The Constantine Conspiracy (34 page)

Shannon hesitated, then said. “Okay, it’s you and me then. Come pick me up.”

“Negative on that too,” he said as he reached the security gate and extended his driver’s license for the guard to inspect. “You’re not strong enough yet.”

“Then I’ll come on my own. You can’t stop me.”

“Look, Shannon, I know we’ll probably never see each other again and I understand that—we’re polar opposites in too many ways. But I still feel protective toward you, don’t want you in any more danger.”

“I’m not your ward,” she argued.

Rick thought a moment. “Give the phone back to the bodyguard,” he finally said, entering the gate.

“That’s better.”

A second later, the guard came on the phone.

“This is Rick.”

“Yes, Mr. Carson.”

“Put us on speakerphone so Ms. Bridge can hear what I’m going to say.”

“Okay; on speakerphone.”

“Keep Ms. Bridge in custody,” Rick said. “Don’t let her leave the house. I don’t care how much she screams or complains. We clear on that?”

“You can’t do this!” Shannon yelled.

“You clear on my instructions?” Rick asked the guard.

“No!” Shannon yelled.

“Absolutely, Mr. Carson,” the guard said.

Rick hung up and headed to a parking space, his conscience clear. Although he didn’t know for certain that he and Shannon had reached the correct conclusion, he planned to climb aboard a family jet within the hour and fly to Missouri. If they were correct, he’d be heading straight into chaos and he didn’t want Shannon involved in any of it.

40

A
fter Rick hung up, Shannon spent the next hour seething. How dare he kidnap her! She begged the guards to let her go but they ignored her, their arms crossed, their legs braced by her door. She checked her window and saw two more security men on the ground outside, their eyes scanning the property, pistols in holsters on their hips. Nurse Cotter showed up and Shannon pled her case and Cotter nodded in sympathy but pointed to the guards and said her hands were tied.

As the second hour ended, Shannon shooed the guards into the hallway, checked her bag for her phone, and found it, then made one call, her voice low to keep the guards from hearing. Then she asked for some food. Thirty minutes later Nurse Cotter brought her a bowl of chicken soup, a walnut spinach salad, and a club sandwich. Shannon and the nurse visited while Shannon ate, then Cotter cleaned up the dishes and pushed the serving cart back to the kitchen. About five minutes after Cotter left, Shannon gingerly climbed out of bed, grabbed her black bag, and stepped to the bathroom. There she slipped into a pair of jeans, a pullover top, and a pair of walking shoes. Her breath came in short gasps and her broken wrist burned with pain, but she fought it off and kept moving. Back in the bedroom, she sat on the edge of the bed, pulled back her hair, stuck three fingers down her throat, and threw up all over the floor.

After catching her breath and wiping her face, she picked up her bell, admired its heft for a moment, then eased to her knees and arranged herself on the floor, close to but not touching the mess she’d just made. Then she started jerking like a fish out of water and ringing the bell like her hand had lost all control.

Within seconds two guards appeared. Shannon’s teeth clacked together, her eyes rolled back in her head and her body convulsed.

“Some kind of seizure!” a guard yelled. “She barfed all over the place, watch it! Get the nurse!”

The second guard disappeared as Shannon continued to jerk, her movements frenetic, her heels pounding the floor, one hand clawing the air while the other rang the bell. Her lungs rebelled and her wrist ached, but she pushed through the pain. Her eyes opened as the remaining guard searched the room then grabbed the water pitcher on the table by the bed and rushed to the bathroom to fill it.

As he entered the bathroom, Shannon rolled to her feet and rushed toward him. He reached for the faucet, his back to her. She lifted the bell with her one good hand and crashed it down on the back of his head. He slowly pivoted, the pitcher falling to the floor, and she raised the bell again. He looked at her and tried to speak. She started to smack him again, but his legs gave way, and he toppled forward, saving himself another blow.

“Sorry,” she panted, grabbing his gun and shoving it into her waist.

He said nothing.

Shannon hurried as quickly as her injuries allowed to the room’s door. After checking both directions, she dragged herself toward the stairwell. Halfway there she spotted Nurse Cotter coming her way, a guard behind her. Shannon grabbed the pistol from her waist, backed up against the wall, and kept moving.

“Hold it!” Cotter yelled.

