Runaway Model (31 page)

"DEA," Wilton said. "We say we deviated so we'd come down over an uninhabited area. But they figure it's because we made a drug pickup."

"The jet's clean now," Bryce said. "Let them search."

They were all looking out the windows now. There were seven black cars hanging back from the spot where the pilot would be expected to put down.

They weren't Crown Vics. Hell, they weren't any kind of Ford sedan any kind of way.

Johnston handed Bryce his field glasses. "Mercedes GL SUVs," Bryce said after a moment. "Dark tint on the windows. Bulletproof glass if I don't miss my guess."

"Fuck me," Wilton said. "No way those are feds. Taxpayers never bought those land yachts."

"Some drug kingpin wanting his stolen Cessna Citation back?" Roberto asked.

The Cessna pilot wouldn't be talking. The smaller plane once had an anti-theft locator installed in its chassis, but he'd disabled it himself when he took the off-the-books job to transport Kyle's kidnapper and his human cargo. It was a dirty job, done by a dirty pilot, who wouldn't care to explain his actions to the police—much less to his regular employers.

When you're working for a cartel, you're not supposed to be open to freelancing gigs. And you're not supposed to get hooked on the product you're moving. Dude was a tweaker, no two ways about it.

After Kyle's rescue, they'd dropped the dirtbag off at a small eastern Pennsylvania airstrip and told him to get lost. None of them expected to see him again.

"You stick to the story, and nobody will ever know how bad you fucked up," Bryce had told him.

The Cessna itself was probably still a bloody mess from Nigel's handgun suicide. It seemed highly unlikely that anyone would have found it yet at the long-abandoned strip in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. The freak was probably still attracting flies where he was hanging out of the passenger side door.

It would look like a theft followed by a suicide when the thief realized he might not get away with his crime. When he realized he'd stolen property belonging to the kind of people who liked to get their revenge with a blow torch.

"It's too soon for anybody to tie us to that Cessna," Johnston said. "What's the link to us and some guy who stole a meth trafficker's plane? Maybe one day, if somebody was highly motivated, they might put two and two together and develop some suspicions. But not within hours."

Kyle studied the black cars. He'd pulled on the trackie top, which looked large and sloppy on his slender frame. It had the name of a Lake Charles riverboat on it. Evidently the tracksuits were tacky casino giveaways. He'd feel more like himself when he got back to the flat and into some of his own clothes.

But right now it seemed like there would be a slight delay.

"They look like showboaters to me," Kyle said. "Rich fucks, innit? Trying to make some kind of point about something we don't know about yet."

"Whoever they are, they want something," Bryce said. "We all have to stick to the script."

"We all know our parts," Roberto said. Conducting a quasi-military hostage extraction on American soil wasn't the most legal thing they'd ever done for Bryce Yourself Petroleum. But it was the way they'd had to go if they wanted to get to Kyle in time.

"I hope those rich wankers know their parts." Kyle had plenty of reasons not to trust in the system. Starting with how long his stalker, a schoolteacher, had been free to track him down.

Michel's fate was a second, even stronger reason. You were supposed to have the right to self-defense but it didn't seem like you did really. Not unless you were a well-connected man with a gun.

A kid with a knife was written off as a vicious animal.

Don't think about Michel right now, Kyle told himself. One crisis at a time. He had to get through today and keep himself out of prison. It was the only way he'd be able to be there for his brother.

First trained as a pilot for the US Air Force, Carter made an expert landing despite the long hours he'd been on duty. Kyle wouldn't have expected anything less of a member of Bryce's elite team.

The black cars began to close in once the jet came to a full stop.

The unknowns did look intimidating. But they'd just landed at one of the world's biggest private airports during the hectic Christmas shopping season only miles away from Manhattan, one of the world's favorite shopping destinations.

Bryce's soldiers wouldn't need their weapons. At least Kyle hoped they wouldn't need them, because they no longer had them. New York and New Jersey had some of the toughest gun control laws in the nation. Once Kyle was back safe, Bryce's soldiers had dumped their contraband into a particularly wet and grim bit of swamp rather than risk carrying it back. They knew their unscheduled stop for an alleged emergency would put them at a higher risk of being searched when they returned to the Manhattan area.

