The Angels' Share (The Bourbon Kings Book 2) (12 page)

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 in 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.

O
ut 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.

“Is there something else?” Edward prompted.

“This
is very awkward for me.”

“Clearly.”

There was another silence, as if the man would have much preferred Edward get to the point. But that was not going to happen. As Edward had long learned in business, he who opened the meeting in any given negotiation lost.

And yes, he knew why the man had driven out to the farm.

Monteverdi coughed a little. “Well, now. Indeed. With your father’s death, certain … arrangements … that he made need to be attended to, and in my case, with alacrity. Although I know you are in mourning, I’m afraid that there is one situation in particular which cannot be put off and which is imminently due. Accordingly, and in order to protect your family’s name and reputation, I am coming to you so that things may be handled discreetly.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Liar, liar, pants on fire. “So I’m afraid you will have to be more specific.”

“Your father came to me several months ago for a private loan. I was happy to take care of what he required, but let us say that I had to get creative with the financing. The monies are due now and they must be repaid before the quarterly Prospect Trust board meeting or—”

“Or you will be in a tight spot?”

Monteverdi’s face got hard. “No, I will be forced to put your family in a tight spot.”

“I can’t help you.”

“I don’t think you understand. If that money is not repaid, I’m going to have to take legal action, and that will become very public, very quickly.”

“So sue us. Call the
New York Times
and tell them we owe your Trust company fifty-three million dollars. Tell them we’re deadbeats, liars, thieves. I don’t care.”

“I thought you said you knew nothing of this.”

Goddamn drink was still in his veins. Also, he was out of practice with verbal sparring.

“I think the issue,” Edward said with a smile, “is your needing to protect yourself. You’re trying to strong-arm me so that you don’t have to
tell your board that you executed a massive, unsecured loan without their knowledge and admit that you’ve been skimming the interest from it for yourself. My response is that I don’t give a shit. Do whatever you have to. I don’t care because it’s not my problem.”

“Your mother is in a delicate state.”

“She’s in a coma for all intents and purposes.”

“As the eldest son, I would think you’d care about her welfare more than this.”

“I moved out here to this incredible luxury”—Edward waved a hand around at the ratty furniture—“to get away from all of that and all of them for a good reason. So sink that big fancy ship up on that hill. Shoot your cannons at my family’s mansion until the whole lot of it ends up on the seafloor. It is not going to affect me one way or another.”

Monteverdi jabbed a finger across the space. “You are not worthy of calling yourself a son.”

“Considering who my parents are, I’m proud of having lasted as long as I did under that roof. And do us both a favor. Don’t try to mask your self-interest in the rhetoric of altruism while you’re threatening my family. Tell me, how much interest did you pocket? Ten percent? Fifteen? If the loan was for six months, that’s at least two and a half million right there for you. Nice work if you can find it, huh.”

Monteverdi tugged at his icy white French cuffs. “I regard this as a declaration of war. What happens next is your fault.”

“How codependent of you.” Edward indicated his body. “But I’ve been tortured for eight days by people who were going to kill me, and in my case, that is not hyperbole. If you think there is anything that you can do to get my attention, you are delusional.”

“Just watch. You may not care about your mother, but I wonder if you feel so cavalier about your siblings. As far as I understand it, you have always been quite the caretaker.”

“Were.”

“We shall see.”

The man turned away and was out the door a moment later. And as the old-fashioned phone started to ring again, Edward stared down at his
ruined legs … and wondered, not for the first time, what might have been.

What should have been.

Too late for all that now, however.

Cranking his head to the side, he stared at that receiver hanging on the wall by the galley kitchen. The thought of walking over there exhausted him, but mostly, he knew what the call probably was about.

They were going to have to come for him if they wanted him, though.

E
dwin
MacAllan, Master Distiller for the Bradford Bourbon Company, was getting nowhere. Sitting in his office, which had been his father’s command central up until the man had died unexpectely a decade ago, Mack was trying to reach someone, anyone at the business center. Nothing. All he was getting was voice mail, which, considering he was dialing senior management’s private lines and not going through the receptionist, was unprecedented.

The CFO, COO, and three senior vice presidents were not picking up.

Lane was also not answering his cell.

As Mack hung up the phone again, he knew damn well that caller ID on the corporate phones meant that people knew who it was. And whereas one or two might not have answered, all five? Yes, their CEO had died, and there was chaos, but the business had to keep running.

“Hey, am I doing this—”

Before Mack could get to the word “right,” he shut his mouth and remembered that his executive assistant, who had also been his father’s, was
not out there anymore. And hadn’t been since her brother had had a heart attack the day before yesterday.

As if all the interviews he’d done today hadn’t reminded him of the loss?

Clearly, they’d just thrown him into a case of denial.

Putting his elbows on the piles of paperwork, he rubbed his head. Hiring was a lot like dating. HR had sent over a number of candidates, and each one of them had been a swipe left, the executive assistant equivalents of high-maintenance, bobbleheaded beauty queens; neurotic, Glenn Close, bunny-boiling clingers; or sex-less, defensive, hairy-armpitted manhaters.

“Shit.”

Getting up, he walked around the battered old desk and took a lingering stroll around, looking at the artifacts that were displayed in glass cases and shadowboxes. There was the first barrel that had been stamped with No. Fifteen, the company’s brand of relatively reasonably priced bourbon. A line-up of special bottles celebrating the University of Charlemont basketball program’s wins in the NCAA tournament in 1980, 1986, and 2013. Historic revolvers. Maps. Letters from Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jackson to various Bradfords.

But the wallpaper itself was the true testimony to the company’s product, longevity, and pride. Every inch of flat, vertical space was layered with labels from countless bottles, the different fonts and colors and images illustrating an evolution of marketing, value proposition, and price.

Even as the product that was packaged stayed exactly the same.

Bradford Bourbon was made precisely the way it had been since the late 1700s, nothing changing, not the make-up of the grain mash, not the strain of yeast, not the special limestone aquifer-fed water source, not the charred oak of the barrels. And God knew the Kentucky seasons and the number of days in a calendar year hadn’t altered.

As he measured the history that had come before him, it seemed inconceivable that over two centuries of tradition could end on his watch.But
the corporate bigwigs had decided, before William Baldwine had died, to freeze the purchasing of corn, which meant there was no more mash, which meant Mack had had to shut production down.