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Max woke on day six of Alex’s disappearance. He dressed in his traditional dark suit and white shirt, but without a tie or cuff links. He appeared calmer and more casual than usual, but his tight mouth and twitch of his bottom lip indicated his uneasiness, an expression when he was serious, but with Max you never could tell. He appeared to have it all together, but he was dying inside, because only Alex could relax him when he confronted a crisis, but she wasn’t here.
She was the crisis he had to solve alone.
He had to find her. He couldn’t do without her. He needed her for him, but most importantly for his children. How could he raise three young children alone? There wasn’t going to be any thought of that, because he wasn’t going to be alone. He could control this. As long as she wasn’t dead, he would find her.
When he turned to walk out of the room, Jonas was standing in the doorway. “What are you doing up, Jonas?”
“I’m going with you.”
“You know what the doctor said. You need rest and you’re weak.”
“I don’t give a fuck what the doctor said. I know where to look for Alex. I know all the places. You may live here, but this is my town. I know the people. You know the business part of this town, but I know the private. I know the sexual demons and vices of these rich bastards. And it’s one of them that has her. Maybe because of me and maybe because of you.” Jonas watched Max, waiting for his reaction.
When Max didn’t answer, Jonas said, “These people have two faces that they show to others and I can read them all. If I can’t find her, I can lead you to whomever has her. What do you say, Max?”
Max stood patiently and heard Jonas out, and he agreed, “Very well. I hope you can be of some use to me, considering you got Alex into all this shit in the beginning. It’s probably one of those sleazy clients of yours that’s holding her. Pretty soon I’ll get a ransom note from them.”
“If you’re looking to blame someone, I only share part of the blame. You can assign some of that to yourself. You placed Robert in your building next to your wife. You knew the kind of man he was, and yet you trusted him.” Max brow furrowed. His eyes narrowed and his mouth took a hard line. He turned away from Jonas.
“You won’t get a ransom note. It should have been here by now. But it’s more than holding her for ransom I’m afraid. You haven’t heard anything yet,” Jonas said, knowing about Robert, and how he prized Alex for her expertise in bondage. Jonas’s clients would kill just to get a woman who could do the things that Alex had learned from Max and under Jonas’s guidance.
Jonas wouldn’t tell Max he used Alex as part of his advertisement to open his club. He just mentioned her, without any names or pictures on the brochures he sent as invitations all around town.
“Let’s go. I see you’re bent on coming with me, and actually I need your help.” Jonas opened Max’s closet and pulled out a brown leather jacket he wore over a beige silk sweater, and a pair of dark-brown slacks. Because Jonas wore a new growth of beard, they didn’t look like twins anymore. At least no one could tell unless they had a probing eye.
Both brothers were drop-dead gorgeous and would appeal to two different types of women because of their manner of dress and looks. Jonas appeared rugged and unpolished in talk and dress. However, both were expensively dressed, but Max a little more uptight than Jonas in the way he carried himself, but it didn’t show because Max wore his confidence better.
When they reached the lobby, Jonas threw a nasty look at the doorman who had come on his shift early, because he was the one who had mistaken him for a bum.
Jonas grew angry, because he had asked for Max and Alex, but this doorman refused to listen to him, or let him into the building, even when he said he was Maximillian Blackstone’s brother.
Seeing the look on Jonas’s face, the doorman said, “Good day, Mr. Blackstone, and you too, Mr. Jonas.” Jonas smiled and strutted out next to Max. On reaching the limo, Max gestured for his bodyguard to get behind the wheel, and he opened the door, and let Jonas in and climbed in after him.
After telling the driver where he wanted to go, the driver pulled the limo into traffic, and they headed downtown to Sebastian’s office.
Walking into the lobby, Jonas said, “Where’s the elevator?”
“It’s out of order. Time to climb stairs,” Max said, looking at him and headed up.
“Do you think he can handle this case? I have some ideas I wanted to go over with you.”
“He managed to find Alex’s girlfriend.”
“But can he handle a case like this?”
“I’ll let you answer your own questions.”
When they reached the third floor, Max rang the bell, and Sebastian’s secretary greeted them. “Mr. Blackstone, Sam is waiting in his office.”
Jonas stood smiling at Chris. “This is my brother, Jonas.” Chris walked around Jonas with him gawking at her. She couldn’t help but look back at him as she walked up to the door and knocked.
“Mr. Blackstone and his brother is here.”
“Come in.” Chris opened the door and Max entered. Jonas waited a few minutes until Chris closed the door behind him.
