Private Monaco

Chapter 83

“You missed,” Michel said bitterly, and his face reddened with fury as he watched the commotion on the grandstand.

I couldn’t make out the details, but I was pretty sure the press of bodies was Carver’s close protection detail taking him to safety.

Kendrick Stamp unclipped the rifle from the gyroscopic platform and turned it on Michel.

“I missed that target,” he agreed. “But I won’t miss this one.”

He pulled the trigger and shot Michel in the chest. The force of the high-caliber slug delivered at deafeningly close range drove Michel across the deck, and he collapsed against the other side, pawing weakly at the hole in his chest.

Stamp put the rifle down and helped me to my feet.

“Thank you,” I said.

His eyes shimmered with tears. “I didn’t do it for you. I did it for my wife.”

“I appreciate it nonetheless,” I told him.

“I missed on purpose. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t shoot him. I swore an oath.” He hesitated. “Help me find her. Please.”

“Do you have any leads?”

He nodded. “They let me speak to her this morning. I was hooded, but she was there with me, in person, in a house or warehouse. It was definitely inside. I felt the breeze when they took me out afterwards.”

“Any ideas on the locality?” I asked, wiping blood from my eye.

“After the shooting at the hotel, they came and took me. Put a hood on me and moved me somewhere about twenty minutes’ drive away. They turned and doubled back so much, I can’t tell you the direction of travel. I spoke to Angie inside and then they led me away and brought me here by boat. I was still hooded, but the boat was waiting right outside the location. There were steps down and sand, so wherever she is it has to be on the waterfront. Angie is somewhere over there.”

I walked over to Michel, who was taking rapid shallow breaths. He groaned as I approached, and I ignored his pathetic attempts to fight me off as I reached into his pocket for the phone he’d threatened Stamp with earlier.

I stepped away and used it to call Justine. She answered almost immediately.

“Hello?”

“Jus, it’s me.”

“Jack, thank God! When Carver was shot at, I feared the worst.”

“I’m okay,” I assured her. “Where are you?”

“In some sort of equipment store with Secretary Carver and his people,” she replied. “They’re preparing to evacuate him.”

“The threat here is over. I don’t know if there are others, but Kendrick Stamp did the right thing and missed on purpose,” I said, looking at Stamp, whose eyes shone with fear and uncertainty about his decision.

I knew exactly how he felt, having lost Justine to these men a few days earlier.

“I need you to ask Carver to run a trace on the last five numbers into and out of this phone. And I need it now. Angie Stamp is being held hostage somewhere in Monaco, and I’ve promised we’ll find her, so I need the location of any device that’s had contact with this phone.”

“I’m on it,” Justine said, before hanging up.

I turned to Stamp, who signaled to Michel. His eyes were glassy and his bloody chest was still. He was dead. I felt no pity for a person who’d been part of such evil.

“We need to be ready to move,” I told Stamp as I crouched to pick up Michel’s fallen pistol, a Dan Wesson DWX, which was an excellent close-range weapon.

Stamp grabbed the sniper rifle, and took an ammunition box from beneath the gyroscopic platform.

“I’m ready,” he said.

“Good. Let’s go,” I replied, and we headed for the RIB.