Lucky Charm (36 page)

Ariel looked at him, his tension contagious.

She thought of all the offices across the country where she was scheduled to visit, taking in the scale of it. Thousands of investors, both large and small. Retirement funds. Investment accounts. They would use her company’s software to conceal what they did.

“How much money are we talking about?” she asked.

Matt looked at her, seeing in her eyes an understanding of the magnitude of the plot.

“Millions certainly, for the top people, perhaps even billions,” he said.

People had killed for much less.

“And when it collapses?” Ariel asked.

It would collapse, sooner or later the amount of money going in wouldn’t be able to support the money that went out.

Matt didn’t really have to answer.

They remembered Madoff and Stanford. There had been several suicides, thousands of investors large and small had lost a great deal of money. To some of the larger investors it would be painful. To the smaller ones who lost their entire life savings it would be devastating.

Her voice a whisper, Ariel looked at him. “Matt…”

Taking a breath, he nodded.

One of Madoff’s whistleblowers had feared for himself and his family, with reason.

They were sitting on a potential time bomb.

“There’s something else,” Matt said, switching screens on the computer to bring up a picture.

What appeared on the screen was a slightly nasty surprise, like touching something benign and getting a shock.

It was a face of sharp planes and angles. There was an emotionless flatness to it, an almost snakelike blankness to the cold, impersonal black eyes. In fact, there was a lot about that face that reminded Matt of a snake, from the pale skin to the angular features and almost lipless mouth, to the man’s silver-touched hair.

Tilting his head at the image, Matt held it up so Ariel could get a good look.

“Jonathan Lovell. Vice President of Security for Genesis. Darrin did a check on him.”

Matt’s voice had gone a lot deeper and there was a thrum of something very like worry beneath it.

There was too much Matt wasn’t hearing about Lovell. People were far too cautious when talking about him.

Tightening his arm, he looked at Ariel, hoping to impress her with his seriousness. “If you see him, even just a glimpse of him, get out and call me. No questions, no delay. Make a quick excuse and leave. Call me the instant you see him. No ifs ands or buts.”

Looking at the face in the picture, Ariel wouldn’t have been surprised to see a forked tongue flicker out of that picture like something from a Steven King novel.

Nor was he the only one she had to worry about.

It was impossible to miss the concern in Matthew’s eyes or voice. For her.

No ifs ands or buts. She nodded.

“So,” she asked. “What now?”

Just the thought of raising suspicions about Ariel sent a chill through Matt. They were already looking at her. He didn’t want to give them another reason to do so. Even if she quit, if they thought she knew something, Columbus wouldn’t be far enough away. Marathon had an office there, too.

“For you,” he said, “business as usual.”

And he would stay close, he thought, pulling her tightly against him.

“We need more proof,” he said. “These are powerful people with influential friends who don’t realize they’re being shafted.”

“And they won’t like hearing it from us,” Ariel said, softly.

“No, they won’t, and very likely they wouldn’t believe us if we tried to tell them.”

Genardi’s cell phone rang. The private, disposable one. The one he should have made disappear. His stomach in knots, Genardi looked at the caller ID. Unknown caller it said. Only one or two people with that designation had his number. Tom picked up the wireless handset rather than activating his Bluetooth headset, just as a precaution.

“Mr. Genardi,” said the voice on the phone flatly, “what is the latest on Mr. Morrison?”

Lovell.

There was an edge to Lovell’s voice.

Suddenly Tom felt like he was twelve years old again and in the Principal’s office. He’d hated that man. Or when his mother called him Thomas Allen, the way the old witch did when she’d been drinking too much and needed to put a whooping on someone or something. Usually him. He’d been an outlet for both his parents as a kid. Until he grew big enough and mean enough to put it back on them.

He went stiff as the hackles rose on the back of his neck. “There’s been nothing. No sign of him at all.”

The voice on the other end went much colder. “No, Mr. Genardi, the investigation. Some few days ago I suggested we learn a little bit more about Mr. Morrison. That was given to you to do. Have you done it?”

He had. It pissed him off to have this man ordering him around like some flunky. They had the same title, so he didn’t answer to Lovell or anybody. No one but the suits in the front office.

Except that he did.

“We talked to Parkhurst’s widow. She said he was some kind of glorified accountant, that’s what he’d gone to college for.”

A college boy.

There was silence on the other end of the line. “That’s all you did.”

“He’s an accountant, for Christ’s sake.”

“Apparently he’s a great deal more than that, Mr. Genardi. I’ve received a report from my own people. It was somewhat delayed by Mr. Morrison’s arrival.”

Now that voice was like an arctic breeze. It felt as if Genardi’s belly went cold and loose at that tone.

Genardi was wary. “Morrison was there?”

“Hmmm. Given the capabilities of Miss O’Donnell as regards the computer system and her seemingly inadvertent intrusion in the situation with Mr. Morrison in Birmingham, it was felt that perhaps some questions should be asked of her. It was Mr. Morrison who intervened. Whether they are actively working together or Mr. Morrison has become aware of your people is somewhat in question. The gentlemen in the front offices at Marathon, your company, are concerned.”

