chapter forty-two

I joined Kelly and Jay at the dining room table when I got back from my jaunt upstairs. The two of them hadn’t even noticed that I was gone.

“The watchdog on the twentieth floor says that Nat Scott is at home and has been since five this morning,” I reported to them.

Kelly’s face was a large question mark.

“I went up to Nat Scott’s floor,” I told him. “I’m so pissed right now. I wanted to talk to her. Get to the bottom of this.”

Kelly ran his hand over his face and his fingers pulled at the sides of his mouth. The shake of his head was imperceptible, but it was there. Jay saw it too.

“Kate,” Jay said, “I don’t think you should be running around, checking things out by yourself. It’s not safe.” Kelly’s slight nod, agreeing with Jay, did not go unnoticed by me. I impressed myself by deciding not to argue with either of them.

“Any news?” I asked, changing the subject.

“Yeah, on two fronts,” Kelly told me. “First on Dr. Francis. There’s been no sign of him for about a month at his apartment building. No one has seen him coming or going. His apartment is still full of his belongings and the food in his refrigerator has gone bad. “

“So your people were in his apartment?” I asked.

Kelly nodded. I didn’t ask how they got in.

“Does it look like he packed a couple of suitcases and took off?”

Kelly shook his head. “Nope. Toothbrush is still in the bathroom, a set of suitcases are sitting in the bedroom closet. Neighbours haven’t seen him.”

“This is not good,” I said, stating the obvious. “Dr. Pritchard and the staff at Global Devices think that he moved away. His resignation letter said that he was moving and he didn’t leave a forwarding address. What the hell is going on?”

Jay and Kelly looked at me, silently. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Everything was out of control and I felt like Alice in Wonderland, falling and falling. What the hell had I got myself into? What the fuck had Tom Connaught been thinking when he left this shit fucking mess to me? I slammed the palms of my hands on the table and stood up, shoving the chair backwards with my legs.

“We need to call the police and report the poor man missing. Can you find out if he has any family Kelly? Maybe he’s not missing. Maybe he’s scared and is hiding out with them.” I tried to calm myself down, breathing through my nose. I was ready to pack it in, lock, stock and barrel, right now, right here. Kate Monahan was scared and starting to panic. Slow breaths through the nose, I told myself.

Jay was starting to look concerned but knew to keep his distance. He knew that when I was scared I would lash out at anything or anyone near me.

I put my hands on the table and leaned forward a bit. “I’m okay,” I told the both of them. Liar, I told myself. “I’m going to make some coffee. Who wants a cup?”

Ten minutes later we were all back at the dining room table, with our coffee. “So,” I asked Kelly. “Let’s get back to where we were before I panicked. Sorry about that.”

Kelly held up his right hand and shook his head. I took this to mean, no apology necessary.

“You said there was news on two fronts,” I reminded him.

Kelly looked over at Jay and they shared a glance that went something like this: if you think she panicked over the news on Dr. Francis, wait until she hears this.

“What?” I demanded of them.

“It’s about Donald McLean. We found out why he spent time in the state prison.” Jay was delivering the news on this one.

“He’s a sex offender. I’m not sure I want to know the gory details,” I told them.

Jay ignored my wish and told me anyway. “He was convicted of sexually fondling his patients.”

“What patients?” I asked.

“Well, apparently our Mr. McLean was a surgical resident at the Flagstaff Memorial Hospital. Donald McLean is a medical doctor with a specialty in surgery. Although the Arizona Medical Board doesn’t agree. They revoked his license when he was convicted.”

I sat there and let that news sink in. Disgusted was a good word to describe how I felt. And a little more than slightly sick to my stomach. Disgusted with myself, to think that I had found that man attractive. Disgusted with myself to think that I had flirted with him.

Jay looked at me and I had a sudden urge to crawl onto his lap and cuddle up.

“Shall I finish the story on Mr. McLean?” he offered. I nodded.

“Well, the police records that we were able to access reported that after he was convicted, but before he was sentenced and sent to the state prison, Mr. McLean ran his car into a tree at full speed. The police report indicated that the weather was good, and there were no skid marks to indicate that he tried to avoid the tree. The report speculated that it was an attempted suicide.”

Not a nice way to go, I thought, but maybe preferable to life in a prison and a sexual predator label.

“That’s how he ended up in the wheelchair,” Jay continued. “Spent several weeks in the hospital, and when he was released, he went straight from there to the Arizona State Prison at Winslow.”

“So what’s he doing out of prison?” I asked.

“He did his time,” Kelly said. “Sentenced to ten years, served four, got out early because he was a model prisoner. Was a teacher at the prison, helped his fellow inmates get their high school diplomas.” I detected a slight sneer in Kelly’s voice, but his face didn’t betray any such emotion. Maybe I was just misreading his drawl.

“One wonders how the hell he ended up at Phoenix Technologies,” I ventured, mostly to myself. Nausea was pushing at the back of my throat and sharp, shooting pains were throbbing in my temples. Usually, these were some of the first signs of a migraine. When I got a migraine, I usually ended up flat on my back, in a dark room, for many hours and I groaned inwardly, knowing that I couldn’t afford to be out of the loop for that long.

“Kate, you need a break,” Jay was saying. “Where are your painkillers?” The man was a mind reader.

The nausea hit me like a wave and I had to get away from the overhead lights in the dining room and the talking, and the freaking crap that was my life at this moment.

My friend sleep arrived about fifteen minutes after I took my prescription medication and lay like a mummy on my bed, with no covers touching me and my arms crossed over my chest. Tommy came to me in my sleep and he held me and told me how sorry he was and he swore he never meant to put me into such a mess and he told me over and over and over again how much he loved me. I tried to ask him who murdered him but Tommy was holding me so tight I couldn’t speak and I struggled with him. Let me go, let me go, I begged him, let me go because I needed to ask him the question. Let me go.

When I woke up I slowly rolled my eyes behind my closed lids, testing for the tell-tale pain. There was a lingering smidge so I gingerly opened my eyes and turned my head sideways and saw Jay sitting up against the headboard on his side of the bed. He was reading a book and holding a small penlight over the pages. The bedroom was dark except for this little bit of light. I rolled over and made my way across the bed until I was lying beside Jay. He quietly put his hand on my head and I fell back to sleep.

chapter forty-three

The next morning I woke up craving coffee and feeling somewhat refreshed. I set the shower head to massage and enjoyed the water pounding on the back of my neck. I felt a little foolish about the way our evening had ended so abruptly the night before, but I’m sure Kelly understood. I loathed appearing weak in front of others, but trying to function normally while in the grips of a migraine just isn’t an option for me.

After my shower I made my way to the kitchen and was happy to see Jay sitting on one of the barstools at the breakfast counter. I came up behind him and wrapped my arms around his waist and rested my head on his back.

“Good morning,” I mumbled into his T-shirt. He turned around and wrapped me in a big hug, lifting me off the floor. “Good morning yourself,” he said.

“Put me down,” I laughed. My feet were swinging in the air.

“Gimme a kiss first,” he teased. Which I did. Which lasted way longer than a good morning kiss normally did. Which led to all sorts of delicious fun back in our bedroom. Which is why I had two showers that morning.

I finally got my coffee an hour later, which I was enjoying while I watched Jay cook us some breakfast.

“After I so gracefully ended our discussion last night, what did you and Kelly do?” I asked Jay.

“Nothing.” The smell of bacon filled the kitchen. “Kelly left as soon as you went to bed. He said for you to call him today if you were feeling better. And he gave me his cell phone number. I told him I was going to continue digging for information.” Jay reached under the counter while he was telling me this and pulled out some sort of appliance contraption that I had never seen before. He set it on the counter and plugged it in.

“I have to tell you,” he continued, “helping out last night was great fun.” Jay grabbed several large oranges from the wire basket on the counter and skillfully sliced each in half. “Digging into the police databases, accessing the Arizona State Prison records, and the Arizona Medical Board records was a little weird.” Jay grabbed two glasses from the cupboard and placed one under a little spout on the appliance, which he magically flipped down. He then lifted a clear cone shaped gizmo on the appliance and placed half an orange on top of a small protrusion, put the cone back in place, and pressed a button. “It almost felt like I was hacking into computers,” he was saying. “I can’t believe how so much information is available on the internet.” Fresh orange juice was pouring out of the little spout into the glass.

He turned around to the stove, flipped some bacon, grabbed another frying pan from the rack hanging over the counter, placed it on the stove, turned on the burner under it, and placed a dab of butter in the middle of the pan. He was then back at the juicer, quickly feeding it the orange halves. The two glasses of juice were placed side by side on the counter in front of me and in one graceful motion he was back at the stove cracking eggs (one handed) into the frying pan. I sighed a little and wondered if life got any better than this? Jay was my own private dancer, doing his choreographed footwork in the kitchen, cooking for me.

I forced my mind back to reality and gave Jay a very big smile when he placed my plate full of eggs, bacon and toast in front of me. Jay sat beside me on the matching barstool.

“Thank you for breakfast, and thank you for helping out last night.” I leaned over a bit and wrapped my arm around Jay’s waist and rested my head on his arm.

“You are welcome,” he replied. “Now eat your breakfast.”

The stalker’s breathing was controlled. Deep breaths originating in the diaphragm allowed more control and the stalker concentrated on the air expanding the abdomen, not the chest. The stalker felt omniscient with all the extra oxygen the diaphragmatic breathing provided. There were no obstacles to success. Nothing could stand in the way now. Expand the abdomen, not the chest. Extra oxygen meant that sight was improved, hearing was sharper, food tasted so much better. The stalker was constantly sexually aroused. Oxygen meant power. Power meant control. The stalker peered at the medical monitor and nodded silently. Blood oxygen reading was good. Blood pressure slightly low. Heart rate normal. The stalker gloated, just a little, and smiled. Omniscient and omnipotent.

Jay was between my legs with his hands around my throat, and I didn’t like it a bit. In fact, I hated it, which Frank said was a good thing. I lay there on the floor of Frank’s dojo, with a tingling scalp and stinging wrists, and I was supposed to writhe out of Jay’s death grip. I was feeling really pooped out but Frank was having none of that.

“Cross your arms over his and grab his wrists,” he commanded me. When my hands had a good grasp on Jay’s wrists, Frank told me to start moving, and to bring my knees, legs and feet up, under Jay’s body. “Kick at him, throw him off balance,” Frank said. When I had done that, Frank told me to roll to the side, using my shoulder, hip and foot to throw Jay off me. I rolled to the left, grunted, and pushed with my right foot. Miraculously, I ended up between Jays legs, on top of him.

Frank was urging me to strike his groin and get up and run. Embarrassed at how spent I was, I stayed on my hands and knees for a few moments and watched great globs of my sweat drop on the floor. I gulped at the air. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I gasped. How pathetic, I thought. An hour working out and my joints were like Jell-O. I finally stood up and turned around to face Frank and Jay who were patiently waiting for me to come back to life.

After breakfast I had told Jay that I was going to play hooky from the office. Jay just laughed.

“What?”

“You’re the boss so it’s not called hooky.” Jay paused and a big smile played around his mouth. “What are we going to do today?”

“You’re playing hooky too?” He nodded. I put my arms around his waist and looked up at him. Gawd, he makes my heart go pitter-patter, I thought.

“Let’s do something together that’ll take my mind off everything at Phoenix for at least an hour or so.” I gave him a bit of a suggestive leer which didn’t work because we had ended up at Frank Sanchez’s place for another self-defence class.

“Okay,” Frank said. “Good.” He walked over and clapped me on the back. “Good work today Kate. Let’s review what we went over. You worked on what to do if someone comes up behind you and grabs you by your hair.” I nodded and rubbed my scalp. Christ that hurt, getting your hair pulled. Hurt is good, said Frank. It focuses your attention. Reach up, put your hands over theirs, bend down, step back and get out of the grab. “You and Jay worked on how to disarm someone if they come at you with a gun.” I rubbed my wrist, and thought about whether or not I’d be able to remember any of what I had learned today.

Frank said to act submissive when confronted by someone with a gun. I don’t think I’d have any trouble with that part, short of peeing my pants, I’d have my hands up in the air, begging for my mommy. Put your hands up, hang your head, make them think they’ve got the upper hand. And never lose your focus, Frank demanded. When they come at you with that gun, he showed us how to put them to their knees and take the weapon from them. Admittedly, it felt good.

“And lastly,” Frank was saying, “you learned what to do if someone has you on the ground. I know it’s a lot of information in one session, but you need to practice. When can you come back?”

I looked at Jay and he shrugged his shoulders. This was my call. “Tomorrow?” I asked Frank. We agreed on a time and while I gathered up my stuff, Jay called Lou to tell him we were finished and coming downstairs to the car.

Apparently, Jay and Kelly had a little chat last night after I fell asleep. Kelly had a “come to Jesus talk” with Jay and today Lou the driver was Jay’s new best friend. Kelly was concerned about my safety and now Jay had taken on the job of being my personal bodyguard. Which was kind of funny, considering that he had absolutely no training, which Jay didn’t find funny when I pointed that out to him. I decided to go along with whatever Kelly and Jay wanted me to do, for now at least. One thing that Jay made clear to me right away was that we wouldn’t be going anywhere unless it was in Lou’s car. Security of my person was top of mind for Jay, Lou and Kelly. I felt so special.

At the doorway to the street, Jay stood in front of me and looked for Lou’s car. When he saw it pulling up, he took me by the arm and scooted me into the back of the car. Quickly. Somehow I didn’t feel like a movie star.

chapter forty-four

Lou handed me two message slips when I slid into the back of the car. Call Carrie and call Kelly. When I called the office Carrie told me that Cleve Johnston needed to talk me, so I asked her to transfer me to his line.

“Kate, there are a few things we should talk about before I head back to Toronto. I’m hoping to catch the five thirty out of LaGuardia. When can we meet?”

The small digital clock mounted on the back of the front seat of the car told me it was 10:30. Cleve and I agreed to meet for lunch at a small Italian restaurant on East 57th, practically around the corner from my apartment. I had time to take a shower and walk to the restaurant, although Jay and Lou both told me that I would be driven over.

I called Kelly as soon as I got back in the apartment.

“Northland,” he said as soon as he answered the phone.

“Sit rep,” I barked at him and fancied him tightening his butt cheeks and standing at attention.

There was a bit of a pause and I think he actually figured out that I was joshing with him.

“Ma’am,” he drawled. “How are you feeling today?”

“Much better Staff Sergeant, thanks for asking. What’s up?

“Better we talk in person,” he said guardedly.

“I’m at my apartment, and have to leave in about fifty minutes for a lunch meeting,” I told him.

“I’ll be there in twenty.”

He was actually there in eighteen. I had taken my shower and was just finished dressing when I heard the intercom announcing his arrival. Jay and he were comfortably ensconced at the dining room table, chatting like two long lost friends when I came out of the bedroom.

“So, Kelly, what’s up?” I pulled out a chair across the table from him and sat down. He flipped open his little notebook which was sitting on the table in front of him.

“Natalie Scott.”

“Okay. You’ve got my attention. Fire away.”

“Well, most of what is on her background check has been verified. What struck my investigator as a little odd were some slight time differences from what she put on the application. It didn’t add up, so we went off on our own and did a deep dive check on her.”

I was getting that oh-oh feeling in the pit of my gut and I didn’t like it.

Kelly continued. “Seems that our Miss Scott spent some time in Arizona.” He paused but I don’t think it was for effect. And then he swallowed before continuing. “Flagstaff specifically.”

Flagstaff was the city that had hosted our own sexual predator, Mr. Donald McLean.

“Oh really?” I said.

“Really,” he replied. “Although it’s not mentioned on the employment background check, apparently Miss Scott did a placement at the Flagstaff Memorial Hospital as part of her Ph.D studies in biochemistry. She spent four months working in one of their research labs. Ben Tucker, or Donald McLean, was doing his surgical residency there at the same time.”

I had my hands clasped together, in front of me, resting on the table. With this news, my hands clenched and my knuckles turned white.

“What else do we know about her time in Flagstaff?” I asked.

“Nothing yet. My guy was on a flight this morning to Phoenix, connecting to Flagstaff. He’ll be there early afternoon.”

I looked over at Jay and then at Kelly.

“This just keeps getting worse, doesn’t it?”

They both nodded.

“We have to speak to the police. To the detectives who are investigating Tommy’s murder.”

“Agreed,” Kelly said. “Although I’d like to wait until my guy calls with something. The detectives will likely find it interesting that Ben Tucker and Nat Scott were both in Flagstaff, at the same time, but this information isn’t going to help them solve the case.”

“I’m getting closer to believing that both of them had something to do with Tommy’s murder.” I stood up and walked over to the windows and stared across at the tree tops of Central Park. “We have to tell them about Dr. Francis, too,” I said to the window. My watch said I had ten minutes to get to the restaurant to meet Cleve.

Kelly told Jay he didn’t have to go with me. He patted his side, under his left arm. “I’m on the case,” he assured Jay. I think he had a gun under his jacket.

Cleve was waiting for me inside the small entrance to the restaurant. The building was very old and the ceilings were very low and Cleve looked like the Friendly Giant. He stood in front of the maitre ‘d with his shoulders hunched and his head bent over. I gave him a small smile in greeting and then a waiter led us to our table.

I ordered a sparkling mineral water with lime and lots of ice and Cleve said he would have the same. Nothing on the menu appealed to me because I was sick just thinking about the shit going on. Silence surrounded me and I could hear the blood pounding in my ears. I stared mutely at the menu and felt spent. Sure I was tired because of my hour with Frank Sanchez, but my body always tried to shut down on me when I was stressed. Knowing I was only into the first part of the marathon of what Phoenix Technologies was going to be to me, I mentally slapped myself and girded myself for a long race. My eyes were full of tears when I finally looked up at Cleve.

He put his menu down on the table and looked across at me with concern on his face. I held up my hand, stopping him from speaking and took a sip of my sparkling water. “Sometimes, it’s a little much,” I told him by way of explanation. “I’m okay, though,” I reassured him. I adjusted myself in the chair and sat up straighter and looked him in the eye, all business now.

“So, what do we need to discuss counsellor?”

“A couple of things. First off, I want to go back to Toronto for the weekend, but I can be back early next week. That is if you need me. You know I’m only a phone call away.” I nodded. It was true. I knew I could count on Cleve for whatever I needed.

I smiled a bit. “Funny isn’t it? A couple of weeks ago, you were the boss. Now I get to say who comes and goes,” I joked. “Unless something comes up, I don’t see why you would need to be here next week.” He was listening intently to what I was saying. As if I had something important to say, which was a crock if you thought about it. What could Kate Monahan possibly have to say that a man so educated, so well respected, would listen to so intently? I reached across the table and put my hand over his.

“Mr. Johnston, do you know how much I value your friendship? How much I appreciate that you were Tommy’s friend? And how much I appreciate your advice and counsel now? This is hard for me, and I know I’ve been a royal shit to you in the past. I’m sorry for that. I’m just glad you’re here now.” That was one big speech for me, a little on the bare emotional side, but it needed to be said.

Cleve’s big hand engulfed mine and he squeezed lightly. “Enough said. I’m glad to be here and to be of help.”

The waiter appeared and took our orders. While we waited for our food Cleve gave me some more kick-you-in-the-gut news.

“I’ve been thinking about the company and this mess with Global Devices,” he started. “So far, we’ve come clean with the shareholders and the Securities Commissions about the contract cancellation. But what we haven’t done is address the fact that the company is accused of falsifying records. When the FDA finds out about that, it’s not going to be pretty for Phoenix.”

Great. Just what I needed. More good news. And the fact that I hadn’t even thought about this made me even more angry. I was the president of a company for gawd’s sake. I should have thought about this. Fuck. Pay more attention Monahan, I chastised myself.

