Silent Partner

by Stephen Frey

  Angela turned toward Jake, her eyes wide. “Oh, my God, I think I—” But her cell phone rang, cutting her off. It was Liv, she figured, pulling the phone from her pocket. “Hello.”

  “Angela.”

  The voice sounded familiar, but she couldn’t place it right away. “Yes?”

  “Do you know who this is?”

  She struggled, trying desperately to identify the caller. Then she realized who it was. “This is—”

  “Carter Hill.”

  “What do you—”

  “I want my files back, Angela. The ones you took from me tonight. If you give me those files, I will give you back your son.”

  Angela was silent, the breath sucked from her lungs.

  “That’s right. Hunter is here with me, and he’s fine.” Hill’s voice turned vicious. “For now.”

  Carter Hill stood before Angela, his thin smile barely visible in the moonlight. It was just after three o’clock in the morning and dawn was still two hours away. She had come to the swing set of this small park in the West End immediately after getting off the phone with Hill, as he had demanded. But he had made her wait. On the ground beside her was a cardboard box.

  “I assume those are my files,” Hill said, nodding down at the box. “The ones you stole from the South Side location.”

  “Yes,” she said, shivering. She’d been standing here for an hour, waiting for Hill to appear.

  “You’ve made a wise decision, Angela. Without all of that evidence, no one will believe your accusations. The South Side operation has already been shut down. Nothing there now but empty desks.” His smile grew wider.

  “I don’t care about anyone believing me. I just want my son back.”

  Hill motioned over his shoulder and a man appeared out of the darkness. “Take that,” Hill ordered, pointing at the box.

  “Yes, sir.” The man picked it up, then melted back into the shadows.

  “Now give me my son,” Angela said, her voice rising.

  “Not so fast. My people will need time to review the files to make certain everything is there.”

  “What! You promised me—”

  “Shut up!” Hill hissed. “Or your little boy will end up like Liv Jefferson.”

  Angela caught her breath. “What do you mean?”

  Hill chuckled. “Let’s just put it this way. Your little nigger friend won’t be writing any more columns about discriminatory banking practices.”

  Her hands began to tremble. “You killed her?”

  “You said it, not me.”

  “You—” But Angela couldn’t get the words out. She could feel the tears coming to her eyes and a terrible pain tearing at her heart. One she’d felt before.

  “That will be all for now,” Hill said calmly. “I’ll be in touch.”

  As he turned, Angela saw the three flashes over Hill’s left shoulder. The signal that the area had been completely secured. “Stop right where you are,” she ordered, smoothly drawing the pistol Jake had given her and pointing it directly at Hill’s chest as he turned back around. “Don’t move.”

  Hill spotted the glint of the gun in the moonlight. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? You’ll never see your son again.”

  He took a step toward her and she cocked the weapon, the metallic click stopping him dead in his tracks. She wouldn’t hesitate to follow her father’s advice this time. “Take one more step, Hill, and I’ll kill you,” she said coldly.

  “You’re making a grave—”

  But Hill didn’t finish. Two of Jake’s men appeared like ghosts from the shadows, hitting Hill at exactly the same moment. One high, one low. And a second later his wrists were cuffed securely behind his back. Then they had him on his feet, a rag stuffed in his mouth, and they were hustling him away toward the waiting van.

  Angela let out a long, heavy sigh, uncocked the pistol, and brought her hands down.

  Jake moved behind her and placed a hand on her shoulder. “I hope you know what you’re doing, sweetheart.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The sun’s first rays were just beginning to break through a thick cloud cover as theBoston Whaler motored along the north shore of the James River. When they reached land, Angela jumped to the bank, then darted into the forest along with five of Jake’s men. They’d come from downstream, hugging the wooded shoreline, and they were headed for Rosemary—the pool house specifically. They planned to enter the estate there, then scour the entire complex until they found Hunter. Angela was certain her son was with Chuck Reese.

