Club Prive Book V

Chapter 1


Howard

June 13th 2008

This was not the way I’d wanted to spend my day. It was a beautiful June afternoon in the Big Apple, but the atmosphere around me and my lunch companion was anything but pleasant. Earlier this month, after almost seven years, suspects in the attack on this city were arraigned. Today, there were rumors of a breakout of more than two hundred Taliban members from prison. Neither of these things made New Yorkers more inclined to be friendly to the Saudi man across from me.

I wasn’t talking to him at the moment, however. No, I was on my cell phone trying to figure out how much more damage control was going to be needed for the disaster that had happened several hours ago.

“Were you able to move the car without being seen?” I kept my voice low even though the surrounding tables were empty. One could never be too careful.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Weiss.” Gene was my fixer, the man I called when things went to hell like they had earlier today. “And I heard from my police contact, too.”

“And?” I asked impatiently.

“There’s a witness.”

I swore, my hand tightening on my phone.

“Sounds like he didn’t see much,” Gene continued. “It’s the woman’s fiancé. He was so busy with her, all he could tell the cops was that it was a black Bentley. He didn’t even get a single letter on the plate.”

I relaxed a little. Bentleys weren’t exactly common, but I was hardly the only person in the city who owned one. I owned more than one, in fact. If we played our cards right, this could go away.

“Tell your contact to keep you informed,” I instructed. “If the witness remembers anything else, anything that could come back on us, take care of it.”

“Got it.”

The call ended and I pocketed my phone. I turned back to my business partner, a smile on my face. It was almost all genuine. “Everything is clear. We can move on as planned.”

“Excellent,” he said in his heavily accented English. He leaned down and retrieved a suitcase. He slid it across the table to me. “The price we agreed upon.”

I opened the case, my smiling widening into completely genuine as I saw the neat little bundles of bills. “It is always a pleasure doing business with you,” I said as I closed the briefcase.

Now, if the little incident went away, it would turn out to be a good day after all.





Chapter 2


Carrie

Present Day

Shit, shit, and double shit. I silently cursed as my brain scrambled to figure out what to do. If I didn’t act fast, I was going to be caught with my hand in the proverbial cookie jar. Except the cookie jar was a locked filing cabinet, and instead of a cookie, I was holding in my hand the file of a missing girl. A file that contained some pictures that would be pretty good circumstantial evidence saying that Howard Weiss had been in contact with Patricia Vinarisky around the time of her disappearance.

I shoved the file back into the cabinet and closed it, hoping it locked automatically. Now I had to find somewhere to hide. The voices in the hallway had stopped in front of the office door and someone was turning the doorknob. Thankfully, the person on the other side of the door paused.

I ran across the room as quickly as my elegant evening gown and high-heeled shoes would let me. The door on the other side of the office led to a closet or bathroom, either one of which was fine with me. I just needed to be somewhere out of sight.

I ducked inside without looking behind me. The room felt bigger than I’d originally assumed, but I didn’t take the time to see why. All of my attention was focused through the thin crack in the door. I’d considered closing it all the way, but a part of me felt the need to know what was happening.

The door to the office opened and I watched two people enter. One was Howard Weiss, the handsome billionaire whose office I’d broken into. The other was his personal assistant, Annie. Like all of the other women I’d seen with Howard, she was beautiful. Tall, slender, with honey blond hair and light blue eyes. She could have been a model.

At first, I was so focused on hoping they didn’t look my way that I completely missed the angry expression on Howard’s face. It wasn’t until he spoke that I realized he and Annie were in here for something other than a quick grab of some papers or taking a memo. Something had happened while I’d been away from the party.

“How in the world do you lose a person?” His voice was low and angry, more so than I’d ever heard it before. The charming mask that he wore all the time had slipped away, and even though he still had his classic movie-star good looks, there was something ugly about him.

“I double-checked the flight manifests myself, sir. She was checked in.” Annie sounded nervous.