“This place was probably paid for with money from bank robberies.”
“It is beautiful though, plus, the food is delicious. I wish that they had this dish in Texas.”
After eating our meal, we sipped on coffee, hoping that Hyte would arrive. At one point, I looked up and found Ramón staring at me.
“What?”
“The blonde hair, I’m still getting used to it.”
“Don’t bother, it’s not staying.”
“Good.”
“You don’t like blondes?”
“I liked it at first because it was novel, but it’s not you.”
“As soon as we return home, I’ll change back.”
Ramón stood up and offered me his hand.
“Let’s go. We’ll come back tonight and look for Hyte.”
“And in the meantime?”
“In the meantime, we enjoy Paris.”
And we did just that, including the Eiffel Tower, where Ramón paid an insane amount of money for tour tickets, but it was either that or miss it, and I was so glad we didn’t miss it, and took dozens of photos.
We then returned to our hotel where we made love and drank champagne. As the hour grew late, we left our room with a sigh, and went off in search of a terrorist.
We arrived back at Bonne Bouffe near midnight and discovered that they were on last call, but luck was with us and we found a man fitting Hyte’s description talking to the bartender. He then went through a red curtain that revealed a short hallway; most likely, an office lay beyond that.
We finished our drinks and left the restaurant, to stand in the doorway of a shoe store and stare across at Bonne Bouffe. We were waiting for Hyte to leave, and while we waited for him to appear, his staff all went home, leaving him the only one left.
“We should have rented a car,” I said.
“We don’t need it. See that side door back there in the alley, next to the Mercedes? I bet that’s how Hyte comes and goes. We’ll just confront him when he leaves.”
We crossed the avenue and walked back toward where the car was parked. It was over an hour before the side door opened. When it did, Hyte stepped out and headed for the Mercedes.
Ramón walked toward him with the knife.
“Hyte, I’m here to ask you about Natalie Stone.”
Hyte didn’t even blink.
“Put that knife away or I’ll stick it in your eye.”
I came up behind Ramón and displayed my gun, although, we were hoping not to use it. As late an hour as it was, there was still the occasional pedestrian about, and plenty of cars drove past on the avenue.
Hyte seemed to become enraged at the sight of the gun. He charged Ramón with a speed that belied his bulk. Ramón embedded the knife in Hyte’s left shoulder even as Hyte drove him back into me. The three of us kept going until I was slammed backwards into a dumpster, only to be sandwiched there by Ramón and Hyte as they struggled.
The impact knocked the breath out of me and I dropped the gun. Hyte was an animal, even with the blade deep in his shoulder, he fought Ramón fiercely. I prayed that Ramón wouldn’t be injured again, after having just barely recovered from his previous beating.
I slid to the ground and searched for the gun, as Hyte placed both hands around Ramón’s neck and squeezed.
Ramón tried to pry his hands off, but it was useless, then he withdrew the knife from Hyte’s shoulder and jammed it in Hyte’s left ear. That caused Hyte to release him, as an unearthly scream escape his mouth. That was followed by blood, then death.
Ramón leaned on the car’s trunk while coughing, as I finally retrieved my gun from beneath the car.
“Are you okay?”
He nodded, then spoke in a choking voice.
“Lord, but that man had a grip. Another few seconds and he’d have crushed my windpipe.”
I stared down at the corpse.
“He won’t be answering any questions.”
“What should we do next?”
I smiled.
“What’s the smile for?”
“You asked me what to do next, most men would be telling me what they think.”
“Well, I think that you’re the best there is at tracking someone down. I’d be a fool to think I could do better.”
“I do have an idea. We take his wallet, keys, and his car and learn as much as we can from those. If he lived alone, we’ll even have time to search his apartment.”
“Sounds good to me, but help me with the body.”
Ramón grabbed Hyte under the arms while I took his feet, and we dumped him in the Mercedes’ trunk.
We were in the car and ready to go when I realized that we should have searched the office.
Once inside, we found nothing of interest until Ramón discovered a safe built into the floor of the closet. The safe opened with a key, but after trying every key on the ring, we came up empty.
“There’s one more place that it might be,” I said, and began going through the filing cabinet.
The key turned up at the rear of the bottom drawer.
“I never would have thought to look there,” Ramón said.
“My boss, Ron Tenney, it’s where he keeps his, although he doesn’t know that I know that.”
The key turned easily and revealed several bundles of Euro banknotes; the colorful money was wrapped in rubber bands. Ramón scoped them out and handed it all to me. Afterward, he dug farther down, to reveal several photos.
In two of the photos, Hyte was seated beside Natalie Stone at a table, in what looked like another restaurant.
Ramón flipped it over and saw the words, Le Garder, my high school French kicked in and I translated it.
“The Castle? No, wait, The Keep, Le Garder is The Keep.”
Ramón rushed back over to the filing cabinet.
