Page 64 of The Diamond Thief
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Jacob
The limo bounces along the back country road as we head toward the highway.
I’m body-shackled. The encasement is like a handcuff for your body, linking my ankles, knees, and thighs, and pinning my hands across my body like a straitjacket.
It’s Antony’s personal baby, and he trains no one, not a soul on this planet, on how to get out of it.
I should have seen this attack coming. There were signs. Antony tailing me on the job. I wonder about that girl, Jade’s friend. Elena. I don’t think she was in on it. I don’t even know if Elliott was in on it. It’s a huge double cross if he is.
I have to reconsider everything in my life up until this point, my entire career with the thieves of the Den. I still have no idea who is involved in Jade’s so-called war.
At least they didn’t locate her. She is safely sleeping off the tranquilizer in the fake hotel room. The bunker is not completely breached. They didn’t find that room, and once they had me, they believed she had already escaped.
By the time she wakes, everyone should have cleared out.
She knows how to get out of there. The bunker is in the middle of nowhere, buried in a hillside fronted by a fake electrical outbuilding. But an old woman lives in a solitary house about a mile away. It’s the first place Jade will come to if she sets out walking.
The old woman is friendly, a retired Vigilante I met along the way. She will help Jade. She will recognize her for who she is. They spot the sort of training people like Jade and I have been through. She will believe even the most outlandish tale, or recognize the cover story for what it is.
We hit another pothole, and I’m momentarily lifted off the seat.
“Damn backcountry,” Antony growls. He’s sloshed his drink.
His limo is the most tricked-out car I’ve ever seen. You could run a bank robbery out of it. No doubt it is fully bulletproof, probably as heavily armored as a tank.
Antony brags about it often. He’s been trying to make it amphibious, although everyone on his team tells him it’s way too heavy to ever work on water.
I have to play my cards carefully in the next few hours, figure out Antony’s mission here and free myself from this odious man’s circle. My career in the Den is over, but I have options. The most important priority will be to locate Jade.
“You going to continue to protect that woman?” Antony asks.
“If you don’t also believe that Jade is my public enemy number one, then there’s no getting through to you,” I say. “She has my swords.”
“It didn’t take a black light to the sheets to know what was going on in that love-hole,” he says. “She’s got you strung on a line. Hell, I’d take a round with her. I just wouldn’t be so stupid as to trust her.”
If it were humanly possible to bust his jaw through this human shackle, my fist would have found his face.
As it is, I stare out the window at the landscape whirring by.
Antony coughs into his hand. He sits across from me, next to the crystal bar. A glass of whiskey sounds pretty good right about now.
“In my youth,” he says, “thieves knew their place. They stayed on their own turf and kept their loyalty to their own extended family.” He lets out a heavy sigh.
This again. Anyone who has been trained by Antony has been subjected to his rants on the good ol’ days of simple crime. You’d think he’d bootlegged moonshine during prohibition, the way he talked.
Antony continues to bluster on, and I try to work out what my situation will be when we arrive at the Den. I can only assume that’s where we’re headed. I doubt Antony is taking me home for tea.
“Jacob,” he says, and his tone has shifted from angry to more paternal. This makes me wary. I’m about to get a new brand of speech.
“Just tell me where the girl went. We know that you incapacitated her in the van and took your car to that bunker. I can only assume that at some point you got her out of there.”
He smacks his hands down on the leather seats. “I have men down over there. Do you know how hard it was to leave them?”
“They’re asleep,” I growl. “You should dock their pay for napping on the job.”
“Be that as it may, I have to downgrade them. Some of my best men. All this over a girl.”
