by Holly Hart
“Hey, Karen,” I say. “What’s up?”
“I’m taking a break,” she says without her trademark style. “Things are getting a little tense up there.”
“Why, what’s going on?”
“Chance and Tre keep staring daggers at each other. It makes me uncomfortable. It’s like having your parents fight in front of you.”
God, I know what that’s like.
“I’m sure it’ll blow over,” I soothe. “I’ve known them since we were kids. They always patch things up. They’re as close as any brothers I know.”
“I hope you’re right,” she says. “I just want things to go back to the way they were before Quentin Pearce came into our office.”
As she walks out onto the street, I find myself wishing the same thing.
Chapter Forty-Two
42. CHANCE
“What are we going to do up here?” Sara asks as we climb the stairwell that leads to the roof of the building where Atlas’s offices occupy the seventeenth floor.
“I told you, you’ll see when we get there,” I say.
“I wish you’d told me about having to take the stairs the last three flights. I would have told you Sara don’t do that shit. Plus, you said you were taking me for dinner.”
We finally reach the door to the roof. The stairwell landing is dank up here, with no light except for a bare security bulb.
“How do you know I’m not taking you to dinner right now?” I ask.
She grins. “Dining al fresco? On the roof?”
I just smile back.
“I’d hate to be the caterer who has to lug all the food up these stairs,” she says, looking back down the way we came. “But I guess the view will be worth it.”
“Oh, I definitely think the view will be worth it,” I say as I press the crash bar and push the door open.
We step out onto the tar-paper and gravel roof to a 360-degree view of downtown Chicago’s Loop business district. The sun is sitting at about the halfway point in the western sky, about two hours from sunset.
“Wow,” she says, scanning the horizon. “This is impressive. But I don’t see a table or anything.”
“What we’re looking for is over here,” I say, taking her by the hand.
We round the corner of a maintenance outbuilding and her eyes pop as she finally sees what I’m talking about.
“Whoa,” she breathes. “Is that…?”
“That,” I say, pointing at the pea green behemoth parked on the building’s helipad, “is the company’s specially modified Sikorsky HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter.”
We walk closer and Sara looks like a kid at an air show, inspecting the big bird from all angles.
“These are what the military used for search and rescue during Katrina in 2005,” I say. “They’re specifically designed to get people out of tight spaces under challenging conditions.”
She turns to me. “Challenging conditions?” she asks. “Does that mean what I think it means?”
“Live fire,” I nod, patting the armored door. “This baby has seen some of the roughest places in the world. But she always gets us back out again.”
Sara’s big blues are practically glowing. “This is so cool,” she says.
“I was hoping you’d like it,” I grin.
“So do you think you could take the boss into letting me ride in it sometime?” she asks, taking my hand.
“Why do you think I brought you up here?” I open the pilot’s side door and pull out a helmet. “We’re going to dinner.”
Her jaw drops. “You can fly this thing?”
“I’ve learned how to do a lot of things over the years.”
She gives me a leering grin. “One thing at a time, Tiger.”
“That’s it right there,” I say into the helmet microphone.
“What?” she shouts over the din of the Sikorsky’s rotors.
I point through the windscreen at the beach of the resort town of Grand Haven below us on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. It’s a favorite of the Chicago yachting folks, who use it as an excuse to cruise across the lake. Or, in my case, an excuse to show off my helicopter.
“Grand Haven,” I say, a little louder. “Dinner.”
She smiles and gives me the thumbs-up.
A few minutes later and we’re descending onto a landing pad at the Coast Guard’s sector field office.
A woman in a Coast Guard uniform opens the door for Sara and helps her out of the Sikorsky as it powers down. I meet them a few feet from the chopper.
“We have a car waiting for you, ma’am,” the woman shouts over the whine of the engine.
Sara gapes at me. “A car?”
I shrug. “I called in a couple of favors.”
“Mr. Talbot is being modest, ma’am,” says the woman, a lieutenant named Gloria whom I’ve met a few times. “Atlas has been a great friend to the Coast Guard.”
A white Ford Expedition pulls up and the driver gets out to open the door for Sara. I climb in the other side.
“Anything else you feel like impressing me with tonight?” she asks as we pull away.
“Wait till you see what we’re having for dinner,” I say with a grin.
“Oof,” Sara breathes as she finally pushes her plate away from her.
I do a slow clap. “That was impressive.”
“Why did you bring me here?” she groans. “That burger had to have been 5,000 calories.”
“Don’t forget the sweet potato fries,” I remind her, wiping the last of the grease from my lips. “Easily another thousand.”
“Burpees,” she sobs. “Kelsey’s going to have me do a burpee for every calorie, I know it. I hate burpees.”
“Good thing you didn’t enlist, then. Burpees are what you do to celebrate that the workout is over.”
She sticks her tongue out at me, and I feel an obscene throb under my jeans.
Across the lake, the sun is setting in a riot of orange and indigo. Our table is on the beachside patio of Banana Cabana, a summer-only burger shack that I discovered a few years ago. It’s been a mainstay for locals and summer tourists since it opened in the ‘80s.
