The Billionaire's Redemption (The Billionaire's Kiss, Book Five): (A Billionaire Alpha Romance) (31 page)

I wonder if Epicurus is the same… if he’s great with computer code and IP addresses, but if he has a blind spot for ‘real world stuff.’

“Are we ready to go?” Dominique calls out.

“Not yet,” I answer, and turn back to hacking.

“
I’m
ready,” she says petulantly.

“Hold your horses.”

Something about the phrase sounds familiar. I look over at Dominique, and she has the same glimmer of recognition in her eyes.

“Grant says that,” she murmurs quietly.

I go back to my computer search with a heavy heart – but not for long. Within seconds, I’ve hit the mother lode: a folder of digital receipts from political campaigns.

Name every major politician you can think of, from gubernatorial offices all the way up to the very highest levels of the federal government, and there’s a good chance their name would be on that list.

Governors, senators, congressmen… even a former president. Not to mention a gaggle of presidential candidates from every election cycle over the last two decades.

 What’s
really
interesting is they’re from both parties. Neither Republicans nor Democrats are exempt.

And the amounts? Maximum contributions allowed by law to individual candidates, but that’s chicken feed compared to the hundreds of millions donated to Super PACs.

Epicurus must have some very good friends in high places.

This information would be disastrous if it leaked. Once Epicurus is exposed, this would be the equivalent of the press finding out a politician’s campaign manager is a neo-Nazi pedophile.

So I immediately save
everything
to a special server in the cloud – sort of my rainy day ‘Get Out Of Jail Free’ fund. If I need to twist some arms down the road to get me and Grant free of the FBI, this is what I’m going to use.

Except… Epicurus needs to be exposed to the general public in order for the political connections to do me any good.

How do I do
that?
I need proof he’s a psychopathic killer, and there isn’t any. Or none that I’ve found.

While I ponder that conundrum, I check the surveillance feeds again, and my stomach turns.

A whole new batch of cameras have been turned on. They are different angles on the same thing: Epicurus standing in a room with tile floors and walls completely covered in plastic,
Dexter
-style, presumably so clean-up is easier.

The main item in the room is a bed-like platform with arm, ankle, chest, and head restraints. It has a mechanical base with a control panel; my guess is that the bed can be made to raise, lower, and tilt at any angle, like a souped-up dentist’s chair.

Speaking of dentists, Epicurus looks like a particularly hellish one. Dressed in a white lab coat, he hums absentmindedly as he checks a gleaming metal table laid out with dozens of implements.

Some are medical: dentist’s drills, scalpels, clamps, needles.

Some are industrial: a car battery with jumper cables, pliers, hammers, a blowtorch.

Some might best be described as medieval instruments of torture.

And some… some are custom creations straight out of a madman’s nightmares.

“Jesus,” I whisper.

Dominique looks at the monitor and turns white. “Are we ready to go?” she asks urgently.

“Almost,” I promise her, and go back to the computer screen.

Something strikes me as weird.

Epicurus is a big fan of surveillance systems, for obvious reasons. He used them devastatingly against me and Grant in New York and Paris, by hacking into traffic cameras and the security cameras of banks and department stores.

You would think a guy who knows just how much Big Brother is watching us would be hesitant about having so many cameras in his own home. But no – there’s almost 80 in the house alone. He must be supremely overconfident, absolutely sure that no one will ever be able to hack into his system to spy on him. False modesty aside, I’m one of the best hackers in the world, and I doubt I could have done it, even over a span of weeks. The only reason I’m looking at these video feeds is because Epicurus is tied in deep with the NSA, and Mailin has a coworker with a friend in the NSA.

Here’s the metaphor: Epicurus lives in a digital fortress, but because he does so much business with the NSA, he shares an underground tunnel with
their
digital fortress. Because NOBODY would ever hack the NSA, Epicurus believes that tunnel is secure. And because he believes that, all he has on his end of the tunnel is a flimsy door and a couple of deadbolts.

