The Fury

More bothersome, something about the trips to Kinshasa was starting to seem peculiar. The guys I was setting up meetings for seemed to know each other already, and there didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the scheduling. Even for Africa, where delay for monetary gain was a time-honored tactic, it was just feeling wrong.

I sent a note up to Alan about my concerns; his response was distracted and a bit confused, but he promised to kick it upstairs to his father.

I didn't catch it at the time, but he completely ignored my polite, "send my regards to Karen." Maybe, if I'd have noticed that, I wouldn't have been caught so completely flat-footed at Christmas.

***

The Christmas Ball was the most formal of all of Mr. Daniel's mixers. White tie, ball gowns, entrees nobody could pronounce, and live orchestra music in a massive ballroom were the order of the day. I'd have asked Jessie, but she sent me a note before the invite even reached my desk, telling me to pick her up at 5:30 on the day of the ball, that we had a room reserved and that she already had an "unbelievable" dress picked out.

The dress really was unbelievable. When Jessie answered the door in a shimmering opalescent white sheath dress, with matching hair, lipstick and nail polish, I was momentarily dumbstruck.

She gave a smug smile. "Cat got your tongue?"

I caught my breath. "Wow. Just, wow." I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again. "Just unreal."

Her smile went a little lopsided, in a good way. We both recognized that we were just friends with benefits, but she liked being appreciated. She took my arm and we headed out to my car.

After dropping the car with the valet, we headed into the grand ballroom, an enormous hundred-year-old venue that they'd managed to keep in near perfect condition.

We found our table off in a remote corner, which bothered me a bit, as stupid as it seemed, I'd thought we'd had a lot of fun with Alan and Karen, and I'd kind of expected to be a bit closer to wherever they were sitting. Still, Bethany and Howie ended up at our table and so we had entertaining conversation and when the dancing started, we traded partners for a couple of dances.

I caught a glimpse or two of Alan, and finally during a lull, Jessie and I decided to go over and socialize a bit.

We were still twenty feet away when Jessie suddenly stopped and tightened her grip on my arm. "Holy shit. Who the hell is she?"

I followed her stare. The woman hanging onto Alan's arm wasn't Karen.

She was tall, with a figure that was barely believable; mile-long legs, and long golden-red hair. She radiated sex like a supernova. She held on to Alan with an easy confident belief in her ownership. We weren't the only ones looking at her. Nearly every man and woman on the floor had one eye on her in a mix of jealousy and barely concealed lust.

Jessie blinked. "Wow. Where the hell did she come from?"

Alan suddenly caught us staring. "Cal, Jessie, come on over here and meet Trina."

The redhead turned to look at us and smiled, a practiced, perfect blinding smile. "Trina Roberts, I'm Alan's fiancée." She didn't seem to recognize me at all, but I knew her. I hadn't seen her since the day before I left for basic training, but there was no way I'd ever forget her.

I kept my face straight with enormous effort. "Nice to meet you, Trina. I'm afraid I've been out of the country, so Alan hasn't had a chance to tell me about you."

A look of relief washed over Alan's face when he realized I wasn't going to say anything about Karen. "Yes, it's just been so hectic; we just keep missing each other. Trina and I met in October." He went on to discuss a relatively meaningless charity ball and how their eyes had met, and they "just knew." It was all very romantic, if you discounted the unspoken part about Karen.

Jessie followed my lead, introducing herself with distant politeness. We excused ourselves and wandered up to the balcony overlooking the ballroom.

"Damn." Jessie shivered. "Karen never stood a chance against that."

"She's... something."

Jessie eyed me wryly. "If you get a shot at hitting that and pass it up, I'm getting you an eye test, a testosterone check and maybe a mental exam. That's a once in a lifetime ride there. As in 'You-must-be-this-tall-to ride-this ride.' Hell, I'd do her right there on the floor."

"She's pure poison, Jessie. I can feel it."

"Don't I know it. But it'd be a helluva way to go."

"It would be. Maybe." A voice came from behind us.

I turned to face Mr. Daniels. "Sir."

"I'm glad to find you two together. I need to speak with you both and this is as good a time and place as any."

Jessie edged a little closer to me and looked at him impassively. "About what?" Her voice was curiously flat.

