CHAPTER 47

Corin arrived at Tesser’s home on Sunday morning two minutes before nine and reached for the doorbell, but before he could ring it, the door opened to reveal a grinning Tesser.

Strange. He’d never come to the door in all the years Corin had known him.

“You’re here!” Tesser shuffled his feet forward and back in a little jig. “Finally. I’ve been up since four, squirming with anticipation.”

“You’ve found something big.”

“Very.” Tesser motioned him into the foyer. “Come, come, let’s get to my study.”

Corin followed Tesser as he trotted down his dark hallway, muttering over his shoulder about how excited he was.

Tesser pushed through the halfway open door to his massive study and threw his arms wide, his gaze focused toward the middle of the room. “Blicken!”

The German word for “look.” Corin stared at the back of his friend’s head. He’d never heard Tesser speak German before. What was that about?

He stepped through the door to view Tesser’s discovery. Immediately three emotions crashed into his mind simultaneously.

Disbelief.

Anger.

Fear.

Nicole sat in the middle of the vast study, in the duplicate of the chair, her hands tied with brown twine as were her ankles. The same type of twine he’d been tied with in his store three days earlier.

Her white hair was disheveled, her head cocked slightly to the side. Her countenance was worn, her skin pale.

Impossible.

Corin tried to speak but the shock of seeing his Nicole sitting in the center of Tesser’s study bound against her will froze his speech, froze his mind, froze his words.

Tesser couldn’t have done this.

Waves of heat surged through him as the sensation of vertigo made him flail for something to hang on to.

“What have you done?” Corin stumbled toward Tesser, who shuffled backward toward his oversized maple desk.

A moment later Corin spun toward Nicole and staggered her direction.

“No, I can’t let you do that,” Tesser said. “Help, please.”

Immediately four men stepped out of the deep flickering shadows cast by the candles randomly placed throughout the room.

Their arms hung loose but looked ready to move like lightning if needed. He recognized two of them: Ponytail and Baldy. The other two were rail thin, but their craggy faces conveyed how efficient they’d be in a street fight.

This wasn’t real. He was dreaming. He had to be.

Jefferies doing something like this would have been a bad dream come to life, but one he could have expected. This was a nightmare.

“I didn’t want to do it this way.” Tesser shuffled back and forth in front of his desk in his oversized slippers, fingers pressed into his forehead. “Really, Corin, I didn’t.” He glanced up, his face grim, then he slammed his hand down on top of the desk. “Why couldn’t you have given me the chair when I asked you to store it here? Or left it in the barn? If you had we wouldn’t be going through all this turmoil right now. A shame, it is.”

“Let her go.”

Tesser strolled over within a foot of Corin. “But all emotion aside, I am so very glad you came, because now we can end this subterfuge. I’ve been waiting for this moment since last night when I finally found Nicole and brought her here for a visit. And I have to assume she has been waiting as well.” He motioned toward her with an ancient-looking pen. “Although I feel I’ve been a gracious host, I believe she would prefer not being here.”

“Are you okay?” Corin said to Nicole.

“I’m fine.” She blinked rapidly and breathed deep.

Corin glanced at Tesser’s thugs. “Friends of yours?”

“Yes.” Tesser glanced to his right then left. “Good friends. Loyal friends.”

“Friends who throw rocks through windows and break into stores to steal what is not theirs.”

“Yes, those kinds of friends.” Tesser pulled on his sparse goatee.

Corin lunged for Tesser but Ponytail and Baldy grabbed him, flung him into a chair to his left, and began tying him to it.

As they did, Tesser frowned. “Yes, very, very regrettable about your friend. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Not at all. Tsk, tsk. Truly.”

“How could you do this do me?”

“You mean—why did I want the chair?”

Corin stared at him, no need to answer the question.

“At least three or four reasons, maybe even five. I haven’t really thought about it.”

“Think about it now.” Corin yanked on the cords around his wrists.

“This is amusing since you’re not exactly in a position to be making demands, but why not?”

Tesser paced in front of him, still pulling on the thin tuffs of hair hanging from his chin. “First, it’s fun, don’t you think? This is real-life Indiana Jones stuff.” Tesser stopped pacing and turned to Corin. “Come, come, even though you’re not having fun at the moment, you have to admit this has been one of our more fascinating adventures together. Yes?”

