“Call the house,” Carter told Vin. “Hurry!”
Willie was sitting in a living room chair, two guards standing in front of her, when she shrieked and pointed at the French doors behind them. “Fire!”
The guards turned and saw the rocking chair on the porch engulfed in flames, the fire licking at the window like an animal wanting to get inside.
The phone rang and someone began hammering on the front door.
“Fire department,” a voice called from outside. “Open up or we’ll break this door down with an ax! The house is burning!”
“Answer the phone!” Carter yelled, staring at the living room camera feed on the monitor, watching the guard ignore the phone and hurry to the front door.
“No!” Carter slammed his fist on the console. “Fucking idiots.”
He saw the guard open the door, and saw two firefighters burst in.
One of the firefighters suckerpunched a guard in the throat, sending him choking to the floor.
The other guard reached for his gun and got sprayed in the face with foam from the extinguisher. Carter uttered an oath when the bimbo rig driver got up and hit the guard with a right hook so hard, it took him down and knocked the foam off his face.
“Nice,” Kate said.
“I’m not as sweet and innocent as I appear,” Willie said.
Nick handed Willie the extinguisher. “Douse the fire on the porch with this and get out of here. Wait for me in the pickup.”
Carter watched it all go down in helpless fury. One of the firefighters took off his respirator mask, looked directly at the living room surveillance camera, and smiled.
It was Nicolas Fox.
The other firefighter removed his mask. It was Kate O’Hare.
Everything fell into place for Carter. They were here for his collection, which they’d use to send him to prison for the rest of his life, destroying him and BlackRhino all at once. But it wasn’t over yet, not while he was still breathing and secure in his command bunker.
Nick removed the radar gun from inside his jacket, switched it on, and studied its screen.
“The paintings are under the chimney,” he said.
Kate took possession of the radar gun, and Nick studied the fireplace stones. There was one that had a barely perceptible hairline gap around it instead of cement. He pushed and turned it. A bookcase swung open beside the fireplace.
“I’m beginning to feel like I’m the only person in America who doesn’t have a secret door,” Kate said.
“That’s because you don’t have anything valuable enough to hide.”
“There’s my Glock,” Kate said.
“You keep that under your pillow.”
“Maybe I’ll get a secret compartment under my pillow.”
Kate stayed in the living room to watch Nick’s back while he went down the stairs to confirm that the collection was there.
• • •
Carter stared at the screen, trying to conceive of an escape plan that would keep him out of jail, maintain his reputation, and destroy Nick Fox and Kate O’Hare.
“What do we do now, sir?” Vin asked, pointing at another screen. “The sheriff just got here.”
Carter wasn’t paying attention to Vin. Something had caught his eye. He leaned closer to the screen in front of him and studied the object in Kate’s hand.
It looked like a radar-tracking, laser-targeting device, but he suspected it did much more. He suspected the Rembrandts were tagged. It gave him an idea, a way to save himself, but it would come at a staggering cost. And yet it was a small price to pay for his freedom and his reputation.
Carter called Veronica Dell. “Where’s our predator drone right now?”
“On the AeroSystem airfield outside of Huntsville, Alabama, armed and ready for deployment.”
Huntsville was about 240 miles away. A drone armed with bunker-busting Hellfire missiles could cover that distance in less than two hours. Without the art collection, there would be no evidence to convict him of any crime.
“I have a target,” he said.
When Sheriff Travis Villency, sitting at his desk in the Hancock County Administration Building in Hawesville, got the call about an explosion on a ranch, his first thought was that another meth lab had blown up.
There were over a thousand meth labs a year shut down in Kentucky, and rural Hancock County had more than its share. Villency estimated that 60 percent of the people in his county who bought pseudoephedrine at the drugstore were using it to cook meth, not relieve their colds. And meth heads weren’t exactly cautious and meticulous people when it came to handling flammable chemicals, or anything else, so lab explosions were common.
When Villency realized that the address was Carter Grove’s ranch, he tightened his suspenders and girded himself for trouble. He tried to have nothing to do with Carter and his BlackRhino bunch. Carter acted like he owned the county—though when it came down to it he essentially did, because he had the money and influence to sway every election toward the candidates of his choosing. Villency had been one of them, but he chafed at being treated like one of Carter’s underlings.
Villency rounded up four of his deputies and they headed out to Carter Grove’s place in three squad cars, sirens wailing. By the time they got there, two fire trucks had arrived from Hawesville and Pellville, paramedics were on the scene, and two dozen firefighters were at work trying to smother the flames around the twisted wreckage of a big rig. Twenty yards away was a blackened, smoking crater where a propane tank used to be.
Judging by the skid marks on the road, the flattened fence, and the wreckage, Villency assumed the big rig had lost control and smashed into the gasoline tank, setting off a blast that had also ignited the propane tank. What he couldn’t figure out was why Carter hadn’t called him directly, demanding action.
Villency parked on the roadway outside the estate. He pulled his considerable bulk out of the car, hiked up his pants even though they were already hiked up as far as they could possibly go, put on his stiff-brimmed hat, and ordered his deputies to control traffic and keep the looky-loos away.
