Hot Shot

by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  As Sam slid into his seat, he pulled a copy of the Wall Street Journal from the seat pocket in front of him. "Now that I'm going to be a tycoon, I'll have to change my reading habits," he joked. He made a great play out of opening the newspaper and busily arranging it in front of him. He was trying to be funny, but Susannah couldn't manage much more than a polite smile. She had seen her father's head buried in the same newspaper too many times.

  An array of feelings, bittersweet and painful, swept over her. Several moments passed before she realized that Sam had fallen silent next to her. She glanced over and saw that his face had grown rigid.

  "Sam?"

  He abruptly folded the paper and stuffed it under his arm. "We've got to get off the plane."

  "What?"

  "Come on."

  "Sam?"

  "Hurry. They're getting ready to close the door."

  His air of urgency alarmed her, and she found herself rising from her seat. He planted his hand in the small of her back and pushed her ahead of him. "Sam? What are you doing? Where are we going?"

  He directed her past a stewardess. "We've got to get off. Hurry up."

  She glanced over her shoulder at their partner, who was still seated, his eyes vaguely puzzled beneath his glasses. "What about Yank?"

  "Somebody'll take care of him."

  Within minutes, Susannah found herself standing in the boarding area while her few remaining clothes took off for San Francisco. Three hours later, she and Sam were on their way to Boston in search of a man named Mitchell Blaine.

  Blaine lived in an expensive English Tudor located in Weston, one of Boston's more prestigious suburbs. The afternoon sun filtered through the maple trees and sparkled on the ivy that climbed the walls of the house. As Susannah and Sam walked up the antique brick pathway toward the front door, she found herself hoping that the owner was on vacation in Alaska someplace. Although that certainly wouldn't stop Sam. He would probably insist they board the next plane to Fairbanks.

  On the flight to Boston, she had studied the article in the Wall Street Journal that had caught Sam's attention, and she'd learned as much as she could about the man they had come to see. Mitchell Blaine was one of the wunderkinds of Route 128, the high-tech area that had formed around Boston and was the East Coast counterpart to California's Silicon Valley. A midwesterner by birth, he had a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from Ohio State, a Master's Degree from MIT, and an MBA from Harvard. But it was his ability to combine technological know-how with a wizardry for marketing that had made him a multimillionaire.

  During the late sixties and early seventies, he had quickly risen through the ranks of several of Boston's most aggressive young high-tech companies and at the same time wisely taken advantage of their early public stock issues to begin amassing his personal fortune. By 1976 he had a reported net worth nearing five million dollars-insignificant compared to the world's great fortunes, but respectable money for someone who'd been orphaned at the age of seven. Business analysts had targeted him as one of the bright new leaders who would direct the course of high-tech industry as it moved into the 1980s.

  And then, four days earlier, his meteoric career had come to an end. In a tersely worded one-paragraph press release that had sent industry analysts reeling, he had announced his retirement from the business world. He was only thirty-one years old.

  The article had given no explanation for his decision, but that hadn't stopped Sam, who had immediately invented his own. "The man's bored, Susannah. He's only thirty-one. He wants a challenge. SysVal is going to be just what he needs."

  Try as she might, she could find no evidence in the article to support Sam's conclusion. The article told the facts about Blaine's life but nothing about the man himself.

  She caught his arm as they approached the front steps of the house. "Sam, this is awful. We have to call first."

  "And give him an opportunity to brush us off? Not a chance. Besides, you don't think we can just ring up information and get Mitchell Blaine's private phone number, do you? It was hard enough for you to find out where he lived."

  She didn't want to think about how embarrassed she had been to rouse one of FBT's Boston executives out of bed at six-thirty in the morning with a preposterous story about needing Blaine's address for her father's social calendar. "We can't just show up on his doorstep," she insisted. "It simply isn't done."

  Sam jabbed the door bell. "If you're afraid you'll get kicked off the Social Register, it's too late. Our little escapade on your wedding day took care of that."

  "Damn it, Sam!"