“I can’t blame you,” Sara sighs. “You can lead a horse to burger, but you can’t make her snarf it down like a pig at the trough. That was all me.”
“You loved it,” I say.
“Is it sick to admit I want to get one to take home with me?” she asks in a conspiratorial whisper.
“No sicker than the fact I flew a helicopter to bring us here.”
“That was pretty decadent.”
“What can I say? I had a girl to impress.”
She grins. “Mission accomplished, soldier.”
We sit silently for a while, watching the sunset and slurping the last of our Diet Cokes through our straws. Sara was right – it was pretty decadent to bring the Sikorsky for a date.
But something about being with her makes me want to show off like a peacock. It’s like I didn’t even realize I was rich until she came back into my life. All of a sudden, I’m like a kid showing his friend his toy room: I got this and this, and one of these, and my X-Box…
Sara leans in closer.
“How fast does that chopper go?” she asks.
“About 195 knots,” I say. “Works out to 200-plus miles per hour. Why?”
“I’m just wondering how fast you can get me back home. I need to work off that burger, and like I said, I hate burpees.”
The look in her eyes has me standing at full attention under my jeans now.
I reach down and pull her from her seat with one hand, tossing a hundred onto the table with the other. We practically jog across the parking lot to the waiting Expedition and our Coast Guard driver.
Chapter Forty-Three
43. SARA
“That was so much more fun than burpees,” I pant.
Chance nods. “Probably burned more calories, too.”
I look around his bedroom and see the clothes piled in random spots wh
ere they landed after we flung them when we got here. A night breeze is lifting the sheer curtains over the window next to the bed, helping to cool the aftermath of our passion.
He reaches an arm around me and pulls me close. We lay like that silently for a while. Tonight has been probably the most incredible night of my life.
So why can’t I get Quentin Pearce out of my head?
“Everything okay?” Chance asks.
I come this close to just saying yes before I stop myself. Not being honest with him was what led to me losing him all those years ago. Now I have a second chance. And no, the irony isn’t lost on me.
“There’s something I really should talk to you about,” I say gingerly. “But I don’t know how to do it.”
He sits up, eyes wide. I can read his mind in that gesture.
“I’m not pregnant, dummy.” I give him a playful smack as he exhales heavily.
“Okay,” he says. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way, anything you have to tell me will be a piece of cake.”
“Even if it’s about Quentin?” I ask.
He sighs. “I suppose. Why, what’s up?”
“He called me yesterday demanding an update.”
“That’s fine,” he shrugs, lying down again. “Like I said, don’t worry about doing your job. I’m good with it.”
“I had to give him something, so I told him about the only thing I’ve found that might be a red flag.”
“What’s that?”
I take a deep breath. We’re wading into uncharted waters here.
“That there’s no real accounting of where the capital came from during Atlas’s expansion phase a few years ago.”
Chance’s body tenses next to mine. He’s silent long enough for me to start worrying.
“What did Pearce have to say about that?” he asks finally.
“He assumed it was an angel investor. But there’s no ownership equity that I can find. Unless it was one of the Sullivans, of course.”
Silence again.
“Chance, I don’t care what Pearce thinks. I know everything is aboveboard at Atlas. And if he has a problem with the truth, he can go fuck himself. I’m not going to make things up to help him steal your company, no matter how much he offers.”
He rolls over to face me. The intensity in his gaze gives me goosebumps. Please don’t tell me everything is going to come crashing down again over this. Please.
“Do you trust me, Sara?”
That’s not what I expected. “Of course,” I say.
“Thank you. That means a lot to me. Now I have to ask if I can trust you not to tell Pearce what I’m about to tell you.”
“Off the record,” I say, pretending to lock my lips with a key. “Journalism grad, remember?”
“I just don’t want to put you in a conflict of interest.”
I shake my head. “Like I said, the longer this goes on, the more I think Quentin Pearce’s interests can spin on my middle finger.”
I wasn’t trying to be funny, but Chance chuckles anyway.
“Remind me never to get on your bad side,” he says. “Would you mind taking your phone out of your purse?”
I raise an eyebrow but do as I’m told and hand it to him.
“What are you doing?” I ask as he fiddles with it.
“Taking you off the grid.” His fingers emerge with the phone’s SIM card and place it on the nightstand. “You can’t be too careful with a guy like Pearce. I want to eliminate the possibility of eavesdropping.”
I wish I could say he was being paranoid, but after overhearing Quentin’s conversation at his office, I really can’t.
“Okay,” he says, looking me in the eye. “Here’s the truth: you’re right, the angel investor was one of the Sullivans. In fact, it was Sully himself.”
I snap my fingers. “I knew it! Pearce can suck it. But wait, where did he get the money?”
“That’s what we need to talk about. And it’s all as off the record as you can get.”
Chapter Forty-Four
44. CHANCE
“You asked about my scars that first night together,” I say. “Remember?”
