Loose And Easy

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Lost. Rangers were never lost. Never.

Johnny could have been dropped in the middle of a damn desert blindfolded, and with a compass and a map, screw the GPS, have known where he was on the planet in a couple of minutes. Guaranteed. Rangers were the ultimate Eagle Scouts.

But he’d been on more than one mission in the Middle East where they’d had a local guide, and sometimes, those boys had gotten lost. The Rangers would still know where they were. The trick was in knowing where they were supposed to be, or finding a target that wasn’t where the guide had “known” it would be.

No target, no mission.

That’s where he and his current guide, otherwise known as Esme Alexandria Alden, were: off target. According to her, Isaac Nachman’s mansion was humongous, fifty thousand square feet of castlelike log-and-stone lodge set on a thousand acres.

And the girl couldn’t find it, even with her directions in her hand. Even with having done her recon work less than seven days ago.

So how, he wondered, did a person forget the coordinates of a fifty-thousand-square-foot castle? There was only one way-by never knowing them in the first place.

She’d counted on the roads, and remembering where to turn, without measuring distances and mapping them out. That was the big difference between the pros and the amateurs, between the big boys and the-well, he hated to say it, but between the big boys and the girls.

Esme was all girl, and she was lost, and she’d dragged him with her.

And he wasn’t the only one.

In the traffic on the interstate, he hadn’t noticed anybody following them, but he knew the rear end of a 1968 Mercury Cyclone had a distinct vehicular signature even at night. It would have been easy to follow Solange’s taillights-and somebody had done exactly that, because he and Esme weren’t alone out here in the wilderness.

Every now and then, he saw another set of headlights cutting through the darkness below them. He wasn’t too worried, because the other car was losing ground, falling further and further behind. Nachman’s place was in the back of beyond of Genesee, with dozens of roads snaking off into the night in every which direction.

Rangers were never lost, though. Never. And despite all the twists and turns, and all the roads, Johnny knew exactly how to get back to the interstate. If Esme could just remember how to get them to the lodge, he could get them home.

“There.” She pointed out the windshield. “To the right. Just beyond those two big trees.”

Two. Big. Trees.

Right. There weren’t two big trees on this mountainside. There were thousands-thousands and thousands of big trees.

“Esme-”

“You just missed it.”

Missed what?

He looked back over his shoulder-and he’d be damned. There was a road, or rather a track between two big trees.

“A thousand-acre hunting preserve with a fifty-thousand-square-foot lodge on it, and the entrance is a dirt track no more than eight feet wide?” In his limited experience, guys like Nachman liked to announce their munificence with elaborate gates. There wasn’t so much as a string of barbed wire across the track.

He threw Solange into reverse and backed up a couple of feet.

“The road widens out in a mile. The first thing we’ll see is a massive wall running for about a quarter mile in either direction off a huge gate. It’s like the Great Wall of China. There’ll be a gatehouse and a guard to call us in. This road is meant to throw off the day-trippers.”

A guard-he’d expected as much.

“You’re carrying a sidearm,” he said, stopping the car and shifting back into first. “Were you armed the last time you were here?”

“Yes, and I kept my weapon with me the whole time, if that’s what you’re asking.”

That’s exactly what he was asking.

“Does Nachman’s staff make a habit of frisking uninvited male guests?” There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that he looked more dangerous than her.

He eased the Cyclone onto the rutted path, heading for the Great Wall of China. It was possible Isaac’s security staff simply hadn’t considered Esme a threat. She was short, blond, cute. Actually, with the right training, she’d make a helluva bodyguard for somebody.

“It’s possible we won’t see any staff, other than the guard at the gate. They’re there. They have to be. The lodge doesn’t run by itself, but the other two times I was here, with my father, I never actually saw anyone at the house except Nachman.”

Well, that was damned odd. Maybe the staff was just incredibly discreet.

“If you button up and tuck in your shirt, though, it won’t look so much like a gun drape,” she added. “That might help, if you’re concerned.”

He left his shirt unbuttoned and untucked so he’d have easier access to his weapon if he needed it, but she was right. To anyone who was aware, it was a dead giveaway that he just might be packing a pistol, almost as bad as a guy with a fanny pack.

