Chapter 5 - Lockdown on the Eightieth Floor
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Cole Mercer and his two tactical guards exploded into motion, crashing through the double stainless-steel doors of the chef’s kitchen right behind the fleeing operative.
Inside the main dining room, chaos threatened to boil over as several guests shouted for the police, while my board members stared in stunned suspicion at Julian Vance, who was hurriedly trying to unbutton his right cufflink beneath his suit sleeve and slip it into his trouser pocket.
"Keep your hands on top of the white linen where I can see them, Julian," I said coldly, walking down the length of the table until I stood directly behind his chair. "Along with that gold phoenix cufflink you’re trying to drop into your pocket."
Julian froze, his silver-haired, aristocratic face flushing a deep, blotchy purple as sixty pairs of eyes swung from Diana to him.
"Marcus, this is preposterous," Julian blustered, forcing a booming boardroom laugh that died in his throat when he saw the look in my eyes. "Fifty alumni in Manhattan wear these cufflinks! You cannot seriously be accusing your own Chief Operating Officer based on the babbling of a three-year-old toddler!"
From the chef’s kitchen behind the pantry wall came the sudden, violent crash of overturning steel prep tables, the shatter of porcelain platters, and two sharp, brutal thuds as flesh struck tile.
Thirty seconds later, the kitchen doors swung open.
Cole dragged the fake sommelier back into the dining room by the collar of his torn black vest, the man’s wrists locked in heavy steel handcuffs behind his back and a streak of blood running from his split lip. One of Cole’s operatives followed, holding a confiscated suppressed nine-millimeter pistol and a small digital transceiver plucked from the man’s belt.
"He tried to breach the roof fire escape to parachute onto Park Avenue, Boss," Cole said, shoving the handcuffed operative onto his knees on the marble floor ten feet from Diana and Julian. "His prints just ran through our federal contractor database. His name is Viktor Kael—former corporate intelligence wet-work operative out of Geneva. And look what was clipped inside his vest pocket."
Cole held up a clear plastic evidence bag containing a second glass medical vial—identical to the discharged micro-atomizer found inside the black package under Diana’s chair—alongside a thirty-thousand-dollar bearer bond drawn on a private bank in Nassau.
I looked down at the handcuffed mercenary kneeling on my floor, then stepped over to the head of the table where my untouched crystal flute of Dom Pérignon still sat beside my silver charger plate.
Waiters had poured that champagne at 6:40 PM—ten minutes before Lily walked out of the pantry in her pink socks.
And who had walked over to the head of the table at 6:42 PM to clink glasses with Diana and adjust the floral centerpiece right beside my water goblet?
Julian Vance.
"That empty atomizer inside the black plastic package under Diana’s chair wasn't waiting to be used later tonight, was it, Cole?" I asked softly, picking up my untouched champagne flute by the base of the stem and holding it up to the chandelier light.
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Tiny, almost invisible oily micro-bubbles clung to the inside rim of the crystal—a telltale chemical reaction of a concentrated liquid potassium-channel blocker mixed into acidic vintage champagne.
"The poison is already in my glass," I said to the silent room.
