* * *
I hear a hiss in my ear, and suddenly Levi pricks Sergio and both guards with something. They fall to the floor almost in unison.
It all happens so quickly; my heart is beating out of my chest.
“Jesus Christ, did you kill them?” I ask.
“Special pen,” Levi says.
“Open that door,” he commands.
Hesitantly, I open the door to a broom closet, and Levi stuffs all three unconscious men into the closet while I look on in horror.
He didn’t answer me as to whether or not they’re dead!
“We don’t have much time, I assume,” Levi whispers.
“Merc, how much time do we have?” I ask.
Merc grumbles.
“I doubt you’ve got more than fifteen minutes. I managed to loop the feed for the cameras in the back, but they’re going to catch on, and quick,” Merc says.
Then there’s a lot of swearing on his end. Poor Merc.
I pick up the hem of my dress and run after Levi as fast as I can, only to catch up to him just as he’s opening a door with Sergio’s card.
I’m familiar with server rooms since I managed some for my father. I’m no computer expert, but I know them well enough to know where to insert a USB cable. However, the imposing servers in front of us make me nervous.
Fortunately, the adrenaline coursing through my body pushes me forward.
“Give me five minutes,” I tell Levi.
“Take three,” Levi commands.
“Give me two,” I challenge him.
I stop wasting time and pull the small portable computer Merc supplied to me out of my clutch and plug a USB cord into one of the server ports. The servers flash green and amber lights, and soon enough, we’re into their network. Merc certainly does have all the nice spy toys.
I type some commands, as Merc instructed, then add a few of my own.
We blast right through casino security, and there’s not much for me to do after that except enter the search commands.
At the last moment, I decide to search ‘Noah Stone’ and hit save.
“Leigha, hurry up!” Levi hisses.
“Olivia Winthrop,” I say her name out loud as I search one last name.
“What are you doing!” Levi roars.
“I’m getting everything we can! Don’t you think that would be apt?” I ask.
Levi sighs heavily, the deep sound that comes from his throat reminds me of the way Noah sighed when we told him I was pregnant.
Suddenly I’m thrown back years, and years, and years.
I’m frozen.
24
Leigha
January 25, 2019
“There’s a little place down the road that serves amazing Mexican food if anyone’s up for it?” Levi says as he lets himself into the safe house.
“Is it safe?” I ask Merc.
Merc laughs at me.
“Leigha, I think they barely knew what hit them. I doubt anyone’s looking for you, or Levi, or myself,” Merc says.
The tone of his words is almost jovial, in a way.
I want to punch both of them.
“Don’t laugh at me,” I scold Merc.
Since Merc had all the cameras looped and we went out the back door, thus setting off the fire alarm, we were entirely missed in all the commotion. Entirely missed. It was too perfect. I keep my thoughts to myself, but it almost felt like someone was helping us get away.
No, that’s ridiculous. There would have to be some high-ranking organization on our side to have done something that high level. And that’s preposterous.
No one would help us get away.
Nope.
We’re not even here, according to everyone else. I’m missing, Merc is dead, and Levi is on vacation.
“It’s fajita night,” Levi quips, his eyes shining with laughter.
“You know, it would be cute, you being all worried, if it wasn’t so tragic,” Levi jokes.
Okay, he’s probably had a few.
That was slightly mean, but it’s no skin off my nose.
“I am not tragic. You are tragic,” I toss a little insult back in his face.
Levi laughs, and the sound of his deep, melodic laughter fills me with a sense of hope that I haven’t felt since Noah ‘died.’
I find myself begin to giggle, and then it turns into the kind of full-blown laughter that makes my eyes water. This is the first time I’ve felt free enough to laugh since I heard about Ethan.
“Alright fine, it’s fajita night,” I say.
“Let’s eat,” Merc grins.
Merc immediately passes out in the only bedroom of the safe house, while Levi flicks through the same three channels.
Hidden deep in the foothills of Mont Bégo, we are secluded and safe with an exit strategy. The dingy little cabin offers little warmth, so I curl up on the floor in a blanket in front of the fire. That was some argument, I think, about whether or not we light the fire. This cabin has no heating, so as it grew later into the night, it got a bit chilly, and Levi suggested a fire.
Merc blew up, something about a heat signature, and then they argued in about five different languages.
In the meantime, I just lit the goddamn fire, because, well, I wasn’t about to freeze all night.
It’s dying now anyway because there’s barely any wood around. Levi starts to snore, still sitting halfway up on the couch in front of the monitors, and I’m alone with my thoughts.
I start to wade through the data we’ve acquired. It’s too much for me to look at all at once.
Duke Geoffrey Whittaker’s data is so vast I’m surprised I was able to grab anything, and of course, it’s all encrypted.
After I run the decryption program multiple times, I can read everything. But it has nothing to do with the Casino; it’s all banking information.
Swiss account numbers, addresses of banks?
What?
I decrypt Olivia’s information and run a scan for a match.
There isn’t one.
That’s not what I expected.
“Merc!” I call his name.
