by Davis Bunn
“Can you tell him I’m okay and that I’ll connect up with him tomorrow?”
“I already did. He wanted to tell you—”
“Later. Please. All right?”
“Sure thing.” He pointed to where Patricia and Lacy Saunders were stepping from their car. “I called them. I hope that’s okay.”
“It’s better than that.” Esther stepped forward to accept their embraces. “Thank you so much for coming.”
Patricia held up a thermos. “I’ve always found hot cocoa to be a soothing balm to every calamity.”
“That sounds nice.”
Patricia unscrewed the cap and poured. The fragrance of steaming chocolate filled the night’s empty spaces. Lacy looked around, asked, “All these police came for an attempted break-in?”
“Must be a slow night,” Craig agreed.
Esther realized they did not know any details. She asked Craig, “What did Talmadge tell you?”
“That there’d been an attack on your home,” Craig said.
She sipped from the cup and felt the warmth spread through her. “This is great.”
“See?” Patricia studied the two men talking with the detective. “Is that Councilman Edwards?”
“Talmadge called him,” Craig said. “He thought having an attorney here might help.”
“And he did,” Esther replied. “A lot.”
Detective Sanchez walked over, declined the offer of chocolate, and said, “It’s okay for you to enter your home.”
“She won’t be staying here,” Patricia declared. “She’s going home with us.”
Lacy said, “Mom, maybe Esther would rather be alone.”
“She’s had a shock. The last thing she needs tonight is to stay here by herself.”
Esther hated the necessity of correcting either of them. And the truth was, she dreaded stepping inside her house just now. But she could not accept their invitation without first clearing up the situation. “Actually, that’s not entirely correct.” She handed back the cup. “They invaded my property. But it appears they did not enter my home.”
She found it interesting that only Lacy seemed to understand. Craig and Patricia both stared at her in confusion. Patricia said, “You caught them before they broke in?”
“Mom . . .”
“What?”
Esther said softly, “It was a hit squad.”
Craig swung toward the detective. When Sanchez did not respond, he turned back, now reflecting Patricia’s confused expression. “How . . . ?”
“I spotted them because I parked down the street a ways to take a phone call. Otherwise I’d be . . .”
Lacy said, “Oh. Wow.”
Esther nodded.
“We’ll assign a patrol car to stay near your home and keep watch,” Sanchez said. When the three people remained frozen from the shock of what they were hearing, she went on, “Another will be serving as your personal escort. You shouldn’t drive anywhere.”
Esther asked, “Is that really necessary?”
Sanchez nodded. “Your would-be assailants are still out there. Maybe you should think about having us move you into a hotel.”
“No,” Patricia said, more quietly now. “She’s coming home with us.”
For the third time, Lacy said, “Mom . . .”
“What?”
“Don’t you think you should talk this over with Dad?”
“Your father is in surgery until who knows how late. He’ll sleep at the hospital. He has rounds tomorrow morning. He’ll come home and find Esther in our guest room and a cop car on our doorstep. Isn’t that right, Officer?”
“Detective,” Sanchez corrected. “Long as Ms. Larsen is in residence.”
Craig said, “Talmadge has also arranged for private security.” All eyes turned his way. He shrugged an apology at Esther. “Talmadge wanted to be the one to tell you, but you said to put him off. I thought you should know that it’s happening.”
“There, you see?” Patricia said. “Craig, go home and get some rest. Esther, come with us.”
Esther started, “I’m not sure . . .”
“Well, I am. Good night, Detective.”
Craig embraced her once more and said, “The girls are going to be furious they missed all this.”
“All right, you two can hug on each other tomorrow.” Patricia made a shooing gesture. “It’s like herding cats.”
46
THURSDAY
Esther awoke to the smell of fresh coffee. She dressed in her clothes from the previous day and went downstairs to find Craig and his daughters seated at the dining table. Their chairs were placed so they could look around the open-plan chimney and carry on a conversation with the pair in the kitchen. Abigail rushed over and hugged her tightly. No words were required. Esther lowered her face so as to take in a huge lungful of the girl’s fresh scent. “I didn’t know I needed that until just now.”
Samantha made a great drama of rising and walking over and taking her sister’s place. Which made the deed all the more special. After Esther released them, Craig was standing there, smiling and ready. “My turn.”
Abigail said, “Daddy wouldn’t let us wake you.”
Craig asked, “How did you sleep?”
Lacy said, “How do you take your coffee?”
Abigail said, “We drove by your house. There’s a policeman parked out front.”
And from Samantha, “I thought this was going to be just another boring spring break.”
Esther just buried her face deeper against Craig’s chest.
Patricia insisted on making oatmeal. Five minutes later, Esther was spooning cinnamon and raisins and shaved almonds into her bowl. Patricia seemed happiest when she had a cooking spoon in her hand. Esther remembered how happy her mother had been, filling their home with light and chatter. Patricia was nothing like the memory Esther had of her mother, the tall willowy woman who was incomplete without a song. But there was a similarity in the way Patricia met every need with an embrace and just the right dish.
