Page 25 of To Claim A King
A moving target caught my sight-line in the opposite mirror, Lauchlan’s frame racing toward the truck from behind. He hauled open the passenger-side door, expelling ragged gasping breaths.
“We’ve got company!” he yelled and pulled into the cab and slammed the door shut.
Without pause, Kellan stepped on the gas, veering around the line of Hillary’s parked luxury vehicles in the center, toward the SUVs now blocking the garage entrance.
I reached for my gun tucked beneath the seat for safekeeping, already loaded, and prepared to fire. I peered through the center glass at two similar-looking men staring through their own panes of glass. Their dark features hardened into severe masks of steel. Several men occupied the vehicles alongside them.
Kellan’s brothers had arrived. Perhaps I would fulfill my oath to him today, after all.
“I’m a maniac, pyromaniaaaaaaaac, on the floor…” I sang to my rendition of Michael Sembello’s classic 80s jam as I unraveled the tiny firebomb that would trigger the building’s fire alarm. There were two sets of elevators, but only one went up to Blondie’s penthouse suite. I was in the opposite set, holding open the door jamb with an extended toe as I shoved the small box into the far corner.
It would take about ten minutes to ignite, then it would smoke for a good five before the flames were strong enough to trigger the alarm. Better still, the fire would completely engulf the entire apparatus and leave a pile of ashes in its wake, making it one hell of a challenge todetermine the source. Bit of genius on my part, but I couldn’t take all the credit. Fire was a fascinating mistress, and I worshipped at her altar.
I lit the tiny fuse and then flicked the button to bring this set of elevators up the shaft. It was three a.m., so doubtful anyone would rightly see it on their travels and try to play the hero. Could just pull the fire alarm myself, but for one, that was a very unfun mission, and for two, that could be traced. Better to keep the mystery alive and frustrate the living hell out of the FBI agents looking for clues.
They want to come after my Blondie? This was my passive-aggressive anarchist response. Way better plan.
First job done, I jogged over to the other set of elevators to take me up to Hillary’s condo. So far, so good.
Given it had been all of three minutes, and I was carrying the camera scrambler with me to hide from the visual feeds all around the building, that was the most likely outcome, but still... Celebrate the small wins and all.
I was a giddy little schoolboy, in truth. I hadn’t felt the buzz from a mission in a good while. The endorphins ripped through my veins like I was riding the high of a great bender. Nope, I was high on life, fulfilling my role in a modern-day misfit Musketeer squad. Blondie needed us, and we would deliver.
I entered the passcode when the elevator arrived at the top of her penthouse and entered my home away from home. The faint scent of bleach clung to the air as I entered the living room; I wrinkled my nose as my gaze hit the glass coffee table in the center, grateful Joey had a much stronger stomach than the likes of me. Not that I’d been expecting it, but no evidence of the chopped-off head remained. The place was still a pristine little palace cleaned by house-elves.
I would have helped Blondie get rid of the body if she’d needed me to, but I was a much better fire bloke than adisposal bloke. Probably would have spewed my guts up a few times before I was done.
I surveyed the main living area of the condo outside of the scene of the crime—nothing amiss to the naked eye. It struck me odd there was nary a boot print on the rugs, or a single speck of spatter, despite Hill’s place being mostly done up in boring cream colors. Whoever had been up here was a professional crew, not some chainsaw-wielding mafia hack job.
An icy shiver struck me between my shoulder blades. Best not to think about that.
I removed a handy little gadget from my backpack and turned it on, scanning for the tiny transmitters in audio bugs and GPS trackers. A skin tracer was the thickness of a piece of human skin, and virtually unnoticeable—it would take a few showers to wash it away if they placed it anywhere a person would naturally pick it up, like a light switch or a door handle. The scanner was a hard bugger to source, but Jediah was a pretty handy contact for these kinds of things.
I’d paid him a lot of money for three of them, but when the screen lit up like a Jackson Pollock painting, it was worth every single American penny.
I whistled through my teeth at the sight. Tracers and bugs feckingeverywhere. Every light switch, every lamp. I made my way toward the panic room inside her walk-in closet and caught one on the shower taps.
Sneaky, kinky fuckers.
I wouldn’tendorsesuch behavior, but the immediate punch of anger in my gut was a helluva surprise. When it came to my Blondie… no one got to get a peeksie of our billionaire’s beautiful body butus.
It was a good thing she and Joey had the sense to leave and never come back, but bad news bears for me, because all those bugs were transmitting somewhere right now, which meantthey—whoevertheywere—knew I was here.
Time to get a move on, Locke.
I input the code I’d memorized and when the door slid open, I grinned like I was a techyJames Bondin black cotton sweatpants.Feckin cool.
No time for grinning. Evidence tampering first, then I had to get the fuck out of dodge. An interesting American saying I had no idea the origins of, but I liked it. It was cheeky.
Firing up her systems, I looked around the room for any outward clues of its purpose. Other than the state-of-the-art set-up, nothing—no bulletin board with red strings attached to a bunch of scary photos of creepy pedo bad guys. Just a genuine panic room for a scared billionaire princess to the untrained eye. That was good. The incriminating stuff was in this bad boy.
Plugging in the flash drive with the program to eat the data from the inside, I started my work. Hard drives couldn’t just be wiped. The new ones couldn’t be erased with magnets or reformatting, making them tasty little nuggets to crack. We didn’t have the ability to shred the metal into teensy little shards so the data was unrecoverable, so fire today would have to do.
The malware was just a way to scramble all the files on the off chance the fire didn’t destroy the system. Another little failsafe because I was a destructive fucker, but a thorough destructive fucker.
I soaked the floor with a tiny bottle of propane—a special blend with no odorant added, undetectable by any fire-sniffing dogs if the FBI used them. Agent Smith evidently had it out for Blondie, so I wasn’t taking any chances. Another little treat from Jediah that had cost a pretty penny, but my billionaire girlfriend could pay me back later with kisses and another pegging.
My girlfriend—was that what I was calling her now? Seemed a bit amateurish, like we weren’t criminal baddieswith two other boyfriends taking on the mafia underworld, but what did I know? I’d never had one before.
