Lucky Charm

by Valerie Douglas

  It promised, however, to be another late night.

  At least she would be busy. Too busy to think of this morning, of Matthew Morrison with his ruggedly handsome face, or his kind, gentle and magical hands on her body. Those moments had haunted the back of her mind all morning, hovering, sending surges of warmth swirling through her belly at odd moments. For some reason, she couldn’t get that last kiss or the feel of his hands on her out of her mind. The memory of his finger sliding inside her sent heat spiraling through her to the point where she nearly gasped out loud. It had been too long since anyone had touched her.

  Shoving those thoughts to the back of her mind, she tried to concentrate on resolving the issues but shimmers of warmth moved through her now and then.

  She tried to ignore them.

  The afternoon training session went well enough as she walked that group of employees through the basics of the new software.

  It was a very sophisticated accounting information system, designed just for finance companies and tied to tracking and marketing software. Once installed, Marathon would be able to follow every client through their database seamlessly, including all their calls, giving them a database their marketing department could use for everything from client information through daily, monthly and weekly reports. It was a nice little program.

  Ariel had been working for Titan for about two years. She liked the product but the demands of travel were difficult.

  They always were.

  Her heart twinged at the reminder.

  She’d been in Atlanta when the news had caught up to her. She pushed the memory away. It always brought tears to her eyes. She wouldn’t think about it now.

  Forcing herself to concentrate, she smiled brightly at her trainees as they filed into the room and kept her mind on them.

  The conflict she’d been trying to resolve reared its ugly head in that session as well, though, so she resigned herself to staying until it was fixed.

  She called the Help Desk as they filed back out.

  Marcus answered. She could picture him sitting at his desk, relaxed, mellow.

  “Hey, Ariel,” he said. His voice was a smooth baritone layered with the musical cadence of the Caribbean.

  “Marcus,” she said, “I’ve got a doozy of a conflict going here.”

  “Yeah, well, Paul wants to talk to you, too,” he said, warning in his voice.

  She was too tired for this. A late night last night – the memory brought back a rush of exhilaration, fear and that swirling warmth – added to a long day didn’t really put her in the mood for talking with one of the bosses.

  Especially Paul.

  Of medium height with a mouse-brown receding hairline and a mouth so thin that it always looked as if he’d tasted something vaguely unpleasant, Paul always sounded pleased to see her. Unless you listened closely and heard the false note underneath his tone or felt the distance he kept between himself and the staff.

  The job was interesting and the pay was good, though. She didn’t have to like the boss and was lucky enough not to have to work out of the office on a day-to-day basis so she rarely had to interact with him anyway.

  “Transfer me but get Luke working on this conflict for me first, would you?” she said, rattling off the specifics.

  “No problem, Ariel, I gotcha,” he said, “Hold for a sec.”

  “Ariel,” Paul said, his voice mellifluous and warm, falsely hearty. “How are things at Marathon?”

  Restraining a sigh, Ariel said, “All in all, pretty well. There are a few conflicts but Luke is working on them for me.”

  She’d warned them of the possibility. Zeus, the software, had never been tested against some of Marathon’s.

  “Good, good. Excellent, actually. Keep me posted, would you?” he asked.

  That was it. The gist of what he wanted. Even though he couldn’t see her, she nodded but mentally she stuck her tongue out at the phone, making faces, something he couldn’t see either. Childish maybe but it got her through the call.

  “Absolutely, Paul,” was all she said.

  “You’ll let us know if there are any major problems?” Paul asked.

  He didn’t really want to know, that was between her and the Help Desk.

  “Of course,” she agreed. “Would you transfer me to Luke?”

  As it was, it was late before she returned to the hotel and the problem still wasn’t resolved.

  Even Luke, their long-haired, long-bearded resident guru, was baffled, although it seemed some ancillary software installed at Titan was causing the problem. He was going to contact the other vendor in the morning to see if there was a solution. Worse, Ariel had missed dinner as well as lunch, but by the time she reached her motel she wasn’t hungry anyway. Instead, she pushed aside some of the furniture to do some yoga. Matthew Morrison had superseded her morning exercise but she thought she’d certainly exercised some muscles then.

  The thought of him sent a wave of warmth through her. His green eyes haunted her.

  In a way, she was sorry she’d never see him again. Even in the very brief time they’d been together there was something about him she’d liked.

  In another way, though, she was glad.

  She didn’t need it. Didn’t need her heart broken. And those green eyes and that face were made for breaking hearts.

  Hers had been battered enough.

  Old grief moved through her. Even the thought of facing that kind of pain again terrified her. The circumstances of their meeting alone promised nothing but more of the same.

  Pushing the thought away, she concentrated on the yoga movements. Sun salute, upward facing dog to plank, then pushing back into downward facing dog, each stretch done slowly, her breathing precise.

  Something else nagged at her – the discrepancies.

  They didn’t make sense. No matter which way she looked at it, the numbers should have added up and they didn’t. The other thing that bothered her was the number of employees whose background wasn’t in finance but in sales. That didn’t make sense, except that with the economy so many in sales didn’t have jobs.

  She’d been in the trade long enough to know the ins and outs or else she couldn’t do her job. She’d spent plenty of time trying to get the books to balance. No one at the other Marathon offices seemed concerned and she dared not make too much of an issue of it or they might blame the software when she knew that wasn’t what was at fault.

  Finally she flipped open her laptop, determined to solve the puzzle. It would also keep her mind occupied.

  Hours later, she closed her laptop again, no closer to solving the discrepancies than before.

  Exhausted, she stumbled to bed.

  Housekeeping hadn’t changed the sheets.

  Ariel knew it the moment her head touched the pillow. It shouldn’t have surprised her in a motel this cheap.

  She could still smell Matthew’s scent, the tantalizing aroma of his body. She didn’t need the reminder and yet she found herself curled up around the pillow he’d used, breathing in the scent of him. For the first time in years, she felt a yearning for solace. She forced it away.

  Dragging herself out of bed the next morning, she took a chance on getting into the office early enough to try to resolve that nagging error.

  Five minutes before her students arrived, it suddenly came to her what the problem was. She tried her own fix.

  No more error message.

  She pumped her fist, hissed a triumphant “Yes!”

  For all the headaches, finding the solution to problems was one of the things she did like about this job.

  This time she’d even outdone the guru. Luke wouldn’t mind, though, especially as the fix was simpler than the ones they’d tried. She sent him a quick e-mail detailing the answer.

  She faced the rest of the day with some satisfaction as her trainees filed into the room. The morning session went better than she’d expected, adding another high note to the day.

  “So, Ariel, are you comin
g to lunch with us?” a voice asked from the doorway as her trainees gathered their things for lunch.

  Looking back over her shoulder, Ariel saw Miriam’s dark head peer around the doorway, a smile on her broad face.

  One of those behind Miriam added, “Come on, Ariel, it’ll be fun.”

  A few of the others chimed in, surprising her with their enthusiasm.

  She liked Miriam and at least she wouldn’t be eating alone as she so often did.

  “Sure,” Ariel said. “Why not?”

  As soon as she walked through the doorway Miriam linked arms with her and grinned. “We’re a bit of a crazy bunch but you’ll get used to us.”

  Walking down the steps in front of the office building Ariel thought she caught a glimpse of Matthew across the street but then he disappeared among the crowd. It was probably just her imagination, a private wish to see that mysterious and handsome man again. Even the mere thought of him still sent curls of warmth deep into her belly. It was ridiculous. She’d only known the man for a short time, a brief bout of intimacy. She had to forget about him.

  She enjoyed herself at lunch, though and everyone tried to include her in the conversations. If she didn’t know what they were talking about, they would explain. It was all mostly shop-talk, which most of them assumed she didn’t understand. Having spent some time in the industry but especially after training the software for a couple of years, she understood a lot more than they thought. It concerned her that so many seemed to have a background more in marketing than finance. Some of what they told her seemed wrong but there was always the chance Florida had different laws. She tried to ignore the vague feeling of discomfort she felt at some of what she heard. It didn’t sound right.

  Then there were the discrepancies she kept finding. Figures that she just couldn’t make match up.

  Somehow she’d have to find a way to ask – delicately – for an explanation.

  Matt turned on the hot water in the shower. He’d taken a taxi back to this little backwater hotel. It was a kitschy little place but comfortable enough. Small but serviceable, it hadn’t yet succumbed to the need to homogenize to the standard of the big brand hotels. Standing in the old-fashioned bathroom, with a real and separate sink rather than a vanity and shelves for his shaving kit and toothbrush, on old but clean linoleum tiles, he looked at himself in the mirror.

  There was a darkening bruise on his cheekbone but surprisingly they’d left his face mostly alone. Why not, when the blows to the body and the Taser had been enough? Gingerly he probed the spot behind his ear where the blackjack had hit him. He had ducked and shifted to pass off some of the force but it was still tender.

  Those boys had known exactly what they were doing. If this was how they operated, he could understand how Bill had been taken down but how the medical examiner had missed the marks of the Taser, he didn’t know. Maybe they hadn’t used one with Bill. Times had changed. Bill had settled down, lost his edge. Or tried to let go of it.

  A little stiffly but a lot less stiffly than he might have expected thanks to his morning’s activities, Matt stripped off his t-shirt. That was a lot less pretty. Blossoming bruises decorated his ribs, belly and he suspected the same was true for his back, especially over his kidneys. He forced back the memory of the one he’d nicknamed Moe circling around his buddies to pop a shot into them. There’d been no blood in his urine but he suspected that those shots had been carefully placed and nicely judged. Which spoke of experience at the job. It didn’t explain, however, why a finance company needed men like that.

  For all that, he didn’t feel nearly as bad as he should have.

  In fact, oddly enough, he felt better than he had in ages. There was a strange feeling of contentment, of satiation. He knew it could only come from one place. The exercise that morning, making love, tightening and loosening his muscles. An elfin face rose up in his mind, surrounded by black Irish hair and smiling Irish blue eyes. In that image she was sitting on the bed as he’d last seen her, as comfortable and natural in her nudity as if she were the pixie she appeared to be. That picture wouldn’t leave his mind any time soon, he knew, nor at the moment did he want it to. How could any sane man want that?

  Not beautiful but pretty and although he wouldn’t dare refer to anyone with that direct gaze as perky, there had been a sense of lightness about Ariel O’Donnell. That sweet smile had come to her lips easily and the brightness in her eyes had been innate. Those lovely blue eyes, sparkling at first and then shadowed, haunted him.

  As he stripped for the shower, he noted with some bemusement that simply thinking about her was enough to have gotten a rise out of him. That moment when she’d shifted her hips to take him in seared through him and he responded automatically to the memory of that tight, heated wetness surrounding him. He groaned and was grateful for the soap. It wasn’t difficult, as the hot water flowed over him, to remember how her sweet body had risen up around him, had arched and shuddered beneath him.

  One thing was certain, this hotel didn’t have their temperature settings on the hot water set too low but the heat was a blessed relief to some of his muscles. Leaning against the wall of the shower he just let the water run over him.

  Everything still seemed vaguely unreal, as if some important part of his life had disappeared, the way it had when his mother had died. Something vital had disappeared, an essential piece of who he was.

  It was still hard to wrap his mind around the idea that Bill was dead. Just the concept that his old buddy was gone seemed unbelievable even a week later. The idea that he’d never hear Bill’s voice on the other end of the phone say “Hey, Matty,” wouldn’t penetrate. He kept waiting for his cell phone to ring with Bill on the other end bragging about a goal that Will had made at soccer, or inviting him to his annual summer barbecue or Christmas party.

  They had been friends since grade school, he and Bill. That left a big gap in his life.

  A mugging, the cops said. That’s how they thought Bill had been killed.

  According to them the assailant had gotten carried away and killed Bill by accident. Bill’s wallet had been empty, his watch and wedding ring were gone.

  Not possible. Matt knew that. Not a mugger. Bill hadn’t gotten that soft.

  He and Bill had taken some specialized training while they were in the Rangers. Maybe Matt had found more use for it after they’d gotten out but when they were horsing around there was no doubt Bill remembered. The moves had still been there. Maybe he’d lost his edge a little but not so much that some hopped-up junky could have taken him.

  It had taken someone like those boys last night to take Bill down.

  The thugs had to have been watching, waiting for Matt, Bill’s wife Penny and the kids to leave the house to arrange for Bill’s funeral. It was no coincidence. Moments afterward, they’d broken in and stolen every bit of electronics in the place. They’d also stripped Bill’s office of almost every scrap of paper.

  Everything except his blotter and the trashcan full of Bill’s random doodlings.

  More than anything else, those doodles had tipped Matt off that there was more going on here than anyone knew.

  It had wrenched at him then, in the first pangs of grief, as he looked at the blotter covered them.

  Bill had doodled whenever he was thinking on the nearest scrap or piece of paper. Once he’d doodled on the last page of Matt’s thesis when they’d shared a room at college. At the time, Matt had been pissed.

  The phone call and Bill’s doodles had given Matt a direction, someplace to look and had only been confirmed when Matt had gone to Bill’s office to get his personal effects. His office had been stripped, too, of everything except his blotter.

  The doodles, though, had survived. They were everywhere. At Marathon Corp., there had been a doodle of the company name encircled by arrows pointing inward at the edge of the blotter. He found another doodle on a piece of scrap paper in the trash. Marathon and Genesis Co., another finance company, had been linked with doodle
s of more arrows. When Bill doodled, if it was good thoughts they were circled, circles within circles. Bad thoughts had arrows like lightning bolts.

  Those jagged lines had been everywhere.

  It was thin, but it and the phone call were all he had.

  Next time he’d have to be careful and probe Marathon’s defenses a little more circumspectly to try to find a way past them. Even now he didn’t know how they’d spotted him. He’d missed something about their security. He knew more than a little something about that, he thought wryly, or he should. What was it he’d missed? That was something else he’d have to check.

  It was too soon to try again, though, he thought as he stepped out of the shower and toweled off, using a corner to clear the steam from the bathroom mirror. One glance convinced him of that.

  The bruise on his face would make things more difficult. It made him noticeable – something he didn’t want. That was one advantage women had, they could hide bruises behind makeup. That wasn’t an option for him. A troll through the public records was called for, instead. He’d try to track down the connection between Marathon and Genesis through more conventional means. What he could do, he would. Public servants didn’t care if you looked as if you’d had a run-in with a Mack truck. Matt didn’t expect any more satisfaction from there than he’d had in San Diego or Sacramento but it had to be done. The bases had to be covered.

  Outside of the general similarity in product – finance – there didn’t seem to be a connection between the two companies.

  Making himself a little space, he pushed through some yoga to loosen up his muscles a little more before he dressed. The sun salutes weren’t so demanding on his body. He knew some guys found yoga a little too… something…but the stretches were perfect for times like these.

  Then he headed for the library.

  The local newspaper archives were a little more interesting. Marathon made the financial pages a little more often than he would have expected. For what was essentially a fairly esoteric product for most of mortal man, they seemed to have a highly developed publicity machine. He found little blurbs about Marathon’s financial wizardry everywhere. Joe Public was actively encouraged to consider investing with Marathon as a sure way to see a steady return, especially Joe Senior. And he did. The financial ratings were good, sometimes very good. Nothing spectacular but it did catch the eye. In none of those articles, though, did he read the explanation for Marathon’s success where others had failed. Nor did he find any connection to Genesis.