I need him for this. I hear Merc grumble from the bedroom and stomp out in his boxers, a blanket wrapped around his body, but his firm chest and abs glinting in the light of the dying flames.
“What!” Merc fumes at me.
“I need your help! None of this is making any sense to me? Why is there banking information in this?” I ask.
“I suspect Geoffrey runs his banking operations, the illegal ones anyway, through the Casino,” Merc drawls sarcastically.
“Did you know this?” I ask indignantly.
“Yes,” Merc replies.
We both fall silent.
“Does it seem odd that he hasn’t had any interaction with Olivia, banking wise, I mean,” I prompt Merc.
“Well, if they were working together…” Merc trails off.
“Yeah that does seem odd,” Merc agrees.
“Unless they’re in some romantic tryst,” he jokes.
I snort.
“I think Olivia and Geoffrey have had some falling out, or possibly broken up. I think they were working together before because Geoffrey promised her a title, and then he reneged. So now, Geoffrey has Noah, and Olivia wants Noah back,” I propose this all to Merc.
I lay all my thoughts on the table and trust that Merc won’t just run back to MI6 with this.
Merc’s silence scares me for a moment.
“You’re right,” Levi says from the couch.
I didn’t even realize he was awake and I jump.
“No, you’re right,” he repeats.
“Olivia and the Duke. Lauren used to cackle over those two. Only I didn’t know what she was referring to until now because I was younger, then,” Levi explains.
“Or was it my mother? No, Lauren, because she was pretending to be my mother,” Levi continues.
“So, their affair has been going on a while,” I say.
“E
ven when the Duke was married?” Merc suggests.
Levi nods.
“His wife died five years ago. The things I heard, while somewhat inappropriate for a child, occurred long before then,” Levi’s confirmation is swift.
I’m not exactly blown away. When Olivia was Noah’s wife, I wasn’t around, so I know nothing about that. But I always knew, from the moment I met Olivia, that she was trouble. I was suspicious when her son got involved with Evan’s long-lost sister. But Corban, Ava’s husband and the father of her children, is nothing like his mother.
Corban is a good man.
All this mess is starting to make me suspicious of everything.
The only person I’m not, suspicious of, is Noah.
Now I’m suddenly wondering why we are not.
It’s a dark thought.
One I keep to myself.
25
Evan
January 28, 2019
Monte Carlo
Isaac and Grace’s four-bedroom-four-bathroom luxury condo overlooking the coast makes me long for the glory of New York City.
There’s more to Isaac’s story because this condo is sitting on prime real estate. All the floors are marble; the kitchen is elite high tech, as is the rest of their apartment; all the furniture starkly modern.
It’s funny that the presence of the dining room table would set my teeth on edge, but this is the same dining room table that Leigha had in her apartment. The only difference is Leigha used clear acrylic chairs as opposed to the matching ones with the leather that Grace has selected.
Victoire and Grace sit at the black lacquer dining room table cooing over Ethan while I pretend not to want to crawl out of my skin.
“Wipe the look off your face, Evan,” Victoire scolds me.
“It’s not a look. It’s my face,” I retort.
“It’s a look,” she sniffs. “Can you please pretend like you’re having fun for five seconds?” Vic requests angrily.
“Five seconds, and not a second longer,” I shoot back at her with a grin.
At least Vic smiles, even if there is an edge to the way she shows her teeth. She looks like she’s about to ask something of me, so I quickly excuse myself onto the spacious balcony.
I need air. Not that a little bit of sea air is going to clear my head, but at least Isaac is out here.
“There was a little scene at the Casino a couple of nights ago. There’s been a lot of chatter since,” Isaac says, as soon as the door is firmly shut.
“You think it was Merc?” I ask.
As hard as I try to keep the desperation out of my voice, it’s there. It’s palpable even.
“Unless your half-brother works in intelligence, I suspect someone was helping him,” Isaac explains.
Then, he shows me the screen of his phone.
Video. Even more so, it’s a snippet of a clip.
“Do you see it, Evan? Whoever was there knew what they were doing. Casino Monte-Carlo security is notoriously difficult to bypass,” Isaac adds.
I almost don’t see it at first, a few seconds of footage rolls by and there’s a flash.
Then, the footage rewinds slowly.
“There,” Isaac notes.
At first, I think it’s my father, from the angle, but when Isaac pauses the footage, it’s very clearly Levi, and my heart drops. Then, I see the image more clearly, and Levi’s got his hand on the arm of a woman. There’s a flash of blonde hair, and I can’t see her face, but unmistakably that’s Leigha’s ring.
She began wearing it again, the night after we made love in our house.
That’s when I knew I had won her back.
“That’s Leigha’s ring,” I tell Isaac.
“So, it is her then?” he asks.
“Between you and I, yes, that’s my wife,” I say firmly.
“You know I can’t do that, Evan,” he tells me.
“Yes, you can,” I reply flatly.
“If they haven’t already figured out that’s her ring, let them figure it out on their own! Give Leigha and Levi time,” I plead with Isaac.
“Do you know what they’re doing?” Isaac asks.