Max walked to a chair and sat in front of Sebastian’s desk. That was an unnatural position for Max. Usually he was the one behind the desk, but a much larger one. Jonas was still looking at the closed door thinking about Chris.
“This is my brother, Jonas. Jonas. Jonas,” Max called out raising his voice higher before Jonas turned around. “Sebastian Hunter my brother Jonas Blackstone.”
“Twins I see,” Sebastian said.
“Yes you are very perceptive,” Jonas said. “Is your secretary married?”
“She will be soon.” Sebastian paused with little expression. “To me.” Then Jonas plopped into the leather chair next to Max.
“Now that we’ve got that over with, can we get on with this?” Max said, peering at Jonas. “We’ve lost enough time.” He turned to Sebastian, “What do you have for me?”
“It seems that the man you’re looking for is the brother of Robert Montgomery. His name is Ross. And here’s his picture.” He slid the folder with the picture across his desk over to Max. Max looked up and passed it over to Jonas. Jonas leaned back and let out a large breath. When Max glanced over to Jonas, he thought Jonas knew something he hadn’t told him. It was just the way he looked at the picture and then looked up at the ceiling.
“What else?” Max said.
“I think you know more than I do. But not much. I can tell you what I know and then you tell me what you know. Maybe we can put this together and find out what’s going on here, and how to find your wife.” Max passed his thumb over his bottom lip.
“Do you have a cigarette?” Jonas asked.
Sebastian reached into his top drawer and pulled out a pack and dropped it in front of him. Jonas placed the cigarette on the side of his mouth. He didn’t ask for a light, but Sebastian had one. He stood and went over to Jonas and lit the cigarette. Jonas looked up, “You’re not going to smoke?”
“I’m quitting. Those things will kill you.”
“We all have to go. You take your poison, I’ll take mine,” Jonas said with a small smile. And he glanced over to Max sitting impatiently and sour looking, waiting for Jonas to stop interfering, and let Sebastian get on with his findings. Max had to question at this point whether it was a waste of time to bring Jonas along. He hadn’t contributed anything of value.
Sebastian leaned forward. Then he opened the door of his desk and dropped the cigarette lighter into the drawer. And he sat back in his dark brown leather chair. “You were saying, Mr. Hunter.” Max began his formal address of Sebastian, suggesting that it was time to get professional. Sebastian understood that Max meant business and he had better give him something beyond a name.
“Mr. Blackstone, you may not know it, but I was a detective on the case when Robert Montgomery was killed.”
“Why do you say killed when the coroner said accidental. Everyone knew Robert was into erotic asphyxiation,” Max said.
“People who do these things usually have a partner. This is very dangerous, and I don’t think Robert was a stupid man, or wanted to die.’
“He could have been addicted and couldn’t wait for someone,” Max said as Jonas looked from Max to Sebastian as if at a tennis match.
“You showed up and found him. Maybe he was waiting for you. Maybe you were his partner, Mr. Blackstone.”
“How absurd. Men usually have female partners.”
“Usually,” Sebastian said, trying to gauge Max’s reaction.
“If you’re suggestion that I’m gay...”
“My brother isn’t gay,” Jonas said, his voice high.
“I don’t need you to vouch for me, Jonas,” Max said, turning away from Jonas and back to Sebastian.
“I didn’t think you were gay. But you are into a specific lifestyle,” Sebastian said.
“I’ll admit that if it makes you happy, but what does that have to do with finding my wife?”
“It may have everything to do with it. I gather by your expression that you didn’t know Robert had a brother and a twin brother at that. That must be a first for me, because I seem to be running into a lot of twins. Quite unusual. Like having two sets of twins involved in the bondage thing, one who used to own a club that catered to billionaires who used that to get their kicks, and one who knows someone personally that engages in the same games.”
“I think you have said enough, and I have listened to too much of this. It isn’t getting me any closer to finding my wife.” Max made a gesture to leave. He leaned to stand.
“But it is getting close, and here is another folder with some of your brother’s contacts that I can’t interview. They won’t see me because I locked some of them up. They are the ones who bought Jonas’s club.” Sebastian turned his focus to Jonas. “You sold that club and got out of town quick. It wasn’t all yours to sell anymore.”
“If you know more, then say it, otherwise stop accusing me of something,” Jonas said with a dry angry tone.
“I’m just stating a fact. When it came out that Robert had died, all of a sudden the club was sold to some suspicious characters. Just maybe you can talk to them, considering they bought the club from you, and you had no right to sell the club. Robert owned sixty percent of that club, and you tried paying him off. Did you try paying him off with your brother’s wife?”
