Page 46 of Murder Island
I looked up at the wall and took another hard look at the flag hanging there. Now it made sense. Black and red for Belgium. A yellow star for the Congo. Leo was serious. He was out to win back his family’s long-lost colony. He thought he deserved to be a king. It ran in his tainted blood.
“I heard he already sent a squad to take over a copper mine near Lake Tanganyika,” said Marley. “Skeleton force.”
“Maybe they need more muscle,” said Harper.
Fenwick licked the meat grease from his fingers. “WhatIneed,” he said, “is somebody nubile and willing!” He was slurring his words as he pushed away from the table. But everybody knew what he meant. He meant sex. The others grunted in agreement.
From what I’d seen, there were no women anywhere in the castle—or anywhere on the property, for that matter. Abstinence was apparently part of Leo’s program. At least, abstinence from women.
“Look! I’ve spotted one!” Fenwick.
He staggered over to the wall and stared up at a life-sized painting of a female nude—a pale, well-rounded woman standing in a garden, with tendrils of her long red hair curled around her breasts. The artwork was old—maybe sixteenth century. And possibly priceless.
Fenwick grabbed the gilded frame with two hands and yanked the painting off the wall. Then he pressed his crotch against the figure of the woman and started humping it wildly.
“Better than nothing!” he shouted with a crazy grin. “What about you, Brandt? Got a honey stashed somewhere?” He kept thrusting his hips against the woman’s painted privates.
I flashed on Kira’s face. Her voice. Her body.
Something snapped.
“Knock it off!” I shouted.
Before I knew it, my fist was cocked and aimed at Fenwick’s jaw. Just as I threw my punch, I felt Marley grab my arm from behind.
Fenwick backed away, hands up, leaving the abused nude leaning against the wall. “Sorry, laddie. Did I tweak a nerve?”
I twisted free and went for him again. Marley and Tagaloa both grabbed me and held me back.
A door burst open. Six masked guards stepped into the room, rifles raised.
Party over.
CHAPTER 55
ONE OF THE guards led me to my cell like a naughty schoolboy. No words. Just a few annoying prods with his rifle. After he slammed my door and locked it, I walked over to my pile of cash and started counting, just to be sure it was all still there. One hundred thousand dollars. Ten grand for every day I’d awakened at the castle.
Leo was right. It was a pretty strong incentive to hang around.
But not strong enough. Not for me. Not anymore. I had no intention of being turned into a killing machine for some crazed royal.
I sat down on my cot and yanked off the thin cotton sheet. I started a tear with my teeth and ripped a long strip down the whole length. Then I looked for the sturdiest object I could find. The weight rack. Welded steel, bolted to the cement floor.
My way out.
I tied one end of the sheet strip to the upper rail of the rack, then looped the other end around my neck. I leaned against the bottom of the rack until I was sure I had enough tension. Then I slid down and let gravity do its work. I felt my arteries pulsing. I saw sparks in the periphery of my vision.
I figured it wouldn’t take too long.
It didn’t.
Within a few seconds, I heard the bang of the door opening again. Two masked guards rushed in. One sliced the sheet with a knife as the other pulled me to my feet. They expected me to be dizzy and weak.
But I recovered fast.
I knocked out the first one with a chop to the neck. When the other one turned on me, I clocked him in the jaw. His head hit the weight rack on the way down. I grabbed flex cuffs from his belt and tied them both to the leg post. I grabbed one of their pistols and a ten-pound weight and headed out into the corridor. There, recessed into the wall, was a steel locker. It had the same number as my cell.
I gave the lock a solid whack with the weight. The door flew open.