  "Wow. Miss Goody-Goody is swearing. She's going to have to sit in the corner." He punched the door bell a second time.

  He was being unbearably nasty, but she understood him well enough to suspect he was merely trying to distract her from the fact that he knew she was right.

  "What are you going to say to him? How are you going to explain our presence?"

  "I'm not. You tell him who you are and get us in the door. After that, I'll do all the talking."

  That was what she had been afraid of.

  He rang the bell several more times, but nothing happened. "No one's here, Sam. Let's forget-"

  "Just keep ringing, damn it!" He disappeared around the side of the house.

  She violated every rule of etiquette she had ever learned by ringing two more times. Just as she was turning away, Sam reappeared. "There's a television on in the rear of the house. Let's go."

  "No, Sam! It might be the maid."

  "He's here. I know it."

  She stumbled over a sprinkler head as he dragged her through a hedge of yews. A shaded flagstone patio lay directly in front of them. As they stepped up on it, a security alarm went off.

  "We're going to get arrested!"

  "Not until we've seen Blaine." Without releasing his grip on her, Sam steered her across the patio to the back door and began to pound it with his fist.

  "Hey, Blaine!" he shouted. "I know you're in there! I want to talk to you. I've got Susannah Faulconer here. FBT Faulconer. Joel Faulconer's daughter. She doesn't like being left on the goddamn doorstep. Let us in."

  "Shhhh!" she hissed. "Be quiet! Will you be quiet!" She imagined Blaine huddled inside his house in terror while he waited for the police to rescue him from the madman who was storming his house. "He's going to think we're here to murder him!"

  No sooner had the words left her mouth than one of the patio doors slid open and they had their first sight of their quarry.

  In those initial few seconds, Susannah came to the rapid conclusion that Mitchell Blaine probably didn't care whether he was about to be murdered or not. As Boston's young high-tech marketing whiz stumbled out onto the patio, she realized that he was too drunk to care much about anything.

  Even drunk, he was formidable. She had been around the exclusive brotherhood of powerful corporate men all her life, and although Blaine was only thirty-one and obviously not at his best, she knew at once that he was a member in good standing. But if she had been pressed to define exactly why she was so certain, she would have had difficulty. Members of the brotherhood reveled in their power too much to drink to the point of oblivion, as Blaine had done. And although he was wearing the proper uniform-a custom-tailored white dress shirt and well-cut gray trousers-the garments looked as if they had been slept in.

  His straight, sandy hair was conservatively cut by a barber who had been well-trained to meet the precise requirements of the brotherhood. But the regulatory side part was uneven, and instead of being combed neatly back from his forehead, the hair at the front tumbled forward in a manner acceptable only after a set of tennis.

  His body wasn't quite right, either. Although he was imposingly tall, his build was a bit too muscular for a member of the corporate elite and his abdomen a little too taut. But the directness in those wide-spaced, light blue eyes was familiar, as well as the chilling contempt in his blunt, slightly irregular features.

  She caught her breath
as Blaine came toward Sam. "Get the hell off my property."

  Sam formed the peace sign, a gesture that would have amused Susannah if she hadn't been so appalled at the rudeness of their intrusion. "We just want to talk," Sam said, refusing to back off by so much as an inch. "We've come a long way to talk to you."

  "I don't care how far you've come. You're trespassing, and I want you out of here!" Blaine took an uneven step forward.

  Sam was starting to get angry, managing by some incredible sleight-of-mind to turn himself into the wronged party. "Listen. We've busted our asses finding you, and the least you can do is hear us out."

  "The least I can do is kick you out of here."

  Gathering her nerve, Susannah pushed herself between Sam and the formidable Mr. Blaine. "Let's go inside and I'll fix you a cup of coffee, Mr. Blaine. You look like you could use it."

  "I don't want any coffee," he said with angry precision. "I want another drink."

  "All right," she replied stubbornly. "I'll fix you some coffee to go along with your drink."

