Ephraim crumbled to the ground.
Not caring if her actions ended up getting her shot as well, Kelsey dropped the glove and ran to her friend, trying to cradle his massive frame in her arms. As she did, her fingers grazed something hard and square at his back. Heart racing, she discreetly pulled it loose from where it was clipped to his belt, praying it was a Taser. As she bent over Ephraim, she slipped the device into her pocket.
He was either unconscious or dead, but before she could figure out which it was, Kelsey felt the cold steel of the gun against her temple.
“Enough talk,” Lou said softly. “I love you, kiddo, but I promise I’ll pull this trigger if you make me. I’m asking you one last time. Where…are…the…bonds?”
She closed her eyes, praying God would protect her.
Then she heard the click of the safety being released.
CHAPTER
FORTY-NINE
April 15, 1912
ADELE
Adele hovered there, stunned and furious as she continued moving with the mass of people toward the waiting lifeboats.
She could hear the crew yelling for women and children. She could see the men and older boys being pulled from the line. She could feel the push of the hands behind her, everyone impatient to get off the sharply tilting ship before it went down. She looked back and could no longer see Jocelyn. She looked forward but saw no sign of Rowan.
Then she looked to her right and met the eyes of the crewman who was assisting people into the lifeboat. He nodded at her and she knew her time for a decision had come.
He reached for her, and after a moment’s hesitation, she took his hand. He guided her into the boat, and she dropped onto a seat. Another young woman was pushed in next to her, and Adele turned to look at the terrified stranger.
A shiver ran through Adele’s body. The person sitting next to her should be Jocelyn. Instantly coming to her senses, she jumped up and grabbed onto the crewman’s arm. She knew what she had to do. She had to get out of this lifeboat and go back and get her cousin.
She wouldn’t leave without her, even if it meant not leaving at all.
CHAPTER
FIFTY
Okay, okay!” Kelsey cried, wincing at the feel of the metal against her skin. “You win. Cole has them. Cole Thornton. We found them last night and decided he would hold on to them for safekeeping.”
With that, she felt the gun being removed from her temple.
“Thank you,” he said softly. “That’s what I needed to know.”
Eyes still closed, she buried her head against Ephraim’s broad shoulder, praying she hadn’t just taken them from the frying pan into the fire. And while she would never, ever want to put Cole in danger, at this point he seemed to be their only hope.
“Call him.”
Opening her eyes, she looked up to see Lou with the gun still in one hand and her cell phone in the other.
“What?”
“Call Cole. Tell him you need him to bring you the bonds right away. Have him go to the back door and tell him you’ll meet him there.”
Her hands trembling so violently she could barely function, Kelsey reached up for the phone.
Trying not to fall apart completely, she dialed Cole’s number. As she did, she discreetly turned down the volume with her thumb in the hopes that she could pull this off without Lou being able to hear what she was doing.
“Put it on speaker,” he commanded, dashing her hopes.
She did as he directed, her pulse surging at the sound of Cole’s voice.
“Kelsey? Hey. That took longer than I expected. You okay?”
“Hi, Cole. I’m here at the meeting and need you to do me a favor. Lou and Walter need to see the bonds. Can you bring them over to B & T?”
“Bring you the bonds? What are you talking about?”
Kelsey took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Please, Lord, help him understand what I’m doing.
“It’s okay, Cole,” she said. “I’ve already told them. In fact, they’re here on the speakerphone with me now. You don’t have to pretend. I just need you to bring us the bonds right away, okay?”
Please let him get the message loud and clear.
After a beat he said, “Sure, but it might take a while. I moved them to the safe down at the office.”
Kelsey looked up at Lou apologetically. Then she said, “I thought we agreed you’d keep them at your place, Cole.”
“We did, but I got nervous. Sorry for being extra cautious. I was trying to protect them.”
“Well, whatever. Go get them and bring them here as quickly as you can. Come to the back door. Text me once you’ve arrived, and I’ll come down and meet you there.”
