Lucky Charm (16 page)

Something about the look on Matt’s face, though, and that shifting as if he were physically uncomfortable… Only one thing could distract a man that way. A woman, it had to be, to have Matt looking so preoccupied. That was the only reason Darrin could think for Matt’s discomfort – not only the physical but the psychological.

Now that was unusual. In all the years Darrin had known him he had never seen Matt so distracted over a woman.

It wasn’t that Matt was the love ‘em and leave ‘em type, it was just that for some reason he couldn’t seem to find one who would stick, who made him truly happy as Darrin had with Matt’s mother. Julianna. Darrin’s heart twinged at the memory. She’d been beautiful, warm…

It was Matt that Darrin had to think of now. Julianna’s son. For some reason Matt kept picking the wrong women. He hoped this one wouldn’t be like the last one.

“What’s her name?” Darrin asked, keeping his tone mild.

Distracted, seeing ivory skin flushed with pleasure in his mind’s eye, Matt murmured, “Ariel.”

Then he looked up sharply but Darrin was looking down at the glass of whiskey in his hands.

It wouldn’t do for Matt to see the look in his eyes, Darrin knew. He’d always hoped that Matt would find a good woman, someone to make him as happy as he’d been with Julianna. He still missed her intensely. He’d had a little more six years of joy with her but it hadn’t been enough, even as tough as that last year had been.

Matt deserved that same kind of happiness but he also needed it, although he wouldn’t admit it.

“Ariel, the sprite,” Darrin commented, keeping his voice even. “Shakespeare.”

It looked as if Ariel had wrought her magic on Matt, casting a spell over him. Darrin, for one, would be glad to see it. If Matt would let it happen. The problem with Matt was that sometimes the women picked him, seeing what he looked like on the outside and not the inside, seeing the job, the car and the ranch, but not the man who owned ‘em. Thinking of money, sometimes, not realizing that the ranch had a mortgage. Sometimes it seemed as if Matt chose them to be cool and distant, when he needed someone warm like his mom, like Julianna. It was Matt’s call. Darrin just hoped he’d be smart enough to recognize if this was the right one.

Looking up from half-lidded eyes, Darrin watched Matt’s face, saw him shift uncomfortably again.

A sprite or elf.
Ariel. Matt nodded at the image.

Yes, she was that. Small and entrancing. He remembered that glance back into the room to see her sitting cross-legged on the bed, her black hair tumbled over her shoulders and curling over her ivory breasts, her trim waist, the dark triangle of hair between her smooth white thighs. The hardness that had begun to fade came back with a rush.

Settling back, Matt considered his next move. First, he would try another way. Any other way than Ariel, then and only then, if there were no other choice, would he try to find her again. He’d gotten the distinct impression both that morning and on the street outside the bar in Fort Lauderdale that she didn’t want to get close. That loneliness, that sense of isolation and apartness. She kept herself that way, except for a brief moment of weakness one morning and a need to be touched so deep she’d thrown caution to the winds. So much pain and such a capacity for joy. So strong and yet so fragile.

If it came down to it, for Bill he would do it but he would try to find another way first.

“What else have you found out about Genesis?” Matt asked.

Frowning, Darrin stared down into the depths of his drink.

“Not much,” he said, frustrated. “Unlike Marathon, they’re not publicly traded. They’re very tight, very elite, with a large but selective clientele.”

Swirling the scotch in the glass, he watched the warm, golden liquid flow as he let out a long, slow breath.

“That,” he added, “is about all we know. I have Harry looking into it, into what financials we can find.”

There was more and Darrin knew it. Something about the whole scenario – not just Bill’s death – bothered him like an itch he just couldn’t scratch.

He had a pretty good idea what Matt suspected, what he himself did. But this time would be different. The bruise on Matt’s face wasn’t likely the only injury he’d taken. The high level of security was more than disturbing.

“If Harry can’t find it,” Matt said, “then it’s buried deep.”

Slowly, Darrin said, “It bothers me that we have to dig so deep. Folks that need to keep information that close to the vest usually have something to hide.”

If there was anything that ever warned Matt when Darrin was disturbed or angry about something it was that slowness of speech, as if Darrin reined everything in so tightly he could only let it out in tightly controlled streams.

Darrin was worried.

In that, he wasn’t alone.

*****

Reluctantly Tom Genardi made the call he’d been dreaded. He’d put it off as long as he could. His people were having no luck catching this guy who kept asking awkward questions. If he didn’t inform his opposite number soon and Lovell found out, there would be hell to pay. The chances were good he’d inform upper management and then Tom would be out of far more than a job. Out of everything.

Until now he’d had a cushy job with a cushy paycheck far beyond his pension from the LAPD and what he could’ve gotten running security for any other company. With millions of dollars at stake and all he knew, out was likely to be permanent. He’d really screwed up there.

They couldn’t take the chance he’d talk about what he knew.

The man he was about to call would be the one to do it, too.