Sara nods.
“I got those particular ones on a night with Sully in Mosul. This was back in the aftermath of a round of terror attacks on Assyrian Christians.”
She nods again. “I remember seeing that on the news.”
“Sully and Atlas had been involved with getting Christians out of the city the year before, during the first wave of attacks. That was when I first started doing work for him on my leave. This time, there were rumors that the terrorists behind the attacks were organizing something major.
“One night, Sully came to me with some intel he’d gotten from a local: there was a financier from Qatar meeting with the group to pass along money to up their game. We tracked down their headquarters a few miles from the city and the two of us went in alone.”
Sara’s eyes are saucers. “My God,” she breathes. “That’s…”
“Insane?” I say. “Yeah. Looking back, it was far and away the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. But I was cocky back then, and so was Sully. So anyway, we bust into the place, guns drawn, to find eight Iraqis in their jihadi best and one guy in a suit. Our man from Jordan.
“We got the drop on them, so when they drew on us, it was a foregone conclusion. The guy in the suit wasn’t armed, so we left him alive. We were going to take him to a CIA contact of Sully’s for interrogation.”
Again, Sara goggles. “CIA ties? Holy shit, Chance.”
“I know,” I say, grinning in spite of myself. “Went from shoplifting Zagnuts at the Bi-Rite to rubbing elbows with spooks. Hard to believe, huh?”
She nods. “Go on.”
“I kept my gun on the Jordanian as Sully checked the trunk he’d brought. It was stuffed with hundred-dollar US bills, $16 million in total. As he was looking at the cash, I saw something taped to the inside of the trunk’s lid. It was an IED – improvised explosive device.
“I was off guard for just a second, but that was enough for our new friend to dash forward and grab the IED. I only had a moment to react – I threw Sully behind me and tackled the guy. I managed to climb over the trunk and toss him through a boarded-up window. Momentum carried me through with him. The IED went off when he landed.”
She winces and points at my chest. “And that happened.”
I grin. “You should’ve seen the other guy. Anyway, I came to in an Army hospital with Sully by my bedside. There was a colonel next to him, waiting to ask me questions. ‘I told him that we took care of the terror cell,’ Sully says. 'Got anything to add?’
“I knew Sully well enough by then to know he was telling me to go along. I backed him up, and no one was the wiser about the cash. He stashed it in an Atlas tent for a few months before smuggling it into the States the next time we rotated home.”
Sara sits in silence for a long time. It’s a lot to process, I know. I lived it and even I have a hard time believing it actually happened to me instead of Matt Damon in some movie.
The quiet is just starting to make me nervous when she finally speaks.
“So the expansion was funded by terror money,” she says.
I nod. “We laundered it through some shell corporations first, but yeah.”
“Why bother with the company?” she asks, ever the investigator. “Why not just retire rich?”
“You had to know Sully. He saw a lot in Iraq, especially during those attacks in Mosul. Those people weren’t fighters, they were just ordinary folks trying to live their lives. And they were slaughtered. That’s what sparked the change in focus for Atlas.”
“And you went along with it?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I thought it was the right thing to do. I still do to this day.”
There it is – it’s out there. The question is how will she feel about it? What we did was highly illegal, but as far as I’m concerned, everything Atlas has accomplished since then was worth it and m
ore.
But will she? Either we’ve just gotten a lot closer to each other, or I’ve handed her exactly what Pearce needs to ruin me.
“Who else knows about this?” she asks.
“Including you and me? Nobody.”
She blinks. “Really? Not even Tre?”
“Tre has always given me a nod and a wink when it comes to anything that might be on the fringes of the law. And he didn’t become president until after the money was in place.”
“So this is how you ended up inheriting Sully’s share of the company,” she says. “It wasn’t just that you shared his vision. You were literally the only one he could trust with Atlas.”
I nod. “Desmond – he was the guy who spoke at the board meeting that day – wasn’t overjoyed that Sully had skipped over his own son to give control to me. But he also realized he didn’t have the experience to run Atlas.”
“Terrorists funded the world’s first and only humanitarian security company,” she says.
“That’s the long and short of it, yeah.”
She stares into my eyes for a long moment before taking my head in her hands and laying a soft kiss on my lips.
“I always knew you’d make it big,” she says. “But I never realized you were a genius.”
Chapter Forty-Five
45. SARA
The expression on Quentin Pearce’s face is passive, but his eyes are blazing. I’ve never actually been scared of him until now – intimidated, sure, but not flat-out afraid like this.
“I don’t have time for this,” he says coldly. “Get back to work.”
“I meant what I said,” I say defiantly. “I’m done.”
He stares at me for a moment before starting to pace his office. It makes him look like a panther in a cage.
“Let me guess,” he says finally. “You and Chance Talbot are sleeping together.”
My gut cramps as I realize he’s even smarter than I thought. Could he have possibly been listening in on my phone the whole time? No, that’s outlandish.
Isn’t it?
“My reasons are my own,” I say.