“Will do.”
“Thanks, Cole,” she said softly, and then she disconnected the call.
Placing the phone back in Lou’s waiting hand, she looked up at him, hoping he’d bought their performance.
“All right, get up,” he told her, gesturing with the gun. “Time to take a walk.”
Grabbing her firmly by the wrist, he pulled her away from Ephraim and to her feet. Overpowered by his brute strength, she was unable to resist as he began dragging her down the hall. Soon they were in the executive conference room and then in the stairwell.
“Where are we going?” she demanded, wishing she could take just five seconds to examine whatever it was she had taken from Ephraim. If it was a Taser, she just might be able to stop things from going any further.
If it wasn’t, she might end up getting herself shot.
“Let’s just say I need a little insurance policy,” Lou told her as they went down the stairs.
She thought they would go down to the first floor and then wait at the bottom, but instead, when they got there, he surprised her by pressing the gun to the small of her back and pushing open the door.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Lou whispered in her ear as they both stepped outside. “We’re going to cross the street and wait over there in the alley. Then we’re going to watch. If Cole shows up alone, no problem. But if he shows up with some friends, specifically friends in blue uniforms, then you and I are out of here. It’s that simple.”
With that, he gripped her elbow and began to propel her forward. With his gun still pressed discreetly at her back, Lou forced her to walk to their vantage point about a hundred feet away. Once there, they stood in the shadows of the alley where they could see the back side of the Brennan & Tate building without being seen. Unfortunately for Kelsey, as was typical for a Saturday, this part of the financial district was practically deserted.
Perhaps that was for the best, she decided. At least this way, if there were gunplay, fewer people were around to get hurt.
Hoping to distract Lou from his vigil, Kelsey tried to pull him back into their earlier conversation, but he wasn’t having any of it. The third time he told her to be quiet, he emphasized the point by jabbing the gun’s barrel into her spine. Wincing from the pain, she kept her mouth shut after that.
Finally, after the longest ten minutes of her life, some sort of movement caught their eye. With a gasp she realized what they were seeing: Three police cars were coming up the road behind the building and pulling to a stop about a block away.
“Looks like my insurance policy paid off. Make one sound, Kelsey, and you’re dead.”
With a jerk Lou turned her around and forced her to walk up the alleyway in the opposite direction. As they went, she said a silent prayer for protection, followed by thanks that at least Walter and Ephraim would now be discovered and get the medical attention they so desperately needed.
At the other end of the alley, they emerged at a cross street and kept going, angling down the sidewalk to a parking garage halfway up the block. It, too, seemed deserted, and soon Kelsey was being shoved into a vehicle—not onto a seat but into its trunk!
She tried to struggle against Lou as he forced her inside, but it was no use. Between his strength and his gun, she was outmatch
ed. With panic rising in her throat, she watched as he closed the lid down on her, and then she was lying alone in the dark.
Bracing herself, she listened as Lou got into the driver’s seat and closed the door. She waited for the car to start, but instead all she heard was Lou’s voice, and it sounded as though he was having a telephone conversation.
“Nice try. Did you think I was stupid enough to wait there for you? Tough luck. We’re long gone.”
Cole. He must be talking to Cole.
“Here’s what you’re going to do now,” Lou continued. “Without telling the police or anyone else this time, you’re going to bring those bonds somewhere else.”
Another long silence.
“Thatta boy. Go to Bowling Green Park and have a seat on a bench to await further instructions.”
And that was it. He must have hung up, because the car roared to life and then they were off.
Kelsey tried not to panic. She told herself not to cry. Instead, as she was bounced and jostled in the tight space, she willed her eyes to get used to the darkness, pulling out the item she’d taken from Ephraim.
She needed to see what it was, but it was just too dark in there. At least she could feel the size and shape. It was smooth, about the size and weight of a man’s electric razor and had an ergonomic shape to it, her hand fitting naturally around one end. At the other end was some sort of symbol, and as her eyes adjusted she thought she could make out a lightning bolt.
