Risk

by Jamie Freveletti

  RISK

  An Emma Caldridge Novella: Part One of Three

  JAMIE FREVELETTI

  Contents

  RISK

  An Excerpt from Dead Asleep

  Chapter 1

  About the Author

  Also by Jamie Freveletti

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  RISK

  SEBASTIAN RYAN NEVER saw the drug that was slipped into his drink, so as he heaved into the bushes behind the Miami Beach nightclub, he blamed himself for mixing alcohol with the medication that he took daily. His stomach emptied and he remained still, taking deep breaths and hoping that the moment was past.

  It was hip hop weekend in Miami Beach, and hundreds of thousands of revelers swarmed the area, filling the streets and dance clubs. Like with Carnival in Rio, or Mardi Gras in New Orleans, they were in for a three-day-long festival of dancing, drinking, and drug overdoses.

  Under normal circumstances Ryan would have never risked fighting the crowds and going to a club on this weekend, nor would he have risked mixing alcohol and medication, but in the past four months not much was normal in his life.

  He straightened up and stumbled home, dodging a bead necklace thrown by a woman standing in a limousine’s open sunroof and making a wide circle around a group of break dancers spinning on the street corner. From somewhere in the distance he heard the sharp report of either a firecracker or a gunshot, but he wasn’t surprised. The nearby gangbangers brought their weapons with them to the party, and clashes between rival gangs meeting at the same club were often deadly. The year before, the police had engaged in a shootout on the streets. Several people died and hundreds were arrested.

  He wound his way through the crowds and walked in the warm, humid night toward the apartment, already bracing himself for the moment that he would open the door to emptiness. Once inside, he took a double dose of a sleeping aid and fell into bed.

  He never saw the person that followed him home.

  The next morning, Ryan walked to the ocean’s edge and struggled to decide whether he should continue walking until the water engulfed him or return to his house to face another day. He had engaged in this debate for the past four months and had no hope that it would get easier. He watched the sun begin its rise, red beams of light streaking across the ocean’s surface and orange lighting the sky above, and even in his despair he appreciated the beauty of the dawn and the new beginning it represented. A fresh start for others, but not for him.

  From the corner of his eye he saw the motion of the runner as she approached. This, too, was a ritual. He watched her run, her smooth strides and fluid motion a study of efficiency. She had brown hair, a slender athlete’s body, and straight legs that carried her in an effortless rhythm. She wore running clothes, a watch, and an armband that he presumed held an iPod, because he saw the cord snaking from it to the earbuds she wore. She looked to be younger than his thirty-five years, perhaps in her mid-twenties.

  She came closer, flicked a glance at him, and he saw recognition in her expression. Usually she ran right past, but today she gave him a nod. They were the only two on this section of the beach and he supposed she felt compelled to acknowledge him.

  He nodded back. The act, though slight, was enough to break his reverie. He sighed, turned from the water and walked toward the boardwalk, away from the ocean and its possibility of eternal peace. He’d face another day.

  Ryan headed toward News Café, a large coffeehouse in the Art Deco section of Miami Beach where he lived. The restaurants were closed, but delivery trucks lined Ocean Drive and vendors delivered bags of bread, pastries, and cartons of beer and bottles of liquor that would restock the Drive for the next night’s influx of hip hop tourists. This weekend the Drive also included a large contingent of bouncers, as the hotels and bars hired private security guards to protect their businesses. The weekend was not sponsored by Miami Beach or Miami, and with the crowds came a corresponding uptick in crime as the local thieves headed to the beach in search of easy pickings. In prior years the massive crowds had overwhelmed the Miami Beach police, and so private muscle was advisable if a business could afford the expense.

  This year several restaurants had decided to close rather than face the inevitable crime wave. Most locals fled for the weekend, but Ryan was staying put.

  He bought a Café Cubano, the dark, sweet coffee that was the hallmark of the Cuban population in Miami, and began his walk toward Meridian, the street where he lived. Each step away from flashy Ocean Drive and the long white beach brought him toward far less affluent areas. Miami Beach south of Fifth Street boasted multi-million-dollar condominium complexes and expensive steak houses, but north and west still contained a few dingy pockets of housing, and all of it contained the drug dealers, drifters, homeless, addicts, and mentally ill fringe elements that populated just about every beach town in the world. Miami was a study in contrasts and always would be.

  To the north was a Jewish Mikva bath center, and to the west a Catholic church. He heard the pulsing of electronic dance music and then the strains of a classical piece before turning onto his street. Here, there were older houses with plaster walls and louvered windows. Tropical plants and bougainvillea filled his courtyard and poured over the stone wall in a riot of red flowers and green leaves. Lush ferns and the smell of orange greeted him as he swung open the metal entrance gate.

  His neighbor, Mrs. Feldstein, stepped out of her door. At eighty she still had the sharp mind and quick tongue of a former New Yorker. He watched her take in his messed up hair and what he knew were dark circles under his eyes. She inhaled and gave him a frank look.

  “How are you doing?”

