by J. R. Ward
"Edward," he whispered. "Edward, what did you do . . ."
*
Out in Ogden County, Edward sat back in his Archie Bunker chair and refused to greet his visitor properly. "There is no reason for you to be here."
Dr. Michael Qalbi smiled in his gentle way. The guy was thirty-five going on twelve, at least by appearances, his handsome face and jet-black hair belying his half-Iraqi heritage, his miss-nothing brown eyes a warning shot across anyone's bow lest they were fooled into thinking his kindness could ever be manipulated. His intellect was so formidable, he'd Doogie Howser'd his medical school and residency programs, and then stepped in to help with his father's concierge practice here in town.
Edward had been a member of their service for years, but he hadn't paid his dues since he'd come back to Charlemont. Good soul that he was, Qalbi didn't seem to care.
"I truly don't need you," Edward tacked on. "And is that a Scrabble tie you're wearing?"
Dr. Qalbi looked down at the multicolored, multi-lettered silk strip that hung from around his neck. "Yes, it is. And if you don't need me, why don't you get up and show me to the door like the gentleman you are?"
"We live in PC times. I wouldn't want to run the risk of insulting your masculinity. It could lead to a barrage of Internet backlash."
Dr. Qalbi nodded at Shelby, who was hanging back, arms crossed over her chest like an MMA fighter at weigh-in. "She said you took a stumble in the stables."
"Say that five times fast." Edward pointed to the old-fashioned black bag in the doctor's hand. "Is that for real or is it a prop?"
"It was my grandfather's. And it's full of goodies."
"I don't like lollipops."
"You don't like anything from what I've heard."
The doctor came forward and kneeled down in front of Edward's monogrammed slippers, the only thing that would fit on his feet, thanks to the ankle from hell and all its swelling.
"These shoes are fantastic."
"They were my grandfather's. I've heard that men in Kentucky never buy anything new except for wives. Our wardrobes, on the other hand, are loaves and fishes."
"Does this hurt?"
As Edward's broken body jerked back in the chair and he threw out hands to the armrests, he was forced to grit, "Not at all."
"How about now?"
When his ankle was moved in the opposite direction, Edward hissed, "Is this payback for my misogynistic comment?"
"So you admit you're in pain."
"Only if you cop to being a democrat."
"I'll say that with pride."
Edward was of a mind to continue the riffing, but his neurons had become overrun with too much sensory information, none of it good. And as he grunted and cursed, he was very much aware of Shelby standing off to the side, watching the show with a glower.
"Can you flex it for me?" Qalbi asked.
"I thought I was."
After two more hours' worth of torture--okay, it was more like two minutes, tops--Dr. Qalbi sat back on his heels. "I don't think it's broken."
Edward shot a look over at Shelby. "Really. Imagine that."
"It's dislocated."
As Shelby's right eyebrow I-told-you-so'd into her hairline, Edward refocused on the doctor. "So put it back in place."
"You said you did this in the stables? How did you get back here?"
"I walked."
"Not possible."
"I'm drunk."
"Well, there you go. We need to get you in to an orthopedist--"
"I'm not going to any hospital. So either you fix it here, or leave me be."
"That is not a course I'd recommend. You need to be--"
"Dr. Qalbi, you know damn well what I've been through. I've spent my lifetime allotment of days in hospitals already. Rather efficient, really. So, no, I will not be going anywhere in an ambulance."
"It would be better to get--"
"Primum non nocere."
"Which is why I want to take you into town."
"And PS, the customer is always right."
"You're my patient, not a customer. So your satisfaction is not my goal. Appropriate care is."
But Qalbi fell silent, and did the whole steady-eyed regard thing--although it was not clear whether he was making further medical assessments or waiting for his "patient" to come to his senses.
"I can't do it alone," the man concluded.
Edward nodded at Shelby. "She is stronger than you are. And I'm sure she would like to hurt me right about now, wouldn't you, darling."
