by Trin Denise
Sydney looked up at the sound of the door opening. She watched Meredith come down the stairs.
Meredith sat the suitcase on the floor next to the couch. “Are you sure about this, Sydney?” she asked. “Once I walk out of here, I’m not coming back.”
“Yes, Meredith, I’m sure. You and I have known for awhile that this was coming.”
“How can you just end it like this? Do all the years we spent together mean nothing to you?”
“You have got to be kidding me. I just caught you in bed with one of my executives and you have the nerve to turn this around on me,” Sidney said calmly.
“Well, I’m not giving up that easily. If you think you can just toss me out like yesterday’s garbage I’ve got news for you and—”
“That’s why I’m giving you this,” Sydney interrupted. She reached down and picked her checkbook up off the coffee table. “I want you out of my life for good, Meredith. No more games.” She ripped off the check and shoved it in Meredith’s hand.
Meredith looked at the check and frowned. “$500,000.00? What in the hell am I supposed to do with this? How can you expect me to live on such a measly amount?” she asked sarcastically.
“If you don’t want it, I’ll take it back,” Sydney said, reaching for the check.
Meredith pulled it back and crammed it in her pocket. “I guess I’ll just have to make do. I wouldn’t want to put you out or anything.”
Sydney resisted the urge to shoot another dinger at Meredith regarding who’s doing all the putting out. She felt her temper flare again. “You’re lucky I’m giving you that much. If you remember correctly, the good citizens of Ohio voted down the gay marriage proposal, so by law, I don’t have to give you a penny and—” Sydney stopped in mid-sentence and stood up from the chair. She threw her hands up in the air. “You know what, Meredith? I am so over this. I just want you gone.”
“Come on, Sydney. Please don’t do this,” Meredith practically begged as she followed Sydney into the foyer.
Sydney jerked the front door open and stood off to the side.
Meredith, dragging her luggage behind her, stomped unceremoniously through the doorway. She turned to look at Sydney, her eyes full of contempt. “I meant what I said. If you think I’m just going to go away quietly without a fight, you’re sadly mistaken, Sydney.”
“Goodbye, Meredith.”
“I’ll send someone over tomorrow to collect the rest of my things,” Meredith yelled over her shoulder just before Sydney slammed the door shut in her face.
Sydney closed her eyes and fell back against the door. Feeling the coolness of the wood permeate through her blouse, she took a deep breath, and forced herself to relax. After a few minutes, she opened her eyes. She glanced at her watch. Jackie would be...
The doorbell rang before she had a chance to finish her thought. “Damn it, Meredith,” she swore as she jerked the door open.
Jackie Christopher, a behemoth of a woman with short sandy brown hair, smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, Syd, it’s just me.”
“I’m sorry, Jackie, please come in,” Sydney said, stepping back to allow her through the doorway.
Jackie walked into the family room and took a seat on the couch. She took off her sunglasses and laid them on the coffee table next to the file folder she had brought with her. She was silent as she watched Sydney go over to the wet bar.
“Kinda early to be hitting the sauce, huh?” Jackie asked, her eyebrow rising slightly as she looked at Sydney.
“You know what they say, it’s five o’clock somewhere. Care to join me?”
“Oh what the hell, you only live once, right?” Jackie laughed.
“So they say,” Sydney said, grabbing two bottles of beer from the fridge.
Jackie took the beer Sydney offered and twisted off the cap. She took a long swig from the bottle. “So, you wanna tell me what’s going on or do you want me to guess?” she asked.
“Meredith and I broke up,” Sydney sighed.
Jackie snorted. “There’s a real shocker.”
“You aren’t the least bit surprised?” Sydney asked, cocking her head to look at Jackie.
“As far as I’m concerned the two of you should have split a long time ago,” Jackie answered, shaking her head.
“You aren’t the first person in my life to point that out,” Sydney laughed.
Jackie looked down at the bottle of beer in her hands. She tore a piece of the label off the bottle. She studied Sydney for several seconds. “Are you okay?” she asked thoughtfully.
“Yeah, actually I am,” Sydney said, answering honestly.
“If you don’t mind my asking, what happened?”
“I just caught her in bed with Anne.”
“You’re shitn’ me,” Jackie said, barely managing to choke out the words as she spit a mouthful of beer on the coffee table. She quickly wiped the liquid off the file folder and turned to look at Sydney.
“I shit you not,” Sydney said with a shake of her head.
“Anne Burbank?”
Sydney nodded.
“Wow just damn wow,” Jackie said with a completely dumbfounded look on her face.
“And I caught them in my bed.” Sydney glanced at her watch and added, “About an hour ago.”
“And Meredith just left?”
Sydney shook her head. “Not without giving me a little crap.”
“Just a little? I would have thought she’d go ballistic,” Jackie said.
Jackie picked up the file folder. She pulled out several documents and laid them on her lap.
“I think Meredith may look for a way to cause me trouble,” Sydney said.
“Well, whatever she does, I’m sure you’ll be able to handle it.”
Sydney nodded at the papers on Jackie’s lap. “What do you have for me?”
“Before I give these to you, are you one-hundred percent sure this is what you want to do?”