“So what do we do about this?” I asked Cleve.

“I’m going to do some research into it. See if there’s any precedent out there on this. Look into what sanctions the FDA can put on companies for this type of screw-up. This is preliminary so I don’t want you worried about it. But we need to be ready.”

“Okay. Let’s get ready. But also let’s remember that right now these are only accusations and haven’t been proven. This is all tied in to Tommy’s murder. I’m sure of it.” And then I filled him in on what Kelly and Jay had come up with last night and today. The good news on our exemplary employees, Ben Tucker and Nat Scott.

When I finished we both sat quietly for a while, sipping our coffee and waiting for the bill.

“Wow,” Cleve finally said, softly. Not a word normally in Cleve’s dictionary so it sounded weird coming from him. “Tommy had it all figured out, and it got him killed. Poor son of a bitch.”

I couldn’t agree more. Now I just had to figure it all out. And not get myself killed.

chapter forty-five

The 20th Precinct looked the same as it did when I had visited it almost two weeks ago. A deceptively modern-looking building, it could have been a bank or an upscale jewellery store except for the large brass words mounted on the brick wall beside the door - 20th Precinct, The City of New York Police Department.

It was hard to believe the things that had happened in those two weeks - it seemed like a lifetime. It took me a few minutes to recall that it was only yesterday morning that Carrie had tracked down the two detectives for me. Assuming that Detective Bartlett was still in the hospital with her back problems and that Detective Shipley was back in town, Kelly and I asked for Detective Shipley at the Precinct.

When Kelly and Lou picked me up at the restaurant after my lunch with Cleve, I insisted that we speak with the police as soon as possible. Kelly instructed Lou to head over to the 20th Precinct on West 82nd Street. On the drive over, we discussed what we needed to tell the police. Kelly was adamant that we give them everything we knew. “In order for them to do their job, they have to have all the facts.” I didn’t disagree with him.

Shipley’s clothes looked like she had slept in them and if her hair had met a hairbrush in the last week I would’ve been surprised. To be fair though, she was probably a little overworked with her partner off sick. She stood in front of us and held her hands together, not offering to shake. Before she spoke, her body shuddered with a very deep sigh which seemed to have started somewhere deep inside her, down near her ankles.

She nodded her head slightly at me and spoke in a soft voice. “Miss Monahan. What can I do for you?”

I introduced Kelly as the head of security for our company and left it at that. “We’d like to speak to you about a few things we think may be relevant to the murder of Tom Connaught.”

She chewed a little bit on her lower lip and shook her head, just a little. “I have nothing to report on the case, I’m sorry. There is no news since the last time we spoke.”

“I understand,” I told her. “But there are some things that we think the police should be aware of.”

“Okay,” she agreed grudgingly. She turned and walked away and I assumed we were to follow her. We walked up two flights of stairs and down a narrow hallway to a small room, similar to the one that Bartlett had taken me to. Notably and thankfully, this one did not smell like the inside of my brother’s hockey equipment bag.

Detective Shipley sat across the table from us and placed a small, spiral-bound notebook in front of her. Surprisingly, she actually had a pen and once she had it in her right hand, she looked up at us expectantly.

“So you said you’ve got some news,” she said.

“Yes,” I told her. “We’ve come across some things at the company that we think you should be aware of. Some things involving some of our employees. And we’re finding out more information by the minute.”

Detective Shipley was looking down at her notepad and doodling in the upper right hand corner of the page. I stopped speaking and it was a good five seconds before she looked up at me. Glad to see that I had her attention.

“I’m not sure how much you know about our company and what it does,” I continued. She nodded at me. At least she was awake.

“We are in the development business. We have clients that we partner with who need high tech components developed and built. They contract us to develop and build things that haven’t been done before.” She was still with me. “One of our biggest partners over the last couple of years has been a company called Global Devices. They’re in the medical research business. I found out recently that they had cancelled all contracts with us and demanded all of their property back.”

Shipley shrugged and gave me a so what? look.

“Well, I’ve been talking to the President of Global Devices about why they cancelled with us and apparently it was because research results were being falsified. Which is not very kosher, considering that we partnered with them to build an artificial kidney for humans.”

Shipley sat up just a little bit at this news.

“But, apparently, only a few people at our company knew that the contracts were cancelled, and didn’t tell anyone, and have kept up a phoney pretense that everything was A-okay.”

Shipley looked a little confused.

“I’m still confused about the whole thing myself,” I acknowledged. “But to top it off, our Vice President of Research and Development has moved out of her office and not given any notice to the company.”

“How long ago was this?” Shipley asked.

“Yesterday,” I told her. Shit this was sounding so lame.

“Let me back up a little bit. A couple of days ago, I found out that Mr. Connaught had a safety deposit box.” Shipley definitely perked up at this news and starting writing in her notepad. “I found papers inside the box that were copies of correspondence with the Food and Drug Administration, and originals of letters which looked to be love letters.” Shipley stopped writing and looked up at me, puzzled.

“I know, it doesn’t make much sense,” I said lamely.

“Maybe I can help out,” Kelly offered.

“Please.” Before Shipley thinks I’m a complete moron.

“Miss Monahan spoke with the President of Global Devices,” Kelly told her. “Apparently one of their Vice Presidents, a Doctor Jordan Francis, resigned his position at Global and hasn’t been heard from in a month. There is no evidence that he’s been at his apartment either. The same papers that were found in Mr. Connaught’s safety deposit box were found taped to the underside of Dr. Francis’ desk drawer.”

The story sounded so much better coming from Kelly. “The Vice President of Research and Development who works at our company, Natalie Scott, vacated the premises and cleaned out her office on Wednesday night. On Miss Monahan’s instructions, my staff have been checking the backgrounds of each of the employees in our research and development group.”

Shipley interrupted at this point. “You’re only now checking backgrounds? In this day and age?”

Kelly held up his right hand. “Of course we check backgrounds,” he said indignantly. “Very thoroughly. But people lie, as we’ve found out. One of our employees falsified his application and we’ve found out that he has spent time in a state prison for sexual offences. He didn’t tell us on his application that he was a qualified surgeon or that Miss Scott, our Vice President, the one who disappeared into the night, apparently worked at the same hospital as he did in Arizona several years ago. Miss Scott failed to mention any of that on her background documentation.”

Kelly stopped at this point and we waited while Shipley wrote some more in her notepad. When she finally looked up at us, she asked, “What do you want me to do with this?”

“Question Miss Scott and the other employee. Find out if they know where Dr. Francis is. Look into his disappearance.”

Shipley made some noise in the back of her throat, that little tiny noise that could make a mockery of whatever you had just said. The noise meant, “as if”. Really. There was a collective pause among the three of us. Kelly turned a wee bit red in the face and I think Shipley was wishing she could take it back.

I stood up and looked down at Detective Shipley. “Here’s something you can do,” I started to tell her. Kelly stood up and took me by the elbow, putting a little pressure on it. I understood the pressure to mean cool it. So I took a little breath and realized that pissing off this woman would get me nowhere. “Have a nice day,” I finished the thought and left the room. I must be growing up, I thought. Under similar circumstances I probably would have told the woman to rub her knuckles in shit, so I was pretty proud of myself. I made a mental note to call my mom and let her know.

I thought Kelly was right behind me but I arrived in the lobby alone. While I waited I looked around and realized the Precinct looked like the inside of my old high school. The walls were tiled and the place had an institutional feel to it. Institutional buildings like these gave me the creeps and I wondered what the hell the designers were thinking when they put tiles on the walls. As if it were a shower or a bathroom. Yuck. They were probably thinking efficiency and how easy it would be to clean. I wondered if they actually mopped the walls. Double yuck.

Kelly appeared in about ten minutes and we didn’t stop to talk in the lobby. When we were sitting in the back of Lou’s car, he told me that he had hung back for a few minutes to talk with her.

“I wanted to cut her some slack,” he said. “You can’t imagine how overworked some of these detectives are. Their caseloads are huge and with her partner out on sick leave, she’s managing it all on her own. I asked her to give some thought to what we had told her. I wouldn’t hold my breath though that she’s going to do anything about it at this point. She’s barely keeping her head above water.”

I sat in silence and looked out the window of the car, admiring the green space of Central Park. Lou had turned into the Park on West 86th and I watched the dozens of joggers on the path near the Reservoir.

I turned to Kelly who was lost in his own thoughts.

“This is pretty hopeless isn’t it?” I asked him.

“It may seem like it, at this point. But something’ll break.” He was trying to sound reassuring. “I’ve only been at this for a day or so. We will get to the bottom of this. Don’t you worry, Miss Monahan.”

chapter forty-six

Kelly’s cell phone rang while Lou was driving south on Fifth Avenue right past the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Another place I wanted to visit and hadn’t had the time yet.

“Northland,” he said into the phone, and then he listened for a few seconds. “Let me call you back in fifteen.” He snapped the cover shut on his phone and shoved it back into his belt holster. Lou pulled up in front of my apartment building a few minutes later.

I exited the car onto the sidewalk and thanked Lou who was holding open the car door for me. Our doorman was standing nearby under the awning of the entrance to the building. Kelly exited the car on the sidewalk side as well, and told me he would see me to the apartment.

I got close to both he and Lou and asked them, sotto voce, if they thought all this extra togetherness was necessary. Lou took umbrage with that and drew in a deep breath, stuck out his seemingly fifty-two inch chest and said, not so sotto voce, “If anything were to happen to you, like what happened to Mr. Connaught,” (he pronounced it Keh-nott), “I could nevah live wid myself.”

I patted his arm and told him I appreciated his attention and his driving and that I was only joking (kind of). Kelly’s cell phone rang again as we were walking into the apartment building. I gave the doorman a smile, feeling like royalty, and headed towards the back of the lobby and the elevators. Kelly was talking quietly into the phone when the elevator doors opened. We waited while three people exited, one of whom was my favourite nosy neighbour, Miss Constance Everwood from the 20th floor. I motioned to Kelly to wait for a minute and stepped up to say hello.

“Miss Everwood,” I said, “Good afternoon.”

She stopped and placed both hands on her cane and peered up at me.

“Miss Monahan. How nice to see you,” she said.

“Likewise,” I said. We walked, or rather shuffled, over to the side of the elevator lobby for a little chat. Miss Everwood was dressed in a beautiful off-white, cashmere coat, sensible chocolate brown walking shoes, and a jaunty hat right out of the thirties. It even had a little feather on the side. The whole outfit looked a little warm for the temperature outside, but some older folks are apparently cold all the time. She had a mesh shopping bag hanging from the same arm as her purse.

“Off to do some shopping?” I inquired.

“Yes. I’m just picking up a few Friday night treats. Thought I’d rent a video, get a bag of popcorn and maybe a chocolate bar. Seen any good movies lately?” she asked me.

I was a little taken aback. Her Friday night sounded like one of mine, not what you would expect of an eighty-year old woman.

“Depends,” I told her. “What type of movies do you like? Chick flicks? Action?”

“I love movies with lots of sex and gratuitous violence,” she said. With a straight face.

“Really?”

She slapped me on the arm. “No, I was just joshing with you. I do like movies with some action.”

“Then watch Pearl Harbour. It’s really good.”

“No, I don’t think so. Thanks anyway, but when you’ve lived through the horror of something like that, you don’t necessarily want to see it on the big screen.”

I imagine she had a point.

“Not to worry,” she told me. “Part of the fun is browsing at the video store and watching people’s reaction when I ask where the porno flicks are.” She laughed at this and so did I. Our Miss Everwood was quite a joker.

“So,” I nudged her. “Any action at the apartment of my co-worker?”

She shook her head. “Nope. Although I did get a few hours of sleep last night so I can’t guarantee there wasn’t some coming and going. But I doubt it. Nobody’s allowed in or out of that place after eight at night. I think I told you that didn’t I?”

“Yes. Yes you did Miss Everwood. Thanks for the information. Enjoy your movie and your Friday evening.” She gave me a little wave and shuffled off.

Kelly was standing in the same spot, still talking on the phone. He finally hung up as I was putting my key in the apartment door.

“My guy’s on the ground in Flagstaff,” Kelly said. “If you’ve got a minute, I can come in and fill you in.”

“Absolutely,” I told him. “Gimme a minute to change into my jeans. Help yourself to anything you want in the kitchen.”

Kelly was sitting at the breakfast bar and Jay was serving coffee when I joined them in the kitchen. As soon as I climbed up on my barstool, Jay served me a hot, black coffee.

“Thank you,” I told him and then turned to Kelly, who was sitting beside me. “So, give us a report.”

“Okay. Jerry Rigley, my guy, has been in Flagstaff for about two hours now. He headed straight for the hospital because he wanted to see if he could get any information from them before the administration types close up shop for the weekend. The hospital confirmed that both Miss Scott and Mr. Tucker were employed at the hospital at the same time. That’s about all they would share. Jerry did manage to buy the secretary in the personnel department a coffee and she was so grateful she gave him the home addresses they had on file for both Scott and Tucker. Checking out both of those addresses are next on his list of things to do. Hopefully, he’ll find someone who can recollect something about the two them.”

Kelly sipped his coffee and I had a hunch he had more news so I sipped my coffee too, and waited. Jay was leaning against the opposite counter, with his arms folded across his chest.

A couple of silent moments passed and I finally broke it. “So, anything else to report Kelly?”

“Well, there is some news a little closer to home,” he offered. “Apparently Mr. Ben Tucker has been seeing a nephrologist here in New York.”

“Excuse my ignorance, but what’s a nephrologist?” Jay asked.

“A kidney specialist,” I told him. “I learned that the other day when I was doing all my reading of the Global Devices files and our PISTON project.”

“Well that’s interesting,” I said to Kelly. “What are they treating him for? Is it an infection?”

“No, I’d say it’s a little more serious than that. It seems our Ben Tucker, or Donald MacLean, is on dialysis. Three times a week.”

“That would explain why he was nowhere to be found when I went looking for him the other day. Can people on dialysis hold full time jobs?” I wondered out loud. “How long does dialysis take?” I wasn’t sure who I was asking these questions of, but it was definitely an interesting subject. And, it seemed that Kelly had the answers.

“Dialysis is different for each person. Each session can take anywhere from an hour to overnight. Lots of people keep their jobs while on dialysis. In Tucker’s case, the dialysis appointments last three hours each time.”

It suddenly struck me that at every turn we were running into kidneys. Real ones or artificial ones. I had heard more and learned more about kidneys in the last two weeks than I really cared to know. I mused about that for a while before Kelly interrupted my thoughts.

“Mr. Tucker is in dire straights though,” Kelly told us. “He has kidney damage because of his paraplegia. He’s losing his kidney function and is close to renal failure.” Kelly reached inside his jacket and pulled out his little notebook. He flipped to a page near the middle and read from it. “Apparently he has neurogenic lower urinary tract dysfunction.” He looked up at me. “He needs a kidney transplant. Soon.”

“That’s not all he needs,” I said. “A kidney transplant. And a job. His ass is fired for lying on his job application.” I felt only a wee bit of satisfaction when I said that out loud. It would have been better if I could have said it to his face.

Although it seemed like a lifetime ago, it was just yesterday that I had confronted Ben in my office about the Global Devices contract. He had denied any knowledge of what was going on. If asked, I wondered how well he would be able to deny knowing Nat Scott before working at Phoenix. The man was a convicted sexual offender, which in all likelihood put him in the category of psychopath. I think that’s the right term to describe people convicted of sex crimes. Just to make sure I wandered into the bedroom and grabbed the dictionary off the shelf. Psychopath: a person affected with antisocial personality disorder. Well, one could argue that sexual offenders fit into the category antisocial. The internet gave me more insight into antisocial personality disorder. Psychopaths use charm, manipulation, intimidation, sex and violence to control others and satisfy their needs. They have no conscience or empathy. Psychopaths are pathological liars, have grandiose self-images and use glibness and superficial charm to get what they want. I felt like ice water had been poured over me and I shuddered.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph. What had I gotten into this time?

chapter forty-seven

Carrie and I spent at least an hour on the phone going over a list of things I had missed that day at the office. There were a dozen phone calls to return, none of which couldn’t be put off until Monday. At least that’s what I thought as she went down the list of calls.

Russ Freeson had asked that we meet as soon as possible to go over updated financial statements. He and the auditors had apparently re-worked all the numbers after he got the news about Global. The quarterly financial statements that we had filed about two weeks ago with the Securities Commissions would have to be restated and refiled. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Not good. More fucking damage control and I wasn’t confident that we would be lucky enough to get this done with little fanfare or scrutiny. So far there had been no coverage of the release we had issued on the cancellation of the Global Devices contracts. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Sandra Melnick, our VP Operations who had agreed to take over R and D, had called. She had spent the day with the team and wanted to report back to me. Call her on Monday.

Mark Hall, our whining VP of Sales who had made such an indelible impression on us yesterday, had called. Hoped I didn’t mind, but he was going to take some time, take a few days off, maybe head over to Bermuda with his wife. Get away from it all.

“Was he kidding?” I asked Carrie.

“No Kate, he wasn’t.”

“Remind me to deal with that on Monday,” I instructed her. Mental note to self to fire that whining wimp. Unbelievable how a good crisis brings out the finest in some people.

“Get Russ Freeson in to see me first thing on Monday. Ask him if there are copies of the financial statements that he could fax to the apartment now. Do you have the fax number here?” She did and she would call Mr. Freeson right away.

Sara Williston from the bank had called. Twice.

“Did she say what it was about?”

“No, but the second time she called she sounded a little disappointed that you weren’t here.”

My watch said it was 4:30. By some standards, that would be way past quitting time for some bankers. Not Sara though. She answered on the second ring.

“Sara, it’s Kate Monahan. My office said you called today.”

“Hi. Thanks for calling back. I hope I didn’t get you at a bad time.”

“No, I’m at home, just finishing up for the day. What’s up?”

“I’m not sure,” she started tentatively. “Do you know if Tom was acquainted with a Dr. Jordan Francis?”

“Yes he was. Why?”

“Well, one of our branches on the Upper West Side called me today. Very strange.” She paused.

“And?”

“They were doing a routine audit at the bank, and one of the auditors was checking that all the safety deposit boxes had been paid for and she recognized a name on the list of box holders.”

“Whose? Dr. Francis’?”

“Yes, but she recognized the other name from recent news reports. Tom Connaught. He’s a co-owner of the box. The auditor looked up Tom in the bank records and saw that he was a customer at my branch. And called.”

We both paused for a minute.

“I want into that safety deposit box,” I told her.

“You can’t Kate. Tom was only a co-owner. We’d need Dr. Francis’ permission.”

“Well, that’s not likely in the near future. He hasn’t been heard from in almost a month.”

“Is there some way to contact him?” Sara asked.

“Not that I know of. He hasn’t been seen at his home or his office for over a month.”

“Are NYPD looking for him?”

I snorted at this. “They didn’t seem too interested today when I tried to talk to them about it. Dr. Francis was a client of our company and from talking to people at his place of work it seems he resigned his job and said he was moving away. That doesn’t sound like a missing person to most people. It sounds like someone who doesn’t want to be contacted.”

“Well, I’m sorry but until Dr. Francis turns up, we can’t access the box. I didn’t mean to upset you with this news Kate, I just thought you’d want to know.”

“Yeah, thanks Sara. I’m not upset. Just another dead end in a day of dead ends. Not very encouraging but interesting.”

So what the hell could be in that safety deposit box? What were Tommy and the impossible to find Dr. Francis up to?

