Highways & Hostages (3 page)

Finn quickly ran through his options. He could tell von Rothschild the truth—that Julian sent them to steal back the item von Rothschild originally stole from him. He could say they were robbing the place, or—

Finn raised his pistol and fired, intentionally missing. The shot rang out, and von Rothschild dropped to the ground. His driver immediately began firing in retaliation. Finn dove behind the one closed front door of the house. He peered around it, his gun cocked. The driver advanced toward the house with von Rothschild close on his heels.

Finn aimed at the arm with which the driver held his gun. He pulled the trigger and the bullet ripped into the driver’s shoulder, propelling him backward and knocking von Rothschild off balance. Finn quickly fired again, sending a bullet in von Rothschild’s direction. The bullet hit its mark. Von Rothschild crumpled to the ground, holding his bleeding right leg.

“Christoph!” Elizabeth screeched from behind the open car door. She turned her rage-filled eyes on Finn. “You bastard!” she screamed. “Someone call for help!”

“Elizabeth, dear, calm down and call Dr. Albrecht,” von Rothschild commanded through clenched teeth. “Go after him, Tobias.”

The driver cradled his injured arm and continued approaching the house, cautiously this time. Finn sent another shot around the door. When Tobias ducked out of the way, Finn took off into the rotunda.

Alex raced down the stairs with the much-coveted chalice.
All of this over a stupid silver cup
, Finn thought. “Out back!” he shouted.

As Alex reached the bottom of the stairs, Finn fired at the doorway. He put the safety on his gun and took off for the sitting room. A set of French doors led onto the veranda and out into the backyard. Finn reached the doors at the same time a gun went off. He turned back to see Alex doubled over, clutching his torso. Alex stumbled toward the sitting room. Another shot rang out, the bullet hitting the doorjamb next to Alex’s head. Without hesitating, Finn ran over to Alex and hoisted him up. He wanted to check how badly Alex was injured, but they didn’t have that kind of time.

With shots pinging all around him, Finn half dragged, half carried Alex through the yard, his grandfather’s dog tags drumming a beat against his chest. “No soldier gets left behind,” the old man had repeated over and over throughout Finn’s childhood. As a kid, Finn imagined his grandfather pulling wounded comrades to safety in World War II as an American flag waved proudly under a cloudless blue sky and an eagle soared overhead. His grandfather had been loyal, faithful. He was a hero. Young Finn wanted to be a hero, but his life had ultimately detoured from that path. At least nobody could deny Adult Finn’s loyalty.

He adjusted his hold on Alex, breathing hard. Finn quickened his pace. “You’re gonna be alright. It’s just a flesh wound.”

Stella pulled her badly rusted 1968 orange VW Beetle up to a beige-and-brown single-wide trailer, which, like the car, had seen better days. She used a hand to still the fuzzy dice dangling from the rearview mirror, glanced around the car, and smiled. The upholstery mimicked the shell of a ladybug—red with black dots.

She got out of the car—affectionately named Josie—and patted it fondly on the hood. Dragging herself up the rickety wooden steps onto the postage stamp–sized porch, Stella frowned at the Gerber daisies wilting in planters on the narrow railing. She sighed, unlocked the front door, and entered.

She’d been renting the mobile home for two years, and despite the fact that she’d shampooed the carpet within an inch of its life and scrubbed down the walls with bleach, the stale smoke and flowery perfume of past residents faintly invaded her living space. Stella was forced to find other ways to make the trailer feel like home. Not an easy thing to do on a shoestring budget.

The first few months after she’d signed the lease, the trailer remained mostly empty. Stella spent her free time scouring Craigslist and visiting yard sales, determined to find pieces that spoke to her. Two years later, she’d finally amassed a jumble of pieces that didn’t quite match, but worked with one another. She was proud of her hard work; it was her own version of shabby-chic.

“Phoebe? Are you here?” Stella called, flicking on the lights. She removed the elastics holding her pigtails and shook out her hair as she walked into the middle of the trailer.

She stopped in front of the TV and spied a Post-it note that read “Out. Back later.”

Grinding her teeth, Stella kicked off her shoes and stretched out on the shabby floral couch. She picked up her cell phone and dialed Derek’s number. As she waited for an answer, she massaged an aching foot.

