The Aspen Account (28 page)

“Doesn’t that breach your independence?” Lucas asked.

“You let me worry about my professional obligations,” Michael said coldly. “Besides, I’m tired of working for Cooley and White. A new job with X-Tronic would be very attractive to me.”

Lance smiled. “You want us to make you rich while also grooming you for an executive position. Perhaps I’ve underestimated your ambitions, Michael. When I first met you, I thought you were just another accountant.”

“And I thought you were just another rich kid that had gone to Harvard to learn how to count all his money,” Michael replied. “Now, do we have a deal?”

Lance took another puff from the pipe. “Yeah,” he said, looking out at the clearing. “We can reach an agreement like that.”

“Don’t you have to discuss it with your father?” Michael asked, disbelieving the twins’ initial response.

“My God!” Lucas remarked. “You really don’t know what you’ve discovered, do you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Our father’s not part of this,” Lance answered. “He’s an old man and knows nothing about X-Tronic these days. The poor fool still thinks he’s leading a healthy corporation. If it wasn’t for the work Lucas and I have done these past few years, the whole world would know how much trouble X-Tronic is in.”

The revelation hit Michael like a concrete truck. “What! I thought your father was overseeing all of X-Tronic’s dealings. Who the hell’s in charge of all this?”

Lance laughed. “Someone you haven’t met. Have another toke and think about it for a second. See if you can guess.”

Michael took the pipe, put it to his lips with a shaking hand, and pretended to inhale. He turned away from the brothers, looking down the mountain, hoping they would trust him.

His mind raced as he began assembling all the pieces. Everything that Glazier and he had concluded about the conspiracy relied on the premise that Don Seaton, with Falcon’s help, was the mastermind behind the fraud. But now, as he concentrated on the motivation to inflate X-Tronic’s financial numbers, the desires of the twins to gain complete control of their father’s company, and the ramifications should the fraud be revealed to the public, he realized—for the first time—that there was another possibility. A sudden fear struck him as he realized how big the conspiracy really was.

Suddenly, his eyes caught a quick movement in the reflection of the silver pipe. He spun around as his left hand pulled up one of his ski poles. The pole rose just enough to block the metal baton that Lucas swung at his head. Michael’s movements were limited because of his attached skis, but he managed to reach upward with his free hand and grab the front of Lucas’s neck with his gloved hand. Screeching, Lucas lunged into him. Michael’s body inched toward the edge until he could feel himself beginning to fall. As he slipped over the edge, he kept a strong grip on Lucas’s neck, and they both toppled over the edge. 

46

MICHAEL’S FACE WAS pressed into the snow, and he could feel a surge of pain somewhere in his upper back. Gradually his body began to work, his arms pushing him up onto his knees. A swooshing sound came from the trees somewhere above him. It took him a few seconds to register where he was, that Lucas had tried to kill him, that he had fallen over the cliff. Looking up, he studied the rock face from which he and Lucas had fallen. Then he noticed the swooshing sound again, coming and going as if trying to torment him. Invisible swooshing, pounding inside his head while the rest of the world was silent. Only this one sound existed. Then he remembered that Lance had not fallen over the side with Lucas and him. The swooshing, closer now, was Lance, skiing around the drop-off to aid his brother.

His brother!
Michael looked around frantically before spying him, lying some forty feet away. Lucas! How had he managed to land so far away when they both had fallen from the same place? Staggering to his feet, he fought the stabbing pain in his back as he slogged through the deep snow. Reaching Lucas’s inert form, he grabbed a shoulder and turned him so that he was no longer facedown in the snow. But turning him over, he felt the unnatural limpness and strange angle of the neck.

Feeling suddenly sick, Michael backed away from the body. He looked around the area and spotted the scattered skis and poles. The swooshing sound coming through the trees above him grew steadily louder; he didn’t have much time. Hurriedly he gathered his gear and struggled frantically to reattach his skis. The deep snow fought him, keeping him from clipping his boots into the bindings. The swoosh magnified into a roaring in his ear as he panicked, cursing the uncooperative bindings. He prayed they hadn’t been damaged in the fall. He could see color in the trees, moving like a phantom, gliding through the snow, growing closer. Finally he heard and felt his first binding engage. Standing on one ski, he could now get some leverage, and he shoved downward—and was in. Lowering his head and taking a deep breath, he stabbed his poles into the snow and lunged forward with all his strength. Moving fast along the snow, away from the base of the cliff, he disappeared into the thick trees down the mountain just as he saw Lance jump a small ledge and blaze toward the cliff base.

