Echoes of Titanic (55 page)

“I
what
?”

“I'm sorry, cousin. I know you want him for yourself, but he loves
me
. And I love him.”

Adele began to shake her head furiously from side to side. “No, Jocelyn, that wasn't it at all. Listen to me. You can't trust him. He doesn't care about you. That's not what happened—”

“Don't do this,” Jocelyn pleaded, her eyes filling with tears as she looked at the grip Adele had on her hands. “Please let me go.”

“I can't. I won't.”

Pulling back, Jocelyn looked into her cousin's face, knowing she had to do something extreme. “Don't you understand?” she whispered. “If I have to choose between him and you, I choose
him.
”

Chaos reigned on every side, but in that moment there was only the two of them. Cousins, raised as sisters, the best of friends. Jocelyn could clearly see in Adele's beautiful blue eyes the hurt her words had caused. She felt bad about that, but surely someday her cousin would understand and forgive her. Jocelyn had dreamed of a husband and children of her own her whole life. Now that the chance was within her grasp, she refused to leave it behind.

As expected, Adele released her grip, dropping her arms to her sides. “You fool,” she said, her voice quivering. “I hope you do find Tad. The two of you deserve each other.”

Her heart heavy, her mind swirling with guilt and regret and fear, Jocelyn slowly stepped away. Then, picking up speed, she headed for the stairwell, desperate to find the man she loved before it was too late.

I
know the bonds used to be kept in a safe.” Lou gestured toward the far wall in Walter's office.

Kelsey turned to look, surprised to see a safe there, albeit one that looked far newer and more modern than Adele's. Mounted in the wall at shoulder height, it was hanging open, the picture frame that had apparently kept it hidden lying broken on the floor underneath.

“The bonds may have been in there before,” Lou continued, “but they are not there now. I think Gloria took them out on Monday night and hid them somewhere else in the building so I wouldn't be able to find them.”

Kelsey swallowed hard, her brain still trying to grasp the situation she found herself in.

“Where are they?” Lou persisted, glaring at her. “Where are the bonds? Where did she put them?”

Kelsey shook her head from side to side. “I promise you, Lou, I don't know. I really don't.”

“Okay, we can start there, no harm done yet.” He moved a step closer, still slapping the tire iron rhythmically against his palm. Behind her, Walter began rocking fiercely in his chair, trying to get loose, but it was no use. He was taped up tight with no hope of escape.

“Look, that's why I came here today,” Kelsey said, taking a step backward, “to search for the bonds myself. I was hoping they might be hidden somewhere in Gloria's office. While you and Walter were in here having your meeting, I was going to go in there and root around till I found them.”

“Uh-huh. Well, been there, done that. Got any other theories?”

“No, but I've been racking my brain trying to figure it out.”

He glared at her, eyes narrowing. “You sure you didn't already find them when you were here last night?”

Kelsey resisted the urge to look over at Walter, who could hear their exchange.

“How did you know about that?” she asked. “Were you the one tracking us?”

Lou shrugged. “Jumping in on your transmission was the only way I could follow your activities, seeing as how you didn't think to wear your pin.”

Kelsey gasped, one hand flitting to her collar, though of course the pin wasn't there. She hadn't worn it since yesterday afternoon. “My Quarter Club pin? What did you do, Lou? Put a bug in it or something?”

He shrugged. “Not exactly. A tracking device. It was the best way I could think of to keep an eye on you and those bonds.”

Kelsey was dumbfounded. How had she ever trusted him, much less defended him to others?

“Speaking of transmissions,” he said, holding out a hand. “Give me your cell phone.”

Only then did she realize that she'd missed an opportunity, that she could have dialed with one hand in her pocket and somehow summoned help. Now it was too late for that. Reluctantly, she handed it over to him and watched as he slipped it into his jacket pocket.

“Back to the matter at hand,” he snapped, “are you sure you didn't already find them when you were here last night? Walter says the bonds were never in the safe at all, but I know he's lying. Now I'm thinking maybe
you
did something with them.”

“He's not lying. The bonds were kept in
Adele's
old safe, not this one.”

Lou eyed her suspiciously. “Adele's old safe? There's another safe somewhere else?”

Kelsey nodded. “I found it last night and even managed to get it open. But it was empty except for my great-grandmother's diary. The bonds weren't in there.”

“Where is it?”

“The safe? It's in my father's office—which used to be Adele's office, as you probably recall.”

“I want to see it. Let's go.”

“I'll show you, but it won't do any good. I'm telling you that it's empty.”

Lou snarled, quickly losing his patience. He gestured toward the other
end of the hall. With a last, desperate glance at Walter, Kelsey began walking, with Lou following closely behind. Passing the main hallway, she desperately wanted to dash out toward the reception area. Even if she couldn't get away from Lou completely, at least her actions might be noticeable on the security camera and would alert Ephraim that something bad was going on up here. But then she felt a sharp jab to her shoulder and realized it was the tip of the tire iron. Swallowing hard, she continued forward. As they passed Gloria's office, Kelsey paused, stunned at the mess she spotted inside.

“You did this?” she gasped, looking at Lou.

“I was trying to find the bonds, but no dice. Wherever she hid them, it wasn't in there. Now keep moving.”