“Gotta go!” Shannon argued, waving the weapon as she stopped.

Cotter halted; the guard also. “You’re not healthy enough to go anywhere,” Cotter said.

“I’m leaving.”

“I can’t let you do that,” the guard said.

“I know how to use this,” Shannon said, indicating the gun.

Cotter and the guard hesitated.

“Back away,” Shannon ordered. “Let me pass.”

“You got other guards at the entry,” Cotter said.

“I’ll deal with them when I get there.”

Cotter glanced at the guard, then back to Shannon. “You bound and determined to do this, girl?”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?”

Cotter glanced at the guard one more time, then addressed Shannon. “I’ll help,” she finally said. “There’s a back way out of here. I’ll show you.”

Shannon studied her a moment, then nodded. “I need your name tag,” she said.

Cotter lifted the rope off her neck.

“Tie him up,” Shannon ordered, indicating the guard. “Won’t hold him forever but we only need a few minutes.”

The guard glared at her but didn’t fight as Cotter pushed him down and went to work with the rope.

“When you get free you need to check on your friend,” Shannon told the guard. “He’s in the bathroom, going to have a headache for a couple of days.”

Cotter finished and stepped back, then led Shannon past him to a stairwell leading into the kitchen then out the back door.

“My car,” Cotter said, rushing toward a detached garage. “Where you need to go?”

“I have a friend,” Shannon panted, following her. “You get me off the property, she’ll take me from there.”

Shannon and Cotter reached the garage just as two guards wheeled around the side of the house, a good hundred yards away, their guns drawn.

“The red Honda,” Cotter said. “Key’s in it.” She stopped and faced the guards.

“What are you doing?” Shannon yelled as she reached the Honda.

“You go on, child. I’ll slow these boys down some.”

“I’ll leave your car at the hospital!”

“Move on, sister!”

Shannon jumped into the Honda, keyed up the ignition, and backed it up. The guards were twenty yards away. Cotter stepped toward them, a hand up. Shannon shifted to drive and hit the gas. The Honda roared past Cotter and down the driveway. The guards ran toward her, one of them smack in her path. She never wavered.

The Honda pressed down on the guard. He stood his ground.

Ten yards, five.

The guard threw his body to the left, his pistol flying as he dodged the Honda.

Shannon glanced back; the second guard rushed at her, but she accelerated even more, and he disappeared as she reached the gate and spun onto the street, the Honda airborne for an instant then back on the ground as she screeched away.

41

A
ugustine and Charbeau sat in a glass-encased den in a severely contemporary home situated on almost fifty acres of hardwood forest halfway between St. Louis and Junction City, Missouri. A row of monitors hung on the wall to their left and a ten-foot-high indoor fountain gurgled and splashed to their right. Augustine held no cigar this time, and Charbeau knew this signaled great seriousness.

“Things will move quickly after the events of tomorrow,” Augustine said. “A national alert, I’m certain. A massive, international search to find the perpetrators of the crime. Locals, state, FBI, Interpol, everybody in on the hunt.”

“The feds will find a boatload of clues,” Charbeau said. “We’ve scattered them all over the place. A driver’s license, phony of course, but picturing an illegal alien of Arab descent. A cheap hotel room five miles from the crime scene. Books outlining his methods, a trail of fake phone calls, records of his entering the country on a student visa but never leaving. It’ll take a few days for them to piece the puzzle together, but the cops will find their man easily enough.”

“No way to blame this on one of our Christian friends?” “Not logical, given who’s going to die.”

Augustine nodded. Although he’d schemed overtime to find a motive for a Christian zealot to do what he’d prepared, he couldn’t conjure up one, so he’d gone the exact opposite way. Blame it on an Arab terrorist—always a winning ploy when it came to finding a patsy for a significant and violent act.

“I’ll fly to Atlanta immediately after the attack, then to Rome the next day,” he said.

“You talking to your boy one last time before that?”

“It is the way, Nolan, as I’ve previously described. But the Succession will go forward with or without him on Sunday evening. That’s the deadline I’ve set.”

“What do you believe he’ll do?”

Augustine shrugged. “He seems disinclined to accept the Sword, but I drained all his accounts an hour ago, banks, brokerages, everything but the penny jar in his bedroom.”

