Echoes of Titanic (52 page)

“So should we go now or wait until Jocelyn returns?”

He thought for a moment. “I need to go to the purser's office first and retrieve our valuables. Hopefully, she will have returned by the time I get back.”

Adele nodded, praying it would be so. “I'll prepare the life vests for wear,” she told him.

“Dress warmly first, and then put on the life vest over your coat. Bring your hat and hand muff too. It's bitterly cold outside tonight. I'll be back soon.”

He opened the door and walked out, and as he did Adele could hear the increased noise level of the corridor.

Where was Jocelyn? Was she on her way back?

Feeling deeply unsettled, Adele decided to go and retrieve her. She rushed from the cabin but was stopped by a steward, who told her to don her life vest first.

“But I'm just going—”

“All passengers in life vests,” he repeated sternly, so she returned to the
room and quickly threw it on, still fastening it as she made her way through the crowds clogging the halls and the stairs, trying to get up to the place where she knew Jocelyn would be. The vest was bulky and cumbersome and felt quite uncomfortable, but Adele realized that nearly every person she passed was wearing theirs as well.

Despite the urgency, her trip was slow going. There were just so many people in the way. As she moved up the steps, she could tell that most of them had no idea what was going on. At every level, people were just standing around, wondering what they were supposed to do or where they were supposed to go. Others were grumbling and complaining about the lateness of the hour or the coldness of the night. Most were calm, but some seemed frantic. There seemed to be no order or reason, but at least there was no general panic. She pushed her way past as many people as she could until she reached the sitting area at the top landing.

Jocelyn wasn't there.

Opening the door to the outside deck, Adele pushed her way into the cold night. Her heart filled with joy as she finally spotted her cousin, off on the far side of the promenade beside a young man. They were both facing away from her, leaning over the rail, looking toward the bow of the ship. As she got closer, she saw the young man slip an arm around Jocelyn's waist, and in response Jocelyn looked up at him and smiled.

Things with this fellow were further along than Adele had realized!

Just as she was about to call out to her, the young man turned and Adele saw his face. The sight hit her like a punch to the stomach.

Tad.

The young man Jocelyn had met up with tonight was Tad.

K
elsey walked away from Cole's building in a daze, her feet pounding rhythmically against the pavement. Despite what had happened, she felt oddly calm and subdued, and she supposed that the full impact of the scene she'd just been through would hit her later. For now, she was simply numb—numb and empty and sad. Poor Cole. Poor her. As much as it felt as though the two of them were soul mates, it was clear they were not meant to be. Perhaps at some point they could revisit the situation one last time, just to make some final peace about it, but any hopes she'd had of Cole coming back into her life in a significant way were now gone. Maybe it was good that this had happened how it did and when it did. That ripping Band-Aid was a killer, but it was still preferable to the torturous alternative of a longer, more excruciating split.

Cole's new place was only about half a mile from Kelsey's own apartment, and once she was out on the street, heading down West Broadway toward Vesey, she considered running home to fix herself up and change into something nicer before going over to the office. After all, she would be addressing B & T's board of directors later this evening.

Then again, she thought as she checked her phone, it was nearly three o'clock, and the meeting with Lou and Walter would be starting at four. If she wanted to be ready in time, she needed to get on over there now. In the long run, if she couldn't save her company, what difference did it make whether she was in jeans or a suit tonight anyway? Decision made, when she
reached Vesey Street, she turned left, went one block and turned right on Church to angle her way down to Brennan & Tate.

As she went, she tried to regroup now that she would be heading into this situation alone, with no Cole-the-money-guy at her side, running the numbers and serving as her wingman. While she might not have his mathematical skills, she knew she'd be okay. She was far more savvy about investments, after all, and probably contracts too. The hardest part wasn't going into this alone. It was grasping the fact that for the first time in her experience, B & T was going to be sitting on the other side of a deal—the “for sale” side. That thought simply broke her heart.

If only she could locate the bonds!

At least she had a little time left. Whatever details were hammered out this afternoon, and regardless of any decisions made tonight, the sale itself would not go through until next week at the earliest. In the meantime, she would take an extremely close look at Strahan Realty Trust. Though she doubted it with every fiber of her being, Kelsey had to acknowledge there was at least a slight chance Cole and Flash were right about Lou's company being set up like some sort of Ponzi scheme.

Even if it turned out that they
were
right, this meeting she was about to head into was not a waste of time—at least not for her—because while Lou and Walter sat and hashed out specifics, she had plans to go and search for the bonds in Gloria's office. Ditto tonight with the board meeting. Kelsey would do whatever it would take to dig up those bonds—which had to be cashed in on Monday, the day after tomorrow, or they would expire and become worthless.

She made it to the office by three fifteen, and she went straight to the front door, not the back. Sneaking in at night with her father's code was one thing, but trying to pull the same stunt in the light of day—especially when she knew Walter would be coming in soon as well—would have been, at the very least, unwise. If the front desk was manned, she wouldn't need a code at all.

When she reached the front door, just as she'd hoped, she spotted someone there despite the fact that it was a Saturday. Even better, the person currently on duty was Ephraim, who buzzed her in the moment he spotted her through the glass entrance.

