“Hello?”
“Stop saying that, for Christ’s sake. This is Jeremy.”
“Jeremy?”
She takes pills to help her sleep, he mouthed to Ava.
“There isn’t any rush. Take your time,” Ava whispered.
“Yes, it’s me,” Ashton said.
“It’s so late. Is everything all right?” Simmons asked hesitantly.
“Yeah, it’s fine, just fine,” he said, his voice trembling just a touch. Ava hoped Simmons was too sleepy to notice.
“Then why are you calling so late?”
“I met this woman today, Ava Lee, who’s arriving in London tomorrow,” he said. “I want you to meet with her.”
Ava encouraged him with a nod. Ashton plunged ahead, sticking to the story she had laid out. His confidence seemed to grow and he began to get a little too excited. Carlo pressed the gun harder against Ashton’s testicles as Ava motioned for him to wrap up the conversation.
“I’ve given her your phone numbers. She’ll call you when she lands,” Ashton said.
“Okay, baby.”
Ava covered the mouthpiece. “How out of it is she?” she asked.
“No more than usual,” Ashton said.
“Will she remember what you said tomorrow morning?”
“She normally does.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“Let me talk to her,” he said. Ava took her hand off the phone.
“Lily, what’s the name of the woman coming to see you tomorrow?”
“Ava Lee.”
“And when will that be?”
“Late in the afternoon.”
“And how will she contact you?”
“By phone.”
Ashton looked at Ava and shrugged.
Say goodbye, Ava mouthed.
“I have to go now. You sleep tight.”
“Thanks, baby, you too.”
Ava shut off the phone. “Well done.” She took a business card and a pen from her bag. “Give me her office, home, and mobile numbers.” Then she said, “Tell me, does she know how you got that money?”
“No,” Ashton said, handing her back the card.
“What does she think?”
“I told her that we finally became profitable.”
“To that degree?”
“The money we’ve made over the past six months isn’t much more than what we forecast when we started the business.”
“And she bought that?”
“Is that a problem?” Douglas asked.
Ava shook her head. “No, not really. She’ll know the truth soon enough.” She turned to Carlo. “Okay, bring in the guys and get them bundled away. Then feed the dogs. I want to get out of here in the next half-hour.”
“Now what?” Douglas asked as he watched Carlo and Andy leave the room.
“We’re going to be getting out of here soon. We’re bringing in your thugs. We’ll put them in separate rooms.”
“You’re going to leave us taped like this?”
“We need to have a serious discussion. Are both of you up for it?” she asked.
Douglas nodded. Ashton said, “I’m listening.”
“This part of your ordeal is over. How the rest of it plays out is entirely up to you,” she said slowly. “I’m going to give you two clear choices, and I know ahead of time which one you’re going to choose. The thing is, you need to understand that by choosing it, you’re making a commitment to me and my people that you cannot go back on. You may think you can, you may even be convinced that you can, but I’m telling you it would be the worst thing you could ever do. Understand?”
Douglas said, “Two choices.”
“Fine, choice one is that you decide not to cooperate. The consequence: you both die and the two guys with the dogs die,” she said. “So I know you’re going to take choice two, and that is to tell me you will cooperate. In that case, the boys and I will leave the way we came and I will go and see Lily Simmons and retrieve the rest of the money you stole. Now, the key to all this is, what do I mean by cooperation?”
“I think you’re going to tell us,” Douglas said.
“Of course I am,” Ava said. “Your thugs will be bound and left in the bedrooms. You’ll be taped and left in other rooms. It’s best if you don’t struggle to get free. And if by some fluke you do, you don’t contact security. Later this evening, someone will call them and arrange for you to be released. When you are released, you will tell security that this was a home invasion by three men in masks with eastern European accents. You will tell your buddies to stick to that story and you will make sure they do. If security calls in the local police, you’ll tell them the same story.
“Neither of you will make any effort to contact Lily Simmons. None. If she phones, don’t take the call. No emails, no texts. Nothing.” She shot a glance at Ashton.
