Judgement by Fire

by Lydia Grace

  “It’s chilly in here now, you must be freezing. Why not bring your coffee back to bed?” she suggested, drinking deep of the rich, sweet liquid in her own cup.

  Jon cocked one eyebrow, his gaze taking in the delicate curve of her breasts where the blankets had slipped down to reveal her nakedness.

  “I really don’t think that’s a good idea. Or at least, it’s a very good idea, but I have to get back to Toronto for a meeting with Warren. If I come any closer to that bed, it’ll be very, very late before I get to the city, and he’ll probably get worried and have Chief Ohmer and all his officers hammering on your door looking for me.”

  Lauren grinned at him then her look turned serious. “Jon, what’s going to happen now? I’m sure, in some way that everything that’s happened…well, it seems like it’s got personal. As though whoever has been behind everything has somehow decided to focus on you, now.”

  “What do you mean?” a puzzled frown creased the skin between Jon’s eyes.

  “I mean that whatever was happening with the company, it seems like it had a different motivation, was somehow less personal, and now the agenda’s changed. I mean that whoever ran me off the road more than likely thought it was you, not me, in that fancy truck of yours.”

  Jon had already had the same thoughts, but he was amazed that she should come to this conclusion so quickly. After all, Lauren didn’t know that after he’d left her with Paul, he’d gone immediately to the police station and shown the damaged Jeep to Mike Ohmer. The Chief had agreed that the marks on the vehicle looked suspiciously like those that would result from a hit-and-run accident, and forensic experts from Toronto had already been on their way to collect the Jeep and to examine the scrapes with their fragments of dark fabric. Carefully, not wanting to frighten Lauren further, Jon explained what had happened and how he and the Chief thought that Jeep was the one used to run down Pippa Williams. Only upper echelon staff at Rush Co. had such easy access to company vehicles, he’d added bleakly.

  “I had one of the mechanics drive down with another Jeep for me to use. That’s the one we drove home in last night,” he concluded, his face drawn as he watched the fear seep over Lauren’s face and rob her cheeks of color.

  She’d laid aside the coffee mug and the plate. Now she grabbed Jon’s arms, her eyes wide with anxiety.

  “Stay here, Jon, Stay here with me. Let your friend Warren and the police do the rest of the work, get this sorted out, and catch whoever’s responsible. You don’t have to go back out there. Anything could happen.”

  Gently he gathered her in his arms, soothing her. Then he rocked back on his heels, holding her away from him so that he could look into her face.

  “I have to go, Lauren. Warren called me on my mobile this morning. That’s how I came to be up and about. Pippa Williams has regained consciousness and whatever it is she has told Warren, he wants me to hear it directly from her.”

  “Lauren, this company was my father’s. He came from nothing. He took his instincts and his brains and built Rush Co. to what it is today. There are a lot of people who depend on us, not just my employees and their families, but our suppliers and subsidiaries, their employees and families…What I’m saying is I won’t stand by and let this company be destroyed. I won’t let my father’s memory be destroyed.”

  “And what about you, Jon? What if you’re destroyed?” her voice was tiny, cut through with threads of anger, but her gaze was wide with fear for him. Jon sighed.

  “Just before I met you, Warren accused me of shutting my eyes to the facts in front of my nose. He said I was sitting back and letting the company be destroyed. And he was right. I wasn’t taking any action, wasn’t facing up to what was going on. And look what’s happened; my inaction has led directly to Pippa Williams’ hospital bed. And to your work being destroyed, your life put at risk. My God, Lauren, can you imagine how I would feel if anything happened to you? I have to go. I have to stop this thing now.”

  The anguish in his voice seared her heart, but the courage on his face and the love that lit his eyes took her fear and anger away. Scrambling to her knees, she pulled him into her arms, kissing him deeply before holding him still and close. Then she let him go with a final brief kiss, telling him to go and do what must be done, but to come back to her when it was over. She’d be waiting.

  They didn’t speak again as Jon dressed quickly. Lauren dragged on her own flannel shirt and jeans and poured them both more coffee. After he’d drained the mug, he pulled on his jacket and parka and started to leave, but he paused at the door and turned to her.

