Chapter 122 Moses Is On The Move

Chapter 122 Moses Is On The Move
POV: BRIGAIL / JERRY / ELI
It wasn't the Rosetta Stone.
Brigail didn't need a law degree to understand what Russell had slid across the desk. A change of ownership. His name out, hers in. The Edgington Industries, all of it, signed over to his granddaughter.
She flipped the folder shut.
"My signature's precious," she said. "Unless you explain exactly what this is, I'm not signing anything."
Russell leaned back in his chair and clasped his fingers together. "It's a gift."
"There's always a catch."
"I'm broke," he said, without missing a beat.
She almost laughed. She covered her mouth with the back of her hand and let a little of it out anyway. "So what you're giving me is a house of cards. Ready to collapse at the first push."
The muscles in his jaw leaped. He was not finding this funny.
She let her amusement die. "I'm not signing it. Find another patsy."
"What gives you the impression you have a choice?" His tone was lazy but the threat underneath it was not. "This is a formality. My lawyer is already processing the papers. Before the day is done you'll own this empire."
She ground her teeth. Then she played the only card she had. "You really despise me, don't you? No matter what I do I'll never be good enough. Why not just handcuff me and throw me in jail? You'd rather sacrifice your own flesh and blood than lose your precious William."
Russell's eyes shifted. Just slightly. He reached into his drawer and produced a remote.
He pointed it at the plasma screen on the wall behind her.
She turned.
Barry Carrolton was on the asphalt of some outdoor lot, moving in slow, agonized motion. His clothes were shredded and soaked through. His arms were stretched above his head, bound by thick welded chain that disappeared off screen. He was alive. Barely.
Russell clicked the screen off.
"As you can see," he said, "William is currently indisposed."
Brigail had known this was coming. Eli had told her in last night's coaster message. It didn't make it easier to watch. She forced herself to breathe through it, pressing her palms flat against the book in her lap.
"Don't kill him," she said.
Russell raised an eyebrow.
"No one deserves to die like that. Not even Barry." She held his gaze. "A wise man told me there's a fate far worse than death. Barry's already living it."
Russell studied her for a long moment, weighing her face.
"If you get that information from him," he said slowly, "I'll let him live."
She pretended to deliberate. "Alright. But I won't go down there. He's the one being punished, not me. Have your people unchain him and give him medical attention first. I need him conscious."
Russell's mouth twisted into the most unsettling smile she had seen on him.
He reached for his phone.
JERRY
He ran.
Thirty-four. Thirty-three. Thirty-two.
He took the emergency stairs two at a time, counting floors. He shoved through the heavy metal door at thirty and went left.

He was three doors away when Palomino's hand closed around his bicep.
Jerry's mouth opened. Palomino's other hand clamped over it.
"Don't scream," Palomino said. He dragged Jerry backward into room 3008 and put him against the wall. "I'm going to take my hand off you now. Don't."
Jerry nodded.
Palomino released him.
"You're working for Eli?" Jerry blurted.
"I almost tased you," Palomino said. "Almost. You think your sister would have let me near you if she thought I'd actually do it?"
He gave Jerry the short version. He hadn't been part of Eli's original team. But he had been seeing Thalia for a year and when her cover was blown he picked a side. Some things were still sacred in Vegas.
Jerry processed this. "Right," he said. Then he looked at the room.
Same dark carpet. Same cream sofa. Same minibar.
And Eli Michealson, stepping out of the en-suite bathroom in a tuxedo.
Jerry blinked four times. "What the"
"Hello, Jerry," said the man who was not Eli Michealson, in a voice that was deeper and slightly wrong.
He looked exactly like Eli. The height, the build, the particular way he carried himself as though the room had been expecting him. But his nose was sharper, his lips fuller, his eyes a shade darker.
The door opened. The real Eli walked in.
He gave his doppelganger one nod. The man walked out without a word.
Jerry pointed at the door. Then at Eli. Then at the door again.
"He'll be me at the bar until the fight," Eli said. "Russell's had men on me all day."
"He's a dead ringer," Jerry said.
"He'll do. Pam wanted to hire a Swedish actor."
"The Swede looks more like you," said a lissome redhead in a moss green dress, appearing from the adjacent bathroom like she'd been there the entire time. Jerry stared.
"Stop," Eli said, reading his face. "She's on the clock. Jerry, did you get it?"
Jerry reached under his blazer and pulled Russell's checkbook wallet from his waistband. "Right breast pocket, like you said."
Eli flipped it open, found the gold keycard, and tossed it to Palomino without looking. Palomino caught it and crouched at the laptop on the center table, sliding the card through a small reader.
"We're cloning it," Eli said. "Russell won't notice the wallet's gone yet. Jerry, get changed. You have about twelve minutes."
The redhead, Clove, was already unzipping a garment bag on the bed. She handed Jerry a charcoal dress shirt, dark pants, and a blue pinstripe tie without making eye contact.
"Pants off," she said.
"Buy me dinner first," Jerry said automatically.
"I'm gay," she replied, already moving.
Eli was still talking. Clove was doing his eyebrows with a small brush while he spoke. The plan was precise: Jimmy would piggyback the surveillance for five minutes. Jerry would take the first elevator right, follow Clove to the east wing casino floor, find the baccarat table farthest from the cordoned slot section, sit in a smoking seat to the right of the dealer, bet minimum, and wait for Jake.
"Don't be the gunner," Eli said.
