"How?"
Jacques shrugged. "I don't know. You seem so—secretive. You still haven't told me what you're doing here."
Eden paused for a moment. It was impossible for him to tell a lie to this man; this man whose bed, whose love, whose trust he had once shared. And so, without any fear of blowing the entire operation, Eden said quite simply: "I'm here with four other men to steal a stone tablet from your uncle."
Jacques stared at Eden, a little stunned at the response, and didn't say a word for several moments.
"Have I shocked you?" Eden asked eventually.
Jacques paused another second, and then smiled and shook his head. "No. If I learned one thing on the Galapagos, it's that I know you well enough to trust you, but not enough to predict what you're ever going to do next. You loved me without question. Yet you left me without saying goodbye. You keep me guessing, Eden Santiago. And I love that about you."
The words almost melted Eden's heart. He looked into Jacques' eyes, and for a second, he was almost willing to give up everything for that beautiful, honest face.
Almost.
But what about the Professor?
What about Luca and Shane and Will?
And Jake?
"What about your uncle?" was the question that finally came from Eden's mouth.
Jacques laughed. "Pierre? Whatever you're looking for, I'll help you find it. My uncle deserves whatever's coming to him. He used to beat me as a child if I used the wrong fork at the dinner table or hiccupped in front of guests. He's an asshole. All he does is steal, lie, cheat and throw his money around to impress people. That's the only thing he's good for. Right or wrong, the only reason I'm here tonight is to ask him to help fund my research with the pink Amazonian river dolphins in Brazil. My government grant has expired; the money's all but dried up. If he thinks it'll get him an invite to an ambassador's ball somewhere in South America, Pierre will open his checkbook. At least that's what I'm hoping."
Pierre reached into his drawer and opened his checkbook, with Jake's eager eyes watching his every move. But even with the sharpest eyes, what Jake couldn't see from where he stood was Perron's index finger press firmly against a silent alarm button fixed to the inside of his drawer, and then slide an automatic pistol to the front of the drawer, within easy reach, before leaving the drawer slightly open and pulling out his checkbook.
"One hundred thousand U.S." Perron muttered airily. "If memory serves me correct."
"I'd be happy to take the Devil off your hands if you have any issues with the money," Jake said. "It's here somewhere, isn't it? You just don't know what to do with it. You're scared of it. You don't know anything about it, other than it's worth a fortune. So you've buried it, probably in a room full of things you've plundered from different cultures, different countries. Things you don't know anything about. Am I right?"
"Perhaps." Perron was beginning to blink nervously for two reasons. Firstly, Jake was closer to the truth than he cared to admit. Secondly, the alarm should have notified the guards in the security room by now, who in turn should have notified the guards at the door.
But there was no sign of movement from beyond the door whatsoever. Which meant one of two things.
Either the guards outside the door had vanished—or Jake's intrusion was an orchestrated attack, and someone had broken into the security room in the south wing.
A buzzer began to ring and a small light flashed next to a monitor with a birds-eye view into Perron's office.
"Will, take a look at this," Shane said, pointing Will's attention away from Eden and Jacques in the grotto and over to the monitor with the small flashing light.
They could see Jake standing in front of Perron's desk, and Perron himself sitting down behind the desk. There was a checkbook in front of him. Perron began writing in it, but then his pen appeared to run out of ink. He shook it about, and then shrugged at Jake and reached into his drawer as if to pull out a second pen.
Instead, he pulled out a gun and pointed it straight at Jake.
"That doesn't look good," Will said. "Hold the fort."
Before Shane could stop him, Will was out the door.
"We're looking for a small stone tablet," Eden said. "About so big, with markings on it like ancient symbols."
Jacques shook his head. "I don't recall seeing anything like that, but that doesn't mean we can't find it. My uncle keeps half his treasures stashed away in a secret room, until he can be bothered to call in an expert to explain what they are. He takes for the sake of taking, but doesn't display anything until he can brag about it."
"Will you take me to it?" Eden asked. "The secret room?"