  This was the question that always threw him. When well-meaning friends asked him how he was doing, he was always tempted to say, I lost my wife and best friend at thirty-five, how well do you think I’m doing? But now, just as always, he managed to reply, “I’m getting through, bit by bit.”

  Mrs. Feldstein gave him a nod full of empathy. “I know what you mean. When I lost George, I was numb for a year. Give it time. Time heals all wounds.”

  And so does walking into the ocean and never coming out, he thought. He grabbed the morning paper off his stoop, managed a smile for Mrs. Feldstein, and closed the door. Inside, he showered, shaved, threw on a suit, popped some antidepressants, then headed out to face another day.

  He never saw the man slip into his house.

  RYAN WORKED IN risk management for a large insurance company. They wrote all kinds of policies, and today his stack of work included preparing a risk analysis for a “key man” and kidnap rider. The policies were meant to protect the CEOs of major multinational companies when they traveled to the troubled areas of the world. The kidnap insurance covered the fees of a trained hostage negotiator, the expenses incurred in flying them to the hot areas, and eighty percent of the ransom paid. He picked up the first file on his desk and opened it. The usual twenty page application was clipped on the right side, and a five-by-seven-inch photo on the left.

  The face of the morning runner stared back at him. She wore her hair down, instead of in a ponytail, and for the first time he also saw that she had green eyes, a straight nose, and a guarded expression, as if she didn’t really trust the photographer. His hands shook as he reached for the application. Her name was Emma Caldridge, and she was the lead chemist and CEO of a company called Pure Chemistry, based in Miami Beach. She had just acquired the CEO title, and the company requested a five-million-dollar kidnap rider with a ten million death benefit should she be killed.

  Ryan whistled under his breath. The limits were high for a CEO of a small company. Oil executives
would demand high rates because they often traveled to unstable countries in the search for natural resources, but a chemist? He was puzzled.

  Ryan flipped the application pages to the question about the executive’s travel history and if he or she had ever been in a dangerous situation. He gasped as his supervisor, Janet Candar, stepped into his office.

  “You look shocked,” Candar said. “Please don’t tell me that one of our insureds has been kidnapped.” She smiled.

  Ryan shook his head. “No. I’m reviewing a new app and I can’t believe the report. She’s already been kidnapped once in Mexico.” His supervisor peered over his shoulder at the picture.

  “Oh, I saw that one already. Apparently her job requires her to travel the world looking for plants that may be of use in the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries. I’m not surprised about Mexico. That country’s blowing up. Did her company pay?”

  Ryan looked at the entry. “It says she escaped on her own.”

  Candar’s eyebrows flew up. “So she’s resourceful.”

  He nodded. “With this string of bad luck, she’d better be.”

  Candar placed another folder on his desk. “Are you going to turn her down?”

  Ryan looked again at the photo. “No. I think I’ll interview her. Find out just why she’s such a magnet for trouble.”

  RYAN SAT IN the open air courtyard of a restaurant overlooking the beach. It wasn’t the perfect place to meet a client, but she’d had no time during the day. He watched as Ms. Caldridge wove her way through the tables toward him. She wore bright red skinny jeans and a white shirt. He tried to still his shaking hands, but it seemed impossible. The shaking was a side effect of the antidepressants. He shoved one hand under the table and gripped his drink with the other. He wondered if she would recognize him from the beach, but her face revealed nothing as she approached. Once she got closer he saw something that may have been recognition dawn in her eyes. She reached him and put out her hand.

  “I’m Emma Caldridge,” she said. He rose to greet her.

  “Sebastian Ryan.”

  “Was that you enjoying the sunrise at the beach this morning?”

  He nodded, pleased that she’d recognized him and relieved that she hadn’t detected the real reason for his morning vigil.

  A commotion from the front door caught their attention as they stood at the table. A group of people crowded the entrance, and in the center of it, Ryan recognized PJ Walters, one of the biggest hip hop artists of the decade. A massive diamond stud glittered in his ear and a jumble of gold chains hung around his neck. More diamonds flashed on his fingers. The hip hop artist’s entourage moved to the café’s far corner to a waiting table.

  Ryan noticed Caldridge scanning the restaurant and then homing in on the small group. “That’s PJ Walters,” he said to her. “He’s in town to give a concert. We insure him, though not for his jewelry. If we did, I’d be concerned.”

  She shot him an amused look. “Why?”

  “He doesn’t have enough muscle in that group to protect it all. Anyone could just take it off of him, and this weekend every criminal in the greater Miami area will descend on the beach.”

  She grimaced. “I hope there’s no repeat of last year. It was insane.” She cocked her head to the side as she contemplated the singer. Ryan took the opportunity to check her out. She was quite pretty, he thought. Looking at her one would never think that she’d been through as much as she had. She took a seat then, and he did as well.

  “What do you insure him for?” she asked.

  “Paternity suits.”

  She looked surprised. “You can buy a policy against paternity suits?”

  Ryan smiled at her. “Sure. Anything is insurable. At the right price, of course.”

  She laughed. “Of course.”

