Emerson’s iPad was beeping inside his rucksack. He pulled it out, tapped in his security code, and the floor plans for Mysterioso Manor appeared on the screen.
“The flashing red dots indicate where the security has been breeched,” Emerson said.
“There are a lot of them,” Riley said. “There are flashing dots all over the place.”
“Yes,” Emerson said. “We have visitors.”
Emerson crossed to a full-length mirror set into the wall and pressed the palm of his hand against the glass. A clicking sound came from behind the mirror, which opened like Aladdin’s cave.
“A fingerprint scanner?” Riley asked.
Myra shook her head. “You boys and your toys.”
“It gets even better,” Emerson said. “It’s also a two-way mirror. When the salesman pitched it, I couldn’t resist.”
Everyone squeezed into the narrow space behind the mirror, and Emerson pulled the massive door shut. No one spoke, and in the absolute silence Riley’s heartbeat rocked her body. She told herself she was safe behind the silvered sheet of glass, but she didn’t believe it. Not for a moment. She saw the door to the tower room open and instinctively stepped back, bumping into Emerson.
Rollo entered the room accompanied by five men in assault gear, rifles held at their hips. He glanced briefly at the mirror, the high tower windows, the conical ceiling, and then his attention swung to the safe.
“The safe is open and empty,” Rollo said, more to himself than to the men. “He’s been here and moved on to another room.” He turned to one of the men. “Stay here. You have a good view of the grounds should he try to leave the house.”
Emerson tapped Riley on the shoulder and maneuvered her flat to the wall while he quietly lifted a trapdoor. Light was dim to nonexistent, but Riley could see the hint of a stairwell winding away from the opening. Emerson curled Riley’s hand around his penlight and eased her forward.
“Take it slow. You’re going to lead us out of here,” he whispered, his lips skimming her ear.
Riley felt a shiver rip through her, the result of an unsettling mixture of absolute terror from their situation and pleasure from Emerson’s touch. She cautiously lowered herself through the trapdoor and began creeping down the narrow stairs, fighting the panic of claustrophobia. The stairs had been set between the outer wall of the tower and the inner wall of the stairwell they’d originally climbed. Myra was directly behind Riley, and Emerson was behind Myra. Emerson had the rucksack over his shoulder and the duffel bag clutched to his chest, and Riley could hear the rucksack occasionally scrape the wall.
The stairs ended at a small narrow landing.
“Now what?” Riley whispered.
“It’s a door,” Emerson said. “There’s a touch latch high on the right side.”
Riley ran her hand up the door, found the touch latch, and the door opened into a long, windowless passage.
“This will take us to the garage,” Emerson said.
“How did they know we were in the house?” Riley asked.
“I imagine they tracked me through my iPad,” Emerson said. “I’ve turned it off and I’ll destroy it when I get the chance.”
They quickly traveled the length of the passage and came to another door with another high touch latch. Emerson opened the door and they walked into a large utility closet. He cracked the door of the closet, looked out, and jerked his head back in.
“There’s an armed guard standing three cars down,” Emerson said to Riley. “I can disable him but I need you to distract him.”
Riley went wide-eyed. “How am I supposed to distract him? What if I startle him and he shoots me?”
“You’re female,” Emerson said. “Females distract males all the time. Just go out there and use your feminine wiles.”
“I don’t have any wiles,” Riley said. “Harvard Law didn’t offer that course. I don’t know how to distract men.”
“Nonsense,” Emerson said. “You distract me all the time.”
“Good heavens,” Myra said. “We’re never gonna get out of here. Get out of my way. I’ll distract him.”
Myra let herself out and marched up to the guard.
“Hey,” Myra said. “What are you doing here in Mr. Knight’s garage?”
“Halt,” the guard said, shouldering his rifle. “Who goes there?”
“Honey, you’ve been watching too much television,” Myra said. “No one talks like that. I’m the Knights’ housekeeper and I’m looking for their armadillo. The whole family is batty. They got a pet armadillo. Can you imagine?”