It was Friday night, and I was glad to see the end of the work week. If I had been at my apartment in Toronto I would be doing some housework, some laundry, ordering a pizza for delivery, and hunkering down with a good Harlequin romance novel. A normal, boring, Friday evening. But nothing that had happened over the last couple of weeks resembled normal, and I longed for it. The traffic below on Fifth Avenue was heavy, and the fumes from the cabs and buses, and Lincoln Town Cars wafted up to where I was sitting on the balcony with my Diet Coke. My feet were up on a cushioned ottoman and my drink was sitting on a glass-topped table beside me. You could fit one small kitchen chair on my balcony in Toronto so I was feeling pretty special sitting in this very comfortable outdoor chair, enjoying the exhaust filled air. The smoke from my cigarette just added to the whole ambience. Jay would be back soon with our pizza and I had a good book to get into. I might even take a long bath and get into bed really early.

As things turned out, it would be a long time before I felt this relaxed again.

chapter forty-eight

It was a good thing that I fell asleep so early the night before. We had a seven a.m. appointment with Frank Sanchez so I didn’t whine too much when Jay had me up and at ‘em at six. Jay had woken me the night before from a deliciously cozy couch in the living room where I had fallen asleep reading restated financial statements. Before I dozed off I remember thinking that I had found the cure for insomnia - financial statements - and for especially bad cases I would recommend reading the notes to the financial statements. Honest to God, did people actually read that babble?

Manhattan was beautifully quiet early on a Saturday morning and Lou was on hand to drive us to Frank’s place.

I settled into the back seat of the car and thought about how quickly I was getting used to being driven around. “Lou, there is no way you are working seven days a week,” I told him. “I don’t care if you’re driving the President of the United States.”

“It’s okay, ma’am,” he assured me as we pulled away from our building, heading south on Fifth Avenue. “I’m off at noon today and Mr. Northland has arranged for one of our other drivers to be available.”

Traffic was light this early in the morning and we made good time driving to Soho. Lou got lucky with the lights and I counted twenty consecutive blocks before we hit a red. As we drove, Jay and I discussed our weekend plans. Although I had absolutely zero desire to go to the office, I knew I had to. One of the reasons that presidents and chief executive officers were in the office seven days a week was because of the endless stream of paper, documents to be reviewed, requests to be turned down, opinions to be given, advice to be doled out, phone calls to be returned, emails to be answered, studies to be studied, research to verify, and proposals to be vetted. I wasn’t complaining - well maybe a little bit - but my problem wasn’t just the amount of work, it was the continual learning curve. Some of the research papers that crossed my desk were absolutely mind boggling. The fact that Tommy had degrees in biology, engineering, and software design probably made it a little easier for him to understand the mounds of paper. Yours truly had a solid high school education and two years of community college where I’d trained as a paralegal. None of my education had prepared me for the highly technical, financial, and scientific issues that crossed my desk on a daily basis. I was learning though how to fake it well.

Frank’s lesson was pretty much a repeat of the day before. “We need you to practice what we went over yesterday,” he told us. “Repetition and more repetition will make it second nature, so we need to train not just your body but your brain too.”

Knife and gun disarms, how to get out of choke holds, what to do when someone grabs you from behind. We practiced, and then practiced some more. And then just to be sure, we practiced one more time. Jay would attack me and then I would reciprocate. How to handle the situations was almost becoming second nature to me and as Jay and I went through the motions I allowed my mind to zone out and my body to take over. The hour flew by and when Frank suggested we take a few minutes to practice our jabs and low line kicks, I was all for it. I do believe I actually got a second wind and wasn’t half as exhausted as I was the day before. Could I actually be getting in shape?

The three of us stood around chugging from bottles of water when we finally finished up about an hour and a half later.

“So Kate, what do you think about all this training?” Frank asked me. “Do you feel like you’re getting the hang of it?”

I mopped the sweat from my face before answering. “I think I’m getting it. I’m starting to understand it better. Today was good though because I was able to react to Jay’s attacks without too much thinking. I’m actually liking it and enjoying the physical side of it. Especially the punching and kicking.”

“Good to hear. But remember, there’s no substitute for awareness. Keep your mind sharp and always be aware of your situation. Don’t let your guard down. Don’t get into stupid situations.” Jay nodded his head in agreement with Frank.

“Understood Frank,” I assured him.

I was at my desk by ten o’clock. I had a quick shower at home after our workout with Frank where I changed into presentable jeans, T-shirt and running shoes. If I had to work, I was going to be comfortable.

The office was expectedly quiet - it was after all a Saturday morning in the summer. When I had signed in with the security guard in the lobby of the office tower, I noticed that there were only a few signatures of Phoenix staff on the list. Not that I recognized any of them. I was only a couple of weeks into the job and most of the employees were still strangers to me.

The mound of papers in my in-basket made me groan and I decided to make some coffee before tackling the pile. The hallways were dark, with the only light coming through glass panels built into the walls next to the doors of offices that had windows to the outside. There was an eerie greenish glow coming from one open doorway and I smiled when I realized it was coming from the photocopier. The coffee room was pitch black but I found the light switch right where it should have been. The door to the coffee room closed behind me quietly.

There were two large coffee machines on the long counter. One which made a whole pot of coffee at a time and the other which dispensed caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee by the cup. I fetched a large china mug from the cupboard and placed it under the spout on the one-cup machine, pushed the button for caffeinated, and watched in fascination through the clear glass front of the machine as it measured up a goodly amount of coffee beans, ground them, placed the coffee grounds in a funny looking gizmo, shot a large amount of boiling water through it which drained into my cup, and then disposed of the used coffee grounds into another container. Very cool.

Back at my desk I worked through my in-basket, dealing with each item as best I could. The things I couldn’t manage without some advice were put into a separate pile. Mundane crap was put into another pile for Carrie to deal with.

Sandra Melnick had left three technical proposals, each in its own file folder, and all three held together with a large rubber band. A large, yellow Post-it note was stuck on the top with a handwritten note from Sandra. She thought I might want to be in the loop on what was going on in the R and D group, and these three proposals were the largest projects for which we were preparing bids. Each file had a template form stapled on the inside cover of the file folder with some basic information. At the bottom of each form there was a section for financial information. Each of these proposals was worth over $10 million, if we were to be the successful bidder. Successful would be nice, I thought, and a couple of these projects could help with the dent in our financials that the loss of the Global Devices work had caused.

The next couple of hours were spent reading and devouring the contents of these three files. I made copious notes to myself and stuck dozens of little, yellow Post-it notes in the margins of the documents highlighting areas where I had questions. Each file contained a bundle of spreadsheets, which were created by our internal financial staff, setting out what we estimated it would cost the company to carry out the work. Some of the spreadsheets had so many columns and rows I could barely read them.

During the time I’d been at the office, Jay had called me twice and Kelly Northland had called me once. Jay was not happy that I was going to the office and I had refused to let him come with me. He tried, unsuccessfully, to talk me out of it. The two phone calls from him were his way of checking up on me.

“I don’t understand why you couldn’t just bring the work home with you,” he’d said the first time he’d called.

Kelly pretty much echoed what Jay had said and told me that he was on his way to the office, he’d see me shortly. Jay must have called him and told on me. I wondered if he was going to call my mom too.

“Kelly, I’m fine. The place is quiet. I’m getting some work done.” I was talking to a dead phone.

I felt comfortable at the office, and Jay and Kelly were probably over-reacting. To what I wasn’t sure. They both were being over-protective, which I reluctantly acknowledged and appreciated, but, in my typical, hard headed fashion, I ignored.

When I finished with the three proposals, I swiveled in my chair to the computer and fired it up. I would finish up by going through my emails and seeing if there was anything urgent. Then, home, and a leisurely afternoon with Jay. Maybe I could convince him to go with me to one of the art museums or for a walk in Central Park. Maybe we could visit the zoo which was right across the street from the apartment and which I was dying to visit.

Microsoft Outlook took a while to boot up and by the time it was running I knew why it had taken so long. My in-basket had over two hundred unread messages. For gawd’s sake, I thought, I was out of the office for one day. I either had to get a Blackberry so I could stay on top of the emails or give Carrie access so she could deal with them.

The message on the top of the list was the most recently received one so I scrolled down several screens to get to the first unread message, so I could go through them in order. The first eighteen messages were spam and by the time I had opened and deleted the eighteenth I was disgusted. Disgusted with the content of the spam messages and disgusted that there were people out there who spent their days sending shit like this. The next dozen messages were legitimate business emails, which I read. They could be dealt with on Monday so I left them where they were in the in-basket. Anxious to finish up, I started scanning the sender’s name and subject line to see if there was anything that needed my attention that couldn’t wait until Monday. I scanned and scrolled, scanned and scrolled. Dozens of the emails were internal, from the Vice Presidents, or bulletins to the employees, some of them automatically generated, like the financial update which was issued every forty-eight hours to the executive team. I scrolled over those and dozens more spam.

My finger froze on the mouse when I caught the subject line of an email I thought at first glance was spam. It read You Don’t Control It All Bitch. This was the first spam message I had seen with a word like bitch in it. I clicked on the message, purely out of curiosity, and quickly wished I had ignored it.

chapter forty-nine

It turns out that the subject line was only mildly offensive. The text of the message turned my stomach.

“You do not control the life of others, you do not control the universe. You do not control who lives and dies. The one who sat where you do today thought they were in control. You are a tiny microcosm who has no worth, no meaning, no value to this world. Like the one before you, you will cease to exist in the macrocosm. Snuffed out, extinct and no longer believing that you are in control. Bitch. Goodbye.”

My breathing was shallow and my face felt flushed. I quickly pushed my chair back, separating myself from the computer. The message remained on the screen and I stared at it from a distance. The one who sat where you do today… Did the message mean Tommy? I quickly lit a cigarette and paced in front of the windows. Who had sent that email? The sender’s email address was gobbledy-gook: ie78amaielr@nyu.edu and the message had been sent in the middle of the night.

The email was threatening and admittedly scared the crap out of me. I closed the offending message and scrolled carefully through the rest of my emails to see if there were any similar messages. Seeing none, I clicked on the large X in the top, right-hand corner of my screen, shutting down Outlook. Out of sight, out of mind, I thought.

The stalker smiled and admired the reflection in the computer screen. The calm visage reflecting back made the stalker feel powerful. The calm was not faked but as a result of biofeedback, which was a learned technique, easy for someone of the stalker’s power to master. The stalker was finally in control of breathing and blood pressure. The bitch had just read the email. Untraceable email. Time to turn up the heat.

The scream caught in my throat and I couldn’t get it out because I swear to God that was where my heart was. With my heart pounding at about three hundred beats a minute, I closed my eyes and took a couple of quick breaths.

“Jesus,” I breathed out slowly. “You scared me.”

Kelly was less than eighteen inches in front of me and he stood stock still in the exact position he was in when I had opened my office door. As soon as I closed down my computer I had phoned the driver and gathered up my things. I was spooked by the email and wanted to get out of the office.

“I was just about to knock,” he explained. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I was just leaving.”

“You look upset,” he said. “What happened?”

“Besides you scaring the bejeezus out of me?” I shot back.

“Yeah, besides that.”

“Just an email I got. It kind of spooked me.”

Kelly pushed past me into my office and headed over towards my computer. “Show me.”

While I booted up the computer, Kelly gave me another gentle lecture about not venturing out on my own. I was spooked enough by the eerie email that I paid attention.

“Until this case is settled, you can’t afford to be alone outside of your apartment.”

“But I can’t ask you to spend your time following me around.”

“I don’t plan on it. That’s why we’ve arranged for a bodyguard. Lou is officially on holidays for a few days. We’ll have a professional driver and guard with you at all times.”

“Isn’t that a bit much?” I ventured. Kelly didn’t respond so I imagine my question was rhetorical in his mind.

The computer screen asked for my log-in and password so I typed them in and waited while the computer continued. At long last the computer stopped its grinding and calmly waited for me to tell it what to do so I clicked on the email icon and my in-box popped right up. I scrolled down until I got to the email, where it sat amongst the hundreds of others.

I offered Kelly my chair and pointed at the message, leaving it unopened so he could see the subject line. He sat down, pulled his notebook out of his jacket pocket and made a few notes as he peered at the computer screen. He finally reached for the mouse and clicked on the message, opening it.

“Where’s your printer?” he asked and clicked on the little printer icon at the top of the page.

“At Carrie’s desk,” I told him and headed to the outer office to pick up the printed copy. When I came back in the office he was on the phone, talking quietly. I sat in one of the guest chairs in front of my desk and waited for him. Again, my thoughts took me to that angry place where I cursed Tommy. Which on reflection was a waste of time. Cursing Tommy, poor Tom, wasn’t getting me any closer to finding out who and what caused this shit storm.

Kelly and I didn’t talk on our elevator ride to the lobby and I could literally feel heat emanating from him. The car was waiting by the curb outside the building but before we crossed the sidewalk to it, I grabbed Kelly’s arm.

“Why are you so pissed off?” There was no mistaking that the heat coming from him was anger.

“I’m not pis… angry,” he told me. I noted that like most old-style military guys, he didn’t use ‘foul’ words in front of the opposite sex.

“Well, you could have fooled me.”

“Let’s get you home and settled,” he said in his calm southern drawl, and tried to take me by the arm and lead me to the car. I shook off his hand.

“Home? And settled? What do you think I am? An invalid? Or a doddering old fool? Don’t you patronize me!” Now the heat was coming off of me.

Kelly stood quietly in front of me, while I ranted, with his hands clasped in front of him. He didn’t say anything. Passive aggressive son-of-a-bitch! I stormed over to the car and grabbed the handle on the back door. Which only caused me to break a fingernail because the back door was locked. So I kicked the bottom of the door, just like a spoiled fourteen year old brat. Embarrassed now by my behaviour, I took a deep breath and turned around to find Kelly standing close by.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “But I can’t stand being patronized and treated like a child,” I told him. To give him credit, he’d only really known me for a few days, so it was likely he hadn’t caught on to Kate’s quirks and temperament.

“Listen,” he said. “I’m sorry if that came across as patronizing. It wasn’t meant to be. But I’m worried about your safety. And that email has me as jumpy as spit on a hot skillet.” That made me smile a little. “I’m worried about your safety and worried about the investigation. That’s why I’m handing you over to a team of guards. They’ll be with you twenty-four seven.” That didn’t make me smile.

“Day and night? Is that really necessary?”

“Do you want me on the case?”

I nodded.

“Then ma’am, we do it my way.”

With that, he opened the back door of the sedan, and we both slid in the back seat. I was surprised to see two guys up front, neither of whom was Lou.

“Lou’s taking a few days off,” Kelly reminded me. “Meet some of the members of your new team.”

From behind they looked like scary statues. Both had wide, muscular shoulders, and their hair was buzzed short, military style. Both had earphones jammed into their right ears with a curly cord snaking down the back of their neck and disappearing out of sight. Both were wearing aviator-style sunglasses and when they turned around in their seats to meet me, I could see my reflection in their sunglasses.

I smiled at them even though their presence made me nervous. “You guys look like commandos,” I joked. Neither of them smiled at that and the one in the passenger seat said, “Pleased to meet you ma’am.” The one in the driver’s seat put the car in gear and we drove off.

chapter fifty

Kelly and Jay had their heads together at the dining room table, planning out exactly what they needed to do to put a trace on the email.

“Hey, we’re a high tech company. I know we’ve got a few geeks on the payroll. Why don’t we use one of them to help us figure this out?” I offered.

“That’s absolutely true, ma’am, but I have a little-bitty problem with that plan. I’m not sure who we can trust at this point.”

“Well,” Jay said. “We’re going to have to pick one person to trust, because you’ll need to get into the email system at Phoenix and I’m guessing that the only way to do that would be with a Phoenix employee.”

I left them to figure it all out and wandered into the kitchen to make some lunch and some coffee. The Navy Seal sitting at the round table in the kitchen startled me. I had forgotten about him.

“Making yourself at home?” He sat as still as a stone statue and nodded his head, mutely. I pulled out a chair and sat across the table from him.

“Do you do this often?” I asked him.

“Often enough, ma’am.”

Ah, definitely military. Being called ma’am makes me feel as old as Methuselah.

“Ex-military?” I asked rhetorically. Anything to get a conversation going. I figured him to be in his mid-thirties, but with his hair cut so short, he looked about fifteen.

“Yes ma’am. Retired last year.”

I laughed and he looked a little confused.

“Sorry. I wasn’t laughing at you,” I said by way of explanation. “It just sounds so funny, coming from someone as young as you to be saying you’re retired.”

He nodded. “I guess. Had twenty years in. Thought I’d get out while the gettin’ was good.” And then he smiled, and that made him a little more human.

“What’s your first name again?”

“Chris.”

“Well, Chris, welcome to my home. Make yourself comfortable. Help yourself to anything you need. I mean it.” I leaned over the table and pointed at the earplug in his ear. “Were you a Navy Seal?”

“No ma’am. Marine Corps. Military police. I worked with Mr. Northland for years.”

“Can I interest you in some coffee?”

“Maybe in a bit, ma’am. I was waiting for Mr. Northland so we can do a perimeter check.”

Jesus, this was sounding like being back home with my dad.

While Chris and Kelly secured the perimeter, whatever the hell that meant because there were only three entrances to the apartment - not counting the balcony - and seriously that was fourteen floors up - Jay and I ate some lunch at the counter in the kitchen. That’s when he told me.

“I have to go to Toronto. I’ll be gone a couple of days. I know it’s not a good time, but I couldn’t very well argue with them.”

True. Jay was in a job that he was thankful to have. After the mess with our previous employer when Jay was fired, he was grateful for his job and he worked hard at it. There was little I could do or say except let him know it was okay.

“It’s okay. Really. And don’t worry about what’s going on here. Apparently I now have trained commandos at my beck and call, watching over me. When are you leaving?”

His flight was in the morning. We decided to spend the rest of the day together, not talking or thinking about Phoenix Technologies or Tommy, or anything related to either of them. It was easier said than done, though, especially with Chris trailing two feet behind us at the Wildlife Centre and the Central Park Zoo. The zoo was quaint and overcrowded with lots of moms and dads and screaming, squealing little kids.

“What do you suppose the protocol is,” I asked Jay, “if we stop for an ice cream? Do we offer Chris one? Are we supposed to ignore him, pretend he’s not there?”

Jay wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me close to him, in an uncharacteristic public embrace. “Ignore him, pay attention to me,” he whispered into my ear. Which was easier said than done. Especially with Chris the bodyguard hovering nearby and a family of four staring at us.

Jay’s flight was early the next morning and I didn’t hear him leave for the airport. It took me a few seconds to remember that I was by myself in the large, king size bed and when I realized that Jay was gone, I moved over to his side of the bed and wrapped the duvet around me. I hugged his pillow and breathed in his scent. Being with Jay and living with him felt right - as corny as that sounded - and I tried to recall if I had ever felt so content. We had only shared this apartment for a week but we were already acting like a couple who had been together forever. It was strange being alone in the apartment but I relished the thought. As much as I wanted - and needed - to share my life and share my living space with Jay, being alone at times and having my space was important too. Living alone for most of my adult life had made me self-sufficient and self-reliant. And just because I had lived alone didn’t mean I was a lonely person.

The digital clock on the beside table told me it was only 7:19. I kicked off the duvet and stretched and started making a mental list of things I would do today. There was laundry to be done. Some personal phone calls to make. I owed my parents a call and I hadn’t spoken with my brother in over a week. I thought about going out and exploring the neighbourhood. Scout out the local grocery stores. See if I could find a newsstand that sold The Toronto Star, my favourite Sunday newspaper. I wiggled my toes and smiled in anticipation of the perfect day ahead of me.

The smile didn’t last long though when the phone rang and I heard Kelly’s drawl. As usual, I was avoiding the unpleasant and had not even thought about Phoenix in the five minutes I had been awake.

“Morning, ma’am.”

“Kelly. How are you today?” The last thing I wanted to do today was deal with company shit. I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed.

“Not so good. I’d like to give you a briefing. We’ve had some developments over night and I need to bring you up to speed.”

