Gone Black (35 page)

Around the end of the first week of the new Mr. and Mrs. Black's luxurious Hawaiian honeymoon trip, Marcel Soquet sat in an isolated country house outside the small town of Bellac, just north of Limoges, France. He was alone there, and he was depressed to the depths of his tortured soul, so overwhelmed with grief and sadness that he could not function properly anymore. He had lost everything. Everything that meant anything to him. His only son. His beloved daughter. His men. And he still suffered physically from the heart attack he had had upon discovering Max's mangled, destroyed body.

Goddamn Nicholas Black! And his woman. God, she was even worse than he was. Claire Morgan had murdered Max. Oh, God, he missed his boy so much. And poor defective little Jaxy. They were both dead, and he couldn't even claim his daughter's body without being arrested by Italian authorities. He was so full of rage and despair and grief that he could barely stand to stay hidden in his safe house and let his body heal. He wanted them dead. Both of them. Now. No waiting. No planning. Just shot down like the dogs they were.

Soquet had already put out feelers among his friends and colleagues in his criminal spheres, trying to find out where they went on their honeymoon. Then he would get a contract killer easily enough and make sure they didn't live long together as a married couple. He didn't care how he did it. But a grenade launcher might be the best thing, shot into their car or into the window of their honeymoon suite. It could be done and that would be fast and easy and deadly.

Soquet had heard all about their wedding. He had seen photographs in the tabloids that the paparazzi had managed to get from inside that big hotel on the lake in Missouri. He had seen pictures of the woman in her bridal gown and read all about how she looked like Grace Kelly had looked on her wedding day in Monaco. How beautiful she was. How handsome he was. What a lovely power couple they made. It was all over the news, and he cringed at the commentators' delight that Black had survived his abduction by terrorists and was safe and sound and able to go through with his wedding. Even more reason that Soquet should make them one extremely dead newlywed couple. And if it happened while they were still on their honeymoon, all the better.

He poured himself another finger of whiskey and drained the short glass, then poured himself another. The pain in his chest was awful. His heart was bad. He might not live much longer. He wanted to stay alive long enough to see Claire Morgan and Nick Black dead. He wouldn't let himself die until he did see that. Shifting in his chair, he grimaced and held his chest, and he caught a glimpse of the framed family portrait sitting on his desktop. He and Lorraine and their two children. All dead now. All but him.

Oh, God. They were all dead because of Nicholas Black. Marcel's pain, his despair, his despondence, all of it was because of him, and he had never been filled with such utter hatred and thirst for revenge. Even before, when he went to such great lengths, such detailed planning to find Black and end his life, to make him pay for Lorraine, never had he felt this degree of bitterness and determination to get him, and now it was that way for both of them. He wanted them shot down and then their bodies burned.

When his cell phone suddenly buzzed and broke the extreme quiet of the room, Soquet jumped in the chair, startled. Now, after all that had happened, he was always filled with nerves and the fear of the unknown. He quickly punched On. “Yes.”

A voice he knew very well spoke softly. A trusted American cohort with whom he often did business. “We found them. They're in Hawaii. At a private estate on Kauai. Hard to get to but not impossible.”

“You will be well rewarded for providing this information.”

The line went dead, and Soquet ended the call and placed the cell phone down on the desk. He smiled, quite pleased, and then he searched through his mind for which of his preferred hit men would be the most suitable for a double murder. When he heard a slight noise out in the hallway, he looked up quickly, the phone back in his hands. That's when the small black hole opened up right in the center of his forehead. Marcel Soquet was dead before he could form another thought. He fell back into the chair, his head leaning on the cushion. He looked as if he had simply fallen asleep in his chair.

A big man dressed in dark clothes and with dark greasepaint smeared all over his face walked out of the shadows in the hallway and stood in the threshold. He waited there for a few seconds, listening for any sounds. Then he walked with light and silent footfalls into the room and over to Soquet's desk. He raised his silenced .45 and put two more quick slugs into the man's heart. Will Novak relaxed and let his gun arm hang down against the side of his leg. He stared down at Marcel Soquet's open and very dead eyes.