It had to be a Taser.
Feeling more empowered now that she had a weapon, Kelsey studied it to make sure she understood how it worked. On one side, near the front, was a round button with an arrow pointing forward. She assumed this was a safety of some kind and would have to be pushed in the direction the arrow was showing before the weapon could work.
Finally she eased the Taser back into her pocket and began to look around for some sort of latch or hook that she might pull to release the trunk lid. Before she could find anything, however, she realized that the car was slowing to a stop, and then it turned off. The drive had been so short, she knew they couldn’t have gone more than half a mile.
Kelsey braced herself for the trunk lid to fly open, but instead she heard the sound of Lou making another call from inside the car. He spoke more softly this time, which made her wonder if they were in a more populated area. She couldn’t make out all of his words, though she felt sure he was talking to Cole again and that he was giving instructions for where he was to go next with the bonds—bonds Cole didn’t even have. Thank goodness for the Taser.
The call finished, Lou was making a new kind of noise, some of it directly behind her, when suddenly light came spilling in over her shoulders.
“Come out this way,” she heard him say. “It’s less noticeable.”
Twisting around in the tight space, Kelsey realized he had pulled down the seat back, which gave access to the trunk from the backseat. Unbelievable.
She managed to work her way out through the opening, and soon she was climbing from the car onto pavement, blinking at the vivid sunset on the distant horizon. They were at the river, the Statue of Liberty standing in proud silhouette against a yellow-and-orange sky.
The heliport. They were at the Downtown Manhattan Heliport.
Lou would be making his getaway by helicopter.
He gestured for her to walk, and so she did, the now-familiar gun pressing into her back as they crossed the paved surface that jutted out into the East River like a big cement peninsula. They reached the edge, where concrete met water. Turning around so they were facing the parking lot, their backs to Lady Liberty, they leaned back against the low railing. The gun remained where it was, but now that she knew she had a Taser, Kelsey wasn’t nearly as frightened as before. Mostly, she just needed the right opportunity to use it.
“What are we doing now?”
“Waiting on Cole,” Lou replied. “He has ten minutes to get here from Bowling Green Park. If he has the bonds, everything will be fine.”
Kelsey wanted to turn and look at Lou, to ask him how he could have done any of this. But instead she continued to face forward and asked him to finish his story from earlier.
“You were telling me how Gloria began to lose her nerve,” she prodded, hoping to distract him with his own words while she got a good grip on the Taser in her pocket. To her relief, he picked things up right where he’d left off.
“Yeah, it all started falling apart on Monday. I called and set up a meeting with a creditor for later in the week so I could line up financing and be ready to roll with a merger if everything went as planned. The problem was, they wanted collateral. The bonds were my collateral, so I called Gloria Monday night and told her I needed to borrow them for a few days. She agreed to meet up with me Tuesday morning and hand them over, but then she never showed.”
“Wait a minute,” Kelsey said. “You called Gloria Monday night? About what time?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Ten? Ten thirty?”
“From a pay phone near Times Square?”
“Yeah,” he said, sounding surprised. “How’d you know that?”
“The cops are stumped and asking around. What were you doing over there?”
“I was sticking with the plan. See, Gloria and I knew that Rupert had gotten to town, and we were afraid he might try to speak with you that night, privately, instead of waiting to confront you the next day at the ceremony. So we left show tickets for him and his sister at the hotel’s front desk just to be safe. My job was to keep an eye on the two of them from a distance to make sure they didn’t take any detours or anything. While they were in the theater, I was checking my voice mail when I heard that message from my lender about needing collateral. So I called Gloria to tell her I had to borrow the bonds.”
“Why use a pay phone?”