Kelly’s developments were no doubt bad news.

“Where are you?”

“Outside your building.”

“I’ll buzz you up and you can make the coffee while I take a shower.”

“Yes ma’am.”

I wanted to crawl back under the duvet but instead I threw on some sweats and a T-shirt and waited at the front door for my daily dose of crap to be delivered.

Kelly placed a steaming mug of coffee in front of me when I climbed up on the stool at the kitchen bar. He had spent plenty of time in the apartment the last forty-eight hours and knew his way around the kitchen. It felt familiar, sitting at the bar with a coffee but Kelly was standing where Jay usually did - on the other side.

“Help yourself to some food, if you like,” I offered.

Kelly shook his head. “Not hungry.”

I agreed. I’d lost my appetite when the phone rang twenty minutes ago.

“So, Staff Sergeant,” I gently teased him. He looked so damn serious all the time. “What’s going on?”

“Well, for starters, we’ve lost touch with our guy on the ground in Flagstaff.”

“What’s his name? Jerry?”

“Right. Jerry Rigley. We haven’t heard from him since Friday night.”

Fuck.

“He was supposed to be checking out those addresses for Natalie and Ben. What happened with that? Is he the type of guy to stop calling in?”

“No,” Kelly said. “He’s usually very reliable. Most of my guys are.” Kelly’s face was grim - more so than usual.

“You said ‘my guys’, Kelly. Is he one of our employees? Should I be thinking the worst?”

“No,” Kelly said. He reached his hand across the counter, as if to touch me, but he pulled it back quickly. “No, he’s not an employee. He’s just one of my guys.” Kelly sipped at his coffee.

“How so?”

“One of the guys in my network. There’re dozens of us. We all knew each other in the military, in one capacity or the other. We’re all retired now and a lot of the guys freelance. They do contract security work. I needed someone to investigate in Flagstaff, so I called up one of my guys.”

“My escort yesterday, Chris, and the gentleman driving? Your guys?”

Kelly nodded. “Of course. It’s all about trust. When you serve in the military and see some action, you trust the guys who have your back. We’ve all stayed in touch and we all help each other out, from time to time.”

“So, not hearing from Jerry is unlike him?”

“Very.” Kelly put his empty coffee mug in the dishwasher. What a good man.

“Frankly, it’s totally unlike him. He did call me later Friday afternoon and let me know that he was still working on tracking down some individuals who might have known those two out in Flagstaff. That was the last contact. He’s not answering his cell phone. We checked all the motels and hotels and he hasn’t registered at one of those.”

“Does he have family that he might have called?”

“Just his mom and dad, and when I spoke with them last night, they said they haven’t heard from him in while.” Kelly put both hands on the counter top and leaned forward a bit. “That’s just one of the things we needed to talk about,” he informed me.

“There’s more?” I shook my head. “Jesus Christ, Kelly, what the hell is going on?” I slid off the stool and rummaged through my purse that was sitting on the counter. “That poor man’s parents must be worried sick. He’s out doing work for us and he disappears and you’re standing here, all business, not worried at all.” I found my pack of cigarettes and greedily lit one. “Just standing there, listing off the bad news, as if you’re reading a newscast.” That was nasty, and I knew it as soon as I said it. “Sorry,” I quickly offered. I had to stop acting like a spoiled child.

“Fine,” he said in a low voice. “But please keep in mind that one of the reasons I’m good at what I do is I try to keep it all business. But don’t think for one minute that this is just business for me. I’m a professional but I care about the people I work with. Jerry’s a friend. Yeah, I’m worried. But Jerry’s a big boy. He’s been known to be able to look after himself. Do you see me screaming and crying and making a huge fuss about it? No. ‘Cause I’m all business. And I’ll find him.”

I felt chagrined and looked down at my feet. When was I going to learn to keep my trap shut?

“I’m sorry,” I told him again. “I didn’t mean to imply that you didn’t care.” He nodded in acknowledgement of my lame apology.

“What’re we doing to try and find him?”

“Two guys drove up from Phoenix yesterday afternoon. They haven’t found him yet. I’m expecting to hear from them this morning.”

This couldn’t be good. Someone reliable who hadn’t checked-in and hadn’t been heard from in over twenty-four hours. “Did we check the hospitals? Call the local police? Maybe he was in an accident or had a heart attack or something.”

Kelly’s head nodded as I talked. “Yeah. We’ve checked with local authorities. No one matching his description has turned up.”

“What’s the other bad news?” I reluctantly asked.

“There’s no trace of Natalie Scott or Ben Tucker.”

That sounded like good news to me, and I said so. Kelly didn’t agree with me.

“No, it’s not good news. We’d rather know where they are. In fact, I want to know where they are because it’s time they answered a few questions. We spent most of yesterday afternoon and evening trying to track them down. Neither of them are answering at their apartments.”

Well, call me kooky, but if I didn’t want to be found, the last thing I’d do is answer the door. Kelly and his guys were not the police so it wasn’t as if they were going to force the door open.

“Did you call at Nat’s apartment before eight at night?” I told him what Miss Everwood had shared with me about no one being allowed in or out after eight.

“Yeah, we tried during the afternoon. The front desk here can’t remember the last time they saw her. Or her mother for that matter.”

chapter fifty-one

Kelly’s phone rang and I could tell by the look on his face that he was not receiving good news from whoever was on the other end. The apartment phone started ringing and I was reluctant to answer it, wanting to hear from Kelly as soon as he hung up. As it turned out, I should have ignored it. The caller identified herself as a business reporter from The Wall Street Journal. By the name of Portia Wellington. I wondered out loud how she got my phone number.

“From Tom Connaught. We used to talk often. I put two and two together and thought I’d try this number to see if you were at his apartment,” she explained.

“Well, you found me,” I said, making a mental note to change the phone number. “What can I do for you?” I probably sounded a little curt with her but reporters should be used to that.

“I’m calling about the press release your company issued on Thursday. About the loss of the Global Devices contracts.”

That crisis seemed like a lifetime ago but in reality the press release in question was probably less than seventy-two hours old. And what the hell was I going to tell a reporter? This was not something I wanted to deal with. Hell, it was something I didn’t know how to deal with. At the last company I worked for there were authorized company spokespersons who were up to speed on the issues and knew what and what not to say. As the CEO, I was likely an authorized spokesperson for the company, but having had no experience with reporters, I was a little wary about saying anything. But how do you put off a reporter from The Wall Street Journal who could knowingly do more damage to your company and your share price than if you admitted that Arthur Andersen were your auditors?

“Yes, what can I help you with?”

“I’m trying to understand why the contracts with Global Devices were cancelled.”

“Well,” I told her, “this happens in business. Contracts are terminated. The reasons remain between the parties. That’s about all I can say on the matter.”

“I suppose your lawyers have warned you not to speak about the reasons, in case of future litigation?” My silence was probably answer enough for her, so she pressed on. “Is there any connection between Tom Connaught’s death and the cancellation of the contracts?” Well, it’s certainly looking like it from my point of view, but I wasn’t going to say anything on that issue.

“Hardly,” I lied, in a slightly indignant tone. “Is there anything else?”

“Have the police got any leads at all on Tom’s murder? Do they have any idea what happened?” Miss Wellington was getting into the type of news that The Wall Street Journal never covered.

“You’d have to ask the police. I’m sure they have their theories. Is that all Miss Wellington?”

“I guess that’s all for now, Miss Monahan. Although I would love the opportunity to have an in-depth interview with you. About the company, your job, your background. I’m sure our readers would love to hear more about you.”

“Well, that’s certainly flattering, but I don’t think there’s much about me that’s newsworthy,” I said with a modicum of modesty. I just wanted to end this conversation.

“Oh come on,” she laughed. “Don’t sell yourself short. That picture of you on the front page of The Toronto Sun, climbing into the back of an ambulance. That picture alone must be worth a story.”

That fucking Toronto Sun photo was going to haunt me for a very long time. The cover photo she was talking about was of me climbing into the back of an ambulance after I was terrorized by that madman. The photo was payback for me refusing to let the paramedics put me on a stretcher. It was very unflattering and showed more of my ass than I cared to share with the world. And there wasn’t any story, any more. That was past history, and something I’d rather forget about. Although it wasn’t surprising that a reporter had gone digging. There was a lot of press coverage of the murders, suicide, and company failure that I was involved in several months ago. So I fake-laughed right back at her and we ended the call.

I wasn’t laughing though when I saw Kelly’s face. He was still talking on the phone, and jotting notes in his little notebook. His face was all business. “When we know anything at all,” he was saying into the phone, “we’ll call you. Count on it. Yeah. Bye.” He flipped the phone shut and tossed it on the counter top. “Shit,” he muttered under his breath.

“What? What’s going on?”

They had found Jerry’s car in a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Flagstaff. But no sign of Jerry. Kelly’s guys were knocking on doors. So far, nothing.

“The good news is it’s early in the morning out there and they’re likely to find lots of people at home. That was Jerry’s mom I was talking to. She’s waiting to hear from us. She’s a soldier’s mom and she’s spent lots of time over the years waiting to hear about her son.”

I hugged myself and thought about Jerry’s mom, and wondered why I felt so bad about someone I didn’t even know. The enormity of being responsible for so many people hit me. Our company employed hundreds of people, and those hundreds had relatives who cared for them. And then there were the men and women who were only peripherally involved in our company. Like Kelly’s “guys”. My head reeled. I actually felt a little faint. My insulated world that three weeks ago had included little ol’ me, Jay, my family, his family and a few acquaintances, had grown exponentially. How could I possibly care about people I didn’t even know? Hadn’t even met? Yet my heart was pounding, my breath was short, and deep inside me I knew that Tommy had cared for these people. Employees yes, but Tommy would have cared for them and their families like they were his own. I resolved to do the same.

“I can help. I can’t sit around and do nothing. I’ll go out of my mind.” Kelly and I were arguing, and I was losing.

“There’s too much that we don’t know at this stage. I can’t allow it.” I almost let him get away with it, but I was born argumentative.

“Allow it?”

He interrupted me before I went any further.

“Yes, allow it. You’ve put your trust in me. Stop being so pigheaded. You’re getting in the way. I know you’re the boss and I know you want to be in charge. But I have to insist.”

“Fine.” I gave in reluctantly.

“She’s all yours, Chris.” He smiled at Chris, my bodyguard, who had arrived about ten minutes ago. The silent behemoth just nodded his head and stood like a stone statue in the living room, his hands clasped in front of him.

Chris made sure the door was locked behind Kelly when he left and I wandered out to the balcony for a cigarette. The air was feeling muggy and sticky, and it reminded me of Toronto on a humid, July afternoon. There was no breeze and the smoke from my cigarette just hung in the air. The day loomed ahead of me. I was a virtual prisoner in my apartment with a bodyguard for company. I knew I had to keep busy or go out of my mind, worrying and wondering what Kelly was up to. He had told me there were several avenues he needed to explore but first he needed to go back to the 20th Precinct. See if he could enlist some assistance from New York’s finest in uncovering the whereabouts of Natalie Scott, Ben Tucker and Dr. Francis.

It took me all of three minutes to do a thorough job of feeding the fish in the magical aquarium built into the wall. I killed another fifteen minutes making the bed, throwing dirty clothes into the hamper, re-hanging the bath towels and emptying the dishwasher. The mundane tasks did nothing to slow down my thoughts and of course I just made myself more frustrated and pissed off. Locked inside my home. Unable to do anything to help.

But how could you help Kate, I asked myself. Always wanting to stick your nose in where it doesn’t belong, I chided myself. But it is my business, the voice inside my head argued. Miss Busybody, who can’t stand it when she’s not in control and isn’t being kept up to date on progress. I shook my head and instead of fighting with myself, I sat quietly in a dining room chair, and tried to be an adult about all of this. Worked at calming down my pea brain. Reasoned with myself. I rubbed the top of my right ear and reminded myself what happened the last time I just couldn’t help myself and got involved in a situation that was way over my head.

My brain had taken enough self-arguing and before I drove myself completely crazy, I decided to go for a walk. Chris the bodyguard wasn’t happy with me, but he did agree that he could protect me sufficiently if push came to shove, on the streets of Manhattan.

The air felt muggier at street level but it felt good to be outside. Standing under the canopy at the front of the apartment building, I looked right and then left, trying to decide which way to go. Across the street was Central Park which Jay and I had explored the day before. If I turned right, I would walk north. For no specific reason, I turned left and when I reached Central Park South, I crossed Fifth Avenue and walked across the southernmost part of the Park. The street vendors were out in full force, their makeshift stalls tucked into the shade of the trees up against the low stone wall which surrounded the Park. Nine horses with their buggies and drivers lined the street. The area teemed with tourists. Chris dogged my heels as I walked and I did my best to ignore him.

When I reached Central Park West, I crossed Columbus Circle and Broadway and kept walking west, down West 60th Street. The area was a mix of residential and businesses, populated with apartment and office buildings. I walked for blocks, randomly turning up different streets. I passed the Julliard School and the Metropolitan Opera House. Tenth Avenue appealed to me so I turned onto it and continued my walk. Within a couple of blocks, I could see ambulances turning into a large complex. A large, white sign with black lettering identified the complex as the Van Buren Health Centre. Underneath several clinics were identified, and at the very bottom, in smaller letters it read “Deliveries Accepted Only From West 79th St., Monday to Friday, 7 am to 5 pm ONLY”.

I pointed at the Deliveries Only part of the sign and asked Chris, “Where’s West 79th?” He pointed up the street. “The next block,” he said. I headed in that direction, knowing that my wanderings had not been random after all. Another large, white sign appeared with huge red letters reading “Deliveries” and under that in smaller black letters “Van Buren Health Centre”.

A paved road about five hundred feet long and two lanes wide went off to the left. There was no sidewalk but I turned in anyway and headed down the road to the back of the Health Centre.

“Ma’am,” Chris called out to me.

Without turning around I waved him on and said, “Come on. I just want to explore back here.”

I didn’t tell him this was where Tommy’s body had been found and that some sort of magnet was pulling me down the road. Grass lined the road and there were some trees planted on the right side. I could see a chain link fence behind the trees, running along the hospital’s property and disappearing in the distance. After walking a couple of minutes I came to the back of the hospital where there were six delivery bays, each with its own industrial size garage door. Large, cement dividers separated each delivery bay and I imagined that the trucks would back in to a bay and offload their cargo through the garage door. It being the weekend, the area was deserted, with only a white panel van parked off to the side.

I stood quietly and breathed in my surroundings, wondering where Tommy had been shot. Past the asphalt delivery area there was grass, some sad looking shrubs, and the chain link fence. Beyond the fence there were tall, brick buildings, most likely apartments. I turned slowly in a circle, taking it all in.

The back of the hospital building was solid brick with the delivery doors the only obvious way in. Above each of the large doors, yellow light bulbs encased in round wire cages protruded from the walls. West 79th Street seemed quite a distance away, down the long driveway.

Where did they find his body? I crossed a huge expanse of asphalt towards the fence, scanning the ground, picturing his lifeless corpse, lying unattended. Did he lie on the cold ground, alive, hoping for someone, anyone to help him? Did he lie on the cold ground feeling his life draining away? My breath caught in my throat and I sobbed out loud. When I reached the fence, I laced my fingers through the chain links and stared at the buildings on the other side. And thought about the sick son-of-a-bitch who had shot Tommy and left him here, on the asphalt. Did the killer stand over Tommy and watch him die?

Anger took the place of grief and I wanted to scream. I turned on my heel and started back towards the main street. Chris, who had been standing by the loading docks watching me, followed along.

chapter fifty-two

A familiar-looking Lincoln Town Car was idling at the end of the long roadway leading out of the hospital loading area. As we approached the car, the front passenger door opened and Kelly got out and waited for us. No words were spoken and I put up no fight when he opened the back door of the car. I slid across the seat and he joined me.

“Have you been following me?” I asked.

“No ma’am. Chris was watching out for you.”

“Then what are you doing here now?”

The car was still parked and I noticed that the driver and Chris were standing on the sidewalk, talking. Kelly turned sideways in his seat to face me and laid his left arm along the back of the leather seat.

“After I left you this morning, I had a call from Detective Shipley,” he started. This didn’t sound like it was going to be joyous news. “A body was found two days ago and they’ve just made a preliminary identification. Had been dead about a week which hampered their efforts to find out who it is. Shipley said the prelim ID says it’s Dr. Francis.”

I didn’t have anything to say to that and turned my head to the left and stared out the window. Traffic was light and there wasn’t much going on outside the car. Kelly let the silence hang between us.

Dr. Francis. I’d never met the man, never laid eyes on him. I knew of him for less than a week. So why did I feel so sad? So helpless and hopeless?

“Did she say how he died?” I asked.

Kelly shook his head. “No, they’re still doing the autopsy. But the body showed signs of mutilation.”

My stomach turned.

“What?” My voice was barely a whisper.

“Both kidneys had been removed.”

Oh. My. God.

“I need to go home. Now. Please.”

I sat at Tommy’s desk in the formal office space adjacent to the dining room. Besides a telephone, the only thing on the desk was a pad of white, blue-lined paper, on the top of which I had written TO DO. Each item on my to do list took up a line on the sheet and I was three-quarters of the way down the page.

On the ride home from the Van Buren Health Centre which took less than fifteen minutes, I quickly went from horrified and sickened about the news of the death of Dr. Francis, to my old Sergeant-Major mode. There were things that needed to be done, and done quickly, and correctly. For a brief moment during my horrified and sickened period, I envisioned myself going back to the apartment, packing my suitcase, and heading out to the airport to fly home to Toronto. But I didn’t need my mother’s voice in my head to tell me that there were too many people, employees and families of employees at Phoenix, who were depending on me. Well, not me, per se. They were depending on the company for their wages and well-being. If they actually knew who was at the helm, many would probably run screaming into the streets. Whether the employees and shareholders liked it or not, they were stuck with me, for the immediate future.

The first thing on my list that needed to be done was to talk to Cleve. Things were getting to a stage that the board of directors needed to be informed. They had been given a report a couple of days ago on the status of the Global Devices contracts and the course of action being taken by management with the SEC and the OSC. I needed advice from Cleve. On what, I wasn’t sure.

He sounded relaxed when he answered the phone. It was Sunday and I hated to call him at home, but being accessible to your clients twenty-four seven is one of the reasons these guys earn an hourly rate that is close to the GDP of Romania.

“Kate, I hope everything’s okay,” he said.

“Not really, Cleve. That’s why I’m calling.” I told him about the police finding the body of Dr. Francis.

“Oh. That poor man. Was it suicide?”

“Not likely,” I snorted. “Although we don’t know the cause of death officially, both of his kidneys had been removed.”

There was a very long pause from Cleve’s end of the phone. I finally had to say something.

“Cleve. Are you there?”

“Yeah.” Another long pause. I wasn’t about to interrupt one of the finest minds I knew so I waited. “Look, Kate, this has got to be related to Tommy’s murder. What are the police saying?”

“No idea, because I haven’t heard from them. I’m sure you remember the two detectives assigned to Tommy’s case. One of them is off sick and the other one is so overwhelmed with cases that I don’t know if she knows what day it is. She called Kelly Northland, our head of security, to tell him about the body. We went to see her on Friday after you and I met for lunch and we brought up the fact that Dr. Francis was missing. She at least paid attention to that fact because that’s how they were able to make a tentative ID on the body.”

There was so much more to tell him but I wasn’t even sure where to start. Like the fact that Nat Scott and Ben Tucker were nowhere to be found. Or the fact that Ben Tucker and Nat Scott had spent time together in Flagstaff. Or that Ben Tucker wasn’t Ben Tucker and he had served time in a state prison. For crimes I didn’t even want to think about. I needed to tell him about Kelly’s missing guy out in Flagstaff. And the little fact about the threatening email I had received. Altogether these facts, along with two murders, added up to one humongous mess.