"Whatcha need, Doctor?" was all she said as she came over.
Qalbi stared straight into Edward's face. "If there is no dorsalis pedis or tibialis posterior pulse after I'm done, you're going to the hospital."
"I don't know what either of those are."
"You're the one who started throwing around Latin. And those are my terms. If you decline them, I will leave, but I will also turn you in to social services as a failure-to-thrive case--and then you can have all kinds of fun dealing with the welfare folks."
"You wouldn't dare."
"Try me," came the calm response.
Baby face, my ass, Edward thought.
"You're a hard negotiator, Doctor."
"Only because you're being ridiculous."
And that was how, a few moments later, Edward ended up with his jeans rolled to scrawny thigh, his mangled leg bent at the knee, and Shelby straddling him with her hands locked on his pathetic hamstrings. Due to injuries to his hip, the straight-leg position wasn't going to work, according to the good doctor.
"I'm going to pull on three."
As Edward braced himself, he looked forward . . . directly into Shelby's rather spectacular backside. But yes, that was the end result when you made your living at physical labor and you were twenty-something.
Across on the kitchen wall, the old-fashioned phone started to ring.
"Three--"
Edward screamed and there was a loud snap. But the pain receded to a dull ache quickly. And as he breathed through it, Dr. Qalbi did some probing.
"Pulses are strong. Looks like you dodged a bullet." The doctor got to his enviably functional feet. "But this incident begs the larger question of where you are in your recovery."
"In this chair," Edward groaned. "I am in this chair, obviously."
"You should have better mobility by now. And you shouldn't be self-medicating with alcohol. And you should--"
"Isn't the word 'should' a modern anathema? I thought there were no more 'shoulds.'"
"Pop psychology doesn't interest me. The fact that you are as weak as you are does."
"So I gather this means that a prescription for painkillers is out of the question. Worried about getting a second member of my family hooked on narcotics?"
"I'm not your mother's treating physician. And I assure you that I wouldn't be handling things as they are if I were." Dr. Qalbi bent down and picked up his bag. "I urge you to consider a short readmission into a rehab facility--"
"Not going to happen--"
"--to build up your strength. I also recommend an alcohol treatment--"
"--because I don't believe in doctors--"
"--program. The last thing you need to do--"
"--and there is nothing wrong--"
"--is add alcohol to this mix."
"--with my drinking."
Dr. Qalbi took a business card out of his back pocket. Offering it to Shelby, he said, "Take this. It has my cell phone on it. If you continue to live with him, you're going to be calling me again, and we might as well cut out the middleman answering service."
"I don't live with him," she said softly. "I work here."
"My apologies for the assumption." Dr. Qalbi glanced at Edward. "You can call me, too. And no--you don't need to bother. I know you'll say you won't."
The cottage door shut and a car drove off a moment later. And in the silence, Edward looked at his foot, which was now in the correct position and not angled out to the side
. For some reason, he thought about the trip over here from the stables, him leaning on Shelby, his battered flesh draped over her lithe body like the deadweight he was.
As the phone began to ring again, Shelby glanced at it. "Would you like me to--"
"I'm sorry," he said roughly. "You're catching me at a time in my life when I'm just like your father was."
"You're not asking me to take care of you."
"Then why are you?"
"Someone has to."
"Not really. And you might want to ask yourself if you should leave."
"I need this job--"
He met her eyes, and something in his expression shut her up. "Shelby. I've got to be honest with you. Things . . . are only going to get worse from here. Harder."
"So don't drink as much. Or stop."
"That's not what I'm talking about."
Well, wasn't he a gentleman. Trying to save her life as his went to hell. And damn it, he wished that ringing would stop.
"Edward, you're drunk--"
As the phone finally went silent, all he could do was shake his head. "There are things that have happened with my family. Things . . . that are going to come out. It's not going to get better than it is right now."
A problem with his ankle was going to be the least of the issues.
As a car pulled up outside, he rolled his eyes. "Qalbi must have forgotten his bedside manner."