“I haven’t seen it,” the guard said. “You need to go back to the house.”
“You remind me of my son. He has curly hair just like you. At least I think so. I don’t see all that good with the cataracts. And I got a big speck of something in my one eye.” Myra circled around the guard and pulled her eyelid up. “Do you see anything in there?”
“No, ma’am,” the guard said, turning toward Myra, keeping her in his sights. “You need to go to the house.”
“Well, it’s killing me,” Myra said. “There’s something sticking in my eye! Owww! OWWW! WOWWW!”
In an instant Emerson was out of the closet and at the guard’s back. Emerson put his hand to the guard’s neck and the guard collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Riley followed after Emerson. “Omigod,” she said. “You killed him.”
“Not nearly,” Emerson said. “There are ninety-six thodu varmam points in the human body. Some points can actually reduce the number of days in a person’s life. Some points just rearrange the sara and kalai ottam. The ancient Siddhars used urakka kaalam for anesthetic purposes to induce sleep when performing surgery. That’s what I did. He’ll be fine in an hour or so.”
Emerson crossed to a ’72 Jarama 400 GT Lamborghini. A four-seat beauty, all sky blue and sleek Italian perfection. “I believe this will do,” he said to Riley. “You drive.”
“You expect me to drive out of here?”
“Yes.”
“The place is crawling with armed men.”
“Most likely,” Emerson said. “So you should drive very fast.”
Riley pushed a stray strand of hair off her face. “Great. Give me the keys.”
“The keys,” Emerson said. “That’s unfortunate.”
“Why?”
“I don’t have any. They’re kept in a key closet in the kitchen.”
“So hot-wire it,” Myra said.
Emerson and Riley went blank-faced.
“Lordy,” Myra said. “They don’t teach you kids any skills these days.”
She stepped over to the tool bench on the back wall, selected a small screwdriver, and used it to remove the panel covering the car’s steering column. She disconnected the red wires from the ignition cylinder and used the screwdriver’s tip to strip the ends from the wires, then twisted them together and dashboard lights came on.
“That’s stage one,” she said. “Here comes the tricky part. The starter.” She isolated the brown wire from the tangle of cables, disconnected it, and carefully stripped the insulation off with the screwdriver.
“Get ready to rev the engine,” Myra said. She took the brown wire, touched it to the exposed red wires, and it sparked. Riley hit the gas and the engine turned over.
Everyone jumped in, and Riley took off through the open garage door. A fleet of black SUVs clogged the driveway and blocked the exit.
“Go right,” Emerson said.
Riley glanced over at him. “There’s no road there.”
“Is that a problem?”
Riley wrenched the wheel to the right, and the Lamborghini bumped over the lawn toward the conservatory. Riley checked the rearview mirror and saw the assault team running for their SUVs.
“Where am I going?” she asked.
“That way,” Emerson said, pointing to the zebra enclosure.
“How do I get around the fence?”
“You don’t.”
/>
Riley narrowed her eyes, leaned on the horn to warn the zebras, and raced toward the chain-link fence. “Have air bags been installed in this car?”
BANG! The Lamborghini plowed into the fence, knocked a section to the ground, and rolled over it.
“No,” Emerson said. “No air bags.”
Riley sped through the pasture with the Lamborghini bucking and caroming over the rough ground.
“Are the SUVs gaining on us?” Riley asked.
“Not so much,” Myra said. “They’re having a tussle with the zebras, being that the zebras are through the hole in the fence and stampeding all over the place. So far one SUV has hit a tree and a second one’s flipped over.”
“What about the zebras?”
“The zebras are having a good time,” Myra said.
Riley had a white-knuckle grip on the wheel. “We’re coming to the end of the open pasture.”
“The fence extends into the woods,” Emerson said. “If you look carefully you’ll see a narrow break in the trees where a path leads to an old stone-and-iron gate.”
