From Manhattan With Revenge Boxed Set (8 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

He shoved
his way forward, never losing sight of the silver dress.
 
She was at the base of the stairs trying
with others to get to the blocked exit above.
 
Men still were pounding against the exit
door, but because they were so closely packed together, there was no room for
momentum to truly give the doors the push they needed.

It was
difficult to stand.
 
The room was
slick with water, which had smothered some of the smoke.
 
People were calling for calm, but no one
was listening.
 
Jean-George Laurent
had just been shot in the head.
 
Tootie Staunton-Miller was still lying on top of him, her face squarely
lodged into the hollow core of his meat face.
 
Addison Miller was trying to lift her
up.
 
His face was grief-stricken,
slick with water and shining because of it.
 
There was a killer among them, people
feared it and they wanted out.

“This
doesn’t happen to people like us!” Lorvenia Billiups screamed.
 
“Why is this happening!”

“It’s
Leana Redman,” Frieda Zulrika Teeple said.
 
“That bullet was meant for her.
 
She’s always been trouble.
 
She’s the one they’re after, just like last time.
 
Keep away from her!”

“Somebody
help me,” Count Luftwick hollered.
 
“I can’t see.
 
You fucking
people know I’m blind.
 
Where’s my
wife?
 
Where’s the countess?
 
Why isn’t she helping me?
 
She wants me to die, I know it!”

As ropes
of insanity spun out to form nooses in the room, Alex inched closer to his
mark, who now was washed clean thanks to the sprinklers.
 
Her hair was falling down her back in
thick wet curls.
 
The man she was
with earlier was assisting the others in putting all of his muscle behind the
door, trying to force it open.
 
Security was making an effort to gain some semblance of control, but
they might as well have been talking into a vacuum.
 

Alex
looked at Leana and reached for his gun.
 
If he held it low and concealed it against his side, no one would know
it was he who shot her.
 
There was
too much confusion.
 
He looked
behind him to see his way out.
 
With
all the scrambling, it would be difficult to get to Carmen and the corridor,
but not impossible.

Leana
Redman was thirty feet away from him.
 
He removed his gun, held it low and was about to shoot when the room was
plunged into darkness.

Alex
whirled around and waited for the generators to kick in.
 
They didn’t, at least not
immediately.
 
Instead, the security
lights flickered and dimmed as if a child was playing with a switch.

Above
the crowd, far to Alex’s right, a gunshot rang into the room, causing shrieks
of fear as people either fell to the floor or tried to find a way out.
 
It was Carmen.
 
He knew it was her.
 
She was calling to him.
 
She was asking him to come with her.

His hand
was in the same position it had been when he had the gun poised at Leana.
 
Had she moved?
 
He wasn’t sure, but he nevertheless
fired four quick shots in similar directions.
 
He heard the buckling of knees, the
falling back of those who were either injured or dead, and hoped that one of
them was her.

He
turned around and took flight in the dark, shoving people out of his way as he
neared the corridor and shouted out Carmen’s name.

Another
gunshot cracked, this time not far in front of him.
 
He ran to it while people openly started
to weep at the sound of it.
 
Everything appeared to be happening in slow motion.

The
lights started to flicker and for an instant, he saw her face.
 
It was the most welcomed sight he’d ever
seen.
 
He did love her.
 
She was pointing above the crowd toward
the corridor, where people were moving more freely now.
 
They could escape through the side exit,
which would lead to the front of the building, but the moment he reached
Carmen, she stopped him.

“The
Grille Room,” she said.
 
“We take
those stairs and exit on the side of the building.
 
Not the front.
 
The side.
 
Hurry!”

He
grabbed her wrist and steamrolled forward with her.
 
Together, they trampled people in an
effort to get to the stairs, down over them to the foyer below and then to the
exit.
 

Other
people were rushing alongside them.
 
Outside, the night was alive with the sound of sirens.
 

Carmen
and Alex joined the flood of those leaving this hell they created and as they
did, the lights behind them spit at their backs, almost as if they were aware
of their escape and cursing the injustice of it.

EPILOGUE

ONE
MONTH LATER

In the
month following the incident at The Four Seasons, Leana Redman remained in her
Park Avenue penthouse, unwilling to leave until they caught the people
responsible for killing Jean-George Laurent and for potentially trying to kill
her.

People
called, including her mother and half-brother, Michael, but in spite of the
news coverage that had blanketed the city for so long as investigators tried to
learn who the murderer was, there was not one call from her father.

She
tried to tell herself that she wasn’t surprised or disappointed, but she was
just lying to herself.
 