“Hey, Eph,” she said as she stepped inside. “I'm surprised to see you here on a Saturday. Are you guys still on a ramped-up security schedule because of last week?”

Ephraim stared at her strangely before answering. “Nope. We're on a ramped-up security schedule because of last night.”

“Oh?” She kept her expression blank as she continued across the wide lobby toward his desk.

“Yeah, it's the strangest thing. From what I hear, your pop is pretty incapacitated these days. And yet somehow he managed to get into the building anyway—and up five flights of stairs, no less. Amazing, isn't it?”

Kelsey hesitated before answering. “Wow. That is amazing. Have you told anyone else about this incredible development?”

He held her gaze for a long moment. “No. I reviewed the security footage from the fifth floor elevator bay and reception area and didn't see anything or anybody. Then I took a look around up there myself, in person. Considering that I couldn't find any signs of, uh, maliciousness or vandalism or anything like that, I figured it could wait until my Monday morning report for Mr. Hallerman. Doesn't seem to be any need to rush and let him know 'bout it today.”

She wanted to hug him, but instead she just gave a quick nod. “My father has always appreciated your loyalty to this firm and to our family.”

“Well, I hope your father—or somebody else in your family who happens to work here—will be able to straighten out this mess real soon and it won't matter anyway.” His expression was stern but loving.

“That's the plan,” she replied, forcing a smile. “Or, I guess I should say, that's the prayer, anyway.”

“Amen to that.”

With a grateful smile, she continued on to the elevator, took it to the fourth floor, and headed down the hallway toward her office. Despite being fully in the right, it felt odd to be here now, almost as if she were an intruder. Nevertheless, Walter knew she was coming in today, so at least she wasn't breaking his ridiculous rules at the moment.

Flipping on the lights, she stepped into the room and looked around, glad that nothing seemed amiss. Her favorite sweater still hung from the peg on the wall. The files she'd been working on Tuesday morning still sat neatly at the corner of her desk. It was almost as if she'd been gone ten minutes, not three days.

She couldn't believe so much had happened in such a short time.

Kelsey would have liked to process things a bit, mentally speaking, but she knew she couldn't dawdle. With less than forty-five minutes until she
was to meet up with Lou and Walter in Walter's office, she needed to get busy. Even without taking Cole's Ponzi theory into consideration, there was still more homework to do on the merger she would be proposing later tonight.

Her laptop was at home, so she flipped on her desktop computer instead. As it powered up she went to the file drawers on the far wall, her own personal archives. Digging through them, she pulled out all the paperwork she had ever acquired regarding Strahan Realty Trust. Besides the large original investment she had orchestrated five years ago, there had also been several small loans in the years since. Back at her desk, she signed into her computer and then pulled up the record of all payments—both loan repayments and dividend earnings—that B & T had ever received from Lou's company. She printed out that information and then returned her attention to the files she had taken from the drawer. Reaching for the earliest one, she flipped it open and began skimming through it, just to refresh her memory of the terms of their original agreement.

As she worked, it wasn't long before she came across the old investment analysis sheet Gloria had first given her to start the ball rolling. Unable to resist, Kelsey looked for the figures Cole had accused her of remembering incorrectly. She felt a surge of righteous indignation when she spotted them, two items in a list of specifics about the deal. First was the line that read,
Client commitments totaling $485,000
, followed by the one that said,
Personal investment totaling $950,000
.

She was right! Cole was the one with the faulty memory.

A part of her—the childish, vindictive part—wanted to scan a copy of that page and email it directly to him with the words “I told you so!” written in big block letters across the top. She didn't, of course, but just in case she ever had the opportunity to share that information with him in a less vindictive manner, she scanned it in anyway, feeling smug and guilty at the same time.

Returning to her work, she continued to review the files. Once she was finished, she went into her email and was relieved to see that Cole had sent over his reports, just as she'd hoped. They were attached to a brief note, one that said, simply:

Ouch. In just two short lines, he had managed to convey every ounce of his anger—and twist the knife a little further into her heart. Deeply saddened, she printed out the information he'd sent and was about to click out of her email when another message from Cole popped up. Opening it, she expected to see another attachment or two, but instead it was just a note, which read:

Kelsey stared at the screen for a long time. In a way, this second letter pained her even more than the first. Words of farewell said in anger seemed far less permanent somehow than those said with kindness.

Their relationship really was over.

With a heavy heart, she rose from her desk. It was almost time to go upstairs to meet with Lou and Walter, almost time to get the ball rolling. The success of scenario number two contained a lot of contingencies—it could work,
if
Lou wasn't running some elaborate scheme,
if
he and Walter could hammer out the specifics,
if
the board approved the deal,
if
Kelsey didn't find the bonds in the meantime—but at least laying the groundwork for a deal was better than doing nothing.

She headed to the printer, pulled off the pages Cole had sent to her, and took a moment to look through them. When she came to the last one, she did a double take. Like her, he had managed to dig out his old investment analysis sheet for Lou Strahan's business venture. His sheet also had a list of specifics about the deal, including client commitments and personal investment. Except his said,
Client commitments totaling $125,000
, and
Personal investment totaling $400,000
.