Chasing the White Lion James Hannibal (essential reading TXT) 📖

hands, and he needed those to manage his toggles for the landing, coming up fast. If armed men waited for him in the trees, he was at their mercy.

CHAPTER

FORTY-

EIGHT

CLUB STYX

MILOS, GREEK ISLES

10:31 PM

ASTHEFERRYMANPUNTEDUPTOTHEDOCK, Valkyrie saw Darcy slip a gray ball into the water. She had missed her teammate’s other drops. Good. Darcy’s sleight-of-hand skills were coming along. If she managed to dodge a fiery death at the hands of her own creations, she might make an excellent grifter. The French accent helped. Half the men in the world were suckers for a French accent. But for Club Styx, Val put on her Southern Belle.

Emma Knight, TACRON’s negotiator, had graduated summa cum laude from Auburn. Emma Knight. Val liked the name. After this job was done, and with the real Emma locked away for weapons trafficking, Val might take on her persona for a while.

The ferryman sailed off to collect more souls, and the girls got to work. They merged into the crowd at the periphery of the cavern, then split off one by one. Val went first. She glanced back to see Talia and Darcy, arm in arm, giggling as they walked. Their antics drew eyes, but Val doubted that any of the onlookers noticed them swap clutches. The two parted, fingers touching until the last moment. Darcy went left. Talia went right.

“Drink, madame?” A waiter offered Val a tray of selections.

She lifted a champagne glass with two fingers. “Thank you. How kind.” Val wasn’t drinking, not on this job. Tyler had made her promise. But she held the glass, a prop to complete the picture the Kongaran warlord’s buyer expected.

She spotted the buyer on the fourth level, sitting alone at a table, and took an open lift to meet him. On the way, she searched the cavern for Marco but didn’t see him. Jafet’s private poker table, on a platform extending from the eighth-level balcony, remained empty.

Val hated the monster Marco had become early in her youth, and despised him even more for pretending to reform after Tyler spared his life. Yet, try as she might suppress it, she cared what happened to him. If the team failed tonight, after dragging Marco out of hiding, she might never forgive herself. She’d certainly never forgive Tyler.

Val sauntered up to the mark’s table, champagne held slightly above her navel, a smile—barely there—on her lips. “You must be Mr. Aku.”

“Yes. Who is asking?” The warlord’s man had his nose buried in a smartphone, brand new and too large to fit in any reasonable pocket. His eyes came up first and widened. The rest of his head followed. “Oh.”

“Emma Knight.” She pushed the accent. Alabaman. Not Texan or Georgia peach. Aku likely wouldn’t know the difference, but Val was a perfectionist.

When he got up to take her hand, almost knocking over his chair, she made her assessment.

Eager to please—a result of physical and psychological abuse in his present superior-subordinate relationship.

Eyes flitting all over the place—doesn’t know where to look when talking to an attractive woman in an evening gown. Makes him distracted, nervous, vulnerable.

New phone. Silk tailored suit, also new—Aku had laid down some cash since arriving in the Greek Isles, hopefully some of his abusive boss’s cash.

Val broadened her Alabama smile. “I’m so pleased to make your acquaintance. Shall we sit?”

The obsidian tables were etched with games designed for guests to enjoy and gamble among themselves. Aku’s table boasted a black felt dice tray and a board of squares with castles carved into the corners, a red dragon at the center. The dice, most of all, caught Val’s eye. There were five, one in the tray and the other four placed on the castle squares, but all were ten-sided gems—sapphire, ruby, amethyst, amber, and emerald, inlaid with gold and silver numbers. The jewels were lab-created, to be sure, but gorgeous nonetheless.

“It is called Dragon’s Domain,” Aku said. “What shall we play for? Pride or greed?”

“How about five million?”

“US dollars?”

“Is there really any other currency worth mentioning?”

“Uh . . . I . . .” The warlord’s lieutenant pressed his lips together and swallowed.

Val already knew he didn’t have that kind of cash. “If I win, your boss, Mr. Iwela, pays TACRON’s asking price for the three squadrons of drones. Fifty million. That’s a respectable bulk discount off our original twenty-million-per-squadron ask.”

“And if I win?”

“If you win, darlin’, your boss still pays fifty, but I divert five million into the account of your choosing.”

Aku’s eyes widened. “You mean—”

Val lifted the amber die from the tray, rolled it between her thumb and forefinger, and winked. “What happens to the extra five million is entirely up to you.”

She didn’t have to ask twice. Aku nodded. “This arrangement is acceptable. Quite acceptable.”

“Excellent.” Val flicked the die into the tray, watching the yellow facets catch the torchlight. She set her champagne glass beside the board. “How do we play?”

“You do not know?”

“Darlin’, I’ve never seen this game in my life.”

The Kongaran could hardly contain his grin. “I will teach you.”

The game had something to do with moving Val’s ruby and sapphire pieces to reach the opposite castles or forcing Aku’s gems into the center, which he called the Dragon’s Domain. Aku was no genius, and despite Val’s best efforts at losing, his emerald and amethyst pieces were soon sitting at the clawed feet of the dragon.

She clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh my. Did I win?” She wanted to smack him.

The Kongaran stared at his pieces in disbelief. “Best two out of three?”

“I’ll tell you what. I’m all about makin’ friends. So, let’s you and I pretend you won, and if you don’t tell your boss, neither will I.”

“Really?”

She ran a finger along the back of his hand. “Really. Now, shall we make this official so we can enjoy the rest of the evening?”

His eyes were dazed, mesmerized. Five million dollars and a glittering red dress had that effect on a man like Aku.

“I’ll take your silence as a yes.” Val sat back, taking his smartphone