It was a couple minutes after midnight when Riley retrieved the key she kept hidden in a fake rock near a shrub next to the front steps and let herself into her apartment. So far so good, she thought. She hadn’t been stopped by the NSA. No sign of Rollo. No SWAT team waiting for her on the sidewalk in front of her building. If her apartment had been searched at least they’d been neat about it, because nothing seemed out of place. She poured herself a glass of wine, took two sips, and decided she was too tired to drink the rest of it. The day had been mind-numbing. Confusing, terrifying, exhilarating, and exhausting. Her purse had been left behind, so tomorrow she was faced with the chore of replacing her driver’s license, smartphone, and credit cards. She hoped she lived long enough to do it. She had no clue how she stood with Werner but she took it as a good sign that her apartment hadn’t been booby-trapped.
She had a nervous flutter in her stomach when she fell asleep and it was still there when she woke up in the morning. Her life was a mess. One day everything was on track and then WHAM! Emerson Knight.
Riley checked her email while she downed two cups of coffee and a bowl of cereal. Her mother had sent her a picture of the cake she’d made for Uncle Mickey’s birthday party. It was followed by a picture of Uncle Mickey eating a slice of the cake and a message that everyone misses Riley but is excited that she has her dream job in Washington, D.C.
Crap on a cake, Riley thought.
Her oldest brother, Lowell, usually sent her a conspiracy-laden tirade about the government being in cahoots with Big Oil, the Russians, and the Taliban, in no particular order. Today Lowell was going on and on about the Treasury Department and Big Gold. He said a rumor had appeared on the Internet just last night, claiming that the gold treasuries at the Federal Reserve were all fake. Bogus. Counterfeit. Nothing but hollow shells filled with tungsten.
Riley broke out in goosebumps. It was unusual for Lowell to strike a note so close to reality. Usually, he favored the black-op-helicopter-time-machine-was-behind-the-Kennedy-assassination type of theory. Lowell was part conspiracy theorist and part aspiring author. Sometimes it was hard to tell where his political rants stopped and his thriller plot took over.
Riley scrolled through the endless text where Lowell seamlessly floated between fact and fiction and finally gave credit to the origin of the fake gold disclosure. Lowell stated that his information came from an unimpeachable source, the well-known philosopher and mystic Mysterioso.
More goosebumps. Emerson had “outed” the Grunwalds through the blog he shared with Vernon. Riley clicked over to the Mysterioso site and read down. It was all there with names omitted. Emerson and Riley had become Mr. K. and Miss M., but the rest was there, in all its unbelievable glory. The car bomb, the infiltration of the Fed vault, drilling into the gold bars, finding the tungsten, escaping. It sounded like the ravings of a madman.
And it was all true.
If she hadn’t been there, she’d never have believed it, not for a second. No one would. Except nuts like her brother Lowell. She closed her computer and sat for a moment in numb disbelief before trying to continue on with life in its normal rhythm. She rinsed the dishes and put the cereal box back in the cupboard. She moved on to the bathroom.
She took a shower, applied minimal makeup, and stared into her closet. Now what? She asked herself. Do I put on jeans and a T-shirt and go home to Texas? Or do I get dressed in a suit on Monday, march into Blane-Grunwald, and act as if nothing unusual happened and I still work there? None of the above, she decided.
It was Saturday. Blane-Grunwald was mostly closed. There would just be a skeleton crew in the building, tending to emergency transactions. She’d retrieve her Mini Cooper from Emerson’s house. Then she would calmly and casually stroll into Blane-Grunwald, clean out her desk, and sneak off. By the time Monday rolled around she’d have figured out the next step.
Riley flagged down a cab two blocks from her house and directed the driver to Mysterioso Manor. Aunt Myra was on the front porch when Riley arrived.
“Were you going out?” Riley asked Myra.
“No. I was just coming in from feeding some of the critters. They’re scattered all the heck over the place. Sometimes I think I should just let them eat each other and be done with it.”
“I came to collect my car and to talk to Emerson.”
“Emmie’s not here, hon. I thought he was with you.”
“No. We got separated in New York. He said he was going off the grid. I wasn’t sure how off he was talking about.”
“Well, he’ll find his way back. I remember when he was nine years old and ran away to join Greenpeace.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. We were very worried. But he was back two days later, ready to eat everything in the fridge. He’s got some homing pigeon in him.”
