Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [57]
Seven bodyguards above, on rotation to protect one man below.
“Call me when you actually know something, then!” Frants terminated the call and exited the elevator. One bodyguard moved ahead, opening the door to his boss’s living quarters. He stepped inside, did a quick visual scan while his partner ran a check with a handheld scanner.
“All clear,” the second one announced, his readout returning nothing that shouldn’t have been there. The first guard nodded, his physical check confirming the electronics.
“Fine. Go.”
The two guards looked at each other, then Number 1 shrugged and stepped back. If the boss wanted to be alone, he’d be alone. One of them would stay outside, in case he changed his mind. The other would go upstairs, and the third of their team had remained below, in the basement gym area. Nothing could get into the private portions of this building without them knowing it.
“Honey, I’m home.” Frants laughed, kicking off his trainers and leaving them by the entrance. His valet would come by in the morning to have them sanitized. The cell phone was unclipped, juggled in one hand. A tug on his sweatshirt with his free hand, and it was tossed into the hamper, followed by his socks. His valet would attend to them, as well.
He walked on the silky-soft rug, barely feeling the texture from familiarity but aware of it nonetheless—the awareness of ownership. Naked but for his shorts, he went into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of the high-protein drink that was waiting in the blender, freshly-made for him. It tasted disgusting, but it did the job.
Oliver Frants took pride in the fact that he rarely slept. A combination of drugs, herbal extracts, and iron self-control kept him going, his mind sharp. Time, he believed, was too precious to waste: there were only so many hours allotted to a man, and he had things to do in every one of them.
His father had owned a home in the suburbs, beyond the noise and congestion of the city. His grandfather lived in a townhouse off Astor Place, and used to walk to and from the office every evening. I lair where I hunt, their son and grandson was often quoted as saying. You can’t be out of touch when there’s business to be done. And there’s always business to be done.
“Peter?” His drink in one hand, the cell phone in the other, he wandered over to the widescreen video display and watched the overseas markets scroll past. “Where do we stand on the McConnell deal?”
He could practically sense the bodyguard outside, the rage of having to depend on someone else for protection a smoldering ember in his awareness. His insurers insisted on their presence, but it annoyed him. It was like an itch that you can’t quite reach, knowing that ignoring it won’t make it any more bearable. Even worse, since that damn spell had been breached, they’d upped the guards to two at all times rather than simply when he left the building.
Oliver Frants had not left this building, save for closely-guarded public appearances and PR tours, in almost a decade. Less agoraphobia and more obsession: this building was all he needed, the control panel from which he manipulated the world to his liking.
But that self-determined universe had been shaken, badly, by the bastard who dared put sticky fingers on his belongings. His security. No matter what his people said about the likelihood that it was probably only a joyrider, a thrill-thief taking something that was supposedly impossible to take, Frants knew it for what it was—a slap at him. At everything he was, everything he had built.
The fact that the lonejack he had hired to retrieve it had yet to succeed left him with even less desire for sleep now. Things to do. Thieves to crush. Universes to be put back to rights.
“Now you tell me this?” he said to the man on the other end of the line, his tone exasperated, irritated. “Now,