Money to Burn

It was the preferred fuel for bride burning.

His sister’s screams were suddenly in his head, along with the indelible image of her husband and brother-in-law dousing her with kerosene and setting her afire in the garage. He hadn’t actually seen it happen, but her wounds had told the story. For five horrendous days in the hospital, Charu-her name meant “beautiful”-had managed to survive with burns covering 95 percent of her body. He never left her side, knowing what they had done to her. By the time she expired, he could see the men in that garage unleashing their unspeakable cruelty on a twenty-year-old woman from the Dhravi slum whose family was too poor to pay the expected dowry.

And all these years later, he could still see it.

“Wait a second,” said Volke, his voice transmitting through Burn’s earbud and drawing him back to his mission. “I dialed his office number. Let me try his cell.”

The words struck panic: The pilot’s cell!

Burn dived toward the body and snatched the phone from the pilot’s pocket. It made a slight chirp-the ring was just begi

He removed the earbuds and switched off Ivy’s cell. Then he pressed the gun firmly to the side of Ivy’s head and, with the other hand, unfastened her seat belt.

“Stand up slowly,” he said, “and if you do exactly as you’re told, maybe the others will live.”

63

THE NOISE FROM INSIDE THE SIKORSKY MADE ME DO A DOUBLE TAKE. It sounded like a half ring from a cell phone after Eric dialed the pilot’s number. Eric and Olivia had heard it, too. The tinted glass was virtually opaque beneath the hangar lighting, making it impossible to see inside. Suddenly, the tinted glass door flew open. The sight of Ivy standing in the opening with a gun to her head-and Ian Burn behind her-sent chills down my spine.

“Nobody move,” said Burn.

The three of us froze.

Burn looked almost exactly the way I remembered him from our very first meeting at Sal’s Place. To hide the scar on his neck, he wore a black turtleneck beneath a black leather jacket with the collar turned up. A knit beanie covered the deformed right ear. The expression on his face was all business, no sign of panic. He nudged Ivy forward, and they stepped down from the helicopter to the concrete floor. I noticed that Ivy’s hands were fastened behind her back. More than that, I noticed the look in her eyes-a desperate need to tell me something.

I looked away, still wrestling with what Eric had told me back in the WhiteSands dining room-away from Olivia-about the woman I had married.

“You,” said Burn, speaking to Eric. “Step away from the others.”

As Eric moved closer to the hangar door, my phone rang-the cell that Ivy had given to me. It startled me, but I didn’t move. It was that fu

“Reach into your pocket slowly,” said Burn, “and take out the phone.”

I did as he told me.

“Who’s the voice mail from?”

I checked the display. The number was familiar, and it only took a moment for it to register in my mind. I’d seen it a dozen times just a few hours earlier at the To

And thanks to Ivy, I now knew that Andrea was FBI.

“I don’t know,” I said.

Apparently I was a lousy liar around loaded weapons; Burn clearly didn’t believe me.

“Put it on speaker and play the message,” he told me.

I retrieved the message and hit the speaker button. The message was almost ninety minutes old:

“Ivy, it’s Agent He

The message ended.

“That’s not true!” said Eric. “I did tell the FBI!”

Something was starting to smell rotten, and I was nowhere near Denmark.

“Quiet!” Burn shouted. “Put the phone on the floor and slide it over here. Slowly.”

Again, I obeyed.

“Now everybody hold still,” Burn said as he reached for his cell. “We have some distinguished guests to invite.”

64

KYLE MCVEE WAS BEHIND THE WHEEL OF A BLACK SUV, DRIVING toward WhiteSands. His nephew had arranged for transportation to be waiting for them at the private heliport a few miles away when they landed. He was in the passenger seat, too busy fussing with his new toy.

“I’m liking it,” said Wald.

He was inspecting his new weapon for the tenth time, an older but nicely refurbished Italian-made Beretta 92FS Compact. From a technical standpoint, it was everything he needed-thirteen rounds of 9 mm ammunition in a quick-release magazine, a smaller and more easily concealed version of its big bad-ass cousin, the M-9 pistol used by the U.S. military.

“I can see why Tony liked it so much,” he said, weighing it in his shooting hand.

“You kept Girelli’s gun?”

“My trophy.”

McVee flung his fist at him, hitting his nephew square in the chest.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“Dump that damn gun the minute we’re done here,” McVee said. “Now put it away before you shoot yourself.”

Wald double-checked the safety and tucked his trophy back into his shoulder holster. “Like I’m the only one taking u

“What is that supposed to mean?” said McVee.

“The way we’ve played this so far, it would be difficult for anyone to place you in the same zip code as Ian Burn, let alone in the same helicopter hangar.”

“Fine. Your concern is noted.”

“I understand that they all have to go,” said Wald. “But there’s no need for you to be there when it happens.”

McVee gripped the steering wheel even tighter. “You know nothing about my needs,” he snapped.

“I’m just saying, we can handle this.”

They rode in silence for another minute, but McVee’s emotions were begi

“You don’t know me,” said McVee, “and you certainly didn’t know your cousin.”

“Marcus?” said Wald. “Of course I knew-”

“You didn’t,” said McVee.

He paused, struggling to get control of himself. There was nothing to be gained by unloading on Jason at this point, but the kid seemed to think that this was all part of Kyle McVee’s business plan and personal vision, that he was proud of the way his nephew was comfortable in dealing with the darkest elements of organized crime. The boy couldn’t have been more wrong.

“You think this is what I wanted Ploutus to become?” he said. “You think I like being the Wall Street thief who manipulates the market? The go-to hedge fund for mob money?”

He glanced at his nephew, and from the look at his face, the younger man had never really reduced it to such vile terms.

“You pay a price,” said McVee, “when you reach a point in your life when everything you’ve worked for is bullshit. When it doesn’t matter anymore. When you need a man like Ian Burn to make it right.”

Wald was about to speak, then stopped, seeming to sense that silence was the wiser course.

“Do you have any idea what it feels like to see lightweights like Eric Volke rise to the top? To see a know-nothing like Michael Cantella named in Forbes magazine as Saxton Silvers’ youngest-ever investment advisor of the year? It would be hard enough to stomach that shit in any case, but in a world with my son dead and buried, it’s unbearable. Marcus was a dynamo,” he said, his voice quaking, “and we had plans. Big plans. If he were alive today, he’d be the CEO of Ploutus-a thirty-six-year-old king of the world. I’d probably be president of the NASDAQ. All that ended when that bitch came along. I was happy when she was lost at sea and the sharks got her-and just enraged when I found out four years later that it was all a lie. That Girelli didn’t really get the job done.”