Michael skied as fast as he could, desperate to get through the trees and off Vail Mountain. He had been moving for perhaps ten seconds when a scream floated down from the trees behind him. Lance had just found his brother’s body.

Picking up speed, Michael darted toward a sliver of sunlight that showed the open trail beyond the trees. He ducked a mat of low-hanging branches and shot down into a small ravine before rising toward a mound at the edge of the trees. As he came to the jump, he exploded from the trees into an open trail thronged with dozens of skiers. Waving his arms frantically for balance as he flew through the air, he hit the ground hard and immediately began stabbing his poles into the snow like an Olympic skier racing for the finish line. He was afraid Lance might come after him. The twin was the better skier, and it would have been easy to follow his tracks through the woods.

He had to catch two lifts before making it back to the front of the mountain. Eventually he made it to the final run approaching Vail Village. He rushed down with a wave of skiers, hoping to lose himself in the crowd. As he left the slopes, he skied past the standing ski racks, almost to the sidewalk, and there unclipped his skis, tossed his poles next to them, and shucked off his red coat. He didn’t know what Lance was capable of, but he wasn’t taking any chances in case his description made its way to an emergency dispatcher. For all Michael knew, he was now a hunted man—wanted for killing the son of one of the most influential people in Colorado. 

Moving through Vail Village, he entered a sporting shop, took off his ski boots, and bought hiking boots, a blue Denver Broncos jacket, and a gray ski cap he could pull down low over his head. He struck up a conversation with some college girls walking toward the east parking garage and ended up getting them to drop him in Breckenridge on their way back to Boulder. In Breckenridge he sent an e-mail to Glazier from a cyber café and then used his Department of the Treasury credit card to rent a Volvo S60. Leaving town, he turned west on Interstate 70 and headed deeper into the Rocky Mountains. He needed to make it to Aspen as soon as possible.

47

MICHAEL EXITED FROM I-70 at Glenwood Springs. The interstate had taken him halfway to Aspen; the rest of the journey would be through mountain back highways. The sun had set, and a giant moon slowly rose over the peaks rimming the steep canyon he had just passed through. Isolated lights of scattered houses dotted the hillsides above the mountain town.

He pulled into a BP gas station nestled close to the highway. As he filled up, he leaned against the Volvo’s trunk and looked along the quiet Main Street, lined with a small grocery store, a fly-fishing shop, and a one-name law office. But an unnerving feeling overcame him when he saw a police cruiser creep by the gas station. Its tires crunched the snow as it turned in and stopped at the pump opposite Michael’s. The engine idled powerfully, then went dead. As the officer got out, Michael turned his face away, feigning a sudden interest in the gas pump handle. He didn’t know if Lance had reported him to the authorities, but his instincts told him to avoid any attention. He watched in the reflection of his car window as the officer worked the gas pump.

The radio at his shoulder spat out occasional chatter: somewhere a patrol car was setting up a DUI checkpoint targeting spring breakers in the area. Michael recalled that Colorado had three times as many DUI arrests in March as in any other month, because of college students flooding the ski resorts during semester recess.

“Hear about that storm coming in?”

Michael cringed when he heard the officer address him. He forced a smile and turned toward the man, a broad-shouldered veteran with a square jaw and eyes that seemed to miss little.

“Storm?” Michael replied, shaking his head. “Nah, haven’t heard.”

“Yep, big ’un, crossing over the mountains from the east—and it’s moving fast. Should be here in a couple hours. Denver got hit hard. Beating the hell out of the Front Range right now. I-Seventy’s closed east of the Eisenhower Tunnel. Sixty inches in some places—hope you’re not going east!”

“Nope. Heading west to Grand Junction,” he lied.

“Should be okay, then,” the officer smiled, as if pleased to have helped him avoid a serious mistake.

