Chapter 11 - Vintage Blood in the Cellar
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Clara didn't run backward into the dead-end archive cage where she would be trapped like a rat in a box.
The moment she saw the two gunmen step into the narrow brick wine corridor fifty feet away—blocking the main path to the kitchen office where Chloe was sitting behind the frosted glass—Clara ducked silently behind the central freestanding island of oak Champagne riddling racks in the dark middle aisle of the cellar!
"Two armed men in black coats just came through the loading bay door into the main wine vault," Clara whispered barely louder than a breath into her mic as she crouched behind the heavy oak racks stacked with three hundred thick glass magnums of vintage Dom Pérignon. "They’re between me and the kitchen door."
"We’re coming through the loading bay right now—twenty seconds out!" Julian’s voice growled in her ear, accompanied by the muffled double-thwip of Dante’s suppressed pistol eliminating the lookout driver in the alley outside! "Stay low behind the oak racks, Clara—do NOT let them see your head!"
Twenty feet away in the dim amber glow of the cellar aisle, the two Morelli hitmen split up—one moving down the left wall of Bordeaux racks, the other walking straight down the center aisle toward the Champagne island where Clara was crouching, his suppressed Beretta raised at chest height!
Wait—if the second gunman reached the end of the corridor where the frosted glass window of the private dining office glowed, he would see Chloe sitting at her desk and shoot her as a witness!
Clara looked at the ten-foot-tall A-frame oak riddling rack directly beside her shoulder.
Each heavy slanted oak board held sixty massive, three-liter glass Jeroboam and Magnum bottles of high-pressure sparkling wine—resting on a steel pivot pin at the top that the cellar masters unlocked whenever they needed to fold the racks flat for cleaning!
The gunman in the center aisle was six feet away from the opposite side of the rack, his boots clicking softly on the red quarry tile as he raised his pistol toward the office window.
Clara didn't wait for twenty seconds.
She gripped the cold iron locking pin at the base of the A-frame oak rack with her left hand, braced both boots against the stone baseboard behind her back, yanked the pin free, and shoved the six-hundred-pound wall of oak and pressurized glass sideways with every ounce of strength in her legs!
CRAAAASH—BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The entire ten-foot oak rack toppled straight over onto the center aisle gunman like a falling brick wall! Sixty pressurized glass magnums of champagne exploded simultaneously on impact against the stone floor in a deafening chain-reaction of flying green glass shrapnel and blinding white foam that knocked the gunman flat underneath the splintered oak beams!
"What the—?!" the second gunman in the left aisle spun around through the drifting mist of champagne spray, aiming his suppressed pistol toward the collapsed rack—right as the rear loading-bay door blew open behind him!
Julian Vane stepped into the cellar archway ahead of Dante, his charcoal overcoat flaring back as he raised his suppressed Heckler & Koch P30 in one hand and put two rapid subsonic rounds straight through the back of the standing gunman’s heart!
The shooter pitched forward into a rack of 1982 Lafite, dead before he hit the soaked tiles.
While Dante sprinted forward to zip-tie and gag the groaning, glass-cut gunman pinned beneath the collapsed champagne rack, Julian vaulted over the river of foaming wine and broken green glass and caught Clara in his arms as she stepped out from behind the stone pillar.
His large hands framed her face, his breathing rough as his arctic-blue eyes searched hers in the dim cellar light.
"I told you twenty seconds," Julian rasped, though the fierce, terrifying relief in his eyes nearly took her breath away. "And you dropped half a million dollars of vintage Dom Pérignon on his head in ten."
"He was walking toward Chloe’s office window," Clara whispered, her hands resting against the solid wool of his lapels as her heart hammered against his chest. "And don't worry—I only knocked over the non-vintage calibration bottles on the bottom tier. The real Dom is on the back wall."
A rough, incredulous sound that was half-laugh, half-groan vibrated in Julian’s chest.
Before she could say another word, his hand slid to the back of her neck, tilting her chin up, and his mouth came down hard on hers.
Right there in the middle of the St. Regis wine cellar, surrounded by spilled champagne and the scent of old oak and gunpowder, Julian Vane kissed her as if he had been starving for her since the moment she put that crumpled napkin into his palm on Thursday night. His lips were warm, commanding, and devastatingly thorough, stealing the breath straight from her lungs until her fingers curled into his cashmere coat to hold herself upright.
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When he finally lifted his head an inch, his forehead resting against hers, his blue eyes were dark as midnight.
"Keep that yellow carbon copy from the binder safe inside your coat," Julian murmured huskily against her lips. "Uncle Victor has no idea we just took out his two cleaners—which means tomorrow night at the gala, when Victor and Commissioner Sterling think they’re walking up to the podium to hand my ports to Morelli, we’re going to let them pull the rope tight around their own necks."
