Chapter 15

Finn

I left her condo that night with a feeling of calm and exultation at the same time. I was relieved that we had talked; it had put those little voices of mine to rest. I’d laid things out there, and she hadn’t run away. I thought it amazing that honesty could be so liberating. I made a note to use it more often… okay, so maybe in limited circumstances.

I had tried to put myself in her place. I knew I’d be freaked if I couldn’t remember who I was, had no money, nowhere to go and no one I could trust. In fact, I doubted whether I could handle it as well as she had. The amazing thing was that, unlike all the women I’d been with before, she didn’t want anything I had or could give her. She only wanted to be with me. It was an amazing feeling. I would have to be very careful that I never compromised that trust—beginning with the shrink who was going to come and talk with her.

Initially, I’d planned to sit in on it. I had always prided myself on being able to read people well. I guess I thought the shrink could ask questions and I’d watch her reactions. Make it sort of a double-team effort. Now I recognized what a huge mistake that would have been; I’d have run her off forever. She deserved her privacy and if she was going to share things with me, they had to be in her time and place. Maybe I was the one who needed the shrink?

I went up to my penthouse and stood on the enclosed roof deck, a tumbler of scotch and the skyline spread out before me. The realization dawned that I could have almost anything out there I wanted; at least in some measure. Yet the only thing I truly wanted was the blue-eyed urchin who, at this very moment, was on the floor beneath me and wanted nothing but my presence and trust. I’d spent my life so far playing the game of money and thought I’d won. I hadn’t won anything at all.

My cell buzzed in my pocket, and I pulled it out to see a text.

THANK YOU. NITE.

Three simple words that hit me right in the gut. Damn! I was in trouble. There was a shiver when it occurred to me that she could almost read my mind. Hell, it didn’t take my imagination long to dream up the scenario that she had been dropped from the sky for me to find. The reason she had no memory was because she literally had no past. Maybe she was a test—a joke played on me by God or Fate.

Then I felt a cold knife of lightning go through me. I remembered seeing a movie about something like that once. Michael Douglas had played the role of a zillionaire whose brother had coerced him to join this weird club. The members of the club would play a game, bringing unlikely coincidences into his life and he never realized it until it was too late. They messed with his life as a joke; a frat house lark that grew deadly, or so he thought. Was someone playing me? Was there anyone in my life who could have set this up? Jay? The guys at his party? They’d known where I would be driving. They could have set up the dare that took me to Lake Superior that night and known the GPS would take me on that route.

Oh, shit! Was Elspeth a plant? Were they sitting in someone’s study right now, sipping scotch like the one in my hand and having a huge laugh at my expense? It wasn’t too far-fetched; it could have been planned that way.

That shook me up. God damn it, but they could have pulled this off. I swore to kill them or at least ruin every one of them if that was what it turned out to be. Was Elspeth nothing more than a hired actress?

That was when the real icy chill hit me. What if her role was to be found, to seduce me, and that’s it? What if she got hit by something in the cabin and her memory loss wasn’t part of the plan? Maybe that part was legit and we’d never find out if that’s how she ended up there? Or, worse yet, she could remember it somewhere along the way and then take a hike on me.

That’s when I realized I had to be careful. I couldn’t trust her completely. I’d be insane to do that. I couldn’t let myself really fall for her! I could just envision myself coming clean, being absolutely honest with her and then it would come back to bite me. It could be like getting drugged and confessing things you wanted kept quiet, only to have your enemies exploit it and kill or ruin you. Was that what was going on? Could Jerry be in on this?

Damn! Damn! Damn! Now I was really freaking. That was one problem with being at the top; there was always someone ready to push you off and watch you hit the pavement below.

I glanced over the rail and my stomach went south. Stumbling, I made a quick exit and went back down into the condo. Another two fingers of scotch went into my glass to calm my shaking hands. There was nothing for it—I’d have to keep up my guard, at least until I could prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt that she wasn’t a setup.