Riley slowed to a crawl and turned onto the path. She stopped at the gate, and Emerson jumped out and opened it. Riley drove to the other side and into an affluent suburban neighborhood. Emerson closed the gate, pitched his laptop into a small pond that backed up to the gate, and got back into the car.
“That gate looked a lot less substantial than the chain-link we demolished. Couldn’t we have just knocked it off its hinges?” she asked Emerson.
“Yes, but that gate’s almost a hundred years old,” Emerson said. “I wouldn’t want to destroy it. And it keeps the zebras out of the neighborhood swimming pools.”
—
Riley drove to Fourteenth Street and parked a block away from the Columbia Heights metro stop.
“Now what?” she asked Emerson.
“Now we take the yellow line train to Virginia,” Emerson said.
“I don’t mean to talk out of school,” Myra said, “but shouldn’t we be going to the police?”
Emerson shook his head. “We’re dealing with corruption at the very highest level and we have no idea how it trickles down. At the very least we would be detained and remanded to involved authorities.”
Myra raised an eyebrow. “Do I want to know what the heck is going on?”
“It’s the NSA,” Riley told her.
“It’s not the NSA,” Emerson said. “If it was the NSA they would have caught us leaving the estate. They would have had helicopters and a fleet of cars all through the neighborhood to track us down no matter what we did. As it was, the operation at Mysterioso was limited to a small number of men.”
“That’s comforting,” Myra said, rolling her eyes.
“It is,” Emerson said. “It means that the U.S. government isn’t behind this. Just an incredibly powerful cabal within the U.S. government.”
“This is about the blog, isn’t it?” Myra asked.
They had reached the train platform and Emerson pulled up. “You read the blog?”
“Of course,” Myra said. “It’s just about like having a son and a nephew on television. You’re almost famous.”
“Astonishing,” Emerson said. “I rather like that.”
“And I can always tell when you’re the one writing the blog,” Myra said. “You use more words than Vernon, and sometimes I have to look them up.”
“I have a superior vocabulary,” Emerson said. “In fact, it’s superior in four different languages.”
Riley cut her eyes to him. “You only speak four languages?”
“At a superior level,” Emerson said.
The yellow line train glided into the station, and Emerson, Riley, and Myra stepped on board and found a near-empty car. A half hour later the train crossed the Potomac into Alexandria.
“This is our stop,” Emerson said, rising as the doors opened at Huntington Station.
Everyone shuffled off the train, and Larry met them on the platform. “I had a feeling you’d be on this one,” he said. “I’m parked in the lot.”
“So Emmie’s got you mixed up in this too,” Myra said.
“Just like old times,” Larry said. “Not too many dull moments when you work for the Knights.”
“What sort of car do we have?” Emerson asked Larry.
“It’s a nice big sedan. A Cadillac. I borrowed it from my cousin. It’ll be good for the trip.”
“Trip?” Riley asked.
“We’re taking Aunt Myra home to Harrisonburg,” Emerson said.
—
“Let me get this straight,” Werner said to Rollo. “You knew where they were. You had them cornered. You went in with an entire unit. And you came out with nothing.”
It was late at night and Werner and Rollo were standing on a shadowed, deserted street corner. Both men were armed, Rollo with a surgical knife, Werner with a semiautomatic that was neatly concealed by the line of his suit jacket.
“They weren’t alone,” Rollo said.
“I’ve already been briefed on your failure. They had a sixty-five-year-old woman helping them. You can’t be expected to overcome odds like that.”
Rollo’s eyes were popped out even more than usual. Freakish glistening white orbs in his pale face.
“I’ll get them,” Rollo said. “You don’t have to worry.”
“You’re the one who should be worrying,” Werner said. “We’re very near the completion of all our plans. If you fail me again and put the mission in jeopardy, I’ll have you gutted and filleted like a fish. I’ll do it myself and I’ll use your personal knife.”
