DrillingDownDeep (23 page)

How had it all gone so wrong?

“I’ll fix this. Don’t worry,” Heinrich said.

“You’ve been in America too long. All these fancy plots and
complicated shit. And look what happens.”

First the device was discovered and he
had to kill Tiffany-Cissy-Lou. So he hadn’t found himself offering advice in
the house in the Hamptons after all, but being questioned by the authorities.
He wasn’t even supposed to know about the bomb. Lying low seemed like the only
option.

“There’ll be repercussions if you’re not able to follow
through on this, Gregor.”

“Heinrich,” he said automatically. It had been his own
little amusing idea when he had first set up this alias. Giving oneself a name
like John Smith might be open to question, but who would invent a name like
Heinrich Kohler? Interpol had long stopped tracking his father, who had done
the same, with the Kohler part anyway, once they’d convinced themselves he
couldn’t blend in with his heavy Russian accent.

But with that new Reynolds brother-in-law—the snoop—being
from Interpol, Heinrich wondered if he had been so wise to keep the Kohler
name. But no need to mention that to his superiors in Russia.

“I still have this in hand,” he lied through his teeth.

And he would. He swore he would.

Even if at this point he had to get the circuitry the
old-fashioned way and forget about all those cumbersome export regulations,
hiding behind a joint venture. He’d figure some other way around getting them
out of the country.

And he’d figure a way around Michael Reynolds too.

Stealing cars wasn’t the only thing he hadn’t forgotten how
to do.

* * * * *

New York was every bit as rainy and dismal as Texas had
been, but not as hot at least. It was a cool rain. The kind that made a person
want to sit before a fire and drink cocoa. Which was exactly what Vanny had
said she was going to do when he had the car drop her off at the Central Park
West apartment before he went on to Reynolds Industries headquarters downtown.

“Michael.” His father looked up in surprise. “I thought you
went back to Houston.”

“I did. With Vanny. But we flew here this morning. I wanted
to talk to you.”

His father leaned back in his throne-like desk chair.
“Well?”

Michael loved his father. He didn’t think about it often and
it wasn’t the easy affection Vanny seemed to share with her “Pops”, but he
loved him and he knew his father loved him back, as he loved all his children.
As much as his siblings thought their father favored the
heir
, Michael
knew that wasn’t true. Damien’s children were equal in his affections, whatever
they thought.

But their mothers were different. Michael knew, they all
knew, that Damien had only loved Michael’s own mother. Damien made no secret of
it.

He paced in front of the mammoth desk his father had used
since Michael was a little boy and had come to the office to see “what would
all be his someday”.

“What is it? You’re making me nervous, son. Is it more bad news
about whatever’s going on? I’ve been working overtime keeping this out of the
papers.”

He shook his head. “No. It’s not that.”

“Well?” his father barked.

“You claimed you loved my mother.”

Damien reared back, not expecting that apparently. “I did
love your mother.”

“You know, I never believed you. Believed that.”

“What’s this all about, Michael?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m…confused.”

“About what? Why all this talk about your mother? I could
never seem to interest you in that subject before.”

He shook his head. “It wasn’t that.” He was having trouble
articulating this. “It’s just, you made her sound so perfect.”

“She wasn’t. She was just perfect for me.”

“See, like that kind of thing. You were always saying that
kind of thing,” he snapped testily.

“What kind of thing?”

“The kind of thing that belonged on a greeting card. The
truth was she was a girl half your age and you had the hots for her. Period.
The only reason you think you loved her now is because she died before you
could get tired of her.”

He half thought his father, who’d never laid a hand on him,
would react to that outright heresy by springing up from behind his desk and
giving him a good punch in the nose. But the old man didn’t. He looked fucking
calm. Almost amused.

“What?” Michael finally said, annoyed.

“You’re in love with your Vanny, aren’t you, son?”

“I am not. That’s not what this is all about.”

“Why not? Because you don’t believe in love?”

“Because I’ve known her less than a month! Because she’s
half my age.”

“I doubt that. Two thirds maybe.”