“No, no. I don’t. But whatever it is, I guarantee they aren’t out to hurt anyone,” I argue.
“Still, I have a duty,” Isaac says.
“Fuck your duty! Dammit, man, think about this for a second,” I tell him.
Isaac regards me with cold, deadly eyes.
“Go on, Evan. I really would like to hear this,” he says, gruffly.
I take a breath.
“If, for some reason, they are closer to finding my father than we are, then maybe it’ll help us? In the long run?” I rationalize.
“Go on,” he says.
“If they find Noah, Olivia isn’t far behind, and probably my aunt, as well?” I say.
Isaac doesn’t have a response to that.
“Alright, but if they make one false move-” he threatens.
Isaac, however, doesn’t finish his sentence as Grace steps out onto the balcony.
“Isaac, where are we going for dinner?” she asks.
“Wherever you want, sweetheart,” Isaac says, a smile pasted on his face.
He barely skips a beat, but Grace can tell something is wrong.
“What are you talking about?” she asks, her tone innocent.
“Dinner,” Isaac replies.
“How about Buddha Bar at the casino?” Grace suggests.
“Sure,” I answer quickly. Maybe a little too quickly.
“Well, alright, I’ll call for a reservation,” Grace says unevenly, as if she wants to say something else.
“Give them the last name Stone,” I direct her, knowing full on well if we’re going to get a reservation last minute, she’ll need my name to do it.
“Alright,” Grace replies.
She nods to both of us and closes the door behind her.
“Whatever it is you are thinking,” Isaac says swiftly, “the answer is no.”
And, that, he confirms my suspicions. Whatever they took from that Casino, I now want it too.
Almost as badly as I want Leigha.
Goddamnit.
“This place is incredible,” Victoire says for the third time.
We are seated right underneath a giant Buddha statue, in the center of the action, which would generally thrill me. However, I’m cautious about being seen sitting next to my ex-girlfriend. I do not want Leigha to get the wrong idea should someone decide to take a snap of us and paste it all over the London tabloids.
Hey, stranger shit has happened, I think, feeling paranoid.
“Evan, can you stop fidgeting for two seconds and just try to enjoy yourself?” Vic finally scolds me.
“I was waiting for that,” I retort.
“Guys, come on, you were getting along so well,” Grace whines, her voice a pitch below angry.
“If by getting along you mean ignoring each other, then sure,” Vic says dryly.
“Maybe I should’ve stayed home with Ethan, instead of Athena,” I slap back.
That’s the only way I know how to hurt her by letting her know that I do not want to be here. Athena being in Monaco with Aidan was just a plus. Although Athena was tired, she jumped at the chance to watch Ethan.
I was itching to get out of Isaac and Grace’s condo; it was a win-win for all of us.
Though I doubt Aidan and Athena are going to get much sleep with Ethan. He screams for Vic every five minutes when she leaves the room.
Poor kid.
“Stop it, both of you,” Grace scolds us.
I want to tell her not to be melodramatic, but we are clearly on the way to ruining what should be a pleasant meal. That’s when I spy Levi across the room.
Or at least I think I do. It’s a flash of him.
“Excuse me,” I say.
No one seems to protest as I get up from the table, and head in the direction that I saw him. Of course, by the time I make my way towards where I thought I saw him, ther
e isn’t a trace of Levi.
It doesn’t even make sense. Why would they return to the scene of the crime?
That’s when I hear something I’m not supposed to.
“We haven’t been able to reach him, sir,” one of the Casino guards blurts into his radio.
“Well, find them!” the radio screeches back.
It sounds very clearly like Duke Geoffrey Whittaker.
“Sir, if I may, perhaps they’ve already left?” the guard suggests.
“I want them found! That package to Paris needs to be secured!” Geoffrey screams through the radio.
For some reason, my immediate thought is the train station. It would difficult to transport something across Europe on a plane, especially something illegal. Trains are much more relaxed about security. But without Isaac, I know I’m a little out of my element, I don’t even have any way to defend myself should I need to.
As much as I don’t want to believe it, I need Isaac.
He’s my only intelligence link left.
26
Leigha
January 28, 2019
“The next train to Paris isn’t until eleven,” Levi tells me.
Then, he hands me the train ticket, which I quickly slide into my pocket.
“What do we do? Just wait here?” I ask Merc.
“You got a better idea?” Merc asks with a glance at his watch.
“It’s almost nine anyway,” Levi replies.
Paris seems to be the best lead we have at the moment: a lot of Duke Geoffrey Whittaker’s transactions go through a French bank in the heart of Paris. But without conveniently absent details, we have no idea who the money is going to.
All the accounts are numbered.
I’ve never broken into a bank before, so this will be a first.
If Merc even lets me tag along, that is. After last time, I’m not sure he’ll let me do much of anything. This makes me giggle to myself, that despite my screw up, we still have something to go on.
“What’s so funny?” Merc asks.
“Nothing,” I say with a shake of my head.
“Come on, let’s find somewhere more private to sit. I feel like a sitting duck here,” Merc ignores me.
FRACTURE: Hearts of Stone Book Six Page 14