“Nobody tortures my friends the way you did and gets away with it,” he said to Soquet's staring corpse. “Not ever. Not while I'm still breathing.”

Novak turned and headed outside. He walked out into the cool night air and found the deep shadows and looked up at the starry night sky. His mind returned to that day not so long ago when they'd finally located and stormed the old fortress in Sicily. That's when they had found the tapes that documented Black's torture sessions. The films had been hard to stomach, especially for his friends to watch, and they had not shown them to Nick. Not yet. But Booker kept them, just in case Black ever wanted to analyze the techniques they used on him. Novak didn't think he would, not for a while, anyway. Black was gonna need time and space to get over the hellish ordeal. As a shrink, he would know what he needed. Claire would help him. They would help each other. As bad as those tapes had been, however, Novak hadn't seen the worst until he cleared the tunnels under the fortress and found Max Soquet's cell phone, the one in which Claire had made her desperate call to them for help. Novak had stood there, alone, in that dark, cold place, and recharged the cell with the portable charger he always carried.

Novak had found Max's video of his cowardly and vicious assault on Claire. He had watched in utter disgust what the big psychopath had tried to do to her. He had seen with his own eyes how hard Claire had fought to stay alive, how desperate she'd been. As hardened and jaded as Novak was now, the video actually turned his stomach. He had heard the threats, seen the attack that Claire had gone through while locked inside that room with Max. And he had seen the intimidation, and he had seen how she reacted after she had killed Max in such a terrible and brutal way. He had watched, sickened, as she scrabbled back away from the bleeding corpse, panting and horrified and cradling her butchered hand. But she had done it. She had gone through virtual hell to get herself and Black out of that prison.

But now, after tonight, Claire was safe, thank God, but she would probably never be quite the same again. He had taken Max's cell phone and kept it, without telling Booker and Holliday what he had seen. He didn't think Claire would want anybody to see it, or ever want to see it again herself, or even think about it again. Novak shuddered to think what Black would do if he ever saw what that guy had put her through. But Novak knew what Black would do. He would go after Marcel Soquet with everything he had, and he would kill him, just the way Novak had done tonight. But now, all three of their tormentors were dead. None of them would ever harm Claire or Black or anybody else again. Novak had taken care of it, once and for all. He had no regrets about what he'd just done. He was happy to be the one to do it. Tonight, he had made the world a better place.

Even better, Claire and Black could start their marriage without worrying about somebody trying to kill them again or ever have to think about the evil son of a bitch sitting back there stone dead in that chair. One more terrorist dead. One more man down, a man who'd caused the deaths of countless men, women, and children. Blown them to bits, tortured, murdered, and destroyed their families. Just like similar men had murdered Novak's own wife, Sarah, and their children, the day they'd brought down the South Tower of the World Trade Center over ten years ago.

Outside the country house, in the cool and quiet night, he stood alone under the twinkling stars in that ink black sky and turned on his cell phone. He punched in a number and waited. After a few moments, he connected with Black's voice mail.

“It's done. You can quit worrying now and relax. Tell Claire I said hello and to stay gone as long as she wants and not to worry about the agency. I'll take care of everything. Hope you guys have fun and get some rest.”

Satisfied with a good night's work, Novak hung up and then turned off the phone. He crossed the grassy yard and melted into the dark shadows.

She was last seen in New Orleans. Her father, a rich,
powerful arms dealer, believes she was abducted. For ransom.
For revenge. For reasons too horrible to imagine.

 

Claire Morgan, recent former cop turned private investigator,
and her new partner begin their search at the girl's school,
where a violent junkie attacks Claire with scissors,
raves of “demons and devils,” and then takes her own life.

 

Sinister clues lead Claire on a twisted trail through the bars
and bayous of New Orleans to a bloodstained altar in Paris.
Vast, secret, and powerful, it is a world that few enter or escape.
And Claire is going in—
the devil be damned . . .

 

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