"From your conversation, you can probably guess. Trina Roberts has her hooks so deep into Alan that they're coming out the other side. One minute he's happily engaged to Karen Albright, pretty much the perfect woman for him." He paused and smiled sardonically. "And, admittedly, for me, since it would pretty much guarantee a partnership with Albright Financial. The next thing I know, the engagement is off, my golf games with her father are cancelled and all Alan can say is 'Trina, Trina, Trina.'"

"What do you want us to do?" I could see genuine concern in his eyes, but I had the feeling it was less for Alan than for the business.

"Look into her, find out what you can. Let me know if it is as bad as I think it is. Alan has made some relationship mistakes before, and it has cost the family more than a little money. He doesn't seem to be very good at discerning intent."

Jessie shrugged. "We can do that. But what do you do if it's what you think? Alan won't listen; I can see it in his face. He won't hear anything you have to say."

Daniels pursed his lips. "If it's all about money, I'll make her an offer. Most of the gold diggers are happy to take a quick and easy payday against the long haul with a pre-nup." He glanced at me. "I can find other ways to convince her to listen to reason." Without another word he turned and strode off.

Jessie made a sour face. "Ick. I don't like him. He's the kind of guy that has to have everything his way. Like he'd just order you to show up in a "slutty schoolgirl" outfit with pigtails."

I looked at her incredulously. "Did you forget? Two weeks ago, you showed up at my door in a schoolgirl outfit and pigtails."

"Yeah. But that was my idea. It's different." She smirked.

When the evening ended, as Jessie and I were heading up to our room, I glanced down and accidently looked right into Trina's eyes as she watched us. Even though her eyes were emerald green and hard as ice, all I could think of was the dead eyes of that young girl in Africa.

*****

"This is bad. Really bad." Jessie stared wide-eyed at her computer screen.

"You mentioned that when you called me over to your office." I leaned back in the visitor chair. "Define bad."

"Category Five Hurricane bad. Just follow the carnage. Two marriages and two divorces in less than eight years, each lasting less than a year. Named in four more divorces. Probably paid hush money for at least that many that aren't in the legal records." Jessie pursed her cupid lips and shook her head in slow disbelief.

"Daniels will insist on an ironclad pre-nup." I walked over to the window and stared out.

Jessie studied her screen. "These were all old money families. The kind that are born with pre-nups in hand. Her lawyer broke them."

"Shit. Alan is all twisted up. He broke off his engagement to Karen. He's crazy enough over her that he might do something crazy like elope to California. No pre-nup at all."

Jessie tapped out a rhythm on her keyboard for a few seconds, and pulled up a picture from the Christmas party, then gave a low whistle. "Damn. I forgot how hot she is. It'll be damn hard to pry any man away from that."

I walked behind her desk and looked at our nemesis. Jessie was right, if Alan was going to throw millions of dollars away, at least she looked like she might be worth it. I wanted to tell her who "Trina" really was, but came up blank when I realized how it would look.

Jessie caught it immediately. "Cal? What's going on."

I took a deep breath and decided I had to trust someone. "Laura. Her name is Laura Pike. Or it was at one time." I went on to explain to Jessie where I'd met her before.

She looked at me wide-eyed. "Shit. Daniels will never believe this is a coincidence."

"I think you're right about that. Even I'd have trouble believing it's a coincidence, and I know it is."

"So stay out of it. You tell Daniels what we've learned about 'Trina' and never bring up 'Laura'. It's enough to know what he's dealing with. He'll either pay her off or scare her away."

"Unless she's changed a lot, scaring her away isn't going to be easy."

"He'll probably try to pay her off, but he'd better not be cheap. She probably has a pretty solid bank account. There's a 400-acre seaside estate in Mexico, a penthouse apartment in Beverly Hills, a penthouse apartment here, and a collection of vintage cars."

"I'll make sure he knows."

"You do that, he creeps me out."

I headed over to my office and pondered my options while I idly picked my way through my inbox. An odd envelope caught my attention.

It was to "PKM Advisory Services, LLC," and I very nearly stuck it back into the outbox as mis-delivered distribution until I saw "Calvin I. Pickmann" in the second line. There just aren't a lot of guys with that name. I tore it open and found a business bank account statement that totaled just over a million dollars.

