The Fifth Avenue Series Boxed Set (55 page)

There were none.
 
They had used both towels earlier that morning and they were now lying across the room in a wet heap.
 
The phone rang again.
 
Michael said, “Shit!,” and started to push open the glass separation.
 

“Do you want me to answer it?” she said.

“Jesus!” His hand jerked back and struck the shower door. “Leana?
 
What are you doing in here?
 
I thought you were asleep.
 
Christ, you scared me.”

The phone entered its third ring, began its fourth. The sound echoed in the large bathroom. “Can you get that?” he asked.

She was confused.
 
She was certain he was going to insist on answering it himself.
 
Had the lines somehow gotten crossed in the storm and she heard someone else’s conversation?
 
She couldn’t be sure, but she knew she’d heard that voice before.

The phone rang again.
 
Michael said tentatively, “Honey…?”

Leana reached for the phone, not sure what to expect.
 
The press had tracked them down earlier, but the front desk had been given specific instructions to screen all calls.
 
Mr. and Mrs. Archer did not wish to be disturbed by any member of the press.

Then who is calling? Nobody knows we’re here.

She answered the phone.
 
A man’s voice.
 
“Leana?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Harold.
 
Thank God, I found you.”

“Harold?”
 
She looked at Michael.
 
“Is something wrong?”

“You need to come home immediately.
  
Something terrible has happened.
 
Your parents need you.”

“Since when?”

Harold paused.
 
“It’s your sister, Leana.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

He entered her apartment not as guest, but as intruder.
 
It was an odd feeling and one he wasn’t comfortable with.
 
The woman, after all, was in love with him.

With the help of one of his crutches, Eric eased the door shut behind him and listened.
 
He was standing in the foyer of Diana’s apartment and he could hear a television playing in the distance.
 
It sounded as if it was coming from the kitchen.
 
Or from one of the rooms upstairs.

Was she home?
 
She said she would be out most of the day.
 
If you’re going to stay here, I’m going to have to buy food?
 
What do you want?

He made a list and she left.
 
It was then that he phoned Louis Ryan and left for their appointment.

He moved out of the foyer and into the living room, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror she had taped a list of his faults to.
 
He looked tense beneath the purplish bruises on his face, and if she was here, he knew she would notice and ask him what was wrong.

Calm down.

The living room was empty.
 
To his right was the winding staircase that led to the second-floor bedrooms and Diana’s office.
 
Eric looked up and called her name once, twice, but there was no reply.

The kitchen was at the end of a long hallway.
 
Awkwardly, he moved toward it, the rubber tips of his crutches catching on the carpet, the sound of the television growing louder.
 
There was no one in the dining room as he passed it.
 
He opened a door and saw that the bathroom was empty.

When he reached the kitchen’s closed swinging doors, he listened and heard not only the television, but also running water.
 
He closed his eyes.
 
She was home.
 
She was fucking home. Now what was he going to do?
 
Ryan wanted that information immediately.
 

He turned and looked back down the hallway, toward the living room.
 
For a moment, he considered sneaking into Diana’s office, locking the door behind him and getting the files Ryan needed.
 
But that would be stupid.
 
If Diana ever went to her office and learned what he was doing, his ass would be behind bars for the next twenty years.
 
He would have to wait and get the information later.

Parting the kitchen doors with his shoulder, he stepped through.

Tried to step through.

In front of the doors was an overturned bag of groceries, their contents spilled.
 
Eric looked around the room, saw a small wooden table on its side and another bag of groceries on the floor.
  
Alarmed, he went to the island that was in the center of the kitchen and turned off the running water—the television seemed to grow louder.
 
He looked at the screen, saw that she had it on CNN and clicked it off.
 
It wasn’t until he turned to look once more around the room that he saw the note stuck to the refrigerator.

He plucked it off.
 
In a hurried scrawl, she’d written these words:
 
“George called an emergency board meeting.
 
I don’t know when I’ll be home.
 
Call me immediately at the office.”

Eric read the note twice, wondering what had happened and why George would call an emergency board meeting on a Saturday afternoon.
 
He was tempted to call and ask her what was going on, but there was no time.
 
