Because somehow, he had. He’d used that impossible disguise to get five minutes alone with Iranian crown jewels.
And he had taken the Ocean of Light.
CHAPTER
34
The headache nearly killed me. For twelve hours I couldn’t do a goddamn thing except lie there with my eyes closed and a cool towel on my forehead. I mean, I must’ve eaten half a bottle of Tylenol, and it did nothing to chill that fucking headache. The ophthalmologist had told me it would happen like that. It’s a big reason why nobody but me would think of this trick. To everybody else, it’s either impossible, or it’s way too painful. You can’t fuck with your eyes like that without paying the price.
I paid it. I didn’t mind. Hell, I could afford it now.
The trick was pretty simple, when you think about it. Big, thick prescription lenses—nobody could see through them unless they need that prescription, that’s obvious. So you know it’s not a disguise—it’s got to really be some half-blind guy. It can’t possibly be Riley Wolfe, right?
Unless Riley Wolfe puts on contact lenses first—contact lenses with the exact opposite prescription of the lenses. Contacts with a prescription of minus 8.00, glasses with plus 8.00, get it? So the contacts and the glasses cancel out, and you see with your normal vision. But you look like a goggle-eyed freak—so you can’t possibly be Riley Wolfe, and you can pull off some amazing shit.
And I had.
And then the absolutely killer headache. The opthamologist I’d paid to work this out for me had warned me. He was right. I was just about paralyzed with the pounding pain in my skull. But hey—who would ever say it wasn’t worth it?
It totally was worth it. Even if the fucking headache lasted a month.
I was pretty sure somebody would figure it out soon enough. Probably the FBI guy. My only regret was that I wasn’t there to see his face when he did—or when he “found” my mother. I should have left a camera, recorded that. I bet it was worth watching a few times. Shit, I would’ve put it on a continuous loop. Used it as wallpaper on my laptop.
Whatever. Anyway, it gave me plenty of time to split from New York, lose the headache, and get to my island.
Yeah, that’s right. I have an island. It’s not even on the maps, and it’s all mine, nobody else lives there, mostly nobody even knows it’s there. I want to keep it that way, too. So I’ll just say it’s probably either somewhere in the Caribbean or maybe the South Pacific. Someplace warm and very private. And I don’t let anybody else visit, hear about it, know about it—not nobody, nohow, never . . . with one small exception. Just this once.
Every big win deserves a big prize, and this had been one hell of a win. It would need a world-class reward. And guess what? I had one all picked out.
* * *
—
Monique was having a very hard time believing it. She’d thought it was a very bad idea to begin with, and she was more than half convinced that it still was.
But here she was, wherever “here” was. Riley had been mysterious to the point of being psychotic about the exact location. All Monique knew was that the next-to-last leg of the trip had been twelve hours on a private jet, which had landed on a small and unidentifiable island. From there, Riley had hustled her off to a tiny marina on one end of the island, where they’d boarded a thirty-foot boat—a yacht, really. It had a cabin with a queen-sized bed and full kitchen. And it apparently had very large engines, because when Riley steered it out of the harbor and onto the open water and opened up the throttle, the acceleration had nearly pushed Monique through the back of her chair.
Eleven hours later, Riley slowed and steered them through a tight and unmarked channel, and finally to a well-hidden dock, where he tied up the boat, off-loaded their minor luggage, and led her onto his island.
There were a lot of security features, which she’d expected—everything from locked steel gates to electronic panels where Riley turned off unguessable devices, punching in long strings of numbers before proceeding. And finally, following a path up a gently sloping hill, they came to Riley’s house, which was the biggest surprise of all. Not the fact that there was a house, of course. The surprise was the house itself.
Monique would have expected something small, sleek, and secure. Maybe more like a bunker with picture windows? What she found, perched on top of the hill in the center of the island, was a large, pseudo-Victorian house, with a cupola and a wraparound porch—really kind of a tacky, suburban house, Monique thought. It didn’t fit here, in this tropical setting.
But Riley was clearly proud of the place. And from the inside of the house, it was clear that he had done a lot of work to make it more suitable to his personal tastes. There were floor-to-ceiling mahogany bookshelves, and they were loaded with well-worn books. And there was a large stereo system and several more shelves packed with CDs. The books were a bit of a shock to Monique. And the size and variety of the CD collection was just as impressive. It all hinted at someone she didn’t know. Monique realized that by being here, she was getting a look at this unknown man—the real Riley Wolfe. She liked what she was seeing of this new person, so Monique kept her comments about the architecture to herself.
There was a faint whisper of air-conditioning, and it was cool a
nd dry inside, in spite of the hot sun beating down outside. The windows had heavy steel roll-down shutters; the doors were thick and also reinforced with steel. “We are safe here,” Riley said as she looked around the living room. “Completely, totally safe.”
Safety would not have been the first of Monique’s concerns in an isolated spot like this one, and she wondered why it seemed so important to Riley.
She wondered much more why she’d agreed to come with him to this completely secluded spot. She knew very well why he had asked her to come and what he would expect if she agreed, so why had she said yes? Why had she come along so readily, blurting out, “Okay, sure,” the moment he asked, without really thinking about what she was agreeing to?
Part of it had been Riley’s euphoric excitement. He was like a little boy who couldn’t enjoy his new toy unless he shared it with his friend, and the bubbly glee was contagious.
But a deeper part was that Monique’s feelings for Riley had changed. As she had worked feverishly to finish her replica of the great diamond, she had driven herself without mercy because Riley’s life depended on her making something perfect. And as she repeated that, like a mantra, it gradually occurred to her that Riley’s life was important to her. She cared. Monique’s life without Riley Wolfe in it would be dimmer, less interesting. She wanted him alive, safe, and she wanted to be around him.
So she went along. Knowing what she was agreeing to when she did, Monique went with Riley to his supersecret, totally hidden, completely safe fortress of solitude. And for a while, she was glad she did. The odd shift in her feelings for Riley, the warming up to him that had come over her while she worked on this insane, lethal job, made it all a lot easier—even kind of natural. It even had her thinking, who knew what might happen between them? It no longer seemed annoying or unthinkable—even without losing the Bet.