Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #1: Books 1-4 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [classic children's novels txt] 📗

with a copper hood, a cream sofa, and a large armchair. But no people. Another couple of steps and I could see that to the right there was a passage, and my gut told me that led to the kitchen.

I slipped into the living room. I was on a mezzanine floor with two steps to a lower level, where one whole wall was made of plate glass, in the middle of which there were two sliding doors that now stood open onto a broad, weatherboard terrace that was bathed in moonlight. Now I could hear voices and the sound of the surf.

Keeping in the shadows, I slipped along the wall to stand in the corner, looking out onto the terrace. They had the terrace lights off and were sitting like moonlit ghosts at a table. Beyond them, I could see the luminous ocean and the lights of a small launch.

Emma spoke suddenly.

“Please, Geronimo, I am begging of you, please don’t hurt him. Please, don’t hurt him.”

Geronimo gave a high-pitched wheeze, which must have been a laugh, and said, “Oh, I am going to hurt him, Emma. I am going to make him weep like a child, and I am going to make you watch every second of it until he dies, sobbing for his mommy. Unless, of course, you tell me where the box is. And where is Tammy?”

Twenty-Three

“I am sick of telling you!” Her voice was a hiss in the night, like an echo from the surf on the beach. “I don’t know! For this very reason, Geronimo! I knew that you would try something. I knew that you’d try to trick us and betray us.”

He gave a screech like a parrot. “That! That is fine! When it was your sister who cheated me in the first place! If she had stuck to the terms of our agreement in the first place, we would not be in this mess now!”

“An agreement that gave her a filthy two thousand dollars while you netted an incalculable fortune!”

He leaned forward and spat the words viciously at her. “It was not for me! It was for the Mother Church! He had no place owning that treasure! It belongs to the Church!”

“This is getting us nowhere.”

“Where is Tamara?”

“Where you can never find her.”

“Where is she!”

“Never! I will never tell you!” They were both silent, glaring at each other. Then Emma exploded, “Why are you so obsessed with her? Why can’t you let her be?”

“Because she stole from me, and she must pay.”

“You are such a cretin! If you had just left things as they were, Geronimo! You would have your bloody box! I would have my money and my guarantee, and we would be done! Now you get nothing!”

“Fine!” He pounded the table with his fist. “Have it your way! Ronaldo, go and get him!”

Ronaldo moved toward the plate glass doors. As he did so, Emma threw herself at him, clawing at his arm and pleading, “Please! Please don’t hurt him! For God’s sake, please! Please don’t!”

Geronimo pounded the table again. “Enough of this!”

“I swear to you he has the box! I gave it to him so that you could not get it from me! I don’t know where it is! Kill him and you will never get it!”

I stepped out onto the terrace.

“She’s telling the truth. She gave it to me this morning, and we agreed she would have no knowledge of what I did with it.”

Geronimo gaped. “Stone! What the…?” He glared at Ronaldo and screamed like a hysterical woman. “You incompetent fool!”

“Now, you are at an impasse, Geronimo. The clock is ticking. Hurt Emma or hurt me, you will never see the box again. In a week, it could be anywhere in the world. You tried to be too smart. Now, you have one chance and one chance only. Accept you will have to buy the box with more than money.”

“What do you mean, more than money?”

“A confession, signed and recorded, that implicates all three of us. If any one of us gets hurt, the other two go down.”

“That’s absurd!”

“That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”

His face went crimson, and he pounded the table with both fists till I thought he was going to have a stroke. Even Ronaldo looked curious.

Dos Santos leaned across the table, pointing a finger just an inch from Emma’s face. “Just once! Just once I saw her! Perfect! Beautiful! Enrapturing! If I could have owned her, I would have bought her! But I knew, I knew.” Now he pounded the side of his head with his finger. “God spoke to me. ‘She is the spawn of the Devil! She will be only trouble!’ Five minutes I saw her and I knew!” He dropped back into his chair. “But I was desperate to do God’s work, and I was a fool!”

“You’re a boring man, Geronimo. You talk a lot of shit. Now what’s it to be? If we have a deal, let’s do it. If there is no deal, Emma and I are walking out of here, and you know there is damn all you can do about it.”

Ronaldo pulled his gun and pointed it at me. I looked Geronimo in the eye and said, “You have five seconds to make him put that gun on the table. If he doesn’t, I walk. Then one of two things is going to happen. One, you will kill me, and then you will never see your box. Two, you won’t kill me, and you will never see your box. You see how it works, Geronimo. Now, I am counting…”

Geronimo waved his hand at Ronaldo. “Put down the gun. Put it down.”

Ronaldo shrugged like he thought his boss was stupid. He wasn’t wrong. He put the gun on the table. I thought