Tesser went on without waiting for an answer. “Second, I’ve been looking for this chair all my life. Most thought it a legend only.” He shook his head. “My, did I start to get excited when I realized you might have the real thing.

“Third, I wanted to validate all the time I’ve spent trying to track the chair down. Fourth, I suppose it irked me that all these years Nicole was right under my proverbial nose and I didn’t see it, so now I want to rub her face in it just a bit. And fifth, I want the power that surrounds the chair. I think anyone can understand that.”

“You’re an old man, Tesser. What good could the chair do you?”

“Yes, I’m old, it’s true.” He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “But the chair is not for me. The chair is for those who have been given claim to the earth. Those who are destined to rule this world. I’m a historian. I’ve never thought in decades but centuries. Look at the United States, Corin. Look at the world. It’s falling apart.

“The Reich is needed. Hitler took it too far. His zeal overtook his wisdom. The killing of the Jews was an atrocity beyond imagination. But our destiny to rule the other races? That is true. It is good. It is right.”

For the first time Corin heard the trace of a German accent that filled microscopic cracks in Tesser’s voice. How had he missed that all these years?

Tesser’s words from their first meeting almost two weeks ago floated through his mind: “Think what kind of an army you could build with . . .”

Corin stated the obvious. “You were raised in Germany.”

“I always wondered why you never asked me about that.”

“When did you move to this country?”

“Long ago.” Tesser waved his pen in the air. “But my heritage has not been forgotten.”

“I trusted you.”

“You can still trust me. I am your friend, Corin, and I have no intent to hurt you in any manner.” Tesser sighed. “As I tried to tell you out by the waterfall, I wish you weren’t mixed up in this. And of course I tried with the rock through your window, and then with my friends who stopped by to pick up the chair and transfer it here, but in neither case would you listen. A shame.” He motioned again to Nicole. “So I had to track down this elegant lady and—if I need to—I will use her as a most valuable currency in our negotiation for a certain piece of merchandise.”

“Let her go,” Corin repeated.

“Certainly. Of course, right away.” Tesser smiled at Corin, an expectant look on his face.

“As soon as I tell you where the chair is.”

“Precisely. So good to know we still understand each other in the, uh, midst of realizing my slight alteration of our friendship.”

Tesser tapped his pen on his palm, weaved in between Ponytail and the bald thug from Corin’s store, and stopped behind Nicole. “I have to say your building a decoy was an excellent diversion.” He slid his pen into his pocket and patted the back of the chair with both hands. “I didn’t see that coming although I should have. Congratulations on your skills—I didn’t know of your woodworking talents. I’m impressed, really I am. It took me two full days before I realized you’d created a duplicate.” Tesser tipped his cap. “You are an artist.” He shook his head and smiled.

“How do I know you’ll let her go if I tell you?”

“You don’t, I’m afraid.”

Nicole struggled to sit up straighter in her chair. “Don’t let your emotions cause you to stray from the truth, Corin.”

“What truth?”

“That we all die sooner or later. And delaying my death is not worth your telling him where the chair is.”

“I can’t lose you.” He’d just found her. Losing her so soon would rip him apart. With Shasta solar systems beyond his reach, she was the only family he had.

“Yes,” she smiled, “you can. If it is my time to go sooner rather than later it will be all right. I know it will.”

Corin pulled on the cords cutting into his wrists and glared at Tesser. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth from the beginning?”

“What do you mean?” Tesser smiled as if looking at a child. “I never lied. I simply didn’t tell you everything I knew or what my ultimate motivations were for finding the chair.”

“Holding back knowledge for personal gain that can hurt the other person is lying.”

Tesser motioned to two of his men and they hoisted Corin to his feet.

“Since I never skirted over into the ethics department during my tenure at the university, I think we’d be wasting time on the semantics of truth telling.” Tesser pulled down his glasses and looked at Corin over the top of them. “Tell me where the chair is.”

“Never.”

