The Heist

  “And yet here they are,” Dumah said. “How did they escape?”

  “I’m sure there’s a good explanation,” Griffin said. “You keep an eye on her crew. I’ll watch her.”

  Griffin stepped into the warm, shallow water and offered his hand to the woman as she climbed out of the boat.

  “Oh, thank God,” she said. “A friendly face. For a minute there, I was afraid we were trading one bad situation for another. What if we’d come ashore on an island occupied by pirates?”

  “Fortunately, that’s not the case,” Griffin said, leading her to the beach and leaving her two crew members to fend for themselves. “I’m Daniel Dravot and this is my private island. You’re safe here.”

  “That’s a huge relief after what we’ve just been through. I’m Eunice Huffnagle.” She gestured to her two crew members standing a respectful distance away with Dumah and the curious tribespeople. “Willie is my ship’s captain, and Sam is first mate.”

  “Eunice Huffnagle,” Griffin said. “What an unusual name.”

  “I was named after my great-aunt. She went insane one night and killed her mate.” Kate cut her eyes to Nick.

  “Your boat looks like it’s sustained significant damage,” Griffin said. “You don’t have your great-aunt on board, do you?”

  “Goodness, no. We were attacked by pirates,” Kate said. “They came out of nowhere on speedboats and just started shooting at us with machine guns. Luckily, no one was hurt. We have to call the coast guard right away.”

  “There’s no point. There’s nothing the authorities can do.”

  “But those pirates are still out there, waiting to ambush somebody else.”

  “It’s a big sea with a thousand islands, all of it infested with pirates. You escaped. Consider yourself very, very lucky.”

  “So it’s just open season on the tourists.”

  “Only the ones who stray far from civilization and flaunt their wealth and vulnerability.”

  He regretted the remark the instant he made it. Insulting a woman was probably not the best strategy for getting her into bed. But, to his relief, she didn’t seem offended. She shrugged his comment off.

  “I wanted to get away from it all and experience the true Indonesia, not sit around in one of Daddy’s hotels. So I rented this little boat. What’s the point of having lots of money if you don’t spend it?”

  “So true,” Griffin said, trying to sneak a peek down her silky top. “How did you get away from the pirates? Surely you couldn’t have outrun them.”

  “Sam blew up their boat with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.”

  Eunice said it in a casual, offhand sort of way that made it seem as if she was referring to a common yacht accessory.

  “Really?” Griffin looked over her shoulder to Sam, who nodded.

  “Her father is very protective,” Sam said. “You should see what she takes with her when she goes camping.”

  “I may be rich, showy, and irresponsible,” Eunice said, “but I’m never vulnerable.”

  Griffin laughed, truly laughed, for the first time in ages. Eunice was his kind of woman: sexy, smart, and sassy. He hadn’t met anyone like her since he’d fled the United States. And he intended to make the most of the opportunity that had fallen into his lap, right where it belonged.

  “You still must be pretty shaken up after such a terrifying experience,” he said to her.

  “To be honest, I couldn’t stop shaking until you took my hand to help me out of the boat.”

  Holy crap, Griffin thought. It kept getting better and better. He had a sure thing, and she wasn’t even ugly. She was pretty. Okay, so maybe her hair was sort of chopped off, but it was probably hard to get a good cut in Indonesia.

  “I hope you’ll let me be of even greater comfort to you,” he said. “I insist that you stay here as my guest for a few days. That will give your crew a chance to clean up your yacht and make absolutely sure there isn’t any serious damage. You will find the true Indonesia right here, on this remote paradise, along with the finest amenities, a world-class chef, and the best wine cellar in the region.”

  Eunice Huffnagle flicked a look at her yacht and then at her crew while she considered his invitation, and Griffin seized the opportunity to watch a drop of sweat roll down her chest and disappear into her cleavage. Ordinarily he prided himself on his self-control, but he’d been on the island way too long, and he was afraid to look down and check himself out for fear he was busting out of his shorts.

