Chapter 123: The Last Act

POV: ELI / BRIGAIL

There was no magic trick. Only a perfectly choreographed illusion.

Eli pushed his black statement glasses up his nose and scanned the sixth row from the ring. Pam and Roman sat on either side of his double, who had the good sense to keep one hand against the side of his face. From four rows up and slightly left, Mr. Tuxedo was convincing enough. He had cost Pam a considerable sum and was worth every dollar.

He would have been more satisfied if Brigail hadn't given the man a second look when she walked in with Russell.

Turn around. I'm right here.

He forced his attention back to the ring. The Mexican fighter was the clear underdog, swaying on his feet, and even a casual observer could see where the fight was heading. Eli was not a casual observer. He was not an observer at all. He was bored before the first bell and had been watching the clock since the second round.

9:05pm.

If everything held, Clove was halfway to the eighth floor.

He settled back in his seat and allowed himself one careful look at Brigail, four rows down, sitting like a composed and utterly unreadable woman beside the most dangerous man in the room. She wore the black dress like a weapon. Her hair was down, trailing over one shoulder, and he made a mental note to tell her later that she could not wear something that provocative again while he was unable to touch her.

The bell dinged. The crowd exploded. Eli blinked and the fight was over. Marquez was down. The Mexican, in a development nobody with working eyes had predicted, had landed a right hook that turned the whole arena on its head.

Talk about a sucker punch.

He was already moving toward the exit when he caught a last glimpse of Brigail rising from her seat, Russell's hand at the small of her back, guiding her toward the corridor.

Not for much longer.

He found Palomino's broad back in the crowd and fell in behind it at a careful distance.

The Vista Ballroom was empty and smelled of fresh linen and old carpet. Palomino gave him a single nod at the door and tilted his head toward the ladies' room.

Eli pushed inside.

She was leaning against the gray marble counter with her arms crossed, looking like someone who had been waiting an appropriate number of minutes and had opinions about it.

"How do I know you're not the double?" she asked.

He leaned against the door. Crossed his arms. "I know you have a heart-shaped tattoo on your right butt cheek."

She raised an eyebrow. Turned halfway. Pulled the hem of her dress aside and examined the relevant portion of her anatomy with complete seriousness.

"I'm afraid you'll have to leave," she said. "My boyfriend is very possessive and if he finds you in here eye-fucking my ass he'll kill us both."

He was across the room before she finished the sentence. His hands went to her face, both of them, holding it still, and she threw her arms around him and tipped her chin up and he kissed her with everything that had been accumulating for nine days of coasters and surveillance screens and counting down hours on a plane over the Pacific.

"We have to stop meeting like this," she said, when she could say anything.

"Agree," he said against her neck. "Let's run."

"You're too high maintenance to run. You'd miss the caviar inside a week."

He pulled back and looked at her. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips already swollen, and she had the expression of someone who had decided to enjoy the next five minutes fully and would deal with everything else after.

Level 3 heat. What followed was quick and urgent and entirely without ceremony, which was exactly what it needed to be, given that Russell Edgington was somewhere in the building and Clove was upstairs cracking a nine-digit combination on a titanium safe.

Afterward she smoothed her dress and ran her fingers through her hair and looked at him in the mirror with that particular expression, the one that made him want to say things he had decided to save for later.

"I saw you looking at the double," he said.

"I knew immediately," she said. "His hands weren't big enough."

He laughed. She grinned. He pulled her hips back toward him.

"Round two," he said.

"You have an Edgington to take down," she said. "No round two."

"It won't take long."

She arched one eyebrow at him.

"I'm aware that's not the argument I think it is," he said.

She kissed his cheek and grabbed her purse. "Don't hurt yourself tonight. I'm quite fond of you."

"Fond," he repeated.

"Downton Abbey," she explained, already moving.

He pressed his palm against the door before she could open it. "Tell me you love me or I will make you say it the other way."

She tilted her chin up at him. "I'd like to see you try."

He reached past her and clicked the lock.

She did not object.

BRIGAIL

The Mandalay basement had the specific feel of a place that had given up on comfort entirely.

Beige walls. Fluorescent lights. Five fireproof steel doors, each one waiting for the previous to seal before the next one opened, like a prison intake. Palomino's face was the key. He would tilt his chin at each black dome and the doors would answer.

