Under the Bones

by Kory M. Shrum

  The key opened a cabinet and after a brief search, the man found what he was looking for.

  Ricci handed over the laptop, wrapping the snake-like charger cord around and around its square body. “It’s a dummy. So if we gotta burn it after, it’s fine. Can I get you anything to drink or eat while you’re waiting?”

  Konstantine was in fact starving despite his nerves. He told Ricci as much. “I’ll have Valerie bring something in for you guys. Go on and get comfortable. I’ll make sure nobody else bothers you while you do your business.”

  The Jade room was probably named so for its emerald green wallpaper and the gold flourishes in Chinese design that ran vertically along the walls. A large red table with carved dragon legs sat in the center of the room, flanked by wooden pillars the same color.

  He pulled out a chair and sat while King did the same.

  “Tell me,” Konstantine began. “Does…our mutual friend often leave you alone with people you do not know?”

  He wanted this to mean more than it did. That she trusted him not to harm this man—whatever he was to her. Or perhaps she trusted the man’s ability to protect himself, should it come to it. Though one look at his bloodshot eyes and purple circles told him that perhaps that was not true. At least not today.

  But again this only gave Konstantine hope. That maybe, with time, she could grow to trust him.

  “At least this isn’t a Siberian shipping container,” the man mumbled taking in the emerald wallpaper and golden accents.

  Konstantine didn’t know what to think of this. He searched for footing in the conversation.

  “Did she say anything?” He hoped the question sounded casual. He kept his gaze on the screen as he created the cloaking he would use to show the old man a few tricks.

  “She told me to stay with you until she got back. She’s going to pop in and check on—” Here he paused and looked around the room. Good. He understood that they were being watched then. He wouldn’t make the mistake of saying Lou’s name or share any information that perhaps he didn’t want a man like Ricci to know. He licked his lips and said, “She’s scoping out the situation before you go in. So you know what to expect.”

  Useful. Very helpful.

  Konstantine loosed a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. “Right. Let’s begin with whatever you did before.”

  “I used old passwords to access the servers. Sometimes I was able to guess the new ones.”

  “That’s called social engineering,” Konstantine said. “A SQL injection from a logless VPN would be better.”

  King only blinked at him.

  “You know how to create dummy IP addresses, I assume.”

  “Yes. But they still knew it was me.”

  “That’s because you can’t truly be anonymous even if you are hiding behind someone else’s IP. They will trace it back to you eventually. Instead I would use a paid, logless VPN. I can recommend a few, if you like?”

  King said that he did and Konstantine told him how to contact the service and set it up.

  “Once you have your logless VPN, then you can use SQL injections from your browser to access the host database. Then all the data stored there will be yours for the taking. I would suggest you take all of it, indiscriminately, rather than search for specific items, say, names, or anything that could form a pattern. You don’t want anyone to know what you are looking at exactly, now do you? So take it all and go through it on a burner, offline, later.”

  King shook his head.

  He handed the computer over to the man and let him try a few simple commands. He wasn’t a complete luddite. Konstantine saw the knowledge and skills. But it was clear that the technology was advancing faster than perhaps this man had trained for. And maybe he didn’t have the passion for the machines, like Konstantine did.

  A young woman with a tray appeared burdened with chicken and pork covered in sauces, wontons and dumplings steamed, crab legs, heaping plates of rice and noodles. It was enough for a large family and the two men who sat there. Leaving plates, napkins, silverware, soda, and water, she departed the moment Konstantine thanked her.

  King only stared at the feast. He looked like he would rather vomit on the food than put it in his mouth. “Will he be offended if—”

  “Not at all,” Konstantine interjected.

  King drank deep of the soda on the table, but he left the food untouched.

  He returned his attention to the computer, working to recreate what Konstantine had demonstrated with ease. He was getting a little faster with each pass. His face relaxed and eyes focused at least.

  Konstantine ate a little bit of everything, hoping that it pleased his host that he did so. When King looked as though he was tired for now, Konstantine spared him.

  “You know that none of this is necessary?” Konstantine said at last, as the man’s practice was well underway.

  King looked up, face pinched. He reached for the water pitcher and poured himself a full glass. Drank it down and filled it again, all while Konstantine continued on.

  “I monitor all the intelligence databases. CIA, FBI, DEA, USSS, FPS, even the Coast Guard.” He laughed. “And not just here. But Italian Interpol, most of the agencies in Europe and Russia too. China.”

  King’s surprise couldn’t be more evident. His mouth hung open.

  Konstantine capitalized on the silence. “It would be nothing to protect the anonymity of our friend. I will continue to do so. Should something come up, I will handle it.”

  Then he seemed to recover himself at last, putting down his water glass, and scratched at his scruffy face with a yellowed thumbnail. “In your line of work, you must have business connections in every corner of the planet.”

  Konstantine said nothing, laying his fork against his demolished plate and taking another helping of the steamed dumplings.

  “And you want to know who knows your business in each of those corners,” King added. “Especially if business is going well.”

  “If business is going well,” Konstantine countered, pointing with his fork. “There is no mention of me at all.”