I felt sick. Whatever it was, this couldn't be good. Deposits had an obvious pattern, at least obvious to me. The deposits almost invariably followed my trips to Africa. I looked back at the address and saw it was in the main office building in the Center of Dallas, but to a room I'd never been to. I thought of the strange trips and Howie's comment on me being hand-picked by Daniels.

I only had one person I trusted enough to ask for help. I walked back over to Jessie's office and tossed the envelope down in front of her.

"I'm in trouble. I think I'm being set up for something. I don't know what, but this doesn't look good." I explained the pattern to her.

She read the statement wide-eyed, then hammered at her keyboard, white faced. "According to the records, you registered PKM Services about a month after you started here. The suite is rented out to PKM Services by Qantic. Payments made, but nothing else really. The suite is right next to Philips though..." She paused and looked up at me. "I think you're right; this smells bad. I can do some digging. You need to be careful, Cal."

I nodded. "I'll pass the info on 'Trina' to Daniels and act like nothing is wrong." I stopped and thought for a second. "Could you find out more about Philips? There may be something there."

*****

I sent Daniels the information on Trina in an email. There was no way I wanted to meet him in person and risk him realizing that I knew something. Good businessmen can read people all too well. I got a short response back that he would take care of things.

When I dropped by Jessie's office, she let me know what she'd found on Philips. Not a lot, but enough to make me worry. His full name was Eric Philips, and he was a former DEA agent who'd left that agency under a cloud of suspicion when his partner was killed and several thousand dollars had gone missing. Not enough evidence to prove anything, but it was clear what the DEA thought of him.

Jessie also looked into the bank account; the money was coming from anonymous accounts in places like the Cayman Islands, but she was otherwise sparse on information. Her stock answer was a harried and distracted "still digging."

I'd just have to play along until I knew what was going on.

It was quiet for a couple days, while I mostly tried to figure out what to do. If Daniels was stitching me up for something, I needed to know what it was and how far it went.

I was staring out the window watching rain spatter against the pane in a numbing rhythm when the phone rang.

"Please hold for Mr. Daniels."

A moment later he came on the line. "Calvin. I need you to have a word with Miss Roberts. The bitch laughed in my lawyer's face when he offered her a four-hundred-thousand-dollar payment to leave town and leave Alan alone."

"What do you think I can do?"

"Push her. Get her to understand that this is not happening. I will not allow it." Sensing my hesitation, he continued. "I'd send Philips, he can be very convincing, but he is out of town at the moment."

His voice made it clear that he expected me to do what I was ordered, and I needed time. "I can do that. I'll have some words with her."

***

She opened the door to her penthouse apartment and just stood back with an enigmatic half-smile and one arched eyebrow. She was even more beautiful than I remembered. Her white silk robe was one step from sheer, and it highlighted rather than hid her unbelievable figure. The silk clung to her in a way that made it very clear it was the only thing she had on.

I stepped past her and she pressed the door closed. "Laura."

At least she didn't deny it. "Nice to see you, Cal. Still playing the hero?"

"Not so much anymore." I glanced around, the whole place screamed "money" in a million subtle ways.

She leaned back against the doorframe in an almost lazy cat-like stretch, her emerald eyes locked on me. "So I'm guessing Daddy Daniels sent you?"

"He asked if I could talk with you about Alan."

Glancing sideways at me she smiled slightly. "I'm a little surprised; I thought you'd still be too much a hero to do this kind of thing."

"I'm just here to talk."

"Did you tell him you know me?"

"Not yet, I was hoping we could deal with this quietly."

She pushed off the doorframe and moved liquidly, slowly around me to a bar on the side wall. "Is that what they call it now?"

"I'm just trying to keep everyone out of trouble."

She opened a bottle and began to pour whisky into two tumblers. "Oh, but that's not how it works, Cal." She turned and handed me a tumbler and took a long, slow drink from the other.

"So how does it work?" I sipped her very expensive whisky, savoring the taste almost as much as the sight of her. She was hypnotic, almost addictive to watch.

"Daddy gets concerned, he sends a lawyer around to make an offer, just a gesture really. 'Leave my son alone.' He promises a little money. That sort of thing."

