. Maybe you’d like to reimburse me for the taillight you smashed on my truck?”

  “You did what?” Martine said.

  Levi gave Dominic a smile that was pure malice. Dominic’s breath stumbled and his cock stirred.

  The thing was, Dominic had always loved Levi’s hard edges, his acid tongue, his ruthless streak. Underneath all that prickly sarcasm lay an achingly compassionate heart—a man who was unflinchingly loyal and fiercely protective. Dominic had enjoyed peeling away all those layers, had relished the knowledge that he was one of the few people in the world Levi trusted enough to be vulnerable with.

  Except . . . Dominic had violated that trust. In an effort to hide his relapse, he’d hurt Levi on purpose, and more than once. Levi didn’t trust him anymore.

  Remembering that was as good as a slap in the face. Dominic faltered and took a shuffling step back.

  Levi watched Dominic for a second, his vicious smirk slipping away. “I’ll pay for the taillight,” he said quietly, before he turned on his heel and headed for his car.

  Dominic stared after him, his tongue heavy with all the things he wanted to say but couldn’t.

  Martine dropped her eyes to the charger in his hand, then lifted them to his face. “Really?”

  Suddenly embarrassed, he stuffed the charger back into his bag. “You told me Levi’s therapy was helping, but his anger is still totally out of control.”

  She shrugged. “A few weeks ago, I would have had to physically stop him from flipping the table in there. It’s progress. Incremental, but better than nothing.” She gave him a pointed look and added, “At least he had the balls to admit he needed help and ask for it.”

  The familiar cascade of shame-anger-defensiveness rippled through Dominic like toppled dominoes. Levi had told Martine about the gambling—which Dominic didn’t resent, because there had been no other way for Levi to explain their breakup to his closest friend—but Dominic wouldn’t tolerate her throwing it in his face.

  “I’m fine,” he said, his voice tight. “Levi just can’t accept that I’m competent enough to handle myself. I have everything under control.”

  “You know, back in Brooklyn, I had an uncle with an alcohol problem. He used to say the same thing—that he had everything under control. Every time he started drinking again, he’d repeat that mantra over and over, right up until his esophageal varices ruptured and he died of internal bleeding at the age of fifty-two.”

  Dominic briefly closed his eyes.

  “If you gave Levi the smallest sign you were willing to get help, tossed him the tiniest bread crumb, he would have your back in seconds and you know it,” she said. “But you can’t expect him to keep bashing his head against the same brick wall. It’s not fair. Loving someone doesn’t mean you have to let them treat you like shit, no matter what they’re going through.”

  A muscle jumped in Dominic’s jaw; he couldn’t bring himself to speak. Martine sighed.

  “Take care of yourself, Dom,” she said, and walked away.

  “It’s not him,” was the first thing Martine said when they settled at their adjoining desks in the substation bullpen.

  “It is him, Martine,” Levi said tiredly. “It’s just the worst parts of him. And it’s not like I don’t understand. When my anger runs away with me and I say or do things I shouldn’t, that’s still me. An alien doesn’t take over my body and force me to be an asshole.”

  “He—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Levi said, then softened his request with a smile. “Please.”

  Martine let it go, and they got to work.

  At least Levi had an interesting case to distract himself with. While their official mandate was to solve Buckner’s homicide, that would require investigating all five kidnappings. He and Martine would need to interview all the victims and their families, friends, and coworkers, searching for commonalities and discrepancies between everyone’s stories so they could create a timeline of the kidnappings and establish the perpetrators’ MO.

  Then they’d need to obtain traffic camera footage for every area the victims had been taken from and returned, plus GPS data from the victims’ cell phones and cars—though the kidnappers had returned Nguyen’s car to her home with her phone on the dashboard, so he didn’t anticipate that the latter would be very helpful. It would also be a good idea to reach out to their criminal contacts; a mercenary kidnapping ring couldn’t have moved into the Valley without causing some kind of ripple effect.

  Finally, Levi was going to make it his personal mission to not only get his hands on the names of KIG’s policyholders, but to thoroughly investigate Nathan Royce. For one thing, the guy was shady as hell, but Levi could admit his determination was born from spite as much as anything else.

  Royce was a selfish coward who had put his job above innocent people’s lives. Levi was going to make him regret that.

  Levi worked late into the night, hours after Martine had left, though he didn’t begrudge her departure—after all, she had a husband and two daughters to go home to. There was nobody waiting for Levi, not even a pet.

  Tomorrow was Saturday, and Levi planned to continue working the new case even though it was his day off. Martine had agreed to meet up with him after her daughter’s softball game. However, that plan was derailed by the message waiting for him when he got out of the shower on Saturday morning:

  The Seven of Spades had struck again.

  Levi paced the lobby of Caesars Palace while he waited for Martine, ignoring the sideways looks from the tourists who gave him a wide berth as they walked past. There was no guarantee that this murder was connected to the “gift” the Seven of Spades had promised him, but a sick pit in his stomach assured him that it was.

  Everything the Seven of Spades did was meticulously planned down to the tiniest detail. They had left him that birthday card to fuck with his head, and the timing of their next murder wasn’t an accident—it had been long enough for Levi to stew in anxious anticipation of the possibilities, but not long enough to take the edge off his apprehension. This was sure to be the next stage in their scheme.

  “It just had to be a Saturday, didn’t it?” Martine groused when she showed up. “Simone’s so pissed I’m missing another game.”

  “At least Antoine will be there.”

  “Yeah, but I’m getting pretty sick of having to tell my girls I can�
��t show up to support them because a serial killer is rampaging around the city slitting throats left and right.”

  As they proceeded to the elevator, Levi said, “Why here? The Seven of Spades doesn’t kill tourists.”

  “Maybe it’s an employee.”

  They rode up to the twentieth floor and entered one of the hotel’s lavish three-bedroom suites. Levi wrinkled his nose in distaste as he glanced around—this entire place was a garish, over-the-top Roman Empire fantasy extravaganza. It looked like a cheesy porn set.

  No sooner had they stepped inside than they were greeted by Jonah Gibbs, a stout, ruddy-faced officer with a volatile temper—though Levi was giving him a run for his money these days.

  “Hey, Detectives. I gotta say, this is a bizarre one, even for the Seven of Spades.”

  Levi and Martine followed Gibbs through the main room of the suite. There were busy people crowding the large space—uniformed officers, CSIs, the crime scene photographer—but there were also six civilians who Levi noticed right away. They were all men, ethnically diverse but in the same age group—early thirties, like Levi himself.

  Most appeared to be in shock, motionless and glassy-eyed, but one man was crying and another was shouting angrily into his cell phone by the window, almost incoherent in his grief.

  “Bachelor party weekend,” Gibbs said, gesturing to the men. “Their buddy won some kind of all-expenses-paid getaway. Bet they’re wishing they’d stayed home now.”

  “Gibbs,” Martine said sharply, impatient as always with his lack of tact.

  They entered the master bedroom, and for Levi, time screeched to a halt.

  A white man was zip-tied to a chair, his throat slit in a gaping arc. His mouth was duct-taped shut, and the playing card was stuck horizontally to the tape right over his lips. An enormous red ribbon had been wrapped around his chest and tied into a giant bow like he’d been gift-wrapped. Half a dozen gaily patterned balloons were attached to the back and arms of the chair, all bearing the slogan HAPPY BIRTHDAY! along with smiley faces and colorful stars.

  But Levi’s brain only cataloged those details on autopilot, because the rest of him was paralyzed. Every movement in the room seemed to happen in slow motion, every sound around him a prolonged, distant echo.