  “Agostino changed that when he announced your name to every agency in the known world.”

  Konstantine smiled. “Perhaps. But my point is that it is no longer only my name that I keep an eye-out for.”

  King nodded, showing that he understood. “Then it doesn’t matter if I can do any of this, does it?”

  “If things go wrong tonight, perhaps very wrong, you will have to do the job.”

  “Hey, Mr. Konstantine, you get enough to eat?” Ricci stood in the doorway, his thumbs in his belt loops, pudgy belly hanging over the denim band.

  “It was wonderful. You’ve been very hospitable, my friend,” Konstantine said. “I will treat you even better the next time you come see me in Florence.”

  Ricci was pleased with this answer. “Good, good. I’m glad to hear it. If you’re ready, we should head down to the airfield now. Buddy says we’ve got the hangar to ourselves and no prying eyes for the next 45 minutes.”

  Ricci looked at the man powering down and closing the laptop. Konstantine also considered him for a moment.

  King caught the exchange and said, “She wanted me to stay with you.”

  “Come on then,” Konstantine said. “We wouldn’t want to disappoint her, would we?”

  Ricci didn’t ask who she might be and Konstantine knew he wouldn’t. Ricci had lived to be the ripe old age of 68 for a reason. He was damn good at keeping his mouth shut and his eyes and ears open.

  “I don’t have my passport,” King said, pushing back his chair. “Not on me.”

  Ricci laughed.

  Konstantine smiled and slapped the man on the shoulder while coming around the table, leaving his half-demolished feast behind. “The way we are traveling, you will not need it.”

  29

  Lou stood in her apartment, taking in afternoon light. She wanted a moment to clear her head before she went to Florence. Something a
bout Konstantine and King together, the marriage of those two parts of her life—it had unnerved her. Don’t overthink it, she warned herself. For all she knew Konstantine would die tonight, fighting in Padre Leo’s church, the hallowed ground of the Ravengers.

  San Augusto al Monte.

  While so much about Paolo Konstantine confused and infuriated her, this she understood. Padre had been like a father to him. And he left this empire to his adopted son with the expectation that he would protect all that he’d built. Surely he felt some obligation to protect that legacy.

  Her father had died too soon to leave her an empire, except of course the multi-million dollar life insurance policy meant to carry her through life.

  What he’d left her was intangible. The drive. The thirst. He’d given his life for hers. If that was his gift, she’d been too careless.

  Your life is your own to live, Jack said. Good answer.

  The Mississippi River shimmered and the white seagulls dove and bobbed from above.

  She checked her five guns and the corresponding clips again. Double-checked that she had enough ammo to fight her way out, should something go wrong. Two knives stuffed into sewn slips at each forearm and one more at her right thigh. And at last, her father’s bullet proof vest snug over her chest.

  This first glimpse was only to get a sense of what they were walking into. The layout of the church, how many men Nico had, his plan for attack. She’d gather the intel she could, sticking to the unobtrusive shadows. Then she’d get King, take him back to New Orleans before he had a chance to get hurt.

  Konstantine could do what he wanted with the information that she found. It wouldn’t alter her plans in the slightest.

  Lou stepped into the closet, welcoming the familiar darkness. The compass whirled inside, lining up those two invisible slots in the machine that would move heaven and earth. When the darkness softened and Lou herself stepped through, she felt the shift. Another floor in another country rose up to meet her. Her hand finding not the opposite closet wall, but a cool stone pillar.

  The church came into focus around her. The orderly pews and clean stone gave no impression of the firefight that had taken place here a few days before. She knew her own bullets had chipped away at these ancient facades.

  It was so quiet. Too quiet.

  She slipped through the shadows, taking in the church from different angles. Men were stationed, waiting in the wings for Konstantine no doubt. But there was no sign of the men that Lou recognized. Those who were in Konstantine’s closest entourage. Had Nico killed them outright?

  Nico was nowhere to be seen.

  Two men standing near the image of the weeping Christ spoke in hushed, whispered Italian. But she understood what happened next.

  One man lifted the purple cloth to reveal a mess of wires and jugs of fluorescent fluid.

  A bomb.

  Nico was going to blow up the church—no doubt when Konstantine was inside. It made perfect sense. If Nico harbored as much hate for his father’s betrayal as Konstantine said, why wouldn’t he want to bring down his father’s empire, brick by literal brick?

  And take out the clever golden boy while he was at it?

  No doubt he would make a big show of it. Station enough men here to oppose Konstantine, to make him believe that Nico was hidden in the bowels of the church, a prize to be had if only Konstantine could fight his way through.

  But if Nico wasn’t here, where was he?

  Lou pressed her back into the shadows of the stone pillar and let her compass shift and whirl. It clicked into place and she stepped through.

  A padded floor rose up to meet her. She wobbled on her feet, her body caught off guard by the unsteady nature of the flooring. She dropped into a crouch to steady herself and gain a better understanding of her surroundings. Pitch black. Not an ounce of light from anywhere. She couldn’t even see her hand in front of her face.