“That’ll ruffle his feathers.”

“He’ll hate me for a day or so, then start weighing what it means.”

“If he accepts the Succession, I’m on the streets. I did kill his dad.”

“You’ll have a hundred million in your Swiss account, a nice consolation prize it seems to me.”

“What if he comes looking for me? You gave him my name, am I right?”

“Of course. I needed to keep him confused. Give him enough of one truth to hide the rest of many. But you need not fear him. Rick is—how can I say this?—a nice man. He will want revenge but not have the anger to sustain it. Stay out of sight for a year or so and he will move to other pursuits.”

“Like the woman, Bridge.”

“No worries about that anymore.”

“What’s the story?”

“Apparently she will have nothing to do with him—she is a woman of faith after all. And Rick, whatever his faults, seems unwilling to consider that nonsense.”

“Good to hear.”

Augustine nodded, then shifted back to the matter at hand. “I won’t see you again until the Succession, Nolan. So let me say this while I have the opportunity. If you complete this final task and we escape blame for it, the Council will forever be in your debt, as will I.”

“I’m counting on that, sir.”

“I expect you are.”

42

W
ith the invitation to Justice Toliver’s burial in his pocket and his bodyguards once again in the back of his SUV, Rick left Rolling Hills in a hurry, his phone to his ear before he left the parking lot.

“Rick Carson here,” he said to the man who answered on the other end. “Prepare a jet; we’re flying to St. Louis.”

The man cleared his throat. “No go, Mr. Carson. Jet isn’t available.”

“What do you mean?”

“You talked to Mr. Augustine lately?”

“Last night.”

“Well . . . he said you . . . you don’t have access to the jets right now.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Call him yourself, then get him to contact me. Until I hear from him, I can’t take the chance. With the economy like it is, if he fires me I’m out of a job.”

Rick punched off the phone, his face white with fear and anger. He checked his watch—almost 4:00. He got his bank on the line, asked to speak to the manager. “Rick Carson here,” he started. “Need to get a balance on my accounts.”

The manager told him to hold a minute, then came back on. “Eight hundred ninety-three dollars,” the manager said.

“I had over a million with you, cash and money market.”

“Not anymore.”

“I didn’t withdraw the money.”

“All I can say is we got the paperwork, correct passwords and everything, the money transferred earlier today.”

Rick shut off the phone and slammed it against the seat. Pops hadn’t waited for his answer. He grabbed the phone again to try his broker, but then realized it’d be a dead end so he didn’t bother. He saw he’d missed a few calls and quickly checked the numbers, recognized a call from the security detail at his house.

“Yeah,” he barked when the guard picked up.

“Tried to reach you,” the guard said.

“I was with my mom. What’s up?”

“Miss Bridge is gone.”

“How’d that happen?”

The guard gave him the details and Rick’s jaw dropped, but then he gained his voice again. “She’s going to Missouri,” he surmised.

“What do you want us to do?” the guard asked.

“Go home,” Rick ordered. “Your job ended when you let her escape.”

He hung up and boiled in silence the rest of the way home, wondering what to do. Pops didn’t want him at the funeral— that much was evident, which gave him all the more incentive to go. If his suspicions were correct, he had to get to Junction City. But how? He couldn’t fly commercial; too much media plus Pops would know the instant he made the reservation, and without the element of surprise he had no chance to do what he needed to do.

As he pulled into his driveway, leaving the paparazzi at the front gate, an idea hit him and he latched onto it as reasonable and spent the rest of the afternoon putting the pieces into place to carry it out. First, he stuffed the sixty-five thousand dollars he’d taken from Solitude, along with a suit for the funeral and enough clothes and personal items for a couple of days, into his luggage. Second, he left an urgent message for Shannon to call him as soon as possible. Third, he changed the dressing on his wound, wincing as he peeled off the old bandage and attached the new. When finished, he held the sling for a moment, then tossed it in the garbage can. Then he waited for dark to fall.

As he waited, his mind played all kinds of tricks on him, pushing first in this direction, then in that one. He wondered again about his grandfather’s scheme, hoped he’d made a big mistake in the conclusion he’d reached, hoped his imagination had gotten the best of him. If Pops cared no more for life than to do what Rick feared, then he’d degenerated into an alien life form that Rick didn’t recognize.