  “I already called Chief Ohmer to tell him I’m leaving and you’ll be alone here. I asked him to send a car over. Don’t let anyone you don’t know in, Lauren. Keep the doors locked.”

  “God, you sound like my mother,” she teased him, and he grinned. But the look he gave her before he left was filled with love and longing, and when he was gone, Lauren’s brave smile slipped from her face and she wrapped her arms around herself and wept.

  *

  “I’m sorry, Dad. I guess I’ve screwed this all up, too. You said I wasn’t much good, said it ran in our side of the family,” the man kneeling at the graveside choked on sobs which racked his body. “Mom, I wanted to make you so proud of me, wanted to be somebody, because I know you thought Dad had let you down. That’s why you died so soon, isn’t it? And nobody helped us, least of all Uncle Jonathon.” Silently, he laid the huge bouquet of yellow roses on the grave, then stood and wiped the tears from his face. “Well, it’s over now. By tonight they’ll have paid their dues, too.”

  Then he straightened shoulders that stooped in a parody of prayer, and turned away from the grave as the early morning sun picked out the names carved on the stone: Mary Margaret Rush, nee Wallace, and her beloved husband, Stephen Rush, Sr.

  *

  What is it about hospitals that make them all seem the same? Jon wondered as he strode through the automatic doors into the big Toronto hospital where Pippa Williams was being cared for.

  He’d managed earlier to slip into his office in the Rush Co. building and change out of the crumpled clothes he’d worn all the previous day and then again this morning. He always kept a variety of fresh clothes and toiletries in his office suite, never knowing when business might require him to jet off to some distant locale.

  A few days ago he’d wondered why he was involving himself so closely in what was really quite a small project for the mighty Rush Co. Now he realized that even then, although he hadn’t admitted it to himself, he had been irresistibly drawn to Lauren Stephens from the very first time they met. An aftershock of pure pleasure shivered through him as he recalled the passion they’d shared, and visions of her lovely body, her face taut with delight as she hovered above him, lit by the soft golden light of the fire, winged across his mind in rapid, sensuous succession.

  Seeing the odd look a passing nurse gave him, Jon grinned at her and gave himself a strict order to keep to the business in hand. Yet those flighty little tremors kept on creeping up on him, and he knew he wouldn’t have it any other way.

  And his mind returned to the problem of his own involvement with Haverford Castle. Although it wasn’t a large enough project for the company president to be running errands on, it should certainly have occupied the time of the vice-president for Avalon Hospitality Inc., and chairperson of the Special Projects Committee, Stephen Rush. Yet Stephen had been missing for several days now.

  Jon had checked with Stephen’s department during his brief visit to the office this morning, and been told by an anxious-looking second in command, that there’d been no message from Stephen. When Jon had commiserated, commenting that the work Stephen should have been attending to must have been piling up, the other man had grimaced and said that there had been nothing that the other Mr. Rush would not have normally left to his deputy and staff. The man had looked embarrassed then, obviously unhappy at sounding so critical about his own boss to the company head. After all, his boss was
the company head’s cousin.

  Jon, however, had shown no hint of the anger that was building in him. Instead, he had put the man at his ease, complimented him on the job he was doing and assured him that if he needed further help, he could contact Jon’s administrative secretary, Cathy, and she would arrange things.

  Then he made a mental note to speak to Stephen and find out just how true those rumors were that he’d been hearing about his cousin’s lack of attention to work issues. A moth of unease was beating its wings against his brain, but the candle flame of an idea to which it was drawn was much too hot and bright for Jon to pull out into the open right now. He pushed the thought aside as he prepared to step into the private room where Pippa Williams lay.

  However, he was not allowed to keep this protective ignorance for very long. As soon as he stepped into the bright hospital room, he saw Warren slumped in a chair next to the bed where a small dark-haired woman was supported by a mound of pillows and the raised backrest.

