Devoted(99)
105
At 12:46 p.m., as a recently awakened Rosa Leon was assisting Megan in the kitchen, the deputies stationed in an SUV at the west end of the yard, near the forest, and those in another SUV near the back porch drove away into the wind.
Megan doubted that Shacket had been apprehended. Her experience and Carson Conroy’s assessment of Hayden Eckman convinced her that the Pinehaven County sheriff’s department was corrupt. The very fact that no one informed Megan that her protection was being withdrawn suggested that someone working on Dorian Purcell’s behalf had gotten to Eckman. She was being left vulnerable to Lee Shacket but also to whoever might be coming from Tragedy, the Dark Web operation.
Rosa said, “I should wake Mr. Hawkins.”
“Let him sleep a while longer, Rosa. He said that when and if our protection was withdrawn, the men from Tragedy won’t come right away. That would be too obvious. We’ve got a few hours. But go see about Woody and Kipp. If they’re sleeping, wake them and bring them down here. Let’s keep them near us.”
As if it were just another culinary tool, her 9 mm Heckler & Koch lay on a nearby cutting board.
As Rosa hurried upstairs, Megan picked up her phone and keyed in Carson Conroy’s number. He would be waiting in Harry Borsello’s Fleetwood Southwind in the former trailer park that had never become a wind-power plant.
Carson answered on the second ring, and Megan said, “All the uniforms are gone. No one to see you. Are you ready?”
“Be there in fifteen,” he promised.
106
Dorian Purcell in the transit station on the roof of the Nob Hill building. At a window, staring impatiently at a helicopter landing pad. Waiting for his air taxi.
The two bodyguards, one at the elevator and one beside Dorian, would not be making this trip with him. His destination was secure.
In addition to the large apartment at Parable headquarters in Sunnyvale and the larger estate in Palo Alto and the still larger two-floor penthouse here in the heart of San Francisco, Dorian had an additional property in his Bay Area residential real-estate portfolio. His house in Tiburon, on the north shore of San Francisco Bay, encompassed forty thousand square feet and stood on five prime acres. The mansion provided a south-southwest view of the Golden Gate Bridge and the fabled city, which lay at an aesthetically pleasing distance, across almost five miles of water, a dazzling sight in its nightdress, and at all times inoffensive to the sense of smell.
His fiancée, Paloma Pascal, who lived with him in Palo Alto and sometimes joined him in the Nob Hill penthouse when they were in the city for a cultural event, did not have an article of clothing or even a toothbrush in the Tiburon house. Saffron “Sunny” Ketterling, gymnast and contortionist extraordinaire, who lived with Dorian in the penthouse except on the rare occasion when Paloma was visiting, also had spent no time in Tiburon.
Dorian had acquired three side-by-side properties, had torn down the existing mansions, and had commissioned the current ultramodern residence, which had been completed sixteen months earlier. It was a wonder of steel and granite and quartzite and glass, with secret staircases and hidden rooms and all kinds of other gee-whiz features that every thirteen-year-old boy, besotted with fantasy and science fiction, would include in a mansion if thirteen-year-old boys had the wherewithal to spend $80 million on a house.
Four days a week, a staff of fourteen cared for the new mansion and the grounds, but no one was there from 5:00 p.m. Thursday until 8:00 a.m. Monday. Although he decamped to Tiburon only one or two weekends a month, Dorian valued the property as a retreat. The absolute privacy allowed him the freedom from distractions and the clarity of thought to speculate about where culture and high tech were going, to apply his singular genius as a futurist to conceiving new businesses and technological innovations that would keep Parable growing.
He saw himself as the Thomas Edison of his time, although with none of Edison’s primitive moralism, and with a keen sense of how to maximize profits that the vaunted Wizard of Menlo Park could only have dreamed about.
Although he didn’t mind being alone in Tiburon, he had built the house with the expectation that it would eventually be staffed with a conjugal partner, some different flavor from either Paloma or Sunny. He was a highly sexual person and thought of himself as the human equivalent of a prize breeding bull, though only in the sense that he was always ready; the thought of fathering a child chilled him to the bone, and he didn’t tolerate scheming in that direction by Paloma, Sunny, or anyone else.
In all the months since the mansion was completed, he had not settled on a woman to install among its many comforts. During the design and construction process, he never consciously considered the subject. When the contractor handed him the keys, however, Dorian realized that subconsciously he had been thinking of this place as not merely a retreat from the distractions of his busy daily life but as a retreat, as well, from the stifling rules and petty social norms of a world that was fast changing, though not fast enough to suit him. During his monthly visits to Tiburon, he had conceived of a few ways that he might venture into exciting new sexual territory. He hadn’t yet settled on a course of action; as a most ambitious yet prudent man, he was still considering his options, debating with himself as to how outrageous he could be and still count on getting away with it.
Bearing the Parable logo, the twin-engine eight-passenger helicopter with high-set main and tail rotors, with an advanced-glass cockpit, floated down out of the sky. In fifteen minutes, Dorian would be in Tiburon.