Tesser wagged his finger and the man on either side of Corin slugged him in the gut. Hard. It felt like two shot-put champions had dropped their shots into his stomach from thirty feet up. He doubled over and his stomach heaved, almost spilling his burger onto Tesser’s cherry hardwood floor.

Tesser frowned. “A little too robust, gentlemen. Corin is my friend and we’re trying to coerce, not kill the boy.”

Tesser’s thugs didn’t respond but took a step back and stared at the professor.

“Now, Corin, I need you to tell me where the real chair is.”

“No chance.”

“Really?” Tesser glanced at the man on either side of Corin, then back at him. “You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

“Interesting.” Tesser rubbed his forehead and paced in front of Corin, then looked at Nicole. “What do you think of that, Nicole? You must be proud of your protégée protecting your most prized possession.”

Tesser waved his hand to the two men on either side of Corin. “Again.”

This time the shots to his stomach felt like cannonballs.

“Corin?”

“No,” Corin choked out.

Tesser shook his head. “I have no desire to hurt you permanently, Corin. I simply want the chair. You give it to me, I’m happy, you’re happy, Nicole and you aren’t dead, and we all skip off into the sunset whistling. Now tell me.”

“No.”

Tesser circled Corin, poking him as he eased around him counterclockwise. “Where is it?”

Silence.

Tesser poked him hard on his collarbone. “Games are over. Where is it, Corin?”

He glared at Tesser.

“Let’s give this one more try.” Tesser rubbed his hands together, then motioned to his thugs with a quick thwip of his finger. An instant later Corin’s head was yanked back and the blade of a hunting knife was flashed in his face, then applied to his throat with enough pressure to make him cough. After a few seconds he felt a trickle of blood wind its way down his skin.

Tesser laughed. “Don’t cough, Corin! It jiggles the blade. Then you start bleeding and make a mess out of that fine American Eagle shirt you have on. Donate your B positive at the blood bank, not here okay? Now tell me.”

“No.”

Corin tried to look at Nicole but the vise grip on his hair kept him from moving more than an eighth of an inch. He was yanked again.

The shuffle of Tesser’s slippers moving toward him was mixed with a ringing in Corin’s ears.

“Oh, let him move his head.”

The grip on Corin’s hair eased and his head flopped forward.

Corin looked at Nicole. Her back was straight, chin pushed forward, and even a hint of her enigmatic smile surfaced as she stared Tesser’s direction. A moment later she turned and looked at Corin. It was easy to see what was in her eyes. Deep love. And peace.

As her eyes spoke of a joy that made no sense, Corin tried to soak it all in. It fanned the flame of his determination.

Corin coughed and pain ripped through his ribs like a knife. They were probably broken. “I’ll never tell you.”

Tesser glanced back and forth between Corin and Nicole three times before bending over Corin. “I think you believe that. I also think I will be able to persuade you to think differently.”

Tesser let out a long sigh and ambled over to Nicole. “I hate this, I really do.” He picked up a long serrated knife from the table next to her. He turned it over and seemed to study the blade. “Where is the chair?”

“Fine, I’ll tell you.”

“See that wasn’t so hard.” Tesser stepped away from Nicole.

“It’s in my vault. In the store.”

“Please, Corin.” Tesser rolled his eyes. “We’ve been there, remember?”

“It’s the locked room in my basement.” Corin dropped his eyes. “In my house.”

“Oh, dear Corin. We’ve been there too. Just the other day. Did I forget to tell you?” He stepped back to Nicole and placed the knife against her neck and drew it a quarter-inch to the right. A sliver of blood appeared and Nicole gasped.

“No!” Corin yanked on the cords constraining his wrists so hard it felt like he’d dislocated his shoulders. This couldn’t be happening.

Tesser whirled toward him. “Come, come. Why all the drama. It’s a shallow cut. It will take ages for Nicole to bleed to death with a nick like that. But you were lying to me and it’s getting tiresome.” The old professor turned back to Nicole, leaned down, and said to her in a mock whisper, “As soon as he tells me where the chair is, we’ll get some antiseptic on that and bandage it up. The scar will hardly be noticeable.”

He brought the knife back up to Nicole’s throat.