  Eunice turned back to Griffin. “Thank you, Mr. Dravot, I would be delighted. I’ve never spent the night on an uncharted desert isle before.”

  “We’re on all the navigational charts.”

  “Shhhh.” Eunice looped her arm around his and pressed her breast against him. “Don’t ruin the fantasy.”

  “Call me Daniel,” he said, and led her away.

  Griffin loaded Kate into the golf cart and drove her down a narrow sandy trail, about fifty yards inland from the beach, to his house.

  “We have electricity from solar power,” he said. “Plus gas-powered generators in a pinch. Freshwater is collected in cisterns, and there’s a backup desalinization system. There’s also a working farm where we grow rice, fruit, and vegetables, till the land with water buffalo, and raise pigs for slaughter.”

  “But do you have HBO?” she asked.

  “We have all the comforts and conveniences of your yacht,” Griffin said. He pointed to the small mountain that was in the dead center of the island. “I’ve got satellite dishes and radio antennas on top of that mountain. And I have a satellite phone, in case I want to have a pizza delivered.”

  She gestured to the wooden effigies staring out at them from alcoves carved into the mountain. “What are those?”

  “Dead people. It’s a Torajan tribal thing. When someone dies, they carve a likeness of him out of jackwood, use pineapple fibers for his hair, and dress him in the deceased’s clothes and jewelry. The effigy hangs out at the funeral like an invited guest and then gets stowed with the coffin in this big cave, sort of a Torajan mausoleum, in the mountain. Once the coffin and body fall apart, the bones are gathered up and stuck up there on the mountain face with the effigy. It has something to do with them believing their ancestors all came to earth by climbing down some giant bamboo ladder in the cosmos. Maybe this helps them climb back up. But I’d rather not have them staring at me while I eat.”

  His large two-story house was on stilts, with big picture windows and verandas under a massive bamboo roof that reminded her of the bow of the Bugis schooners she’d seen in Benoa Harbor.

  “Then why did you build your house so most of the windows face the mountain and not the sea?”

  “I was required by the government to honor tribal customs, which demand that all homes face north, in the direction of Puang Matua, the creator of all things who built the first tongkonan, or master’s house, in heaven.”

  “You believe that stuff?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “The only thing I believe in is money.”

  “Then we have something in common,” she said. “How many people are on your island?”

  She wanted to know how many people she’d be up against if she ended up having to take Griffin against his will.

  “A dozen, including me,” he said. “There are eight members of the tribe, the chef and his wife, who runs the house, and Dumah, who I suppose you could call my property manager.”

  And head of security, Kate thought. She could tell by the way he scrutinized them as they approached the island and by the telltale bulge under his shirt where he hid his gun. So far, it seemed that Dumah was her only real obstacle, and she was confident she could neutralize him.

  “Can I see the rest of the island?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  He drove her past the terraced rice paddies to the river, where a herd of water buffalo rolled in the mud, and then down to the eastern cove, where his fifty-three-foot yacht and a sing
le-engine high-winged seaplane were tied to a long, narrow dock. The seaplane was like the small aircraft she’d taken to Mount Athos, only this one had two pontoons mounted under the fuselage and wasn’t being used as a henhouse.

  Two more options for a quick escape, Kate thought. If Willie could fly a turboprop, she could probably handle a seaplane.

  “A sport yacht and a plane,” she said. “You get around in style and with speed.”

  “We’re remote, but with those little toys I’m never far from the action.”

  “I’m sure a man like you gets as much as he wants,” she said. “What do you do for a living?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” he said as he steered the golf cart back to the house.

  “Me neither. Rich parents?”

  “Even better. Dead rich parents. I shrewdly invest their money and live off the proceeds.”

  “Maybe you could teach me a thing or two about that.”

  “There are all kinds of things I could teach you,” he said, his leering smile and suggestive inflection making it clear where his thoughts were going.