“Hey, fiancée,” a smooth baritone greeted her. The tension in Stella’s body immediately started to ease. She pictured Derek sitting in his favorite plaid armchair with his dark hair curling onto his forehead, blue eyes sparkling mischievously behind his glasses.

Stella sighed. “Hey.”

“What’s wrong? Is it Phoebe again?”

“Gee, how did you guess? She showed up at work earlier today to ask me for money. Now she’s wandered off again. At least this time she left a note saying she was out. Can you please remind me why I agreed to do this?”

“Well, the note is progress, right? And you agreed to it because you are an amazing woman with a giant heart who wants to bond with her half sister. You know so little about her.”

“I’ve decided I don’t want to know her,” Stella declared. She picked up a lacy pillow from the couch and flung it across the room.

“Sweetheart, give it time. It’s been, what, a few weeks?” There was laughter in his voice.

Groaning, she picked up a thick white binder from the scarred top of the coffee table and reclined against the back of the sofa. “I don’t want to talk about her anymore. Let’s talk about the wedding.”

Derek let out a groan of his own. “I don’t want to talk about the wedding. Let’s talk about something else.”

“Okay. We can talk about how I’m dreading having brunch with your mother on Sunday. That woman totally hates me.” Hate was an understatement. Recently Stella had started having nightmares about Diane Warner standing up and objecting during the marriage ceremony. “Do we have a part like that in our ceremony? If so, we need to take that out.”

“She does not hate you.” He paused. “She just takes time to warm up to people.”

Stella pushed her hair out of her face. “We’ve been dating for a year and a half.”

“I know,” he sighed. He continued with forced optimism, “She’s going to come around. She just hasn’t spent enough time with you to see you for the awesome person you are.”

“Oh, that’s what it must be! Of course it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that I’m just a lowly bar waitress.”

Derek groaned again. “Stella, don’t start. I’d rather talk about the wedding.”

Stella bit her lip and thought about keeping up the argument. Instead she flipped a page in her binder. “For the reception, I was thinking of a chocolate fountain—” She stopped midsentence as the front door of the mobile home flew open. Phoebe muttered a greeting in passing as she slunk toward the guest bedroom.

“Derek, I’m gonna have to call you back. Phoebe just got here.”

“Go easy on her, Stell. You remember what it was like to be a teenager.”

Stella rolled her eyes and murmured a goodbye before clicking off the call. She got to her feet with a weary sigh and traced Phoebe’s path. She rapped once on the bedroom door before flinging it open.

“Where have you been?” she asked. Her jaw clenched as she forced her arms to remain down at her sides.

Phoebe kicked off her boots and pulled a hoodie over her head. She turned her back to Stella. “I left a note.”

“Yes, I saw your note, but I told you to ask me before you go out somewhere. Just because I let you stay here doesn’t mean you can traipse around the city doing God knows what with God knows who!”

Phoebe spun around. “What am I supposed to do? Bring the few friends I’ve made here to the Leaky Stein so you can ask, ‘Do you want fries with that?’ and then have everyone laugh at me? I don’t think so.”

Stella flushed. “Phoebe, I wouldn’t embarrass you like that. I remember what it was like to be your age—”

“You don’t know anything about me! Okay, so we share a father. Besides that we have NOTHING IN COMMON. The only reason I’m even here this summer is because my parents decided to go off on some romantic getaway and didn’t have anywhere else to dump me,” Phoebe shouted. She took a menacing step toward Stella, who backed out into the hallway.

“Phoebe—”

The door slammed in Stella’s face. She sighed. “That went well.”

Hours later, before the sun rose, Finn fidgeted in Julian Beckham’s office. He drummed his fingers on one knee and absently played with the dog tags around his neck. Julian, father of Alex and Billy, as well as Finn’s boss, sat behind his imposing mahogany desk with steepled fingers.

The office wasn’t for the faint of heart. Neither was Julian’s temper.

Julian’s desk sat in front of a massive marble fireplace. Built-in mahogany bookshelves lined one wall of the office, and an enormous saltwater aquarium, populated with tropical fish and coral, covered half of the opposite wall. Julian’s most-prized art pieces perched on shelves surrounding the aquarium.