"I know what a gunner is."
"Don't be one anyway."
Clove dumped something foamy on Jerry's head and fitted a short black wig over it. He looked in the wall mirror and barely recognized himself.
"There's something in my shoe," Jerry said, feeling the hard lump under his sole.
Eli caught his arm before he could reach for it. "Marble. Leave it."
"It'll make me limp all night."
"That's the point."
Jerry looked at him.
"They're looking for a young Caucasian male with blonde hair," Eli said. "With the disguise you're a middle-aged man with dark hair and a limp. Disguise changes your look. A limp changes your entire identity." He paused. "Watch The Usual Suspects next time instead of ordering porn."
Palomino straightened up from the laptop and returned the wallet to his back pocket. "Russell's heading to the Arena," he said.
"You're giving it back?" Jerry asked.
"We have what we need," Eli said. "We don't want him changing the locks tonight."
"I told you," Clove said, slinging her purse over her shoulder, "I don't need a key to open that vault."
Eli's expression remained flat. "I want it done my way. As long as Brigail is with him, nothing that puts her in more danger. Clear?"
Nobody argued with that.
"One more thing," Eli said, turning to Jerry. "Punch Palomino in the face."
Jerry stared at him.
"He's returning the wallet. Russell needs to believe he caught you and there was a struggle."
Palomino lowered himself slightly. "I won't hit back."
"I'm sorry," Jerry said, and gave him a solid shovel hook to the right cheek.
Palomino groaned, cupping his face. Then he started laughing.
"The hell?" Jerry said.
"You punch like a girl," Palomino said, still laughing.
Clove took Jerry by the wrist and steered him toward the door. She pulled out a white phone and pressed a single button. "Moses is on the move. Blind the eye on the thirtieth in twenty seconds."
Jerry twisted back. "Eli. Where are you going?"
Eli straightened his jacket. The lopsided smirk came out slowly, the one that Jerry had seen stop women in their tracks from a distance of twenty feet.
"I have a date with your sister," he said.
The timer hit zero. Clove pulled Jerry through the door.
ELI
He took the service staircase.
Russell was already moving toward the Arena. The boxing match would start in twenty-five minutes. Every guard on the 35th floor would be repositioning to track Jerry. Russell would have Brigail with him, which meant she was visible and accounted for, which meant he had a window.
Sandy Sechrest had sent the IRS flag through her contact at the agency, exactly as planned. Russell's cheque had bounced because Jimmy had made sure the accounts showed insufficient funds before the bank opened this morning. The slot machines were still paying out on Russell's money because Palomino had kept the hacking active. The liquid B shipment was sailing toward Monaco where Luca Warlow's coast guard was already in position.
Everything was in motion.
Eli pressed the earpiece in as he reached the service corridor behind the Arena level. "Jimmy."
"Vault's on the forty-second floor," Jimmy said through the line. "Clove's already at the west wing. Palomino's back with Russell. The gold card clone is live."
"Barry?"
"Being moved to medical. Russell kept his word on that one." A pause. "She's good, Eli. She's with him in the Arena box. I can see her on camera."
Eli let himself look at the feed Jimmy pulled up on his phone screen. A small square image. The Arena. Russell's private box above the ring. Brigail in the black strapless dress, sitting two seats from Russell, her posture as easy and composed as someone who had been doing this for years.
He put the phone away.
She had asked him to ask her before everything went to hell.
He had said no. He had told her he would ask her in a wickedly perfect way when it was all over and she would be a Michealson and she would be his.
He had meant every word.
He took the stairs up.
The fight had started. He could hear the crowd through the walls, that specific roar that filled a boxing arena when something significant happened in the ring. Forty thousand people watching two men hit each other while the real fight happened above them in the private boxes and behind the locked doors of a forty-second floor vault.
He reached the landing and checked his watch.
Eighteen minutes.
Clove was the best larcenist money could buy. He had hired her in Prague four years ago after she bypassed a security system that three other professionals had told him was impenetrable. She had done it in eleven minutes, with a hairpin and a device the size of a matchbook, while eating an apple.
She had seventeen minutes left.
He pressed the earpiece. "Clove."
"I'm in," she said. Her voice was completely even. He could hear the soft click of tumblers in the background. "Give me ten."
He allowed himself a single breath of relief.
Below him, the crowd roared again.
Above him, Russell Edgington's entire financial history was about to walk out of a vault in a briefcase, bound for the IRS, the DEA, and the gaming commission simultaneously.
Russell still thought he had one move left. He was going to ask Brigail to sign the company over. He was going to try to use her as a shield between himself and the fallout.
What Russell did not know was that Brigail had already signed the papers.
She had signed them this morning, two hours before the meeting, with a signature that Eli's legal team had spent a week confirming was forensically indistinguishable from her real one.
It was not her real one.
The company would transfer. The IRS would seize it within forty-eight hours. And the name on the transfer document would lead them directly back to Russell's own accounts.
Eli had told her: when you gamble with a losing hand, make your opponent think they're winning until the last card turns.
Russell had been slow playing all month.
So had they.
The difference was that only one of them knew what was in the other's hand.
Eli checked his watch again.
Fifteen minutes.
He reached into his jacket pocket and felt the ring box there. He had put it back this morning when he dressed. He wasn't sure why. Force of habit, maybe. Or because carrying it made the waiting feel less like waiting.
"Clove," he said.
"Two minutes," she said.
He waited.