Chapter 15 #3
I took the passenger seat as the others climbed into the two rear rows.
Most of us had left our packs on the plane, since it would be remaining here until we were ready to head home, and only had our weapons on us.
The twins were sharing an apple between them that they’d gotten from a fruit basket on the plane.
I’d only had a swig of a whiskey to keep me warm and some leftover pie this morning.
The drive to Weatherby Dalton-Jones IV’s estate was mostly in silence.
We had no idea what we were about to find.
Given what we’d seen in Amsterdam and Russia, though, our hopes weren’t high that Nishi would be in good health and standing.
She was going to need medical attention, and likely more than Tommy could provide her.
There was a good chance she was also hooked on drugs to keep her compliant.
And it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibilities that she was pregnant too.
I’d had a lot of sex in my life, and it was well established that I was a bit of an asshole. I was most certainly a murderer. I was a thief on occasion, though not so much recently. An outsider looking at me would call me a crook, a criminal. The scum of the world.
But I had never, would never, take a woman against her will. To be bought and sold like livestock? It was dehumanizing, but to be used as nothing more than an object for another’s pleasure?
We’d done some questionable storylines in shoots. The prospect of force in sex could be very arousing, but there was a big difference between a roleplaying game between consenting adults and buying a woman on the Black Market, knowing you were going to rape her.
There was a special place in luaahi for Weatherby Dalton-Jones IV. I didn’t know if luaahi was the same place as Hell, but I’d sure as fuck make the Wall Street tycoon’s last minutes a living hell. Just in case.
The fact that he wasn’t going to be home when we got there was just bad timing of arriving early in the morning instead of late at night. Neo did not believe the man had any hired security, which was too bad. I was itching for a fight.
However, records did show that the man was married. We had no idea if the wife was aware of her husband’s depravities or not. I would make the decision as to what to do with the wife once we figured out if she was just a gold digger or a willing partner.
As much as it chafed to know I’d have to wait to get my hands on Weatherby Dalton-Jones IV, the more sensible side of me knew it was best to get into his estate, get Nishi, and then exact retribution after she was being medically attended to.
Still didn’t like it though. I was out for blood, and that was no secret.
The house itself reminded me of Bacon’s.
The biggest difference was that there wasn’t a vastness of land surrounding the large estate.
Its small lawn was in pristine condition, but it was like there was an imaginary spotlight on the property.
A look at how rich I am vibe that was beyond pretentious.
Whereas Bacon’s home was set back amongst trees and land, this home was out front and center.
Four stories, a rooftop indoor pool with a glass dome, and a marble staircase.
I hadn’t even met the man, and I knew just by looking at his house that he was a giant douchebag. Add in a human trafficker, and the man was just begging to have his balls bitten off by a triggerfish.
There was no place to hide the SUV. We couldn’t sneak up on the estate or hide from the neighbors if we came at it from the front.
The back wasn’t much better, but at least it had some coverage.
What the fuck was up with suburbia? It was like they were having separation anxiety from the city life and were too afraid to put any distance between their homes.
Mind, I was about to move twelve club members into a bunkhouse across from my house, or where my house had been. I really didn’t have room to talk anymore.
Pun intended.
We checked for an alarm system first. Depending on how he was holding Nishi, he might have the property rigged to tell him if someone was trying to escape.
But there wasn’t anything. There was evidence of an old system, but nothing active.
That made me wonder if we were missing something. Like maybe the old system was a ploy.
Reacher joined us. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with having a stranger at my back, but we were short on time and offending Hurricane would only delay my returning home. Fuck.
As Spirit slipped into the four-car garage, Tangaloa showed me a message from Neo saying that satellite imagery showed no one in the house.
For good measure, I held my middle finger up at the sky.
Satellite imagery could suck my dick. Nishi was here; I knew it in my bones.
We just had to find her. Whatever heat sensor or whatever the fuck the satellite used to detect people must be blocked by something.
If Superman couldn’t see through lead, maybe Big Brother in the sky couldn’t either.