Cleve interrupted my thoughts. “I’m going to make some calls Kate. And then I’m on the next plane down there.”

“We need to do some more firefighting with the board and the shareholders,” I added.

“Yep. That’s a given. Let me call you when I’ve got my flights arranged and we can figure out where to meet when I get there.”

“Fly private. I’ll arrange for the company plane to meet you at the Island Airport and bring you into Teterboro. It’s a lot faster.” Hell, we’d just lost about $50 million in revenues. I didn’t think it would seem excessive to spend another several thousand dollars to fire up the company jet.

With Cleve here in the City, I would be able to cross off ninety percent of the items on my to do list. Most of the items were things I had to do for the company. Things to protect our company.

Like its reputation.

As soon as the newshounds got wind of Dr. Francis’ death and put two and two together, the proverbial shit was going to hit the fan. There is nothing worse for a company than having its name bandied about in the newspaper for things out of the ordinary.

Ordinary would normally include reports on the financial condition of a company, remarks made at a shareholders meeting, a good news report on a new product. Out of the ordinary would include things like the murder of the CEO and founder of the company, the cancellation of millions of dollars worth of contracts with a major customer, the murder of a senior researcher employed by that customer, or convicted felons working as employees, under assumed names. Out of the ordinary would not be good for our share price. Speculation in the news always leads to a roller coaster ride for the shareholders.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Kelly was talking on his cell phone, and Chris the bodyguard was making coffee when I came into the kitchen. I stood by the door and watched them, and realized I was getting used to having these guys around all the time. Weird, because up until a while ago I considered myself a loner, treasuring my alone time. Admittedly I felt safe with the two of them here in my apartment.

Kelly’s voice was low and he was making notes in his spiral bound notebook. The conversation ended and he flipped his phone shut. He seemed so very tired when he looked up and saw me leaning against the doorframe.

I gave him a weary smile, letting him know we were in this together.

“News?” I asked.

“Nothing much,” he reported. “My geek was able to trace the source of the email you received. But we weren’t able to put a name or identity to it. Seems it was sent on a server at New York University, and it was an NYU email account. Opened just before the email was sent, and closed as soon as the email hit cyberspace. Seems you need to be a registered student at the University to be able to open an email account, but they aren’t willing to share any information with us. They have close to forty thousand students, so it would be like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack.”

I joined him at the breakfast counter and heaved myself up onto one of the stools. Chris wordlessly held up a mug, offering me coffee, and I nodded.

“Any news on our guy in Flagstaff?”

Kelly shook his head. “Nothing. It’s like he disappeared into thin air.”

chapter fifty-three

The stalker re-read the note and smiled in smug satisfaction. The bitch would not get in the way of finishing what was started. Started so long ago. The beginning of this had felt like the end, so long ago. But time was all the stalker had for so very, very long. Time which resulted in getting one’s perspective back. Now that the end was so clearly in sight, the stalker was not about to let anyone get in the way of the finish line. No one. Especially Tom Connaught’s bitch.

Cleve had a little surprise up his sleeve when he arrived at the apartment, shortly after dinner. My sidekicks and I had Chinese take-out, which on a good night would have been fabulous, but on this night, did little to settle my nervous stomach.

I was waiting at the apartment door for Cleve to get off the elevator and imagined getting lost in one of his bear hugs. Which would probably put me over the edge and the last thing I needed to be doing was bawling like a baby. So instead of offering myself up for a hug, I greeted him with my hands clasped in front of me.

“Good flight?”

“Yeah. That’s the way to travel between Toronto and New York. This time of day, everything would be backed up and most flights are probably late. Coming in on a private plane, having the U.S. Customs Agents meet you, and then jumping into a car right on the tarmac is almost heaven.”

Cleve settled into one of the wing back chairs and I curled up on one of the sofas in the living room.

“You need to be brought up to speed on everything else that’s been going on,” I started. “This is one major cluster fuck, with disaster written all over it.” Cleve gave me a distasteful look, and I remembered that he was not fond of my foul mouth. “Sorry.”

I launched into the long list of events that had happened in the last forty-eight hours. While I talked, Cleve sat quietly, not interrupting, but taking notes on a yellow legal pad which was balanced on his thigh. When I finished he glanced up at me from his note taking, then wrote a few more things before he put the pad and pen on the table beside the chair.

“Okay, I think I have everything,” he said. “Before I flew down today, I contacted some people, and I’ve arranged for us to meet with the Police Commissioner.”

“The who?”

“The Police Commissioner. The chief of police for the New York Police Department.”

“Yeah, I heard you the first time, Cleve. How did you arrange that? And why would he want to see us?”

“I called the Prime Minister’s office.” He stated this matter of factly.

“You called the Prime Minister’s office,” I repeated.

“Yes. And asked him if he had any connections here in New York.”

“You called the Prime Minister’s office, and he answered the phone?”

Cleve chuckled. “I can see you’re obviously easily impressed, Kate. No, I called his office, and his assistant connected me with the Prime Minister, who I believe was at his summer house in Meech Lake. You’ll remember that the Prime Minister used to practice law before he went into politics? He was a partner at our former law firm and we’ve known each for a long time. He told me that his only connection here in New York was with the former mayor, who he had met last year during the September 11th crisis.”

“Interesting,” I said. “I guess I forgot about that connection.” The Prime Minister had been a lawyer at the law firm where I first met Cleve, but at that time he was just another snotty, senior partner.

“So, he called the ex-mayor, who put me in touch with the Police Commissioner.” Cleve looked at his watch. “We have a meeting with him in an hour.”

This was welcome news. Maybe meeting with the Police Commissioner would kick-start some action on the part of NYPD.

“I’d like Kelly to come along,” I said.

Cleve was nodding. “Sure, no problem. Did you want to change?” He was staring pointedly at my sweat pants and bare feet.

“That would probably be for the best.”

The Commissioner’s office was massive. Like a cliche out of an early Edward G. Robinson movie, the Commissioner was squat, a little on the heavy side, with a barrel chest. He filled out the cliche with a top o’ the morning to ya, Irish lilt. Desmond Patrick Murphy is how he introduced himself and I wondered if people on a first name basis with him called him Desmond Patrick. The only thing missing was a stub of a cigar in the side of his mouth.

Desmond Patrick took me by the arm and introduced me to the others in the room. Chief of Detectives, Roland Hill. Lieutenant Linda Derek from the 20th Precinct, the precinct having jurisdiction for Tommy’s case. Two other detectives from the 20th Precinct whose names I forgot as soon as we were introduced, and, Detective Shipley, who I acknowledged as having already met. Shipley gave me one of those looks that could kill when Desmond Patrick led me to the table. I’m sure she wasn’t too happy being called to this meeting.

We were seated around a large conference table. All eyes turned to the Commissioner who was seated at the head of the table, on my right.

“So, Miss Monahan, I understand you’re a little disappointed with NYPD and how we’re handling this case.”

Shit. Salvo fired off the poop deck.

“No, Mr. Murphy. Not at all.” Watch Kate balance on one foot. I did not want to piss anyone off, at least not yet. “We appreciate the time you and your staff are taking for us tonight.” I pointedly looked across the table at Cleve, hoping for some help, but he wasn’t even looking my way. “It’s been two and a half weeks since Mr. Connaught was murdered. We understand that the Detectives don’t have a lot of leads. We asked for some assistance tonight so we could share all the facts as we know them.”

“Well,” Desmond Patrick interrupted. “My friend the ex-mayor called me this afternoon and asked that we give you some help. That’s why we’re here. So let’s get started.” I guess he wasn’t as insulted as I thought. “Lieutenant Derek,” he barked down the conference table. “What’s the status?”

“I’ll admit, sir, that we’re not much further along than we were two weeks ago. One of the detectives assigned to the case is on sick leave, and Detective Shipley is working the case alone.”

“Well, excuse my French but that’s bullshit and the bullshit stops right here.” Desmond Patrick gave everyone a fierce look. “What have you got for us, Miss Monahan?”

“I’ll defer to Mr. Northland. He’s head of our security detail at Phoenix.” I gave them a quick primer on Kelly’s background so everyone understood they weren’t dealing with Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys here.

“Before Mr. Northland starts though, I’d just like to ask that you respect the confidentiality of some of the information relating to our company.”

The words were barely out my mouth and I heard Shipley snort a few seats away.

“Yes?” I looked at her.

“You can’t ask that we keep information confidential when we’re investigating a murder. Are you asking us to ignore facts? This is just typical of you rich and uppity business types.” Roger that. Confirmed that she was pissed with me.

Cleve jumped in at this point and put on his best we take umbrage with those remarks personage. “We are not asking that you ignore facts. We are just asking that the confidentiality of certain things we are going to disclose to you be kept confidential, if you can manage that.”

“Understood,” Mr. Murphy barked again and this time his fierce look was directed at Shipley.

Kelly proceeded to fill them in, just as we’d discussed in the car on the ride over. I watched the crowd around the table as he gave them the run down. His note book was open in front of him and occasionally he would flip a page, but he didn’t read from it. He was politically correct and addressed most of his remarks directly at Shipley. Not that she hadn’t heard some of this before, I reminded myself. The Commissioner appeared a bit bored, picking at his cuticles. Shipley’s boss Linda Derek took notes but she was outpaced by the Commissioner’s assistant who sat at the far end of the table. He was a young man, probably not yet thirty, of Asian descent, who seemed to be taking down everything that was said verbatim.

I chastised myself for daydreaming and brought my attention back to Kelly.

“So, in a nutshell, that’s what we know. We’d like NYPD’s assistance in locating Ben Tucker and Natalie Scott.” I looked at Detective Shipley who was grim-faced and unmoving. She nodded at Kelly.

“Anything else?” the Commissioner asked. Without waiting for any responses, he slapped both hands down on the table and stood up. I looked at my watch. We’d been here less than fifteen minutes and it appeared that we were being given the bum’s rush.

“Miss Monahan. Nice meeting you.” He held out his hand and I stood up and gave him a shake. “I’ve got another meeting but please, use my office. The detectives here are tasked with solving this case.” Another fierce look in their direction. “The City of New York takes crime seriously. The murder of one of this city’s citizens is serious business.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “And, we’re sorry for your loss.” In spite of his bluster, I think he meant it.

We spent the next ninety minutes at his conference table, rehashing the last two weeks. The detectives fired questions at us, and we answered the best we could.

Who would want to kill Dr. Francis?

We had no idea.

Why did he suddenly leave his job at Global Devices?

We had no idea.

How well did Mr. Connaught know Dr. Francis?

Again, no idea. I told them they should talk with Dr. Bill Pritchard. Get his take on things. Shipley nodded.

I gave them Sara Williston’s phone number. One of them mentioned that they’d work on a search warrant to access the safety deposit box shared by Tommy and Dr. Francis.

Were we aware of any relationship between Ben Tucker and Natalie Scott?

None, other than their reporting relationship at work and the fact that they had worked together at the hospital in Flagstaff.

Shipley riled me a little with some of her questions. Like were the lawyers any further along in figuring out the value of the deceased’s estate? Before I could answer that she rephrased the question and wanted to know just how much I was inheriting. And before I could answer that, she looked at the other detectives with a smug, knowing look. I didn’t bother to answer her because she was clearly giving me a dig and besides, Cleve shot me a look across the table, which said keep your mouth shut.

I wanted to counter with some questions of my own. Like what the hell had they been doing the last two weeks to get to the bottom of this? What had Shipley done with the information that Kelly and I shared with her on Friday? Sweet fuck all would be the answer I was going to get. The only reason we were getting anywhere at this point, late on a Sunday night was because the Commissioner had called this meeting. I was pissed, but I was tired too, so I kept the bitchiness in check.

Had the FDA been informed of the reasons for the contract cancellation by Global? This was from one of the detectives whose name I forgot, but it was a good question.

What was the latest report from Flagstaff? Was there any news on our missing investigator?

We wrapped up with handshakes all around and fake smiles on my behalf. I didn’t think for a minute that my smile fooled anyone but the detectives and their boss were civil with us, promising to keep us informed.

chapter fifty-four

My eyes locked on the object and my body went rigid. I was breathing yes, but not moving. I stood there for what seemed like an eternity, staring at it, trying to get my heart pumping at the hysterical rate rather than the panicked rate. My eyes shot around the bedroom. The digital clock read 11:27. The door to the ensuite bathroom was ajar and some light was filtering out. Did I leave the light on in the bathroom?

The corners of the large room were dark and my heart rate shot back up to hysterical as I willed my eyes to adjust to see if there was anything, anybody in the shadows. Just like a kid playing the game of statues, my body was frozen in a ridiculous pose.

As I usually did when I came in the bedroom, I walked to the side of the bed where I slept and turned on the lamp on the bedside table. Light illuminated the top half of the massive, king size bed. In the split second that I was thinking about sinking into the crisp sheets and pulling the duvet over me, I spied the white envelope sitting squarely in the middle of my pillow.

I let my eyes focus on the envelope and I whimpered just little when I saw that it was addressed to BITCH.

Not entirely convinced that I was alone, I nonetheless made myself, no correct that, willed myself to leave the room. Hyper-aware now, just like Frank Sanchez had drilled into me. My peripheral vision kicked in, my back straightened up and my fists clenched. The envelope lay untouched on the pillow and as I backed out of the bedroom into the hall, I knew that the pillow was going in the garbage and I would never let it touch me again.

When I came out of the hallway into the main area of the apartment, I was relieved to see my ever-present bodyguard, Chris, sitting at the dining room table reading a newspaper. He must have known by the look on my face that something was wrong because he was quickly out of his chair, coming around the table towards me with a gun in his hand. I stupidly wondered where the gun came from and at the same time told him that there was something on my bed. He grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me into the foyer of the apartment where we both stood against the wall while he made some calls on his cell phone.

While I stood rigidly in the foyer, unable to relax my body, my brain was running wild. Someone had been in the apartment while we were at the Police Commissioner’s office. How had they got in? Besides putting what looked like a harmless envelope on my bed, what else had they done? Were they still in the apartment? When was this all going to end?

An eternity later the intercom on the wall chimed and Kelly and the cavalry arrived. The cavalry were really the two other bodyguards whom I had met over the past couple of days. They and Kelly fanned out in the apartment, with their guns out and up, clasped in both hands, just like the cops in the TV shows. Chris stayed with me in the foyer. When we got the all clear, I felt my body relax a bit, but the adrenaline was still pumping. My brain was screaming for a cigarette and my heart was aching for Jay.

I ignored the nicotine need and pow-wowed with Kelly, Chris and the cavalry in the kitchen.

I could tell Kelly was livid. “I’m sorry this happened, ma’am,” he told me through clenched teeth. He shot a look at Chris and then pointed to the reason why we were all standing around the round table in the kitchen. The offensive object was now inside a plastic bag and I let my eyes rest on it for a moment.

“The apartment was breached. How, we’re not sure at this point, but we will find out. As of now, you’ll have three men in the apartment with you at all times. We think it’s easier to protect you here than in a hotel or another place.”

I nodded, suddenly very tired. I thrust my chin towards the envelope. “Are we going to see what the note inside says?”

“Later. Right now it’s evidence.”

Satisfied with the telephone call, the stalker smiled and gently placed the handset on the telephone base, ending the long distance call to Flagstaff. The long reach of Tom Connaught’s bitch and her ‘soldiers’ was effectively cut off. Not caring to know the name of the person sent by the bitch, the stalker had abruptly interrupted the caller. Just tell me there is no link from us to him.

My sleep was interrupted by an urgent hand, shaking my shoulder.

“Ma’am.”

“Yunh.” I mumbled something and willed my brain to wake up from a deep sleep. I was under some blankets on one of the couches in the living room, where I had fallen asleep in the early morning hours.

I struggled to sit up, totally disoriented because it was still dark with only a little light coming from the lamp on the side table. Kelly was crouched down in front of the couch, waiting for my eyes to focus. I ran my hands through my hair, and then rubbed them over my face.

“What time is it?” I whispered.

“Three thirty. I’m sorry to wake you but we’ve got a situation.”

I took a deep breath, not sure if I was ready for more bad news. With my feet on the floor and the blanket wrapped around my shoulders, I looked at Kelly sitting on his heels in front of me. Looked in his eyes and couldn’t stand what I saw there. My stomach flipped and my brain willed it to stay still. Stay strong. Stay tough. Strong and tough - two of my personality traits that had been seeping out of me with each passing hour, dealing with this shit-mess.

“I’m awake. What’s going on?”

“They’ve found our guy in Flagstaff.”

Jerry. The man who had a mom and dad waiting for him. The man who was working for us. Oh my God. I nodded my head, silently telling Kelly to go on.

“There’s a fire right now in the administration offices at the hospital in Flagstaff. It’s the middle of the night out there, so thank God no staff were there. But they found a man’s body. Unconscious, suffering from smoke inhalation they think.”

I put my hand on Kelly’s shoulder, which felt like a piece of granite. “Is he going to be okay?”

“We hope.” He placed his hands on his knees and stood up. All business now. “My other guys out there will call again soon with an update report.” He reached over to turn off the lamp and I stopped him.

“Leave it on. I’m getting up.” If Kelly and his guys could work around the clock for me and for our company, I could too. As helpless as I felt at this moment, I was sure I could at least make some coffee.

“I’m coming back on the next plane,” Jay said when I finished describing what had happened in the twenty-four hours since he had gone back to Toronto.

“No,” I told him. My voice was hoarse from lack of sleep and too many cigarettes. “It’s alright. As much as I miss you and want to see you, you need to stay there. For your job. It’s important.”

There was a long silence and I wondered if Jay was thinking about my close call a few months ago, when that madman had shot at me, point blank.

“It’s okay, really Jay. Kelly and his gang of guys are here. I promise I won’t do anything to put myself out there. Kelly wouldn’t let me anyway.”

“I just can’t understand what all of this is about. Who’s doing this? And I can’t believe that Dr. Francis is dead. I never met the man but I felt like I knew him just a little bit.”

I agreed with Jay and we talked about that for a little while longer, theorizing but getting nowhere. We promised to call each other again, later that day.

It was early Monday morning and I was at my desk, at the Phoenix offices. A different bodyguard, Michael, was at my beck and call, sitting in the outside office in a guest chair beside Carrie’s desk. It was awkward all around but I was appreciative of his presence.

I started off the day meeting with Sandra Melnick and going through the piles of files that she had left me on Friday. I swear to God that I tried to pay attention because this was important stuff for our company. But my mind kept wandering. Wondering about Jerry’s parents, worried about their son. A son who had survived military service but was now unconscious, in a hospital. Left for dead because of some private investigating work on behalf of a company they had never heard of, never had anything to do with. From there my thoughts segued to Dr. Jordan Francis’ family. Who were they? They would be reconciling the death of their son, their brother, their uncle. I couldn’t recall a time when my heart hurt as much as it did right now. My nose started to sting, signaling the start of tears, so I sniffed hard and brought my attention back to what Sandra was telling me.

Cleve came through the office door as soon as Sandra left and he joined me at the work table. A large carafe of coffee sat in the middle of the table, with cream and sugar, china mugs, and silver spoons on a large tray. Cleve poured himself a mug before he sat down across from me. I was smoking but put the cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray.

“I just spoke with Kelly,” he told me. “He brought me up to speed on what’s happening in Flagstaff. In addition to the smoke inhalation, the doctors report that Mr. Rigley has some severe lacerations on his head. He was most likely knocked out and left to die. The fire chief has confirmed that the fire was deliberately set. Thankfully, there was more smoke damage than anything else.”