Max turned with a jerk staring at Jonas. Jonas lowered his eyes and stared at his feet. Max noticed. Then he glanced over to Sebastian with a furrowed brow.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jonas said standing, and walking around the room, pacing to the window and back to the cigarette that had by now burned out in the ashtray in front of him. Then he took another turn around the room with Sebastian and Max staring at him.
“I think there’s more going on with him than I know. You’d better get him out of New York before someone picks up that case, and starts questioning him. He looks like he’s on the verge of confessing something,” Sebastian said. Jonas never did go back to his seat. He just stood looking out at the street and buildings, and people looking like they were scurrying around going someplace.
“Mr. Blackstone. I think you should get your brother to go with you and talk to some of his friends. We have Ross’s name and address. I went there, but the doorman said he had moved out. I think it was around the time he inherited his brother’s estate. I’ll try to find his lawyer, but he’s not going to tell me anything. If you have any favors to call in, I think you should. But I’m going to keep trying to find this man,” Sebastian said.
“I’ll have my lawyer send you a check and an advance. Stay on the case.”
Max stood and extended his hand, and Sebastian took it, and said, “I will.” Max walked over to Jonas and touched his elbow. Jonas turned looking confused. He walked slowly and followed Max to the outer office. Jonas stood in one spot, expecting Max to tell him when he should go.
“Get your brother some help.” Max didn’t say anything. He had heard that before, and he got Jonas more help than any other soldiers had received, but Jonas was damaged, and it would take more than Max to help him.
Max walked over to Jonas and touched his elbow again, and he looked around and saw that it was Max, and he turned and smiled as if he was entering into a new world, and leaving an old one, a world too frightening for a man. But with Max the world wasn’t frightening. It was rosy and happy.
“Good bye, Mr. Blackstone, and you too, Jonas.” Jonas looked up as if he remembered Sebastian and gave him a smile and shook his hand. “My secretary will show you out.”
Sebastian closed the door. He had hit on something, but he didn’t know what it was yet. It was the detective in him that made him curious. But he had to forego that because he wasn’t a detective of that kind anymore. He would find people, not lock them up, and he had to separate the two.
Max and Jonas stepped into the office where the secretary was standing looking through folders when they passed. Jonas smiled at her, and he stopped to engage Chris in a conversation. Max prevented the conversation, by saying, “You have to call your wife and child.”
“Oh. Yes.” Jonas turned as if a light had just gone off, and he suddenly realized that he did have a wife and child, one that didn’t know where he was. He had gone for a walk and ended up in New York. He had to call her.
As he and Max walked down the stairs, Max said, “I need your help, Jonas.”
“Anything. I’ll do anything.”
“First, I need you to call Crystal and tell her you’re with me and that I’ll bring you home soon. Don’t tell her about Alex. I don’t want anyone to know, especially not her parents. I can’t deal with that now. Besides, they think I’m not good for her,” Max said.
“Here, use my phone, and I’ll get you one tomorrow. Do you have money?” Max asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“What did you do with that money when you sold your club?”
“I don’t remember,” Jonas said, climbing into the car.
“Do you remember the people you sold it to?”
“I think so. But we can go to the club. I think he’s there,” Jonas said stepping into the limo. The limo made a circle around the block and headed up town.
Jonas sat looking out as if he had never seen Manhattan. The look on his face was that of awe. As Jonas called on Max’s cell, Max used the phone in the limo to contact his business partners to get Robert’s lawyer’s name.
Max heard Jonas talk to Crystal and his baby. The baby too young, but seemed to recognize Jonas and he turned to Max, and said, “My baby boy recognized my voice.” Jonas appeared to be happy about that for a minute. Max turned back and finished his conversation. Then he heard Jonas mumble Alex’s name.
He thought nothing of it only trying to find out more information. Sebastian seemed to think it had something to do with the club and Jonas. Max had always thought the same about the club, and especially about Jonas.
While in New York, Jonas had surrounded himself with sleazy characters and underground figures. When he opened the club, he was told that this was New York, and things were done differently from say California. He had to pay to play in New York.
Jonas overlooked that aspect of the business because he needed to make some quick money and he depended on Max to keep the underground business community in check. Max had connections, but Jonas didn’t go through Max before he decided to open the club. Max would have protected him, but Jonas never consulted Max, because he would have said, “Don’t do it.”
Max couldn’t blame Jonas without blaming himself, though.
As Jonas and Max were stepping out of Max’s car at the bondage club Jonas once owned, Alex and Ross were stepping into a limo heading to a private airfield.