“I get it,” he said.
“Okay, now let me make it clear that my leaving doesn’t make your position any easier. If by some chance you decided to gamble and did speak to Lily Simmons, or — just as bad — told the authorities what actually happened here and maybe even managed somehow to get me and the boys arrested, it would not make any difference to your position. In fact, as I said before, it would probably worsen it. For certain my people would go public with the news that The River is nothing but a front for fraud and that you are the primary perpetrators. Your reputations would be destroyed. They’d come after all the money and then, of course, they’d kill you. And it wouldn’t be any quick bullet to the head. They’d send guys like Carlo and Andy, who are experts in prolonged agony. Understand?”
“Yeah.”
“And neither of you would be able to hide. These people would find you. They always find who they’re after, and they would take it out on you for making them hunt you down.”
“I understand,” Douglas said, sweat coating his face.
“Now, if you do cooperate, what’s the upside? You stay alive. You keep the rest of your appendages. Your reputations remain intact. The River can keep rolling as long as it operates above board. And — if I can get Lily Simmons to sign over the $65 million I want from the holding company’s accounts, I will return all the money that I just removed from your personal accounts and from The River’s operating account.”
“You would really do that?” Douglas asked.
“I would.”
“And what if you can’t get her to sign? Does our cooperation still have some value?”
She admired his nerve. “Do you have any reason to think I won’t be able to get her to sign?”
Douglas looked at Ashton, who said, “It’s not her that might be a problem. It’s her father.”
Ava stared at him. “Explain that to me.”
“I hardly know where to begin.”
“That’s not a good start.”
Ashton shook his head. “He’s a self-made man, or, as he prefers to say, ‘a fucking self-made man.’ He has a working-class background. His father was a coal miner and he was the first of his family to go to university. He took engineering, and when he left school, he joined a small company that made generators. Within five years he was running it, and five years later he owned it. Ten years after that it was one of the largest generator manufacturers in the world. It’s a success story he never tires of telling, and he’s always at the centre of it. In his own mind there aren’t many people smarter or tougher than Roger Simmons.”
“So he obviously made some serious money as well.” Ava said.
“That’s his second favourite subject — how much he’s made and how hard it was to make it. It’s how he puts a value on himself. It separates him from the riff-raff he grew up with. It brings him at least close to a level playing field with the blueblood crowd he loves to hang around with now, the crowd he married into.” Ashton looked up at Ava. “He loves his money. He was mouthing off to Lily about how much money we had lost, and she thought he was close to shutting us down until we turned things around. Now that he has the money back, he isn’t the kind of man to give it up that easily.”
“I read that he’s in politics now.”
“Yeah, that’s his latest ego trip. It’s a toss-up which he feels the most puffed up about, his business success and his money or his fucking political status.”
“I read that he’s a cabinet minister in the U.K.”
“He is, and when he gets a few drinks in him and he’s with friends or family, he doesn’t mind telling you he’s only one step away from becoming prime minister and saving the country from ruin.”
“His assets must be in a blind trust or something like that, no?”
“That’s true.”
“So his daughter is obviously empowered to manage the money.”
“In theory.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s still his money. He keeps his eye on every pound. Lily may officially administer the trust and sign all the documents, but nothing happens until she clears it with him. He jokes about it. He says just because his money is in a blind trust, it doesn’t mean he’s also deaf. They’re careful, I give them that. Nothing is ever in writing, not even an email. It’s strictly verbal.”
“But she has the authority. She doesn’t actually need his approval.”
“She won’t do anything that might upset Daddy, and not many things in life upset Roger Simmons more than losing money.”
“He doesn’t have to know.”
“You aren’t listening to me. She won’t do it without him, and I’m trying to tell you he’ll be a hard man to convince.”
Lily Simmons seems to have issues with men, Ava thought. “I appreciate your candour. I assume this is your way of making sure that if she won’t sign, it won’t come back to bite you.”
“She’s an only child and she’s her father’s daughter. The bonds are incredibly tight,” Ashton said.