The scotch went into the bedroom with me that night and into my empty stomach. I laid naked on the bed with all the lights off, the moon pouring a silvery path of light across the bedroom carpet. I tried to calm down, to be rational and recall all the little details of our meeting and the time we spent afterward.

Good poker players looked for tells. What were hers? I tried not to think of the sex—Jesus, but that thought hurt. Was she a low-class hooker and was that why she’d let me have her so easily? Then, later, on the drive to Traverse. She’d gone down on me as though it was no big deal.

I flew off the mattress and barely made it to the toilet before the sour thought brought up everything left in my stomach. Thank God, it wasn’t much. I’d broken my own rule—getting mega drunk without eating. I was grateful for the heated tile floor that night, as it became my mattress and the toilet, my porcelain companion. I didn’t stop drinking, though… not until the last drop.

I was too drunk to find another bottle, so I let that one run its full course, feeding my overly active imagination with every horrible, angry, bitter scenario I could manufacture. She was no angel laid in my path as a reward for good deeds. She had, in the space of a couple hours, become a black-hearted whore who was spying on me and passing my innocent trust to the enemy. God, but I hated her. Even more, I hated my culpability.

* * *

By the next morning, the pain in my head and the bitterness in my stomach outpaced anything my conscious mind could recall. I texted Leigh that I would be in late and she, professionally, asked if I needed anything. Was there a list long enough?

Sleeping until noon helped a little; the hair of the dog helped a little more. I decided to skip the entire day. Call it a dry run for the upcoming weeks when the ship would be in Jerry’s hands. I finally made myself a sandwich and ate it while looking out over the lake. The sun was shining and the waves laughed in its face as they rolled out of reach and became nothing more than wet sand. I could relate.

I was a little more rational by then, but the thought nightmare I’d conjured the night before had left its mark on me. There were too many times when I’d gamed a competitor; maybe not this way, but at least to set them up in a compromising position that forced them to bow to my demands. Hell, I was no angel; I’d be the first to admit it. Angels were poor and homeless; gamers looked down over the city the same as I was doing in that moment.

I thought about Elspeth, sitting somewhere beneath me across from the shrink. He’d been instructed to run her through a mental sieve, extract every impression and every bit of information he could, and report it back to me. Doubtless she was resenting me at that moment, wondering why she’d agreed to stay. Was her trust being compromised? Mine had. Was that fair to her? Hell, nothing in life was fair.

Then came that little voice again. This time, it pleaded on her behalf, begging me to realize that the whole setup scenario was a figment of my overly-imaginative mind. I was a tactician; all good businessmen were. Had I become my own victim?

Was Elspeth exactly as she appeared? A sweet girl from somewhere down south who had, for some reason, ended up in the UP, abandoned alongside the road and then she’d sought out the only shelter available?

Could it be that simple? Not likely—not in my world. But then I didn’t know her world. I didn’t know what it was to be at the hands of fate, to be cast aside as useless. I’d always enjoyed the power, the money, the reputation, and the fearful respect of those who wanted what I had. They say everything in life is a matter of perspective, and mine was shifting as I breathed.

I resolved to return to the trusting guy who had come upstairs the night before, filled with excitement and the possibility of having found a golden nugget. I owed it to myself, and I owed it to her.

That was when I got the text from Leigh that changed the course of things for me.

CALL ME

“Tell me.” I wasted no time with preliminaries.

“It’s bad, Finn.”

“Tell me, god damn it!”

“Marty. It’s Marty. He’s dead, Finn.”

I sucked in my breath so hard, saliva went down my windpipe, and I dissolved into a choking convulsion.

“Finn? Finn? Are you okay?”

As a boy, watching movies, it had become a pet peeve of mine that when someone was choking, people asked, “Are you okay?” Like the person choking could interrupt it and say calmly, “Quite fine, ol’ chap,” and then continue choking. I guess Leigh had the assurance that at least I was still breathing. In my head, however, was the similarity between what I’d just heard and the movie where all the reliable, trusted characters were dropping like flies. That was immediately followed by being aghast for thinking only of myself. Or am I?

