Chapter 12
NOT LIKE THAT
brYS
Jakob reaches back and snags the strap of the rifle, kicks open his door, and is jogging across the intersection an instant after hearing the gunshots.
Which comes from the house we are obviously watching—I assume because ‘the quarry' is inside, the quarry being this Pooly guy, whoever he is.
Although who is shooting at whom, I do not know.
A nasty, vindictive bastard, by the sound of it—he did something so awful to Jakob’s employee Lash that he won’t speak of it. The devil would be horrified is a pretty incredible and damning statement.
I don't know what I'm supposed to do—sit here and wait? What if there are more of those maniacal murder-thugs out there patrolling the neighborhood? What if—
Glass shatters in conjunction with a deafening series of cracking gunshots from very close.
Before I can so much as scream, a gloved hand reaches in through the shattered window, wielding a tool of some kind; its purpose is revealed when the person uses it to slice my seatbelt apart.
The door is wrenched open before I can react, hands grip my arm, and yank me bodily out of the vehicle like a rag doll.
I land in a heap in the grass, my head bouncing off the hard earth, my shoulder screaming in protest at the way I was yanked.
I've never been one to go down without a fight—NOT LIKE THAT, get your mind out of the gutter—so I log roll away from the hands, onto my back, and start screaming, kicking, thrashing, and flailing like a madwoman.
My limbs connect with someone, and I'm rewarded with a pissed-off masculine yelp of pain.
Thus encouraged, I kick and thrash and fight all the harder, and again my efforts are rewarded with a thump of my foot against flesh and another wordless expression of pain, followed by what sounds like cursing in some European language I can't place.
A loud crack accompanies a flaring burst of agony and a splintering, coruscating flash of lights; my cheek throbs with flaring pain, and the world spins.
Something cold and hard touches my forehead. "Kick me again, and I paint the street with your blood, bitch-woman." The voice is rough, accented, and vicious.
I go still. "You are making a mistake."
"Oh, you think your precious Caleb Indigo will save you?"
"Who?" I blink away the dancing dots; the face above mine is wide and round and dotted with the scars of a severe chicken pox infection.
The gun, a comically colossal silver hand-cannon, waves at the house. "Him. Indigo. Now—you stand up very slowly and do as I say, or I hurt you more.” He uses the gun to gesture for me to stand up. "I do not like to hurt women, so do not give me a reason."
"I don't know who you're talking about," I say, even as my memory niggles at the sound of the name.
"It does not matter what you know or do not know about the man.
" He stares at me with small, dark, porcine eyes set deep in a fleshy face, and that cold, wicked gaze is all the convincing I need to play along, for now.
"You are to come with me." Once I'm on my feet, the man presses the gun to my forehead again.
Never let a kidnapper take you anywhere.
Fight like hell. Once they get you into a car, your chances of survival plummet.
My father's voice echoes in my ear—this was advice given to me the day he dropped me off for my first day of university at Yale…
along with other fun nuggets of wisdom, mostly to do with how not to get raped, kidnapped, murdered, or scammed. Fun guy, my father.
The gun, making an O-shaped indentation in my forehead, however, is a pretty convincing argument for picking the right moment for my resistance. Fight now, and this moon-faced fuck will go all Jackson Pollack with my brains on the concrete. Which doesn't sound like a good time to me.
I keep my hands up and visible. "Okay. Okay. I'll cooperate."
More gunfire echoes from the house—a single crack followed by a short burst from an automatic. Another automatic burst rattles, and another single crack, a second crack, a third, all in short order.
That's not good. At all.
The man's big, fleshy, strong hand clamps onto the back of my neck as if I were a recalcitrant child wandering off in public.
It's a bad move because it pisses me off.
I am easily annoyed, especially by stupidity.
But to truly piss me off? Like actual anger?
That takes a bit more effort. And just for the record, I am an almighty unpleasant bitch when I'm pissed off.
I'm talking unmitigated cuntery. Viciously irrational.
My normal sarcasm seems like High Tea pleasantries.
"Take your hand off of me," I snap. "You will regret this no matter what," I tell the man, glaring up at him with naked fury carved into my features, "But if you put your hand on me again, your regret will be compounded."