“I didn’t want you to have unrealistic expectations,” Douglas added.
“I see that, and I appreciate it,” she said.
“So how about the deal you mentioned? Is it still on?” Douglas asked. Then, for the first time since she had entered the house, he stared directly into her eyes. It was a hard, questioning look, the kind she imagined he had perfected at the poker table when trying to decide if his opponent was bluffing. She stared back, unwavering, until he turned away.
“If Lily Simmons refuses to sign and I believe you haven’t interfered in the process, then I will return half of your personal money, but none of The River’s.”
Now Ashton looked at her with something other than hatred. “If Lily signs, you’ll return our personal money and all of The River’s. If she doesn’t, we get half of our own money.”
“That’s what I just said.” The offer to return the money both bought her time and acted as a sweetener. It was a lesson she had learned from her father, and one that had been reinforced time and again by Uncle. If you push people into a corner and give them no way out, they attack. It’s human nature. She wanted them to cooperate — for her sake, not theirs — and offering them some of their own money back gave them a positive and compelling reason to do so. She had figured out that both cared more about their money than their reputations, and the interest her offer had sparked was proving her right. She knew she had an agreement.
“This isn’t so hard, gentlemen,” Ava said, holding out her hands, palms up. “Choice one: don’t cooperate or pretend to cooperate, and lose your reputation, your business, your money, and your lives. Choice two: do as I say and keep them all.”
“You have a deal,” Douglas said.
“How about you?” she asked Ashton.
“I’m in,” he said quickly.
“I thought you might be,” Ava said. “Now, I do need to stress one thing — there’s no time limit on our agreement. It doesn’t expire in a month, a year, or ten years.”
“That’s clear,” Douglas said.
A noise erupted from the kitchen. Carlo and Andy were hauling in the man who had been shot in the leg. They stood on either side of him, holding his arms, as he hopped in. Douglas looked at him with disgust.
It took fifteen minutes to get everyone double-taped and lying in separate rooms. When they were settled, she said to Carlo and Andy, “Take their wallets and go through the drawers. Make it look like a robbery. You can keep whatever you find; just don’t use their credit cards. When you’re done, come outside to the car.”
As Carlo and Andy started going through Douglas’s things, Ava went outside to join Martin. “We’re just finishing up,” she told him as she slid into the passenger seat.
“And?”
“Here is a confession signed by both of them,” she said, passing him a copy. “It could be useful if the Chief ever has an issue with them.”
“What are you going to do with it?” Martin asked.
“It’s a bargaining chip.”
“Why do you need one?”
“I only got back a little of the money they stole. The bulk is sitting in an account in Cyprus and it takes three signatures to release it. I have only two.”
“Who is the third?”
“Ashton’s fiancee, and she’s in London. I’m going there tonight.”
“What about them?” he asked, pointing to the house.
“They’re tied up and will stay that way until I can get Carlo and Andy and you out of Las Vegas.”
“And they’ll stay quiet?”
“Yes, I think they will. Neither of them is stupid.”
The front door opened and Carlo and Andy emerged, each of them carrying his paper bag.
“You can open the trunk,” Ava said. “We should leave the same way we came in.”
They climbed back into the trunk in the same order. The smell of baby powder was gone, replaced by a faint odour of sweat.
They drove out of the complex without any complications, and two minutes later Martin pulled the car over to the side of the road. He popped the trunk, held out his hand to Ava, and pulled her out. She felt stiff, and the right side of her torso was throbbing. The boys climbed out after her.
“Wipe your prints off the cleaver and the gun and then toss them,” she said.
As she watched them walk out into the desert to get rid of the weapons, she muttered, “Ninety-five.”
“What?” Martin said.
“I’m ninety-five percent of the way to getting that money back.”
“That’s amazing.”
“No, unfortunately, it isn’t. Unless I can close, it doesn’t mean a thing,” Ava said. Half of her brain was making a list of all the things she had to do before she left Las Vegas; the other half was already in London.