At the Brink

by Anna del Mar

  Panic flared in Thomas’s eyes. “He gave me up?”

  “On a silver platter.”

  He slumped in his seat. “I thought the deal with Chamberlain would be good for Phoenix Prime.”

  “But was it really?” I said. “You may have thought I was distracted, but I ran the numbers and studied the projections. In the short term, they looked fine, but in the long term, it was a scam to marginalize the little guys’ investments and gut them out of their savings. But all of that was beside the point, because the money Chamberlain deposited in your Swiss bank account ensured you’d overlook the pesky details.”

  Thomas buried his face in his hands. “I’ll quit. I swear, Josh. You’ll never hear from me again.”

  “Quitting is not an option, Thomas. Not when you devolved into attempted murder.”

  “What?” Thomas stared at me in horror. “No.”

  “You hired Ben Delacroix, retired sergeant from the French Foreign Legion, who happens to be an expert in marine explosives and a professional scuba diver. Mac got the guy. He confessed and we followed the money trail all the way back to you. If you couldn’t get me to sell the company to Chamberlain, then you had to get me out of the way and fast. All because of those enormous gambling debts you’ve accumulated.”

  Thomas gawked. “How could you know about that?”

  “I know everything about you, Thomas. You were one of the few people who knew where I was and who had access to the security details at the cove. You set it up so that Delacroix would do your dirty work and you’d have the run of Phoenix Prime and your hand directly in the bucket.”

  “You have no proof.”

  “You know better. You’ve worked with me for a long time. I’m thorough, Thomas. Some would say obsessively so.”

  The look Thomas gave me spoke of defeat. He understood what I meant by thorough. He might not know about the complete, irrefutable case that Riker had delivered to the authorities an hour ago, but looking out the window, he understood why the police waited for him at the bottom of the stairs. He took off his glasses and set them aside, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He’d been beaten.

  “To think that all of this happened because of that woman,” he muttered.

  “I warned you,” I said. “Nobody touches Lily. Nobody.”

  The way in which he reached into his case seemed casual, but I’d dealt with desperate men before. My Sig Sauer pressed against the center of his forehead way before his fingers brushed the butt of the Beretta I removed from beneath his laptop.

  I tsked. “Bad move, Thomas. Now we have assault with a deadly weapon to add to your charges. Get up, hands on your head, you know the drill. If I were you, I’d walk toward that door very carefully. I’ve wanted to kill the man who hurt Lily for a while now and, even though I’m trying to stick to the civilized approach, I’d be delighted if you run.”

  * * *

  Once the plane leveled off, I stomped to the office compartment and shut the door. My head ached and my muscles cramped. I was furious. The crap piled high and it was hard to keep it together. I didn’t like that someone from my team had resorted to betrayal. I questioned my leadership and my ability to run a successful team. Christ, when the shit hit the fan everyone got splashed.

  I opened my laptop. I had a new message from Ernest Chamberlain confirming that he’d met all of my settlement requirements. Our investigation had conclusively shown that, although Chamberlain had been involved with Stratton in the takeover bid, Chamberlain had not been part of Stratton’s more sinister attempt to kill me.

  Still, I’d negotiated one other concession out of Chamberlain’s atonement. I had asked him to talk to his brother-in-law, who happened to be the senior art critic at The Globe. Ernest had some very specific instructions. I believed in Lily’s talent, so I didn’t want anything overt or obvious, just a brief mention of an upcoming little known auction, nothing more.

  And now that I was done securing Lily’s welfare, I had to start the gut-wrenching process of excising her from my rotten soul.

  Chapter Forty

  Lily

  The days and weeks passed without news from Josh. Thanksgiving came and went. He was gone. I knew it in my heart.

  “So what else is new?” I muttered to myself, putting the last touches on the painting for the community center benefit. I knew I had to pull out of the post Josh funk, but even though I’d healed physically, I felt emotionally sick.

  I set up the easel in my bedroom because my tiny living room was command center for Nurse Carmen. She had taken control of my life, coordinating my care, scheduling my rehab appointments, managing the host of specialists who conspired to put Humpty Dumpty together again. I let her do it mostly because I didn’t care. I kept to my room and refused to take calls from anyone. The world seemed empty without Josh. The days went on endlessly and without purpose.

  Bree came to see me every day, but despite trying, she wasn’t making much progress into my head. My only lifeline was painting, which I did faithfully. I must have produced at least five or six paintings during those weeks, a couple of portraits inspired by Rosa and even some island landscapes.

  There was a lot of darkness in my paintings. The color black didn’t seem as daunting as it had before. On the contrary, it called me, overwhelming the color wheel in my mind. I worked on a portrait of Josh, but his stark features looked misplaced and I couldn’t get his eyes right. No matter what colors I blended, his stare only got murkier, as if I painted the eyes of a dead man.

  Weeks after the breakup, Riker, who’d come by every day since Josh’s departure to check on the team taking care of me, showed up at the apartment and asked if he could speak to me.

  My stomach bounced off my feet. “Is Josh okay?”

