Breathless

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by Nancy Warren


  She pressed her lips to his forehead. “Get well soon,” she said softly, and pulled away before she could change her mind.

  4

  SOPHIE GROANED AS SHE literally dragged herself into work at Investment Bank of Vancouver the next morning. One knee was so badly bruised she couldn’t bend it and had to haul it behind her as she struggled up the three stone steps outside the building.

  She’d popped a couple of pain relievers to help fight both the pain in her leg and the pain in her scraped, bandaged hand, but still her whole body felt bruised and battered.

  And on the mental side things weren’t looking all that cheery, either. There was the major load of guilt she was packing. As she dragged the stiff leg behind her, she wondered how Detective Barker would make out with his much stiffer and far more unwieldy broken left leg. Then there was the personal loss. There was still no sign of her car and after Detective Barker’s comments she had to assume it wasn’t even a whole car anymore.

  She also had the nuisance factor of the theft to contend with. Even though she’d already had her locks changed, cancelled her credit cards and changed her bank accounts, she had to do something about other documents such as her birth certificate.

  She realized with a scowl that the thief would even get her free cup of coffee since she’d just filled her frequent drinker card from her favorite café across the street. The café where she’d be at this very moment grabbing her first java of the day if her knee wasn’t so sore. It wouldn’t be long before she’d filled another frequent coffee card, but it was the principle of the thing that irked her.

  As she entered the side entrance of the bank and crossed to the elevator, she continued her mental inventory of all the not very important but convenient cards in her wallet. There was her library card, video membership, the card with birth dates of all her family along with their sizes and favorite colors.

  Forcing a pleasant smile to her face, even though she wanted to kick something, she emerged from the elevator to the fourth-floor administration offices and made her way to her own. If she concentrated, she could walk without limping. Much.

  She picked up a blank notepad and stuffed it into a vinyl portfolio case she’d been given at a banking conference. Then she flipped on her computer and printed out her notes for today’s management meeting.

  She stopped in at the coffee room to fill her mug before heading to the boardroom. Her bad mood worsened when she sipped the toxic sludge, wishing she’d dragged herself across the road after all.

  Ellsworth Timson, senior account manager in Private Banking, was the only other early bird. He raised his gray-blond head and stared at her as she limped into the room with a carefree smile pasted on her face like too much lipstick.

  “Sophie! What happened?” She’d decided simply to say her car had been stolen and she’d tripped over a curb while chasing the thief. No need to go into details of how she’d single-handedly botched an important police investigation and wounded an officer in the process.

  But Ellsworth was a friend and at the moment they had the room to themselves. She couldn’t lie to him. She told him the truth, stopping short of describing Detective Barker’s injuries. She’d noticed how much Barker had hated being helpless and injured, and an odd sort of protectiveness stopped her from describing that part of her misadventures.

  “Here, let me help you sit down.” Ellsworth fussed over her as she told the story, pulling up an extra chair for her to rest her bruised leg on, asking her three times if she’d be more comfortable at home.

  “No,” she assured him three times. She wouldn’t. The bank chairman and the president were headed for a conference in New York the next day, and she felt she ought to be here today since it would be the last operations meeting for two weeks.

  “At least let me run across the street and get you your coffee.” He must have noticed her grimace as she sipped the office brew.

  She shook her head, smiling at his thoughtfulness. “This stuff tastes like they sucked it straight out of the tar sands, but it’s loaded with caffeine. It’ll do.”

  “Are the police considering any…?” He made a vague motion with his pen.

  “Charges?” She shuddered and dropped her head in her hands, wincing as the bandage shifted against her scrape. “No. I certainly deserve it, but I suppose they think since I had my car stolen I’ve been punished.” She reached out and touched his sleeve. “Don’t spread the story around, okay? It’s too embarrassing.”

  He patted her sore knee. “Of course not. You seem a little pale. I could have someone drive you home.”

  “No. Really.” She tried not to snap, he was only trying to be helpful. “I’m fine.”

  Although, for all the good she was to anyone in the meeting, she might as well have gone home. She couldn’t concentrate when her mind was still cataloging the contents of her briefcase, bag, glove compartment. Argh! Her workout gear was in her gym bag—in the trunk. One more item to replace.

  Ruby Ferringer, the queen bee of Private Banking, wanted hiring authority over the department she managed. It was an old scab, but she picked at it almost every week. Sophie was never certain whether it was because she was so much younger than Ruby that she resented her or whether Ruby would make life difficult for anyone who hired for her department. Today’s complaint was that certain assistant account managers were taking too long to complete routine paperwork.

  “If I hired my own people, I’d make certain they were efficient,” she argued. She used to harp about Ellsworth coming to the management meetings, but, since he was the top producer in the department and a friend of the bank chairman, Henry Forsyth, Ruby had finally given up and started picking on Sophie instead.

  Henry was too much of a gentleman to tell Ruby to shut up, which, Sophie imagined, every other person around the table was itching to do. Instead, he leaned back in his gentleman-banker pose, and took them all on a trip down memory lane to his younger days, before the age of computers.

