Night Watch (44 page)

“How about the shed?” another asked, as I flattened myself against the wall, behind the tallest pile of bales.

“That’s where Mr. Danton was standing when he called me. Fan out and look for her. No need to be unpleasant. Just bring her back to this blue car. They’ll be leaving soon.”

“Who’s watching the surveillance screens?” the second guy wanted to know.

“There’s only the three of us working today. One of you will be back on that duty after you find the girl.”

I was relieved that nothing unpleasant was in store for me, and also to know that the security team was understaffed. But I didn’t feel comfortable enough to identify myself to them as long as Mike was on the other side of a locked door. And I didn’t want Mercer to meet any resistance if he drove in before we were able to get out.

I exhaled when I heard the workmen leave. But now all I could focus on was that two of the men who meant the most to me in the world—Luc and Mike—were locked in the underground storage facility and had no reason to know that Peter Danton was unhappy to have Mike there.

I didn’t want to be “found” by the searchers, so I squeezed myself farther back between two tall stacks of hay bales.

There must have been a legitimate purpose for the meeting Danton had arranged, I tried to convince myself. Both Jim Mulroy and Josh Hanson had expressed their interest in investing in Lutèce. Had Luc been lured here to see the vault, and then been obligated to sit down with the group to accept their offer to expand his team?

And what did he know about Gineva Imports? Had Gina Varona not been invited to this impromptu get-together, or was she simply unable to make it on short notice?

I saw the giant wheel on the steel door begin to spin only minutes after Danton had gone back inside. Maybe the discussion had been aborted because of Mike’s presence, and the foursome was coming out. But it was Peter Danton, this time accompanied by Josh Hanson.

Danton walked to the opening of the shed and must have seen his workers scrambling around, inside and out of the other barns.

He held the walkie-talkie to his mouth with his good hand.

“Haven’t you found her yet?” he demanded.

I couldn’t hear the answer.

“Just get her back to her car. I’ll have the detective out to her shortly. He’s just poking around before he leaves.”

I was frozen in place.

Peter Danton turned and started talking to Josh Hanson. “It’s time to break up our meeting. I want to get Chapman out of here before he does any more snooping. Go back in and tell Luc you’ve got to hurry back to your kid’s soccer game. Understood? We’ll deal with your cut of the business another time.”

“That’s fine.”

“Get rid of the detective and Luc, so we can move the stuff out of here if we need to. Worst he can do is come back in a couple of days looking for it, if he’s half as smart as he thinks he is. I’ll rejoin you in a few minutes. Just keep Chapman away from that bin behind the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.”

“Will do.”

Josh Hanson went back through the open steel door, and Peter Danton took one more look outside the shed.

He pressed the walkie-talkie to find his security head. “Where is everybody?”

The machine crackled back at him.

“If the detective’s traveling companion wasn’t in any of the barns, then check the closest trails,” he said. “She can’t be that far away.”

“Say that again? You’ve just gone back to watch the surveillance tape a second time?” Danton held the device to his ear. “You’re telling me she came into this little building with the detective but never left?”

Danton turned and started to look around the small shed. “No, no. You go out with the other men and keep looking. I’m doing fine right here.”

Peter Danton put the walkie-talkie in his rear pants pocket, then walked to the door of the vault. He pushed it closed and locked it, with four men still inside, to begin his search for me.

“Alexandra Cooper.” Peter Danton repeated my name aloud, over and over. Each time he said it, he lifted a bale of hay from one of the taller piles and threw it onto a smaller one.

With three or four more tosses, I would be completely exposed.

“I’m going to find you in a moment or two, Alex, and then you and I are going to join the party.”

He lifted another block and bounced it off a nearby pile.

“You could scream, of course, but then the only people who might hear you are the men who work for me. The vault is completely soundproofed. Nobody wanted to hear those bombs exploding around them in the good old days,” he said. “And the men who work for me don’t have a reputation for being the friendliest sort.”

I heard another bale land on the floor.

“That’s what I get for hiring ex-cons to do my security. They’re a little rough around the edges—all the edges—but then again, they don’t scare easily out here in the boondocks, which so many people do. Well, there you are!”