Well, I’m a digital cat burglar, the way Grant’s one in the real world. And deadbolts are nothing to a cat burglar. I might not have been able to break into the fortress, but sneak me into that tunnel and it’s game over, baby.

But there’s something else weird. Of the 80 cameras in his house, there are twelve in this room alone – two in every corner and a handful overhead, all arranged in a variety of shots from close-ups to wide angles. It’s like he’s a Hollywood director, trying to film from every conceivable direction so he can cut it together and make… a movie…

“Oh my God,” I whisper, and immediately begin a search through all of Epicurus’s archives.

I find what I want within seconds. All I had to do was search for huge file sizes – three, four, even five-hour-long videos.

I’m not going to tell you what’s in them, because it would give you nightmares. I know what I see is going to plague
me
for the rest of my life.

They say serial killers keep trophies. Epicurus apparently makes home movies, and there are over a hundred of them, edited together seamlessly from a dozen different camera angles.

I inspect a couple of the videos briefly, just to confirm my suspicions, and have to force myself not to vomit.

What’s unfathomable to me from a strictly computer geek angle is that there’s not any special security for them. They’re tucked away in a remote corner of his computer network, but there are no passwords guarding them. If I was in the possession of something that could get me the death penalty, I think I would go to greater lengths to safeguard it.

But then again, if you’re one of the richest people on the planet,
and
you’re a megalomaniacal serial killer who hasn’t been caught for twenty years,
and
you have some of the world’s most powerful people in your back pocket, maybe you think the laws no longer apply to you. That laws are for ‘regular people.’

I decide right then and there that I’m going to remind Epicurus he’s ‘regular people,’ just like everybody else. Actually, I’m going to remind him that he’s the scum of the earth, and the laws for ‘regular people’ are going to destroy him.

I copy all the videos into my online vault, along with the political contribution records. As they upload, I rig a failsafe system so that everything will be made public within twelve hours unless I enter a horrendously complex password. We’re talking Wikileaks, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, the Department of Justice… everybody.

In case I don’t make it out alive, I want the world to know who this murdering asshole is, and who he’s been cozying up to.

Then I switch back to the plan. Because what I
really
want is for me and Grant to come out of this alive.

First I make a series of preparations that are absolutely necessary. For instance:

Audio of me saying various things, in case I need to distract Epicurus but can’t speak aloud. I’m inspired by my Al Pacino soundboard, so I use the program to record a bunch of elements I think I might be able to string together into a semi-coherent conversation.

Also, five-minute-long video loops of blank footage for every outside camera on the property. That’s so Dominique and I can approach the mansion undetected by Epicurus’s security detail – at least as long as they’re only watching the video cameras. Running across any guards face-to-face will be a different matter.

A list of usernames and passwords for all of Epicurus’s computer systems, courtesy of the NSA’s backdoor.

Then I bring up schematics of Epicurus’s house. How’d I get them? From Grant’s online vault of client blueprints. I found them the night I met him, when I was seeking revenge for him stealing my phone and walking out on me after sex. I never thought they would come in handy, but then, I never thought I would be sneaking onto a serial killer’s estate to rescue the man I love, either.

JP pores over the blueprints on my laptop.

“You’re familiar with how Grant designs his trap doors, right?” I ask. “I mean, he did one for you back in your Paris apartment – can you tell where they are just by looking at the blueprints?”

“I believe so…
oui…
here… and here… here is the safe room, it would appear…”

He points to an unlabeled square in the center of the mansion, and then we all glance at the video feed of the plastic-coated room. It’s got to be the same place.

“Is there a way to get into that room?” I ask.

“
Oui…
this… how do you say… air duct… this leads to the ceiling over the room.”

“Can you direct me through all that?”

“
Oui.
But… I can go instead,” JP offers. “You can stay here.”

“No,” I say firmly. “You’re more than capable of controlling Epicurus’s security system. And when the FBI shows up, if they arrest whoever is here, then I need to be able to continue hacking from the mansion.”