Shelby went over to the door and opened it. "It's someone else."
"If it's a long black limo with a pink Chanel suit in back, tell them to--"
"It's a man."
Edward smiled coldly. "At least I know it's not my father coming to see me. That little headache has been well taken care of."
When Edward looked over to the open doorway, he frowned as he saw who it was out front. "Shelby. Will you excuse us for a moment? Thank you."
TEN
Out in the sunshine at Easterly, Lane ended the call to Metro Police and looked at Samuel T., who'd come back out the grand front door.
"Okay, Counselor," Lane said. "We've got fifteen, twenty minutes before the homicide team arrives. At this point I'm on a first-name basis with them."
"So we've got enough time to hide evidence in case you did it." As Lizzie and Greta pulled a gasp-and-stare, Samuel T. rolled his eyes. "Relax. It was a joke--"
At that moment, Jeff Stern came pile driving out of the mansion. Lane's old college roommate and U.Va. fraternity brother looked about as relaxed and well slept as anybody who'd been up for too many nights straight, living on coffee and microscoping financial spreadsheets.
An extra from The Walking Dead had a better chance with GQ.
"We got a problem," Jeff said as he stumbled across the lawn.
Under different circumstances, he was actually a handsome guy, a self-professed anti-WASP with his proud Jewish heritage and New Jersey accent. He'd stood out at U.Va. for a lot of reasons, mostly because of his math skills, and had subsequently gone on to Wall Street to make sick money as an investment banker.
Lane had spent the last two years on the bastard's couch up in the Big Apple. And he'd repaid the favor by begging Jeff to take a "vacation" and figure out what the hell his father had done with all that money.
"Can it wait?" Lane said. "I need to--"
"No." Jeff glanced at Lizzie and Greta. "We need to talk."
"Well, we have fifteen minutes before the police get here."
"So you know? What the hell? Why didn't you tell me--"
"Know what?"
Jeff looked at the two women again, but Lane cut that off. "Anything you have to say to me can be done in front of them."
"You sure about that?" The guy put his palms up and cut off any argument. "Fine. Someone's embezzling from the company, too. It's not just whatever happened to your household accounts. There's a river of money leaving Bradford Bourbon, and if you want to have anything left, you better call the FBI now. There are bank wires all over the place, a lot of RICO shit going on--this needs to be handled by the Feds."
Lane looked at Lizzie, and as she reached out and took his hand, he wondered what the hell he would do without her. "Are you sure?"
His old friend shot him a give-me-a-break stare. "And I haven't even gone through all of it. It's that bad. You need to get senior management to halt all activity, then call the FBI, and lock up that business center behind this house."
Lane pivoted toward the mansion. After his mother had "taken ill," his father had converted what had previously been the stables behind the mansion into a fully functional, state-of-the-art office facility right on site. William had moved senior management in, put locks on all the doors, and turned the company's massive headquarters downtown into a second-fiddle, also-ran repository for vice presidents, directors, and middle managers. Ostensibly, the relocation of the brain trust had been so the man could stay home closer to his wife, but really, who could believe that, given that the pair of them had rarely been in the same room together.
Now Lane was seeing the real reason why. Easier to steal with fewer people around.
"Field trip," he announced.
With that, he released Lizzie's palm and strode off, heading around to the soccer-field-sized rear courtyard where the business center stretched out behind the mansion. In his wake, people were talking to him, but he ignored all that.
"Lane," Samuel T. said as he jumped in front. "What are you doing?"
"Saving electricity."
"I think we should call law enforcement--"
"I just did. Remember the finger?"
The business center's back door was locked with a big fat dead bolt secured by a coded system. Fortunately, when he and Edward had broken in a couple of days ago to get the financials, Lane had memorized the correct sequence of digits.
