“So you’d put me down like a dog, Mr. Kenzie?” He smiled.
I shook my head. “No. More like a sand shark you catch when you’re deep-sea fishing. I’d haul you onto the boat, club you until you were stunned. Then I’d open up your belly and toss you back into the water, watch as the bigger sharks came and ate you alive.”
“My, my,” he said. “Wouldn’t that be a sight?”
Desiree crossed back to us. “Having fun, gentlemen?”
“Mr. Kenzie was just explaining to me the subtleties of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto Number Two in F major. He truly revolutionized my perception of it, darling.”
She slapped his temple. “That’s nice, Daddy.”
“So, what are you planning to do with us?” he said.
“You mean after I kill you?”
“Well, I was wondering about that. I don’t see why you would need to confer with my beloved servant, Mr. Archerson, if all was going according to plan. You’re meticulous, Desiree, because I trained you to be so. If you needed to confer with Mr. Archerson, there must be a proverbial fly in the ointment.” He looked at me. “Would it have something to do with the wily Mr. Kenzie?”
“Wily,” I said. “That’s twice now.”
“It’ll grow on you,” he assured me.
“Patrick,” Desiree said, “you and I do have some things to discuss, don’t we?” She turned her head. “Julian, will you take Mr. Stone to the pantry and lock him in?”
“The pantry!” Trevor cried. “I love the pantry. All those canned goods.”
Julian placed his hands on Trevor’s shoulders. “You know my strength, sir. Don’t make me use it.”
“Wouldn’t think of it,” Trevor said. “To the canned goods, Julian. Posthaste.”
Julian wheeled him out of the room and I heard the wheels squeak on the marble as they made their way past the grand staircase toward the kitchen.
“All those hams!” Trevor cried. “All those leeks!”
Desiree straddled me and placed the gun against my left ear. “Here we are.”
“Isn’t it romantic?”
“About Danny,” she said.
“Yes?”
“Where is he?”
“Where’s my partner?”
She smiled. “In the garden.”
“The garden?” I said.
She nodded. “Buried up to her neck.” She looked out the window. “Gosh, I hope it doesn’t snow tonight.”
“Dig her out,” I said.
“No.”
“Then kiss Danny good-bye.”
Knives danced in her irises. “Let me guess—unless you make a phone call by a certain time, he’s dead, blah, blah, blah.”
I looked at the clock over her shoulder as she shifted her weight on my thighs. “Actually, no. He’ll be getting a bullet in his head in about thirty minutes regardless.”
Her face sagged along the jawline for just a moment and then her hand tightened in my hair and the gun dug into my ear so hard I half expected it to pop out the other side. “Unless you make a phone call,” she said.
“No. A phone call won’t cut it because the guy holding him doesn’t have a phone. I either show up at his door in thirty—no, twenty-nine—minutes, or we have one less lawyer in the world. All in all, who’s going to miss a lawyer?”
“And where’s that leave you if he dies?”
“Dead,” I said. “Which is where I’m going to be anyway.”
“Have you forgotten your partner?” She cocked her head toward the windows.
“Oh, come on, Desiree. You’ve already killed her.”
I looked in her eyes as she answered.
“No, I haven’t.”
“Prove it.”
She laughed and leaned back on my thighs. “Fuck you, buddy.” She wagged a finger in my face. “Your desperation’s showing, Patrick.”
“So’s yours, Desiree. You lose that lawyer, you lose it all. Kill your father, kill me, you’ve still got only two million. And we both know that’s not enough for you.” I tilted my head so the gun slipped from my ear, then nuzzled the slide with my cheekbone. “Twenty-eight minutes,” I said. “After that, you’ll go through the rest of your life knowing how close you were to over one billion dollars. And watching as other people spend it.”
The butt of the gun hit the top of my head so hard the air in the room turned scarlet for a moment and everything spun.
Desiree came off my thighs and slapped me across the face with her open hand. “You think I don’t know you?” she screamed. “Huh? You think I don’t—”
“I think you’re short a lawyer, Desiree. That’s what I think.”
Another slap, this one with nails trailing after it that tore through the flesh over my left cheekbone.
She drew back on the hammer of the gun and placed the muzzle between my eyebrows and screamed in my face, her mouth a gaping hole of furious, disrupted insolence. Spittle boiled at the corners of her mouth, and she screamed again, her index finger turning deep pink as it curled around the trigger. The shock of her screams, the violent residue of them, eddied around my skull and burned my ears.
“You will fucking die,” she said in a wet, ragged voice.
“Twenty-seven minutes,” I said.
Julian came bursting through the doors and she pointed the gun at him.
He held up his hands. “A problem, miss?”
“How fast can you drive to Dorchester?” she said.
“Thirty minutes,” he said.
“You have twenty. We’re going to show Mr. Kenzie his partner in the garden.” She looked down at me. “Then you, Patrick, are going to give us your friend’s address.”
“Julian’ll never get through the door alive.”
She raised the gun over my head, then paused halfway through her strike. “Let Julian worry about that,” she hissed. “The address for a look at your partner. Deal?”
I nodded.
“Untie him.”
“Dear?”
“Don’t ‘dear’ me, Julian.” She bent by the back of my chair. “Untie him.”
Julian said, “This isn’t wise.”
“Julian, by all means tell me what my options are.”
Julian didn’t have an answer for that.
I felt the pressure leave my chest first. Then my legs. The sheets fell away and spread across the floor in front of me.