Slowing Solange back to a stop, he put her in neutral and engaged the parking brake, then followed Esme’s advice, stepping out of the car and buttoning up his shirt and tucking it into his jeans. He wasn’t in the mood to have his weapon confiscated for security reasons. But neither was he in the mood to be stuck in the car while she went inside alone-and he knew those would be his choices, if Nachman’s security guys were paying attention and doing their jobs.

And whether she’d seen them or not, he agreed with her; they had to be there, probably half a dozen of them, along with maids, cooks, gardeners, and housekeepers. Guys like Isaac Nachman didn’t live alone.

He stood corrected.

In the middle of the biggest foyer he’d ever seen, a foyer the size of a cathedral, open to the rafters, all open-beamed, three stories high with a giant staircase sweeping up one side, floor after floor, with huge landings and galleries overlooking the foyer, he stood corrected.

The place was empty. He felt it in every bone in his body. Other than him, Easy Alex, God only knew how many dozens of stuffed animal heads from every continent, and the wizened little old man standing in front of them in slippers, socks, and a striped silk robe, and please dear God, something- anything-underneath it, the place was empty.

They’d been passed through the gate by a guard at least as old as Nachman, maybe even older. Decrepitude seemed to be the order of the day at the hunting lodge, ancient decrepitude.

And yet, Isaac Nachman’s eyes were alight.

He’d had Esme open the case on a small table next to the sweeping expanse of stairs, and he’d been riveted to the painting since first sight.

“My dear, my dear.” He almost hummed the words, his excitement was running so high. “My dear Miss Esme. This is a rare day for the Nachman family, a rare day.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Nachman,” Esme agreed. She was very relaxed, which was more than Johnny could say about himself. The place creeped him out. A Cape buffalo was eyeing him from across the room, its black glass eyes seeming to stare straight at him. Four stuffed cheetahs stalked across the wall opposite the staircase. A pride of lions silently roared and motionlessly stalked unseen prey in a room across the way-a whole pride, taxidermied for posterity and somebody’s overwhelming ego.

The rich could be too rich.

And without a doubt, they could be damned strange. He couldn’t believe Esme’s partner had expected her to come up here into the middle of freaking nowhere, to this huge, empty mansion full of dead animals, to cut a deal with this eccentric old geezer all by herself.

He wouldn’t have wanted to do it alone, and he was carrying a.45.

So was she, and he didn’t doubt that her partner knew it, and truth be told, she could probably take Isaac Nachman and the guard at the gate with one hand tied behind her back.

But still.

“She’s been missing from our home for a long, long time,” the old man crooned. “It’s time for her to join her sisters.”

Okay, now he was officially creeped out.

“I know she’s happy to be home, Mr. Nachman.”

He slanted Esme a very askance glance. Geezus.

“If only we had the Monet, Miss Esme,” Nachman mused. “I remember the Monet from when I was a child in Berlin.”

“My father is working on the Monet, Mr. Nachman.”

“Yes, yes. Burt will find it. Burt never fails. He and Bainbridge never fail.”

Johnny kept his mouth shut. His lips were super-glued. He had nothing to add here.

“No, sir, Mr. Nachman. My father never fails.”

He looked at her again, his gaze narrowed. She was watching the old man, the way his hand hovered over the painting, a few centimeters from the surface, like he was channeling the woman in Woman in Blue-and she believed what she’d just said. Her dad never failed. Burt Alden, the guy whose motto was “We Snoop 4 U.”

“He has a gift,” Isaac Nachman said.

“Yes, sir. He does.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” the old man continued. “We had hired so many people over the years. Had our own people on the hunt, and then, like a miracle, we found your father. He has outdone them all.”

“A gift,” she agreed, and Johnny had to wonder, really, just how much of a Burt Alden celebration this was going to turn out to be, and he had to wonder who this “we” was that old Nachman was talking about. There was no “we” that he could see. The mansion was as quiet as a tomb, except for the creaking of the timbers, and the sound of the wind sloughing past the windows.

The wind was new. There hadn’t been any wind when he and Esme had walked up to the massive front door.

If thunder started to roll, and lightning to flash, if it started to rain, he was grabbing Esme and getting the hell out. He wasn’t going to do the whole “dark and stormy night” thing in this freaking weird place.

“And yet…” Nachman said.

And yet Burt Alden was a verifiable screwup. Geezus. Franklin Bleak was going to deep-six him in the river, if Burt didn’t pay off his gambling debt. Whatever gift he had for finding art that had been missing for more than half a century, it sure as hell didn’t extend to finding a horse in the fifth.

