by Bryan Devore
“Jesus Christ, Troy!” Willis breathed. “Where do we think he is now?”
“We don’t know, sir. His last known location was in Glenwood Springs. God knows what’s happened to him in the past twenty-four hours. The authorities are saying he killed Lucas on the ski slopes in Vail.”
“Just like—”
“Right. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Revenge?”
Glazier shook his head. “He’d been working this case for months. It’s taken him over two years to get deep enough into the firm to get this assignment—he sure as shit wouldn’t jeopardize the investigation now.”
“Well, I would say it’s jeopardized now.”
“I never should have left Denver,” Glazier muttered. “I’m going back to Colorado tonight.” He turned to Shannon. “Have a chopper meet me on the roof, and have a jet waiting when I get to Andrews.”
“I’ll do what I can from here,” said Willis.
Glazier leaned back into the conference room to grab his case, then bolted for the elevators.
“Troy!” Shannon yelled at him, holding her cell phone to her ear. “All runways are currently closed in Denver. The entire mountain region is under a massive winter storm. They’re not letting any air traffic in. All flights have been grounded, and most of the highways are closed. No one’s getting in or out of the state.”
“Just have that jet ready. And tell the pilot he’s going to have to find a way to set us down in Denver—I don’t care if it’s on the damned interstate.”
“Troy!” the deputy secretary yelled after him.
Glazier turned to look at his boss.
“Do you think you know where he’s headed?”
Glazier nodded as the elevator doors slid open. “He was last spotted outside Glenwood Springs. I don’t know what happened to him in Vail, but I think he’s headed for Aspen—I think he’s going after Don Seaton!”
49
MICHAEL DROVE PAST the Aspen-Pitkin County Airport, past the boutiques and taverns lining the mountain town’s quaint snow-covered streets. After crawling sedately through town to avoid any chance of getting stopped, he drove another ten minutes along winding mountain roads to the Seaton estate. But instead of stopping, he kept going past the driveway until he found a service road a half mile up. Parking the car, he threw on his coat and began bushwhacking through the snowy wilderness.
Don Seaton sat staring into the fireplace, his gaze lost somewhere between the fire and the stones. He slumped in the leather chair, a half-empty glass of Scotch in his hand. Raising the glass again, he downed the contents and went on watching the wood shrivel into black pellets before peeling away from the logs and falling into gray ash below the grate. Another log popped, spitting embers up the chimney. Impulsively, he hurled the tumbler into the fire, shattering it.
With restrained anger, he got up, pulled a bottle of Glenury Royal off the bookcase, and poured two fingers into a fresh glass. He approached the window of his study, took a drink, and looked out at the snow circling the front drive of the mansion. Less than an hour had passed since the Denver homicide detective telephoned to inform him that Lucas had been killed. “His neck was snapped,” the detective had told him. “There’s an investigation under way. Your son Lance was questioned earlier. We’re following up on some leads and will call you if anything develops.”
Seaton would wait till morning to visit the coroner’s office in Vail—a snowstorm was moving through the central mountains, making travel impossible for the next twelve hours. He didn’t mind the forced delay. Even though he had stopped loving his sons the day his wife died, he needed a night to beg her forgiveness for his failure as a father before he could face the reality of his son’s corpse.
Michael reached the edge of the clearing behind the estate. The wide courtyard that he remembered from the party a month ago was now silent as a tomb. At the far left, light escaped through the small windows of the back kitchen. The door was again slightly ajar, and he recalled Lance explaining how the cook couldn’t stand the unventilated heat of the mansion’s old kitchen without cracking at least one window or door.
He scanned the backyard once more. Nothing moved—he was alone. But something was unusual—some lingering tension, some sense of commotion within the mansion. Too many lights were on, the house too active at this late hour . . . News of Lucas’s death must have beaten him to the estate.
He sprinted toward the mansion, his boots crunching through the crusted snow. Hidden spotlights suddenly illuminated the area, but they caught his image for only an instant before he reached the mansion and leaned against the dark wall. Inching along in the shadows, he peered around the kitchen door. A plump man was sprinkling something into a steaming pot. The man’s back was to the outside, making it easy to slip into the kitchen and turn up a narrow staircase leading to the servants’ passageway. He was halfway up the stairs when the backyard spotlights turned off.
Inside the darkened servants’ passageway, he could hear sounds all around him. The mansion was filled with activity. He slipped past a door with light seeping from underneath, then another, and reached the end of the narrow hallway. He was about to turn around in the darkness and find a way to the main hallway when he heard the distinct sound of glass breaking. He leaned his ear against the end wall and listened to the faint clank of two glasses hitting, as if someone were toasting or pouring a drink. Kneeling on the wood floor, he felt a slight recess under the panel and realized that he was in front of a hidden doorway to one of the main rooms. Carefully, he returned his ear to the wood and listened to the sounds inside the room.
The Siberian husky ran through the trees behind the mansion, with Marcus walking after it. It snuffled along beneath the trees, pausing, sniffing, then leaping through the snowbanks.