He smirks at me derisively. "You think much of yourself, little woman." The gun twists into my forehead, and he clamps down all the harder with his fist around the back of my neck. "Tell me what is or what, hmm?"
If not for the gun, his wrist and elbow would be broken by now. I hold his glare but remain silent, not allowing the pain of his grip to show on my face.
He gives me a little shove as he releases me. "Go. Walk."
"Where?"
He gestures toward the house. "That way. Indigo should be dead by now. You will not enjoy what is next for you, but I will."
Oh dear, I do not like the sound of that.
And who the fuck is Caleb Indigo?
Clearly, he must mean Jakob. But why does that name ring a bell?
I almost owned BDI, a long, long time ago, in another life.
Jakob's words from the day we met echo clearly in my memory.
He almost owned BDI? As far as I know—and I'm CEO, so I have access to our records, as well as my own memory from being part of the company from the age of fourteen—BDI only ever came close to being sold twice.
Once to a corporate raider from Hong Kong who thought bribing my father was a sound business tactic, and once to…
Indigo Enterprises, Incorporated. The first time was when I was in high school, a freshman, maybe a sophomore.
I only vaguely remember any of it other than overhearing my father ranting to my mother about some shady Chinese asshole who thought he could bribe Father into selling at disadvantageous terms.
The second time, I remember much more clearly.
I was home from Yale, and Father held a business meeting in his home office on a Sunday morning.
This was unusual because he tried very hard, especially after Mother's death, to be at home with me on the weekends, and even after I left for college, he kept the habit of not working weekends.
He wore sweats and ratty old shorts, played squash with his friends, and barbecued.
He never, ever took meetings at home. So when he came down in a three-piece suit, saying he had an important meeting and could I please keep quiet for a couple of hours, I knew something was up.
I eavesdropped, obviously. I heard Father's voice, and another. A deep, smooth, powerful, and cold voice, carefully accentless, polished, elegant, and sophisticated. I'd never heard a voice like that. I remember thinking, I could listen to that voice read the phone book.
I could only catch snatches and fragments of the conversation, but I heard the name Mr. Indigo and Indigo Enterprises several times.
Now, I mentally overlay the voice from my memory against Jakob's, add in his own claim that he nearly owned my father's—and now my—company, and I can only come up with the reality that Caleb Indigo is Jakob…
and I am only now realizing I don't know his last name.
Or his real name. Or much of anything about him at all.
Except for a few interesting tidbits, I suppose.
He used to be worth billions—and, assuming he is or was Caleb Indigo, that tracks.
Indigo Enterprises was a massive company in New York, with holdings across the five boroughs, as well as a finger in NYC telecom infrastructure, data management, corporate acquisitions, and who knows what else.
I vaguely remember reading an article in…
oh god….Business Insider? Barron's?—something like that—about Caleb Indigo and his mysterious persona and freakish success rate in business gambles.
He had a penchant for knowing which way the wind was going to blow when almost no one else did, the article said.
So it would make sense that he'd be worth billions.
And I also remember the shock that rippled through NYC—and the wider business world as a whole—when a car bomb took his life so unexpectedly…
and randomly. The speculation was that a disgruntled corporate owner whose business had been acquired, dismantled, and discarded by Indigo Enterprises had taken revenge on Caleb Indigo; no one had ever been able to find a single scrap of evidence linking anyone to the explosion, however. A perfect murder, one might say.
Now it is much clearer—Caleb Indigo faked his death, gave away the bulk of his massive fortune to the woman from the street—Isabel de la Maria Vega Navarro Ryder.
Philanthropist, queen of the Manhattan socialites, and Jakob's ex.
Or Caleb's ex? Is Jakob his real name or Caleb?
Neither? Why did he fake his death? Indigo Enterprises was on the rise when he "died," showing no signs of slowing or stopping.
He could have been bigger than Musk, Buffet, Bezos, all of them.
He faked his death and vanished off the face of the earth… why? Gave his fortune to his ex…why?
Some things regarding Jakob's reticence to discuss his past make more sense, but on the whole, I'm left with far more questions than answers.