Villency started down the driveway toward the house and was halfway there when he was intercepted by a firefighter.
“Hey, Sheriff, there’s something in that house you’ve got to see,” the fireman said. “We came across it when we were evacuating the house.”
“What’s that, son?”
“There’s a bunch of paintings in the basement. A couple look like the ones that were stolen in Canada.”
“Really?” Villency said, putting his hands on his hips. “What are you, some kind of art expert?”
“I watch CNN. Go look for yourself.”
The last thing Villency wanted to do was start poking around in Carter’s house. It was a good way to get himself thrown out of office in a Carter Grove–funded recall election.
“I didn’t catch your name, son,” Villency said.
“Jethro Clampett.”
The name a rang a bell, but Villency couldn’t place it. He was continuing on around the paramedic vehicle toward the house when it occurred to him that Jethro was wearing an Owensboro Fire Department suit. He glanced back over his shoulder, but the firefighter was gone. Villency turned his attention back to the house. Two paramedics were treating two BlackRhino guys who looked like they’d been hit in the face with bricks.
“What happened to these guys?” Villency asked the nearest paramedic.
“They’ve both sustained serious concussions and broken ribs. One of the men has a broken jaw. Neither one of them is in any condition to talk right now. But the two guys up on the porch say they were hit by part of the propane tank when it blew.”
Villency looked around. The nearest piece of the propane tank was twenty yards away. They’d been hit by something, but it wasn’t the propane tank. What the hell had happened here? He went up to talk to the two other BlackRhino men, who were sitting on the porch, ice packs on their heads. One of the men was soakin
g wet.
“What happened to you two?” Villency asked.
“I got knocked down by the explosion,” the dry guy said.
Villency shifted his gaze to the wet guy. “And you?”
“I fell in the lake,” he said.
“You both look like you’ve been in fights and lost.”
“It was the explosion,” the dry guy said.
Villency knew he wasn’t getting the whole story, but he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know the truth. “Where is Mr. Grove?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” the wet guy said.
“Neither do I,” the dry guy said.
“Was he here when the accident happened?”
The two men looked at each other, trying to decide how to answer. They both looked back at Villency.
“Maybe,” the dry guy said.
“We aren’t sure,” the wet guy said.
“We were elsewhere,” the dry guy said.
Villency glanced at the open front door and was trying to decide whether or not to go inside when his attention was caught by the sound of a car approaching. He turned and saw a Ford Explorer speed down the driveway and come to a stop behind the paramedic truck. A woman in a V-neck T-shirt and jeans stepped out, a holstered Glock clipped to her belt. She walked up and flashed an ID at him. It was federal tin.
“Sheriff,” she said, “I’m FBI Special Agent Kate O’Hare.”
“What brings you all the way out here?”
“Three stolen Rembrandts,” she said. “I’ve been chasing the guy who took them from a Montreal museum. The trail led here. I believe Carter Grove has them now.”
So Jethro was right after all. Villency noticed that the agent’s comment seemed to stir an angry glare from the BlackRhino guy with the broken jaw. He thought on the situation for a moment. Stolen Rembrandts in Carter’s house would be the biggest crime he’d ever uncovered. It would make his career, ensuring he’d keep his job as long as he wanted it, and he’d never have to answer to Carter Grove again. But if the paintings weren’t stolen, Carter would ruin him. Or worse. He decided to go with his gut, which was the majority of his body.
“Funny you should say that,” Villency replied. “One of the firefighters saw some paintings he thought he recognized from a news report on CNN.”
Kate looked past him to the open front door. “Let’s go look.”
“We don’t have a warrant.”
“Exigent circumstances,” Kate said. “There’s a raging fire, and if there are still people in that house, they could be in grave danger.”
The fire didn’t seem to be raging anywhere near the house now, but Carter was missing and several people had already been injured in the blast. It would hold up in court, at least in Hancock County. Even so, he decided it would be best if he didn’t take the lead.
“After you,” Villency said.
Kate marched past him into the house, and he followed. The first thing Villency noticed was the bookcase yawning open like a door. That was cool, like something out of a Batman movie. Kate took a small Maglite out of her pocket, drew her gun, and stepped into the opening. Villency drew his gun too, just to be sociable.
A staircase led down into a storm cellar. “This is Kate O’Hare, FBI. Is anyone down here?”
No one answered. Kate found a light switch. The lights came on, revealing a room stuffed full of paintings, sculptures, pottery, and some jewelry in display cases.
Kate gestured with her gun to some paintings on easels. “Those are the Rembrandts. The rest of these are stolen, too. There’s got to be hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of art in here.”
“Hot damn,” Villency said. This would put him on the national stage. He’d be the small-time sheriff who’d helped solve an international crime. His political future in Kentucky suddenly seemed very, very bright. “You know, I always thought there was something fishy about Carter. I’ve been unofficially investigating him for months.”
“I’m not surprised,” Kate said, knowing things would go much smoother from here on out if Villency decided she was okay. “Lawmen have a sixth sense about this kind of thing.”