A cold chill settled deep in the pit of Genardi’s stomach. “Our information was that he was only some kind of glorified accountant.”

“You settled for that. He’s a great deal more. Now you tell me that after weeks of concerted effort to breach our security, he’s suddenly stopped?”

Leaning back in his chair, Genardi said, “He couldn’t go on forever, I thought he’d given up.”

“It seems unlikely, given his tenacity so far,” the other said. “Your own reports say Parkhurst was a friend. Perhaps he’s merely found a way in.”

“No one has seen him or heard from him since his attempt in Birmingham,” Genardi said.

“When the O’Donnell woman helped him leave the building. Perhaps she’s helping him enter.”

Slowly, Genardi sat up. “That’s easy enough to check. She’s scheduled to be at our Houston site come Monday.”

“Do that please, Mr. Genardi.”

For a minute there was silence on the other end and then suddenly the connection was severed.

Lovell swore, virulently and inventively, for several minutes. Then he asked his secretary to contact one of his investigators and request the man come to his office.

When the man arrived Lovell’s instructions were terse but clear.

“Patrick, I want everything there is to know about a Matthew Morrison. He went to college with a man named William Parkhurst, an ex-employee. I need the information ASAP. Ditto for Ariel O’Donnell.”

How the hell do you fight an enemy when you don’t know who he is
? Lovell considered, irate.

Genardi was a fool, lazy and incompetent.

Even the most simpleminded knew enough to know thine enemy. It was the only way to defeat them. One had only to consult Sun Tzu’s the Art of War to know this. Not Genardi. He’d taken appearance for fact. Lovell wasn’t that stupid. There was more to Morrison than met the eye. Lovell wanted to know what that was. This had gone on for far too long.

It was supposed to be simple. It had now become complicated. He should never have allowed Genardi to handle it. Or believed him when he’d said he had it under control.

The man was a thug.

Now Lovell would have to look into it himself and decide whether he would handle it himself as he’d handled the reporter and the SEC investigator.

For some it was money.

For the idealists there were accidents.

With all due apologies to the folks who lived in the city of Houston and loved it, Ariel looked around and couldn’t find much to recommend it. There might be pretty sections but none she’d seen so far. It seemed like one large suburb with some tall buildings thrown here and there and a cluster in the center. It was hot, humid and flat.

As a precaution they stayed in a different hotel during the weekend than the one she’d originally reserved in the hope that it might take the stooges a little longer to find them again. Whichever set of them that was. At least one worked for Marathon. Who the other was, they didn’t know but it was likely Genesis.

Meanwhile they played in the pool, talked endlessly and made love all weekend.

To prove conspiracy they needed more than one office.

Houston would be one of them.

Gary Crocker, the office manager, was a big, bluff man. A little pompous, he seemed more watchful and wary than Beatrice Miller but not too concerned, leaving promptly at five.

Getting Matthew in was as easy as in New Orleans. There was no sign yet that anyone suspected Ariel of anything.

Here again was an old-style computer room, large, with banks and racks where computer equipment had once stood, probably an AS 400 before the newer, smaller systems had been introduced. It was a sterile room with a smell that always spoke to Ariel of electronics and dust. Much of it was used for storage of old office furniture, boxes of old paper files that had been scanned but not destroyed.

The server was a fraction of the size of the one that once had filled the room and occupied a slot meant for something much bigger. Beside it was a large desk where two workstations sat, with keyboards and monitors for access.

It was the voices in the outer office that warned them. Voices where none should be and they were far too close. There was no time to prepare and virtually no place for Matt to hide.

Ariel froze, looked around and then at Matt. He nodded and moved nearly silently back among the racks. She quickly flipped her laptop mostly closed so it wouldn’t go into standby and then slid it back on the table behind the monitor. She prayed no one would see it or ask to see the screen and the files displayed there. That many files were just too much to fit on a flash drive. She quickly tucked the one she did have into her bra.

Looking up as if she’d just noticed the approaching voices, she smiled at Gary, the office manager. The man with him she didn’t know except from the pictures Matt had shown her, but she did know he had cold eyes in a cold face. He was a little on the tall side, broad in the shoulders, with a stocky muscular body beneath his business suit.

“Hello, Ariel,” Gary said, “this is Thomas Genardi, Vice President and Chief of Security for Marathon Corp.”

It was clear that Gary was nervous.

Matthew, listening from behind a bank of empty computer slots went still, crouched within the well of one of the old desks stored in the room. If they started to search, though, he’d have to consider taking the two men out.

He hoped Ariel had her poker face on. They’d been downloading files onto her laptop. If Genardi asked to see it and knew what it was he was seeing, their chances of getting out of here unscathed were a little slim. He wished he could see.

Smiling, Ariel held a hand out to Genardi.

Although she had a firm handshake, Genardi had a bone-crusher. She kept herself from wincing with an effort and saw something move in his eyes, some kind of shadow. He liked using it.