  These were the last pieces of the puzzle for Angela: Bob Dudley and Chuck Reese’s mutual hatred; Dennis Wolfe’s defection from Dudley’s Sumter Bank to Reese’s Albemarle Capital six years ago; the fact that Sage Capital was the lessor of the space in the South Side business park; and Dudley’s observation that Carter Hill would have needed a financial backer to support that South Side operation. These were the last few pieces and Angela was certain she knew exactly how they fit together. She was sure that Chuck Reese was the money behind everything. Certain that once the forensic accountants had a chance to scrutinize the Albemarle and Sage records, they would find that Sage Capital was ultimately controlled by Albemarle. And she was certain that Dennis Wolfe had set up Sage for Reese after spending time at Albemarle.

  Sage Capital had originally controlled ESP Technologies, had paid Strategy Partners’ Alabama State Corporation Commission dues, and were the lessors of the South Side facility housing Sumter’s mortgage screening operation. It was obvious now why Dennis Wolfe had defied Walter Fogel at the Proxmire board meeting last Sunday evening. Wolfe would have figured out what was happening and reported it all back to Reese. But she and Jake had gotten to Ted Harmon and pierced the corporate veil anyway.

  The Carter Hill–Chuck Reese partnership made perfect sense to Angela. Hill and Reese both hated Dudley, and they both knew that what he treasured most in the world was Sumter Bank. To wrest control of it away from him would hurt him more than anything else could. So they’d agreed on a plan to frame Dudley for fraud in order to have him removed as chairman, while at the same time pushing a mutual agenda of housing discrimination against minorities by setting up the South Side operation. Hill needed financial support, and Reese needed someone inside to arrange the Dudley frame. A man who was ideally motivated. A man who would ascend to the Sumter throne—albeit ultimately reporting to Reese—should Dudley be deposed. It was a perfect match.

  Fifty yards from the pool house Angela knelt down behind a tall oak tree. She was joined by the leader of Jake’s team. “That’s it,” she confirmed, gesturing at the outline of the huge structure barely visible through the trees and the murky light.

  “You should stay here until it’s over, Ms. Day,” the team leader advised. “Mr. Lawrence ordered me to make certain that you were not involved in a dangerous situation.”

  She shook her head. “I believe my son is in there. I’ll be going in with you.”

  “Mr. Lawrence was very clear.”

  Angela placed her fingers on the young man’s shoulder. “You can’t keep me away. It’s my son. Besides, I’m safer with you than out here.”

  The young man grimaced. “You must stay very close to me. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.” She would, too. She saw no sense in being a dead hero.

  The leader signaled silently to the team and they stole the last few yards across the forest floor through the gloom to the pool house. When they had checked the interior through one of the floor-to-ceiling windows and had seen no one, one of the men produced a glass cutter and quickly sliced out a piece of the window while two other men kept the piece from falling by holding it up with suction cups. When the glass had been removed and laid carefully on the ground, the leader nodded to the others. They had to be ready for alarms to go off as they entered the building. But, as the leader stepped onto the pool deck, everything remained quiet.

  Angela stepped into the pool house’s humid air last and followed
the men as they sprinted for the door at the far end of the space. Behind the door lay the staircase leading down to the underground corridor connecting the pool to the massive main house. She had briefed the team on the structure’s layout as they’d headed up the James toward Rosemary in theBoston Whaler .

  At the doorway, they huddled together. “Let me go first,” Angela whispered to the leader.

  “Please don’t put me in this position, Ms. Day. Please stay back.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said, pulling out the pistol Jake had given her. She opened the door and crept slowly down the stairs, aware of muffled voices ahead as she and the rest of the team reached the bottom step and the corridor.

  She moved forward, gun drawn, her heart racing faster as the voices grew louder and the words discernible. She recognized Chuck Reese’s deep baritone, Hunter’s giggle, and then Caroline’s high-pitched tone. Then a voice that sent shivers up her spine. It was exactly as she had surmised. That could be the only explanation for the voice she had just heard.

  Angela and the men moved into position outside the playroom door, inside of which the Reese family was assembled. The leader tapped her on the shoulder, then pointed, indicating that two of his men would lead the assault. That there would be no argument this time, and she nodded.

