The Billionaire's Redemption (The Billionaire's Kiss, Book Five): (A Billionaire Alpha Romance) (32 page)

By the time I’m recording again, the conversation has moved on to something I didn’t catch.

“…have a lot of time to explore the issue over the next 24 hours,”
Epicurus says.

My heart jumps.

Twenty-four hours gives us plenty of time. Twenty-four hours is excellent.

Well… relatively speaking.

“Twenty-four? Seriously?”
Grant asks flippantly.
“Are you really that bad at this?”

“No… I’m that GOOD at this. I have taken every precaution to keep you alive as long as possible.”
Epicurus wheels an IV stand over next to the bed.
“I have 12 liters of O negative blood ready for transfusion, just to make sure there is no possibility that you bleed out.”

“Wow. Thanks,”
Grant says sarcastically.

“Oh, I plan to enjoy this for a very,
very
long time. You will be my masterpiece. No expense has been spared.”

“I’m sure those guys who captured me would’ve liked you to spare a little more. Twenty million for, what, 15 mercenaries, plus expenses? Come on, Dieter. You paid me almost that much to design this dump, and I didn’t have to fly overseas with a naked guy on a cart to do it.”

“They agreed to work for a price, and that price is what I gave them.”

“To tell the truth, I’m surprised you let them walk away. Now there’s 15 assholes out there who know what you look like and exactly where you live. Once the paycheck runs out, they’ll be back and asking you for more than 20 million, I guarantee.”

Epicurus snickers.
“Oh, they won’t be back. In fact… they’re never going to leave.”

…what?

Grant seems confused, too.
“What are you talking about, ‘never going to leave’?”

“Those stacks of money they loaded onto their plane? The centers were hollow and filled with incendiary devices. My men are waiting in the hangar to detonate them, then finish off the survivors.”

“Check the feed,” I tell JP hurriedly.

JP finds the video of the hangar area. Sure enough, the mercenaries’ plane is engulfed in flames. Ten men in body armor – Epicurus’s guys, no doubt – use machine guns to mow down anybody who stumbles out of the plane’s smoke-billowing doorway.

“Putain d’merde,”
JP whispers.

“I think they have more than two guards,” I say to Dominique with a heavy dose of gallows humor. She just shudders.

“You’re insane,”
Grant’s voice says, and this time there’s no flippancy. Just sheer horror.

“No, I’m thorough. You might be wondering, ‘Why waste 20 million dollars and a jet plane just to get rid of 15 witnesses?’ Because the illusion had to be impeccable, or they would have suspected something. And that would have led to far more trouble.”

“Actually, I was wondering, ‘What kind of an asshole kills 15 people?’ But then I remembered we’re talking about YOU.”

“Keep making your jokes while you can, Mr. Carlson. It will be much harder when you don’t have a tongue.”
Epicurus picks up the jumper cables connected to the car battery and sparks them against each other.
“I thought we would start with something that won’t cut, or burn, or leave any SERIOUS damage. What do you think?”

I force myself to turn away from the screen.

“Okay,” I say nervously to Dominique. “Time to go.”

I am on the land surrounding Epicurus’s property, and I am running for my life.

More accurately, I am running for
Grant’s
life.

There are pre-recorded video loops on all the surveillance cameras on the property. If Epicurus has someone watching the cameras, all they will see is a grove of orange trees and grassy fields, instead of a twenty-something chick hauling ass.

Thank God I told Marcel I wanted jeans and tennis shoes. This would be a complete travesty if I were in a skirt and heels.

I’m also wearing Grant’s backpack, the one we jumped out of the New York skyscraper with. Inside is my laptop, two tubes of superglue, a GPS chip, a cell phone, and Mailin’s government-issued handgun.

In my hand is one of the other pistols. I don’t really know how to use it, other than point and pull the trigger, but I have it just in case.

In case of what, I don’t want to consider.

