Page 111 of Mr. Match

I think I found what I’m looking for.

Gimme more… gimme more… gimme more…

Epilogue - OLVIER

Apparently some jerk-off snapped a picture of Weston Conrad filling in for a sick actor at Sparrow’s haunted house the other night and then tricked a reporter into declaring him dead yesterday morning. Some people really need to get their facts straight. Weston is threatening to sue unless they all run a retraction.

Which might happen.

The explosion at my father’s shooting range was verifiably linked to two East Coast criminals who were targeted by another, as yet unnamed, organized crime ring.

The last surprise surfaces late afternoon when the reports come in about an FBI raid on the Antimony House after the huge explosion up in the mountains that took out more than fifty people.

Fifty. It’s a big, big number. And one of them is Lily Kalashova.

Kat sleeps late, sleeps right through the live report on the TV. Or maybe she doesn’t. The bedroom is a loft, after all. Regardless, she doesn’t come down until evening. And she looks refreshed and clean, her pale skin a little bit red from the hot shower she just took.

Most of the writing I’ve done on her body is still there. Some of it faded, some of it still bright. But it’s the one across her neck that I stare at.

“What happened?” Kat says, motioning to the TV where the news is on mute. It’s footage of the Antimony House.

“Turns out,” I say, sipping some coffee, “that the Antimony girls were up to some no-good shit. The rumor is, that’s why that mansion they own up in Estes Park was bombed last night.”

Katya raises one eyebrow at me.

“Dark web marketplace,” I say, before taking another sip of coffee and gauging her reaction over the top of my mug. I swallow and then ask, “You ever heard of that kind of thing? I guess they were like, selling drugs and hitmen. Some really nasty shit on there, Kat. You’d have been sick over it.”

I cashed in a huge favor with the Russian. Once I learned that Antimony House used ShrikeSafe, I had Cindy go in through the back door and, yeah, we cracked their wifi code in like thirty minutes and got into their computers. None of us Shrike kids are good enough to fuck with that code they put on my system eleven years ago to make me their scapegoat, but the Russian has teams of people on the same level as Five. And since Mysterious really could buy a cop off the dark market, they exchanged my server for the one inside the Antimony House while they were raiding it this morning.

Hook-Me-Up has been offline ever since, but who cares. The Russian is gonna buy it. He says he can fix it and it’s good for data-mining.

But that’s not how I convinced them to help me last night. I had one more ace in the hole to offer up. Or rather, Weston Conrad did.

His treasure. That stupid fucking treasure was the root of all our problems.

Liam spilled about why all this happened and it really did all come back to that gold on the bottom of the ocean out off the coast of Nantucket. Turns out that a ship carrying six very important people—the original Silver Society members, in fact—and a whole lot of coin, was hit by another ship back in 1909, causing it to sink.

Apparently these six people were up to some pretty sneaky shit with that gold. Trying to steal it, I think. Wikipedia says it was originally supposed to be either a loan to Russia, or some kind of relief aid for a town hit by an earthquake in Italy, or the payroll for the US Navy’s Great White Fleet. The RMS Republic really did collide with the SS Florida. Six people died. They current estimation for the value of the missing gold is in the billions, just like Weston said. And the Russians were involved. My secret sources say it really was a loan to Russia and they even had to pay it back.

You can’t make this shit up.

If someone really does find that gold it would be the largest recovery treasure of all time. Liam’s salvage company had filed a claim on the ship. But the treasure had moved. Maybe someone moved it? Maybe it drifted into that cave where seven-year-old Weston found it? Who knows how it ended up where it was. Maybe it was just fate?

So the Conrads… what a bunch of filthy assholes they were. They always knew there was more gold than Weston told them about. And when Liam couldn’t beat it out of him, they took him home. They were patient, I’ll give them that. But everyone’s patience runs out after a while. And by the time Weston was in his senior year at Brown, they’d had enough. They devised that rape charge to pressure him into spilling his secrets. Did we all get taken along for the ride? Maybe. Maybe not.

God they make me sick.

Weston was all too happy to wash his hands of the whole thing so when I offered it up to the Russians to pay for their help in setting up the Antimony Association house, he was ready.

It was also a bribe to stay far, far away from my Katya.

Katya’s other eyebrow goes up. “Well,” she says. “Imagine that. And nope, I have no idea what you’re talking about right now, Mr. Match.”

“Me either,” I say, handing her a cup of coffee too. “But speaking of Mr. Match, another totally funny thing happened while you were sleeping.”

She doesn’t bother cocking her eyebrow this time. “Really?” She laughs. “There’s more?”

“Yeah, what do you think about me selling Hook-Me-Up?”