“I just saw those same words somewhere… yeah, here it is. It looks like Hyte owns that place too. There are receipts here for food deliveries, utilities, and… an alarm system, with a hand-written set of alarm codes.”
“What’s the address?”
“It’s back in London.”
“Then so are we, let’s gather everything out of the safe and take it with us. We’re going back to London.”
Le Garder turned out to be a quaint little eatery near the north bank of the Thames. It was in an area that was industrial. It was nearly five o’clock in the morning when we found it and we decided to risk going in to look around.
The restaurant sat on the opposite side of an alley that had yet another restaurant on the other side, but that was more of a hash house, which served only breakfast and lunch.
We had the keys and the alarm codes but had no way of knowing if the hand-written codes were still valid. We avoided the front door and looked for a side entrance. We found it halfway down the length of the building and tried the keys until we found the right one.
We entered, and the ghosts of devoured meals haunted the place with the aroma of food, making me realized that I was hungry.
Ramón searched the wall by the door with his eyes.
“There’s no alarm pad.”
I looked down a dimly lit corridor and spotted an alarm pad next to another door.
“There’s one down there.”
We rushed to it, expecting to find it blinking rapidly, but all was well, and the alarm seemed undisturbed.
Ramón pointed back the way we’d come. “The kitchen, restrooms, and pantries are back there, so what’s on the other side of this door?”
I pointed at the steel door. “There’s no lock, just a handle,” I tried it, but the latch wouldn’t release.
Ramón began pressing buttons on the alarm pad.
“I don’t think this is an alarm, I think it’s an electronic lock.”
We heard a clicking sound as the pad on the wall beeped approval.
Ramón went to push the door open, but I halted him by grabbing his wrist.
“Weapons, we don’t know what or who might be in the
re.”
He nodded agreement, took out his gun, and eased the door open.
There was another room, actually four. One room was much like the dining area up front, with tables, chairs, and even a small bar with stools. While the second room contained a sectional leather sofa that faced a sixty-inch flat screen television with surround sound and a video game system. The third room had pinball machines and a real jukebox, but the fourth and final room was the most interesting. It was an office, or maybe more of a conference room with a long table in the middle that could seat twelve. There was even a projector, along with a huge screen, the type used for PowerPoint presentations.
“It’s a private club; The Keep is a private club,” Ramón said.
“Not just a social club though, this might be where they plan their attacks.”
Ramón gestured about. “This is bigger than just Natalie. If this room were wired with cameras and sound, who knows what could be learned. We can’t take out Natalie here, this place is too valuable. We need to let Lawson know about it.”
CLUNK!
The sound came from the restaurant, or more specifically from the side door we had entered through.
We went back and closed the connecting door until it was almost shut. We listened but heard nothing else.
“Let’s check it out,” I said.
We took a few quick photos and left everything the way we’d found it. We locked the door from the inside, then left by the rear door at the back of the conference room. This one also had a keypad on both sides of the door. After exiting into a back alley, we reset the lock and crept toward the front of the building, with guns at the ready.
When we reached the side door, we discovered what had made the sound we heard. It was a box of bread; the local bakery must have dropped off that day’s delivery for the restaurant. I was already hungry, but the aroma of the warm croissants made my mouth water. I reached into the box and scooped out two from a paper sack, to hand one to Ramón.
“Thank you, Blue, but where’s the coffee?”
“We’ll have some soon, but first we need to contact Lawson.”
“A terrorist clubhouse?” Lawson said over the phone.
“We think so. We have pictures, keys, and the alarm codes to get inside.”
We had checked into another hotel in a different section of London. I had just taken a shower and told Ramón that I would call Lawson from a payphone outside, while he freshened up. We hadn’t slept all night and were running on just the croissants we’d stolen from the bakery bag. Needless to say, room service was on its way.
“This Hyte, what did you do with his body?”
“It’s locked away in the trunk of his car. You’ll want to clean that up too. If it gets out that he’s dead, Natalie and her friends might grow suspicious.”
“We’ll handle it. Interpol should hire you two, fantastic work,” Lawson said.
“What do you want to do with all this?” I asked.
“I’ll notify MI5, I’m also sending over a team, a surveillance team, with an ops team to follow. We’ll have that room completely wired by this time tomorrow. If and when Natalie Stone shows up, we’ll let you know. I’ll call your cell phone within the hour about when and where to drop off the keys and alarm codes.”
“That sounds good, but tell me, what happened with the arms dealer that tried to double-cross us?”
“I was going to ask you about that. Did you two go back and pay them a visit?”
“No, it would have been too public, so we passed it on to you.”
“Someone beat us to it. We found the father dead in the back room, and there was no sign of his son.”
“Perhaps they had a disagreement. We didn’t think the father was involved, if he were, then why even bother with the taxi, why not just kill us in the back room?”
“Yes, I see your point; I think I’ll dig deeper into the son’s background.”
“All right, and let us know what you find.”
“I will, Lawson out.”