He dropped the note into a wastebasket and left the kitchen.

As fast as he could, he moved down the hallway toward the living room.
 
Leg throbbing, head aching, one single thought revolved in his mind:
 
The sooner Ryan has that information, the sooner that check is mine.

In the living room, he was faced with his first obstacle—the tall, winding staircase.

Eric looked up at it with dread and wondered how he would get to the top of it without falling and breaking his neck.
 
He took one stair at a time, moving carefully, his crutches slipping twice on the varnished wood.

By the time he reached the upper level, four minutes had passed and he was out of breath.
 
His forehead shimmered with perspiration and he wiped it off with the back of his hand.
 
Her office was through the door to his right.
 
Eric glanced at his watch and wondered how much longer she would be.
 
Hours?
 
Minutes?

He stepped into the sun-filled room.
 
File cabinets were along the wall to his left.
 
At his right were bookcases filled with law books.
 
On gleaming glass tables were computers, printers, telephones, fax machines and photocopiers.
 
The office was large, but it wasn’t overdone.
 
Like Diana, it was practical and efficient.
 
Essentially, it was a smaller version of her corner office at Redman International and Eric knew that everything she kept there, she had files of here.
 
For convenience.

He went to the computer that was in the center of the room.

As he sat in the leather chair and lowered his crutches to the floor, it occurred to him once more how ridiculous this was.
 
There was not one thing Eric didn’t know about the takeover of WestTex Incorporated.
 
He and Diana discussed it every day.
 
If Ryan had only listened to him, he now would have the information he needed confirmed.
 
But the man trusted no one.
 
He insisted on having hard copies of every file Eric could get his hands on—and Eric was in no position to argue.

He turned on the computer.
 
The screen flashed a message:
 
ENTER PASSWORD.

Eric opened the top drawer of Diana’s desk.
 
Inside, between two piles of neatly stacked papers, was an envelope slightly larger than the size of a credit card.
 
Eric removed the envelope and closed the drawer.
 
Inside, on a slip of paper, was Diana’s password, just where it had been a month ago, when his own computer died and he phoned to ask if he could come down to her apartment and finish the report on her computer.

Like his own, the machine was linked to Redman International’s main cluster of computers.
 
It was then that she’d shown him where she kept her password, a combination of twenty letters and numbers no one could remember.
 
Not even me
, Diana said.
 
And you know how good my memory is.

He entered the code, the screen winked and control of the computer became his.

His fingers danced over the keyboard.
 
He went to the menu, brought up the directory and hundreds of files began filling the screen.
 
The files he needed were halfway down the screen and listed in code.
 
If you knew it, the code was simple to understand.
 
Any file that began with an asterisk and ended with the letter “T” was a file that contained information on the takeover of WestTex Incorporated.

Although there were only twelve files, each one contained hundreds of pages of information—clearly too much to print out on Diana’s printer in the short amount of time he felt he had left.
 
And so Eric opened a side drawer and removed one of her flash drives.
 
He inserted it into the machine’s USB port and the computer buzzed, whirred and hummed.
 
He reached for the mouse that was on the pad to his right and moved the cursor to one of the files.
 
He clicked on the icon, dragged it to the drive icon—and a new message appeared:

TO COPY FILE *FA#IB!$S@*T

ENTER SECURITY CODE BETA

Eric stared at the screen in disbelief.
 
As an added security feature, Redman International changed their security codes every three months, which must have happened recently.
 
When he last had access to the system, it was code ALPHA.
 
Not BETA.
 
BETA hadn’t fucking existed.
 
Without a code to enter into the computer, he wouldn’t be able to transfer the files onto the disk.

There had to be a way around this.
 
The system was tight, but not airtight.

A thought occurred to him.
 
Whenever Redman International changed their security codes, an email was sent to employees giving them the option of coming up with their own security code, one they would have less trouble remembering.
 
The idea was that if they had gotten this far, they were indeed an employee of Redman International and so security became somewhat more lax.

The code could be anything they wished.
 
Eric wondered if Diana was anything like him and Celina, and just used her old code out of laziness.
 
He knew the code she gave him before was her middle name—Marie.
 
He entered it into the computer.

And the screen winked.

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