  While he reminisced, Sophie went back to her catalog of missing stuff. She fretted about work-related documents that had been in her car. She tried to recall all the information in her day planner and the few files she’d been carrying. It wasn’t supersensitive information, but she hated knowing it was in the hands of a gang of criminals.

  She’d tried to do a good deed and instead caused a heap of trouble—not only for herself. That was the part she hated most. It seemed small punishment to suffer the inconvenience of a rental car, a sore knee and having to replace a slew of documents when Detective Barker had suffered broken bones, as well as the loss of a suspect.

  Knowing the fault was completely hers hurt. It hurt badly.

  She managed to stumble through her own brief report before Mr. Forsyth turned to Ellsworth. “And how’s your week been? Won any more awards? Broken any more records?”

  He teased, but there wasn’t a person at the table who didn’t know how proud he was of the prestige Ellsworth brought to the bank. He had an uncanny sense with investments and had made his clients and the bank huge amounts of money in his long career. With less than five years till he retired, there was a flurry among the younger account managers to recreate his magic. In fact, it had been a quiet week for his department, with markets uncertain and no big new clients to boast.

  “Come on, I’ll walk you to your office,” Ellsworth said a little while later, and she realized the meeting was over.

  “Thanks.” She shut her portfolio before he could see she hadn’t made a single note. Hadn’t heard more than a word in ten, come to that.

  After she lowered her foot from the extra chair, he moved it aside so she could rise more easily. She thanked him and they walked out together. Well, he walked. She shuffled like an old woman.

  “I was thinking about how brave you were yesterday. You should get some kind of medal.”

  She snorted, not with amusement but with self-derision. “I don’t think so. I botched an arrest and the suspect escaped in my car.�


  “Yes, but you were trying to be a good citizen.” He shrugged and sent her an avuncular smile. “Did you get a good look at the woman? Maybe you’ll see her again one day and be able to recognize her.”

  She nodded, realizing the woman’s countenance was etched in her memory. “I’d recognize her again, and this time I’d make sure the police caught up with her.”

  She supposed he’d known her long enough to recognize mulish determination, for he took her arm. “Those gangs are bad news. If you ever see that woman again, run.”

  They’d reached her office now, and he paused by her door as she glanced at him in surprise. “You sound like the police detective. That’s what he said.”

  “You make sure you take his advice, hmm? Were there any other witnesses?”

  “Nobody that I saw.” She shook her head. “It’s too bad you had that other meeting to go to yesterday or I would have followed you and saved myself a bunch of trouble.”

  He touched her hand where the light bandage covered the oozing scrape. “From now on, we’ll have all meetings involving you take place at head office. All right? If you need a few days at home to recover, you know your staff can cover.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  He nodded. “If there’s anything you need…” Then he turned down the corridor that led to his own office.

  She dragged one of her visitor chairs over to her desk to prop her sore leg on, and hoped she wouldn’t have to go anywhere today. She checked her in-house e-mail. That done, she reached absently for her briefcase to pull out her day planner. Her eyelids drooped in frustration. Her day planner was in her briefcase in her car, which, according to Detective Sunshine was at this very moment being sold off in tiny bits.

  Would they do the same with her briefcase? She’d have to check eBay for brass locks and briefcase sides.

  Her assistant, Gwen, stuck her nose in the door. “What are you giggling about?”

  “It’s incipient hysteria. My day planner was stolen along with everything else. Do you have any idea what I’m supposed to do today?”

  Gwen grinned and returned to her desk to pull up her own superefficient computerized version of Sophie’s schedule. Sophie hauled herself out of her chair and leaned against her doorjamb while Gwen scanned her appointments. “I’ll do you a printout, but the only thing I can see for today is a meeting on the third floor.”

  She grimaced, thinking there was a good reason the meeting had slipped her mind. “The queen bee?”

  “Ruby, yeah. Meeting’s in her office.” She gestured to Sophie’s leg. “Want me to ask her to come here instead?”

  Ruby was known as the queen bee of Private Banking for several reasons. She’d been here at head office longer than anyone else except the chairman and had been one of the first female account managers. In an industry where personnel were moved around to gain experience, she’d refused every transfer and, through a combination of factors, mostly stubbornness, had ended up with her own empire in a twisting labyrinth of offices, appropriately called The Hive.

  The only thing Ruby didn’t completely control was the hiring for her department, and for that slight Sophie paid dearly. “No. She’ll be easier to deal with on her turf. What’s the problem now?” she asked Gwen, wondering if she should take Ellsworth’s advice and take a couple of days off.

  Coward.

  Gwen skimmed the notes she’d made regarding the meeting. “She’s not happy with her new assistant account manager, Phil Britten.”

  Sophie’s eyes bugged. “I thought she’d love Phil. He’s a teetotaler like she is and a health nut. He doesn’t even eat meat.”

  “Really?” Gwen’s eyes widened. “But he’s so buff for a vegetarian.”

  She nodded, remembering his résumé and some of the get-to-know-you chats they’d had during his interviews. “He’s an amateur weightlifter.”

  “Oh, that explains it. Well, Ruby’s got some concerns about his performance she wants to discuss in private.”