Jacques smiled and nodded. They put their socks, shoes and masks back on and Jacques led Eden out of the grotto and through the gathering of guests in the main courtyard. Past party-goers in costumes both dazzling and freakish: a woman with a beak and a face of feathers and a man with a decorative elephant's head pushing down on his shoulders; a bright copper flower and a grinning goat's head and an angry tin centurion from a legion of the Roman army; a woman wearing a crown of live, slithering snakes.
They made their way across the vestibule overlooking the canal, and then away from the party again, into the palazzo's vast antechamber, to a flight of marble stairs that veered down into a deserted basement, and then along a corridor so slender the two men had to turn their shoulders sideways to walk through to the other end of it.
To a wide wooden door.
Into a cold stone room.
Its walls were adorned with dozens of antique weapons, ranging from guns and rifles to foils and axes that were hundreds if not thousands of years old.
"A morbid collection," Jacques commented. "My uncle is so proud of it. I think it's ghastly. But this isn't the room we want."
He pointed Eden's attention to a large, ancient cast-iron furnace built into the far wall.
There was a detailed depiction of seventeenth century Venice painted on its cracked, glazed surface. Dozens of merchants and menace-makers, countrymen and clergymen, peasants and noblemen, grocers and gondoliers all thronged the busy streets or peered from open windows or floated down the intricate network of canals.
Jacques laid his blue dolphin mask aside and unhooked a large latch in the center of the furnace.
Eden hadn't noticed it before, amidst all the detail and color of the portrait of Venice. Nor did he notice the thin crevice that ran all the way down the middle of the enormous boiler. But now, as Jacques pulled on the latch and stepped back, it all became clear. And much more impressive.
The furnace was fake.
As Jacques pulled, the furnace split in two and opened outward, forming a secret entrance leading into a black chasm even further inside the depths of the palazzo.
Eden's eyes drank in the inky darkness that opened before him, his mind swimming with intrigue.
As the heavy cast iron doors of the furnace opened fully, Jacques stepped inside and flicked a switch. Four small gas lanterns inside the pitch dark chasm spontaneously ignited, casting a luminous glow over a large low chamber.
There were five short steps leading into the chamber, which was filled with thousands of relics, some large, some small, stacked high and low in no discernible order whatsoever. Some objects were covered in sheets or wrapped in plastic; others looked as if they had just been tossed to one side or placed carelessly in a spare corner, out of the way and out of sight.
"He calls it his vault," Jacques said.
"So many treasures," Eden whispered, astonished. He stepped into the chamber and walked among the stacks of disorganized relics as if he were walking through a jumble sale. "What a waste. All just sitting here, rotting away."
"Not rotting," Jacques said. "It's too cold in here for that."
He walked up behind Eden and led him to the far wall of the chamber. Gently he took Eden's hand in his and laid them both against the rock surface of the wall. "It's freezing," Eden said.
"That's because the Grand Canal is on the other side of the wall. It keeps the temperature down in here. Until Pierre finds out what he's got stashed down here, he doesn't want any of his trinkets depreciating in value as a result of light or heat."
Eden felt the cool of the wall against the flat of his palm and the warmth of Jacques' hand on the back of his.
Jacques suddenly stole the moment, leaning in and kissing Eden on the lips.
"Enough fooling around," Perron grinned at Jake, suddenly pulling the gun on him and snapping off the safety. Perron stood from behind his desk, not taking the gun off Jake.
"How many times do you want to try and kill me?" Jake asked.
"That depends how many lives you think you have left to spare. It'd be a shame really. In a strange way I'll miss you once you're dead, not to mention the treasures you find for me. But it's all just part of the journey. There're more thrill-seekers where you came from."
At that moment, something very hard and very heavy pounded against the closed doors of Perron's study.
Perron and Jake both looked.
A moment later there was another thump from the other side of the doors, even louder than the first.
Perron looked very concerned. A drop of sweat ran down his fat forehead and dribbled its way between his beady eyes. Suddenly, the doors exploded open and Will burst into the room, packing the security guards' pistols, one in each hand.
Panic-stricken, Perron fired a reckless shot at Will, but missed him completely.
Will responded with a shot directly to Perron's right hand, knocking the weapon out of his chubby fist and taking off the top of his index finger.