I returned to find room service being delivered. By the time I had my coffee prepared, Ramón exited the bathroom freshly showered, but looking exhausted.
“Good timing,” I said, and then I filled him in on Lawson. When I was done, he asked a question.
“What’s next? Personally, I think we should sleep. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired, my side also hurts from where Hyte hit me.”
I put down my cup. “Are you hurt? Did you get re-injured?”
“I’ll be fine, but I could use some sleep.”
My phone rang. It was Lawson calling with the meeting details. When I ended the call, I stood.
“Lawson wants The Keep materials handed off to a man who’ll be in the lobby of the Hilton. Why don’t you go to bed while I take care of it?”
“I don’t like the idea of you going off alone?”
“It’s nearby, and I’ll join you in bed when I get back.”
“All right, but take your gun.”
“I will.”
I kissed him and left for the meeting. When I got downstairs, I debated whether to use Hyte’s car one more time and deliver it to Lawson’s man. We had dumped it in a parking garage a block from the hotel. I decided against it though and took a cab instead.
The meeting at the Hilton went off without incident and I returned to our hotel less than an hour later. As I was exiting my taxi, I spotted a familiar face seated in a car parked at the curb. It was the blond man from the counter of the luggage shop.
He was staring at the entrance of the hotel as if he were waiting for someone to come out. He must have felt my eyes on him, because he turned his head and looked at me, but I saw no hint of recognition. Then I remembered that he had never seen me with blonde hair.
As I rushed toward the car, he suddenly realized who I was and shouted for the driver to take off. I was too slow and reached the door an instant before the car sprinted into the traffic.
Ramón!
He was upstairs, alone, asleep, and they had likely sent someone up to kill us. I ran through the lobby as I called his phone, while being fortunate enough to snag an empty elevator.
No answer. C’mon, pick up! Pick up! Oh God, please pick up!
The elevator opened onto our floor and I ran toward our room. When I was in sight of it, I saw that the door was sitting open.
Oh God, no, oh dear God, no.
I took out my gun and crept forward, dreading what I might find. When I reached the doorway, I saw nothing amiss in the living room of the suite, and so I headed to the bedroom.
It seemed to come to me in pieces then, as I fell to my knees in despair.
First, I saw the blood, so much blood.
Second, the body atop the bed.
And finally, my future, empty.
Ramón was dead.
Chapter 12
“Blue?”
I swung my head around at the sound of my name and saw Ramón. He was standing in the bathroom doorway while holding a white towel to his arm. The towel was rapidly turning red from a gash, but he was alive.
He was alive!
I leapt off the floor and went to him.
“Oh God, I thought that was you.”
“No, baby, it’s okay, I’m okay.”
“Your arm?”
“It’s a deep cut; I’ll need stitches.”
“What happened?”
“I’ll tell you, but first, let’s lock that door.”
I followed him to the front of the suite. After the door was locked, we sat on the sofa and he told me what had happened.
“I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t, not until you were back here safe and sound. I went down the hall to get more coffee from the machine, and when I came back, I found him entering the room. After I burned him with the coffee, we struggled over his gun and I managed to make him drop it. He took out a knife, I took out mine… and he lost. The gun has a silencer; it’s in there laying on the sink.”
“Let me see
your arm.”
When he pried the towel away, I gasped, as blood ran freely from the wound.
“Oh God, that is deep. You do need stitches, and we need help, I’m calling Lawson. I also need to let him know that the man from the luggage shop was behind this. I saw him downstairs when I arrived back. That’s his man lying in there.”
I grabbed Ramón around the neck and hugged him.
“When I saw that body lying face down on the bed, I thought that I had lost you.”
He hugged me back with his one good arm.
“I’m not going anywhere, Blue.”
I took out my phone, dialed, and heard him answer.
“Lawson.”
“We have a problem…”
Two hours later, we were in another hotel and Ramón’s left forearm was stitched and bandaged.
We were lying in bed together; both of us were tired, but we couldn’t seem to go to sleep.
“Blue?”
“Yes?”
“This ranch you want to own, what’s it like?”
I smiled. “I’ve been thinking about it and saving up for it for years. I want to raise quarter horses. I love everything about them, their speed, their grace, their beauty. It’s my dream.”
“It does sound nice, but then, I’ve never been on a horse.”
“Well fix that when we get back; I’ll take you riding.”
“I look forward to it.”
I caressed his cheek. “Do you have a dream?”
“I didn’t, but I do now.”
“What is it?”
“This, being with you, just holding you like this. I could stay like this forever.”
“Were you always interested in me?”
“Yes, I mean, look how we met, you were like a tiger protecting Amy, saving her from those men. How could I not be interested?”
“You never said anything.”
“You were with someone and thought of me as just a friend. I accepted it.”
“But when you thought I was in danger, you protected me and risked your own life to do it.”
“Just because we weren’t together, it didn’t mean that I didn’t—”
Blue Steele Box Set Page 20