Riley glanced at the monkey curled in a rocking chair. “Looks like the monkey is still here.”
“Seems like he comes and goes. Already had a runaround with the armadillo this morning,” Myra said. “Truth is, I’m not sure it’s always the same monkey. I think we might have a pack of them.”
Riley wondered if Rollo was coming and going too. Hiding out there somewhere, watching, waiting to pounce on Emerson. And maybe on her as well. It was a chilling thought. It reminded her that she needed to stay vigilant.
“Have you seen Emerson’s and Vernon’s blog?” she asked Myra. “Why the Sam Hill would he provoke the Grunwalds?”
“Emmie wants to expose the gold stealers. He said if he couldn’t bring Muhammad to the mountain, he’d bring the mountain to Muhammad, or something like that. Guess that’s his way of saying if he can’t get to the bad guys, he’ll have the bad guys come to him.”
“That sounds like Emerson.”
Riley moved off the porch and walked toward her car. “Tell Emerson to call me when he comes home.”
“I’ll have him call you first thing,” Aunt Myra said.
Twenty minutes later, Riley was at the Blane-Grunwald building on Constitution Avenue, circling it repeatedly, trying to decide whether to pull into the garage or to get on I-66 and go back to Texas.
Her dad would tell her to hitch up her jeans and just get on with it, so she turned in to the garage and drove down to her space, feeling like she was driving down the Nine Circles of Hell. Plus a few more. She parked, took the elevator to the lobby, and was relieved to see a familiar face at the reception desk. She was waved through to the bank of elevators, took one to the fourth floor, and made her way through the maze of desks to her cubicle. She could hear someone working on the far side of the room. Eager beaver, she thought. Someone going the extra mile to impress, hoping to move up the food chain. That would have been her if she hadn’t gotten involved with Emerson Knight.
She put her few personal belongings in a tote bag she’d brought. A couple granola bars, a roll of peppermint Life Savers, a Starbucks coffee mug, Burt’s Bees lip balm, and a picture of her family standing in front of a Christmas tree. She hadn’t occupied the desk long enough to really take possession. She would have left all but the picture.
Werner was on the golf course when a text message came in from office security, alerting him that Moonbeam was in the building. Ten minutes later he received a text that she had removed personal items from her desk and was offsite. He couldn’t care less except that he knew the message had also been sent to the old man. The old man was informed of everything. And the message would trigger a phone call. The one phone call he couldn’t ignore. Ever.
Werner’s phone dinged and he pushed down the panic that always arose in his chest whenever he heard the telltale ringtone.
“It’s under control,” Werner said on answering. “He’ll be taken care of. And so will she.”
There was a long pause before the sound of labored breathing came through the line. “I hope so. For your sake.”
Riley drove back to her apartment and parked in the space allotted to her in the alleyway behind the Victorian. She hiked the tote bag onto her shoulder, locked her car, and crossed the small yard to the house’s rear entrance. She had her house key in hand when a man rounded the Victorian from the street side.
“Stop!” he shouted at Riley. “You need to come with me.”
He was big. Over six foot tall and built like an NFL linebacker. In his late fifties, Riley thought. Used to giving orders and being obeyed. He had a scar running down the side of his face and a military-style buzz haircut.
Riley’s assessment was that he was scary as hell and made Rollo look like a choirboy. No way was she going anywhere with him. She rammed the key into the lock, pushed the door open, and rushed inside. She threw the bolt, ran down the short hall to the front foyer, and ran up three flights of stairs to the safety of her apartment. She let herself in, locked her door, and looked out a back window at the man standing in the yard.
He looked confused. Unsure what to do. Less threatening from this vantage point. He looked up at her and she jumped away from the window. When she returned moments later, he was gone.
I’m in big trouble, Riley thought. And I don’t know where to go for help. I could trust my dad but I don’t want to drag my family into this. Going home to Texas is no longer an option. I can probably trust Emerson, but he’s weird and I don’t know how to get in touch with him. Government agencies are out. I don’t know how far the Grunwald tentacles reach into those agencies.
She set the tote bag on a kitchen chair and checked the time. Almost noon. She should have lunch. Keep up with the normal activities, and maybe everything would eventually fall back into place. She stared into her fridge and let the cold air wash over her while she scanned the contents. White bread, strawberry jelly, mustard, a carton of eggs, 1 percent milk, provolone cheese slices, some deli ham, a jar of olives, a bag of baby carrots.