“And yet…” Esme repeated.

“One must be sure, Miss Esme,” Nachman said.

“One must be sure,” Esme again repeated what the old man had said.

Maxing out on the creeping out, Johnny thought, releasing a long breath. He glanced back over at the Cape buffalo. Yeah, that thing wanted to eat his lunch.

“Shall we, my dear? Mr. Ramos, you may await us here.” Nachman started walking toward the room with the pride of stuffed lions loping over an artfully designed patch of sub-Saharan Africa.

“Of course.” Esme picked up the painting and started after him.

Johnny stopped her with a touch of his hand on her arm.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Mr. Nachman and I are going to authenticate the painting.”

“Yes… yes, my dear.” The old man had stopped and was looking over his shoulder at her, a very odd and discomfiting smile playing about his lips. “Authenticate to my satisfaction.”

Bullshit.

“We’ll all go together,” Johnny said.

“There won’t be room.” Isaac Nachman shook his head. “There won’t be room, I tell you. Not in the closet.”

Closet?

“We’ll make room,” he said. Fifty goddamn thousand square feet of house and this guy was taking her into a goddamn closet?

Esme gave him a look that clearly said she had it covered, but he didn’t care. The look he gave her back said he had it covered-his way or the highway.

She rolled her eyes and turned back to Isaac Nachman. “Mr. Ramos has been with me for a number of months now, but is still relatively new to the art-recovery business, Mr. Nachman, and he would, no doubt, benefit from being present at the authentication.”

No fucking doubt.

“My…my dear, I must… well, you know.”

“I will vouch for him, Mr. Nachman, personally, upon my utmost honor. His association with our family goes back many, many years, and his security credentials are impeccable, acknowledged and accepted by my father.”

His security credentials were vouchsafed by a helluva lot more reliable and exacting sources than Burt Alden.

“Well, my dear, if your father… well, then, I must, I suppose, accommodate, then… if Mr. Ramos must,” the man said, clearly flustered, which only reinforced Johnny’s position. If there were anything worse than being stuck in a closet with an old geezer wearing a silk bathrobe, it would be being stuck in a closet with a flustered old geezer wearing a silk bathrobe.

What in the hell did the old guy think he was going to get away with? Grabbing her ass? Worse?

Well, it wasn’t going to happen. Not on his shift. And for the record, in his book, Burt Alden was still a bum.

With a decidedly pinched and vapid expression of duress on his face, Isaac Nachman led the way through the lion room, shuffling along in his slippers. Esme followed him, and Johnny followed Esme, bringing up the rear.

The house was amazing, even with so many stuffed animals everywhere. It was all log walls and giant stone fireplaces, and expensive wood paneling with incredibly thick rugs carpeting the floors. But the place didn’t make sense, and it took him passing through a couple more rooms to figure out why.

There was no art. None. Nada. Nothing. Not on the walls, not on the tables, not anything anywhere. No exquisite paintings, no vases, no intricately carved tribal masks, no sculpture, no wall hangings, no tapestries. Only stuffed animals, a bunch of which, on closer inspection, looked a little flea-bitten, like they’d been hunted down and killed a long, long time ago.

Minute after minute passed, with the three of them still walking, heading toward the back of the house, room after room, until Johnny began to wonder how in the world people lived in a place this big. Fifty thousand square feet was unmanageable.

After a couple more turns into beautiful wood-paneled hallways, they took a short flight of stairs down to a lower level with recessed lighting, always with Isaac Nachman in the lead and Esme carrying the painting, until they came to an elevator.

Johnny didn’t mind the ride down even though it seemed to last a helluva long time for being part of a house. He had no problems with elevators. But when the door opened, he did have a problem.

They weren’t in the house any longer. The elevator had opened onto a tunnel dug deep into the mountain, like a mining tunnel, with raw earth walls shored up with lumber. Lights hung from a rock ceiling, a string of lanterns snaking into the far darkness, but Johnny didn’t really give a damn. Lights or no lights, he had a problem, and fighting the urge to draw his pistol and slide up against one of the walls took everything he had.

He clenched his left hand into a fist to hold himself in check, to make sure he didn’t do it.

In front of him, Isaac Nachman shuffled out of the elevator and headed down the tunnel. Esme Alexandria Alden followed the old man, and he, Johnny Aurelio Ramos, stood stock-still in the elevator and started to sweat.