The Lincoln Myth (Cotton Malone 9)

“The intel on this place,” Luke whispered, “is that there are no guards. No cameras. No alarms. Salazar keeps a low profile.”

“Trusting soul.”

“I’m told Mormons are that way.”

“But they’re not foolish.”

He was still bothered by the Danites. Those two men in Højbro Plads had been real. Were more threats like that lurking in the darkness that surrounded them? Possible. He still believed this a trap. Hopefully, Kirk’s reinforcements were still chasing that cell phone on the bus.

They cleared the woods, and he spotted three structures in the dark. A small brick house, two stories with a gabled roof, along with a pair of smaller cottages. Two lights burned in the larger house, both just above ground level, in what was surely a cellar.

They hustled around to the rear, staying in the shadows, and found a short set of steps that dropped down in the ground. Luke descended and Malone was surprised to see that the door at the bottom opened.

Luke stared at him.

Way too easy.

They both readied their guns.

Inside was a dimly lit cellar that stretched the house’s entire length. Brick archways provided support to the upper floors. Lots of nooks and crannies raised alarms. Equipment and tools lay about, surely used to maintain the estate.

Over there, Luke mouthed, pointing.

His gaze followed.

Built into one of the archways near a corner were iron bars. Inside, propped against the wall, lay a man with a bullet hole in the forehead, his face beaten into a mottled pattern of blood and bruises. They approached and saw a bucket of water and a ladle just outside the bars to one side. The light was dimmer here, no windows nearby, the cell’s floor as hard and dry as a desert. The iron door was locked. No key in sight.

Luke squatted and stared at his comrade. “I knew him. We worked together once. He’s got a family.”

Malone’s gut ached, too. He ran his tongue along the inside of his mouth and swallowed hard, then knelt beside the water bucket with the ladle. “You realize Salazar wanted you to find this. I’m sure we would have had company the moment we did.”

Luke stood. “I get it. He thinks we’re stupid. Now I’m going to kill the son of a bitch.”

“That would accomplish a whole bunch.”

“You have a better idea?”

He shrugged. “This is your show, not mine. I’m just here for a limited engagement, which seems to be over.”

“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that long enough, Malone, you might start believing it.”

“You might have an open-field run now. Those guys are surely still chasing that bus. But there could be more of them around.”

Luke shook his head. “Salazar only has five on the payroll. Three are dead. The other two were there in the square.”

“Aren’t you a wealth of information? Would have been nice if you’d shared that before now.”

He knew Luke was ready to be rid of him. He’d never liked partners, either, especially difficult ones. And he was ready to be gone. There was still the matter of the Copenhagen police, though, but Stephanie could deal with them.

“I have a job to do,” Luke said. “You can wait at the car.”

He blocked any retreat and said, “Quit bullshitting me. What did Stephanie brief you on in the car?”

“Look, old man, I don’t have time to explain. Get out of my way and go back to your bookshop. Let the A-team handle this one.”

He caught the anger and understood. Losing a man affected everyone.

“I told Stephanie I’d see this through. So that’s what I’m going to do. Whether you like it or not. I assume you want to take a look at the main house, in that study Kirk so conveniently mentioned?”

“It’s my job. I don’t have a choice.”

They left the cellar and traipsed west through the woods, paralleling the sea, the pound of surf clear in the distance. The lit mansion that awaited them was an excellent example of Dutch Baroque. Three stories, three wings, hip roof. The exterior was sheathed with the trademark thin red brick—Dutch clinkers, Malone had learned to call them. He counted thirty windows facing their way, only a handful lit, and all on the ground floor.

“Nobody’s home,” Luke said.

“How do you know that?”

“The man’s out for the evening.”

Surely more of what Stephanie had told him on the phone.

They stayed toward the mansion’s rear, where an expansive terrace faced the blackened sea fifty yards away. A row of French doors and windows opened into the house.

Luke tried the latches. Locked.

A light came on inside.

Which startled them both.

Malone darted left into a shrubbery bed, where darkness and the exterior wall offered protection. Luke found refuge in a similar spot on the terrace’s opposite side, the French doors and windows between them. They both peered around the edge into the lit space beyond the glass and saw a red-walled parlor dotted with elegant period furniture, gilt mirrors, and oil paintings.

And two people.

One face—a man’s—he did not recognize. But it didn’t take a rocket scientist to know his identity.

Josepe Salazar.

The other, though, was a shock. No one had said a word about her involvement.

Not Stephanie. Not Frat Boy.

Nobody.

Yet here she was.

His girlfriend.

Cassiopeia Vitt.

SIXTEEN

CASSIOPEIA VITT ADMIRED THE MANSION’S INTERIOR, WHICH reflected the elegance she recalled of Josepe’s mother. She’d been a quiet, refined woman, always respectful toward her husband and mindful of her family. Cassiopeia’s own mother had been the same, and watching what she took to be both women’s passiveness was one of the reasons she’d fled both the relationship with Josepe and the family religion. Those precepts may be good for some, but dependence and vulnerability simply were not part of her character.

“I’ve left the furnishings close to how my mother arranged them. I always liked her style, so I saw no need to change. I remember her

so clearly when I’m here.”

Josepe remained a striking man. Tall, squarely built, his Spanish ancestry showed in his swarthy complexion and thick black hair. His imposing brown eyes cast the same confidence, the same quiet intensity. Highly educated and with a colloquial command of several languages, he’d enjoyed immense success in business. His family’s concerns, like her own, stretched across Europe and Africa. And, like herself, he led a life of wealth and privilege. But unlike her, he’d decided to devote himself to his faith.

“You spend a lot of time here?” she asked.

He nodded. “My brothers and sisters are not fond of the place. So I enjoy summers here. Soon I’ll head back to Spain for the winter.”

She’d never visited the Salazar family in Denmark. Always in Spain, where they lived only a few kilometers away from her family’s estate. She stepped toward a row of French doors that opened to a darkened terrace.

“I imagine there’s a lovely view of the ocean from here.”

Josepe came close. “A magnificent view, actually.”

He walked over and yanked the cantilevered handles down, throwing open the panels and allowing cool air to rush inside.

“Feels wonderful,” she said.

She was not proud of herself. She’d just spent an evening lying to a man she’d once cared about. There’d been no reawakening inside her. She’d not recently read the Book of Mormon. The only time she’d ever tried, as a teenager, she stopped ten pages in. She’d always wondered why the philosophies of the lost peoples described in the book were so revered. The Nephites wiped themselves out—no survivors, no trace left of their entire civilization. What was there to emulate?