Punching them in on the pad, the entry unlocked and he walked into the hushed, luxurious interior. Every inch of the nearly twenty-thousand-square-foot, single-story structure was done in maroon-and-gold carpeting that was thick as a mattress. Insulated walls meant that no voices or ringing phones or tapping on keyboards traveled outside of a given space. And there were as many portriats on the walls as most iPhones had selfies.
With private offices for senior management, a gourmet kitchen and a reception area that resembled the Oval Office of the White House, the facility represented everything the Bradford Bourbon Company stood for: the highest standards of excellence, the oldest of traditions and the very best of the best for everything.
Lane didn't head for the higher-ups and their private offices, though. He went to the back, where the storage rooms and the kitchen were.
As well as the utilities.
Pushing through a double door, he entered a hot, window-less enclave full of mechanicals that included blowers for heat and air, and a hot-water heater . . . and the electrical panel.
Overhead lights were motion-activated, and he went directly across the concrete floor to the fuse box. Grabbing hold of a red handle at its side, he pulled the thing down, killing all current to the facility.
Everything went dark, and then low-lit security panels flared.
As he stepped back out into the hall, Samuel T. said dryly, "Well, that's one way to do it--"
Like wasps riled from a nest, executives came running, the three men, one woman, and receptionist clown-car'ing their way into the narrow corridor at the same time. They stopped dead as soon as they saw him.
The CFO, a sixty-year-old, Ivy League-educated know-it-all with manicured hands and shoes spit-shined at his private club, recoiled. "What are you doing here?"
"Shutting this place down."
"Excuse me?"
While another suit came skidding into the group, Lane just pointed to the back door he himself had come in through. "Get out. All of you."
The CFO got robin-chested and authori-voiced. "You do not have the right to--"
"The police are on their way." Which was technically true. "It's your choice whether you're leaving with them or i
n your own Mercedes. Or do you drive a Lexus?"
Lane watched their expressions carefully. And was entirely unsurprised when the CFO went on another you-have-no-right offensive.
"This is private property," Samuel T. said smoothly. "This facility is not on corporate land. You have just been informed by the owner that you are not welcome. You all look smart enough to already know trespassing law in Kentucky, but I am more than happy to provide you with a quick lesson or a refresher as necessary. It will involve a shotgun, however, and a--"
Lane elbowed his lawyer in the liver to shut him up.
Meanwhile, the CFO pulled himself together and ran a hand down his red tie. "There are critical functions managed from this--"
Lane went in face-to-face with the guy, prepared to grab him by the Brooks Brothers and drag him out onto the lawn. "Shut up and start walking."
"Your father would be appalled!"
"He's dead, remember. So he doesn't have an opinion. Now, are you leaving peacefully, or am I getting a gun like my lawyer was talking about."
"Are you threatening me?"
Samuel T. spoke up. "You're trespassing in three . . . two . . . one--"
"I'm going to tell the board chair about this--"
Lane crossed his arms over his chest. "As long as it's not on a phone here, I don't care whether you call the President of the United States or your fairy Godmother."
"Wait," Jeff cut in. "One of us will escort you to your offices for your car keys. You are not authorized to remove any equipment, drives, paperwork, or files from the premises."
"Good one," Lane said to his buddy.
*
Out at the Red & Black caretaker's cottage, Edward smiled at his visitor as Shelby took her leave of them both. Ricardo Monteverdi was CEO of Prospect Trust, the largest privately held trust company in the middle of the country, and he looked the part, his trim figure and distinguished presentation in that pinstriped suit making Edward think of a brochure for the Wharton School of Business, ca. 1985. With the wall of silver trophies creating a halo around him, the glow suggested, falsely, that he might be a bearer of good tidings.
One knew better, however.
"Have you come to pay your respects about my father?" Edward drawled. "You needn't bother."
"Oh . . . but of course," the banker said with a brief bow. "I am very sorry about your loss."
"Which makes one of us."
There was a pause, and Edward wasn't sure whether the man was chewing on that quip or gearing up for the reason he'd come unannounced. Probably the latter.