A trickle of blood continued to snake down Nicole’s neck and Corin tried to gauge how deep the cut was.

Tesser placed the blade against the other side of Nicole’s throat and looked toward Corin. “Deeper this time, friend.”

“Don’t, Tesser. If you ever cared for me—don’t.”

“I do care for you; that’s why I’m giving you one more chance. But this will be the last. Just tell me.”

Corin’s mind spun. He had to wake up! But it wasn’t a dream. One of his oldest friends had gone insane. Think. There had to be something that would snap the old man out of his madness. But maybe giving in was the only way to stop it. “All right.”

Tesser pulled the blade away from Nicole’s neck and beckoned with his fingers. “Where?”

“Get away from her.” Corin drilled his eyes into Tesser’s.

“Fine.” Tesser took a half step to the left. “Now speak.”

“Give me your word you’ll let her go.”

“My word.” Tesser gave a mock bow.

“In my warehouse twenty miles east of town. There’s a basement full of old worthless antiques ready for restoration. In the far south corner buried under two feet of old blankets and a pile of worthless old lamps is a trapdoor. It’s in there.”

“Not so difficult, was that?”

“Now let her go.” Corin stared at Tesser and willed him to back off. His breath came in short gasps.

“Have you spoken truth about the location of the chair?”

“All I want is Nicole. Take the chair.”

Tesser pulled a cell phone out of his breast pocket and pressed a button. “It’s in Corin’s warehouse east of town, south corner basement, trapdoor.” He ended the call and put the phone back in his pocket.

“Let her go,” Corin growled.

Tesser paced back and forth in front of Nicole three times before speaking again. “At this point we come to the most difficult part of our transaction.” He stopped pacing and kicked at the floor with the toe of his slipper. “I don’t like this part at all, but . . .” He glanced up, a sad, resolved look in his eyes. “I can’t avoid it.”

Tesser stepped around to the back of the chair, placed the blade against Nicole’s neck again, and with a swift motion slit her throat. The thin line of blood that appeared grew in seconds to a stream that flowed down her neck, soaking her blouse with crimson.

“No!” Corin lurched forward in his chair almost tipping over. “Why? You got what you wanted!”

“Let’s call it insurance. I’m absolutely positive you told me the truth about the location of the chair, but just in case you lied, I wanted to make sure you understand how serious I am about obtaining the truth. And how when I tell you I’ll hunt down and kill everyone close to you if you did lie, you will believe me.”

As Corin strained against the cords around his wrists he thought for a moment he would break them. Just as he would break Tesser’s neck if he could reach the old man. Murderer. Manufactured from the same sick gene cesspool Hitler had been created in. Insane. Devoid of any shred of morality. A being whose evil had just shattered his world.

Tesser doffed his ratty baseball hat and bowed to Nicole. “Since I won’t see you again, my lady, I bid you safe travels in the afterlife. And Corin, should I not see you again, which I won’t unless you’ve lied to me, I bid you fair sailing as long as you continue to grace this earth with your presence.”

The professor shuffled toward the door, then stopped and motioned to his thugs.

“My friends here will keep an eye on you until I can get to the warehouse—examine the chair—and make sure you weren’t the ultimate sneaky fellow and made more than one duplicate.”

Before Tesser reached the door to the hallway the windows surrounding the top of the room shattered and shards of glass pelted down onto the floor of the study in a wide circle.

“Don’t move!”

A voice above and to Corin’s left boomed down on them, its echo filling the room.

Tesser fell back and whirled like a merry-go-round toward the first voice, then the second, then toward the other six silhouettes hovering over them.

One of Tesser’s thugs reached inside his coat. A bullet screeched past him and sent splinters into the air as it tore into the hardwood floor.

“Hands high!” The voice above them ripped through the air again.

Tesser and his thugs complied.

An instant later four men sprinted through the door into the study and leveled rifles at Tesser and his men.

After surrounding them the lead man shouted, “Clear!” to the men in the windows above, then glanced at Tesser and each of his men one at a time.

“Slowly. Like molasses in January. Guns out of coats and tossed to the center of the room. I would hate to see one of you maggots die.” In perfect unison the men cocked their rifles.