I was crouched in a corner of the shed, and now my cover was completely gone.

“You can come to me, Alex, or I’ll just get over to you and drag you out. It might take a minute or two longer, but I’ll get there.”

I stood up. I stepped on the pile of hay between me and Peter Danton. He reached out to grab my arm and pull me down beside him.

“Sorry. I was up most of the night. I just fell asleep back here.” I figured I looked dazed enough to make believe I hadn’t heard any of the conversation.

“I would have thought you’d be the type to enjoy some fresh air,” he said, “which would have been much healthier for you. But now I think it’s time for a rendezvous with your friends in the vault.”

I looked out the door of the small shed and thought about making a run for my car. I’d prefer anything to being entombed in a bomb shelter. Mike had a gun and knew how to use it, though the idea of leaving him and Luc trapped behind the steel door terrified me.

“If you want me to take off, I’ll just get in the car and go,” I said.

“A little late for that plan, don’t you think? And don’t look so longingly at all that open land out there. My foreman is a great hunter. Unfortunately, he once mistook his wife for a deer, I guess. Did twelve years for it and I’d say he’s completely rehabilitated.”

I was backed against the hay bales when Danton grabbed my right arm, above my elbow, with his good hand. “Just listen to what I say and stay calm,” he said. “You’re walking with me.”

Peter Danton led me toward the steel door, the entrance to the vault. I looked back over my shoulder, hoping against hope that Mercer would be arriving any minute. But there was no sign of anyone approaching the graveled parking lot.

“I’ve got the lives of your dear friends in my hands, Alex, and Luc tells me you’re a very emotional girl. High-strung is what he called you.”

There would be time for me to argue with Luc about that one later on.

“You’d be wiser to control yourself once we see the others. Maybe we can sort this out and get you on your way.”

“I’m sure we can do that,” I said, knowing that my brain was scrambling to think of ways to counter whatever Danton had in mind.

“I don’t scare easily, Alex. I lost one finger to my own negligence a long time ago in a kitchen, as I told you,” he said. He had clamped his other hand on my neck to keep me close to him. “The other one was hacked off by a drug dealer in Nigeria who thought I’d been poaching from his stash. Both times without the benefit of anesthesia.”

He laughed at his own story, or maybe at the look on my face as I checked out his mutilated fingers.

“Don’t look so surprised, Alex. You and the detective obviously came up here today because—”

“I asked him to bring me here to find Luc. That’s all. I was desperate to spend a few hours with Luc before he goes home.”

“Such a sweet thought. But I think the truth is that your friend Chapman believes I knew something about Luigi and his drug business. He’ll be happy to see you come in with me, Alex. Both Mike and Luc will be glad you’re there.”

I tried to dig my heels into the seams of the wooden floorboard, but Peter Danton pulled me forward. “I’ve learned to work with what I’ve got left, in case you’re thinking there isn’t much strength in my hands.”

I wanted them off me—off my neck. I shook my head but he grasped me even tighter.

“Come along, Alex,” he said, as he steered me through the opening of the vault. “Don’t keep everyone waiting. It’s cold in there. Bone-chilling cold.”

The temperature dropped the minute we crossed the threshold into the subterranean shelter. Outside it had been a warm, sunny April afternoon, but once the steel door closed behind us, the fifty-five-degree temperature—and the sudden injection of fear—had me shivering uncontrollably.

Peter Danton kept a firm grip on my neck as he moved me forward. There was a single corridor—a long, gray cement floor lined with cases and cases of wine, stacked floor to ceiling. Overhead, the long fluorescent lights cast an eerie glow in the windowless space.

I could hear voices in the distance. I thought about screaming, but there was no point in creating chaos without an understanding of what had gone on. I knew that Mike had a gun, and it didn’t appear that Peter Danton did.

Every ten cases or so, an alley had been created between the cartons, each ending against a solid concrete wall. I looked from side to side but saw no one.

