I, Alex Cross

for the evening, a Trinidadian beauty by the name of Esther, was arranging leather guest folios on a Chippendale table in the foyer.
    "Any issues for me?" he asked. "Any unanticipated problems for tonight?"
    "None, Mr. Nicholson. Everything is perfect." Esther had a wonderfully serene manner that Nicholson loved.
    It slowed him down right away. "The Bollinger is iced, we have the Flor de Farach coronas in the humidors, the girls are all beautiful and properly briefed, and you have" — she pulled a watch out of her pocket; there were no clocks in the house — " at least twenty minutes before our first guests are scheduled to arrive. They called ahead. They are right on time. They sound very…
enthusiastic
."
    "Right, then. Excellent job. You know where to find me if you need me."
    Nicholson made a quick pass through the first floor before heading upstairs. The foyer and lounges on this level evoked an English gentlemen’s club more than anything, with their mahogany paneling, brass fixtures on the bars, and lots of ridiculously expensive antiques. It looked like the kind of place his father could have only dreamed of joining, given England’s obscene class system. Nicholson was a working-class Brighton boy by birth, but he’d left all of that dreary shit behind long ago. Here, he was king. Or at least a crown prince.
    He took the main stairs up to the second floor, where several of the girls were already dressed and waiting for the first rush of guests, the "early buggers."
    Stunningly beautiful girls, elegant
and
sexy, they sat chatting on the low sofas in the mezzanine, which also had comfortable floor cushions all around and layers of soft drapes that could be pulled for more or less privacy, depending on the desires of the party.
    "Evening, ladies," he said, looking them over with an expert eye. "Yes, yes, very nice. You’re all gorgeous. Perfect, every one of you, in every way."
    "Thank you, Tony," one of them said a little louder than the others. This was Katherine, of course, whose gray blue eyes always lingered over his Nordic features a little longer than the others. She would have loved to have a go at the boss, and for all the wrong reasons, he understood.
Like replacing his wife in his life.
    Nicholson leaned down to whisper in her ear, fingering the hem of her white lace mini as he did. "A different dress, though, I think, Kat. Can’t have the whores looking like whores, now, can we?"
    He watched the beautiful girl struggle to keep the brilliant smile on her face — as if he’d just said something charming and sweet. Without another word, she got up and left the room. "I have to use the little girls’ room," she whispered.
    Once he’d been satisfied that everything else was in superb working order, Nicholson continued up to his locked office on the third floor. This was the one area of the house he kept off limits to both the guests and the help.
    Inside, he poured a glass of seven-hundred-dollar-a-bottle Bollinger — a gift to himself from the client’s stock — and sat down. It had been a hectic day; now he could finally relax.
    Well, not really relax, but at least there was the Bollinger.
    Two large flat-screen monitors dominated the desk in front of him. He powered up the system and typed in a long password.
    Rows of thumbnail images tiled open like dominos across one of the two screens.
    At first glance, they looked like miniature still lifes, each one from a different area of the house — foyer, mezzanine, guest suites, massage rooms, dungeon, screening rooms. There were thirty-six in all.
    Nicholson stopped for just a moment to watch the duplicitous Katherine in one of the changing rooms, wearing just a thong, breasts heaving, fussing at her runny eye makeup in the mirror. Beautiful though she might be, Katherine was a mistake — too ambitious, too cunning — but she was not his real priority right now.
    He clicked on an image of the driveway in front of the house and dragged it so that it jumped screens to open full-size on the other monitor. A time signature began to count out at the bottom.
    He clicked once more, on a red triangular button in the border, for "record."
    The first cars were just pulling in. The party was about to start.
    "Let the fucking begin — mind and otherwise. Whatever their little hard-ons desire."

Chapter 29

    BY ELEVEN THIRTY, the very expensive and exclusive Blacksmith Farms was in full swing. Each of the guest suites was occupied, the massage rooms,