The Pact

by Jennifer Sturman

  “Ouch—there’s no need to poke it,” I said. Jane returned with a glass of brandy and handed it to me with the sort of look that implied I should shut up and drink it. I took a big sip, coughing with its fiery warmth.

  “We should get Matthew,” said Jane.

  “No,” I cried. “I’m fine.” I felt foolish enough; I didn’t want to rouse Matthew in the middle of the night and have to explain my latest exercise in gracelessness. I was already bracing for extensive retelling of the story I’d been stupid enough to tell my friends in college, about how my childhood ballet teacher diplomatically suggested that perhaps I should try modern dance instead. “Ouch,” I said again, as Sean placed something cold on the back of my head.

  “Here,” he said. “I wrapped some ice in a towel. Hold it in place, okay?” I did as he told me. They both pulled up chairs and sat facing me.

  “So, tell us everything,” said Jane.

  “I told you already,” I protested.

  “Tell us again,” said Sean.

  “Look. I went swimming—”

  “With Peter?” asked Jane.

  “Yes,” I confirmed. “And when I got into bed I realized I’d left my locket down at the beach. And I didn’t want anything to happen to it. So I went to look for it.”

  “Alone?”

  “Uh-huh. But I couldn’t find it in the dark. And then I saw a deer. He’d come to get a drink of water. He was really cute. And he almost let me pet him. But then he freaked out and ran back into the woods.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know,” I confessed. “Next thing I knew you guys were there.”

  “Why didn’t Peter come back to the lake with you?” asked Sean.

  “He was already in bed. It didn’t make sense to wake him.” I saw a look pass between them that I didn’t like.

  “Look, Rach, Peter seems like a good guy and all, but you need to be careful,” said Jane.

  I bristled. “What do you mean?”

  She glanced at Sean. They had their version of good cop-bad cop down to an art form, although in this case it was more like good cop-good cop. “She didn’t mean anything, really,” he said. “But we know that somebody killed Richard, and we don’t know who. Peter seems cool and everything, but he’s still an unknown quantity.”

  “He’s known to me,” I said hotly, taking a swig of the brandy.

  “Let’s look at this another way,” Jane said. “Sean and I come along and find you passed out, facedown in the water. You think you tripped and fell on something, but the bump is on the back of your head. Beyond the fact that we didn’t see what exactly you tripped on, or what exactly you could have hit your head on, why were you lying on your front and not on your back? That doesn’t make sense when the bump is on the back of your head.”

  “Since when did you start writing for CSI? What are you trying to say?” I felt defensive, and I wasn’t sure why.

  “Someone could have hit you with something,” said Sean gently.

  “Why would anybody do that? You’re being ridiculous.”

  “Maybe,” he answered. “But it’s a possibility. Do you know something? Something that somebody doesn’t want you to know? You’ve got to remember, there is a murderer loose in the house.”

  “Oh, come on,” I said, exasperated. “This is absurd. You know what a spaz I am. I’ve managed to do all sorts of damage to myself before without any help.”

  “Okay, okay,” said Jane. “But, when it’s light out, we’re going to go back down to the beach and look around.”

  “Fine,” I grumbled. “While you’re at it, you can help me find my locket.”

  “And you’re going to tell the police about this in the morning,” she added, in the voice she usually reserved for recalcitrant students who’d failed to do their homework.

  “All right. Geez. I never knew you were such a tyrant.”

  Sean grinned. “How do you think she got me to marry her?”

  “Oh, please. You begged me to marry you. I only agreed because I felt sorry for you.”

  I wasn’t in the mood for any cute happy-couple banter. “Well, thanks for helping me out back there.” I didn’t want to be ungracious; they had saved my life, I guessed.

  “Our pleasure. Now, are you sure you don’t want us to get Matthew to take a look at you?”

  “No. I feel fine. Really.”

  “We should make her walk a straight line or something,” said Jane.

  “Or close her eyes and touch her fingers to her nose.”

  “I can’t do that under normal circumstances,” I reminded them.

  “Well, then, let’s get you to bed,” said Sean.