“Never mind.” He didn’t know what he was doing going to the
old man. For what? Advice on his love life? What a joke.

He headed to the door. Moving faster than he would have
thought an eighty-year-old could, no matter how spry, his father came around
from behind the desk and blocked his exit.

“Wait. Sit down, Michael.” He held a hand out to the sofa by
the window.

Because he didn’t know what the hell else to do, he sat.
Surprising him, yet again, his father sat right down next to him.

“Do you know how long I knew your mother before I knew I
wanted to marry her?”

“Don’t tell me, let me guess. A month.”

“I knew right away.”

“Now you’re being ridiculous.”

“I did. I swear. She was outside our headquarters, they were
in Stamford back then, waving this picket sign—”

“I thought she worked for you.”

“I never said that. I said we met at work. And we did. She
was protesting for ‘woman’s lib’, as they called it back then. Groups of women
were targeting businesses with all-male executive ranks, which of course at the
time was every business, and they were picketing and doing things like burning
their bras. Right in front of our lobby.” He chuckled at the memory. “It didn’t
bother me one bit. Back in those days, I barely stopped thinking about business
for a single second. So I was ignoring them, going to my limousine, which took
up half the length of the curb, and she planted her cute little behind—”

“Dad!”

“Right in front of me. Oh I was full of myself back then.”

“What’s changed?”

“Youngest CEO on Wall Street, a mover and a shaker, old
family, old money, new brains, but she didn’t back off one whit. She shook that
sign in my face and kept me from getting in the car. I was a goner from then
on.”

Michael flopped back on the couch. “Love at first sight,
huh? So what’s your point? We both go for beautiful young rebels?”

His father shook his head. “No. You’re not listening to me.
My point is it happens. It does. There’s a person for us, or some of us, I
don’t pretend to know, but that person is it. And I wouldn’t trade one minute
with your mother for anything. Even if I’ve made a fool of myself my whole life
trying to re-create it.”

“I don’t recognize myself,” Michael mumbled.

His father shrugged. “Look pretty much the same to me.”

“I want to marry her!” he blurted out. “Me! A girl I just
met.”

“Like that’d be a surprise to anybody who saw the two of you
in a room for five minutes?”

“Not fuck her! Marry her!”

“Well, I suspect you’ve been doing quite enough of the one.”
His father laughed. “Right now, you look like you want to pummel me for even
speculating about that. Oh this is so amusing.”

“Ha ha ha.” He glanced at him resentfully. “You’re not
playing your part very well by the way.”

“What part?”

“Billionaire patriarch faced with son and heir consorting
with a penniless, mouthy girl. You should be having her investigated or saying
she’s after me only for my money or something.”

“Oh bah! It’s plain to see that Vanessa is probably the only
girl you’ve ever met who couldn’t care less about your money.”

“It’s true. It’s infuriating.”

His father had always said his mother was only impressed
with one thing. Michael had never asked what, afraid the answer was some
sentimental claptrap, but now he did wonder. What would it take to impress
Vanny?

His father patted him on the back. “Stop fighting so hard.
If you’re afraid of marrying the girl now, there’s no law against that. Wait
awhile before you do anything permanent.”

He shot up. “Like hell! I’m not letting her go anywhere. I’m
marrying her as soon as she’ll have me and that’s that.”

His father chuckled. “Yeah. That’s what I thought. I felt
the same way about your mother, Michael. But I’ll give you a hint. You have to
be careful around a girl like that. She doesn’t want to feel like you’re trying
to own her.”

He grinned. “Even if you are?”

“In a good way, son. In a good way.”

* * * * *

Vanny waved at the guard at the front desk of Michael’s
apartment building on her way out into the rain. There were not only all manner
of card keys and security cameras and whatnot for this exclusive piece of real
estate, but a twenty-four-hour guard as well, sometimes two. Looked as if there
was just the one today though.

She popped her umbrella open and braved the drizzle. The man
had a gazillion dollars but not one damn container of cocoa to his name? At
least he had an umbrella. It was only a few minutes to run down to the corner
store and back for some, but it got her thoroughly wet, umbrella or no
umbrella. She inserted the card key to the front door of the building, not
waiting for the guard to buzz her in, which was a good thing since when she got
in she saw he wasn’t behind the desk. Unusual, but she supposed the guy had to
go to the can once in a while.