Larry and Myra chatted in the front seat. Their words were a monotone hum to Riley. Emerson was in his zone. His body was warm and masculine next to hers. She suspected his mind was on a distant astral plane. It was black beyond the windows. The road in front of them was illuminated only by the Cadillac’s headlights. Endless strips of white hypnotically coming at them. The tedium of the drive was a narcotic, and Riley drifted into sleep, waking when the car slowed for a turn or stoplight, and then drifting off again when the momentum returned.
She surfaced from her dreamless drifting and realized the car had stopped. She sat up and squinted through the windshield at a big black chunk of something and blazing lights. Her head cleared and she recognized Vernon’s RV.
“This is Harrisonburg?” Riley asked.
“I don’t exactly live in Harrisonburg,” Myra said. “I mostly live close to Harrisonburg. This here’s Blue Ridge country.”
Riley got out of the car and looked up. There were a lot of stars in the sky. More than she’d seen in a long time. Vernon’s RV was parked just past some railroad tracks. A Blake Shelton song was playing somewhere inside the RV and spilling out the open door.
Vernon strolled over, coffee cup in his hand, and grinned down at Riley. “We got the RV all tuned up for you and it’s ready to go.”
“Go?” Riley said. “In an RV?”
“That’s so you get to your destination in style and comfort,” Vernon said. “And it’s real secretive. You don’t have to stop at a motel and give out your name. We even got it loaded up with food.”
Riley had two thoughts. The first was that Vernon’s grin was deadly good. And the second was that she had no clue where they were going. She was in whatever this was up to her armpits, and she wasn’t being included in the decision-making process. Not acceptable.
“We need a word,” Riley said to Emerson.
“Yes?”
“In private.”
“In my experience, when girls get that steely eye look and use that tone it’s never good,” Vernon said to Emerson. “You must have done something bad.”
“I can’t imagine what it might be,” Emerson said.
Riley leaned forward and poked him in the chest. “How about ruining my life?” Poke. “How about not consulting me on any of your nutso plans?” Poke. “And you didn’t eat the sandwich I made for you.”
“I don’t like white br
ead,” Emerson said.
“That’s ridiculous,” Riley said. “Everyone likes white bread.”
“You’re going into a land of hurt with this woman,” Vernon said to Emerson. “She’s pretty as all get-out but she’s not dumb, and you’re going to have to rearrange your thinking if she’s a keeper.”
“My thinking is perfect,” Emerson said. “What do you mean…‘keeper’?”
Vernon hung an arm on Emerson’s shoulder. “Son, you need to come with me. I got some homemade hooch in the RV that’ll set it all straight.”
Emerson followed Vernon into the RV, and Myra turned to Riley.
“Sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s the smart one,” Myra said.
“Have they always been friends?”
“Ever since they were little boys. Emerson used to get shipped off to spend some of his summer with his ‘country relatives.’ We loved him dearly but he could be a trial. Even as a little boy he had a persistent personality.”
“How did you get to be country relatives? You must have had the same privileged childhood as your brother.”
“When I was four, my mother walked out on her marriage and left the Knight money behind. She took me with her. My brother, Mitchell, was fourteen and stayed with his daddy. When our father died, all the money went to him. It was just as well, because I’ve always been happy here in the mountains.”
“I get the impression Emerson wasn’t close to his father.”
“Mitchell wasn’t close to anyone. Not even his wives. Except for Bertram Grunwald. Mitchell and Bertram met at the University of Virginia and were instant chums. That’s how they put it. Chums. After college they stayed chums. They shared a lot of interests.”
“Such as?”
“Economics, poker, whores, and rockets. They used to fire them off from Rock Creek Park.”
“The whores or the rockets?”
“Both, I think. This was before Mitchell and Bertram conquered the world. They never forgot how they started, though. Just two rich kids with a dream to get even richer. Though Mitchell was far richer to start with.