From his days on the job, he knew men like Lovell. Stone cold killers. It was in their eyes. Not merely cold but flat, dead and empty eyes. It was like looking into the eye of a shark. He’d killed a time or two himself but not with the cold calculation Lovell probably had. Not for the first time he wondered if the man even had enough emotion, enough humanity left to enjoy sex. Or even something as simple as food. He wasn’t quite sure and the very idea chilled him.

“How can I help you, Tom?” the voice on the other end of the phone asked, coolly polite.

Taking a deep breath, Genardi answered, “We still have a problem. My boys nearly had him but he got away.”

He had no need to explain who they were talking about.

“Do you have an ID on him yet?”

Genardi laughed shortly. “Yeah, that was simple. We asked the widow. She said he was an old college buddy of her husband by the name of Matthew Morrison. He’s some kind of an accountant.”

“Have you alerted your people in your other offices?”

Girding himself, Genardi said, “That’s why I called.”

There was no need to explain. He’d said it all in that one sentence.

For a moment there was silence.

Then, “Which?”

“Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa.”

Another silence, but Genardi could almost feel the frost of Lovell’s anger through the phone. “So he’s come across country. There are security cameras in the lobbies, am I correct?”

“Yes.”

“Pull the film, see if we can get a picture of the sonovabitch. Circulate it to all the managers of all the offices that are in on this. They’ll have a vested interest in containing him. We need to know more about him, too. See to it.”

Silence.

Then.

“No more mistakes.”

The warning in Lovell’s voice was clear.

Jonathan Lovell flipped the disposable cell phone closed and tossed it onto his desk. In a day or so he’d dispose of it. Paranoid perhaps but better than being caught with something that could be traced, depending on what happened in the days ahead.

Resting his elbows on his desk, he steepled his fingers and tapped them against his lips as he thought.

Genardi’s report was less than satisfactory.

His counterpart with Marathon, Thomas Genardi was far too reliant on brute force. Instinct born of Lovell’s years first with the Marines, then the NYPD and finally as a consultant with the private security firm Viking in Afghanistan and Iraq told him the situation could be trouble. As Vice President of Security for Genesis Corp. trouble was what he’d been hired to prevent. Especially in this age of corporate walks of shame.

After watching others take it neither J. Gordon Maxwell, CEO of Genesis – the brains behind the operation – nor Philip Alden, CEO of Marathon wanted to find themselves in the same position.

Their instructions had been quite clear. Prevent such an occurrence. At any cost. Neither mentioned extreme prejudice in so many words but that was what they’d meant.

J. Gordon Maxwell hobnobbed with the rich and famous in NY and LA with Alden at his heels. He schmoozed with old money in the Hamptons, threw sparkling parties. The man owned a mega-yacht as well as a castle in Great Britain. Lovell had been to both.

He had a boat as well, a smaller one, in Costa Rica. He knew the value of keeping a bolt hole in case of emergencies.

It was almost amusing. For all the outrage on the part of the populace – with every financier and investment broker stuffing their pockets with money, Senators and Congressmen up to the highest levels taking advantage of what they knew privately – still no one really wanted to regulate the financial industry that allowed it.

Lovell couldn’t help but think that given that most people deserved exactly what they got. Screwed. They bought the convenient fiction that regulation would stifle industry and jobs when all it really did was keep people like Maxwell from getting richer.

It was no real matter to him in any case.

Genesis and Marathon had a nice little scam going here and all the right people were getting rich.

Including him.

Nor did he want to take that walk of shame himself, which he would. He could see the headlines all too well.

It wouldn’t happen.

Which brought him to this other situation. As much as it served their purposes, buying time, providing excuses, it had its own inherent risks.

A distraction was therefore required.

Pressing a button, he summoned a few of his own trusted people, gave them instructions. It was time to do some checking on his own as well. He had little faith in Genardi

.

Birmingham, Alabama, was a lovely city and Ariel liked it almost instantly. For the center of a city, the downtown area was pretty, even with the inevitable glass and steel towers but without the wretched stench of some. She’d visited a few, especially on the East Coast that absolutely reeked of odors both familiar and better left unidentified. Then there were the soft accents and the genteel manners that still held in the Deep South. And, finally, the entire office broke for lunch, no exceptions, especially not her. The staff wouldn’t hear of it. They insisted, despite her protests, on taking her along. It seemed as if many of the others did, too. It was amazing to see. Office workers poured from the buildings and crowded into the food court of the downtown mall or the numerous eateries.

With the preparation done, though, she still had the installation to do that night. It was the least disruptive time and she had the option of working through some problems before anyone was affected. If she could find and fix them in time. By now she had a fairly extensive list of things she could check to try to eliminate the kind of problems she’d had before.

At least this office hadn’t been like Tampa, which had been a disaster.

The growing silence in the outer office told her it was emptying. As did the server, as she watched the employees sign out, their status beside their names changing as they logged off. She wouldn’t start until the last was gone, until there was no one on the network and no chance someone would log back on. She would be converting data, updating and changing files, anyone accessing those files in the conversion process risked the possibility of blowing up the installation. That had happened once, to disastrous result. If worst came to worst, she could force them off but she didn’t like to do that. It set a bad tone between her and the person she’d pushed off line.