Chapter 8 - The Arrogance of the Elite
The French doors weren't locked; Julian had been too arrogant or too panicked to secure the rear perimeter while his mercenaries patrolled the front lawn. I pushed the glass door inward, stepping over the threshold into the air-conditioned luxury of the mahogany study. Ares glided silently beside me, his paws making no sound on the thick Persian rug.
"You should have spent less time packing passports and more time checking your perimeter, Julian," I said, my voice cutting through the frantic rustling of paper like a gunshot.
Julian spun around so fast he knocked a stack of bearer bonds off the desk, his eyes bulging in absolute disbelief. Eleanor dropped her satellite phone onto the mahogany, her hand flying to her pearl necklace as if to shield her throat from an apparition.
"You..." Julian gasped, backing away until his thighs hit the heavy desk. "How did you get past the guards? We have five armed men on this estate!"
"Your guards are amateurs who rely on noise and intimidation," I said, taking two deliberate steps into the center of the room, grounding my oak stick onto the floorboards. "And your dog seems to prefer professional management. Sitz, Ares."
The Malinois instantly dropped his hindquarters onto the Persian rug at my left heel, his dark eyes locked onto Julian’s face with a cold, watchful alertness that made the young billionaire flinch.
"This is an outrage!" Eleanor shrieked, finding her voice as her face flushed crimson with aristocratic fury. She reached for the brass intercom button on the desk to summon the guards outside. "We will have you shot for trespassing! You are a dead man, Vance!"
"Touch that intercom, ma'am, and I'll let the dog handle the room," I warned, my tone so icy and absolute that her finger froze an inch above the button. "I didn't come back here to fight your hired guns. I came back for what my daughter left behind."
I didn't wait for them to respond. I shifted my weight onto my good leg, reached down with my walking stick, and hooked the heavy brass air vent grate set into the floorboards just three feet from Julian’s desk. With a sharp, practiced twist of my wrist, I popped the grate out of its wooden frame, sending it clattering across the rug.
I reached into the dusty ductwork, my fingers sweeping the cold metal until they brushed against a small, hard rectangular object. When I pulled my hand out, I was holding the sleek, silver USB flash drive containing the double ledgers of their fraudulent pediatric medical supply contracts.
Julian’s face drained of all color, turning the sickly, pale gray of wet ash. He lunged forward instinctively, his hands grasping toward the drive. "Give me that! You don't know what that is! That's proprietary corporate data! You can't steal from me!"
I didn't retreat. I simply raised my left hand and snapped my fingers once.
"Steh!"
Ares was on his feet in a microsecond, a terrifying, guttural snarl vibrating from deep within his chest, his bared fangs gleaming just inches from Julian’s outstretched wrist. Julian screamed, throwing himself backward so violently he tumbled over his own leather office chair, crashing heavily to the floor in a tangle of limbs and expensive fabric.
"This little drive is going to put you and your mother in a federal penitentiary for the next twenty years, Julian," I said, holding the silver device up to the light. "You stole tens of millions of dollars from sick children, you laundered it through shell companies to buy this house, and then you locked my daughter in a cage like an animal because she had the courage to say no."
"We can pay you!" Eleanor cried out, her arrogance finally collapsing into raw, desperate bribery as she sank onto the edge of the mahogany desk. "Name your price, Mr. Vance! Ten million! Twenty million! We have offshore accounts that can't be traced! You and Sarah could live anywhere in the world like royalty! Just give us the drive and let us board that plane!"
I looked at the woman who had watched my daughter shiver in the cold with a glass of wine in her hand. I felt nothing for her—no pity, no anger, just the profound, sterile disgust one feels when looking at a poisonous reptile.
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"My daughter took an oath to protect human life, Mrs. Kensington," I said quietly, slipping the flash drive securely into my inside coat pocket. "And I took an oath fifty years ago to defend this country against enemies, foreign and domestic. You don't have enough money in the world to buy my family's honor."
Before Eleanor could utter another word of protest, the heavy mahogany double doors leading from the study into the main grand foyer were blown open with a deafening crash that shook the walls.