  “I’m filled with anticipation,” she said. Gak, she thought, what a creep!

  Griffin pulled up to the house and led her past the totem of water buffalo horns to the front door, which was surrounded by carvings of vines of some kind, and over the door were the words “Not God, Not Devil, But Man.” He told her about the horns, how they and his herd of water buffalo were important signs of wealth and power respected by the Torajans. Moreover, they encouraged prosperity for all those symbolically under his roof.

  She gestured to the sign. “What’s that?”

  “A reminder to keep humble.”

  “And the vines?”

  “Fast-growing waterweeds, a Torajan symbol of fertility.”

  “You’ve got a lot of weeds and horns on your place,” she said. “So much for remaining humble.”

  “There’s a difference between being humble and stating an indisputable fact,” he said.

  “Which is that you’re loaded in more ways than one.”

  Griffin sent her another suggestive smile. “You’re very perceptive.”

  Just stick a fork in my eye, Kate thought. It would be less painful than this.

  The interior of the house was modest but elegantly colonial, almost what she imagined the Raffles hotel in Singapore must look like, based on Nick’s description. There was lots of rattan furniture and white paneling that stood out against the polished dark hardwood floors. The hot, humid air was pushed around to good effect with ceiling fans, the blades fashioned to resemble palm fronds.

  Griffin showed her his library, which was windowless and filled with first editions. It was two floors tall, with a winding staircase to the second level, and ladders on rails made it possible to reach the highest shelves. Man-size leather armchairs were spread throughout the room. Antique side tables and old-fashioned reading lamps had been placed beside the leather chairs. An ornate mahogany desk was tucked into a back corner. There were only two items on the desk. One was a phone that Kate assumed was the satellite phone. The other item was a reinforced computer case that looked sturdy enough to withstand being run over by a truck or tossed off a cliff. Presumably the computer was locked up inside the case.

  “I have first editions of Rudyard Kipling’s entire body of work, as well as novels by Ernest Hemingway, Somerset Maugham, and John Steinbeck, to name a few. The room has an environmental control system to protect the books from the moisture in the air,” Griffin told her.

  She didn’t care about the books. She was focused on the laptop in the gorilla-proof case. It was probably how he contacted his bank, and it might be possible to find his codes buried somewhere on the hard drive.

  “You don’t strike me as the bookish sort, Daniel.”

  “I had cancer as a child and spent years in and out of the hospital. There wasn’t anything to do but read, and all they had around were the old classics. Those books took me away from that bleak hospital to wonderful, exotic places full of adventure and intrigue. I vowed that if I beat the cancer, I would find one of those places and make it mine. I did and I have.”

  Kate didn’t know why Griffin collected old books, nor did she care, but she knew he’d never had cancer. His father had been a salesman for Kirby Homes, which built subdivisions throughout the western United States. Derek’s mother was a stay-at-home wife and an alcoholic. Many years later, the couple invested their modest life savings with their son and he’d cleaned them out, too, along with everybody else who trusted him.

  “ ‘I did and I have,’ ” she said. “That’s what you should have written over your front door. I might just write it over mine, if I ever stay anywhere long enough to call someplace home.”

  “You don’t have a home?”

  “I went to boarding school in Massachusetts, which was like going to a Siberian prison. I didn’t read anything then and I don’t now,” Kate said. “I vowed that when I turned eighteen, I’d break open my trust fund, travel the world, and spend as much of Daddy’s money as I could doing it.”

  Good job, she thought. Her fib was every bit as good as his fib.

  “It’s the best revenge,” he said.

  That might have been the first honest thing he’d said to her, considering what he’d done to his parents, who were now living in Tampa on food stamps.

  He showed her his game room, his home theater, his Western-style bathroom, and his gourmet kitchen, where he introduced her to his personal chef, a Balinese man who’d studied at Le Cordon Bleu and Lenôtre in France.