Sydney nodded. “I think right now, this is the only thing in my life that I am sure about,” she said, reaching for the documents. She looked at Jackie. “How’s she doing at EMCOR?”
“Very well actually and as a matter of fact, two days ago she was promoted to Senior Designer.”
“That doesn’t surprise me a bit. She always wanted to be an architect,” Sydney said as she looked at the documents.
They were both silent for several minutes as Sydney digested the information and with each passing minute, the color in her cheeks grew redder. Finally, she raised her head to look at Jackie. “How long has this been going on?” she asked.
“From what I can tell, it seems to have started right after they were married,” Jackie answered. She had been dreading Sydney’s reaction from the minute she discovered these new details. She pushed several pictures across the table toward Sydney.
“Why didn’t we know about this before now?” Sydney asked, trying hard to keep the irritation out of her voice.
Jackie shrugged. “I never had a reason to check hospital records. I only did so after noticing the small bruise on her cheek when I saw those pictures.”
Sydney looked at the attractive blonde-haired woman in the photo. The bright blue eyes sparkled in spite of the large purple and green bruise covering the woman’s right cheek. Her eyes were still as beautiful as Sydney remembered yet she looked different. The thirty-seven-year old face staring back at her looked sad, haunted, not the bubbling, happy, “I’m grateful to be alive” woman she used to know.
Jackie pulled out several documents stapled together from the file folder and slid it across the coffee table to Sydney. “This is a little more detailed and gives the so-called reasons for her injuries.”
Sydney looked at the first entry on the paper. “This happened less than a month after they were married.”
“Yeah, says she slipped and fell while getting out of the car. She just so happened to break her arm in the process.”
Sydney used her finger to scan down the list of entries. “She was treated fo
r a concussion four months later when she accidentally fell down the basement stairs.” Sydney shook her head. “She was pregnant when these things happened.”
“She’s been to the hospital fourteen times in the last eight years but none in the past year, which seems odd since most abusers don’t just stop.”
“Stitches, concussions, broken bones, cracked ribs, fractured wrist, you name it, and she’s had it. Why in the hell would she stay with a man like that?”
“You know as well I do that some women come up with all sorts of reasons to justify the abuse and somehow it’s always their fault. His supper was late or she forgot to renew his newspaper subscription. You know the drill.”
Sydney shook her head again. “It has to be more than that. He must have something on her. The woman I knew would never put up with this.”
“You haven’t seen her for almost thirteen years. People change.”
Sydney’s anger was almost to the boiling point. “That son of a bitch. I’d like to see him do that to me,” she said, tossing the photos on the coffee table. Her thoughts turned to Rachel’s two daughters. Both girls were technically defined as prodigies and Rachel’s youngest, Alyssa, was just eight-years-old, yet she was already in the seventh grade. “What about Caitlyn and Alyssa?” she asked.
“From what I can tell, he doesn’t lay a hand on the girls, just their mother.”
“He’s not Caitlyn’s biological father, he died before she was born but I think if Edward was abusing her I would have seen the signs.”
“Not necessarily. There are more ways to inflict abuse on a person besides physical. He’s definitely a real piece of work. Take a look at this,” Jackie said and handed Sydney two documents.
Sydney scanned the documents. “I don’t understand, what is this?” she asked.
“Well, after I found the hospital records, I had a friend of mine in D.C. do a little deep digging for me. Seems that Mr. Eddie Ashburn isn’t who he claims to be.”
“Do tell,” Sydney said with a smile.
“Edward Ashburn, born June 16th, 1964 in Scottsdale, Arizona died at childbirth.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Nope,” Jackie said.
Sydney looked at the documents again. One was a copy of a death certificate; the other was the birth certificate for Edward Ashburn, infant son of Martha and Samuel Ashburn. “Then who the hell is he and why is hiding out under an assumed name?”
Jackie shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine but I intend to find out.”
“I want you to make this priority number one and the minute you find out what Mr. Ashburn is hiding, I want to know,” Sydney said as she gave the documents back to Jackie and stood up. “Whatever he’s hiding has to be pretty damn big.”
“My thoughts exactly. Most people who change their identity are on the run. We just need to find out what or whom, he’s running from. It would make my job a little easier if I could get my hands on a set of his prints,” Jackie said as she put the documents back into the file folder and followed Sydney over to the door.
“I’ll see what I can do about getting those for you.” Sydney laid her hand on Jackie’s shoulder, giving it an affectionate squeeze. “Thank you. I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me.”
“That’s why you pay me the big bucks,” Jackie laughed.
Sydney playfully pushed Jackie through the open doorway. “You know it’s much more than that.”
“You’re right. I do,” Jackie laughed again as she stepped off the porch. She stopped and turned to look at Sydney. “I should know something in the morning and I’ll call as soon as I do but before I go any further, I need to ask you one more time. Are you really sure, I mean one hundred percent sure you want to go through with this crazy scheme of yours?”
Now it was Sydney’s turn to laugh. “We’ve been following their lives for almost ten years now. So yes, for the umpteenth time, I am sure and before you say anything else, let me assure you that I know what I’m doing.”