  “As far as I know, he’s getting along,” Riker said, sitting across from me in my room.

  “Then why did you want to speak to me?”

  “I thought you should know,” he said. “We figured out everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “Lisa Artiaga was responsible for vandalizing your door,” Riker said. “Thomas Stratton was behind the assassination attempt. The woman has been neutralized. You shouldn’t fear any reprisals. As to Stratton, he’s in jail, awaiting trial. Josh took care of everything before he left, but I wanted to tie all the loose ends before I gave you the all clear. You don’t need to be afraid anymore.”

  “Um, okay,” I said, numb. “Does that mean that the security team can go now?”

  “Not unless Josh says so.” Riker got up. “I guess that’s all I had to say.”

  “Thanks,” I mumbled, running on automatic.

  “Damn it, no.” Riker sat down again. “That’s not all I came to say. Josh, he’s not like the rest of us, Lily. You need to be patient.”

  “He’s not coming back to me,” I said with a conviction that left me reeling.

  “Have you ever—you know—thought about calling him, telling him how you feel?”

  “I’ve tried,” I said. “He won’t answer my calls, texts or emails, and since I don’t know where he is, I can’t exactly go knocking at his door.”

  “But would you do it?” Riker said. “Would you go after him if you could?”

  “I... I don’t know.”

  Riker got up again, this time for good. “If you need anything, don’t hesitate to call.”

  I felt like crying, something I did a lot of these days, but only when I was alone.

  During the next few weeks, I refused to make use of the vast resources at my disposal. God knew, Nurse Carmen did enough of that, ordering lavish takeout from the best restaurants in town. I did, however, accept Amman’s daily rides to Parkview, because I couldn’t muster the energy to ride the buses across town and Mom had developed a mild lung infection that the doctors said was comm
on in people confined to vegetative states.

  On a dreary December day, Amman and I made a stop at the community center on the way to the nursing home. We delivered three paintings. I told the director he could use whichever he liked best for the auction. The ride to the nursing home was quiet as always. The visit with my mom was routine, except for the hoarse whistle that the infection added to her labored breath.

  “Are you sure she’s okay?” I asked the doctor.

  “She’ll be fine,” the doctor said. “The antibiotics should take care of the symptoms in a few days.”

  I rode back to the house in quiet companionship with Amman. He wasn’t a big talker and for the most part, I respected his silence, but seeing Mom like that stirred my anxiety.

  “Why do you think Josh left?” I asked. “Did he get tired of me? Did he want to go back to the way things were before me?”

  Amman hesitated before answering. “I think he was scared.”

  “Scared?” I said, surprised. “Of what?”

  “Of you,” he said. “I think he cared too much. I think he saw you sick and hurt and that stirred up memories.”

  “What memories?”

  “Only he can answer that,” Amman said. “Something spooked him. Perhaps you asked too much of him and he just couldn’t give it.”

  The truth. He hadn’t wanted me to know. Why not?

  As the holidays approached, I started to go from shell-shocked to furious. After everything we’d been through, how could he just leave me like this? It’d been so easy for him to walk out and forget me.

  “It’s okay to be mad.” Bree sat on my bed, wearing her trained therapist face. “Anger is a natural stage in the process of grieving.”

  “This sucks.” I took a step back and contemplated the canvas. “It’s a disaster.”

  “It’s not so bad,” Bree said. “Don’t try to change the subject on me. You’ve got to find a way of channeling your anger.”

  “You think so?” I said.

  Bree nodded.

  “That son of a bitch!” I hurled the paint brush against the wall, startling Bree, who jumped three feet high. “Does he really think he can treat me like shit?”

  Bree’s sharp brows rose in alarm. “I’ve never heard you use language like that.”

  “I’ve spent a lifetime being proper and look where it got me,” I said. “I think he just got tired of me and went back to his regular stream of floozies. I wasn’t good enough for him.”

  Bree’s mouth twisted with skepticism. “Are you sure about that?”

  “He probably hated the way I looked all bruised and scarred,” I said. “He couldn’t fuck me and he wasn’t interested in me otherwise.”

  “Lily!”

  “It’s true,” I said. “It was all about the fucking. A few days without it and the jerk went out the door.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Bree said.

  “After all that bluster at the hospital, why are you defending him now?”

  “I got to know him a little during those days you were so sick,” Bree said. “I might have been a bit harsh on him. I didn’t know the whole story. He saved you that day. He fetched you before you drowned and gave you CPR. He kept you alive until the emergency services arrived. He also stuck by you at the hospital.”

  “That’s just ’cause he felt guilty.”

  “I don’t pretend to know how he felt.” Bree chose her words carefully. “But if we think rationally, his actions look more like those of a smitten guy—a guy who really cared—as opposed to those of a sex-obsessed narcissist.”

  I groaned.

  “You’ve got to be fair, Lily. He engineered your freedom from Martin. He made sure you had a nurse and the best doctors to look after you. He’s still helping out with your mom’s expenses. He can’t be all bad. Why would he do all of that if he didn’t care about you?”