I got dressed and headed down to the office. Bursting through the doors, I headed for Leigh’s desk and looked up to see she was already waiting for me in my office. She knew me so well.

“Glad to see you’re breathing,” she said and I was about to snap off her head when I saw in her eyes that she was genuinely concerned. There had been no way for her to check on me. No one, not even Leigh, was permitted in my penthouse. I’d made that rule when I moved in, so no lines would be crossed, and there were so many lines that could be easily crossed.

“What happened?”

“A woman called on the private line. She identified herself as Maggie and said she was his girlfriend. She said she’d gone to his apartment and when she let herself in, she found him on the floor. She thinks he had a heart attack because his hand was still lying over his heart, but of course, there’s no way to know. The coroner took him away.”

“Damn!” I was horrified at his passing and secretly, at the information he’d died with and I’d never know. He worked alone, didn’t own a computer, and kept no records. His clients counted on that. Everything that Marty uncovered stayed in Marty’s brain, imparted only to the client who’d hired him. “Hell, I don’t even know if he has any family.”

“I don’t think so. Well, okay, Finn, I’m going to tell you now before you hear it elsewhere. He had no family. Parents dead, no siblings, not even a cousin. He was married once, when he was fresh out of high school and she ran off with someone. He was alone. Well, except for the girlfriend…” Her voice trailed off and she teared up.

“Tell me.”

“I used to date him, Finn. Purely personal—we never discussed you or the business. You have to believe me.”

I looked at her hard, and despite the tears in her beautiful eyes, I could tell she was telling me the truth. Anyway, I knew if there was a bomb coming from that direction, it would have exploded long before.

“How did it end?”

“He had a temper; I’d had enough.”

“That why he was no longer a cop?”

“That’s right,” she verified and I could see her knees were shaking as she stood.

“Sit down.” I poured us both a scotch from the bar in the wall and handed it to her. “Sorry, Leigh, I didn’t know.”

“You weren’t supposed to. We both knew we never crossed any lines when it came to you and figured if we let on, you’d always wonder. We’d have to resign and you’d lose two of the people you could truly trust. So, in a way we were protecting you from yourself. Sorry, but that’s how we saw it.”

“You were probably right.” I nodded and took a swig. “So, I guess that’s it.”

She nodded and sipped her glass first, then upended it and swallowed it all. I’d never seen her drink and had no idea she had that sort of capacity. “Jesus, Leigh.”

“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me, Finn… but none that would compromise you. You have my word on that.”

“Well, hell, now I don’t know what to do. Do we send flowers somewhere? A funeral?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Marty was private and although he still had some buddies in the force, he knew he had a dangerous career and he could wind up dead before his time. I’m not saying that’s what happened, but even if there was a funeral, it’s not like his clients would show up and show their cards, if you know what I mean.”

I saw her point. “So, that’s it?”

“Pretty much. We talked about it once. I guess maybe I got closer to him than the others, and I knew there were and would be others. He played things like that, Finn. He never got too close to anyone. In fact, I think he was closer to you than anyone I know. He thought of you like a son and more than once, I could see how proud he was of you when you’d win an award or pull off buying a new company. No, he’ll be cremated when the coroner is done with him and that will be it.”

“Jesus! Not even a mourner.”

“Marty was very much about trying not to die, Finn.”

“I guess so. Listen, you go home and don’t come in tomorrow if you don’t want to.”

“I’ll go now, but I’ll be here tomorrow. This is home. You see, Marty and I had that in common. Neither of us had family; maybe that’s why we hit it off.” She stood up, set the empty glass on the corner of my desk, and walked to the door. With her back still toward me, she said, “You’re my family, Finn,” and the door clicked softly as she disappeared.