Chapter 85

85

When Shaw awoke from his catnap, the Sikorski was in a hover.

Out the port window, Shaw could see the early bird fishermen on the Star Island dock stopped in their tracks, watching as they came in for the landing on the boat of Wall Street titan Frank Stone.

Of course, they were. Under the landing gear was a two-hundred-foot battleship gray yacht with three decks and all black windows that looked like something out of a spy movie.

Shaw had been in Manhattan about to head home when Stone called Control and said he wanted a personal debrief out here in Montauk.

And with pockets like this guy had, Shaw thought as they descended toward the second deck of his mega yacht, what Frank wanted, Frank got.

As he got off the bird, some knockout brunette came out of the lower pilothouse and led him inside and sat him in a luxury hotel–like stateroom. She told him he needed to cool his heels for a bit and offered him a menu, an actual menu like he was at a four-star restaurant.

He'd packed in some French toast and a quart of OJ and had actually fallen asleep when Frank's assistant woke him a few minutes later. He was led below deck to an even more opulent living room space and then Frank himself came marching in wearing jeans and an unbuttoned shirt.

Shaw had to bite his cheek from bursting into laughter at the entrance of Little Frank.

Even with the leg breaking, grow-four-inches billionaire thing, he was barely five foot nine.

He'd had a trainer to help him force some muscle tone onto his scrawny ass and now he wanted one and all to take in his teeny-weeny muscles.

Truly it was funny. He basically paid some guy to do push-ups for him and now he thought he was Genghis Khan.

What did he even want? Shaw thought, yawning from where he was sitting on a white couch. To chew his ass? Motivate him or something? Punish him?

Like his boss, Vance—and all rich guys—Frank had the blind spot of thinking money could buy you anything you wanted. What old Frank didn't realize was that there were a lot of different kinds of dudes out there in the world. Some of them were out of their freaking minds. Like this bomb squad cop, for instance. The guy drove around with freaking Semtex in the trunk of his car? You think you were gonna bribe this guy?

Bribe gravity sooner. Or time , Shaw thought.

"What the hell happened?" Frank said in greeting.

Shaw yawned again and was just about to go over it when the assistant showed back up with a SAT phone.

"Who is it?" Frank said.

"President Cushing, sir."

"Excellent. This concerns him. Just put him on speaker phone," he said, gesturing for the young woman to leave.

"Hello," said a cheery voice.

Shaw squinted.

It was a vaguely familiar cheery voice.

"Marty?"

"No, this isn't Marty, Frank. This is the guy who has Marty's phone."

Shaw, exhausted, suddenly started laughing.

"It's him," Shaw said brightly.

This guy really was good! Shaw thought.

"Him? Him who?"

"I'm the guy with the video, Frank. I'm the guy you couldn't kill. Try to keep up. And listen up. I've seen your little room in Marty's house. Your little setup. In fact, I'm looking at it right now."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Frank said.

"I have all the servers. Your blackmail is now my blackmail. But good news, Frank. I'm willing to cut a deal. We get Olivia back, you get the blackmail back. I hear you like boats. As it happens, me, too. Let's meet this afternoon somewhere discreet and do the exchange. Put your captain on and I'll give him the coordinates."