Page 93 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“A typed let­ter. It said that the dig­i­tal files and all copies of the pho­tos would be de­stroyed if I did just one task. There would be no fur­ther de­mands af­ter that.” Ricci took a deep breath. “The mes­sage said I should be pre­pared for an overnight trip at all times. In ad­di­tion, I should text a list of all the sup­plies I would need for a sim­ple oto­plasty to the num­ber in the let­ter. At some point in the next few months, I would re­ceive a text mes­sage telling me where to go. It would con­tain the code word ‘lilies.’ That was it.”

“What hap­pened the day of the mu­ti­la­tion?” Mikel’s voice was like a whipcrack.

Ricci winced at the last word. “A text ar­rived from a dif­fer­ent num­ber, not the one that I’d sent the list to. It said that I should bring the lilies to the train sta­tion in Brus­sels at six p.m. on that day. Some­one would ac­cept the flower de­liv­ery there. When I got off the train, an­other text ar­rived, telling me to walk to where the van was parked and get in.”

He curled over his knees. “I didn’t know what was go­ing to hap­pen to me.” His voice broke on a sob. “It was al­most a re­lief when they took the blind­fold off, and I saw I was in a makeshift op­er­at­ing room. At least there I felt cer­tain about what I was sup­posed to do.”

“Slice a per­fectly healthy ear off of a man be­ing held against his will,” Quinn snapped. “You were com­fort­able with that.”

“No! No.” He shook his head with­out straight­en­ing. “But that would be the end. I wouldn’t have to won­der if Sylvie would get a packet of pho­tos in the mail on any given day.”

“You be­lieved the black­mailer would de­stroy the orig­i­nal photo files?” Quinn in­jected ut­ter scorn into her voice.

“I didn’t have a choice. And I was right.” He raised his head. “No pack­age has ever come.” A touch of con­fi­dence was back in his voice. He’d weath­ered the storm, so he could still globe-trot be­tween all his fancy houses.

Set­ting aside her de­sire to smack the con­ceit off Ricci’s too-hand­some face, Quinn sorted through the im­pli­ca­tions of what they had learned. Us­ing Ricci’s skills had been a one-off for the black­mailer, which led back to the kid­nap­ping be­ing a per­sonal vendetta. The black­mailer hadn’t shaken Ricci down for money on top of his ser­vices, so that hadn’t been a mo­ti­va­tion ei­ther.

She be­gan to feel that ex­hil­a­rat­ing sense of stand­ing on the top of a moun­tain of data where she could see the dots. Now she had to find the con­nec­tions.

The per­son who planned all this had to know Ricci and his wife well enough to un­der­stand the pres­sure those pho­tos would ex­ert. Ricci’s love nest was in Paris. Brus­sels was only about four hours from Paris by car. Gabriel had heard Ko­dra re­fer to Paris.

“Do you or your wife have any friends or busi­ness as­so­ciates who live in Paris?” Quinn asked.

“Of course. Quite a few. We have an apart­ment there.” Ricci looked away. “Other than the one Ru­pert lived in.”

“I want you to write down their names, no mat­ter how ca­sual the ac­quain­tance. I want con­tact info and how you know them,” Quinn said. “Here’s a se­cure ad­dress to email the list to.” She handed him one of the busi­ness cards Mikel in­sisted that she carry. It was the first time she had used one.

“Do not leave out a sin­gle name,” Mikel re­in­forced Quinn’s re­quest.

“I’ll in­clude ev­ery­one I can think of.” Ricci flicked the busi­ness card against his palm. “What hap­pens now?”

Mikel stood. “If we think of fur­ther ques­tions, we’ll be in touch.”

“I mean what hap­pens to me?”

“You make sure that I can al­ways find you.” Mikel pro­jected icy men­ace. “If I have to go look­ing for you, it will make your fu­ture very un­pleas­ant.”

“What do you mean? I have to stay here in Zug all the time?” Ricci had the nerve to sound an­noyed.

“No. You just have to make it easy for my sur­veil­lance team to keep track of you,” Mikel said.

The sur­geon went pale as he glanced to­ward the win­dows again. “I’m un­der sur­veil­lance?”

“How do you think we knew you were here?” Mikel smiled and walked to­ward the front door.

Quinn stood and flicked her jacket back to show Ricci her Glock one more time.

Once they were set­tled in the limou­sine again, Quinn took the gun out of the shoul­der hol­ster, checked that the cham­ber was still empty, and handed it to Mikel. “I en­joyed mak­ing him flinch.”

“I wanted to kill him.” Her boss’s dec­la­ra­tion was chill­ing be­cause it was so mat­ter-of-fact.

Quinn’s hero wor­ship of Mikel ratch­eted up a notch. “Yeah, I kept imag­in­ing Gabriel strapped down on that ta­ble while Ricci sliced into his ear, just be­cause he wanted to keep his six houses. How could any­one, es­pe­cially a doc­tor, do that?”

“Peo­ple do far worse,” Mikel said, his voice bur­dened with a vast weari­ness. “In a twisted way, Gabriel was lucky that Ricci did the surgery. Ricci is highly skilled. The fact that he’s a nar­cis­sis­tic cabrón doesn’t change that.”

“What if the in­sti­ga­tor of the kid­nap­ping only thought of the surgery be­cause he knew he could black­mail Ricci into do­ing it?”

“There is al­ways that pos­si­bil­ity.” Mikel stowed both Glocks in the brief­case. “I could see your brain work­ing at the end of our in­ter­view. You be­lieve the black­mailer is some­one fa­mil­iar with the Ric­cis.”

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