  The leader held up three fingers, then two, then one, then pointed at the doorway and waved. The first two men tumbled into the large playroom, Glocks drawn, followed by the team leader, the other two men, then Angela.

  It was exactly as she had anticipated. Chuck Reese and Caroline were sitting in large easy chairs. Hunter was on the floor, playing. And Bill Colby was standing behind Reese. What she hadn’t anticipated were the three armed guards against the far wall. Men of Colby’s command who brought their rifles down and began firing as she hurled herself behind a wooden chair in a far corner of the room.

  Serenity turned to chaos, the angry spray of automatic gunfire tearing apart walls and bodies. Colby’s shouts. Caroline’s shrieks. Hunter’s screams.

  Angela rose up from behind the chair just as one of Jake’s men tumbled back against a wall, his body riddled with bullets. One of Colby’s men was doubled over as well, clutching his stomach, a dark river pouring from his abdomen. Chuck Reese was scrambling across the floor toward Hunter and Hunter was crying hysterically. She fired at another of Colby’s men who was aiming at one of Jake’s men, and he went down, shouting in pain and grabbing his thigh. Then she turned her gun on Colby who was racing for the door, firing twice.

  She barely felt the bullet pierce her arm. At first it seemed like nothing more than the sensation of hot grease hitting her elbow, a searing sensation that would pass after the initial pain. She swung her firearm in the direction she believed the bullet had come from, focused on the last of Colby’s men who was standing, and tried to pull the trigger. But her fingers failed to respond, and she dropped the pistol and grabbed her arm, aware that the man she had been aiming at had dropped to his knees and collapsed. Suddenly it seemed like her arm was going to fall off.

  She glanced down and saw crimson dripping through her fingers, and her head began to spin. She looked away and up into the eyes of the leader, trying to think of anything but the searing pain.

  “You all right?” he shouted.

  She nodded, not at all certain she was. But then he was shoving Hunter into her arms and the little boy’s panic-stricken grip gave her strength.

  “Mom!”

  “It’s all right, honey. Everything’s all right,” she said, tears streaming down her face, aware that the whine of bullets was gone. “Mommy’s here. Mommy won’t let anything happen to you.”

  The room had gone still except for the groans of the wounded and Caroline’s sobs. Colby, his three men, and two of Jake’s squad were down. The leader of the team had already secured Chuck Reese, and another of Jake’s men was escorting Caroline out of the playroom, her anguished cries fading as the man led her away.

  “I’ve got to get you and your boy out of here, Ms. Day!” The leader was tugging on her good elbow. “There could be more of Colby’s people around!” he shouted.

  “Okay,” she agreed groggily. But as she staggered from the playroom, Hunter’s tiny hand clasping hers, she heard shouting down the corridor toward the house. “What’s going on?”

  “There’s a guy down the hall holding a black woman hostage!” the leader hollered, dragging her along.

  “What?” She stopped, halting on the first step leading up to the pool. “What did you say?”

  “Come on, Ms. Day! I can’t have you hanging around here. I must get you out of the area. Let’s go!”

  “No!” The man down the corridor was Sam. And the woman was Liv. Carter Hill had lied. They hadn’t killed her. They’d brought her here when they’d kidnapped Hunter. She nodded down at the boy. “Get him to the boat! I’m staying.”

  “Ms. Day!”

  “Do it!” she screamed.

  The leader gazed at her intently for several moments, then clutched Hunter and raced up the stairs.

  Angela watched until they had disappeared, then staggered down the corridor toward the shouting voices.

  “I’ll kill her, I swear!”

  Angela came around the corner of a doorway to another, smaller playroom a hundred feet down the corridor from the room where they had just recovered Hunter. Sam Reese stood with his back to the far wall with Liv directly in front of him, one hand clasping her neck, the other a revolver pointed at her head. He was wild-eyed, the hand holding the revolver shaking crazily. Liv’s eyes were shut tightly, tears streaking her face. Her wrists were secured behind her back.