Marcus had used the dog as an excuse to get some fresh air. He had been with Seaton when the phone call came from the Denver detective. Despite the snowstorm that was crawling west through the mountains, he had insisted he could push the Hummer through the roads to Vail if necessary. But his boss had declined the offer and retreated to his study.
Walking through the snowy woods, Marcus hadn’t taken long to conclude that Lucas’s death meant nothing to him. The only thing that concerned him was Mr. Seaton’s safety. But one thought had bothered him: Lance and Lucas were always together. How could Lucas have died alone? The investigators claimed that Lance had given them a statement about Lucas’s death before leaving the police station in Vail. Since then, Marcus had tried in vain to phone Lance, and no one else had heard from him in almost two hours. Lance seemed to have vanished, which made Marcus very nervous.
As Seaton’s head of security and as his personal bodyguard, Marcus was constantly turning every situation over in his mind, searching for the hidden threat. When the twins had increasingly concealed their business activities from their father, it was Marcus who convinced Seaton to pay for a thorough background check on the twins’ lives during their college years: obtaining confidential school records, interviewing old acquaintances and professors under false pretenses, and even discovering certain buried campus police reports. His findings had revealed enough concerns that he began having the twins watched occasionally.
He would never forget the look on his boss’s face when he had presented him with the files from the investigators and advised the billionaire that his own sons now posed a potential security threat.
Marcus came to a sudden stop in the trees, instantly on full alert. He stared at the tracks in the snow: size eleven or twelve hiking boots—one man, running. Still deep, even with the wind pushing fresh powder along the forest floor—the tracks were fresh. He looked back in the direction the tracks came from: disappearing into the woods that stretched away from the estate, perfectly in line with the direction of the service road a half mile behind the property. Of more immediate concern, however, was where the tracks were headed: directly toward the mansion. He looked just in time to catch the faint glow of the
backyard motion lights a hundred yards away, the instant before they turned off. He bolted toward the mansion, unholstering his gun as he ran.
50
WITH HIS EAR against the doorway, Michael again heard the crash and tinkle of breaking glass, then a murmuring voice, which he recognized as Don Seaton’s.
“I couldn’t do it without you,” he heard Seaton say. “I never really tried. I failed you. Forgive me.”
Michael was almost certain Mr. Seaton was alone, and the old man’s mumbling seemed to carry a note of inconsolable sadness. Suddenly he saw a strange reflection off the wall in front of him. Was the door opening? He leaned back from it, watching the narrow slat of light at the bottom, waiting for it to grow, but it didn’t change. No, he realized, the light was coming from behind him. Just then he heard a sound in the passageway and turned to see a small flashlight beam shine brightly in his eyes. He tried to stand up, but before he had gotten to his feet, a heavy blow to his chest sent him flying backward. His body broke through the hidden doorway and came crashing into Seaton’s study.
Seaton whirled clumsily around from the window. “What the hell!” he yelled as Michael fell into the room, rolling over one shoulder and springing to his feet. His attacker jumped through the doorway and knocked him to the floor with a blow to the solar plexus. The pain all but paralyzed him, and he curled into a defensive ball like an injured animal.
“Marcus . . . !” Seaton yelled, looking to his bodyguard for an immediate explanation.
“He snuck onto the property and then entered the mansion through the servants’ passageway in the kitchen,” the bodyguard replied.
“Who is he?” Seaton demanded.
Marcus stepped toward Michael and kicked him in the midsection, then reached down and took his wallet. “Name’s Michael Chapman,” the bodyguard said, flipping through the contents. “Hey, he works for Cooley and White!” He held up a business card.
Groaning, Michael sat up, and Marcus leveled a gun at his face. “Stay down,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
Michael looked first at the gun, then at the man. He was about to answer when he noticed something unusual: a twitch at the corner of the left eye. A few seconds later, it twitched again.
“It was you!” Michael exclaimed.
“What?”
“It was you. You’re the man that visited Dr. Speer the week before I did—the man asking questions about how Kurt Matthews died.”
“I’m going to ask you once more: what are you doing here?” Marcus growled.
“Mr. Seaton,” Michael said, ignoring Marcus, “I’m a federal agent for the U.S Treasury Department. I’m working undercover at Cooley and White as part of a prototype operation created by a Senate oversight committee three years ago. I was the senior auditor on the X-Tronic engagement this year. When Kurt Matthews was killed, I was placed on the engagement. I’ve discovered a fraudulent conspiracy between certain high-level employees from both X-Tronic and Cooley and White. I believe the conspirators planned to inflate profits illegally for personal gain from stock options and an aggressive bonus system, as well as for career security in case the Cygnus takeover was successful. Kurt Matthews was murdered because he discovered the fraud. And your sons are involved.”
Marcus held the gun steady but glanced toward Seaton for instructions.
“Wait,” Seaton said. “We’ve met before, haven’t we?”
Michael nodded, fighting nausea from the blows to the midsection. “In a break room at X-Tronic. We both arrived to work early one day. That was more than a month ago.”
“Would you like a drink?” Seaton asked.
The man’s composure surprised Michael. It seemed almost as if he had expected to hear such things about his company and his sons.
“Now that you mention it, I could use a drink, sir,” he replied.