Dominique should be about 500 feet to my left. The McMansion abuts Epicurus’s property, and we started off at different ends of the property. She’s heading for the north part of Epicurus’s compound, and I’m heading for the south.

I’m pretty sure she’ll get there first. I feel like my lungs are on fire.

“You are approaching… something strange,”
JP’s voice says in my ear.
“Many small buildings.”

“Any guards?”

“I do not see any.”

I forgot to mention that I’m wearing Duplass’s Bluetooth earpiece. It’s the only remotely helpful thing about the son of a bitch.

JP’s acting as my guardian angel. Both Dominique and I are carrying GPS chips, and he’s tracking both of us at the same time, giving us heads-ups on what’s coming our way. He’s the only person who can see what’s really being transmitted through the surveillance cameras – not to mention he has blueprints of the house.

As I crest the ridge, I find out JP wasn’t wrong with the ‘something strange’ comments.

It’s a zoo.

Epicurus has a goddamn zoo on his property.

It’s a series of metal cages filled with jaguars, tigers, lemurs, monkeys, and exotic birds. I race past them as the animals snarl and shriek at me.

A peacock is walking around uncaged, but it hustles out of my path as I race past. Its feathers fan out in a beautiful display of territorial outrage.

I’m reminded of a line from my college lit 101 course:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree…

“Anybody up ahead?” I huff and puff.

“No one,”
JP says.
“You are well until the house.”

Ha.

‘Well until the house.’

I don’t bother to correct him. I figure it would be tempting fate to do so.

Far off to my right, I hear a gunshot.

Dominique.

I hope it’s her shooting an asshole, and not an asshole shooting
her.

The grounds are clear ahead of me, so I keep running.

Three hundred feet away I can see the house. Between me and the mansion are beautiful gardens filled with blooming tulips, magnificent roses, and beautifully sculpted bushes that would have made Edward Scissorhands jealous.

“There is a door in the center, do you see it?”
JP asks.
“Go there.”

I run through the flowers and topiaries until I reach a set of French doors.

There is a soft buzz from the lock, courtesy of JP. I put my hand on the doorknob and turn it.

The door opens.

I’m inside.

It’s a beautiful sunroom, with furniture that looks like it was pilfered from Versailles.

Outside in the distance, I hear
BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM.

Dominique must have encountered the thugs from the hangar. Now there’s a gunfight.

It feels strange to do so, but I say a prayer for her as I run inside.

“Where to now?” I whisper.

“There is a door to the right. Go there.”

I head for the only door to my right, open it, and find a dimly lit passageway.

“Go into the hall… one, two, three doors on the left… open it…”

And so begins an odyssey through the bowels of Epicurus’s hideout.

In many ways, it reminds me of the twisted search through the skyscraper that led us to Connor and Lily. Go into a closet here, remove that panel there, crawl into the air-conditioning duct…

Until I hear the words I absolutely did
not
want to hear.

Not from JP, but from other voices in the room behind him:

“FBI! PUT YOUR HANDS UP!”

The FBI strike team has reached the McMansion.

I know it’s all part of the plan, but it scares the shit out of me nonetheless.

I stay motionless in the air duct, trying to fight off mounting claustrophobia, as I listen to the male authoritarian voices question JP.

“What are you doing?!”

“I am helping my friend stop a killer – ”

“What’s that?! What’s that on your computer?!”

“It is the house on the property next to us – the killer’s house – ”

“What are you doing?!”

“I told you, I am helping – ”

“Who’s your friend?! What are they planning on doing?!”

I pull the Bluetooth device out of my ear and hang up my cell phone. JP can’t help me anymore.

I slide the laptop out of my backpack and use my password list to log on to the house’s wireless internet. Within 90 seconds, I have full control of every surveillance system on the property.

I map my position using Grant’s blueprints of the house. I’m directly over the room where Grant and Epicurus are, and about ten feet away from where JP said the trapdoor should be.

I can see where I am because of the GPS chip in my backpack – just like I can see Dominique’s position, too. I gave her a chip so we could track her. She’s made it to the main house, and is somewhere near the front of the building.

