It’s Jet.
While I stare in shock, the guy in body armor reaches back inside and helps a heavy black woman to the ground. Tallulah Williams. Last of all comes Kevin Matheson, who leaps easily to the ground, looking around like a kid stunned to find himself on a night adventure.
Turning to Paul, I see but one emotion in his face: fear.
Chapter 55
“What the fuck is my son doing here?” Paul asks, standing rigid as a man waiting to be horsewhipped.
“You’ll see,” Beau Holland says over his shoulder.
Holland doesn’t realize how close he is to death at this moment.
Two guards appear behind Paul. One takes the pistol from the small of his back. The other checks his ankles for a holster. Apparently they knew Max’s carrying habits. Sure enough, they find a second gun. Paul must have put on Max’s ankle holster before or after we loaded his corpse into the truck. While they set aside Paul’s weapons, another guard wraps an iron-hard arm around me and snatches Nadine’s .32 automatic from my pocket. Paul and I make momentary eye contact, but if he’s sending me a message, I’m too thick to translate it. Paul didn’t protest being stripped of his guns because he knows there’s nothing he can do at this point but make a suicidal stand. And until he knows Buckman’s intentions regarding his family, he won’t do that.
His eyes go wide, however, when two armed guards take hold of Kevin and Tallulah and lead them into the main lodge. When Jet tries to follow, another guard restrains her and marches her toward the pavilion. There’s a scuffle as Tallulah resists being led into the lodge, and Kevin tries to help her, but the guards quickly subdue both the maid and the boy. I can’t help but feel that Paul is marking these transgressions on an internal ledger that he will square if it takes the rest of his life—however short that may be.
“Where are they taking my boy?” he asks softly.
“Kevin’s fine,” Buckman says. “He’s safe.”
“For now,” adds Holland. “Let’s see how this goes.”
As the chopper’s engine spools down, Wyatt Cash climbs out of the pilot’s seat and trots across the ground, catching up to Jet as she’s led into the pavilion. Cash seems surprised by the size of the gathering, and even more so by the mood of the men, which feels like the quiet before a crack of lightning.
In the threatening silence, Jet looks up and sees Nadine on the TV screen. “Oh, my God,” she whispers. “What have you done to her?”
“What do you care?” Holland asks. “You gave her up to us.”
“Sweet Jesus.” She looks at me. “I’m so sorry, Marshall.”
“We may do the same to you yet,” Holland says, and I see Paul shift his weight.
Jet scowls at the real estate developer with contempt. “You sick bastard.”
If Paul weren’t here, I have no doubt that Holland would have struck her for that. Instead he walks to the fireplace and comes back with a roll of duct tape. While a guard holds Jet’s head, Beau rips off a length and tapes her mouth shut. Wyatt Cash looks like he’s about to protest, but Buckman waves a hand, silencing him.
“There’s no call for this,” Paul says to Buckman. “No reason for it.”
“Here’s the thing, Paul,” croaks the old banker. “Nadine Sullivan poses no further threat to us. Neither does Marshall. The X factor is your wife.”
“My wife? How do you figure that?”
“She was close to your mother. She’s a lawyer. She’s been trying to nail our asses for years. If Max hadn’t been protecting her, she’d have had an accident a long time ago. She’s the natural person for Sally to give another copy of this cache to.”
“She doesn’t have it, Claude.”
“Well, Paulie,” Russo chimes in, “you gotta forgive us if your word isn’t quite enough. You’re probably the last person who’d know what Jet’s really up to. In fact, Marshall here’s probably the only one who would.”
“She doesn’t have it, guys,” I tell them. “Seriously.”
Holland laughs, as do several other men—Warren Lacey the loudest.
Buckman signals Holland with a nod, and Beau picks up the TV remote again. The image changes from Nadine in the skinning room to security camera footage of a long balcony. It’s the interior of the Aurora Hotel. The mezzanine. The view is from above, shooting along the balcony rail. The screen flickers as Holland presses a button to fast-forward. Two figures hurry along the rail at quadruple speed, and it’s hard to make out what’s going on. Then Holland removes his finger, bringing the playback to normal.
Panic hits me all at once, sending adrenaline shunting through my veins. Jet’s eyes have gone wide above the duct tape, but I can’t read her emotions. Fear, yes, but something else, too. The desperate drive for survival. She senses how close we are to being killed. Paul doesn’t yet know what’s coming, but he will any second.
On the screen, a woman who is unmistakably Jet leans against the rail in profile and hikes her dress over her hips. From the side she looks like a textbook illustration of lordosis, the behavior during which female mammals arch their backs and make themselves most receptive to being mounted by males. She glances back over her shoulder and speaks. I say something, then turn and walk away from her. The camera follows me.
“How about that tracking function?” Holland marvels. “Tommy’s casino contractor set us up with pan-tilt-zoom rigs.”
Paul stares wordlessly at this further evidence of his wife’s infidelity—or desire for it. The view switches to a different camera, this one apparently near the service elevator. Now we’re looking straight-on at Jet’s behind, the dark tangle below the cleft in her derriere shockingly visible, even with the thong.
“I don’t appreciate everybody looking at my wife’s ass,” Paul says quietly.
Holland chuckles. “If she didn’t spread it around like she does, we wouldn’t have to.”
This guy is clueless, I think. Or else he’s betting that Paul won’t make it through this meeting alive.
“Can’t believe she ever delivered a kid,” says Dr. Lacey. “She’s still high and tight. I’d like to give that a workout.”
Paul cuts his eyes at Lacey, marking him down for future attention.
“Point is, Paulie,” says Russo, “you don’t know what the hell she’s been up to, or how much of a threat she is to us.”
“I think it’s time we heard from the lady herself,” says Buckman.
Holland rips off the duct tape. Jet yelps, then raises her hand to slap Holland, but he easily catches her arm.
She looks down at Buckman, her arm still locked in Holland’s grasp. “You’d better tell him to let go, Claude. Because you are well and truly fucked already. And this is making it worse, I promise you.”
Buckman assesses her with a practiced eye. “Let her go, Beau.”
She focuses on the old banker, and in her eyes I see implacable fury. “You threaten my child? You kidnap me by force, when you could have just invited me here? What the hell were you thinking?”
“Business is business, dear.”
“You’re the one here to answer questions,” says Holland. “Not us.”
“Why is our son here?” Paul asks in a barely controlled voice.
“To ensure that your wife tells us the truth,” Buckman replies, nodding to Holland once more.
Holland works the remote, and the video of Jet is replaced by an image of Kevin Matheson pacing a small bedroom, while Tallulah Williams sits at the end of a bed, looking frightened.
“You’re saying you’d torture my son?” Paul asks, his eyes on Buckman, then Blake Donnelly, who looks away in shame.
“We didn’t create this situation,” says Buckman. “And I don’t think it will come to that. But I’m very concerned about what your wife just said.”
“You should be, you dried-up bag of bones,” Jet says. “What I said is you’re fucked. Screwed. Dead meat. Either you put us back in that chopper and fly us home, or the FBI will be kicking down your door by eight a.m. Every one of you. Federal prison. Bank on it.”