  Fortunately, the relentless whine of the security alarm had begun to bother him even more than their presence. He turned back toward the house, and at that moment she knew why she had recognized him as one of the elite brotherhood of the powerful. Even though he was staggeringly drunk, he had been able to dismiss them with cruel accuracy as persons of no consequence to him.

  He moved with surprising grace for a man in his condition, although he did manage to stub the toe of his expensive black leather wing tips on the step. Sam refused to wait for an invitation that he knew wouldn't be forthcoming. Grabbing Susannah, he pulled her through the patio door after him.

  They walked into a family room complete with timbered ceiling and a soaring Old English fireplace that looked large enough to roast an ox. The green and red plaid design in the carpet held indentations showing that couches and tables had been in place quite recently, but many of the items themselves were missing. The few pieces of furniture that remained were obviously expensive, but dark and heavy.

  When Blaine finally realized they had followed him, he looked annoyed, but not alarmed. She spotted the glass that he had been drinking from. Ignoring her conscience, she snatched it up and handed it to him. While Sam studied their surroundings, she adopted the deferential manner of one of Joel Faulconer's secretaries and managed to convince Blaine to deactivate the alarm and call off his security company.

  When the house was finally quiet, Sam spoke. "I've got a proposition for you, Blaine…"

  She went into the kitchen to make coffee. While she was waiting for the water to boil, she spotted a nursery school calendar hanging crookedly by a magnetic clip on the side of the refrigerator along with a collection of crayoned art work. Children had obviously occupied this house until fairly recently, but where were they now?

  As she returned to the family room with the coffee, she saw that Blaine had refreshed his glass with three fingers of something that looked like straight scotch. Sam was waving a can of Coke in the air and talking, talking, talking. "… is the most incredible, extraordinary machine you've ever seen. Simple, elegant-it'll blow you away."

  Blaine turned as he spotted Susannah. "So you're Joel Faulconer's daughter?" His consonants were slightly blurred at the edges.

  "Yes, I am."

  "He's a son of a bitch."

  She shrugged noncommittally and held out a coffee mug, which he ignored. Taking a mug for herself, she sat in one of the remaining chairs. Something poked her in the hip. As Sam resumed speaking, she reached behind her and pulled out a toy truck. For a moment she studied it, and then she quickly pushed it back where it had come from. The fresh indentations in the carpet and the evidence of the recent presence of children all pointed to the fact that Mitchell Blaine had marital problems, probably fairly recent ones, if she were to judge by his intoxicated condition.

  Sam had been nervously passing his Coke can from one hand to the other while he spoke, and now he turned to her. "Mitch agreed to fly to San Francisco with us this afternoon."

  "I did?"

  "That's what you told me, Mitch," Sam replied. "Remember how anxious you are to see our computer."

  Susannah rose quickly to her feet. Sam was lying. This was another one of his monumental bluffs. "Sam, I don't think-"

  "Call the airlines and make certain the tickets are taken care of, will you? I want to leave as soon as possible."

  Blaine drained his glass. "I'm not going anywhere until I have another drink."

  Susannah was normally impatient with drunks, but something about Blaine touched her. Maybe when Sam realized that this man was in pain, he would leave him alone. She studied the fresh dents in the carpet and asked softly, "Has your wife been gone long?"

  Blaine's expression closed up tight. "That's none of your business."

  "I'm sorry. I'm sure this is a difficult time for you."

  He reached for the scotch bottle. She realized that he was determined to drink himself into oblivion, and was equally determined that it be a solitary journey. As she watched the care with which he was performing each simple movement, she felt an unexplainable sense of protectiveness toward him. Even blindly drunk, he hadn't lost a shred of dignity.

  She could tell that Sam was growing impatient, but for the first time that summer, the needs of a man other than Sam Gamble had caught her attention. "I don't think drinking is going to help," she said. "Perhaps I could call one of your friends."

  Sam shot her a warning glance. Then he pushed her out of the way and took the bottle of scotch from Blaine's hand. "You don't want to see any of your friends right now, do you, Mitch? Bunch of stiffs. The California climate will fix you right up. And once you see our computer, you won't even think about your wife anymore."