Thank God she’s still alive.

I switch to a view of the exterior cameras on the property and wait.

I absolutely
hate
having to leave Grant in the hands of that maniac, but I content myself with the knowledge that Epicurus has 24 hours planned out. Five minutes won’t make too much difference.

I hope.

As the five minutes elapse, I very slowly creep through the air duct, inch by painful inch.

JP told me that the duct was specially reinforced to bear Grant’s weight without making any dinging or banging noises. After all, it was designed for him to break in without anyone hearing him.

But I also know that Epicurus is right underneath me, so I don’t take any chances: I move like a sloth in molasses. I also mute the computer so no audio can play unexpectedly and give me away.

I think a snail could win in a race against me, I’m moving so slow, but I finally reach the trap door. JP described it perfectly: a rectangular hatch with three locking mechanisms. They look just like the devices on the back of the wardrobe in the apartment in Paris, the one that led us to the catacombs.

I position myself so that I can go down the hatch feet-first, and then I turn back to the computer.

Thirty seconds later, the camera right outside the mansion’s front door picks up a black helicopter landing on the stadium-sized front yard. Eight masked men spill out onto the grass. All of them are armed, and all of them are in black body armor with ‘FBI’ printed on the front in white block letters.

Right on time, boys.

I’m betting that Duplass sent them here. Probably not to save Grant, but
Epicurus
. That’s all the Bureau’s number one asshole seemed to care about when he was still awake. That, and getting a warrant.

Still, the FBI are showing up exactly when I need them, so I’m not going to complain.

I toggle through the cameras and see that Dominique is waiting in the main hall of the house on her hands and knees. She seems okay. No obvious wounds, at least.

Her gun is nowhere in sight, which is good. If the FBI sees a gun, they might shoot her.

A couple of days ago, that would have been my preference. Now, it’s the farthest thing from what I want.

How things change.

The FBI and Dominique are both in position. The stage is set.

It’s time for me to do
my
death-defying bit.

I switch to a view of the plastic room and wince in apprehension of seeing Grant in pain – but Epicurus seems to still be in gloat mode.

I click a button on my laptop, the soundboard activates, and an audio clip of my voice plays over the loudspeaker in the plastic-wrapped room beneath me – just like Al Pacino or Arnold Schwarzenegger. I can hear it distinctly, even in the air duct.

“Heeeeey Epicurus. Or should I say, ‘Dieter’?”

The shock on Epicurus’s face is something to behold. I have to stifle a laugh as he whirls around like a surprised baboon.

“WHAT?! NO! How did you find me?!”

I muted all audio from the laptop, so I’m actually hearing him shout from right beneath me. He’s more than loud enough for his voice to carry through the reinforced metal.

I click a button, and my voice speaks in the room beneath me.
“It was easy. TOO easy.”

While Epicurus continues to flail about like a chimp on crack, I check the surveillance feeds in the rest of the house. The audio may be silent, but the video is plenty dramatic even on mute.

The front door explodes in a shower of glass, and Dominique starts screaming and blubbering quite convincingly.

She has a future in silent films,
I think to myself.

Meanwhile, Epicurus is screaming, “Where ARE you?!”

I hit two other buttons in quick succession:
“Never you mind. Let Grant go.”

Back in the main foyer of the building, FBI agents swarm around Dominique, their guns in her face. She points towards the back of the house, tears streaming down her cheeks. The FBI agents haul her to her feet, and then everybody takes off running through the foyer.

“TELL me – how did you find me?!” Epicurus howls.

I don’t want to use ‘It was easy’ again, so I settle for
“I’m not here to negotiate.”
Then I hit the button again for
“Let Grant go.”

He frowns. I can see it clearly on my laptop screen. ‘I’m not here to negotiate’ doesn’t really fit the conversation, and he can tell by the exact same intonation of ‘Let Grant go’ that something is up. He just doesn’t know
what
.