Jackie shook her head and grinned. “Famous last words.” Jackie looked at her for a moment. “Can I ask you one more thing?”
Sydney laughed. “Sure, not sure I will answer though.”
“I’ve never questioned anything you’ve asked me to do and I’ve never asked about Rachel but what is it about this woman? Why her?”
“Out of all the women I’ve known in my life, she’s the only one who ever left me breathless and … she broke my heart. Crushed it actually,” Sydney answered without hesitation. She intentionally left out the part that her actions were now fueled by revenge. Rachel Ashburn had ended their relationship without a second thought. It was bad enough that Rachel had decided she didn’t want to share the rest of her life with her. She could have dealt with that but it was the reasons behind Rachel’s decision that Sydney just couldn’t accept and no matter how hard she tried, she could not get the woman out of her head. People say that time heals all wounds but it doesn’t. Time may lessen the pain but it never goes away, not completely. She wanted Rachel to feel just one iota of the pain she had felt all those years ago. The physical abuse that Edward inflicted wouldn’t come close to the emotional havoc she was about to unleash on Rachel Ashburn.
Jackie knew exactly what Sydney meant. “Remind me to never get on your bad side,” she chuckled. Although she said it more as a joke, she knew that Sydney Welsh was the last person she would ever want to cross paths with unless they were fighting on the same side. She herself knew that the wrath of a woman scorned didn’t compare to a lonely woman with a cold broken heart.
“Now get out of here before you convince me I’m crazy,” Sydney said with a wink.
She watched Jackie back out of the driveway and waited until her car disappeared down the drive before turning to go back in the house. She had just closed the door when her cell phone rang. She raced into the family room and snatched the phone off the coffee table. “Hello,” she said into the receiver.
“Hey, Syd, it’s me. Sorry to bother you at home,” Caitlyn said through the phone. “But this is really important,” she added before Sydney could respond.
“It’s okay, Caitlyn, what’s going on?” Sydney asked, sensing that something was wrong.
“You know how I’ve been working on updating our main computer system?” Caitlyn asked.
Sydney nodded although Caitlyn couldn’t see her. “Yes,” she answered.
“Well, I’ve found some major discrepancies. I went over it several times and each time I came to the same conclusion. I should have had some idea that this was going on.”
“Spit it out, Caitlyn,” Sydney laughed.
“Ninety percent of our client accounts show monetary discrepancies.” Caitlyn inhaled deeply and then added, “A substantial amount of money is missing.”
“How substantial?” Sydney asked, not completely sure she wanted to know the answer. Caitlyn became so quiet, Sydney thought she was no longer on the line. “You still there, Caitlyn?” she asked just to be sure.
“Um, yeah. I’m still here.”
“How much?” Sydney asked.
Caitlyn took a deep and then said, “Close to four and a half million dollars.”
Sydney’s jaw almost dropped to the floor. There must be a mistake. She cleared her throat. “Did I hear you right?” she asked, wanting Caitlyn to repeat it just to be sure.
“I’m afraid so,” Caitlyn answered.
“And you’re sure that it should be there?” Sydney asked, still not believing what she was hearing.
“Yes, Syd, I’m sure. I checked, checked it twice, and then crosschecked my checks. The money is missing, gone, vanished, vamoosed, history.”
“Am I right to guess that you might have an idea where it went?” Sydney asked, a small grin forming at the corners of her mouth.
“Do you really need to ask me that question?”
“Nah, just testing you,” Sydney chuckled.
“I do have a few ideas that I would like to run
by you but I don’t think we should discuss it over the phone. Will you be coming into the office today?” Caitlyn asked.
“I hadn’t planned on it but if this can’t wait, I’ll be in,” Sydney said.
“I don’t think one more day will make much difference. So, I guess I will see you in the morning then.”
Sydney smiled. “Thank you for taking good care of me.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Sydney said.
Chapter 2
Sydney shook her head, tossed the phone on the couch, and headed upstairs. She hoped that Caitlyn was wrong but something in her gut was telling her different. She went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. She stripped off her clothes and grabbed a fresh towel out of the linen closet. I don’t think this day can get much worse, she thought as she stepped under the hot water.
Fifteen minutes later, she came out of the bathroom wearing a fluffy, light blue, terrycloth robe, and feeling fully refreshed. She pulled open her dresser drawer. A loud thud against the side of the house caused her to jump nearly an inch off the floor. She went over to the window and pulled the curtain back. A blood-curdling scream pierced her ears. It took her mind a good three seconds to realize that the scream came from her throat. A grey-haired old man, perched atop a ladder with a string of Christmas lights in his hand stared at her through the window. His lips curved upward, revealing a toothy smile.
Sydney raised the window and poked her head out.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t mean ta startle ya,” the man said with a southern accent as thick as road tar.
“And I don’t mean to be rude but who are you exactly?” Sydney asked, not recognizing the man.
“My name is Jedidiah Saunders,” he answered. He let go of the ladder to extend his hand to her and in the process lost his balance.
Sydney reached out and grabbed his arm just in time to keep him from falling to the ground below. “Maybe you should keep both hands on the ladder,” she suggested.