  “Maybe I’m just a charity case for him,” I said. “Maybe that’s all I’ve been from the beginning. Part of me wishes he would stop paying the bills and call off his people. Then I’d know for sure that he didn’t give a hoot and I could move on.”

  “Right.” Bree said flatly. “Like that’s going to change the way you feel about him.”

  She was right and yet I wasn’t in the mood for logic.

  On Christmas Eve, I’d just finished exercising my arm when Bree arrived, bringing startling news.

  “You’re not going to believe this.” Her blue eyes glittered. “I went to the community center to pick up your check like you asked. I spoke to the director. He’s been trying to call you, but you’re not answering your phone.”

  “I don’t feel like talking to anyone.”

  “Your painting,” Bree said, following me into the living room. “At the community center auction?” She let out a little squeal of excitement. “It raised thirty thousand dollars!”

  “What?” I couldn’t believe my ears.

  “I know, right? It gets better.” Bree dug into her purse and handed me a check. “The other two paintings? The director offered them at the auction as well. He sold them, for similar amounts.”

  I stared at the check in my hand and had to sit down. After splitting the proceeds with the community center, I had made more money in one night that I’d made in the last three years.

  “Look here.” Bree produced a newspaper and opened it to the lifestyle section. “It seems that Clark Angleson, The Globe’s art critic, was tipped that there would be an original Boswell at the auction.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care.” Bree grinned, nearly bursting with glee. “He and his posse made a big fuss about it in the paper, and a whole bunch of art collectors showed up at the auction. They came to check out the work of Leonard Boswell’s daughter. Not only did they like it. They bought it.”

  I was speechless.

  “The director has been fielding calls,” Bree said. “People want you to paint their portraits. You’ve got commissions waiting if you want them. And the director wants you to pick up another day or two of classes at the center. It appears that having a Boswell on staff has done a great deal for the donation stream. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Yes, I understood perfectly. It meant I had a viable career ahead and a way to take care of my mother and myself.

  I went to the bank that afternoon and deposited the check in my personal account. I then went to the nursing home and made arrangements to pay for my mother’s expenses directly. When I got back home, I called Riker.

  “What can I do for you?” he said.

  “Nurse Carmen, the security detail, Amman,” I said. “I want them gone.”

  “I can’t do that without Josh’s authorization.”

  “You can and you will,” I said. “I like you a lot, Theon, but if you don’t get your people out of my life by five o’clock today, I’m going to get a restraining order against the lot of you.”

  How was that for channeling my anger?

  I hung up the phone. Josh Lane was officially out of my life. Now if I could only erase his tracks from my heart.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Josh

  I stared at my computer as if gluing my eyes to the screen would force me to process the information it displayed. It didn’t work. Trends eluded me and formulas failed me, cryptic as metaphors. My state of mind was such that I couldn’t relate to anyone or anything, and that included numbers, my life-long friends.

  By all accounts, my trip so far had been a success. In Brazil, I had facilitated the formation of the Paolo DaSilva Orchid Preservation Center, setting aside millions of acres of pristine rainforest and using the government tax credit to replenish Mr. DaSilva’s holdings with a similar number of coastal acres. The swap evened out the company’s portfolio. Th
e merger was a done deal.

  In Africa, I had completed project assessments and acquisitions in South Africa and Nigeria. From there, I had conducted reviews in Dubai, Turkey, India and Hong Kong. Along the way, I met many beautiful women. Out of loneliness, I accepted a few invitations to dinner or drinks. But no matter how charming and accomplished my companions were, I couldn’t muster the energy to fight off Lily’s shadow.

  It was as if in only a few weeks, she had trained and tamed me, as if after accepting her one condition, I was never going to be able to look at another woman without thinking about her. How the hell was I going to shake Lily out of my system if I didn’t want any other woman but her?

  In Japan, I was invited to the home of Ang Shoi, the famous courtesan who presided over a legion of women reputed to be the fairest in the world. I passed. In Vienna, an old flame who had just been named as one of the world’s most beautiful women approached me. I congratulated her on her nomination and went to bed alone. In Switzerland, I was invited to spend the holidays with a stunning baroness renowned for her prowess in bed. I spent Christmas at my hotel and New Year’s at the Museum of Art in Stockholm, which was featuring—what else—a Leonard Boswell exhibition.

  Tonight I sat in yet another hotel room, trying to cram the hole in my heart with mountains of spreadsheets. I rubbed my eyes and stared at the numbers again. My phone rang. It was Riker.

  “We blew them up,” he announced without preamble. “We detonated a digital drone and took out the hackers. We wiped out their servers, Josh. We fried the fuckers.”

  “Confirmation?”

  “Affirmative,” Riker said. “The Council on Global Affairs is reporting a major meltdown at the Chinese ministry of technology, a system-wide shut down. Of course, the Chinese will never admit to it, but that’s us, barbarians at the gates.”

  “Well done,” I said. “It’s not every day the Chinese get a dose of their own crap.”