“We certainly do.”
“This will be a joint effort now between your office and the FBI.”
Villency liked the sound of that. “How do you want to play it from here?”
Kate holstered her gun. “I suggest we restrict this entire property as a crime scene and clear those firefighters out of here as soon as the blaze is under control. Meanwhile, based on what we’ve learned, you obtain a search warrant from the friendliest judge you’ve got. I’ll contact the U.S. Marshals in Lexington and get them out here to guard the evidence until I can get a full FBI operations team and forensics unit here from Louisville.”
“Works for me,” Villency said. “What do we do about Carter? Nobody knows where he is.”
“He’s probably got a safe room somewhere on the property,” Kate said. “If he’s still here, he’s not going anywhere. And if he’s fled, we’ll have to deal with it.”
“We’ve never had a catered field mission before,” Walter said.
He’d set down his sniper rifle when the sheriff arrived, and he was now eating the KFC biscuits. Somehow they tasted better in Kentucky than they did in L.A., even though they were probably made from the same recipe and ingredients throughout the chain.
“This is the way to go,” he told Jake. “Speaking of going, shouldn’t we be getting out of here?”
Jake surveyed the scene with binoculars. The rocket launcher was propped up on the wall beside him. “As long as Kate is still down there, and Carter is in his bunker, we stay.”
“Fine by me.” Walter dabbed his lips with a napkin. “I’ve still got the Little Bucket Parfaits to eat.”
Carter watched Kate and the fat sheriff come out of the house. He knew they’d be securing the scene, filing for a warrant, and bringing in more federal agents.
“Shouldn’t we get out of here?” Vin asked.
“Just sit still and shut up,” Carter said.
“What’s the point of staying down here now?”
Carter held out his hand to Vin, palm up. “Can I see your gun, please?”
Vin took the gun from his holster, handed it over, and Carter shot him in the head.
Carter set the gun on the console. He wasn’t worried that anyone outside had heard the gunshot. The security center was underground and the walls were thick. And he wasn’t concerned about being found with the body. Nobody would be coming down to the bunker. He was going to blow his house and all the evidence in it to kingdom come, then emerge after the smoke cleared. And he’d talk his way out of this mess, just as he’d done many times before. And then he’d seek revenge. The thought of that kept him happy and occupied as he waited for the drone to arrive. It wouldn’t be long now.
• • •
Kate was feeling pretty pleased with herself. She sat in her car in front of Carter’s house, watching the firefighters shovel dirt onto the smoking embers that remained in the wake of the blaze. She was waiting for the warrant and the marshals to show up. Once they got here, she’d roust Carter out of his bunker, arrest him, and oversee the cataloging and confiscation of the paintings. Any accusations he might make later about her and Nick working together for the FBI would be dismissed as utterly absurd. Nobody would take Carter seriously after what they were about to find in his basement.
The BlackRhino operatives had been taken away and were being held for questioning by deputies. By now, Nick and Willie were waiting at the hotel for word from her that it was all done, then they’d fly back to L.A. on the “borrowed” King Air with Jake and Walter while she stayed in Owensboro until everything was wrapped up.
It had been about two hours since she’d introduced herself to Sheriff Villency, and an hour since she’d phoned Jessup to fill him in. She smiled to herself thinking about that call.
“I thought you’d like to know that I’m in your home state of Kentucky and abou
t to arrest Carter Grove for possession of stolen goods,” Kate had said to Jessup. “Most notably, the three Rembrandts stolen this week in Montreal.”
“Wait one damn minute,” Jessup had said. “You’ve been suspended. You were supposed to be on vacation, recuperating from your injuries. You have no authority to conduct an investigation into Carter Grove or anybody else. In fact, you were explicitly told to stay the hell away from him.”
“I wouldn’t mention that in the press conference.”
“What press conference?”
“The one Bolton will be having tomorrow to explain Carter’s arrest and the recovery of the Rembrandts and dozens of other masterpieces stolen in some of the most notorious art thefts committed in the last thirty years.”
“How did you do that?”
“I’ll give you the details when I see you.”
There was a beat of silence on Jessup’s end. “You’re a credit to the department,” he finally said. “Good thing your suspension was lifted yesterday.”
It had been a good conversation, but time was dragging now. Kate did some housekeeping, sorting through the junk she had in the car. A couple empty water bottles, some confiscated guns, her FBI windbreaker, the high-tech taggant gun she’d forgotten to give back to Nick. She was checking email on her smartphone when the taggant gun started beeping. The beeps started slow and then became more and more urgent. She was initially puzzled, and then a jolt of fear coursed through her body. She knew what the beeps meant from her years as a Navy commando. A Hellfire missile was coming.
From the safety of the security center beneath the game-cleaning facility, Carter Grove watched the video feed from the camera mounted on the nose of the predator drone. He could see the Hellfire missile homing in on his house below. Retribution was coming from the skies. In a few seconds, Kate O’Hare and all the evidence against him would be obliterated and only a smoking crater would be left behind. That was how he rolled.