  I felt too wound up to sleep, but I doubted I’d be able to withstand further bullying. I polished off the rest of the brandy and pushed my chair away from the table. “Okay.”

  “Just do us a favor, Rach.”

  “Hmm?” I asked, emptying the towel of melting ice into the sink.

  “When we get you back to your room, go to bed and stay there until morning, all right?” Jane had on her I-will-brook-no-nonsense-from-anyone face.

  “And no more roaming around the house alone in the dark,” contributed Sean.

  “Or roaming around outside in the dark,” Jane added.

  “Jawohl, mein Führers. No roaming around anywhere in the dark. Anything else?”

  She sighed. “Just be a little bit careful, Rachel. Is that too much to ask?”

  “No,” I grumbled. “I promise, I’ll be a little angel.”

  “You always are.” She smiled.

  “Make way for me and my halo,” I said.

  They followed me up the stairs.

  CHAPTER 24

  Just because I’d been told to go to sleep didn’t make it easy. My nice swim with Peter and the hot cocoa had left me cozy and relaxed, but my second nocturnal trip to the beach and its aftermath had left me with the strung-out, frazzled feeling I got after I’d pulled an all-nighter—exhausted but unable to sit still. In Emma’s room, I fished some Advil from my bag and washed it down with a glass of water from the bathroom tap. I envied Emma the sedative she’d taken; if I knew where to find some I’d be tempted to take one myself. Another night with minimal sleep was the last thing I needed.

  My pajamas were all sandy, so I exchanged them for an oversize T-shirt and got back into bed, where I tried to recapture the warm drowsy feelings I’d had before I’d gone to retrieve the locket. But my body throbbed at every extremity, and my mind was racing. Jane and Sean were being alarmist, I knew, but I still found their warnings discomfiting. I hadn’t liked their concerns about Peter, or that look that had passed between the two of them. I’d finally found someone I really liked, and he even seemed to like me back, and my friends were busy trying to find things to make me doubt him.

  I was trying to figure out how I could arrange to do more business in San Francisco when I remembered, yet again, the fax that had been sent to me from my office. Whatever it was, it was sure to be sufficiently tedious to knock any whirling romantic thoughts out of my head and put me right to sleep. Surely Jane’s and Sean’s admonition not to roam around in the dark couldn’t apply to a simple trip down the hallway to Jacob’s study. I slid out from under the covers, grabbed Emma’s bathrobe from the hook on the bathroom door, and let myself soundlessly out of the room. I made my way down the unlit hallway to Mr. Furlong’s study, fumbling about in the dark before I located the switch on the wall that turned on the desk lamp. A stack of papers had gathered in the fax machine’s output tray, and I picked them up and settled myself onto the leather sofa to take a look.

  But I just couldn’t concentrate on work. My head pounded, and when I tried to begin reading, the words on the top page swam together, rearranging themselves in the shape of Peter’s face. I was either losing my mind or desperately in need of glasses. I stood up again and went over to the phone on the desk to check my voice mail, but lost momentum before I’d even picked up the receiver. If I couldn�
��t read the fax, I was in even worse shape for processing any interminable messages from Stan, et al.

  I perched on the edge of the desk and let my gaze roam around the room. Again, the two paintings on the opposite wall caught my attention. I walked over to study them more closely.

  The more recent one was definitely the more striking, even to my untrained eye: a cacophony of brilliant colors that gave a first impression of boundless passion and energy. But when you looked more closely, there was a meditative quality to it, a sense of peace and harmony, as if the most exuberant Jasper Johns or Rauschenberg had mated with a Rothko to produce this canvas. In the lower right corner was Jacob Furlong’s distinctive signature, just his initials in bold script. And the date, May 30, 1972. A week after the day Emma was born. Without even knowing what had inspired the artist it was a tremendously moving work. When you realized that it was an homage to his newborn daughter, it held all the more power.