Blood spurted.
Perron squealed and clutched his severed hand, horrified.
Jake smiled. "You were saying something about there being more thrill-seekers where I came from—?"
"You shot me!" Perron screamed. "You shot my fucking finger off!"
"And now we're gonna tie you up," Will nodded matter-of-factly, throwing one of the guns to Jake and ripping the cord out of the phone on Perron's desk.
"And after that," Jake said, "you're gonna tell us where you keep all your precious cargo. Unless, of course, you think
you've
got a few more lives left to spare."
When Jacques led Eden past the man with the grinning goat's mask and the angry Roman centurion in the main courtyard, there were two things Eden didn't notice that Shane, watching on one of the security monitors, did.
First of all, the grinning goat only had one arm.
Secondly, as Jacques and Eden past, the centurion pulled off his mask for a fleeting moment, seemingly to get a better look at Eden.
"Holy shit!" Shane whispered, jumping to his feet. "Eric Landon."
The grinning goat and the centurion immediately began to trail Eden and Jacques through the crowd.
Shane was out of the security room in a flash. He raced down the corridor then, in order to avoid suspicion, slowed his pace to a brisk walk as he rushed into the main courtyard. Over the heads of hundreds of party-goers, he saw the horns of the goat and the helmet of the centurion move determinedly into a vast antechamber at the far end of the courtyard.
They picked up their pace.
So did Shane, but in doing so, he plowed straight into a middle-aged woman in a fox mask, whose champagne went all the way down her fox fur coat.
"You idiot!" she exclaimed.
"I'm sorry," Shane apologized, ever the gentleman. He tried to wipe the spill away with his jacket sleeve, but the woman slapped at his arm. "Get your hands off me! You're ruining my coat!"
Shane suddenly backed up angrily and shouted, "I'm sorry to tell you lady, but that coat wasn't yours to begin with!"
The woman gasped and indignantly muttered something about damn nuisance animal rights activists under her breath, but before she could make any more of a scene, Shane had vanished into the crowd.
He emerged at the far end of the main courtyard, ran through the deserted antechamber and slid to a halt at the top of the marble staircase leading down.
The goat and the centurion were already halfway down the stairs when Shane slid the white horse mask off his face and called, "Hey Eric! You and I got some unfinished business."
The Roman centurion stopped, turned, and slowly Eric removed his helmet to reveal his handsome smiling face. "Hey there, cowboy. Nearly didn't recognize you with clothes on." He quickly turned to the one-armed grinning goat and said, "You go on. I'll take care of this."
The goat disappeared down the narrow corridor at the foot of the stairs.
As Shane charged down the marble staircase, Eric charged up it, meeting Shane halfway and slamming into him, sending them both toppling and sliding down the stairs.
As Jacques leaned in and stole his kiss, Eden reacted instantly, unleashing a passion that had been bursting inside him since he had first laid eyes on Jacques that night. He cupped his lips around Jacques', holding onto the kiss, enjoying the sweet taste of Jacques' champagne still lingering on his tongue.
Jacques' fingers swept over Eden's shoulders. His firm hands found Eden's throat and caressed the muscles in the back of his neck before pulling on his bow tie like a string. It unraveled and floated to the floor.
Without breaking the kiss, Jacques peeled the jacket and shirt off Eden's shoulders and lowered them gently to the floor. He unbuckled his belt and unzipped him, letting the rim of his pants sag loosely about his hips. Jacques tore away from their kiss momentarily and eyed the torso of rich brown skin and muscle that stretched from Eden's chest down to the top of a dark pubic patch sprouting from the band of his briefs. Below it, his pants were caught by a stiff protrusion, trying to lift its way out from under the clothing.
Jacques wanted more, but Eden caught his hands and lowered Jacques to the stone floor. The handsome young Frenchman co-operated and lay out on his back. Eden untied Jacques' bow tie and unbuttoned his shirt, revealing his wide swimmer's chest and a strong, rigid stomach. Eden ran his fingers over Jacques' smooth tan skin. The canvas of his flesh broke out in goose bumps at Eden's tender touch.