  And this strange floor… it felt like linen. A thick material with something stuffed inside it, billowing it into a stiff pillow shape beneath her hands.

  Then the lights turned on. Lights from every conceivable direction blared down on her like the light from a thousand suns. She moved to jump into the shadow, only to find there was no shadow. No seam, no crevice, no crack. So much light that she couldn’t see any more than she could have seen in the darkness. She pulled her gun and shot wildly. The bullet connected with something, pinged off in an unseen direction.

  Then she thought to shoot the lights. She would have to shoot out the lights. She raised her gun and aimed it at the sky.

  An electrical current shot through her body. Her convulsing hand emptied the clip into the wall, not the ceiling. She crumpled onto the floor, unsure if she still held her gun or not.

  It’s in the floor, she thought. There’s a current in the floor.

  And then she thought nothing at all.

  30

  Every time King closed his eyes, he saw Lucy. He saw her sitting in a Café du Monde bistro chair, sucking praline chocolate off her thumb. He saw her walking beside him down Royal Street, her red sundress sliding across tan thighs. Her saw the sunlight sparking in her eyes.

  The way she’d cupped his cheek and said, I do. The firelight dancing across her cheekbones.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled a ragged breath.

  “Can I get you anything?”

  King turned and saw a young man, maybe twenty, leaning toward his airplane seat, his face open and neutral.

  “A coke,” King said. “And some aspirin if you’ve got it.”

  The kid wandered away and King caught Konstantine’s eye. The man sat opposite him, in an adjacent airplane seat.

  King only vaguely noted his presence. He kept replaying the moments of Lucy’s life on the screen of his mind. His only reprieve was his last conversation, when Naomi of the cancer center finally called to inform him of her passing. As if he didn’t know.

  There was no mention of the body’s strange condition. No doubt Lucy was still covered in sand and her clothing reeked of campfire smoke. But why would they tell him that? Grieving family members were unpredictable. Explaining the strange discovery was an admission of guilt. They could face a lawsuit for wrongful conduct.

  King was certain that whatever strange thoughts the attending physicians must’ve had over what they found in her room, they planned to keep those thoughts to themselves.

  Nurse Naomi only said what all cancer center nurses were required to say. She passed this morning. It was peaceful. We are sorry for your loss.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Konstantine said, and the words echoed his own thoughts so closely that it jolted King from his mind and back into the airplane seat.

  The small private jet held Konstantine and himself, a pilot, a bodyguard that Ricci had given to Konstantine for this trip, and the boy who waited on them all. Another plane full of muscle, the loaned army, would meet them on the Italian airfield. He’d heard the men agree that the muscle and the weapons should travel separate, should either be seized.

  “Thank you,” King croaked. His throat felt abnormally tight and it burned. Speech seemed impossible.

  Konstantine turned away, looking out the window.

  “It seems very strange,” he began, in his accented English. His hands were loosely clasped over his crossed knee. “After traveling as she does, to be moving so…slowly.”

  Konstantine looked at the silver watch on his wrist and frowned. “It’s been six hours.”

  That explained the darkness outside the plane window and the fact that the plane carried them forward in time.

  King leaned over the armrest and peered out into the impenetrable darkness, one red bulb flashing on the end of the wing, and found the suggestion of gray clouds. He knew the ocean must lay below them, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything.

  “Something may have happened. She has no other reason to leave you in my company so long. Not that I don’t enjoy it,” Konstantine
added diplomatically.

  “Perhaps she can’t…” King realized what he was about to say. “Maybe she has a hard time catching flights.”

  Konstantine smiled. “She met Donatello Martinelli on a red eye. New York to Rome.”

  King hadn’t known this. He knew about her careful destruction of Konstantine’s family—a family by blood, not bond—but didn’t know the particulars of each kill. One was taken from prison, thought to have escaped. That he remembered because it had been all over the front page of every paper and nighttime news story.

  “Do you think she ran into trouble?” King asked. At last the world was coming into focus around him. It was still raw with his grief.

  The sounds were too bright. The light of the cabin was too bright. His own pain was too bright.

  But he was here. He longed for the part that would come after. The hollowed-out numbness that would rise from the wake of the initial shock. The days he would lie in his bed and feel nothing but emptiness.

  It would be a blessed release.

  Konstantine smiled. “She’s very capable.”

  “What do we do if we land and she still hasn’t come back?”

  It was easy sticking to the job, focusing on what needed to be done here and now. He had other thoughts about this man. About his connection to Lou. But in his limited mind all he could think of now was Lucy. The meteor of her death had left a crater-shaped hole where his heart should be.

  Konstantine turned toward the window and considered the night. King watched the red light flash on and off on his face.

  “You will stay with me as she asked,” Konstantine said finally. “I assume you know how to use a gun.”

  “Of course.” The real trick will be not using it on myself.

  31

  Nico knelt over the unconscious woman. The pure rubber in his boots—that which would protect him from the current in the floor should it come on again—found the padding springy, nearly pitching him off his feet and on top of her.

  Not that it would have been an entirely unpleasant experience to land on top of that body.