We both sat quietly, lost in our thoughts. There wasn’t much to say except the obvious. Cleve appeared to be as weary as I was so I poured both of us another coffee. I was wired with caffeine and adrenaline and it was only ten in the morning.

chapter fifty-five

The caffeine load combined with lack of sleep made me feel like a cat on a hot tin roof. I couldn’t concentrate on any of the work staring at me from the overloaded in-basket on my desk. I had paced out my office and if my mother were here she’d be asking me if I had ants in my pants. Bothered and bitchy best described how I was feeling. And caged in. So I decided to take a walk down to the R and D floor. Have a look at Ben Tucker’s place of work. Michael jumped up from his chair when I opened the door to my office.

“I’m going down to R and D,” I told Carrie and the bodyguard. Michael discreetly followed along behind me, down the hallway and the inner staircase. When I came out through the fire door on the floor, I stood for a moment, getting my bearings. Off to the far right was Nat Scott’s former office, and on the left of the floor were the glass brick enclosed offices, where Kelly and his security team were housed. I headed towards Nat Scott’s area and was happy to see my new best friend Jenn Ludlow at her desk, surrounded with piles of paper and file folders. Her face was intent with concentration and she was humming along to music pulsing through her earphones.

She beamed me one of her gorgeous smiles when she noticed me standing in front of her desk. She pulled out her earphones and stood up.

“Hey Kate. What’s shaking?” She peered around me and looked at Michael and then back at me. “Who’s your shadow?” she asked with a sly smile.

I introduced them. “Jenn this is Michael. Michael, Jenn.” Jenn came out from behind her desk and held out her hand like she was the Pope, expecting him to kiss her ring. She dipped her head slightly and the large swath of hair over the right side of her face swished sexily, revealing both of her eyes. Clearly smitten, Michael was unable to speak. His eighteen inch neck turned bright pink and he let Jenn’s hand rest in the palm of his. I was witnessing love - or lust - at first sight. I cleared my throat trying to interrupt them as they stared at each other, mesmerized.

“Jenn,” I finally said, after about ten seconds.

“Yep.” She broke the eye lock and turned her head towards me.

“Where is Ben Tucker’s office?”

She pointed and said, “Four workstations that a way. But I don’t think he’s here. Haven’t seen him today.”

“Thanks Jenn. I’ll go over anyway.”

I counted off four workstations in the direction that she had indicated and found what was definitely Ben’s place. His was a wheelchair accessible workstation, with a lower than normal work surface and no desk chair. The workstation was neat and organized and everything was in its place, on low shelves, reachable by someone confined to their wheelchair. There was no sign of Ben. But did I really expect to find him sitting at his desk, working away? It took me a minute to realize that there was no computer on the desk.

Michael dutifully trailed behind me as I abruptly left the workstation and headed across the large floor to Kelly’s office, where he was standing in the doorway, clearly waiting for me. He nodded at Michael and wordlessly used his head to point at the office next door, directing him there. Kelly ushered me into his office and quietly closed the door.

I didn’t sit down because the caffeine continued to course through my system and the ants in my pants were still there. Kelly stood in front of his closed door and I faced him, with my hands clasped in front of me.

Kelly spoke first.

“How’re you holding up?”

“Good,” I lied.

Then I sucked in a deep breath and felt my body shudder, just a little. Signs of adrenaline leaving my system. “How about you Kelly? You’re running on less sleep than me.”

“I’m used to it. I only need a couple of hours each night.”

“I was just over at Ben Tucker’s desk.”

“Yeah, I know. Michael’s keeping me informed.”

“There’s no computer at his desk.”

“Yep. We know that too. He has a laptop like most of the R and D staff. He must have it with him. We’re checking his accounts on the network, his email account, things like that. Shipley called saying they wanted to search his workstation area, I told her that would be fine with us. They’ll be over here soon.”

“Can they at least be discreet about it? Can we pack everything up and give it to them? I don’t want to upset the employees any more than we have to.”

Kelly nodded his head. “I’ll see what we can do.” He walked over behind his desk, sat down and took a piece of paper out of a file folder. He slid it across the desk towards me. “The contents of the note,” he offered.

I continued to stand near the door, admittedly a little reluctant to read it, acknowledge it or touch it, even though I knew it wasn’t the original.

“I am in control. I hold your fate in my hands. You have no power over me. You have no power period. Lay your head on this pillow and sleep soundly.”

By lunchtime I was exhausted, frustrated and close to tears. Exhausted because the caffeine was no longer doing its job. Frustrated because there didn’t appear to be anything worthwhile I could do to help Kelly or the police bring an end to this shit-storm. And close to tears because I was exhausted and frustrated. So I decided to do something totally out of character. Exercise. Admittedly the idea was not mine. Frank Sanchez apparently called the office after talking to Jay who informed him of the events of the last couple of days and how the bodyguard contingent was rising exponentially. Frank called Carrie who obligingly cleared my calendar.

The tears finally overflowed as I was telling Frank about finding the envelope on my bed. I was able to do the telling without any accompanying sobs but the tears poured. Frank was a saint. He didn’t do any of the patronizing there-there it’ll be okay shit typical of men who don’t know how to deal with a woman in tears. When I was done he artfully took my story and turned it into a lesson in personal security awareness. Then we worked out for over an hour and when we were done I had a new understanding of the meaning of exhausted.

Keeping one’s pulse under control was extremely difficult. But extremely difficult did not mean impossible. Conquering adversity made you stronger. More powerful. Omnipotent. Because there was no challenge that could not be overcome. Oxygen-laced, deep breaths calmed the pulse and focused the mind. The hardest challenge was about to be surmounted. The bitch was about to be conquered.

When Frank called an end to the drills, I thanked him and collapsed on one of the benches up against the wall of the Dojo. With my elbows on my knees, I worked at getting my breathing back in order and watched my sweat drip on the floor. The exhaustion gave me a feeling of powerfulness, as crazy as that sounded to me. I felt powerful and strong even though my knees were weak and my arms were trembling. They say that knowledge is power, and knowing that I had worked out and trained when I was beyond exhausted made me proud of myself. I grinned inwardly and gave myself a mental pat on the back.

Michael was dutifully waiting for me in the small waiting room outside Frank’s Dojo. He gave me a quiet smile and a hardly noticeable nod, acknowledging the sweat which was still beading on my face. With my gym bag slung over my shoulder I followed Michael through the door, onto the landing and then down the steep set of stairs. The hallway and staircase were well lit but the area felt dark because the walls and the stairs were painted a deep chocolate brown. At the bottom of the staircase there was a small lobby and then the door to the street.

I paid no attention to our descent, as I had gone down this stairway many times now. Like a good girl, I held on to the banister, and kept my eyes focused on Michael’s back who was about four steps ahead of me. Michael crossed the small lobby in two giant steps and had the door to the street open while I was still descending the stairs.

I saw him look both ways as he stood in the doorway and then he was on the ground. He just crumpled and silently fell. My foot was on the lobby floor and I dropped my gym bag, readying myself to run the few steps to him. I looked down at the threshold of the doorway, thinking that he must have tripped and fallen, and in that split second the area around the doorway darkened. When I looked up a body was filling the doorway and there was a gun pointed at my chest.

My first thoughts were for Michael.

He must have been shot by this person and I frantically wondered why I hadn’t heard any shot.

Adrenaline coursed through my veins and my breath came in short gasps.

Blood pounded so hard in my ears I could hear nothing and I tried mightily to focus on the person standing in front of me. It felt like I was looking at them through the wrong ends of a pair of binoculars and I realized that I had tunnel vision.

Tunnel vision, tunnel vision. Frank had drilled into me all the things I could expect if I found myself in a situation where my life was threatened. Tunnel vision was one of them.

And adrenaline.

And blood pounding in my ears obscuring my hearing.

And shortened breath.

I had to focus. Focus.

And be docile.

And non-threatening.

And hyperaware.

I raised my hands in the air and looked at the ground, trying to be as non-threatening as I could.

“Please don’t hurt me,” I whimpered. Just like Frank taught me. “Please,” I repeated.

Still looking at the floor, I was hyperaware of this person’s smell, and it was sour and fearful. Or was that me?

The gunman was standing so close to me I could feel his breath coming out of his mouth in short gasps, just like mine and I peered up at him, keeping my head bowed. The gun was held in both of his hands and his hands were shaking, and the gun was jerking up and down. He had both arms straight out in front of him and his feet were planted about shoulder width apart. I was fucking lucky that he was hesitating. That he didn’t shoot me right away. It felt like a lifetime had passed since Michael had fallen to the ground. In reality it was probably less than thirty seconds.

In one smooth motion, just like I had been taught and Jay and I had drilled for hours, my left hand shot out, grabbing his wrist hard, deflecting the gun barrel away from me. The gun was now pointed at the wall and away from my chest. My right hand came down on top of the gun and I twisted with all my might. Twisted the gun barrel back towards him. Heard the snap of his finger breaking that he’d stupidly held on the trigger. He squealed. The pressure of my left hand on his wrist, and the pressure from my right hand twisting the gun caused him to let go of it.

I backed up a step, aiming his gun at him. I held the gun close to me. Saw him hesitate. Making a decision.

His decision was probably the right one. He guessed that I wouldn’t shoot him because he turned and jack-rabbited over Michael’s prone body and he took off running. I was right behind him, yelling like a fool.

I saw him a few storefronts up where he was dodging between two parked cars to cross the street. I ran into the street after him. My hearing was back and I clearly heard squealing tires, horns honking, and screams. The screams were mine.

chapter fifty-six

The voices were all around me and I only caught snippets of what was being said. None of it made sense.

“Ran right into the street.”

“… lucky she wasn’t killed.”

“Who is she?”

Then hands were touching me. I kicked and mumbled.

“Ma’am, it’s all right.”

“Ma’am, stay still.”

In and out of consciousness. I finally stopped fighting and gave into it.

The bitch’s body was loaded into an ambulance. The useless, goddamn stupid piece of garbage had botched it. The bitch was holding the idiot’s gun when she chased him out of the building. Seeing red. Breathing fire. Angry. So angry.

“Kathleen.” The voice was determined to wake me up. And the bright beam of light into my eye helped.

I turned my head away from the light and clamped my eyes shut. It pissed me off when I was woken up from a nap.

“Leave me alone,” I mumbled, and tried to roll over on my side. The movement caused pain to wash over me so swiftly it took my breath away. I couldn’t focus on just one area of pain because it enveloped my whole body. My entire being. As consciousness regained a toe hold on my brain, I took an inventory of myself and my beloved body parts. A head to foot mental inventory quickly confirmed that I must be in one piece because every body part on that inventory hurt. Throbbed. Pounded.

I opened my eyes slowly and the bright lights above me caused me to wince. Someone put their hand on my shoulder and I cried out. And then a wave of nausea that started at my feet hit me and I knew I was going to be sick to my stomach. It wasn’t pretty and I didn’t care. Not sure that it was possible, but I felt worse after throwing up.

By this time I figured out that I was in a hospital. Why I was there was the sixty-four thousand dollar question. I had been at Frank’s Dojo training and the next thing I knew I was lying on a gurney in the most amount of pain I had ever experienced.

“Kate,” someone whispered. “Everything is okay. You’ve got two broken ribs but everything else is fine.” I opened my eyes and Kelly was standing beside me, bent over a little, talking quietly to me.

“What happened?” I asked him. My voice was hoarse and my throat hurt, but I think that was from throwing up.

“You ran into the street and got hit by a car,” he told me. And then I remembered everything that had happened. Oh my Christ. Michael. Someone else to add to the list of souls damaged by me and our godforsaken company.

“Michael. How’s Michael?” I asked and begged him with my eyes to tell me the truth.

Kelly paused and I could see him taking a deep breath. “He’s going to be okay.” He seemed relieved to tell me and I was relieved too. “He was shot in the upper thigh, and was bleeding from an artery but the medics got to him in time.”

Michael was badly injured but at least he was alive. I got little comfort from that - if not for me, he wouldn’t have been shot. Guilt tore inside me and made my body ache even more.

“He told me what happened,” Kelly said. “How you disarmed that guy and took off after him.” Kelly grinned a little. “You did good, Ma’am.”

Personally I didn’t think so, considering where I was at the moment. I tried to give him a wee smile back but it hurt too much. I couldn’t believe that even my face was aching.

“Did anyone catch the guy?”

Kelly shook his head. “No. Some witnesses at the scene said he took off running down one of the side streets. He never stopped, never looked back. Did you get a good look at him?”

“Yeah. I won’t forget his face for a long time.”

“Was he someone you know?”

“No. Never seen him before.”

There was some activity behind Kelly and a nurse stepped around and stood beside him.

“Sir, we’re moving her to a room so we’ll have to ask you to step outside for a bit.”

I looked around me for the first time. The paraphernalia around me belonged to an emergency department in a hospital. I was lying on a narrow stretcher, there was an IV in my left hand, and the small area was enclosed with curtains, giving me a modicum of privacy. I tuned in to the surrounding noises and could hear voices, moans, and the public address system.

“When you’re settled in,” Kelly told me, “the police need to get your statement.” He backed away and disappeared through the curtains.

“Do I really need to stay in the hospital?” I asked the nurse.

“You sure do, dear. We need to keep an eye on you. You’ve got a nasty concussion. You’ll be here at least twenty-four hours.” While she was talking she covered me with a warm blanket which felt divine and made me realize how cold I was feeling. She fussed around the gurney, efficiently raising up the sides, hooking the IV bag to a pole on the end of the stretcher, and releasing the brakes with a clang. She threw back the curtain and pushed me through the emergency ward, out into a hallway and onto an elevator. Whatever was in the IV bag was working its magic, because I was asleep as soon as they helped me into a real bed.

It was dark outside when I woke up, disoriented and having to pee badly. Gingerly lifting my head from the pillow, I peered around the room. Frank Sanchez was sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed and Jay was in a chair beside me. Pain shot through my neck to the top of my head so I lowered it back on the pillow, and lifted my hand in a small wave.

“Hey,” I croaked out. Jay took my hand and gave it a little squeeze.

“Hey yourself,” he said. “How’re you doing?”

“Gotta pee. Badly.”

“Let me get the nurse,” he offered, and then he was gone.

Twenty minutes later I was feeling a little more human. A visit to the bathroom, teeth brushed and two very large pain pills helped. Which was good because the nurse told me there was a crowd of people waiting to see me.

My headache came back in style as soon as I saw that Detective Shipley was the first one through the door. Another detective who I had met at the meeting with the Chief trailed behind her. I couldn’t remember his name.

“Good evening Ms. Monahan.”

“Hi, Detectives.”

“We’re sorry to hear about your injuries,” Shipley intoned disingenuously.

Sure, I thought.

She didn’t look at me as she dug around in her bag and I wondered if she’d been forced to come here. They asked me some questions about my attacker. Did I recognize him? No. Would I recognize him if saw him again? Definitely yes. Describe him. White, about five foot eight, in his late twenties or early thirties, dark brown hair, nervous type.

How did I get the gun away from him? My description caused Shipley to snort in disbelief, so I looked at her partner who just rolled his eyes. They finished up after that and left me in peace for about eight seconds.

Jay and Frank came back through the door, followed by Kelly and one of the bodyguards whose name escaped me. Hopefully all this name forgetting wasn’t a side effect of the concussion. One of the nurses was on the heels of the bodyguard, tsking and harumphing in stereotypical fashion.

“Gentlemen, it’s past visiting hours. Our girl needs her rest. I’ll give you a few minutes,” she told them, and then took me by the shoulders, sat me up, fluffed my pillows and gently helped me lay back down again. She glared at all of them and said, “Ten minutes.” Then she efficiently tucked me in so tight I wasn’t sure I could get out of bed if I had to.

Frank told me he was sorry for what happened but that he was proud of me for how I handled the situation. Kelly told me that he was sorry for what happened and that Jason, the bodyguard whose name I remembered as soon as Kelly said it, would be sitting outside my door, guarding me. Jason nodded in my direction and then they left. Jay pulled up a chair beside my bed, sat down and took my hand in both of his.

“When did you get back in the City?” I asked him.

“Around four o’clock. After we talked this morning, I decided to catch the first flight I could. When I landed and called you at the office, Carrie told me what happened. I came straight to the hospital.”

I turned my head on the pillow and looked at him. His face had aged ten years. His hair stood straight up because of his nervous habit of running his hands through it. His eyes locked with mine and I felt more guilt because he was suffering. Because of me.

“What are we going to do Kate?” he asked me quietly.

I was suddenly very pissed. Not at Jay. At whoever was behind all of this. Pissed that some madman, or madwoman, had thoroughly taken over our lives. Feelings of rage boiled inside me, causing my head to ache and my broken ribs to throb.

“We’re going to find this fucker and kick his ass, royally.” I said it like I meant it.

Jay smiled. “Good plan.”

chapter fifty-seven

It was likely the drugs they gave me. I was loopy, in and out of wakefulness, with restless legs and dreams that wouldn’t stop. The nurses woke me regularly to do those things they go to nursing school for. At least they kept the lights low in my room. My whole body ached and every few seconds I would get stabbing, shooting pains in a different part of my body. I could hear moaning and realized it was me. At one point in the middle of the longest night of my life, as the nurse was mindlessly taking my blood pressure with a cuff that squeezed the life out of my arm, I remember wryly thinking to myself, so this is what it feels like to get hit by a Mack truck.

Around four a.m. I woke with a start. All of my limbs had jerked me awake. I felt claustrophobic and wanted to be free of the sheets and blanket that I had been tucked into. Try as I might I couldn’t lift either of my hands to move the bed sheets and although I signaled my feet with my brain to kick off the covers my body wouldn’t react. When I realized that I couldn’t move my head, I started to panic. Bright light was shone in each of my eyes, blinding me momentarily. My voice was useless because I couldn’t open my mouth to make a sound. My body was totally paralyzed.

What was the matter with me? Were my injuries worse than the doctors thought? Did I damage my spine? Did I have a stroke? All of these thoughts screamed inside my head. Who was there? Why weren’t they talking to me? Had I gone deaf too?

The bedcovers were removed and my brain was working well enough for me to realize that I could still feel - I just couldn’t move. What the fuck was going on? Somebody!

I felt hands under my legs and two hands on my shoulders and those hands lifted me and put me on a stretcher. Thank God, I thought. Somebody realizes something is wrong. Somebody say something my mind pleaded. We were rolling out of my hospital room and into an elevator. My eyes darted back and forth but all I could see was the ceiling and walls of the hospital hallway, and then the ceiling of the elevator. Whoever was wheeling me away was not within my vision. After the elevator ride we went down a long, dark, tunnel-like hallway. The dim lights were spaced far apart in the ceiling which was bare cement. And then the end of my stretcher was banged hard against a door, which opened to the outside.

Where was I going? We were outside the hospital now. Something was really wrong and it just wasn’t the fact that my body was paralyzed. The stretcher started moving faster and whoever was pushing it must have started to run. Just as quickly we stopped, and for the first time I heard some mumbled voices. Vehicle doors were opened and the stretcher was lifted up and wheeled inside the back of a truck. Doors were slammed, the engine turned over and we started moving. Tears were pouring out of my eyes now and draining into my ears.

My ears were wet from my tears. Unbelievable. What the fuck was going on and why was I worried about wet ears?

Lights were turned on in the back of the truck and my eyes darted left and right and I realized that I must be inside an ambulance. On both walls small cubbyholes were jammed with medical supplies, blood pressure cups and bags of intravenous fluids. A stethoscope hung from a nearby hook.

Something was tightened around my knees and then my chest. They now had me strapped to the stretcher. Who were they? What were they doing? I felt so helpless.

My bowels loosened and my mouth went dry when a face finally came into my vision.

The face belonged to the big cry baby Belinda Moffat.

Why was she here? She had a stethoscope plugged into her ears and she was listening to my heart which thankfully was still beating.