Esther’s cellphone rang while she was enjoying her second cup of coffee. Patricia said, “That’s probably Donald. He wants to speak with you about your brother.”
Esther stopped in the process of answering. “Is Nathan okay?”
“He didn’t say.”
But when she answered, Suzie McManning said, “I’d be furious with you if I thought it would do any good.”
“I should have called the station,” Esther said.
“Well, duh.”
“It didn’t even occur to me.”
“At least it did to Talmadge. Only he left his message far too late. Our crew managed to interview the councilman and the deputy chief. We’ll roll footage again before you and I go on camera. We want to run a midday report.”
Esther shook her head to the watching group. “I don’t think—”
“You don’t have a choice,” Suzie interrupted. “We let you sleep in. That’s all the breather you get. When can you be here?”
Esther heard the determination in Suzie’s voice and accepted defeat. “A couple of hours.”
“Make it sooner.”
“Wait, how are the markets?”
“Stable,” Suzie assured her. “The world is still spinning. Which is the only reason I didn’t insist they wake you.”
Esther cut the connection and was about to ask Patricia for her husband’s number when her phone rang again. The readout showed a blocked number. “Larsen.”
A man’s voice spoke softly, “Jasmine said I had to call.”
Esther was up and out the rear door in a flash. She was alone on the deck, but still whispered, “Hewitt?”
“If anybody here finds out I made this contact, I’m finished.”
She did not bother to tell him how true that was. “You’ve taken precautions?”
“This is a throwaway phone. I’m on my lunch break. Is it for real, Jasmine got fired because of me?”
“It’s my fault, really. I told her to
find you.”
The man had a honeyed voice, strong and warm, even when scared. “Why couldn’t you just leave it alone?”
“You know the answer to that. Where are you?”
Hewitt was silent for so long that Esther feared he was going to turn her down. Then he replied, “Bermuda.”
“Will you tell me what you’re doing?”
“We’ve made all three of the deals your team suggested. Our take was four hundred million. In a week.”
“On how large a portfolio?”
“Seven big ones. More coming in today, so I’ve heard.”
“Where did the funds originate?”
“That’s why it’s all so secret. CFM and the Brits are taking advantage of a short-term window. Because of the merger.”
Esther said, “It’s a ruse.”
“What are you talking—?”
“They tried to take me out. Last night. A professional hit squad. Five, maybe six attackers.”
“Is this a joke?”
Esther pulled the detective’s card from her pocket. She read off the number. “Ask for Detective Sanchez. She’ll confirm everything I’ve just said.”
Hewitt mulled that over. “Okay, so they overreacted. But we’re talking about huge profits. My take is five million bucks.”
She saw Patricia standing in the kitchen’s open doorway and waved her away. “And you may be right. Maybe they’re just skirting the edge of illegality. But what if it’s more than that?”
“It’s not,” Hewitt said. “I’m one of the frontline troops, remember?”
“It’s not so far,” Esther countered. “But is a take like this, no matter how big, worth risking the two bank charters? Not to mention serious jail time for everybody involved?”
Hewitt was slow to come back. “What else could it be?”
“Maybe nothing. In fact, I hope I’m wrong. But what if they’re putting all this in place for something else entirely?”
“Like what?”
“I’m an analyst. I might not be working for CFM anymore, but I still don’t deal in rumors. Tell me one thing. How many of Sir Trevor’s traders are there?”
“Five, same as my group. The ten of us are supported by just three staffers.”
“Has Sir Trevor’s group put forward any deals of their own?”
“Not yet. But I keep hearing they’re preparing some big transaction. Huge.”
Esther’s gut churned with a grim certainty now. “So long as you keep on this tactic, we don’t need to talk again. But if Sir Trevor’s project shows intent to destabilize the markets, you have to call me.”
Hewitt’s response came out slow and measured. “Get. Out.”
“No, Hewitt, that’s what you have to do.”
“They’re paying me five mil to stick around.”
“Listen to me. They sent a hit squad to my house because I asked the wrong question. Do you really think they’ll leave you alive to spend your take?”
Hewitt went quiet.
“Do it for Jasmine,” Esther said. “The minute you hear anything, call me. Then run.”
47
Five minutes later, Esther spoke with Donald Saunders, who insisted that she come by the clinic. He refused to say anything more, responding to her questions with what she considered a doctor’s typical terseness. Esther thanked and hugged her friends, then asked the security detail to drive her home. She needed to shower and dress for the day ahead.
She disliked going anywhere in someone else’s car. She loved to drive almost as much as she liked the private time to think. She understood the logic in being accompanied everywhere, but in the light of another lovely April morning, all the reasons for the tight security flew out the window. Even so, the first phone call she made once they were under way was to Talmadge. “I owe you more than I can ever say.”
“Careful now.” He sounded enormously cheerful. “I might insist you come to work for me.”