  “Get out of here!” he yelled at Jake’s man, who was aiming his weapon at Sam from the doorway. Then he saw Angela. “Tell him, Angie. Tell him I’ll do it. You know I will.”

  “Get out of here, Ms. Day!”

  But Angela ignored the order from Jake’s man, stepping into the room, clasping her bleeding elbow. She watched as the gun shook wildly in Sam’s hand, and as Liv’s eyes flew open at the sound of Angela’s name.

  “Don’t come any further, Angie!” Sam yelled.

  She took several more steps.

  “Ms. Day, get back!”

  “You set me up, Sam,” Angela said quietly, now just a few feet away from him. “All of that talk about us having a better relationship. Bringing Hunter to me because he needed me. Defying your father. All lies. You and your father were setting me up so Carter Hill could kidnap Hunter when he was with me. So it could look as if I were the bad person when he was taken from me. That was your out. What were you going to do? Kill Hill and install your own man at Sumter? Thennegotiate Hunter’s return.”

  Sam smiled but remained silent.

  “But you left too many tracks leading back to Rosemary.”

  “You always were too smart for your own good,” he hissed.

  Angela took another step forward, and Liv moaned as Sam pressed the barrel of the revolver hard against her temple. “What are you going to do, Sam?” She noticed out of the corner of her eye that Jake’s man had moved into the room, sliding along the wall next to the doorway so he could maintain a clear shot at Sam. “Kill me?”

  “I will if you don’t get out of here.”

  “I’m not leaving.” She wouldn’t either. She hadn’t been able to save Sally, but she was going to save Liv. “Not without my friend.”

  Sam laughed harshly. “Then I’ll kill you both.”

  “Let her go and take me.”

  “No.”

  They were only a few feet apart now. “Could you really shoot me, Sam?” she asked softly. “Could you really kill me?”

  Sam gazed into her eyes, holding Liv’s chin tightly. “Don’t make me do it,” he pleaded.

  “Let her go. I’ll help you. I promise.”

  He shook his head slowly. “No, you won’t.”

  “I will,” she said firmly.

  His eyes took on a distant look. “How could you?�
�� he asked, his voice barely audible. “After what I’ve done to you.” He shut his eyes for a moment, and his chin dropped subtly.

  Angela leapt forward, grabbing Sam’s wrist and pointing the gun toward the ceiling. The revolver exploded twice, then she lost her hold on his arm and the gun came down. The shiny black steel disappeared behind Liv. Angela grabbed Liv’s shoulder and pulled her violently to one side, but an arc of red burst from Liv’s dress and she tumbled forward onto the ground. Then the barrel of the black revolver was pointing directly at Angela.

  Instinctively, she put her hands to her face and turned, waiting for the searing pain.

  EPILOGUE

  Sally Chambers. 1971–1994. That was all the tombstone said. It should have said much more.

  No, Angela thought to herself. It shouldn’t say anything because it shouldn’t be here.Sally shouldn’t be here.

  She stared at Sally’s name for a long time, hollow sadness building inside until her lower lip began to quiver. Finally, she knelt down and placed flowers beside the stone, the memory of how close they’d been still strong. The emptiness unremitting. How could humans be so awful? Why couldn’t they just get along?

  “You okay?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, feeling his hand come to her shoulder.

  “Let’s take a walk.”

  As she stood, she gazed at Jake. He’d gotten a haircut and shaved, and he looked good in his dark suit. No more John Tucker. He was all Jake Lawrence now.

  A gentle breeze blew strands of long dark hair across her face, and Jake moved them away, caressing her cheek. Then he gestured at the field beside the cemetery. “Come on.”

  They walked across the new clover until they reached the banks of a stream meandering toward Asheville.

  When they stopped, Jake took a deep breath and put his head back, looking up into the cloudless April sky. “God, it’s a beautiful day.” He glanced over at her. “It’s good to be alive, you know?”

  “Mmm.”

  They were silent for a long time, each alone with their thoughts as they watched the water meander past.