Why, why, why my brain screamed? What is happening? Belinda smiled at me and my eyes pleaded with her. Why are you doing this? She just continued to smile.

When she was done listening to my heart, she fitted me with a blood pressure cuff and took my blood pressure. While she worked, she had the same stupid smile plastered on her fat, ugly face. She didn’t speak. My brain tried to compute her presence and to figure out what part she was playing in this evil game. But overriding my internal computer was a voice in my head screaming a constant stream of why, why, why.

The ambulance continued in motion and eventually went down a steep slope, a sensation I could feel because I felt my body shift on the stretcher. A few moments later we stopped and I heard the engine turn off. My stomach roiled. Belinda and another person - who I couldn’t see or hear - unstrapped me from the gurney and I was lifted up and carried out of the ambulance. Belinda had me under the arms and my body shifted up as I was carried down the steps of the ambulance. I could see the back of a man between my feet, holding me by my legs which he had tight against his body. Still unable to move any part of my body except my eyes, I frantically looked around, taking in my surroundings, looking for something recognizable.

And then at last, I heard a voice.

“Over here. Easy. Easy.”

I was being lowered down.

“Thank God she’s small,” the voice said.

Why? Why is it good that I’m small?

I could see Belinda’s face above me as she lowered me to the ground. She gently tucked my arms close to my body and turned me on my side. Less than two inches away from my face I could see black, satiny fabric.

What is it?

Oh my God. Is it a coffin?

I needed to scream. Screaming will make me feel better.

Pain came back swiftly in my midsection as my legs were bent and my knees jammed into my chest. They were bending me like a pretzel and mother of God, the stabbing pain in my ribs left me breathless.

And then everything went black.

Something had been put over me and everything was dark, and black, and smelled like men’s aftershave. I could hear a vehicle start up and the sound of it was gone in a few moments. The voices hadn’t spoken again and my ears were desperate for human voices. Even Belinda’s, the fucking gargoyle. Why was she doing this to me?

I heard a long, ripping noise, and couldn’t calm my brain down enough to determine what it was. And then I was lifted again and the container I was in was rolling.

I was in a suitcase. The ripping noise was a zipper. A fucking suitcase. Now I was sure I must be dreaming. Why in God’s name would I be in a suitcase?

I needed to get out of here.

Started to panic.

Just fucking lovely, I thought. I’m going to end up claustrophobic after all this. You stupid bitch, Kate, focus, focus.

And then I felt my hand move. Ever so slightly.

And then my big toe on my right foot started to move. Maybe my paralysis wasn’t permanent. I tried pushing on the side of the suitcase with my hand, but it was useless. My toe had stopped moving but I could feel sensation in it. I pushed down with the toe but nothing happened. I probably had the sum total strength of a two-hour old baby.

The suitcase with its Kate Monahan load stopped rolling and after a few seconds I heard a distinct ping and then we started rising. In an elevator. Another ping, then more rolling for a few feet, stopping, and then rolling to a final stop, where I was laid back down on the floor. Muffled voices came to me from a distance.

My body parts were not responding the way I wanted them to but my knees were starting to ache from being jammed into my chest. I tried moving my fingers and was thrilled when I realized I could make fists. The paralysis was leaving my body. My jaw was working and I was able to open my mouth. I couldn’t really tell though what else was working and what wasn’t because being packed into the suitcase didn’t leave much room for movement. There might have been room for a small, travel size shampoo but nothing else.

The voices were closer now and both were female. The louder of the two was definitely Belinda. I would recognize that foghorn timbre from a mile away.

The ripping noise started again and in a few moments the lid of the suitcase was moved aside.

“She’s fine,” Belinda was saying. “Her heart rate and BP were all within the normal range. Her blood-ox and respirations were fine. Nothing to worry about. She should be back to normal in a few minutes.”

The light was dim and I could see very little. As tempted as I was to start moving my limbs and get myself out of the suitcase, I played possum and stayed jammed-in like a street vendor’s pretzel.

“So long as the bitch stays alive for a little while longer, I could care less,” a very familiar voice was saying.

Rough hands grabbed me from behind and rolled me out of the suitcase onto the floor. From my new vantage point, I wasn’t surprised to see Nat Scott standing over me.

When we first met, I think I might have thought Natalie had attractive traits. Standing over me now, though, with her hands on her skinny hips, I took back my first impressions. Ugly, demented eyes glared at me. Her face was so taut with evil and hatred that her lips were virtually non-existent. Her hair was greasy, unkempt and matted.

I felt some relief in my ribcage as my legs straightened out, although pins and needles were stabbing at my feet as the circulation started coming back. I lay as feeble as a baby on the floor, looking up at Nat, meeting her eyes, daring her to do something.

“Put her on the table,” she ordered and I was picked up under my armpits and dragged across the room by Belinda. I made it as hard as possible on her, willing my body to be deadweight and uncooperative.

“Hurry up,” Natalie barked out. “We haven’t got all day.” Her voice faded and I was pretty sure she had left the room.

Belinda scooped me up like a toddler and plunked me on a table like a bag of groceries. We were in a room painted white, with a light coming from an old, overhead fixture. I darted my eyes around without moving my head, trying to get a fix on my surroundings.

“Don’t roll off,” Belinda told me in a distracted voice and she walked out of my vision.

Don’t worry, I thought, taking advantage of the situation and looking around.

What I saw scared me to the depths of my soul and made me more frantic.

Like a scene out of a Frankenstein movie.

On a table up against the wall, where Belinda stood with her back to me, surgical instruments were lined up.

Four large lamps with stainless steel shades stood against the other wall.

White linens were stacked on a cart.

I was in a fucking operating room.

They were not keeping me here, I quickly decided.

I was not waiting around.

Belinda stood about four feet away from me, sorting through the instruments on the table with her back to me.

The pins and needles sensation was now in my arms but I ignored the pain from that and pushed myself up on my elbows, trying to sit up.

My body protested but I ignored it, drawing on the strength I had gained working out with Frank and Jay.

I worked myself up, and swung my near useless legs over the side of the table.

My head swam.

My breath was short.

My vision was slightly blurred.

Belinda turned around and gasped.

Even through blurred vision, Belinda was just as ugly.

She started to open her mouth but I cut her off.

“You fucking traitor.”

chapter fifty-eight

Belinda stared at me. Momentarily speechless.

“Don’t you fucking come near me,” I told her as I slid off the table.

She opened her mouth again and yelled for Nat. I took that opportunity to close the gap between us.

And then I hit her. Hard. With the heel of my hand. At the bottom of her nose where I knew it would hurt the most.

Just like a couple of days ago when she sat in my office and spewed tears, now she was spewing blood. And she started to choke on it as she hyperventilated.

And I didn’t give a shit, hoping she died.

And just to make sure, I hit her again. This time with a jab. My fist connected with her jaw and the force of the punch knocked her back into the table of surgical instruments and she crumpled to the floor. Pain reverberated from my fist to my shoulder, and I gasped. My first time hitting flesh with a properly formed fist was a little different than hitting a sparring mitt.

Belinda was moaning like a tug boat in distress. Blood continued to pour from her nose.

Now what? I wondered. I was barefoot, in a stylish hospital gown which was gaping open in the back, completely nude underneath.

From outside the room, I heard a voice which made me turn around and back up against the wall. Belinda continued to moan and spit blood on the floor beside me.

Nat Scott hurried into the room.

She glanced at Belinda on the floor and then drilled her eyes on me where I had backed up against the wall. Getting as much distance between the two of us as possible.

Nat’s hands hung by her sides, clenched in fists. Her body shook with rage. I didn’t wait for her to find a weapon, or for her to attack me. With Belinda out of the game for the moment, I knew I had to make a move and make it fast. Frank had drilled into me that if I found myself in a life threatening situation, act as quickly as possible to save myself.

Nat Scott had about six inches on me in height and she probably weighed thirty pounds more than me, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. My body was still whacky and pins and needles were shooting all over my legs. My brain was screaming about survival. So I let my instincts kick in.

My useless body stumbled towards her, as quickly as I could make it move. She stood about twelve feet away from me but I closed the distance between us.

I put my hands out in front of me and I pushed her. As hard as I could. She screamed in anger and stumbled backwards, hitting the door frame.

As soon as her back hit the door frame, my body prepared itself instinctively. My right foot was slightly forward, my left foot back a bit. My weight was forward, my back heel off the ground. My right fist was up, in front of my face, my left fist up as well, closer to my jaw. I was in my fighting stance, and Frank would be proud. My body was screaming in pain but I used the pain to keep me focused.

Belinda cried out from the floor.

Nat bounced off the door frame, screaming like a banshee. She came right back at me. Screaming. Screaming from the depths of her soul. She was out of her mind. I swear her eyes turned red.

My hours of practising foot drills paid off as I sidestepped her and slammed my fist up into her chin. My fist shut her up and stunned her. But she was still standing and I wasn’t finished. I stepped behind her and put my right arm around her neck. Standing on my tiptoes, I tried to squeeze the life out of her. Now who was enraged? I felt her body going limp and I threw her on the floor.

Nat lay there for a moment and looked up at me. Surprisingly, she appeared just as angry. I shook my head in disgust and stomped. On her head.

I would have kicked her but I was barefoot and didn’t want to break a toe. She lay there, motionless, unconscious, and I didn’t give a shit whether she was dead or alive.

My brain hadn’t had time to compute what her presence here meant, but my gut told me she was definitely a player in all the mayhem that had been going on.

Belinda was still crying and moaning in the corner.

“Who else is here?” I demanded of her.

She coughed and spit more blood on the floor and didn’t answer me. I nudged her not too gently with my foot and she looked up at me, with pain-filled eyes. While she decided whether or not she was going to answer me, I hog-tied her with a large roll of gauze bandage. I wrapped it around her ankles and her hands which were behind her back.

I was panting and gulping air, and every muscle and bone in my body was on fire.

For good measure, in case she came to, I tied up Nat Scott as well. And then I tried to find my way out of this hell-hole.

I cautiously peered out of the doorway into a small hall, with several doors. The hallway was wallpapered in a flowered, old fashioned print. There were crown moldings around the high ceiling, foot high baseboards, and ornate, glass knobs on the doors. The only sounds I could hear were coming from Belinda. I crept out of the room I was in, down the short hallway and into a large, sparsely furnished, living room. An old fashioned Princess phone sat on one of the end tables and I dashed for it.

It was dead. No dial tone.

Where the hell am I?

A three-sixty review of the room gave me no clues. An old sofa, with saggy, threadbare cushions sat under three windows. In front of the sofa was a coffee table, laden with prescription pill bottles, old National Geographic magazines, pens, balled-up Kleenexes. A door on the left side of the room led to a closet, holding musty-smelling coats and dirt covered shoes.

I need to get out of here!

Another door on the far side of the room led into a kitchen. There didn’t appear to be an exit from there either. I headed back down the hallway and opened the first door that I came to. Inside the door was total darkness. I groped for a light switch on the wall and flooded the room with light.

The sights in that room sickened me. My eyes saw things that my brain could not compute. My nose was scorched with the rotten smell of death and putrefaction. The cadaver of an old woman, curled on her side, lay on a steel table. What used to be her back was now a gaping hole, full of black, dried blood. Her gray hair hung stringy and limp, pieces covering her face. Wrinkled, saggy skin hung from her buttocks, her calves and her arms. Thank God her eyes were closed. My breath came in short gasps and with each outward breath I bawled and with each inward breath I gasped.

Who is she?

I turned around and ran to the next door which opened to a small bedroom, with a neatly made single bed pushed up against the wall. The last door in the hall was my salvation. I opened it and stood amazed, in an area that looked familiar.

I stumbled across the carpeted floor and banged on a door. And the sweetest face I had seen in a while peered up at me when the door opened.

Constance Everwood leaned on her cane and craned her neck up at me.

“Miss Monahan,” she said. “Why are we in our nightdress?”

“It’s not my nightdress, it’s a hospital gown, and I need to call the police.”

“Then step in, young lady. You’ll find the telephone on a small table in my living room. That way,” she motioned with her head.

chapter fifty-nine

A week later, on a Saturday morning, I watched the sun rise on Georgian Bay. My parent’s cottage was on a point in the Bay facing south, so we were graced with beautiful sunrises and sunsets. A light, early morning mist covered the still water, which at this time of day was dark green, almost black. The temperature was cool and I was cocooned inside a quilt on my Muskoka chair. The heat would come in a few hours and it would be sweltering by noon, and likely humid and muggy by mid-afternoon. Early mornings were my favourite time at the cottage.

Peace and quiet and time alone. Time to think and sort things through.

I wasn’t missing Manhattan in the least and was so thankful when the police had finally wrapped things up on Thursday.

Sunday morning I was on a flight from LaGuardia to Toronto. Three hours after landing I arrived in my rental car at my parent’s cottage. The key to the front door of the cottage was in its usual place, hung on a nail inside the unlocked shed. I took my time unloading the groceries I had picked up at the IGA in Orillia. As soon as they were unpacked and put away, I opened all the windows, loaded my few clothes into a dresser, put on my bathing suit and wandered down to the dock. I opted not to take my usual running dive off the end of the dock, in deference to my still broken ribs. Rather, I lowered myself into the lake from the wooden ladder nailed to the end of the dock. And then I floated on my back for an eternity and pretended I was ten years old again.

The police had come quickly, within minutes it seemed. By the time they had arrived, I was presentable in one of Miss Everwood’s chenille bathrobes and a pair of fake fur slippers.

About two cups of tea and a half an hour later, Jay and Kelly had arrived from the hospital, where they had been frantically trying to find me.

Jay sat beside me on the divan - that’s what Miss Everwood called it - holding my hand. I had given him a bit of smile when he arrived but hadn’t said much. Frankly, I was shell-shocked. Not one normally at a loss for words, I just plain had nothing to say. I had directed the police to Nat Scott’s apartment, warning them what they would find.

“I want to go home,” I finally whispered to Jay. The clock on the wall read six thirty. I was bone tired and wanted to go to bed. Jay got up and said he’d find Kelly and clear it with the police.

Miss Everwood, who had been pacing up and down the hallway, peering through the peephole, watching all the action next door came into the room when Jay went out.

“Tell me again how you escaped,” she urged me. “It’s thrilling. Absolutely thrilling, better than any action movie with Bruce Willis.” She was loving this and I was hating it. I hadn’t told her about the cadaver, who I was pretty sure was Nat Scott’s mother.

We got the okay from the police and I thanked Miss Everwood profusely before I let Jay take me home. Kelly rode down in the elevator with us.

“I’ll stay with you until one of the bodyguards arrives,” he advised us. “Until we close this up and until we find Ben Tucker, we’re still going to be guarding you twenty-four seven.”

Kelly was feeling overly protective and responsible for me since I had been kidnapped while under the protection of one of his guys. The hospital security staff had found Jason, drugged and unconscious, on the floor under my hospital bed.

I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

While I was sleeping, they found Ben Tucker. Or, as his mama christened him, Don McLean. Crying Belinda was taken to the Emergency department where she had surgery to remove six of her front teeth and her broken jaw wired up. Miss Natalie Scott refused medical treatment when she came to, so she was taken directly to the Precinct for booking. Everett McLean was arrested in Flagstaff and charged with arson and attempted murder.

“Who is Everett McLean?” I asked.

Kelly and Jay and I were in the kitchen, in what were becoming our ‘usual’ spots at the counter. Jay was cooking and Kelly and I were on stools, drinking coffee. I looked better than the two of them because I had slept for about six hours. Jay said he caught a few hours, and Kelly, the ever-tough, ever-rough Marine claimed he was fine, didn’t need sleep.

“He’s Don McLean’s brother,” Kelly said. “And he’s singing like a canary on speed right now to the Flagstaff police. Seems poor Everett was terrorized by his brother all his life and has always done what his brother demanded. A friend of Everett’s girlfriend is an employee in the administration department at the hospital. That’s how he found out there was someone snooping around, asking about Everett’s brother and his ex-girlfriend.”

Kelly sipped from his coffee. Jay picked up the story.

“Everett called his brother, his brother told him to look after it. Which we think he understood to mean burn down the hospital and kill that guy who’s snooping around.”

It was too sick to think about.

“Where is Ben now?” I wanted to know so I could go and kick the shit out of him.

“Being booked right now at the Precinct,” Kelly said. “They found Ben and his van on the side of the freeway on the Jersey side. His van was fried and he was wheeling himself along the shoulder of the road. Patrolman didn’t know who he was when he picked him up, but being a good Samaritan, he put him in the back seat of the cruiser and loaded his wheelchair into the trunk. Our Miss Scott had already squealed on him so an APB was in the system. The Jersey cop was pretty happy to find out he had a live one locked in his back seat.”

Jay laid a plate in front of each of us, laden with toast slices, scrambled eggs, bacon and tomato wedges. Not much was said for the next few minutes as we dug in. I was surprised to have an appetite.

When we were loading dirty plates into the dishwasher, Kelly’s cell phone rang and he excused himself to take the call. Jay was at the kitchen sink with his hands in soapy water, scrubbing the frying pan. I stood behind him, wrapped my arms around his waist and pressed my cheek against his back. I winced at the sharp pains in my rib cage. My legs were stiff and my upper back throbbed with pulsating pain. But, regardless of the aches and pains, I’d be happy if I could stay right here, forever. Being here in the kitchen, with Jay, was uncomplicated, simple and pure. The way things should always be. I gave him a squeeze which hurt me more than him, and grabbed the dish towel and got back to reality.

Kelly came back into the kitchen and told us, “That was Detective Shipley on the phone. Natalie Scott has herself an attorney.”

“Yippee for her,” I sniped.

Kelly ignored me. Like the professional he was.

“She’s apparently wantin’ to tell her story. Detective Shipley asked if we wanted to come down and listen.”

Jay and Kelly looked at me.

“Hell yeah,” I said in my best Texan drawl. “Count me in.”

chapter sixty

Detective Shipley met us in the lobby of the 20th Precinct on West 82nd Street and escorted us up the staircase to the second floor. The main area of the floor was populated with desks where a few people sat, working. Along one wall were several enclosed rooms. Shipley opened the door to one of these rooms and waved us in.

A small table was pushed up against the far wall and four folding chairs were stacked against the end of the table. An inside wall, adjoining the next enclosed room, had a large window. Shipley pointed at it.

“We’ll be in the next room. Keep the lights off in here so you can see. That switch there,” she pointed at a knob on the wall, “is the audio. I’ll be back later.” She stared at me for a moment and I was thinking she wanted to say something to me but she turned and left.

We waited silently in the darkness for about five minutes and I stared into the next room, looking at the table, the chairs, the video camera set up in the corner. It had been almost three weeks to the day since Tommy had been murdered. Senselessly.

The door in the next room opened and Natalie Scott was ushered in by a female police officer. She was wearing a white jumpsuit that looked like it was made out of paper. Her feet were shackled. Around her waist she was sporting a wide, leather belt to which her hands were cuffed. The police officer pulled out one of the chairs, sat Natalie in it, and then stood on the opposite side of the room, guarding her.

Her skin had a greenish tinge under the harsh florescent lights and her hair hadn’t improved since she and I had seen each other the night before. It remained matted and greasy. She sat quietly, her chin resting on her chest. Resigned.

The bitch is near. Her smell is in the air. So close to being victorious. So close to snuffing out her vile being. So close to finally having it all under control.

A few minutes after Natalie Scott was seated in the room, the door opened again and several people entered and took seats around the table. Detective Shipley and Lieutenant Linda Derek took chairs across from Natalie. A very tall, heavy-set woman took the place next to Natalie. She heaved a large briefcase onto the table, took out a pad of paper and several pens, and then stowed it under the table. Two others, an older man and a middle-aged woman took seats at opposite ends of the table.

Detective Shipley turned on a tape-recorder in the middle of the table and the police officer standing by the wall turned on the video camera.