With Bryce's hundreds of millions of dollars, he could buy them all the brand-new weapons they wanted once they returned to gun-friendly North Dakota.

I already put Stoney at risk
, Kyle thought.
Please God, I haven't put Bryce and his team at risk too.

"I doubt I'm being kidnapped," Bryce said. "There's too many eyes on us. And if it is feds, I don't want to look like a douche with my own private army. They'd associate that with drug activity for sure. I don't want anybody to play bodyguard right now. Let's just leave the plane in natural order."

Kyle hooked his arm into Bryce's. Then he remembered that Bryce wasn't officially out.

Or was he? The older man made no move to distance himself from the model. They'd gone through too much tonight for that. When Kyle stepped back a fraction of an inch, Bryce pulled him in closer.

The two of them deplaned first. Kyle's knees weren't really that shaky any more, but Bryce was taking care to help support Kyle's weight as he went down the steps of the steel ramp. Kyle liked the feeling of being taken care of. He'd had too little of that in his life.

The black armored cars made a circle around the jet. Whatever they wanted, they'd guaranteed that it couldn't take off again.

Kyle and Bryce were now back on solid ground. But Kyle couldn't feel entirely safe.

Bryce stopped. Kyle stood a little too close to him. He could tell from the squeeze of Bryce's arm around his waist that Bryce wanted it that way.

They waited.

It happened like a well-choreographed dance. All the car doors flew open at once. All the men in their surprisingly cheap business suits stepped out at once.

Kyle was reminded of the service at a Michelin-starred restaurant where all the waiters arrived together so everyone's dish hits the table at the exact same moment.

There was a leader. Dark hair with silver at the temples. Botoxed tanned skin but a little crinkle left at the corners of his eyes to show he was a serious man. Fit but not muscular.

His suit wasn't cheap. Kyle recognized the designer. Hell, he recognized the suit. It was this season. Ready-to-wear but limited production. A cool twenty-six thousand dollars.

But the watch on his wrist was the real tell. Two hundred fifty-nine thousand dollars, so you could tell your friends you'd just bought a watch that cost "more than a quarter of million."

Poseur, Kyle thought. Works on commission like one of those bloody ambulance chasers that get so rich here in America.

It was too many cars to be somebody filing a lawsuit or a legal summons. But Kyle wasn't sure what else it could be.

"Bryce Auburn." Slight accent. Kyle thought it might be Norwegian. If so, he'd been educated in America or Canada for several years during his youth. "Are you Bryce Auburn?"

"You know perfectly well that I am. Who are you? What's all this about?"

"Bryce Yourself Petroleum has defaulted on one too many of its credit obligations. Under the terms of your loan agreement, you assigned this jet as collateral against your debts. So we're taking it. Now."

"The fuck you're taking my jet," Bryce said. "I need my fucking jet."

"We prefer to do business peacefully, Mr. Auburn. But if you want to force us to have you detained, we're certainly prepared to do so."

"The fuck? You have no authority to detain me. You have no authority to seize my jet."

"Actually, sir, it isn't your jet." Mr. My Watch Cost More Than A Quarter Million Dollars And Yours Didn't had an unpleasantly toothy smile. "It now belongs to the Norwegian Oil Network. We can and will have you arrested for grand larceny if you refuse to turn over our property."

"The fuck is this! I refused your offer. The Norwegian Oil Network has fuck-all to do with my business."

"That's where you're wrong, Mr. Auburn."

"This is a mistake. I'm telling you now. Let me talk to my banker at Lake Charles Lending. He told me I had plenty of time to settle up. I only need a few more weeks. The price of oil just can't stay this low. Look at the oil futures, for Christ's sake."

Unpleasantly toothy? Kyle decided the man deserved a role in the next remake of
Jaws
. He was a shoo-in for the role of the shark.

"You wouldn't accept a reasonable price from NON. But Lake Charles Lending was more than happy to take advantage of our generous offer to buy out your debt. I agree that LCL would have been delighted to give you more time to meet your obligations. They're a bank, not an oil company. They wouldn't know what to do with a bunch of North Dakota leases and a corporate jet. They just want the cash."

