The Lazarus Trap (28 page)

“Who says that—Audrey? Your dear self-righteous freak of a daughter? Why should I care what she says?” Terrance laughed, and to his own ears it sounded like the baying of wolves. It was beyond delicious, this ability to finally release a tiny shard of the loathing for this man he had carried for a lifetime. “What if I am? Who do you think brought me to this point?”

“No one is responsible for your actions but yourself.”

“What an utterly typical response. You let your own son languish in poverty rather than stand up for what was my rightful inheritance. You let
my
titles and
my
estate go to the offspring of the
real
thief. And you did it without raising a finger! Why? Because nothing mattered to you except maintaining this figment of your own imagination, this ridiculous sham of an existence.”

“That's not true.”

“What nonsense.” Terrance's panting breaths seared his throat. “Of course I steal! What choice did I ever have? I steal because I've been stolen from! Not by my grandfather and his floozy. By you! You wanted peace at all costs. You wanted calm. You wanted a myth of an English country life. Even if it meant sacrificing your own son!”

Arthur sighed and slumped further still. He might have said something. He might even have mentioned Terrance's mother by name.

“This whole rotten mess comes down to your failure to be a father!” Terrance felt himself standing outside the situation, as if the years and his success and his power all had been stripped away in a single instant, by this man who was incapable of any response. Terrance was both the raging banshee and the invisible observer. “You are going to tell me what I need to know.”

The front door crashed back. “You!”

Terrance whirled about. And smiled. “Hello, sister.”

She was taller than Terrance recalled, or perhaps it was merely her ire that added stature. She vaulted into the room, screaming as she raced for him. “You get
away
from him!”

Loupe's driver moved like a cat. He came up behind her and pressed something to her neck. There was a soft zapping sound. Audrey jerked into a full-length spasm, then sighed quietly and came crashing to the floor by her father's feet.

“No, please.” The words carried no strength, as though Arthur knew they were futile even before he uttered them.

The moment was just too delicious. Terrance touched his father's shin with the toe of his shoe. “Look at me, Father.”

Arthur locked gazes with his son. Terrance opened the hidden door, the one he had revealed to no one before this moment. And showed his father the full extent of his rage-driven ferocity. Arthur flinched and looked away. “I don't know where he is. They took him away somewhere. I can't tell you anything.”

“Ah, but for your dear daughter's sake, you must. You cannot possibly imagine what they will do to her if you don't.” Terrance signaled to the silent man. The driver lifted Audrey as easily as he would an empty set of clothes. Terrance drew out pen and pad and wrote down his cell phone number. He dropped it into his father's lap, between the unmoving hands. “Just give me Val.”

Terrance crossed to the front door. “I sincerely hope you find a way to help me. For once.”

THE HOME'S ATMOSPHERE WAS POISONOUS. DILLON GLARED AT him from the hallway, Gerald did sentry at the kitchen doorway. Bert stood by the sink and measured him for a coffin. Val forced himself to reenter the kitchen and sit at the table.

“I have an idea,” Val said. And waited.

Bert finally said, “Let's be hearing it, then.”

Val did not respond. He remained as he was, crouched over the table, staring at his hands.

Finally Bert sighed and dragged out another chair and seated himself. Val kept to the same position. Waiting.

Dillon slipped past Gerald and joined Bert at the table. Bert said, “All right, mate. Let's hear what you've got.”

Gerald remained leaning against the kitchen door frame, arms crossed over chest, gaze heated. Val turned his attention to the men seated at the table. Given the circumstances, two out of three wasn't bad.

“Terrance will be carrying the codes with him,” Val began.

“Codes,” Bert repeated.

“To access the bank funds,” Val explained.

“This is the money he stole we're talking about,” Bert said. “Our pension money.”

“Right. The newspapers are onto this theft. Which means the SEC has been called in.”

“Official government investigators,” Gerald supplied from his position, speaking for the first time since Audrey departed.

“Right. Terrance wouldn't dare go hunting for me without keeping tabs on his money. He would never trust his partners. And he's definitely not in this alone.”

“How can you be sure of that, mate?”

“Because if he was, he wouldn't be free to come over here now.

He's needed back in the States to handle the inquiry into the disappearance of the funds. There's someone else on the inside, someone high up enough to cover for Terrance.” Val rocked back in his seat. “Don Winslow.”

Bert asked, “That name's supposed to mean something?”

“Executive vice president,” Gerald said. “I've seen his name on documents.”

Val explained, “Don backed Terrance's hand when he stole a promotion from me.”

Gerald said, “I thought you had amnesia.”

“My memory was a total loss right after the accident.” Val forced himself to meet the man's gaze. “Things are coming back.

But it's patchy. And most of what I remember are things I'd just as soon forget.”

Gerald snorted quietly. But he subsided.

Bert refocused the discussion with, “So you've got a history with Audrey's brother.”

“Six years.”

“Bit of bad blood there, I take it.”