Tesser sank to the floor, head in his hands. He sat and rocked back and forth, and in that instant his old professor went from ninety-two to four years old, a little boy caught doing something he shouldn’t and feeling bad because he’d been found out, not because of what he’d done.

Thirty seconds later Tesser and his men were handcuffed and muscled out of the room.

“Help her,” Corin shouted and jerked his head in Nicole’s direction.

As one of the men sliced the twine that bound Corin to his chair, another cut Nicole loose and held a thick piece of gauze up to her throat.

The lead man of the rescue team pulled a cell phone from his vest and said, “We need an ambulance here now.”

The moment Corin was free he lurched over to Nicole and took her hands in his.“An ambulance is coming; they’ll get you to the hospital. You’ll be okay.”

“I won’t,” she rasped. “This is my time. The way it is supposed to be.”

Corin rubbed her fingers and stared into her fading eyes. “No, I need you to live. To teach me, show me—”

“Listen, I only have moments left.” Nicole coughed up blood. “Continue to protect the chair as you have done. Know that God is for you, who can be against you?”

“Don’t leave.”

“You were strong.” Nicole gasped for air and her eyes closed. “You didn’t tell him the true location of the chair.”

Corin shook his head.

“Good, good. I knew you wouldn’t.” Her head settled to the side and the brightness in her blue eyes dimmed.

He blinked back tears. “Don’t die.”

She smiled. “I am going to the arms of the One who will never let me go, Corin.” She pulled in another raspy breath. “Stay true to the path He has shown you.” Her grasp on his fingers went limp.

“Stay with me, Nicole.” Corin leaned in.

As her eyes fluttered open, she said, “Forgiveness. For both.”

“Both who?”

“Remember, the chair is only a conduit for His healing power. Healing comes from inside you and from the Maker of the chair. Both. Give it to both.” Nicole’s head settled to the side, her eyes closed and she didn’t open them again.

He kissed her on the head, then slumped to the floor. His body heaved as sobs of sorrow tore their way to the surface from the deepest part of him. Ages later as his tears slowed, Corin stared at Tesser’s endless bookshelves and wished he could torch them all with superpowered heat vision, as if that could subdue the pain of the old man’s brutal betrayal.

FOR ANOTHER AGE Corin sat at the base of the chair he had made, the chair Nicole had died in. The sorrow and anger faded and all he felt was emptiness.

“Excuse me.”

He looked up through his tear-blurred eyes. The lead man of the rescue team stood over him, hands on his hips.

“I know this is a brutal moment for you, but I want to let you know I just called the police and they’ll be here in five to ten minutes.”

“You’re not going to stay?”

“I’ll be watching from a safe distance to make sure nothing happens between now and the time they arrive, but no, we’re going to stay out of having to give the police any reports.” The man winked. “Or an explanation of who we are.”

“But they’ll want me to give them a full explanation.”

“Yeah, sorry.”

Corin nodded, grasped the chair, and hauled himself to his feet.

“Who are you?”

“Friends.” The man wiped his forehead with the back of his black gloved hand.

“But who sent you? How did you know we were here?”

“That will be explained to you.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“By who?”

“The man who hired us.”

“Who hired you?”

The man smiled. “Don’t worry; he’ll be in touch.”

“Tonight?”

“Like I said, soon.”

TWO HOURS LATER Corin drove away from Tesser’s house feeling like his body had been shot full of a local anesthetic. His arms, legs, and especially his mind were numb.

Where did he go from here?

He drove to Woodmoor Lake and sat for three hours, not thinking, not crying, not fearing anything, just feeling the chill of the afternoon seep into his heart.

On his way home an image of the chair shot into his mind. What had Nicole said? The chair would bring joy and great sorrow. No kidding. But the scales were severely out of balance. Ninety-nine percent sorrow, one percent joy. A. C., his brother, Nicole . . . the good news was there wasn’t anyone else he cared about that the chair could destroy.

As he pulled into his driveway he spotted Tori’s car and her standing next to it. He puffed out a disgusted laugh. The laugh made his ribs ache. They weren’t broken but they would be tender for a while.

Okay, not everyone had been devastated. But something told him the circle was about to be completed.