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

it to me. Sell it to me.” Val went to the deal panels and worked the screens. On the scoreboard, the link symbol between Panther Eight One and Panther Eight Two broke.

Talia’s slate buzzed, as it had during the deal with Atan. Val had made an offer. She raised her eyes to the grifter. “You think this will work?”

“It’s worth a shot.”

With a light touch of the ACCEPT button, Talia took the deal. She passed the Bavarian Thaler to Val. “One gold coin in exchange for a meeting with the White Lion, like handing a drachma to the ferryman for the chance to meet Death.”

On the living room TV, the scoreboard gremlins siphoned more than thirty-four million out of Val’s account and dumped it into Talia’s, leaving Val with ten million—exactly what she needed to cover her ante. Talia’s account had grown to the high side of seventy-eight million.

The White Lion’s account had grown as well, but not by nearly as much. Talia now had him beat by a comfortable twenty million, assuming the deal stuck. Boyd was not merely a Frenzy competitor. He was also the referee. Would he allow this little maneuver?

She didn’t have long to wait for the answer. The slate buzzed again—a private message from the White Lion.

Talia let out a quiet laugh. “He wants to meet. The Atrium. We’ve got him.”

CHAPTER

SEVENTY-

FOUR

JUNGLE ATRIUM

TWIN TIGERS COMPLEX

BANGKOK, THAILAND

THEELEVATOROPENED onto a glass walkway, etched to emulate a stone path. With the maze lit below, Talia felt like a messenger to Olympus entering a garden high above the world of men. A near perfect memory of her schooling also left her keenly aware that in every mythology, such places were guarded by monsters.

“Tyler, are you seeing this?” she whispered through her teeth. Her comms crackled, but she received no answer. Eddie had warned her the signal from the repaired transmitter-receiver might not reach the Atrium. No audio or video transmissions. Talia took her glasses off. For now, she was on her own.

A stream fed by a four-story waterfall ran beside the path. Something rustled the foliage beyond. Talia fought the urge to touch the weapon holstered at her back, hidden by her blouse—her Agency-issued all-composite Glock. The time for nonlethals was over. She turned in a circle. “Hello?”

“What is your game, Miss Macciano?”

Talia didn’t see the speaker. “I don’t understand.”

Boyd strolled out from behind the waterfall on a steel-grate walkway, two stories up. He crossed his arms, crumpling the vest and tie of a gray three-piece suit. “You heard me.”

Talia played her part, feigning surprise. “Livingston Boyd. The energy-stock wunderkind. So, you’re the White Lion.”

“In the flesh. But I think you knew that.” He nodded to her left. “Careful.”

A snarling huffpunctuated the warning. Talia jumped to the other side of the path. Across the stream, only a few meters away, a full-grown lion shook its white mane, tracking her every move with blue eyes. “Boyd, what is this? You’re feeding me to your cat?”

“Relax. He won’t cross the stream. There’s an ultrasonic fence. The Japanese circus that sold him to me trained him well. I named him Lionel.” Boyd shoved his hands into his pockets and shrugged. “I couldn’t help myself.”

Talia took a step. The lion matched it. She took another. The lion did the same, placing each paw in Boyd’s synthetic grass with silent purpose. He licked his lips. She swallowed. “How long has it been since Lionel ate?”

“Two days. Keeps him active. I wouldn’t want him passed out in a meat coma when I have guests.” Boyd walked along the winding steel grate track, passing between the umbrella boughs of monkeypod trees. “I asked you a question. What’s your game, Miss Macciano? Mine is cutthroat.”

“As in billiards?”

“As in everything.” He came to a stop above her, where the walkway made an S turn over the path. “I grew up online. Massive multiplayer fantasy games. Resource management simulations. Whatever the arena, cutthroat was the winning strategy. Make alliances. Break alliances. Wipe out the noobs and take their stuff.”

Lionel sat on his great haunches, looking up at his master as if hoping for a treat.

Boyd didn’t give him so much as a glance. “I found the same applies to the world’s markets—black, white, or gray. My game is cutthroat, Miss Macciano. And playing cutthroat has made me billions.”

“Your parents must be proud.”

“My parents still live in Cardiff and think I’m a stockbroker. I’m biding my time until I can stick them in a home.” Boyd rested his forearms on the rail. “So, you ended the partnership with your sister and nearly doubled your money. Betrayal? Collusion? Are you merely vying for my attention, or are you gunning for my title?”

Talia didn’t like the way his new position forced her to tilt her head. It robbed her of any awareness of her surroundings. She backed a few paces down the path, grateful Lionel didn’t follow. “You tell me.”

Boyd snorted. “Sorry. No time for guessing games. In less than fifteen minutes, my proxy will arrive at our off-site warehouse with my biggest buyers. I have thirty or forty million dollars coming in over the next hour. Do you?”

“I still have cards to play.”

“Are you referring to the stock you hijacked from Rudenko?”

Talia held her poker face.

“Yes, I know about the hit on Rudenko’s shipment. I know everything that happens at the Frenzy, Miss Macciano. Everything. You may be interested to know the stock I’m selling this evening is similar, and much higher in volume. You can’t win.”

Similar stock. High volume. Boyd had the children, after all. “If you’re not worried about losing, why did you call me up here?”

“Curiosity.” Boyd descended a spiral stair to the glass path, fingers caressing the rail. Lionel let out another guttural huff, perhaps disappointed the Englishman remained out of reach—a bite-sized beef Wellington on the move. “In years past, Frenzy competitors who came this close wound up lying in pools of their own blood. But you piqued my curiosity.”

“How? Is it