  At his entry, the stocky Ontario Provincial Police woman officer stood up from the chair where she’d been sitting on guard, the magazine she’d been absently flipping through still clutched in her hands. Warren rose to introduce Jon to both the policewoman and to Pippa, who acknowledged their acquaintanceship with a slight smile.

  It was barely twenty-four hours since he’d last seen Warren, yet the deep lines of tiredness and strain that had appeared on his friend’s face took Jon aback. He was even more horrified by the obvious damage that Pippa Williams had suffered. Jon knew her slightly, as he had always made a point of knowing at least by name all the senior staff at Rush Co. He remembered her as a pretty, vivacious woman who took her work very seriously, but not so seriously that she had no life outside the office.

  Now she lay back against the pillows, no trace of that vivacity left in the weary way she slumped, obviously in pain and under the effects of medication. Her pretty features were swollen and discolored and her breathing rasped around the tubes inserted into her nose. The lower half of her body was encased in a plaster cast and an intravenous drip ticked steadily beside the bed as it emptied its life giving fluids and medication into her body through a catheter in her hand. Another machine, monitoring vital signs, hummed quietly on the far side of the bed.

  The awkward moment as Jon stood on the threshold, trying to absorb the shock of what he was seeing quickly dissipated as a middle-aged and competent looking nurse hurried into the room.

  “Ah, you must be the famous Mr. Rush we’ve all been expecting,” she said, her voice deep and attractive, the sort of voice that it wouldn’t be too bad to regain consciousness to, Jon thought idiotically.

  “Now, Miss Williams here is being an awkward patient on your account, young man,” the nurse continued. “You see, she’s pretty uncomfortable and needs her pain medication to get the rest she needs to get better. Isn’t that so, Pippa?” She addressed the woman on the bed. “But Miss Williams here, she tells us the medication makes her mind fuzzy, and Mr. Dillon and herself insist that she tell her story to Mr. Rush directly. She won’t hear of taking that medication until she’s talked to you…”

  Jon swallowed the emotion that had lodged in his throat, greatly moved by the loyalty that led this young woman choose to be in “discomfort” until she was able to carry out what she obviously saw as a duty. Quickly, Jon assured the nurse that this would be a brief interview.

  “You’re darned right it will be. I’ll be back in here in ten minutes. With a needle,” she told Pippa, and left, her soft soles swishing on the polished floor.

  Pippa must have seen the look on Jon’s face, sharp-eyed despite her condition, and she grinned. “Don’t think this is some big ‘loyalty to the firm’ self-sacrifice, Boss,” she told him, her voice dry and hoarse. “Tell you the truth; I want the bastard who did this to me caught. He ran me down like some stray dog who got in his way, left me there not knowing or caring if I was already dead or dying slowly and painfully in a snow bank. If that old woman, God bless her, hadn’t been watching out of the window and hadn’t had the presence of mind to call for help, I probably wouldn’t be talking to you today. Mind you, in this condition, I’m finding it hard to feel thankful, but I am blazing mad.”

  Jon nodded, understanding her reaction and the powerful role her anger had played in helping her cling to life. He moved towards the bed, sitting carefully on the edge of the mattress so as not to hurt her, and took Pippa’s free hand in his.

  “None of that negates the courage of what you’re doing, Pippa,” he said quietly, adding, “And believe me, we all want this guy caught.”

  However, Pippa’s reply shocked him, making him horribly aware again that that candle flame of an idea that his brain had refused to look at was burning ever closer to the surface. “Perhaps you won’t feel quite so positive when you hear this,” Pippa said, flicking a grave glance at Warren’s tense face before pulling her hand away from Jon’s as though wishing to distance herself from him.

  Taking a deep breath, afraid of what was coming, yet having to know, Jon said quietly, “I think you’d better explain, Pippa.”

  And she did. The young accountant told how, for several months now, there had been an increasing number of irreconcilable amounts withdrawn from the special projects committee budget and how a number of the research projects had been way over budget without any logical explanations being offered. She’d challenged the various people involved and they had disclaimed any knowledge of why such large amounts of money were going through the accounts without proper paperwork filed.