Kyle tightened his grip around Bryce's waist. Squeezed him a little. He was no longer worried about his own shaky knees.

He was worried about Bryce.

The wanker in the suit kept on talking. The words washed over Kyle, although he'd remember them later.

"But NON is an oil company, not a bank. We'd rather have the collateral than your money. Look on the bright side, Mr. Auburn. As of today, you're a free man. You had a highly leveraged business that was almost a billion dollars in debt. Now you owe absolutely nothing to absolutely nobody. It's all paid off. We've simply taken the collateral instead."

"The collateral," Bryce said.

"Yes," the suit said. "You do understand. The collateral. All of the collateral."

"All? My company? My oil leases? My fucking jet?"

"And of course the building in Bismarck."

"You're the ones committing grand larceny. You're the thieves. I borrowed from Lake Charles Lending, not from you fuckers. How can you pop up out of nowhere and take everything just because the price of oil dipped below fifty dollars a barrel for a few days? We all know it's going back up!"

Kyle felt a stab of guilt. Bryce, the master negotiator, wouldn't be ranting like that if he wasn't exhausted from Kyle's rescue.

Judging from his untroubled smile, the well-dressed wanker was used to being yelled at by the bankrupt rich. "We're stealing nothing. You gambled, and you lost. We offered you a very generous 800 million to buy out your company. You refused. We had to find another way to get those leases. And we did. It's legal. You signed the loan agreement. LCL sold it to us."

"Those leases will be worth twenty billion dollars in two years' time."

"We agree. That's why we acquired them."

By now, Roberto, Johnston, and Wilton had all exited the jet and joined the little group. They'd heard most of the conversation. Kyle kept his arm around Bryce's waist, supporting him when he seemed to sway a little. He didn't know what else to do.

"You're stealing my company," Bryce said. "You're stealing my fucking jet. Why don't you steal the fucking boots off my feet while you're at it?"

He squirmed down suddenly and made as if to tug off his right boot. Kyle clutched at his hip to pull him back up.

"Don't," Kyle said. "Love, don't."

"What is this? Is this for real?" Roberto asked.

"I don't know," Kyle said.

"Probably," Arnold said. "The company was highly leveraged. He always knew it was possible he could lose everything if the price of oil dropped below a certain level. Fracking leases are really only profitable when oil is over sixty. And the Saudis don't like fracking. Too much of it and America becomes the leading petroleum producer again. They wouldn't need the Middle East reserves any more."

"Listen to your adviser," the suit said. "He sounds like he knows the score."

Kyle followed the music and fashion blogs. Maybe a few online gossip sheets. He wasn't sure what Arnold was saying. "The Saudis crashed the price?"

"Yeah. Basically. Most creditors would have let him ride a little longer. The price won't stay this low. Oil is a nonrenewable resource. But—"

Arnold didn't have to spell it out. The suit already had.

For a moment everyone went silent. At least Bryce had quit trying to take his boots off. He just stood there, lost and dazed, as if he'd been struck by lightning out of a clear blue sky.

"It's a wobble in the market," he finally said. "Give me more time."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Auburn. I don't have the authority to do that. At the end of the day, I'm just doing my job. I'm just following orders. And my orders are to take possession of this jet. If you could sign these papers acknowledging that you surrender possession..."

"Fuck you," Bryce said. "I've already signed too fucking many papers."

"If you have any personal items on the jet, we'll forward them to you as soon as you supply us with your new address."

"The condo too?" Bryce said.

"Yes, Mr. Auburn. The condo too."

Bryce began to march forward blindly. Kyle had to walk briskly to keep pace with him. Arnold and the three soldiers followed only a few steps behind.

Can love survive when one man is rising while another man is falling? Especially when a troubled rock star has his eye on taking one of the men for his own? Find out in Book 2 of The Runaway Model series,
The Runaway Millions.
You can find out where to buy or download all of my books at my website
http://www.therunawaymodel.com/
.

I couldn't have written this, my first novel, without the kind assistance of my first readers, MoNika and CL. I am forever in your debt.