“I don’t owe you that much.”
He laughed and said, “You do a cranky old man’s heart a whole lot of good, young lady.”
“This morning I feel about a million years old.”
“I imagine watching a passel of killers stalk your front garden would do that to a body.”
“I have another request.”
“Name it.”
“Yesterday my number two at the bank was fired. I told her she could come work for me on the hedge fund. But Jasmine needs reassurance that the job and the project are actually happening.”
“She needs a real office in a real company,” Talmadge agreed. “Give me her details. I’ll make the call myself.”
When Esther had done so, she hesitated, then said, “Can you meet me at the studio?”
“Nigh on impossible. I’ve got back-to-back meetings all morning. I interrupted a conference with my tax accountants to take your call.”
Esther decided she did not want to rush through an explanation that amounted merely to suspicions. She did not have enough hard evidence to call it anything else. She especially didn’t want to lay out here what she was thinking, as the two strangers in the front seat were within earshot. So she said, “I’ll check in with you later.”
Esther reviewed her incomings and saw she had thirty-seven voicemails and almost twice as many texts. There was no time to deal with them all, so she quickly scrolled through the messages for anything urgent and spent the remainder of the journey surveying the markets on her cellphone. Suzie’s description of their status as stable went too far. Esther could almost feel the tremors resonate from the charts, up through her hands, as if they were shaking the car and the earth beneath the asphalt.
All the markets needed was one hard shove and they would tumble off the cliff’s edge. But that had been true for weeks now. They were merely one step closer.
Even so, when they pulled into her drive, she could almost feel the cold wind blowing up from the abyss.
The female agent asked Esther for her house keys and security code. Esther refrained from pointing out that the police had kept a car parked out front all night, since her protest would only delay her getting upstairs and into the shower.
The two security agents were fairly easy to ignore. Both were quiet and somewhat nondescript, as though they had developed a persona that allowed them to vanish in plain sight. The woman was a couple of inches shorter than Esther and wore a navy blazer over gray slacks. The driver was male and wore an identical jacket and trousers with a white polo shirt and Ecco lace-ups. They both wore pistols in shoulder holsters under their jackets.
Esther decided to use the moment to phone Detective Sanchez. When the woman answered, Esther thanked her again for coming to her rescue, then described her phone conversation with Hewitt and what this represented. As she talked, the male agent turned around in his seat and watched her. His eyes were a smoky brown, his expression tight. He did not seem to even blink.
Esther hit the phone’s speaker button so her security could hear the detective say, “You’re thinking that these two banks consider you enough of a threat to their illegal activities that they targeted you. What did you say their take was?”
“Around four hundred million for the first week, minus commissions.”
The male agent spoke for the first time that morning. “Four hundred million dollars is a big impetus.”
Sanchez asked, “Who said that?”
“The security driver. And I don’t think you understand. An investment banking division can make that much in a month of normal trading. Less. Everything they’ve done, setting up this off-book project, siphoning in secret funds, none of this makes sense.”
“Same answer,” the driver replied. “Four hundred big ones.”
“I agree,” Sanchez said.
“Not when you look at the risks they’re taking,” Esther insisted. “They would lose their bank charters. Their merger bid would be crushed by the financial authorities. Both company presidents would be fired. Not to mention public humilia
tion and serious jail time.”
“So what are you suggesting?”
“I want you to check and see if any Bermuda-based criminals have recently flown into the US.”
The driver nodded slowly. Sanchez replied, “That’s good thinking.”
Esther went on, “If the two banks are behind this attack, it means they’re planning something much bigger. And everything they’ve done to this point is just part of the ruse.”
48
They left her home forty-six minutes later. Esther continued scanning the morning positions on her cellphone as security drove her to Nathan’s clinic. US markets were nervous but relatively stable. Still, the jumps were huge, an 874-point shift just in the previous half hour of trading. The movement was within a defined range, however, and prices were now anchored by electronic hedges.
Analysts working for other investment bankers had arrived at the same conclusion as Esther. The problems faced by the global markets were vast and growing bigger still. But for the moment, there was no reason to panic. So their traders had set up a system known as bottom-feeding. Whenever a stock moved below a threshold calculated by both the company’s profit level and its year-on-year share price, the computers were set to buy. This created a base below which the market could not move without a shift larger than the bankers were capable of handling.
Esther stared up at the female security agent holding her door.
The woman asked, “Something wrong?”
Esther opened her mouth, but did not know what to say. So she rose and followed the agent past the three dogwoods bordering the parking lot. Another of Talmadge’s guards stood by the clinic’s entrance. He exchanged hellos with Esther’s security and held the door open. Esther waited while the duty nurse phoned the clinic’s doctor. She went back over the mental steps that had brought her to the portal now looming before her. The one that opened into all her midnight terrors.
The nurse replaced the phone and said, “Dr. Cleveland is in a meeting and asks that you wait.”
“I don’t have time this morning.” Esther started toward the rear hallway.
