Pinewood
When Myra and Annie returned to Pinewood, Charles had a platter of empanadas waiting for them. “Just a little something to tide you over.” He set the tray down and wrapped Myra in his arms. “Good to have you back, old girl.”
Lady and her pups were yelping and yapping. Myra and Annie squatted to hug and snuggle the pooches. “I missed you so much.” Myra draped her arms over as many dogs as she could.
Charles clasped Annie’s shoulders. “You managed to stay out of trouble, I see,” he said jokingly.
“I do the best I can!” She pecked him on the cheek. “Where’s Fergus?”
“In the war room. Dealing with Interpol.”
“Goody. Is he optimistic about their cooperation?” Annie asked.
“Anything Nazi related is fair game. The girls will be arriving in about an hour to go over the rest of the details. I’ll bring your bags up, and you can get comfortable. I’ll let Fergus know you’re here, Annie.” Charles buzzed Fergus on his phone and let him know Annie and Myra were back. Then he carried Myra’s luggage to the master suite, with Myra and the dogs following behind.
An hour later, the sisters began arriving. High fives to Annie for the jewelry heist; high fives to Kathryn and Yoko for discovering the pill mill; high fives to Isabelle and Alexis for the Brewster info; more slapping for Maggie’s work on Lorraine Thompson’s apparent suicide and for Charles’s and Fergus’s intel. Nikki, with assistance from Lizzie Fox in Las Vegas, had made a contribution to the mission, also. She and Lizzie had compiled a list of all previous patient victims of Live-Life-Long and were going to file a class-action suit against the individual men. But that would have to wait until they were arrested. A lawsuit could tip them off and send them running. As of now, none of them had any idea about what was coming.
After the hugging, kissing, and hand slapping, Nikki spoke up. “Where’s Charlotte?”
Multiple questions flew out of the sisters’ mouths at the same time.
“Easy.” Myra gestured for them to calm down. “Two things. Even though Charlotte played an enormous role in this, we felt that leaving her out of certain things would suit her preferences more than involving her. While she seemed to relish the process of gathering the ingredients, I doubt she would want to be present for the making of the sausages.”
Taking the opportunity for a pun, Annie blurted, “Speaking of suits and suitors, there is Lincoln Gladwell, my personal jeweler. He and Charlotte hit it off swimmingly.”
Oohs and aahs came from the group.
“Do tell!” Alexis begged.
“Nothing to tell yet,” Myra said evenly. “They met. They chatted. They plan to get together soon.” She couldn’t hide her joy over the new friendship. “It was sweet. Let’s just leave it at that and say some prayers for Charlotte’s happiness.”
“Hells bells, girls! Happiness for all!” Kathryn bellowed.
Charles motioned for everyone to go to the war room to finalize their plans. After the ritual salute to Lady Justice, everyone took their seat. Charles powered up all the monitors and ran down everything they had accomplished, accumulated, and planned. Everyone knew how imperative the timing was. Once the mission began, the final challenge would be the snatch.
The FBI in the US and Scotland Yard in London had to raid the doctors’ offices as well as the property in Michigan. Simultaneously, the FBI would arrest Steinwood for grand theft larceny and Corbett for multiple felonies, and in addition, Interpol would take Corbett in for international art theft. Marcus would be on the run from Franny O’Rourke, assuming that Franny hadn’t found him already. It was anyone’s guess how that would turn out.
Annie and Maggie would alert all their contacts to make sure the media was on standby to break the stories across the country and the free world. Live-Life-Long was going down.