Kelsey kept going until she got to her father's office at the end of the hall and opened the door. The smell inside was the same as it had been last night—dusty and unused—but as she flipped on the light, she realized that it looked completely different now. This office had been tossed as well, with papers strewn everywhere, cabinet doors open, drawers upended onto the floor.

“When did you have time to do all of this?” she couldn't help but ask as she gazed at the mess in dismay. “How did you even get in without security seeing you?”

“It wasn't difficult. You had set up our little meeting for four o'clock, so I called Walter directly and suggested he and I get together an hour early. I told him we needed to speak privately before you joined us. When he showed up at the back door at two forty-five, I was already there waiting for him, so he let me come on in and we walked up the back stairs together. What an idiot.”

Eyes scanning the disaster he'd made of the room, Kelsey tried to understand what he was telling her. “I'm confused, Lou. What about the merger? Was that just some sort of ruse to get into the building?”

“Not at all. I really wanted that to happen, more than you can imagine.”

She turned to look at him, wishing she could find inside the man she'd always thought she knew.

“Then why do all of this? You had to know that once you roughed up Walter and trashed everything the deal would be off.”

Lou shook his head sadly. “Kiddo, I knew the deal was off the minute you called and asked me to bring along an audit and the contact info for my investors. You were on to me. You'd figured things out. At that point the only option left was to get the bonds and get out of town. It wasn't my first choice, but ten million dollars, give or take, can go a long way in helping a guy get established somewhere else with a new identity. A new life.”

She looked at him, sickened by the normalcy of his tone, his face. They might as well have been discussing dinner plans, not theft and lies and brutality.

“Enough talk. Keep moving.” With the tire iron, he poked her again on her shoulder blade, harder this time, so she continued on to the closet and opened the door. Though he had clearly rifled through the shelves during his search earlier, it seemed that he hadn't thought to clear them off completely so he could see what was behind them.

Pushing aside some papers that had fallen to the floor, she knelt down in front of the left wall and pulled off the stacks of old files. Lou came and stood behind her, and as soon as the black metal door became visible, he let out a low whistle.

“Good girl. I knew this was going to work out well, having you here. Open it up.”

Kelsey turned to look at him over her shoulder, realizing for the first time what a strong, imposing figure he was. For years, she'd thought of this man as all bark and no bite.

Now she realized nothing could be further from the truth.

“I'll open it, Lou, but there's nothing in there.”

He didn't reply, so she reached up and began twisting the dial, her hands trembling fiercely. In fact, they were shaking so much that she messed up twice and had to start over.

“Come on, come on!” he snapped.

“I'm trying! You're scaring me.”

He grunted as he took a step back. “I don't want to hurt anybody. I just want what's coming to me.”

“What's
coming
to you? Those bonds belong to my family and to this company, not to you. How could you possibly think you have the right to take them for yourself?” She glanced back to see him shaking his head.

“This is a last resort, kiddo. It wasn't the original plan, not by any means.”

Jaw clenched, she told herself to calm down as she turned to the numbers in the combination. “And what was the original plan?”

He didn't respond, so she added, “I'm assuming Gloria was in on it with you?”

Again, he was quiet for a long moment. “Yeah. We've been working toward this for five years, ever since the day your father passed us over for promotion and brought in someone else from the outside.”

Kelsey swallowed hard, her fingers still slowly turning the dial. “What were you guys hoping to accomplish?”

“Can't you guess? We wanted to set things right, to establish the leadership structure your father should have put in place when he first retired—me as the CEO, Gloria as the COO, and Walter nowhere to be found.”

“And how were you going to do that?”

“It was all a matter of mathematics. We knew that with Nolan no longer at the helm and stupid Hallerman in his place, this company would eventually devalue enough that I could afford to merge back in. That's all we wanted, to be in the top two spots at B & T. Nothing else would have changed. You would still have been our rising star. All we were doing was fixing what your father broke when he made the wrong decisions five years ago.”

“And that's why you gave me faked data in your financing request?”

“Oh, you figured that out too? Gloria worried that you and Cole would talk, but when Cole quit in a huff over your beating him out on the deal, we knew we were set. He played right into our hands.”

Kelsey's mind worked hard to grasp what he was telling her. She couldn't fathom how they allowed her to suffer such collateral damage.

“And where did the bonds figure into that plan?” she asked tightly.

“Don't be naive, Kelsey. The bonds were the key to everything. It was to be a simple acquisition asset sell-off.”

Stunned, Kelsey spun around to face him. “Do you mean to tell me you were going to use this company's own assets to finance your purchase?”

He grinned proudly. “That's the way it's done, kiddo. With the bonds as collateral, I could easily get a short-term loan to buy controlling interest of B & T, and then once I had control, I could authorize the sale of the bonds to pay back the loan. It's brilliant, don't you think?”

She merely glared at him.

“Oh, don't look so shocked,” he sneered. “You were trying to do the same thing—find the bonds, cash them in, and use the money to buy controlling interest and stop the Queen's Fleet takeover.”

“That's not the same thing at all! B & T has a right to those bonds. You don't.”

“A mere technicality. The end result would have been the same, except with my plan, the leadership would have been far more effective. Walter Hallerman is a fool—and so was your father for putting him at the helm. This company needed the vision and the experience that Gloria and I would have brought to the table instead.”

“That's debatable, Lou. I think we were starting to do pretty well without you.”

“Are you kidding me? Five years ago this company was worth upwards of seventy million dollars! By December it was down to less than half that much.”