Finn shifted uneasily in his chocolate leather armchair, anxiously waiting for Julian to say something. Billy slouched in a matching chair next to him, studying his nails. The moments trickled by, and Julian continued to regard them stonily.

Julian Beckham was fifty-nine, but still looked and acted like he was in his early forties, despite a head full of iron-gray hair and the crow’s feet lining his hazel eyes. Finn hoped to look half as distinguished when he reached that age.

Julian began to twist the signet ring on his middle finger, which meant one thing: Finn was royally screwed. “You lot are a bunch of no-good idiots,” Julian said in a measured tone. His anger made his plummy British accent more pronounced. “I told you to think, prepare, think again, and
then
act. Instead you not only shot one man, but two. And now my son is recovering from a gunshot wound to the abdomen in a room down the hall. Thank God I decided to keep Dr. Maynard on retainer.”

“Well, when you put it like that—” Finn cut in.

“I
did
put it like that, Jacob,” Julian said archly.

“You know, Dad, if I had been there, we’d be having a totally different conversation. But all they wanted me to do was drive the getaway car,” Billy commented, not bothering to look up from his hands.

“William, this job required a certain…finesse. A finesse I find you lack most days.”

Billy looked up and crossed his arms. “So shooting two people is an example of finesse? Oh, okay. Just wanted to clear that up.”

“William, leave,” Julian commanded, raising his eyes to the ceiling. It seemed to Finn like he was praying to a divine power to give him the strength necessary to deal with the idiots in front of him.

Billy rose from his chair, biting his lip for a moment. The clenching and unclenching of his fists by his sides told Finn he wanted to argue further. Instead he glared at his father before turning his glare on Finn, then stalked out of the room.

Julian’s eyes surveyed the treasures on his wall. He walked over and plucked an ornate silver serving tray from its display stand and scrutinized it. “This tray is almost purely silver. It’s from the colonial period. My contact found it off the coast of Honduras. Just look at this intricate scrollwork.” His fingers danced over the silver. “Some would say it’s priceless. But you and I both know that everything has a price.” He gently positioned the serving tray in its proper place and perched on the edge of his desk.

“Jacob Finley Gilroy, when I first found you, it was like meeting my younger self. Something told me you were a kindred spirit.” Julian paused. “A hard worker with an ambitious gleam in his eye.”

Finn looked up resolutely and sat a little taller.

“When you first started working for me, you were meticulous. You followed every instruction to the letter, and would do anything it took to get the job done. If I had an idea on how to execute something, you came up with two more of them. Your resourcefulness is an asset to this organization—
was
an asset to this organization.”

Finn jerked his eyes back to Julian’s.

“Jacob, you’ve gotten complacent. With so many successes under your belt, you’ve let yourself go, let yourself become reckless. And tonight you were just idiotic. I’ve an injured son, and you’ve brought a shitload of trouble to the Brotherhood.” Julian stood and began pacing back and forth in front of Finn.

“I started this business from nothing. I was a poor graduate student studying art history at the University of Basel in Switzerland. Ever since I could remember, I wanted to work for an auction house like Sotheby’s or be a museum curator. Going to Basel was a means to that end. But as I learned more about the art world and the world of private collections, I realized I could make much more money going into business for myself.” Julian regarded Finn for a moment before looking over his head and losing himself in his story.

“When I first started out, it was just two other students from the program—one of them being Christoph von Rothschild—and myself. We worked together to find and sell artifacts to interested collectors. It wasn’t the most ethical work, but it was lucrative. The fear of getting caught and a gnawing conscience led our third partner to quit the business. It was then that Christoph and I pledged loyalty to one another and formed the Brotherhood of Basel, as you know it today. Did you know that, Jacob?”

Finn swallowed. “I didn’t. I knew you and von Rothschild were friends for a long time, and there was some kind of dispute that ripped your friendship apart, but I didn’t know he helped you create the Brotherhood.”

“Yes,” Julian said. “Once upon a time, Christoph had one of the rings we wear now as symbols of our loyalty to each other.”

Finn looked down at the signet ring on his pinkie. The Basel coat of arms was engraved in its face. “So what happened?”