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Black Knight (Volume 2) (Witch World, Band 2) - Softcover

Buch 2 von 2: Witch World

Pike, Christopher

 
9781442467347: Black Knight (Volume 2) (Witch World, Band 2)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1442467347 ISBN 13: 9781442467347
Verlag: Simon Pulse, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

The thrilling Witch World saga continues in this suspenseful sequel to Red Queen, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Christopher Pike.

Jessica Ralle thought the worst was over. The mindblowing revelations. The terrifying danger.

The heartbreaking loss.

Turns out, discovering Witch World was just the beginning.

The riveting Witch World saga continues in a sequel packed with even more shocking twists and sexy suspense than Book One…

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Christopher Pike is a bestselling young adult novelist and has published several adult books as well—Sati and The Season of Passage being the most popular. In YA, his Last Vampire series—often called Thirst—is a big favorite among his fans. Pike was born in Brooklyn, New York, but grew up in Los Angeles. He lives in Santa Barbara, California, with his longtime partner, Abir. Currently, several of Pike’s books are being adapted for the screen, including The Midnight Club, which Netflix released as part of a ten-part series. At the moment, Pike is hard at work on a new YA series.

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Black Knight

CHAPTER ONE

PREMIERE NIGHT AT GRAUMAN’S CHINESE Theatre. Roll out the red carpet and prepare to welcome the hordes of beautiful people in their Mercedes S-Class sedans, Jaguar convertibles, Beamers, and Bentleys—and a bevy of other cars worth more than most U.S. homes.

Because he was a parking attendant for Grauman’s—now legally the TCL Chinese Theatre, a name no one in Hollywood was even aware of—the majority of people his age would have assumed Marc Simona loved riding in such cars. The truth was he didn’t. He just parked them, usually drove them less than two hundred yards. He never got to feel how they handled on the open road, and besides, even if he’d been given a chance to drive a sports car up the California coast, he wouldn’t have cared. The only thing that mattered to him was how much trunk space each vehicle had.

The space was what mattered.

That and what kind of jewelry the owners of the cars—specifically the ladies—wore to the red-carpet events. Because Marc didn’t park the cars for tips. Being a valet was just a role he played so he’d know which trunk to climb into at the end of the night.

Most people would have called Marc a thief.

He liked to think of himself as a professional.

Either way he was raking in huge bucks.

During his last trip to New York City and its famous Diamond District—he’d driven cross-country all by himself, in three days no less—he’d fenced a pair of sapphire earrings studded with diamonds and netted twenty grand in cash. The gaudy blue stones had been five carats each, and the lonely eared woman he’d swiped them from had also been wearing a gold bracelet laced with rubies that he’d sold for another ten thousand.

It amazed him that the vast majority of celebrities had no taste. He was something of an expert on the subject. He’d seen with his own eyes how difficult it was, if not impossible, for a certain category of rich or famous women to resist the temptation to drape themselves in the bulk of their jewelry box while attending a red-carpet event.

For Marc that group was easy to spot: female stars who were a few too many years past the cursed number forty, and whose phone had stopped ringing; or else trophy wives who had visited their plastic surgeons one too many times to suction off fat that would have better been shed with diet and exercise. Either group was, to Marc, the equivalent of walking pawnshops.

“Scratch it and you’re dead,” a producer snapped at Marc as he handed over the keys to a black Mercedes sports coupe, while another parking attendant helped the man’s wife out through the passenger door.

Marc recognized the guy—Barry Hazen, executive producer on tonight’s film. By all rights Hazen should have been the man of the hour. Yet Marc knew—as did anyone remotely connected to the business—that Hazen had not worked on the film at all. The guy was filthy rich. He and his partners owned a medium-size production company. All he did was write checks. He never made creative decisions. Yet, with his cash, he was able to put his name on films he probably couldn’t even follow.

That was fine with Marc. Because even though Mr. Hazen was sixty years old with snow-white hair and an Armani tux, Mrs. Hazen was a thirty-year-old redhead wearing a diamond necklace with a central rock the size of a golf ball. It was so big it must have started forming back when the dinosaurs walked the earth. Marc could only dream what he could hock it for.

Marc smiled as he took the man’s keys. “Have no fear, Mr. Hazen. I know a secret spot I can stow this baby where God himself couldn’t touch it.”

Mr. Hazen nodded his approval. “We’ll be here late. Stay behind and pick it up for me and I’ll make it worth your while.”

“Absolutely,” Marc said. He always stayed late for the after-picture party so he could prey on that one couple he’d select who would return home so tired and drunk that they’d fall into bed the instant they entered their house. But whoever that couple turned out to be—so far the Hazens looked good, but Marc knew he’d have several candidates before the night was over—he’d have to clock out before they returned for their car.

Why? The answer was simple. He had to be finished with his work so he could ride home with the couple in their trunk.

Marc hopped in the car and headed straight for Hollywood Boulevard without bothering to check the back, tearing around the block. Grauman’s had been built ages ago, in the era of black-and-white films, and its parking lot could accommodate only a fraction of the valet traffic. Nowadays the best place to stow a Mercedes was in the mall next door. It had a ten-level parking structure and from experience Marc knew how early the bottom level emptied. It was perfect; it gave him more than enough privacy to keep up his lucrative side job.

He stashed Hazen’s sports car in a spot he reserved for his most promising candidates. Besides being physically isolated, it was outside the range of any security cameras and had a seldom-used janitor’s closet where he could store the tools of his trade and work without being interrupted.

Marc hurried to that closet and locked the door behind him. From a box hidden in the corner beneath a filthy sink, he took out a flat, two-inch-square steel case loaded with putty. Separating the Mercedes’s key from the rest of Hazen’s keys, he placed it inside the case and pressed the top shut.

Making the impression of the key was easy—the remainder of the process took patience and skill. Opening the case and removing the key, he reached for a tube of oily brown goo that could best be described as “plaster-glue,” and squeezed it into the impression.

Marc didn’t know the exact chemical makeup of the material, nor did he care. All that mattered was that it dried fast and hard, which it did when heated. That was its only drawback and the main reason why it wasn’t as easy to duplicate keys as most people thought. To speed up the process he kept a battery-powered heater running in the janitor’s closet. He kept extra cases on hand as well. There were nights he’d go through a dozen of them and prepare a dozen spare keys.

Yet in the end he’d use only one key and sneak into only one house—if he was lucky. A lot of factors had to come together for his plan to work. So far, after a year of parking celebrity cars and working over twenty red-carpet events, he’d managed to slip into only seven homes. And out of those seven he’d only struck gold four times.

Of course, the gold had been attached to jewels . . . so he couldn’t complain.

Marc finished applying the plaster and again closed his steel case and held the top tight for a minute without moving an inch. Then, after opening it and leaving the case and the key atop the heater to dry, he cleaned Mr. Hazen’s original key with a paper towel soaked in alcohol and bleach. Whenever he managed to steal something beautiful and expensive, he knew there was no easier way for the police to trace the crime back to him than if he left even the tiniest residue of putty on the original car key.

Since Hazen was his first candidate of the night, Marc was out of practice and it took longer than usual before he was able to exit the janitor’s closet—six whole minutes. The process should have taken him half that time.

Damn, he thought. His boss, Steve Green—a rough-voiced ex-sailor from Australia and the head of the valet...

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Verlag
Simon Pulse
Erscheinungsdatum
2014
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1442467347
ISBN 13 
9781442467347
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
464
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande