Full Circle

by Davis Bunn

  “I wish it was more.”

  The words did not come easily, for to shape them meant giving structure to hope. She had lived so long without any. “We might be able to turn everything around now.”

  “That’s my thinking. At least you’ve got more time to try.” He checked his watch. “I need to go out for a while. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “All right.” The last thing she heard was the door opening and closing. Kayla dove into sleep.

  She drifted back toward the surface several times. Once when the door opened, and she opened her eyes long enough to see it was Adam. Again when the room became tainted by some sharp chemical smell. Kayla sat up and swung her feet to the floor and rubbed her face. “Adam?”

  The bathroom door cracked open. Light spilled into the darkened room. “I’m here.”

  She rubbed her face again. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “A couple of hours. Maybe a little longer.” Adam pushed open the door.

  Kayla rose to her feet and backed until she met the wall. Derek Steen entered the room. But it was Adam who said, “It’s me.”

  He walked over and turned on the switch by the door. Kayla felt the world return to gradual focus. Adam wore Derek like a suit. “I took Derek’s company pass from his briefcase when I fetched his checkbook.”

  “You’re going inside mvp?”

  “We need to see if Derek has anything to help your dad, Kayla.”

  “That’s crazy!”

  “Listen to me.” Adam’s calm was unnerving. “Getting the money for your project was only half the battle.”

  All her possible responses created a jumbled mess in her brain, such that the only one to emerge was, “Joshua fired you!”

  Adam pointed at the table by the window. “I’ve brought you a sandwich and a juice.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You need to eat, Kayla.”

  She made it around the bed and over to the window with-out taking her eyes off him. As she passed the bathroom, she smelled the odor again and realized, “You’ve dyed your hair.”

  He followed her over but did not sit down beside her. The room had an old-fashioned bay window with heavy green drapes. Outside there was the rumble and hiss of city traffic. “I need to look enough like him that anybody I pass won’t be alarmed.”

  She peeled away the sandwich cover and took a bite. “You went out and bought his clothes.”

  “Close as I could find.”

  “It’s amazing.”

  Adam wore a copy of Derek’s clothes from that morning. They formed a version of city casual—cashmere sweater over a pin-striped shirt with a white collar, and a flashy foulard knotted about his neck. Fawn-colored gabardine slacks. Italian loafers. Gold watch that dangled loose.

  She leaned more closely. “Are you wearing contacts?”

  “Eye color was something I couldn’t risk having wrong.”

  “And your face. How did you . . .”

  “Makeup.” His features possessed a hint of Derek’s slackness. The tinted hair was slicked back and spiked. His eyes were gray now, not quite as light as Derek’s, but enough for someone who merely glanced his way. “These are tricks, Kayla. Like cue cards.”

  Adam stood by the window drapes and watched her eat. Several times he started to speak, then caught himself. Kayla waited until she finished the sandwich and drank the last of the orange juice to ask, “What is it?”

  “When we were away over the weekend, you said how perfect it was for me to escape into acting roles. Well, you were right. On the show, my role was the dissipated playboy, the guy who could have any woman and usually did. In a lot of the episodes, I needed to go from the night before to the day after. But there’s more.”

  When he did not continue, Kayla said softly, “More.”

  “A good actor has to find some core identification with the character and the role. When I met Derek, I saw myself.”

  “You’re not him.”

  “Not who I am. Who I almost became.” He lifted one edge of the drapes and stared at the night. “I was so close.”

  Just after eleven, Adam paid his taxi and climbed the stairs leading from the street to the MVP headquarters. The big chrome-and- glass doors swung open before him. Adam stepped inside and crossed the lobby. He hid his dread behind a Derek-style frown. Or so he hoped. The guard behind the curved reception desk watched him but did not rise from his seat. Adam pulled his cell phone from one pocket and the pass he had palmed from Derek’s briefcase in the other. He pretended to pay attention to the phone while he approached the steel barrier. He slid the pass through the magnetic barrier and then leaned into the revolving bars. They clicked around, granting him entry.

  He faced three banks of elevators. He punched the hotel number and stood in pretended concentration while he searched for the bank of elevators that serviced the seventh floor. When the hotel answered, he asked to be put through to Kayla’s room, and then headed for the central bank.

  “Adam?”

  “I’m in.”

  She breathed easier for both of them. “You have the detective’s instructions?”

  “Right here.” Detective Foley and his in-house source had come through for them again. Adam touched the pocket containing the notes from his telephone conversation, detailing the layout of Derek Steen’s floor. But Adam doubted he would need them. They were there for assurance’s sake. Like the words of dialogue he used to write on the inside of his palm, to trigger his memory in case of a panic attack. Adam stepped into the elevator, punched the button for seven, and tried to convince himself that it was just another role.

  “Be careful,” Kayla said. “And come out of this safely.”

  “Do my best.”

  “I mean it. That’s the most important thing tonight. Your safety. Daddy would agree a hundred percent.”

  “This is one gig we don’t need to be telling the old man about, though, do we?” The double doors fronting the elevators were red leather embossed with the MVP logo. Adam ran the pass through another magnetic reader, and the doors swept open to reveal the currency trading floor. He started down the central aisle.

  “Where are you?”

  “The money pit.”

  “Where?”

  The currency floor occupied almost the entire seventh floor. The windowless chamber was a hundred feet square with a thirty-foot-high ceiling. A supervisor’s balcony overlooked one end and running electronic newsboards the other. The desks were split into a dozen islands crammed inside a sea of green carpet. A cluster of late-working peons shuffled papers on a long table by the far wall. The odor of empty pizza cartons wafted across the room. “Once I thought there would be nothing finer than working here.”

  “I thought you were escaping to Costa Rica.”

  “Costa one week, a trading pit the next. Become the super analyst, held in awe by the traders who fought to sign my checks. Power in both fists. Money to burn.”

  Each island, or trading station, had between six and fourteen desks. The senior trader occupied the central position. Some of the largest islands had two traders, but not many. Geoffrey’s station was in the far northeast corner. Each seat had a triple set of screens, except the senior, which held a double-stack so he could monitor his own positions and check on any of his juniors at the same time.

  Kayla said, “Somehow I can’t see you happy living that life.”

  Adam pushed through the glass door at the chamber’s far end. “Derek’s is the third office on the left?”

  “According to the detective’s notes.”

  Only the senior traders had offices. Adam had been around enough trading floors to know they were not expected to spend much time there. The office and the window were perks. Derek’s was not large. Nor did it appear much lived-in. Adam slipped into Derek’s leather throne. The window overlooked an empty London street. A single photo adorned the opposite wall, Derek behind the oversize wheel of an oceangoing yacht. A pair of Ray-Bans dangled
around his neck. Flashing his pirate’s smile. Cold. Aloof. Invulnerable. Alone.

  “Adam?”

  “I’m turning on his computer.”

  “Can anyone see you?”

  “The door is glass, but the hallway is empty.” He fought off a sudden sensation of the chair imprisoning him, as though the real owner’s ire was able to reach out and gnaw at his bones. “Okay, it’s asking for a password.”

  Kayla’s voice grew a metallic rasp. “Back in Dar es Salaam he kept a slip of paper in the bottom of his top right drawer. He could never remember when I changed the project codes.”

  “Okay. It’s here.” He read the seven digits off the paper, typed them in, slipped the paper back in the drawer and slid it shut. “Uh-oh.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m looking at a second check-in screen. He’s set in another password.”

  “He’s got something to hide.”

  “Maybe so.”

  “No maybe, Adam. He’s in this up to his eyeballs.”

  “What difference does that make, if we can’t get in?” Frantically he searched the other drawers, then felt around the base of the desk. “Nothing.”

  “Tell me what you see.”

  “The screen shows a picture of him on a racetrack. He’s standing beside a Ferrari Formula One car.” The photo also showed Derek’s arms wrapped around two beauties wearing Ferrari T-shirts and red-leather hot pants. Adam saw no need to mention that to Kayla. “There’s a box in the middle of the screen asking for another password.”

  “Which means this is his own backup system and not standard company operations.”

  “Probably.” Adam wiped his face. “This is taking too long.”

  Kayla went quiet. Then, “Try my name.”

  Adam hesitated a long moment, then typed in the name. He paused with his hand over the Enter tab. Then pressed it.

  And breathed a long sigh. “We’re in.”

  chapter 23

  They did not make it back to the Austin residence until after two in the morning. Derek Steen’s computer files had proven infuriatingly bare of usable evidence. Adam ran a search covering various names—Peter’s company, Oxford University, the hospital doing clinical trials, the Italian company. Brief snippets appeared here and there, terse fragments that could well have been some company code. Given weeks, Adam suspected he could have come up with a clear trail of misdeeds. But Adam did not have weeks. Each passing minute brought an increased risk of discovery. Finally Adam did a wholesale dump of Steen’s entire filing system and zipped it off to his own e-mail address. And fled.

  Despite the shortened night, Adam awoke not just clear-headed, but with a precise knowledge of his next step. A life-time’s worth of arguments meant nothing in the face of this certainty. When Honor and Peter entered the kitchen below his bedroom, he dressed and went downstairs to join them. But he had no intention of sharing with them the fragments and guesses that had been gained from his search. And the confrontation with Derek was Kayla’s story to relate. Instead, he took his mug over to the rear doors and savored dawn’s slow arrival. Circling hawklike in the growing light was a whisper from his past. His twelfth birthday had fallen on a Sunday. Adam had celebrated by asking his mother not to make him go to church again. Not then, not ever. Even at twelve, Adam had been determined to go places, and do so on his own terms. He was going to be strong. He was going to win.

  Instead of all the arguments he had spent weeks steeling himself against, his mother had simply replied, “One day I hope you come to understand the difference between religion and faith, between the church and the body of Christ.”

  Adam saw both the mist-clad valley and his own hollow-eyed reflection. All this time, and he still had no idea what she had been talking about.

  Well, it was time he started finding out.

  When he turned around, Honor asked, “Have you colored your hair?”

  “Yes. It’s a long story.”

  Peter’s rasp had deepened to where he scarcely had any voice at all. “It’s time we left for church.”

  Adam set his mug on the counter and said what had been waiting for him when he awoke. “Could I come with you?”

  Honor asked, “To the morning service?”

  “If it’s all right.”

  “Of course it’s all right. We’d be delighted to have you join us, wouldn’t we, Peter?”

  But as Peter opened his mouth to respond, a soft voice asked, “Can I come too?”

  Tendrils of mist glowed yellow in the lights surrounding the church. The bell sounded muffled, a tolling soft as the pre-dawn. Villagers offered one another quiet greetings as they passed through the perimeter walls. Footsteps scrunched across the graveled forecourt. The bell tolled a final time as they climbed the front steps, the sound lingering long in the chill and the damp.

  The church’s interior was far narrower than the outer structure suggested. A placard by the entrance said the edifice dated from 1087 and was built upon the foundations of a far older church, one that had never been successfully dated, though records from the eighth century mentioned a monastery on the site. Kayla followed her father and Honor down the central aisle. Candles flanked the aisle and the front altar. Honor slipped into a pew close to the front. The church was neither full nor empty. Kayla guessed their numbers at about fifty.

  A woman muffled against the wintry chill rose from the first pew and approached the dais. The ritual returned to Kayla with the soft familiarity of an old and dear friend. She murmured words she had once taken pride in forgetting. Her mind flitted to the service, to Peter on one side of her, and Honor on the other, and Adam on her father’s other side. Kayla observed how Adam studied the missal with such intensity the air seemed to shimmer about him.

  Her long nap in the seedy London hotel had left her unable to sleep once they finally returned home. Instead, she had tossed and turned through the dark hours, chased from sleep by two thoughts. No, she corrected, thought was not a strong enough term. They were certainties. She knew with absolute conviction that they were both true; first, that Adam loved her, and second, that she did not have it within herself to give what he needed.

  But what finally drove her from her bed was the question asked in a predawn hush, yet resounding through her with explosive force.

  Did she want to give to him, to answer his needs, to love and be loved?

  If so, she had no choice. She could never find what was required inside herself. Not if she searched the ashes of her poor charred heart for a hundred lifetimes. Trust and confidence and hope and love. All the words she had cast aside as belonging to a different person, a different era, a different life. If she wanted to give to him what he needed, what he deserved, she had to look elsewhere.

  They rose to their feet a second time, all but Adam. It was unlikely he realized the others had moved at all, his concentration was so complete.

  The church was built in the medieval fashion, with walls almost six feet thick at the base, narrowing in pyramidal fashion as they rose to the high ceiling. The narrow stained-glass windows were a pale wintry wash. The candlelight formed a comforting haven where even the flickering shadows were friendly.

  Kayla shut her eyes and felt her mother’s presence so intensely she had to resist the urge to reach over and grip the hand that was not there. She took a shaky breath, and her nostrils were filled with her mother’s favorite perfume. Somehow her mother had bridged the eternal divide, just so she could share in this moment. Kayla found the presence so powerful, so comforting, the questions and the doubt and the pain just washed away. A calm replaced it all, the ashes and the hurt and the scorn and the fractured dreams, a calm so potent she could not entirely hold back the tears.

  She opened her eyes and stood for the final blessing. The church swam in a gentle glow of candlelight and remembrances so strong they did not vanish merely because the moment was over. Kayla wiped her face and wondered if what she had just experienced might be called a prayer
.

  chapter 24

  Peter, Honor, and Kayla left the church ahead of Adam. Their footsteps scrunched across the graveled forecourt. They walked with their heads close together. Peter coughed, and both women reached over to touch his back. A family.

  They piled coats and mittens and scarves on the same chair, then filed down the central passage and through the living room and into the kitchen. Adam helped the two ladies set the table and put on a fresh pot of coffee and slice bread and lay out fruit and cheese and marmalade. He was grateful for the silence. For Adam it felt as though words would have cluttered a morning that had already moved far beyond speech and normal comprehension.

  Honor brewed Peter a mug of tea, then laced it with honey and fresh ginger. “Let’s see if this eases your throat.”

  Peter blew, sipped, sighed, sipped again. Then he rasped, “Thank you both for coming this morning. It means more than I can possibly say.”

  Honor took her seat beside her husband. “I think you should ask him, dear.”

  “Do you?”

  “It seems to me the morning has given you the only answer you require.” Honor turned to Adam and went on, “Peter has a daunting task ahead of him today.”

  “A luncheon,” Peter said.

  “A trial,” Honor corrected. “Peter fears the verdict is a fore-gone conclusion.”

  “We must keep hold of hope,” Peter murmured.

  Honor’s worried gaze remained on Peter as she continued, “Some of Peter’s largest investors will be there.”

  “Bursars of two colleges.” It clearly pained him to speak. “Representatives of three other endowments. The chief accountant of the university’s science faculty. And one of the university library directors.”

  Honor finished, “And Rupert Madden. You know who he is?”

  “CEO of Madden and Van Pater,” Adam said, and resisted the urge to talk about their foray into mvp headquarters. It would only add to the day’s burdens.

  Honor went on, “We were wondering, that is, Peter was hoping perhaps you might help him prepare.”