“I’m glad you’re here,” Dino said. “I want witnesses, and Stone isn’t enough.”
“Witnesses?” Viv asked.
Dino set the velvet box on the table and opened it. “Will you marry me?”
Viv stared at the ring. “I notice that you put the ring on the table before you asked. Are you trying to buy me?”
“Whatever works,” Dino said. “I can’t live without you, and Stone and Holly are witnesses that I said that, because we both know I might try to weasel out of it later.”
Viv removed the ring from the box and slipped it on. “It fits,” she said.
“Of course it fits,” Dino replied. “It’s yours. Now answer me, please.”
“I forgot the question.”
“Love, marriage, death do us part?”
“Yeah, okay, that works for me.”
Dino put a hand on her face and kissed her. “Thank God we got that out of the way,” he said. “Now we can eat.”
“Five minutes,” Stone said, stirring in a fistful of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, then prying open a carton of crème fraîche and spooning half of it into the pan. He added more of the cheese, then raked in a plate of shrimp and a bowl of asparagus tips.
“That looks good,” Holly said, polishing off her bourbon, then pouring herself a glass of wine.
“I’ve had it before,” Dino said. “You won’t die from eating it.”
“High praise, Dino,” Stone said, putting a trivet on the table and setting the pan on it. He slid into the banquette beside Holly and raised his wineglass. “Dino and Viv,” he said. “May they not kill each other the first year.”
They all drank.
—
Across town Habib sat at the kitchen table with a block of C4 explosive, a detonator, some wire, and a throwaway cell phone. He used a soldering iron to make the connections, then plugged one end of the wire into the cell phone and the end with the detonator into the soft C4.
“There you are,” he said, “one bomb.”
“You’re sure this will set off the rest?”
“My bombs go off when they’re told to,” Habib said. “The other forty-nine kilos are already in the van. All I have to do is place this block with the others, then you can have the honor of detonating.” He pushed another cell phone across the table. “It’s already programmed. All you have to do is press one, and it will autodial the correct number. The detonator will fire on the first ring: then poof! No more Ms. Barker or Mr. Barrington.”
“Do we know they’re there now?”
“We assume Barrington is there. Two other people, a man and a woman, arrived earlier and checked in with the guards in the SUV. Holly Barker arrived twenty minutes ago. I told our observer to get out of there.”
“Then we’re all set?”
“We are. The van and the Toyota you wanted for our trip are parked outside, and our luggage is in the trunk. You blow it after leaving Barrington’s street—on Forty-second Street, headed for the tunnel. Fifteen minutes after that we’ll be in New Jersey, headed west.”
“Why can’t we blow it from New Jersey? I’d feel safer.”
“We can’t leave the van there untended any longer than absolutely necessary. Some traffic cop might take exception and s
crew things up. Don’t worry, Forty-second Street is plenty far away, and it won’t take long to get there. Once we turn onto Second Avenue the traffic signals are programmed to change as we drive downtown. We have only two turns to make, so it will go smoothly.”
“All right,” Jasmine said. “Let’s do it.”
They were on their second helpings of risotto and their second bottle of Far Niente Chardonnay. Stone looked at his friends and felt good. He had never seen Dino happier.