The shortest entry point from our cover was a small window on the left side of the house. Spirit unlocked it from inside, and one by one we slipped across the manicured grass to enter. Last thing we needed was some nosy Karen getting in our way or calling the police.
There was no fucking way Weatherby Dalton-Jones IV was going to jail.
As soon as Reaper was through the window, we closed it and had a look around. We were in a fancy-ass dining room. Why the fuck was it necessary to have a table for ten with full place settings for a house where, officially, only one man and one woman lived?
Fucking ridiculous.
In addition to no security, Neo also couldn’t find evidence that he had working staff.
No housekeeper, cook, butler… The sort of domestic servant that someone might expect for a man of wealth.
Yet, the house was immaculate. There was nothing out of place, no dust on the tables or marks on the floor.
Who was cleaning? I highly doubted it was a man who had monogrammed dinner plates with WDJ overlapping a giant roman numeral IV.
From the dining room, we journeyed into what could only be described as a sitting room, due to the overabundance of couches and high-back chairs. The carpeting was white. Not off-white or a cream, but white like a blanket of freshly fallen snow.
We moved on. From the large kitchen to another living room, to the massive foyer and up the stairs to an ungodly number of bedrooms. We found a trophy room celebrating every accomplishment Weatherby Dalton-Jones IV had ever won and what looked to be a shrine dedicated to a dog.
There was an indoor golfing room, an elevator, and a Japanese sand garden and koi pond.
But no Nishi.
No sign of the wife either.
The fucking satellite was right: no one was in this house.
I sent Spirit outside to discreetly check the yard. Maybe there was a storm cellar or something outside that we missed. A shed, or fuck, a treehouse. I was desperate at this point. We’d followed the trail, and the breadcrumbs led here. What was I fucking missing?
“Check the floorboards, tear the walls apart,” I ordered the others. “There has to be something here.”
Tangaloa grabbed my arm as I made to storm past. I was going to find a hammer or a sledgehammer or something and tear this house apart. “And if she isn’t here?” he asked quietly. “We have no other leads.”
My jaw ticked. “You think I don’t fucking know that?” I pulled my arm from his grip. “Find her!” I ordered loud enough for the entire house to hear.
It was a good half hour later before the twins shouted they found something in the library.
I had to admit, the damn thing was impressively massive.
Stacks of floor to ceiling bookshelves in a large U-shape.
But just like with the rest of the house, there wasn’t a speck of dust in sight. The entire room felt almost too clean.
“Check this out,” one of the twins said, gesturing to the book shelf behind them.
“It’s like a fucking escape room,” the other one added.
The first pulled a book from the shelf. “All of these are real.”
“But over here,” the other one said, “they’re fake. Most of these are just a front plate.” He pulled off a section of books that was a piece of plastic or maybe cardboard that was just the covers. It was hollow behind, showing off an empty book case.
“I don’t get it.” Tangaloa looked around. “It’s a fake?”
The twins shrugged. “A good part of it,” they said together.
“Start pulling everything down,” I said. “He’s hiding something in here, and I doubt it’s just a false fondness for classic literature.”
We started pulling all the books down. Bottom to top, shelf by shelf. This was taking fucking too long. I didn’t care if the man came home from work while we were still searching, but the longer it took us to find what he was hiding, the longer Nishi was a captive, a victim.
Beyond that Lu was counting on me, I had an obligation to Nishi. She was one of my people who had been taken from my island under my nose.
Tommy was bringing a handful of real books over to where we were dumping them in the middle of the room. When he placed them on top of a previous stack, the entire thing toppled over into an end table beside the couch, making the lamp fall. Only…it didn’t.
There was no crash or shatter of broken ceramic. Instead the lamp tipped backwards and there was a mechanical click beneath the floorboards. The decorative rug shifted under the bookshelves. It wasn’t much. But enough for us to notice.
I wasn’t the only one who climbed down from a ladder as Tommy quickly removed the fallen books from the table that blocked our view of the lamp.
The bottom was connected to the table by a hinge. Tommy lifted his eyebrows at us before reaching forward and pressing the lamp back all the way.