  “My ass. He probably forgot to raise his hand and ask permission before going to the bathroom.” She sighed and rubbed her temple where a headache was starting to form. Since her knee had taken to throbbing in counterpoint to her scraped hand, she figured she’d get her money’s worth from a painkiller.

  She hobbled back to her desk, popped one in her mouth for her aches and pains, swallowing it with cold coffee and popped a second one in preparation for seeing Ruby. “What time’s the meeting?”

  “Eleven.”

  She checked her watch. Just after ten.

  “I think I’ll go see Phil first. He’s done something. Once I know what crime he’s committed it will be easier to smooth the queen bee’s feathers—wings—whatever.”

  “Good luck.”

  Sophie set off with the same portfolio she’d taken to the management meeting, moving slowly on her stiff knee. She took the elevator down to the third floor when normally she would have jogged down the stairs, then stepped through the door that led to Private Banking. She’d been on this floor dozens of times, but she dreaded every one. The place was a maze of devious design guaranteed to confuse anyone, never mind a chronically lost person.

  Ruby’s office was the only landmark that was easy to reach, since it was at the center of things. All corridors led, eventually, to her. Naturally.

  Phil, as both a new hire and not a very important assistant, was on the outskirts. Was his cubicle to her left? She tried to recall from her earlier visit—the one she paid every new head office employee a few days after they started. Yep, definitely left. She turned and walked down the hallway passing cubicles and offices, waving to people she knew. She still hadn’t seen Phil, so she popped her head into a random cubicle and asked the way.

  “Keep going down this corridor. Take a left at the water cooler and a right at the women’s washroom.”

  “Great, thanks.” She carried on. There was the water cooler. Excellent. She kept going, hoping she’d see the women’s washroom soon, after all the coffee she’d drunk this morning.

  A few minutes later she was even more confused. She had no idea where she was, but she’d obviously stumbled into a disused portion of office space. A relic of the pre-downsizing days, she imagined. She made a note. Maybe she could use this area for training, if she could ever find it again.

  Just as she was thinking about retracing her steps, she heard Phil talking. Hmm. Maybe her sense of direction was faulty, but some kind of intuition seemed to have taken her right to him.

  Unable to believe her good luck, she listened more closely. It was definitely Phil. He had an odd voice. Both gravelly and higher pitched than she would have expected for such a muscular man. He spoke rapidly and softly, which had her guessing it was a personal phone call.

  Probably he’d found a quiet area so as not to be overheard through the thin cubicle partitions. Good, she could talk to him more frankly here where there was some privacy.

  Following the sound of his voice, she turned yet again. It was almost spooky back here, away from the buzz of phones and the persistent background hum of computers. Her feet were soundless on the well-tracked carpet. Even the air-conditioning seemed to hold its breath.

  For some reason, she felt like holding her own breath. Then she came close enough to distinguish Phil’s words. He must be on the phone with a client. He was talking about money transfer and some big numbers. But Phil’s next comment made her pause.

  “I think one million dollars is a fair price for my silence,” he said in a tone that suggested he was in the middle of an argument.

  She stood, rooted, her mouth gaping. Silence? About what?

  “I’m not some two-bit blackmailer who’s going to bleed you dry. Let’s call it a performance bonus. A one-time payout guarantees I’ll develop a bad memory.”

  Oh, it must be some kind of joke. He’d probably seen her coming and cooked this up to make fun of her.

  Phil laughed softly, sounding as normal as a guy swapping jokes on
a golf course, and she let herself smile as relief washed over her. She stepped forward.

  “I’ll give you a million guarantees. If you can’t trust your banker, who can you trust?”

  Her stomach sank once more and her footsteps faltered to a stop.

  There was a short pause, then a sound like fingernails tapping a hard surface. She shivered.

  “No. I need it sooner than that… Sure, I know it’s tied up. In offshore accounts, I bet?” The tapping increased in tempo. “I don’t blame you. North American banks aren’t as safe as they used to be, are they?”

  There was only one office with its door closed up ahead. He must be in there, but with open ceilings and no one else in the area, she could hear him with chilling clarity.

  “No. I can’t wait. You’ve got until tomorrow at midnight. Plenty of time to wire money to an account number I’ll give you.”

  Nausea churned in her stomach. Offshore accounts. Wiring money. Bank fraud?

  Blackmail?

  “No. Tomorrow night. Or I’ll have to report the terrible news of the white-collar crime I uncovered in my own bank.”

  Oh, no. Not someone in the bank.

  “You’ll go to jail.”

  The tapping increased. “I’ll get you the number today. You get me the money by tomorrow night. I’ll check my bank balance at midnight our time. The money needs to be there or I’ll have no choice but to report you.”

  As the shock started to wear off she realized she couldn’t stand in the middle of the hallway where Phil would stumble over her. Holding her breath, she crept into the closest doorway, still half waiting for the shouts of “Surprise!” the laughter and teasing: “You should have seen your face…”

  If he walked this way, he’d see her through the half window. So she grit her teeth and forced her bruised leg to bend as she sank, painfully, to her knees.

  Phil’s conversation was barely distinguishable now as she crouched in the abandoned office feeling as ridiculous as a child still playing hide-and-seek after all the other children have gone on to a new game.

 

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