Her mother
told her that he’d never change, which was the truth.
 
He was expecting her to call him, but
she wouldn’t.
 
More than ever, she
was beginning to care less and less about him.
 
She knew it was unhealthy for her to spend
much more time wondering why he was the way he was.
 
He didn’t care for her.
 
As difficult as it was, she needed to
accept that.

One
morning after many late-night discussions with Mario, much of which involved
the security he wanted to have in place for her when she did emerge, she
decided she couldn’t stay like this forever.
 
At the very least, she owed it to Harold
to pick herself up and move forward with her dreams.
 
Not following them was exactly what he
didn’t want.
 
He had entrusted her
with his money for a specific reason and that reason wasn’t just to succeed,
but to take on her father and succeed.

For
herself and for Harold, she needed to see it through.

On some
level, the better part of her life always had been at risk, whether because of
the drugs she nearly overdosed on in her youth or because she was saddled with
her father’s enemies now as an adult.
 
She needed to pick herself up, go to the hotel and get back to work.
 
Three weeks ago they started to
refurbish it.
 
She needed to be
there and be part of it.
 
She needed
to oversee the work that was being done and offer her input.
 
This was her baby and she had to attend
to it.

And so
she did.

After a
shower and changing into a pair of jeans and a sweater, she went downstairs
into the kitchen, where Mario was preparing himself breakfast.
 
It was cool outside and he had a fire
going in the sitting room just off the kitchen.
 
He looked over at her when she came in.

“Good
morning,” he said.

She put
her arms around him and kissed him.
 
“Making anything good?”

“The
kitchen might need to be gutted, but the stove works.
 
Here.
 
I made you an omelet.”
 
He slid it onto a white plate as she sat
at the granite bar and smiled at him.

“You
made that omelet for yourself.”

“So
what?
 
I’ll make another.
 
Juice?”

She
nodded.

“Coffee?”

“If I
can have the entire pot.”

“You can
have whatever you want.
 
What’s on
your agenda today?”

She
leaned back as he poured her coffee into her favorite mug and felt a
groundswell of relief and gratitude when she said, “Something different.”

He put
the omelet in front of her.
 
He was
playing it cool and she loved him for it.
 
“What’s that?”

She
picked up her fork and dug in.
 
“I
think I need to get out,” she said.
 
“One more day here and I’ll likely have mold on me.”
 
She pointed down at her omelet.
 
“This, by the way, is delicious.”

“It’s
the cheese.”

“Whatever
it is, it’s fantastic.”

He
cracked two eggs and started beating them in a bowl.
 
“So, what’ll you do?
 
I’m doing my soup kitchen runs
today.
 
Want to join me?
 
I could use a hand unloading the food.”

Ever
since she’d known him, the one thing he’d never given up was helping those less
fortunate than himself.
 
He’d taught
her plenty about that.
 
There wasn’t
a soup kitchen in New York that hadn’t benefitted because of his efforts.
 
“Actually, if you don’t mind, I think
I’ll go to work,” she said.

He
sprinkled cheese into the bowl with some peppers and onions and she could sense
that he was suppressing a smile.
 
“Work, huh?
 
You ready for
that?”

“I’m
ready,” she said.
 
“In fact, I think
I’m beyond ready.
 
I’ve been pretty
self-indulgent lately.
 
It’s time
for that to end.”
 

Just
hearing the words spoken aloud thrilled her as much as it unnerved her.
 
She was no fool.
 
She knew what she was facing.
 
She knew the expectations and the burden
that would come her way when the press found out she was back on site and
working to turn her hotel into something unforgettable.
 
She also knew the comparisons that would
be made between her and her father, and her and Celina.
 
Was this Redman as talented as that
Redman?
 
Did Leana have what her
sister had?
 
What her father
had?
 

She
didn’t know.
 
But in spite of all
the pitfalls and all the things that could go wrong over the next year, there
was one thing she couldn’t deny, and that was the rush of excitement and
adrenalin that shot through her senses now and made her feel as alive as the
first time she met and fell in love with Mario.
 

She
could do this.
 

She
could feel Harold in her heart, Mario at her back and even Celina, on some
ethereal level, cheering her on.
 

It was
time for her to make a name for herself--and not just by writing a check.

*
 
*
 
*

Save for
the black bikini bottom she wore, Carmen Gragera walked naked onto the dock of
her round Bora Bora hut, which stretched deep into the Pacific ocean, and
looked down at the impossibly clear blue water before she dove into it.
 