She was contemplating a cheese sandwich when she was grabbed from behind. An arm crooked around her neck, and her head was pushed forward in a choke hold.
It was Rollo.
“Memo to Riley,” Rollo said. “Check for killers hiding in closets when entering your apartment. Oops, guess you won’t be able to use that advice since you’ll be dead. I’m going to slit your wrists after you pass out, and you’ll just be another unstable woman who was driven to suicide over losing her dream job.”
Riley grabbed at the arm around her neck and kicked back with her foot, but she was already too oxygen-deprived to be effective, and she slipped into unconsciousness.
Emerson and Larry Quiller took the stairs to Riley’s apartment two at a time.
“I tried to stop her,” Larry said, struggling to keep pace with Emerson. “I told her she needed to come with me, but she ran into the house.”
Emerson reached Riley’s apartment and found the door locked. He stepped aside and Larry kicked the door open, splintering the doorframe, sending the door crashing against the wall.
Rollo was on one knee, bent over Riley with a knife in his hand.
“Mr. Knight,” Rollo said. “We meet again.”
Larry lunged at Rollo. Rollo jumped to his feet and hurled himself through a kitchen window, shattering the glass. He landed on a narrow metal fire escape, shook off the glass shards, and scrambled to the ground.
“Agile little bugger,” Larry said, looking down at Rollo, who was limping away, dripping blood.
Riley struggled to breathe, to open her eyes, to rise out of the suffocating darkness and into the light. The first face that swam into view was Emerson’s. The second face she saw was the big guy with the scar.
“What? Who?” Riley asked.
Emerson leaned close and shouted at her. “I AM EMERSON KNIGHT!”
“Crap on a cracker,” Riley said.
Emerson moved back. “Precisely. And the large man to my right is Larry Quiller. Larry was my chauffeur when I was a child.”
“Very pleased to meet you,” Riley said to Larry.
“Likewise,” Larry said.
Riley looked at her wrists. Not slit. Good deal.
“Rollo was going to kill me,” she said.
“Fortunately we arrived in time to prevent that,” Emerson said. “We were parked across the street waiting for you when we saw Rollo go into your apartment house. We thought it more prudent to intercept you rather than try to root Rollo out before you got home. I was on a phone call when you drove past us and parked in the back, so I sent Larry to retrieve you.”
Riley pushed herself up to a sitting position, and Larry helped her to her feet.
“Larry scared the bejeepers out of me,” Riley said. “I thought he was one of Werner Grunwald’s henchmen.”
Emerson glanced at Larry. “He does have an imposing presence.”
“I try to keep fit,” Larry said.
“Now what?” Riley asked.
“We’re disappearing,” Emerson said. “And we’re going on the hunt. I intend to find the missing gold. Larry has agreed to help us.”
“Yep, I’m coming out of retirement to do some chauffeuring for Emerson. Just like old times.”
“Us?” Riley asked Emerson. “Like, you and me?”
“Of course,” Emerson said. “You can’t continue at Blane-Grunwald. They’re trying to kill you. And since you’re unemployed, I’ll hire you. You can be my apprentice.”
“Your apprentice what?”
“Whatever I am.”
“Criminy.”
“Ask him for two weeks’ paid vacation,” Larry said.
“Vacation is a dated concept,” Emerson said. “No one of any consequence takes a vacation.”
“What about all those trips you took to commune with the Siddhar?” Riley asked.
“I didn’t have a job, therefore they weren’t vacations. They were extensions of my life experience.”
Riley returned to the refrigerator and pulled out the loaf of bread, the ham, the cheese, and the mustard. Her life experience told her she was hungry.
“Were you able to retrieve any of my things?” Riley asked Emerson. “My phone? My wallet?”
“All safely locked away at the Carlyle. If we’re going to go off the grid we must do so completely. No more cellphones. No more Internet. No more credit cards. Nothing that can leave a footprint in cyberspace.”
“I feel like a fugitive.”
“Quite the opposite, but I see the comparison,” Emerson said.
Riley made three sandwiches, wrapped them in aluminum foil, and handed them over to Emerson. She went to her bedroom, threw some underwear and other basic essentials into a small backpack, and returned to the kitchen.
“What about my broken window?” she asked.
“After I do my chauffeuring I can come back and fix the door and the window,” Larry said.