She put the card into the elevator that took her up to
Michael’s floor and then the separate actual key-key, no card for the intricate
steel lock, into the front door of the apartment. She’d left the fireplace on
so it would at least be somewhat toasty when she got back. Heading straight to
the bedroom to change, she contemplated taking a hot shower, but the cocoa
lured her back to the kitchen in just a robe. She’d sip a little by the fire
first.

On the way back to the kitchen, a noise from one of the
bedrooms in the back startled her. “Michael?”

It wasn’t Michael.

* * * * *

Michael’s cell phone rang and his new brother-in-law’s name
came up on the caller ID as his driver pulled up to his apartment building.
“Hey, Vik.”

“Hi. Listen, it turns out this Heinrich Kohler is not what
he seemed to be.”

“Who?”

“The guy at the party. The guy you saw talking to Tiffany.
He has some connections to the Russian mob. Grew up in Moscow, son of a thug
there named Kolchinsky.”

“Russian? He had absolutely no accent.”

“Good with languages apparently,
not
something he got
from his father. Criminal tendencies, though, he did.”

“So what would he want with Reynolds Industries?”

“Not sure. Carter has an APB out on him, but they haven’t
picked him up as yet.”

“Okay. Thanks.” He hung up, glad he had gotten Vanny out of
Houston while they found this guy. Curiouser and curiouser.

There was an awning in front of his building, so he didn’t
get very wet in the two feet from the curb to the entrance. He pulled on the
door, expecting the guard to buzz him in and was vaguely annoyed when he
didn’t. He chuckled at what Vanny would have thought of that. “Open the door
your damn self” came to mind. When he finally found his card key, he let
himself in and saw the guard wasn’t at his station at all.

Before he’d met Vanny, he might have sought the guard out
wherever he was, probably having a cigarette in the back, and remonstrated him.
But now, he didn’t bother. She wouldn’t have liked it, he found himself
thinking, even though he immediately chided himself for it.
Pussy.

The fire was on when he let himself in to the apartment, but
no Vanny in front of it. Maybe she was in the shower. With that hopeful
thought, he dropped his keys in the bowl by the door and headed to the bedroom,
calling her name.

The gun at his back registered at the same time as he saw
the body on the floor of the bedroom. Vanny’s body, a stream of red dripping
from her forehead.

Oh God, no.

“Stay right there, Reynolds.”

Ignoring the man with the gun, seeing nothing but Vanny, he
rushed to her, falling to his knees and taking her in his arms. She was warm
and limp as he held her, but she was breathing. She was breathing!

“She’s not dead. Just knocked out.”

He glared up at the little man holding a gun on him.
“Kohler.”

“Oh yes. You recognize me now. Now I’m important enough for
you to notice me. Well, too late, Mr. Big Rich American. Too late for doing it
nicely.”

He didn’t remember the guy as having an accent, but one
seemed to lurk at the edge of his words now. Or maybe he was just imagining it.

“What the fuck do you want?”

“Something simple really. I asked your girlfriend there to
help me, but she claimed she couldn’t and, frankly, she was so unhelpful I had
to knock her unconscious. She tried to overpower me,
me,
when I was the
one with the gun. A woman! What a wildcat!”

He gathered Vanny closer. “If you’ve hurt her—”

“Save your threats and I might not kill you both.” He
gestured with his gun. “Now leave her and get up and take me into that little
locked room where you keep all your electronics handiwork.”

“What is this all about?”

“Do it now or I’ll shoot her in the head from here. Then you
can do it. Either way.”

With a rage he didn’t know he was capable of feeling, he
laid Vanny down gently and stood up, blocking Kohler’s line of sight to her at
least.

“I was going to do this the American way. Joint venture.
Patent agreements. Proper bills of lading and all. But it simply is not working
out like that. And my bosses are anxious for your little circuit board. So time
to do it my dear old papa’s way.”