  I turned my attention to the older painting, a much smaller piece that was different in just about every way. This one also appeared to be abstract, but upon closer examination it revealed itself to be a portrait of a woman. The palette here was subdued, the strokes careful and almost hesitant. Altogether, it was an unimpressive work, although I, of course, was hardly an art critic. Still, the magnificent talent of Jacob Furlong was barely visible in this painting.

  Well, I told myself, if anyone judged me by the way I looked at financial statements my first year at Winslow, Brown, I doubted that they would have been very impressed, either. And if they could witness my complete inability to focus on my work, they would have been even less impressed. With a sigh, I settled myself back down on the sofa to look at the fax, willing myself to pay attention.

  I’d read the first page twice before I realized that it wasn’t even part of the documents I had been sent, but rather the scanned copy of a page from an outgoing document that somebody else had sent from Mr. Furlong’s fax machine. It wasn’t until I’d read if for the fourth time that the words began to make sense. I dropped the page like a hot potato. Then I picked it up and scurried over to the fax machine, where I deposited it with shaking fingers into the output tray, quickly, as if it might bite.

  My heart began to beat unreasonably fast. I wasn’t sure what upset me most—that the words I’d read completely incriminated Peter or the fact that I’d read them, which pretty much reduced the odds of us having a successful relationship to nil. Attractive, interesting, nice-smelling men confessing their love to me were in short supply, but even the sparse pickings made me loath to settle on a murderer as the father of my children.

  Because what I’d read implied that, all claims of ignorance to the contrary, Peter was thoroughly aware of Richard’s will and was counting on the money he’d receive to keep his business going.

  Good news [it read]. I’ve just received word that I will be able to access an additional source of capital. While I won’t have the money in hand immediately, the guarantee should be sufficient security for the bank to extend our line of credit as necessary to stave off any takeover attempts.

  I paced the room, trying to figure out how this could mean anything but that Peter was planning to use his inheritance from Richard to unleash desperately needed financing for his company. But no matter how I rearranged the facts, the outcome smelled rotten. Very, very rotten. It was true, I guessed, that nothing good ever came of eavesdropping or reading anyone else’s correspondence uninvited.

  I sat back down on the sofa and tried to collect myself. The fax didn’t necessarily prove anything, argued the part of me that was thoroughly smitten with Peter. Perhaps he had received news about some other source of cash—who knew what could have happened? All roads didn’t point to Richard’s estate. Peter himself had said that it was unlikely to be large enough to be meaningful, anyhow. Although, a small voice reminded me, Peter would have said such a thing to throw off suspicion. The duplicity of it was breathtaking—and nauseating.

  Concentrate, I told myself fiercely. You read something you weren’t supposed to, and now you’re jumping to conclusions. Quite shocking, unappealing conclusions. Behave yourself like the cool, rational professional you’re supposed to be. I sat up straight and turned my attention to my own documents, the ones that I’d been supposed to read.

  If I was hoping that Stan’s fax would provide a distraction, I was wrong. That was clear before I even got to the second page. While I’d heard that there were billions of humans, all over the world, of multiple races and religions and professions, carrying on their own lives in ways that in no way overlapped with mine, it was truly amazing how everything in my personal existence kept circling back to a small group of people. It seemed an absurd coincidence, not to mention disastrously unfair, that Smitty Hamilton’s takeover target was a small software firm in San Francisco, run by one Peter Forrest.

  I didn’t even start going through the mental motions of trying to convince myself that the Peter Forrest in question wasn’t the same Peter Forrest with whom I’d recently completed an extended session of passionate kissing. Further reading confirmed to me just how vulnerable his company was and how tenuous his own position in it. Apparently Peter’s company had a major bank loan outstanding on which it was expected to default in the upcoming month. Hamilton Tech had already made overtures to the bank, which was more than eager to sell the note to Smitty Hamilton. And once Peter defaulted, the bank had every right to sell, which would turn control of the company over to Hamilton Tech.