He chuckled softly. “Gloria said Vern had been acting real suspicious of her lately, hinting that he thought she might be involved in an affair. What a joke, a player like that being suspicious of his own wife. I didn’t want my name popping up on her cell phone and making him think she was involved with me, so I used a pay phone instead.”
Kelsey let that sink in, thinking how every piece seemed to be falling into place like a puzzle—yet there was still so much she didn’t know.
“Okay, keep going,” she said. “Gloria was supposed to bring you the bonds Tuesday morning, but she stood you up. What happened next?”
“Not much. I kept calling her all day but she wouldn’t answer and she didn’t return any of my calls. Finally, after the big blowup at the ceremony, I sent you on your way and then I called her and told her I wanted to come upstairs so we could have this out then and there. I knew she was losing her nerve, but I had worked too hard for too long to let it all go now.”
Kelsey blinked, trying to remember the sequence of events from that insane afternoon. The last she’d seen of Lou that day, she’d been riding away in a taxi and he was trying to hail a cab of his own to head to a meeting uptown. Her face flushing with heat, she realized now that there had been no meeting. He’d been lying to cover his tracks.
“How did you get back into the building?”
“Gloria gave me her security code. By that point she was as ready to be done with things as I was.”
Kelsey tried not to shudder as she thought about where the story was leading. “So you used her code to get back in and headed up to her office—”
“Not to her office, too risky. She was waiting for me in the conference room off the stairwell. We talked there.”
Kelsey closed her eyes. There. Where Gloria died.
“She was a mess,” Lou continued, “all in a tizzy about we shouldn’t have done this’ and ‘we shouldn’t have done that.’ I thought it was a little late to put a stop to things by that point. Rupert had already spoken out at the meeting. Pamela had already initiated the takeover. Everything was falling perfectly into place—and all of a sudden Gloria wanted to pull the plug? That was crazy.”
Kelsey’s eyes opened, for the first time feeling some hint of gratitude for the person Gloria had been. If she’d had remorse, that had to mean she hadn’t been completely bad to the core.
“Any idea why she changed her mind?” Kelsey asked softly, watching the Brooklyn skyline as the last reflections of the sunset faded from view.
Lou stiffened as a family emerged from the nearby heliport building and noisily began making their way across the parking lot. Once they were in their car and on their way, he relaxed and answered her question.
“At first I thought this was all about the bonds. She told me that when she got them out of the safe on Monday night, she saw they were bearer bonds and realized she couldn’t let me borrow them after all. She had made photocopies for me to take to the creditor instead.”
The photocopies of the bonds. Kelsey nodded.
“The problem was that along with bonds, she found Adele’s old diary. Said she stayed up all night to read the stupid thing. By morning she’d done a full one eighty. Said she just couldn’t go through with it, couldn’t do this to the Tates or to the memory of Adele. ‘Adele Tate went through so much,’ she told me. ‘Now that I’ve read the diary, I believe she really was who she said she was. How can we challenge that for our own selfish gain?’ It was ridiculous.”
Kelsey realized Gloria must have known Lou would try to take the bonds from the safe himself, so she’d hidden them somewhere else, somewhere he wouldn’t think to look for them.
“So she really did commit suicide out of remorse,” Kelsey said sadly.
“Yeah, something like that,” Lou replied.
Then they grew silent, his words hanging in the air between them. There was something about his tone, his attitude. Stunned, Kelsey turned to face him despite the gun in his hand.
“You killed her, didn’t you?” she whispered, all of the pieces finally falling into place.
“Look, Gloria was my friend. I just wanted her to stick with the plan.”
“What did you do, Lou?”
At least he had the nerve to look ashamed, his cheeks flushed and his eyes darting away nervously. “It was an accident. We were arguing. I had backed her up against the wall. The cord was hanging there, so I used it. By then I was just trying to scare her into giving up the bonds. If she wasn’t going to follow through with the merger, those bonds were all I had left for my trouble. I earned them, but she didn’t see it that way.”
Echoes of Titanic Page 41