“For the record,” Shipley started. “I am Detective Shipley.” She recited her badge number, the case number, the date, and the names of the people present. The large woman beside Natalie was her lawyer, and her name was given as Anne Nicholas. The other two people were Assistant District Attorney’s - Webster Purcell and Sheila Miller.

Out of control. No longer in charge of one’s destiny. Caged like an animal. The rage was back. No control. You make me sick. You cannot do anything right. The bitch was free. You are not. You cannot live like this. This is not living. Rage was boiling again.

Shipley: For the record, Natalie Scott, represented here by Anne Nicholas, has indicated that she is willing to make a statement about the events of last night.

Nicholas: For the record, this statement is against counsel’s advice and my client understands that what she says here will be used against her.

Purcell: For the record, the DA’s office is not offering any deals for Miss Scott’s statement.

Shipley: Miss Scott. Please tell us what transpired at your mother’s apartment last night.

Natalie Scott looked up for the first time. She stared at Detective Shipley for a long moment and then began talking. Her voice was a monotone and sounded almost robotic.

Scott: It didn’t work.

Shipley: What didn’t work?

Scott: The way we planned it.

Natalie kept her head bowed, and her handcuffed hands on her lap.

Plans that don’t work out are not plans. It was fucking bullshit. The stalker was angry, riled. The serenity and control were gone.

“This is bullshit,” I stated. “She’s acting like she’s been beaten down. Bullshit. Last night she was a maniac. She would have killed me.” I felt the tops of my ears turning red and I craved a cigarette.

Jay knew better than to tell me to calm down, but he did take a chance and gently laid his hand on my upper arm. He rubbed it a bit.

“She’s acting,” Kelly said. “I agree with you. Let’s just see how this plays out.”

I started pacing in the small room. Bullshit.

Shipley: Can you be a little more specific? What did you plan?

This time Nat took an extra long time without answering and several minutes of silence ensued. Lieutenant Derek lost patience. She slammed her hand down on the table. Everyone jumped. Except Natalie Scott. It was as if she were drugged.

Nicholas: Was that really necessary, Lieutenant?

Derek: This is bullshit.

Exactly!

Derek: If your client has a statement to make or something to tell us, I suggest she gets on with it.

The stalker’s heart was beating so fast and so hard, it hurt. But pain was the least of the worries now. This was going to end now. Breathing was becoming more and more difficult. It would be alright, soon.

Scott: We needed one more healthy body. It was going to work. We had run the diagnostics and conducted several simulations. It was perfect. The piston.

Everyone in the room was looking at Nat Scott in disbelief.

Shipley: Did you say piston?

Scott: Yes.

Shipley: Can you explain? What piston?

Nat paused again for a long time. The Lieutenant was losing patience, and the two Assistant DA’s were rolling their eyes at each other. Me? I knew we were being hoodwinked. The bitch was playing with us.

I turned around to Jay who was standing behind me. “Piston. Percutaneous intelligence system transfer nephrology. It’s the name of the Phoenix interface that we developed with the Global Devices artificial kidney.”

Jay nodded.

The air surrounding his head was orange. It was swirling. He was hot and sweat poured down out of his hair, down his back, between his legs. Everything was orange. The colour of his rage. He stared at the damp, cement wall and watched it turn red before his eyes. The jail-issued orange coveralls were drenched now in his rage, his sweat, his life.

Scott: Piston is the name of the prototype interface we developed to power an artificial kidney.

The Lieutenant sighed and shook her head in disgust. Twenty minutes had passed and we were no further along.

Shipley: Thank you. You said you needed one more healthy body. Can you tell us about that?

Scott: It had to be Monahan. We had tried and failed with the others. But Monahan stood in the way of it ever working. So we took her. Took her from the hospital. We were going to take her kidneys and give her an artificial one.

I wanted to throw up. I turned around from the glass. I couldn’t look at her. Jay put his arms around me and I buried my head in his chest.

The stalker was strong. His mind was strong but his body was stronger. Breathing hard but under control he pulled himself up the bars and threaded the coveralls through the cross bar. Hanging on with one hand. Biceps and triceps screaming. His brain screaming. He used his free hand and his teeth to secure the overalls and then knowing that blissful peace would be with him soon, he slipped the knotted legs of the coveralls over his head and gratefully let go.

I heard a wail from the room next door and turned around to the window and saw Natalie Scott slump to the side, and fall off her chair. She was moaning loudly and lay on the floor in a fetal position.

The Lieutenant stood up. “We’re done here people. Officer, call the medics.”

The police officer was attending to Natalie on the floor, and everyone else was standing up, watching her.

The door to the room opened half way and someone motioned at Shipley, who left the room. She was back very quickly and whispered something to her Lieutenant. They both left as a medic from the jail arrived.

The door to our room opened and Shipley stuck her head in.

“Ben Tucker, or Don McLean, just committed suicide in his cell. We’ll talk later,” she told us, and quickly left.

It had rained while we were in the Precinct and the air was heavy with moisture. The sun was coming out and the temperature was just below blistering. The three of us stood on the sidewalk for a moment, adjusting our eyes and bodies to being outside again. We used the sunshine as an excuse to stand still for a while, all of us stunned by the news of Ben, or Donald’s, suicide.

“Kelly,” I said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Take the rest of the day off. That’s an order.”

“Thank you ma’am. But I’ll respectfully decline.”

“Come on. Tucker slash McLean is dead. Nat Scott is locked up and probably comatose. And Belinda Moffat is under police guard at the hospital.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Kelly agreed with me, nodding his head. “But are we sure they are the only ones responsible? Until I’m convinced, we’ll be watching you.”

chapter sixty-one

This statement is of my free will. It is being written without coercion and without promise of any leniency by the District Attorney’s office. My name is Belinda Moffat. I am 33 years old and I live in the Borough of Queens. I have a Ph.D in Bio-medical Engineering. I am employed by Phoenix Technologies where I have worked for approximately three years as a project manager in the research and development department. About six months ago, my boss, Natalie Scott, came to me and told me that she had a top-secret project that I was to work on with Ben Tucker. I didn’t object. I did as I was asked by my bosses at Phoenix. It was certainly more workload but I was glad for the opportunity. Several months later, though, when it became clear to me that this top-secret project was all about falsifying records and test results, I objected. That’s when Miss Scott threatened to fire me. I make no excuses for my behavior, but I could not afford to lose my job. It costs me close to $6,000 a month to pay for round the clock care for my twin sisters, both of whom suffer from cerebral palsy.

Again, making no excuses, I participated in the falsification of records which were submitted to the FDA by Global Devices for their artificial kidney project. You see, Ben Tucker was desperate for an artificial kidney to be approved. Because of his paraplegia, he is in renal failure and must take dialysis several times a week.

Dr. Jordan Francis, the vice president in charge of the project at Global Devices suspected that the test results were being falsified and he shared this information with Mr. Connaught, who was the president of Phoenix. How do I know this? Because Jordan Francis was my fiance. He told me of his suspicions. I didn’t have the courage to tell him that I knew, and that I was participating in the fake tests. Natalie Scott and Ben Tucker suspected that they might be found out when Dr. Francis and Mr. Connaught invited them to a meeting and started to question their test methods and the results. I was at that meeting as a member of the team. Three days later Jordan stopped calling me. I was desperate to talk to him, to see him, but the people at Global said he had resigned from his job and moved away. Several days later, Mr. Connaught was murdered. I don’t know for a fact that Natalie Scott or Ben Tucker killed Mr. Connaught, but I do know for a fact that they killed Jordan. They told me that they kidnapped him, drugged him, took his kidneys out and used him as a human guinea pig to test the artificial kidney. He lasted seven days. They made me help them get rid of his body.

Jordan Francis was the only man who truly loved me. In the beginning he thought it was Nat Scott who wanted him, but it was me. I got him to love me. The letters weren’t from her, they were mine. Everyone thought Natalie was beautiful. Natalie didn’t love him. She loved Ben.

Natalie Scott and Ben Tucker are evil. When the artificial kidney didn’t work on Jordan, they tried it on Natalie’s mother. The poor woman was in her nineties.

Ben Tucker was a surgeon before he came to work at Phoenix Technologies. He was in love with Natalie and she adored him. Until he operated on her mother. After that, Ben had to make Natalie take pills and that way she still adored him.

My job was to help them kill Kate Monahan. She was a bitch and she was getting in the way of Ben getting well.

I hired Bill Collins to shoot her. Bill went to high school with me but lately he’s been out of work and needed money. I offered him $500. He shot her bodyguard but missed her. So then we had to get her out of the hospital because Ben thought it would be a good idea to take out her kidneys and make her suffer.

I put the paralytic drug in her IV and Bill and I took her out of the hospital. I must have not given her enough because it wore off too soon and then she hit me and knocked out my teeth.

There was more but it wasn’t relevant. Stuff about her sisters and how they needed a bath every Thursday night. Belinda had clearly gone over the edge, into the deep end.

It was good to know that Dr. Francis was not in on the fixing of the test results, and I know Dr. Pritchard would be happy to hear this. At least the reputation of Global Devices would be intact.

Nat Scott was more clear-headed the day after her original try at confession. Apparently, Tucker/McLean had been doping her. It took a good twenty-four hours for the drugs to leave her system. I wondered what type of cocktail he was feeding her if she could be so full of rage, and then be practically catatonic ten hours later.

Scott: I shot Tom Connaught.

Shipley: Why?

Scott: Because he and Dr. Francis found out about the test results. At first we denied it and we tried to hide it but I knew that Tom had copied the hard drive of my computer. He had all the test result files from the Piston trials. It wasn’t as if we reported huge variations in the readings on the external system. We changed some numbers by fractions. Fractions only. Ben knew this version of the artificial kidney could work. It would save his life. And my mother’s. You have to understand. My mother had been ill for so many years and Ben was so dependent on dialysis. He was determined to make it work. But Tom Connaught was going to expose us. Ben couldn’t go back to prison. He’d die there. So I called Tom Connaught and told him that I would give him all the faked test results. I told him to meet me behind the Van Buren Medical Center. When he came I was too scared at first to shoot him. But Ben would have been furious with me if I didn’t do it. Just before Tom showed up, I got down on my knees and prayed for forgiveness for what I was about to do.

Shipley: Were you praying when you shot Mr. Connaught? Were you on your knees? Please answer the question out loud, Miss. Nodding your head can’t be picked up on the tape recorder.

Scott: Yes. I was kneeling when I shot Tom.

Shipley: And what happened after that?

Scott: Kate Monahan showed up and made things worse. I knew Tom had documents from my hard drive in his apartment and I had to get them. I used an old building key and got in. Kate Monahan was there, but I only hit her. Hit her hard. I should have killed her too, right then.

Shipley: Did you help Mr. Tucker?

Scott: Doctor Tucker. And yes, I helped him. I loved him. I would do anything for him. When you love someone, you help them. No one ever helped me.

Shipley: How did you help Doctor Tucker?

Scott: I gave them the drugs. I helped Ben operate. But it didn’t work. They both died.

Shipley: Who died?

Scott: Dr. Francis and my mother. Ben decided it would help with the research if we used the artificial kidney on a healthy patient and an aging, ill one. Dr. Francis stayed alive for seven days. My mother died on the operating table.

Shipley: Were you going to help operate on Kate Monahan?

Scott: Yes. It was my job to keep her paralyzed and wait for Ben. He was late coming. I couldn’t keep her on the table and she got away. Ben never came. And now he’s dead.

Before I left New York, Cleve and I, and the senior management team spent several days on more damage control. Big time damage control this time. We talked to analysts, bankers, clients, and employees.

Sandra Melnick, our VP Operations stepped up to the plate for us. I admired her skill and level thinking in times of a crisis. She spent time with the big honchos at the FDA. Explaining what had happened. Trying to clear our company’s name.

We talked with analysts until we were blue in the face. I stopped returning their calls on Friday, sick of their unrelated questions and demands for information. We owned up to the criminal activity that had happened. We explained that those guilty were no longer with the company. We hoped that shareholders could see their way to trusting the board of directors and senior management when we committed to coming clean on everything. But analysts were like gossip columnists. They wanted information that couldn’t possibly relate to their making a recommendation on whether or not someone should buy, hold or sell our shares.

Our stock took a shit-kicking. It started in a nose-dive after Portia Wellington wrote a somewhat speculative story in the Wall Street Journal on Monday, after talking to me the day before. The headline went something like this: Can a Company Survive Murder and the Loss of its Visionary? That little story cost us a dollar per share. So by close of business on Monday, the shares were trading around $6.00. By Wednesday, when news hit the street that the ‘Visionary’s’ replacement had survived an attempt on her life, and one of the company’s vice-presidents was charged by New York’s finest with attempted murder of the said replacement, the shares dropped another two dollars.

When the market opened on Thursday morning, there were only sell orders out there and we watched in horror during the day as the shares went from $4.00 and closed at $2.85. In four days the shares had lost about $4.15 in value. Three weeks ago, the ten million outstanding shares of Phoenix were worth, on paper, $73,500,000. Now they were worth $28,500,000. My thirty-three percent was now around $9,000,000.

Numbers that made me gasp.

By Friday morning, there was a little reprieve, and the shares opened at $3.50. There were more buy orders than the day before, and one of the major analysts came out with a hold recommendation. Meaning don’t sell. Thank you very much.

And then Dr. Bill Pritchard, bless him, helped. He had called me on Wednesday and we chatted quietly for about half an hour. I filled him in on what I knew at that point. He was very concerned about me. I assured him that I was no worse for the wear, so to speak. He called me again on Thursday afternoon.

“Kate.” We were on a first name basis now. I liked it.

“Bill. How are you?”

“I’m doing fine for an old fella. Meet me for a beverage at the Blue Square Tavern?”

“Okay.” I could do with a change of scenery.

“And bring your lawyer.” Uh-oh.

“All right…”

“Not to worry dear. I have something I want to run by you.”

Cleve was impressed with the Blue Square Tavern. Said it reminded him of a pub he used to frequent off Queen Street when he was at Osgoode Law School.

Dr. Pritchard was waiting for us at a table near the back. A middle-aged woman sat with him. I introduced Cleve, and Bill introduced Christina Dickson, his corporate counsel from a Wall Street law firm. Christina was tall, probably close to six feet, with beautiful auburn hair that fell in waves to her shoulders.

We sat and made small talk while we waited for our drinks. Christina, please call me Tina, was drinking scotch, straight up, with a twist of lemon. Bill ordered bourbon and an extra glass of ice. Cleve asked the waitress for a large draft beer, and I ordered my usual, Diet Coke. After we each had an obligatory sip of our drinks, Bill placed his hands on the table.

“Let’s get down to business. I wanted to let you know that I’m going to be putting out a buy order for your shares.”

I looked at Cleve, and he nodded.

“What your company has been through in the last month because of a couple of no good criminals, is, well, criminal.” Bill smiled a little.

“I know you might think that I was rash in what I did. Cancelling the contracts with Phoenix. But based on the information I had at the time, it was a good business decision.”

In hindsight, I agreed with him. About it being a business decision.

“But I’ve been doing a lot of thinking in the last few days. Before all of this happened, Global Devices had a good working relationship with Phoenix. Tom Connaught was a man who I admired. God rest his soul.”

We all nodded.

“And Jordan Francis. We’re going to miss him. I admit to being so relieved when I found out he wasn’t in the middle of this mess that I cried.” Bill paused and sipped his drink. “I spoke with the FDA today. We’ve got a long way to go to get back in their good books, but with the help of some of our clients, I think we can restore their confidence.”

“We’re talking to them too,” I put in.

“For Global Devices to be successful, we need successful partners. Like Phoenix. We want to do business with you, again. So, I’m going to put my money where my mouth is. We’ll buy up a truckload of your shares.” He smiled a little. “You must admit, they’re selling at a good price right now.”

“How many shares are you thinking of buying up?” Cleve asked.

“Whatever five million dollars will get me.” So more than a million shares.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said. And I meant it.

We went on to discuss what we needed to do to reinstate our business relationship. The next morning, Bill held a small press conference and announced his intentions about acquiring the shares and talked about his confidence in Phoenix Technologies. Within the hour, our shares were up a dollar, trading at $4.50. When the markets closed at the end of the day, the shares were at about $4.75. There were more buy orders out there than sell orders, which was a good sign.

chapter sixty-two

We did a lot of hand-holding with the employees and shareholders. The senior management team had a communication plan drafted before the sun came up on Wednesday. The plan called for an all-employee meeting at noon on Thursday. Before that meeting though Steve set up conference calls and one-on-one meetings for myself and our chief financial officer with analysts and bankers.

On the employee side, Sandra and I talked to everyone in person, by video conference or by webcast about the situation: what we knew as fact, what were rumours, and how the Company planned on weathering this storm.

After the first employee meeting held in our large boardroom, Jenn Ludlow sought me out. I saw her pushing her way through the crowd of people who were standing four deep around the large table. Her jet black hair covered half her face and she had about fifteen studs in the one ear that was not covered by her hair. She was smiling, as usual.

She stood in front of me and said my name. “Kate.”

“Jenn,” I answered her. We both smiled. She held out her arms and made a ‘come here’ motion with her hands. I didn’t move quick enough for her so she stepped up to me and wrapped me in a big hug. I winced and groaned inwardly, wondering how long broken ribs take to heal. I hugged her back.

“I am so glad that dickhead is dead,” she said quietly in my ear. We broke the hug and stood apart. “You know, Mr. Shit for Brains. Ben Tucker. What an asshole.”

I couldn’t disagree.

“And,” she said in a low voice, “I always knew there was something wrong with Natalie Scott. I just couldn’t pinpoint it.” She clapped her hands once, loudly. “So, are you okay? Do you need me to kick some ass?” She laughed, and leaned closer. “And, have you seen that gorgeous hunk of bodyguard, Michael? I mean, take a good look, because he’s about to come off the market, if you know what I mean! Who would have thought I’d fall for a straight-as-an-arrow type?”

I shrugged my shoulders. Who would have thought?

“Call me if you need anything,” she told me, again. “Catch you on the flip side.” And she was gone, into the crowd.

Muskoka chairs are built for one person, but I’m small so two of us fit just nicely into one. I was curled up on Jay’s lap and we were watching the sun go down over Georgian Bay. My ribs were healing and the other aches and pains had gradually left. Daily swims and hour long back floats in the lake had helped. Jay joined me today after a long week of separation. His job had kept him in New York and I had needed some time. To myself. To think.

And now I didn’t want to think any more. For a while anyway. It felt so good to be held by Jay and to feel his body next to mine.

“I’ve made some decisions,” I said, “but I need your input before they become official decisions.”

I was pretty proud of myself, thinking of someone other than myself, for once. I needed Jay to be okay with what I wanted to do.

“Sure. Fire away. I’d be glad to offer input, at no charge.”

“I think I want to stay at Phoenix. It’s a good company. And good people. I think Tommy would want me to stay.”

“I agree. It’s your company. You need to do whatever you think is necessary.”

“Why are you always so agreeable?” I smiled up at him.

“Because lately, you make it easy.” He smiled back. I knew he was teasing. “What other decisions have you made?”

“Well, if I stay at Phoenix, it’ll have to be in New York.” Jay nodded. “I want to sell Tommy’s apartment and get our own.”

“Agreed.”

“So, this living together is something you want to continue?”

“No. Not necessarily.”

My stomach sank. And here I thought everything was close to perfect. I gulped.

“No?”

“I’m okay with the way things have been the last couple of weeks,” Jay said. “But…”

I sat up from where I had been curled against his chest and turned to him.

“But what?” I asked indignantly.

“Hey, easy girl,” he teased. “Let me finish. I was going to say that I’m okay with the way things have been but it would be better if we were married.”

The long pause that followed was Kate Monahan, finally speechless.