The room where Barry was being kept had bulletproof glass walls and white venetian blinds and the institutional quiet of a place where people came to have conversations they would rather not have.

He was on a stretcher. IV in his left wrist. Pulse oximeter on his right index finger. One eye swollen entirely shut. A thick layer of gauze over his head. White hospital scrubs. He looked diminished in a way she had not expected, which was interesting because she had spent considerable energy over the past year imagining exactly this.

"Barry," she said. "Can you hear me?"

He turned his head. Forced one bloodshot eye open.

"What are you doing here," he said. Every word cost him.

"Just checking on you."

His chuckle came out as a cough. "I'm fucking peachy."

Palomino's radio crackled. He stepped out, leaving them alone.

She set her purse on the steel rail of the stretcher and unclasped it. She pulled out the red paperback and held it above Barry's face.

"Look what I found in your office."

Harry Houdini. The Right Way of Doing Wrong.

His jaw ticked. He looked away. "You found a book. So what."

"I thought it was interesting," she said, sitting in the foldable chair she had angled away from the camera. "A man who loved Houdini enough to keep his biography on his desk. What's your favorite act, Barry? The Water Torture Cell or the Giant Milk Can escape?"

The pulse monitor spiked. She watched the numbers without showing it on her face.

"You're the milk can man," she said, as though she had just worked it out. "I think you relate to Houdini. The idea of being buried and finding your way out."

He said nothing. The monitor said everything.

Palomino returned and moved to the treatment cart. He picked up a vial and a sealed hypodermic with the practiced calm of someone who had done this before. He tore the wrapper and poked the needle through the rubber cap.

Barry's good eye tracked him. "What the hell is that?"

"For the road," Palomino said pleasantly. "Long drive to Carson City. This'll help you sleep."

Barry exhaled and looked away. His pulse came down.

She leaned forward, chin in her palm. "I know you didn't hide anything in a bank. No trail. Which means it's in property. Old fashioned. You and Victor both." She uncrossed her legs and recrossed them. "The question is which house. Andorra? Shanghai? Belize? Your family's place in New Orleans?"

His pulse stayed level. She had expected that. Those were the wrong answers. She gave Palomino a quick look. He smiled.

"Or," she said, "inside the giant milk cans in the basement of your two-story house in Appleton, Wisconsin."

The monitor screamed upward.

She let the silence hold for a moment.

"You and Victor were clever," she said. "Buying the house under Houdini's wife's name. Wilhelmina Weiss. The old hometown. Nobody looks in the hometown." She tilted her head. "Do you know how many hundred-dollar bills fit inside a thirty-gallon milk can?"

Palomino shrugged elaborately. "I'm terrible at math."

"A little over fifty thousand. That's five million per can. Imagine two dozen of them gathering dust." She spread her fingers on her knee. "How did you ship it, Barry? Did you take turns? Or did you hire someone to drive it up?"

He had gone completely rigid.

"Kill me," he said. "Just kill me now."

"What is it with thieves and their attachment to money?" She patted his chest lightly. "You're not dead. You're just poor." She paused. "Relatively speaking."

His eye opened fully, bloodshot and furious. "I'll go Philharmonic on all of you. The drugs, the rigging, the Chariot, Thalia. Everything."

She lowered her head until her mouth was close to his ear.

"Thalia's alive," she said.

He stopped breathing for two full seconds.

She straightened up and squared her shoulders. "And as for turning you in, I'm not going to. The way I see it you're already in the best prison there is. You'll never walk again. But with a hundred and twenty million, I can afford a room with a view. So every morning when you look out the window, you'll see everything I took from you."

She nodded to Palomino.

He drove the syringe into the IV line without ceremony. Barry's good eye began to glaze over immediately.

"Funny thing about your favorite escape artist," she said, picking up the book and dropping it in her purse. "Before he became Harry Houdini, he performed under a different name."

She moved to the door.

"Eli the Great," she said, over her shoulder.

Barry's eye closed.

"Eli sends his regards."

She stepped out into the corridor and let the door seal behind her. The fluorescent lights buzzed. Somewhere above them, forty floors up, the boxing crowd was still making noise.

She stood in the beige hallway for a moment, alone.

Then she straightened her dress, picked up her purse, and went to find out how Clove was doing with the vault.

They were almost done.

Almost.