  Susannah began to protest, but Sam gave her a look so murderous that she fell silent.

  Two hours later they were on their way back to San Francisco with a nearly comatose Mitchell Blaine slumped in the seat between them. Every time he began to wake up, Sam ignored her protests and poured another drink for him. Long before they reached San Francisco, a terrible foreboding had taken hold of Susannah. Drunk, Mitchell Blaine was formidable. She couldn't imagine what he would be like when he was sober.

  Chapter 13

  Blaine was not a happy man when he woke up the next morning. He staggered from Sam's bedroom into the hallway, where he bumped into Angela Gamble, who was wearing only a fluffy bath towel and nail polish. Angela was so startled that her towel slipped, which didn't bother her nearly as much as the fact that she hadn't had time to do her hair.

  Blaine groaned and slumped into the wall, his solid body making a noisy thwack. In the kitchen, Susannah heard the sound and snatched up a water glass along with three aspirin before she raced back to the hallway.

  He was still in the rumpled clothes he'd been wearing the day before. His jaw was covered with rusty stubble, his eyes bloodshot. Angela's towel was once again anchored under her arms, and she looked at Susannah quizzically. Since she had been asleep last night when Sam and Susannah had returned, she had no idea who her newest house guest was. Susannah gave her an I'll-tell-you-later-look and extended the aspirin and the water glass toward Blaine. He fumbled for them.

  "Good morning," she whispered. As soon as he had swallowed, she gestured toward the bathroom. "I'll put some clean clothes out for you while you take a shower. There's a razor on the sink."

  He gave her a bleary, hostile look. "Who are you?"

  "We'll talk as soon as you've had your shower."

  She gently steered him toward the bathroom and quietly shut the door. She wondered what he would think of Elvis.

  After giving Angela a brief summary of the events of the last few days, she laid out a set of clean clothes from Blaine's overnight bag, which she had packed herself before they had ushered him out of his house the afternoon before. Then she returned to the kitchen, where she began frying bacon. She and Sam had decided it would be best if she fed Blai
ne to help him over the initial pain of his hangover and then brought him out to the garage. At the time, their plan had seemed logical, but now she dreaded the idea of dealing with Blaine by herself. Unfortunately, both Sam and Yank were busy setting up a crude version of the prototype of the self-contained computer that Yank had been working on, and she didn't have any choice.

  Very little time passed before Blaine walked into the kitchen. A distinct feeling of dread settled over her at the difference in his appearance. All those liquor-softened edges had hardened. His jaw was smoothly shaven and rigidly set. Although his sandy hair was still damp from the shower, it had been precisely parted and combed into unquestioning obedience. His clothing was impeccable. Even after spending the night in a suitcase, neither his pale yellow sport shirt nor his expensively casual trousers had the nerve to retain a single wrinkle. His hangover had to be deadly, but he gave no sign that he was suffering. He was stiff and starchy, sternly correct, and coldly furious.

  "How do you like your coffee?" she asked nervously, as she filled a mug.

  "Black." He bit the word out, snapped it off, tossed it away.

  She handed him a full mug and arranged the food she had prepared for him on a plate. She wasn't much of a cook and the eggs were a little too brown at the edges, but he didn't comment. Once again, she thought about fleeing to the safety of the garage, but she forced herself to pour a cup of coffee and carry it over to the table. To her astonishment,

  Blaine stood and pulled out her chair. Instead of easing her mind, the display of courtesy was so chillingly correct that she grew even more uncomfortable.

  She nervously sipped her coffee and observed his impeccable table manners. When Blaine was drunk, she had felt some sympathy for him, but now that he was sober, he reminded her too much of the men she had run away from.

  He showed no inclination to speak, so she carefully reintroduced herself. He studied her for a moment, and she received the definite impression that he disliked everything he saw. Turning his attention away from her, he gazed intently out the dinette window. She could almost feel the effort of his self-control, and she braced herself for the inevitable.