  Pippa, who had overall responsibility for the accounts in that department, had become very curious and very concerned. Concerned to the point where she had started examining the financial records of Avalon Hospitality Inc., the company division that had requested most of the special projects’ items that had been so suspect.

  Jon realized he was holding his breath in the silent room as Pippa continued her story.

  “It seems that, for more than a year, money has been being siphoned out of both the Avalon Hospitality accounts and the special projects research accounts. We’re not talking about peanuts here, either,” Pippa said her eyes wide and fixed on Jon’s face. “We’re into at least seven figures, I’d imagine. You see, it’s not just that non-existent projects have been funded and genuine projects have been massively overpriced. In some cases, supplies have been ordered, invoiced, and marked ‘paid’, but then cancelled before delivery could take place. Yet the payment checks have still been drawn and the companies involved claim never to have received any cash because the orders were cancelled. Several were annoyed enough to bawl me out over the phone about the last minute cancellations which fouled up their planning. There have been instances where building supplies have been ordered and paid for through the Rush Co. accounts, but delivered to sites in Markham that certainly aren’t on the books as being owned by, or anything to do with, Rush Co., Avalon Hospitality, or any other company division that I could locate.”

  Pippa paused for breath, and Warren leaned over to offer her a sip of water from a glass at the bedside. John winced as he saw that the only way the young woman could take the liquid was through a drinking straw and the act of swallowing seemed to cause her as much pain as the water brought refreshment.

  “I had all kinds of notes, computer discs, and documents in my briefcase, and I was going to spend the weekend going over everything. Then on Monday, I was going to contact all the people involved, all the suppliers and so on, to see if I could verify the source of the orders and cancellations. Because the source of these orders has to also be the sinkhole into which all this money is being siphoned. I understand my briefcase was taken in the accident,” Pippa said, bitterness lacing her voice on the word “accident”.

  Jon nodded, and Pippa went on, pain making her voice urgent, “I think it might be a fair bet to say that those records have been destroyed, along with the originals at the company. But you see one thing they taught us in acco
untancy school was never to take chances with documentation. I made two copies of everything—one I was taking home with me, and the other I stashed in a big envelope in my secretary’s stationary cupboard. It’s in a box with packets of copier paper, and I hope to God that that madman hasn’t found it and destroyed it, too.”

  Pippa fell silent then, and Jon was racked with guilt because he could only guess at what this interview had cost her. And he knew, with sudden insight, why Warren had insisted that Pippa tell him her story directly. There was one more thing, and he had to ask, although every fiber of his being was crying out against it.

  “You know, don’t you, Pippa. You know who’s at the bottom of all this.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement, and the three people in the room all looked at Jon as they heard the pain in his voice.

  Pippa swallowed. She knew he’d guessed and was grateful for that. However, she also knew that Jon Rush’s belief in loyalty was legendary, and that he had inherited his father’s deep pride in family bonds. Even though he knew, she saw with stunning clarity that, when she said the words aloud, Jon Rush would be pierced to the core.

  “Let’s get this over, Mr. Rush. I’m in pain and I’d like that nice nurse to come in and stick that needle in my rear and let me have a few hours’ of pain-free oblivion; time when I don’t need to think. I phoned Warren for an interview because of my suspicions, and those suspicions were confirmed when I saw that big black Jeep driving straight at me. As it passed a streetlight, I saw the man behind the steering wheel, and even though it was only a split second, I recognized him.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Rush. Your cousin Stephen Rush tried to kill me. He’s the one.”

  Chapter 14

  He didn’t know how he had managed to keep on walking, talking, functioning, not with this awful wound to his heart. Yet he did. At least on the surface.

  Somehow, he managed to conclude the interview with Pippa, gently wishing her a speedy recovery and thanking her for her help, even though the words of thanks almost choked him. For if Pippa was right, a whole part of his life was a hollow sham. His loyalty to family, something he had learned at his father’s knee and sworn at his father’s graveside, was empty. Worse than that, it had threatened to destroy everything he held dear. Jon wasn’t at all sure, through the numbness that shrouded him, that some part of him hadn’t already been destroyed.