Seaton splashed some of the Glenury-Royal into the last two unbroken glasses and gave him one. Michael took a drink to help ease the pain in his ribs. He glanced at Marcus, who did not have a drink.
“Oh, don’t worry about Marcus,” Seaton said. “He doesn’t drink. Now, I believe you want to tell me the details of your investigation at X-Tronic.”
Michael still could not find even a hint of surprise on the billionaire’s face. “You knew something was wrong at the company?” he asked.
“Please,” Seaton insisted. “First tell me everything you know.”
Michael nodded and then proceeded to tell everything that had happened since he was first assigned to the X-Tronic engagement. He told of his discovery of the revenue overstatements from the illegal recording of software contracts. He then described his growing suspicions surrounding Kurt’s death, and how everything tied in with the pending acquisition talks with Cygnus.
But it wasn’t until he began detailing the individual roles of the key managers and officers involved in the conspiracy that he felt a scrutinizing glare from Marcus. Although Seaton was focused on the details of Michael’s findings, Marcus seemed suspicious that he was holding something back. And he was. Because considering all that he was about to ask of X-Tronic’s billionaire CEO, he did not know how he could possibly tell the man that he had been the cause of Lucas’s death.
51
DON SEATON APPEARED exhausted as he slouched down in the leather chair by the fireside. Michael had never imagined how the billionaire might look without the glowing confidence that had exuded from his photos and media interviews during the past twenty-five years. Now he saw the exhaustion in the man’s face, as if he was suddenly on the very brink of death.
“Should I call someone?” Marcus asked, also noticing Seaton’s pallor. Indeed, the bodyguard seemed more concerned about the billionaire’s health than the man himself was.
“Because of the merger talks,” Don began, “we have a shareholders’ meeting in Denver this Thursday. I can’t keep this news of the fraud from the public.” He stood looking into the fire. “This will destroy X-Tronic,” he continued. “It will become the next Enron or WorldCom or Rockwood Corporation. And everything I’ve spent the past thirty years building will be destroyed.” He took another drink of Scotch.
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” Michael said.
“What other possibility is there?”
Michael swirled the liquor in his glass, stalling a moment before answering the question. He was terrified at what he was about to ask of Mr. Seaton. But everything he knew about the man told him he just might go along with it. He merely prayed he hadn’t miscalculated. Finally he said, “How much does X-Tronic mean to you, Mr. Seaton?”
Seaton turned to face him. “It’s my company! I built it! It’s everything I am!”
“No abstractions, please. I’m asking a very specific question. How much are you willing to pay to save X-Tronic and the people who work there and have their lives invested in it?”
Seaton looked at him in surprise. “My heart lies with my company. My wealth is only a cloak that I have been given to wear.”
“Then use your wealth to save the company,” Michael said. “Do what no one would do for Enron. Do what no one else could do . . . Mr. Seaton,” he continued, “if you want to save X-Tronic from financial collapse, you need to use the shareholders’ meeting next week to tell the world about the discovered fraud within the company. They need to hear it from you first.”
Seaton looked at the floor and frowned. “It will still create a panic.” He shook his head, causing the orange firelight to slide back and forth across his face. “People will be on their cell phones, selling their shares immediately after the words leave my mouth. It will flood the market with rumors and drop the stock price to the floor. Our credit rating will be downgraded to junk status and will threaten to force X-Tronic into bankruptcy before the end of the day.”
Michael glanced over to Marcus, walking toward the splintered doorway. The bodyguard didn’t seem to be listening, but Michael knew better. In a steady voice, Michael said to Seaton, “You could cont
act the SEC commissioner and the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange this weekend. Insist that on the day of the shareholders’ meeting they suspend trading of X-Tronic shares for twenty-four hours. This would buy you some time, give you a chance to calm the investors. Demand that they give you their undivided attention during the meeting.”
“I don’t think the Exchange would allow such a move,” Seaton said, staring into the fire. He seemed unwilling to look at Michael when thinking through a problem. “But even if we were able to suspend trading temporarily, what could I possible say to the shareholders that would prevent a panic?”
“There is nothing that will prevent some form of a major financial slide in the market price—especially with all the hype around the better-than-expected earnings release and the analysts’ speculations that the merger will occur. By suspending X-Tronic’s trading, you’re going to allay the onslaught of people selling before the crisis can be explained to investors. Our only argument here is that suspending trade will give people time to evaluate the true impact the fraud may have on future earnings at the company. It’s no different from issuing a major press release after trading closes on Friday, giving investors the weekend to analyze the stock value before the markets open Monday morning.”
“Then why don’t we move the shareholders’ meeting a few days to the following weekend?” Don asked.
“We can’t change the meeting or there will be speculation that something’s happened at X-Tronic.”
The windows shook from a strong gust of wind. The winter storm was approaching, and Michael wondered just how much of the Rocky Mountain region had been shut down.
Seaton stood up from the chair and moved slowly away from the fireplace, as if the storm were calling him. “My son’s funeral is Tuesday—Jesus, I shouldn’t even be having the shareholders’ meeting next week at all! I should cancel it altogether . . .” His voice faded to little more than a whisper. “I don’t know what to do anymore.”
