Page 18 of King’s Ransom

He extended his hand. ‘Dr Speedman, thanks for coming. Quinn McCade, I’m with Sinclair & Loewe.’

Sinclair & Loewe were a very exclusive insurance company that catered to the ultra-wealthy, providing special life insurance deals and other bespoke policies on assets like superyachts and art.

Sinclair & Loewe also sold Kidnap & Ransom insurance, hence Quinn McCade’s presence here.

(Mr McCade’s presence also explained all the bodyguards.

If it seemed like there were a lot of them in the apartment, it’s because there were.

When billionaires take out K&R insurance on themselves and their family members, the insurance company insists that each insured person has a bodyguard—since it’ll be the insurance company that’ll end up paying any ransom.

So, the bodyguards, while employed by the customer, are actually there to mitigate the insurance company’s risk.)

Our group came to a short hallway that led to the master bedroom.

As I began to enter it with Heidi and Bill by my side, Special Agent Hooper suddenly stepped in our way.

‘Not them, only you,’ he said. ‘No assistants. The kidnapper asked for you so we bring in only you.’

‘What about Agent Mills?’ I nodded at Audrey.

Hooper pondered that for a moment, his reptilian eyes literally calculating the career ramifications of the decision.

He grunted. ‘Fine.’

With a nod to Heidi and Bill, I went inside the master bedroom, followed by Agent Hooper, Ms Kimura, Mr McCade and Audrey.

How can I describe the bedroom of the richest man in the world?

If the rest of the apartment was gorgeous then this was sublime.

Mr King’s bedroom occupied the entire southwest corner of the floor, so it had floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides.

The southern set of windows offered a view that could only be described as iconic.

It looked out over the entire length of the city, including a collection of some of the world’s most famous buildings: the Rockefeller Center, the Chrysler Building, the Empire State, the Freedom Tower.

We were so high up, I could see the Statue of Liberty out in the bay, then the Atlantic Ocean stretching to the horizon.

The styling of the bedroom was less ‘understated beige’ and more ‘minimalist silver on white’.

Like the $30,000 silver-and-glass Teckell TAKTO Allegro wall clock. Very slick.

A long mirror occupied most of one wall and thus doubled the natural light.

I touched the mirror as I walked past it, scanning the low bookshelf that ran beneath it.

The books on this shelf, I noticed happily, had actual titles on their spines.

I noted even more happily that a few of them were books that I owned, too: the sci-fi novels Ender’s Game and the Hyperion series plus a gorgeous leather-bound edition of The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (although my Sherlock Holmes book was the generic one you can get from Barnes & Noble for $7.98).

It all made me think of my own bedroom. Small and tidy, with its own little collection of books and pop-culture mementos. The only difference was several hundred billion dollars.

There were people here already, five of them.

They were gathered around the room’s focal point, the bed, blocking my view of it.

On the wall above the bed’s headboard was a Magritte: one of the Belgian surrealist’s L’Empire des lumières paintings.