JP frowns. “We have an agreement with the FBI asshole not to be arrested.”

“Don’t worry, Mailin will cover for us. But I’m pretty sure any deal we had with Duplass went out the window when Dominique punched his lights out.”

“I did what you told me to do!” Dominique exclaims.

“I know, I know. Calm down.”

“I would be better to go through the secret compartments than you,” she sniffs.

I shake my head. “I need you to be the decoy. You’re the
parkour
queen – you can get into the house a dozen different ways, plus you can shoot any guards you run into. I can’t.”

“He does not seem to have so many guards,” Dominique says. “We have only seen the two with Grant. Perhaps you and I both may go through the secret – ”

“Shh,” JP shushes her, and points to the computer screen.

The two bald bruisers in suits are wheeling Grant through the house on the hand truck. Grant still has the duck tape wrapped all the way around his head and mouth.

They enter a gigantic library with an arched ceiling, vaulted windows, and dozens of book shelves interspersed with works of art framed beautifully on the wall.

I frown, then direct the security camera to zoom in more closely on one of the paintings. Something about it seems familiar…

There are three figures: a highly realistic portrait of a woman seated at a piano, a long-haired figure seated with his back to the viewer, and a standing woman who might be singing.

Mother
fucker.

It’s the Vermeer from Grant’s collection, one of the two paintings Epicurus had his thugs take with them when they raided the penthouse in New York.

The other was a van Gogh, a seascape with a dozen figures and a single boat –

There it is, five feet from the Vermeer.

Epicurus has both of the paintings hanging on his library wall.

The temerity.

The audacity.

The unbelievable
balls
on this guy.

But despite my disbelief, I can’t dwell on the paintings. The bodyguards have pushed Grant across the entire library, and now they’re knocking on the seemingly ordinary wall at the far end of the room.

In the plastic-wrapped room, Epicurus crosses over to a door that looks like it belongs on the inside of a meat locker. He taps a seven-digit code on a numerical pad on the wall: 619382#.

I make special note of the code – just in case.

After a tiny beep, Epicurus twists the door’s metal handle.

Back on the library security camera, a section of the wall – camouflaged with a shelf full of books – swings open, and the two bruisers wheel Grant into the plastic-wrapped room.

“Secure him to the bed,”
Epicurus orders.
“But before you do… punch him in the solar plexus.”

Helpless to do anything but tense his abs, Grant steels himself as one of the gorillas punches as hard as he can below the sternum. Grant immediately hunches over, obviously in agony. Taking advantage of his weakness, the henchmen unlock Grant from the hand truck and bind him to the table. Grant tries to fight back, but that undefended punch took too much out of him, and the bastards strap him down without too much trouble.

“Leave us now,”
Epicurus says. The glee in his voice is unmistakable.

The two thugs waddle out of the room with the empty hand truck in tow and close the door.

Epicurus reaches for a scalpel on the table, then approaches Grant.

I hold my breath in horror. Dominique puts her hands to her mouth.

“Hold still, or this will hurt,”
Epicurus says, and raises the blade to Grant’s face.

He makes the smallest nick in the duck tape, then
rrriiiiips
the grey strip off.

“…OW,”
Grant says, with a fair amount of comedic delivery.

Epicurus replaces the scalpel on the table, then balls up the duck tape and throws it in a corner of the room.

“By the way, nice paintings,”
Grant says. He’s talking about the Vermeer and van Gogh.

“Do you like them?”
Epicurus asks.
“I picked them up practically for free.”

“‘Practically’?”

“Well, I did have to pay ten million to the deliverymen. But even then, they were a steal,”
Epicurus says smugly.

“I’ll bet they were.”

Shit.

If anybody ever sees these recordings – and if my plan works out, they will – the subtext is obvious: Epicurus stole the paintings from Grant.

I rewind all the cameras in the room to when Grant still had the duck tape around his head. There will be a highly suspicious jump in the video, but – oh well. We’ll be lucky if we all live long enough for anyone to question us about it.