Below her, she could see a wave of fish
scatter in her wake and it occurred to her again that if this wasn’t paradise,
she’d never see it in her lifetime.

She
heard another splash come behind her and popped to the surface just as Alex
did.
 
They smiled at each other,
circled each other and eventually swam toward one another.
 
After spending four weeks with him here,
if this wasn’t love she was feeling, she wasn’t sure what it was.

“What
are we having for dinner?” he asked.

“Whatever
you poke with your spear.”

“So, it
might be you on the menu?”

“You’re
hilarious.”

“Whatever
keeps you happy.”

“Did you
get the goggles?”

“I put
them on the edge of the dock.”

“Want to
explore?”

He swam
over, snatched the goggles and tossed one of them to her.
 
They put them on.
 
“Think we’ll see sharks again.
 
It’s been days.”

“You
never know.”
 
She spit a jet of
water at him.
 
“But in case we do
see them, just know I’m getting out of the water this time.
 
You won’t trick me into hiding behind
some reef like you did last time.
 
They came too close.
 
They freak
me out.”

“They’re
just black-tipped reef sharks.
 
They
have zero interest in us.
 
Where’s
your sense of adventure?”

“That
would be you.
 
In the bedroom.
 
And believe me, it’s more than enough.”

They dove
beneath the surface, which now looked pristine to Carmen with the goggles in
place.
 
Scores of black fish she
wished she knew the names of were swimming in schools along with brightly
colored yellow fish, sea turtles, iridescent blue fish with happy yellow tails,
the occasional manta ray, a few massive bat rays and, near the bottom, the
choral reef that sustained so many of them.
 
She looked up and on the other side of
the hut, and saw a gathering of other fish lingering along the bottom of her
speed boat.

She
fanned out her arms, lifted herself to the surface to take a breath and then dove
down again.
 
Apparently, their
presence was now known, because within seconds, each was surrounded by dozens
of curious yellow- and black-striped fish, which were their favorites because
they were gentle, beautiful, curious and fearless.
 

Carmen
looked across at Alex, who was floating among them, turning in circles while
they followed his rhythms.
 
She was
about to do the same when what looked like a harpoon shot into the water and
came within inches of cutting through him.

He was
so distracted by the fish while he flipped over and over that he didn’t see or
hear it.
 
And so she quickly kicked
over to him just as another harpoon sliced through the water.
 

This
time he saw and heard it; it carved between them and speared one of the
turtles.
 
Blood entered the water,
which would call other beasts neither wanted to deal with.

Already
she was running out of air and was certain he was as well.
 
She pointed beneath the hut, they dove
down as far as they could, but in the whirl of bubbles they left in their wake,
the gig was up.
 
Dozens of harpoons
started to pierce the water.
 
One
cut clean through her hair, severing a lock of it.
 
Alex came beside her, put his arm around
her and together, they kicked furiously until they were in the large pocket of
air beneath the hut.

“They’ve
found us,” he said.

“How?
 
Nobody know I live here.”

“Somebody
knows.”
 

“That
impossible.”

“Obviously
not.”
 
He looked up.
 
“Grab onto one of those beams and pull
yourself up.
 
They’re shooting
harpoons.
 
One of them could get
lodged into our legs.”

They
each scrambled up.

“I’ve
heard no boat,” Carmen said.
 
“You
know that’s the only way to get out here.
 
Otherwise, we’re isolated.”

“They
could be scuba diving.”

She
shook her head.
 
“The harpoons came
from above.
 
They drove
down
into the water, not horizontally.
 
They must be shooting at us from the shoreline.
 
We need to get to the other side of the
hut and into my boat.”
 
She reached
down and dipped her head into the water.
 
“You’ve got your sharks,” she said.
 
“The turtle brought them out.
 
Right below us, they’re tearing it apart.”

Another
harpoon was released and this time it was clear that it was shot from the
shore.
 
But instead of going into
the water, the harpoon went straight through the house, smashing glass and
sailing through open windows before it splashed into the water on the other
side of it.

“They’ve
seen my boat,” she said.
 
“That
harpoon went through the hut.
 
How
are we going to get out of here?”

“We
shield ourselves with the boat.
 
We
take it off its moorings and paddle out as far as we can until we can get
inside it and get the hell out of here.”

“You’re
telling me that we get in the water with those sharks?
 
I need you to slip your goggles down and
have a look into the water.
 
Then
tell me what we do.”

He
stared at her for a moment, then he lowered the goggles and dipped his head
into the water.
 
When he emerged,
his mouth was set.
 
“There must be a
hundred of them down there.”

“I’m
assuming the turtle’s gone.”