The gas hose clicked as it stopped fueling the Volvo, and Michael replaced the nozzle on the pump. Even though a cold burst of wind had just brushed his face, he could feel a layer of sweat forming on his back. He walked past the police cruiser and headed inside. He wanted to leave as soon as possible. The policeman’s presence was nerve-racking, but he couldn’t risk paying at the pump with plastic in case people were looking for him.

He entered the store and proceeded to the checkout. An old woman in an orange sweatshirt sat behind the counter reading a Hollywood gossip magazine. She looked up at him with tired eyes.

“I’m sorry, honey—didn’t realize you were there,” she said. “Old age is blurring my eyes, I’m afraid.”

He smiled as he waited for her to ring him up. She moved slowly, taking an eternity to press the keys. She paused midway to ask him a question that he didn’t register, and he mumbled a forgettable reply.
Hurry the hell up!
he thought, smiling at her.
You’re killing me.

When she had finally finished, he turned to leave. Outside, he noticed that the police officer had disappeared, though the cruiser was still waiting next to his rental. The restroom, he remembered, was around back. He walked across the lot, praying that his paranoia was unfounded, that his instincts were wrong. Snow flurries spun and wafted lightly in the air, not really falling so much as circling his face, a teasing prelude to the approaching storm. He was just ten feet from his car. A few more seconds, and he would be gone.

“STOP RIGHT THERE! PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR AND SLOWLY TURN AROUND! SLOWLY!”

Michael’s heart raced. He turned slowly around to see the officer hiding in the shadows at the side of the gas station, his gun drawn and pointed at Michael’s chest.

“Easy, now,” Michael said calmly.

“MICHAEL CHAPMAN! YOU’RE WANTED FOR THE MURDER OF LUCAS SEATON. SLOWLY KNEEL ON THE GROUND AND GET DOWN ON YOUR STOMACH!”

“Easy, now,” Michael repeated.

“NOW!”

Michael could see the shocked face of the clerk staring out through the window, her magazine forgotten. He sank to his knees in the snow and lay on his stomach against the cold, grease-stained concrete. He turned his head sideways to speak to the officer.

“I’m a federal agent,” he said. “Radio your captain and have him contact the deputy secretary’s office at the Treasury Department in Washington. They will confirm my status.”

“You have the right to remain silent,” the officer began, moving cautiously toward him.

“God damn it, are you listening to me? I’m a federal agent, and I—”

“I don’t care if you’re the president of the United States—there’s a warrant for your arrest in connection to the murder of a Lucas Seaton. Boy, do you even realize you have been the target of a statewide manhunt for the past two hours?”

“Just be careful with that sidearm, Officer. ‘
Always remember your surroundings when securing a suspect with a fire-strike weapon
’—isn’t that what they taught us? I’m not sure your range instructor from the academy would approve if you discharged your weapon over several thousand gallons of gasoline.”

The officer seemed a little taken aback by Michael’s rote recitation of the firing safety language from cadet school. “If you really are a federal agent, you’ll have no trouble clearing this up at the station.”

“I’m undercover. I have powerful enemies and can’t risk resurfacing.”

“Son, I’m taking you in whether you like it or not.”

Michael turned his face back down to the concrete. He closed his eyes and listened intently, focusing on the distance and direction of every sound, imagining the world beyond his sight. He knew the procedures the officer would follow in securing a suspect: kneeling on his back while temporarily holstering the firearm to get out the handcuffs. He knew the timing of the procedures. In Alabama he had learned them by heart.

The officer bent down and put one knee in his back. Michael would have a one-second window, maybe two, to make his move. He heard the rattle of the handcuffs coming off the officer’s belt . . . the soft slide of gunmetal against leather as he holstered his weapon. Michael levered himself sideways with his legs, which moved his body just enough to throw the man off balance. The officer punched him on the head, but the blow was ineffectual, scraping along his right temple. Michael spun on the ground and flipped the cop to his side. Frantic, the man made a clumsy effort to get his pistol out, but as he got his hands on the gun, Michael threw a hard back elbow into his groin, causing him to curl into a fetal position with a whimper. Cradling the man’s neck between forearm and biceps, he squeezed, and within three seconds the officer was unconscious.