I paused to catch my breath and rub my hands together. The boxes stacked on my right side were different than the wine cases. They were brown cardboard, labeled
ENERGY LIFE PACK
, which seemed ironic at the moment. The date stamp said 1960, and they had obviously
been sealed for more than fifty years. In small print below that was a list of uses:
ATOMIC WARFARE/BACTERIA WARFARE/HURRICANES/EARTHQUAKES
. I wondered if their contents would be of any help today to interlopers buried alive in an out-of-date bomb shelter.

“Is that you, Peter?” Josh Hanson called out. “You back?”

“Yeah. Is there a problem?”

“Nah. Mike here is asking questions I just can’t answer.”

I bit my lip as Danton dragged me along beside him.

“What is it you don’t understand, Detective?” Danton asked.

We were coming to the end of the corridor, and I could tell from the direction of Josh’s voice that the others were around the corner to the left.

The bunker seemed almost like a labyrinth—a small maze with a low ceiling and no natural light, and no exit at the end of any of the rows. The tight, cold space was a claustrophobe’s nightmare. It seemed airless, too, because the chilly temperature made it harder to breathe. I closed my eyes to try to concentrate on a way to safely talk us all out of this disaster.

“I’m just trying to learn about all these vintages—what makes them valuable and that kind of thing.”

Mike was the first person I saw when we turned the last corner. He was ten feet away from me, holding a bottle of wine from the long rows of shelves on which the bottles had been stacked after being removed from their cases.

Although Peter Danton had let go of my neck, Mike clearly got a look at the panicked expression on my face.

“Coop—what—?”

There was a long table tucked into the far corner behind Mike, where Luc and Josh had been seated with Jim Mulroy. Luc got to his feet immediately and called out my name.

“I’m fine,” I said, holding out both hands in front of me and urging both Mike and Luc to stay calm.

“Alex was afraid she was missing out on something tasty,” Danton said. “Aren’t you guys still drinking?”

There were several open bottles of red wine—and four half-filled wineglasses—on the table at which they’d been sitting before Danton came back out and found me.

Mike started toward me as Luc tried to catch up with him.

“I’m fine!” I shouted, far too loud to be convincing as my voice echoed off the ceiling and wall.

At the same moment, Danton yoked me with his right arm, dragging me back and reaching out with his left toward a crack between the metal racks of the last row of wine bottles.

Before Mike could reach me, Peter Danton dropped his hand from my neck and lifted a double-barreled shotgun, pointing it directly at the three startled men who were facing us.

“I’m happy to pay for the wine I drank,” Mike said, lowering his hand to his side. His off-duty gun was probably in a shoulder-holster under his arm. “No need to shoot.”

“On the house, Detective. Keep your hands away from your pockets. More wine and fewer questions, you’d be on your way home.”

“Alex,” Luc said. “Are you all right?”

I nodded at him while Danton answered. “Sit yourself down, Luc. Back at the table where Jim is.”

Luc stood his ground for several seconds, until Danton fired directions at Josh Hanson.

“There are several lengths of rope in that cabinet behind you, Josh,” Danton said. “Sit them down and tie their hands to the chair, behind their backs.”

“Let me recommend something to you,” Mike said. “You and Josh take a flying head start on us, Peter. Get yourselves out of here right now, before anybody else gets hurt. Go right to the airport, if you’re smart. You can live like a king in the South of France. Like a deposed dictator or any other kind of thug. I bet Gil-Darsin’s villa’s already on the market.”

“Shut up, Chapman.”

“Leave us here for a few hours. Overnight even. You know we can’t call out on these phones. Go wherever the hell you want to go and just let us be. You’re not wanted for murder in France.”

“I didn’t kill the girl there,” Danton said.

“They’re ready to tag that one to Luigi,” Mike said. “Not to worry.”

I could hardly stop trembling from the combination of cold and terror.

“Give me your gun, Detective,” Danton said, as I watched Josh wrap the rope around Luc’s hands.

“My day off, Peter. Left my Glock home in bed. I just came for a ride in the country,” Mike said, lifting his arms in the air. “All in the name of love. Now, if you let Alex sit down, maybe she’ll stop shaking so badly.”

“She’ll get used to it.”

“Come here, Coop,” Mike said. “Go sit back there with Luc.”