  The waitress asked to take their order. Caldridge requested a red wine and they both ordered appetizers. He already was working on his second vodka cranberry and waved off a third. He wasn’t supposed to drink while taking the meds that he did, but saw no benefit to sobriety without Susan in his life. Pulling his thoughts away from that dangerous topic, he focused back on Caldridge.

  “Your application was astonishing. I’ve never been asked to insure someone who already had been in as many life-threatening situations as you have. Do you expect this string of bad luck to continue?”

  She frowned. “Bad luck? It’s my job.”

  He heard the trace of annoyance in her voice and retreated to the safe topic of statistics and risk.

  “Okay, well then I’ve rarely met anyone whose occupation is as dangerous as yours. How have you managed to avoid getting killed up to now? Are you ex-military?”

  “Not at all.”

  “A martial artist?”

  “No.”

  “Can you shoot a gun?”

  This time she smiled. “And a rocket-propelled grenade.”

  He felt his mouth open in surprise and snapped it shut, hopefully before he looked like a total fool.

  “That’s remarkable.”

  She shrugged. “It’s the weapon that most use in unstable countries. Powerful and cheap.” She gave him an amused glance over the rim of her wineglass. He couldn’t tell if she was messing with him, but for some reason he thought that she wasn’t.

  The waitress returned with their food and they ate for a while in silence. He noticed that she kept scanning the restaurant. Assessing. He wondered if she was always this observant of her surroundings, or if something in particular made her so vigilant. She seemed self-contained and logical. Every bit the scientist that she was. He had the brief thought that life with her, when she wasn’t traveling the world, would be quiet and practical. No flourishes. Nothing to startle.

  He directed his attention back to his food and they began to converse again, about the pros and cons of living on the Beach and about the fest. While he ate, Ryan thought about the advice he would give her. When the meals were stripped away he decided to simply lay it out in hard numbers.

  “I’m going to have to recommend that the company decline your application. I’m sorry, but your risk is substantial and I don’t thing we can afford to cover it.” That wasn’t true at all. His company would insure anything, but the premium they’d require would far outstrip the benefits she would gain from the policy. Declining her request, he knew, was against his company’s interest, but for some reason he didn’t feel compelled to sell her an overpriced policy.

  She looked surprised. “I thought you said anything was insurable at the right price.”

  He nodded. “That’s true, but in your case the right price would be so high that you may as well self-insure and take the risk that you won’t have to pay anyone off.”

  “So let me get this straight, your company offers policies to cover kidnappings, but you refuse to write one for someone who carries the risk of actually being kidnapped.” She shook her head. “Doesn’t make sense to me.”

  She was smart, and it made him feel a bit foolish that he’d turned her down.

  “But your risk—”

  “Is substantial. Yes, you said that.”

  He leaned forward to make his next point. “No, you don’t understand. You’re a statistical nightmare.”

  She raised her eyebrows at him and he continued.

  “You go into jungle areas known to be controlled by paramilitary elements, head into the Indian Ocean where it’s known that pirates patrol, and cross the border into Ciudad Juarez, the most dangerous city in the world. How can we possibly insure you? Why do you do it?”

  She looked into her glass and back up at him, and he was struck by the gleam in her serious green eyes.

  “I love the search. Finding new plants and possibly chemicals. Uncovering the mysteries of the world. It’s not likely that I’ll find the unexplained in a large city like Miami.”


  “I disagree. What about the guy they found eating another man’s face off on the causeway? No one’s been able to figure out why he did it. They’re talking zombie apocalypse. That’s a mystery right here in Miami.”

  During the last hip hop weekend a young man had been found naked and chewing another’s face on the causeway that connected Miami Beach to Miami proper. He’d been shot dead by a police officer and the victim rushed to the hospital. The young man’s friends all described the man as a sweet, religious person who rarely dabbled in drugs. After a toxicology report failed to find any drugs in the young man’s system, the speculation veered toward his Haitian background and voodoo. Miami’s Haitian population was in a state of terror. They all believed that a hougan priest had unleashed an evil demon on Miami, and people were congregating at night to perform the safety and cleansing sacrificial rituals that they believed would hold off the threat.

  “I’d love to delve into that one,” Caldridge said, “but it’s not what I do. I find plants and chemicals.”

  “You like the adventure, that much is obvious,” he said. “But you take terrible risks. Don’t you value your life?”

  She frowned. “Of course, but I don’t want to sit in a lab all day analyzing specimens.”

  “Does your family approve of this?” He knew from her application that she was unmarried, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have parents, siblings.

  She gave him a frank look. “I haven’t run my personal decisions past my family since I left home at eighteen. They know that I love to travel. I don’t tell them the details.”

  “What about a relationship? Doesn’t that come into play when determining whether you’ll risk your life or not?” He was trespassing into private territory with the question, but he was intrigued. What type of man would she love?

  She looked down at her wine again, and for a moment he thought that she wouldn’t answer. He was ashamed to have asked her and was about to apologize when she took a breath, looked up, and flashed him a knowing, seductive smile. It rocked him, and he hadn’t been rocked in months. He felt himself react and wondered at it. The room grew warmer. His hands stopped shaking.