Page 47 of King’s Ransom

Longmuir frowned. ‘But they’re here, we left them upstairs—oh, fuck.’

I was already running for the elevators. ‘We gotta get back up to the penthouse, now!’

There was blood everywhere in the penthouse.

Whatever had happened, it had been a slaughter.

There was blood in the kitchen: all over the refrigerator and the countertop.

In the living area: it stained the couches and lampshades.

In the elevator vestibule: all over the marble floor and on the artwork on the walls.

The dead bodies of Winnie Tan’s and Yasmina Ivanova’s body­guards lay slumped on the floor, each of them covered in bullet holes.

The three uniformed NYPD cops who’d been left up here were also dead. They lay in pools of blood.

None of them—not the bodyguards or the cops—had been able to draw their weapons before they’d been shot.

And Winnie Tan and Yasmina Ivanova were nowhere to be seen.

Upon seeing the bloodbath, another frightening thought hit me.

Heidi and Bill.

‘Heidi! Bill!’ I called, dashing toward the master bedroom in the southwest corner of the floor.

A moment later, Heidi emerged from the short hallway that led to the bedroom. She was followed by Bill and the Tech Detect.

Heidi said, ‘Sam, you should talk with Tech Boy here. While we were covering the body of the FBI forensic specialist who got shot up by the drone in the bedroom, he found something ­interestin—oh, God . . .’

She stopped, seeing all the carnage.

‘You never heard any gunshots?’ I asked. (I must say I was very relieved she and Bill were okay.)

‘No, we’ve been in the bedroom the whole time. I mean, it’s windy in there, what with all the broken windows, but—’

I swapped a look with Garrett.

‘Suppressors,’ I said.

‘Yeah.’ He nodded grimly.

As the NYPD detective checked his dead people, Garrett and I bent to examine the body of Winnie Tan’s bodyguard.

Drenched in blood, the man’s chest had literally been blown outwards by all the bullets.

Entry wounds are small, exit wounds are big and burst out: he’d been shot in the back.

And his gun, like those of the others, was still in its holster.

‘Shot from behind with an automatic weapon,’ Garrett said. ‘Entry wounds look like 9mm, so maybe MP5SD.’

‘He never even got his gun out. Neither did the cops,’ I said. ‘This is serious firepower, with silencers. It’s . . .’

My voice trailed off as I fully digested the ramifications of this development.

It was ominous, is what it was.