  One room wasn’t included in the tour. The door to the room was closed, and it was obvious he didn’t want her to see what was inside. Once everyone was asleep, Kate planned a nocturnal tour of her own, and that unopened door would be her first stop.

  Griffin took her past his bedroom, which he made sure to identify for her, to the guest room, which had a four-poster bed with mosquito netting and a window that faced the mountain and the audience of the dead.

  Her Vuitton bag was already waiting for her on a small rattan bench.

  “You’ve had a rough morning,” Griffin said. “You’re welcome to relax here, if you like. My chef will prepare lunch whenever you’re ready.”

  “The beach looks absolutely irresistible,” she said. “Mind if I do some sunbathing and take a swim?”

  “Do whatever you like, Eunice. You have the run of the house and the island,” he said, stepping out and closing the door behind him.

  Kate gave up a small sigh of relief. All her worries about seducing Griffin, luring him to the boat, and taking him back to the United States were for nothing. That part was going to be easy. The challenge would be finding the money. And stealing it back.

  Dumah was waiting for Griffin downstairs. “I checked out her yacht when I dropped off her crew. It’s a mess, but I think it’s seaworthy. She wasn’t kidding about the grenade launcher. It’s a Russian RPG-7V2.”

  “See? There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “How can you say that? What kind of woman carries around an RPG-7V2?”

  “My kind,” Griffin said. “Did you search her suitcase?”

  Dumah nodded. “Nothing but clothes and toiletries.”

  “Enough clothes for how long?”

  “Two or three days,” Dumah said.

  If Eunice’s crew knew her well, and could make assumptions about her likely behavior, then the amount of clothes they packed for her was a very good sign. Griffin didn’t want someone who would hang around. He was a slam, bam, thank you, ma’am kind of guy.

  “Tell the chef to slaughter a pig,” Griffin said. “We’re having a feast tonight.”

  Nick and Willie cleaned the yacht, put sheets up over the broken windows, and sliced some fruit and made tropical cocktails to enjoy on the flybridge.

  “I could get used to this,” Willie said, sipping her drink.

  “This is entirely fake,” Nick told her.

  “It feels
real to me.”

  “You’re being suckered by your own con.”

  “It’s not mine, it’s yours. I’m just playing along. And I’m game for more. There must be other rich international fugitives that need to be taken down.”

  “Derek Griffin is in a league of his own.”

  Which reminded Nick of the meeting on the beach. There was something about the fake name that Griffin chose for himself that was nagging at him. Where had he heard of “Daniel Dravot” before?

  Nick grabbed the binoculars and scanned the island. Kate was in a bikini on the beach, lying facedown on a towel and letting Griffin untie her top and smooth suntan lotion on her shoulders, back, and sides.

  “She’s really working it,” Willie said. “You don’t need binoculars to see what’s going down.”

  “She’s just doing her job.”

  “Yeah, but looks to me like she’s enjoying it. You aren’t gonna fly off in a jealous rage, are you?”

  “Not in the immediate future.”

  “You should have let me be the honey trap. Being that you already rejected me, the least you could do is give me a shot at the bad guy.”

  “Kate has more experience with criminals.”

  “Yeah, but I am one. And I have experience with men. Her, I’m not so sure about.”

  Nick swung his attention back to the island. Kate had retied her bikini top and was wading waist deep in water with Griffin watching from the beach. She turned and waved at Griffin, dove in, and headed for the boat, slicing through the water using a killer freestyle stroke.

  “I have to give it to her,” Willie said. “She sure can swim.”

  Nick stepped down from the flybridge, got a towel ready like the dutiful manservant he was supposed to be, and was standing on the swim deck to meet Kate when she emerged from the water.

  “How’s it going?” he asked, draping the towel across her shoulders.

  “Seducing him is going to be easy,” Kate said.

  “So I’ve noticed.”

  “His only security is that guy Dumah, and I don’t see him as much of a threat.”

  “Did you happen to see half a billion dollars lying around?”