“About a year and a half ago,” Val replied, “Terrance seduced my wife. Then he stole a promotion that should have been mine by falsifying documents, pinning a series of losses on my watch. That I know for certain. He bribed a lab or a doctor to alter a DNA test so he could steal my child as well.”

“You got proof?”

“No. No proof. But I'm sure it happened.”

Bert looked at Gerald, who said, “You have quite a way with the ladies.”

To that Val had no response.

Bert continued playing the moderator. “So Terrance is going to be carrying the codes with him.”

“These days, access to a numbered account can be as simple or as difficult as you want to make it,” Val said.

“Know this from personal experience, do you?” Gerald said.

Val lifted his gaze. “That's right. I do.”

Gerald shook his head. Pushed off the doorjamb. Walked over to the window. Gave his attention to the green vista out back.

Val waited until the others' gazes had returned to him. “Knowing Terrance, there will be a series of very complicated maneuvers required to access those funds. Something that has to be done in strict order. He'll have part of it in his head. The other part will be in a computer. Terrance has always loved his toys.”

“You're thinking he's carrying this computer with him,” Bert said.

“That or something else.”

“Something we can lift.”

“Right.”

“Something we can use to renegotiate our position with.”

“That's my thinking.”

The youngest of the trio spoke up. “They've taken the grandest suite in the hotel where I work. I could get in and out, no problem.”

“Not you,” Val said. “Me. There's no need to get anybody else in trouble. And I'd have a better idea what to look for.”

“Just whose position would you be after saving here?” Gerald asked the window. “Yours or our pensions?”

Val decided he'd had enough. He rose from the table and walked outdoors. Clouds were piling in from the north. The afternoon sky contained a riot of tainted moods. The narrow strip of shadow between cloud and hill was shot with silver where sunlight struck the falling rain. Val futilely searched the horizon for a single shred of the confidence he had exhibited inside.

His mind returned to the same unanswered dilemma. Why had he forced Audrey away? The incident in New York might have scrambled his memory, but something far earlier had tainted his heart. How could he have felt something this powerful and still made her leave? Val pounded the post marking the boundary between city and verdant fields, convicted anew by all he could not remember. There was no escape. It was not the exterior that trapped him. It was everything inside. All the things he could never let go.

A siren sounded far in the distance, so faint it should have been possible to let it flow into all the other city noises and disappear. Yet this one rose and fell with the strident force of an alarm meant exclusively for him.

Then he heard the shouts rising from inside the house. One word was cried in anguish. A woman's name.

Dillon said nothing as they walked down the alley leading to the hotel's rear entrance. The lane held a sickly sweet odor of rubbish bins and coming rain. Dillon ducked inside the metal “Employees Only” entrance, then swiftly reappeared. “Ready?”

“You can wait out here if you want.”

“If I'd wanted to wait I'd still be in the van with the others.” Dillon led Val down a concrete hall painted a grim yellow. He pushed open the door to the gents'. “Stay put till I come for you.”

The room was cramped and lined with rusting metal lockers. A shower dripped. Machinery clanked overhead. Val moved to the sinks and pretended to wash his hands. The mirror revealed the same helpless fury that knotted his gut. It was no longer the past only that held a blank void. Audrey had been kidnapped by Terrance. That Terrance had gutted Val's future once more was irony at its most vile.

After Arthur d'Arcy's panic-stricken phone call, Bert and Gerald had gone into town and fetched Audrey's father. The man had been so distraught his words had emerged only half formed. They had learned what they could, then tucked him into the bed last used by Val. Afterwards they had regathered in the kitchen and grimly run through Val's strategy. Doing nothing was not an option.

Bert had toyed with the salt shaker, the glass pyramid tiny in his hands. “I know what the dear would be telling us just now.”

Val asked, “How do you know Audrey?”

“The lady managed to drag me and Dillon here out of one truly dark pit. You know she works as a prison counselor?”

“We don't need to be going there. Audrey was there when our trouble was at its worst. That's all you should be telling the bloke.” Dillon rounded on Val. “This plan of yours. Is it going to work?”

“You can use me as a trade if you think that has a better chance of success.”

“That's not what I was asking, mate.”

“Yes it was.”

“All right, then,” Bert said. “Straight up. Tell us why that's a nonstarter.”

“If you give me up, we're empty handed. They have all they want. They have no reason to give Audrey up.”

The men studied him intently. “Know what I think, mate? There's more to your plan than just stealing the bloke's phone.”

“Computer.”

“Whatever. You're after more, aren't you?”

“I'm just thinking ahead.”

Bert's gaze was hard as his tone. “You're out to shut him down.”

“If I can.”

“And restore our pension fund?”

“I'd like to.”

Gerald remained against the doorway, arms crossed, voice an iron rod. “What about the bit where you stole some for yourself?”

Val had nothing for them but the truth. “I don't understand why I did it. Money's never been all that important to me. Before, I was working for a wife and the children I hoped we'd have. Now I don't have either.”

Bert looked at the others. “I say let's do the job.”