  If I had any loyalty toward Peter, which, I reminded myself sternly, I most definitely did not, I would have felt sympathy for his predicament. His company had been well financed at inception, but the implosion of the NASDAQ and the resulting fallout among the venture capital community had dried up most sources of capital for young technology companies. That Peter had managed to keep the company going was a testament to his management skills, and that vultures like Smitty Hamilton were swooping above was a testament to the value of the technology he’d created, a way of compressing and speeding the transmission of data across the Internet. If the company was worthless, nobody would be interested in an acquisition—particularly an unfriendly takeover. And I couldn’t imagine that Peter was eager to become a Hamilton Tech employee. Or worse, to be ousted by new management from the company he’d built.

  But everything made too much sense. The way Peter claimed to have slept through all the commotion that morning when I’d discovered the body and the police had arrived. Surely it would have been nearly impossible to sleep though that, earplugs notwithstanding? Then I realized that as far as I knew, he was also the last person to see Richard alive. Of course, he had told me that Richard and Emma had a secret assignation after Peter came in to bed, but that was clearly just part of his alibi. How dare he, I thought, try to cast suspicion for his heinous crime onto Emma? This last thought was the most infuriating, whipping me into a real frenzy of indignation.

  I don’t know how long I sat there, trying to process this sudden influx of data and its ramifications. If I had any sense of either personal or professional responsibility, I should have been figuring out how to tip off the police to what I knew or at least trying to figure out how I could help Hamilton Tech take over Peter’s company and jettison its bloody-handed, homicidal CEO. But instead I just sat there cursing my own lack of judgment.

  I’d gone on my first date at the tender age of fifteen, and fifteen years later I was still utterly incapable of assessing the character of a man with any degree of accuracy. You would think that all those years of practice would have taught me a few things, but an hour ago I’d been swooning over a murderer. If anything, I was losing ground. After all, a murderer completely trumped any of my past experiences. And there were a number of doozies that were hard to surpass, beginning with Chris the sociopath. I’d managed to cover all the various male neuroses in my time, from the breathtakingly arrogant hedge fund manager who’d explained to me, in all sincerity, that he had a “brilliant financ
ial mind” to my friends’ personal favorite, the guy who only showed up when not expected, resulting in his none too affectionate nickname of Non-Linear-Time-Boy.

  “You can’t sleep, either?” asked a friendly voice. I stifled a shriek. I’d been deep in thought, and the sudden interruption set my heart racing once again. Really, Peter’s habit of sneaking up on me was entirely losing its charm. And sneakiness was very much in keeping with a murderous character.

  “You—” I gasped, every bit not the calm, collected amateur sleuth. “You startled me.” My voice held an accusation. Surely the best defense was a good offense.

  “I’m so sorry,” Peter said. “I seem to keep sneaking up on you. I’ll have to work on that,” he continued. His voice held a note of apology.

  “Yes,” I agreed, none too hospitably. He was back in his outfit from that morning, a T-shirt and pajama bottoms. This time, however, he seemed far less adorable. Actually, that wasn’t true. On every level but the immediately conscious one, he looked every bit as adorable and even more so, if such a thing were possible. I cursed my depressing lack of resolve.

  “Me, neither. I just kept tossing and turning. It’s been quite a day.”

  “Mmm,” I answered noncommittally, trying to figure out my next move.

  He gave me a quizzical look, clearly put off by my cool tone. “So I came down to check on a fax I’d sent earlier to make sure it went though.”

  “It did,” I replied. “The confirmation page is in the output tray. I came in to get a fax that my office sent, and I saw it.” You disingenuous swine, I added silently.

  “Good,” he said, and collected the piece of paper from the fax machine. “While it’s definitely fun running your own business, it’s hard ever to stop working. But I guess you must keep pretty hectic hours as well in your line of work.” He paused, as if he realized how inane this awkward attempt at conversation sounded.

  “Yes.”

  “So, since neither of us can sleep, maybe we should go upstairs or something? There are a bunch of videos in the den.” He smiled at me eagerly. Clearly the implications of my neutral tone and nonforthcoming replies weren’t sinking in. Just a short time ago I would have leaped shamelessly at the invitation. Now, not only was I not in the mood for another romantic interlude, it occurred to me that I probably should be scared.