"And if that doesn't work?"

"That's where you come in Cal. They send you."

"And what do I do?"

"Oh, you know. You come by unannounced, loom over me, and make scary noises." She put her tumbler on the coffee table, widened her eyes and held her hands up in mock fear, then shook her head and sighed. "But that just doesn't work with me."

I put my tumbler down next to hers and stepped towards her. "So what next?"

"That's when you start getting a little rough with me. Slap me around a bit. You don't want to leave bruises or anything I could use to get sympathy from Alan and alienate him from Daddy, but you need to put some fear into me, teach me a lesson." She stepped slowly towards me one hip at a time. "That's what you do."

"I don't want to do that, Laura."

She stepped forward until I could feel the heat of her body, and she put one warm fingertip to my lip. "But you have to. It's part of the script. It's just how these things are done."

"Not by me. I still have my soul." Her eyes narrowed and her hand blurred, catching me with a stinging slap. She drew back for another and I caught her wrists. "Stop."

I made the mistake of staring into those glittering green eyes for a second; she pushed up against me and I fell into them.

One moment we were standing, the next we were locked together on the plush white carpet, her robe had somehow disappeared, and she was tearing at my shirt, the buttons snapping off and flying across the room.

We were driven by a desperate need, a desperate want, desperate memories that had surged out of nowhere. Or maybe from everywhere.

By the end of it, we lay side by side, gasping for air, trying to calm ourselves. Only our fingertips touched. I'd thrown her coffee table half up on her sofa, the whisky tumblers lay on the expensive carpet. My slacks hung on the corner of the sofa, over a crumpled shirt that would have to be replaced.

I studied the ceiling for a moment. "I feel like shit."

"Because of Alan? You know that isn't real, it never was."

That didn't make me feel any better, but there was no point in arguing. "What are you doing here, Laura? I don't want you to get hurt."

"Me? It's too late for me, Cal. I'm as hurt as I'm going to get."

We both rolled up on our sides to face each other. "I think Daniels is dangerous. Alan has made... mistakes before and it has been expensive."

"So do what they're paying you to do."

I searched her eyes for a second. "I think we both know I couldn't ever harm you."

For a brief second I saw a flare of pain. "I've believed that about a man before. I was wrong." She paused. "I married, right out of college. Just like Mom said. You know the type. The football player, the fast car, the family with all the money. It lasted two years before it all came apart."

There were tears in her voice, but none in her eyes, just cold anger. "He had girls everywhere. I knew how he was when I married him, and I put up with until I got pregnant. One day I lost it; I threw a plate at him. He threw me down the stairs. I lost the baby. I lost the ability to have a baby. Then he decided if I couldn't give him children, I wasn't 'wife material' anymore. The pre-nup had me out the day I left the hospital with no money."

"So how did this happen." I gestured at the room around us.

"I found a lawyer. She broke the pre-nup. They're amazingly delicate things, you know. One little mistake and it's out the window. I got half his money. The maid saw him hurt me. It cost money to get her to testify, but it was worth it. He spent a couple months in jail learning how to be nicer to people." Her eyes glittered, hard and cold. "My lawyer had some friends there who made sure he learned his lesson about beating women."

"And since then?"

"Well, I knew the way the game was played after that."

"So since your marriage didn't work, they all need to be destroyed?"

I expected anger, but instead she smiled; it was edged in ice. "I've never broken a marriage where a man wasn't already playing around. They deserve it, and their wives deserve to know they're not worth keeping. I even make sure the wives get the evidence they need. Very quietly, of course, through my lawyer."

"What about Alan? What'd he do to deserve this?"

She looked away. "Alan is a special case. Believe me, this is for the best." A catch in her voice told me it bothered her.

I didn't know whether I should or not, but I was running a deficit on trust for the whole Daniels clan, so I dropped it. "So what now? We're right back where we started."

"You go to Daniels, tell him you really roughed me up." Her mouth quirked in a real smile. "That's close enough to the truth anyway, just don't tell him it's mostly carpet burns. Then tell him I hinted that I might leave if the offer were a bit better. He'll up the ante, and I'll get out of here while things are still... peaceful."

"You will?"

"After I get what I came for they'll never see me again."

I laid back and looked at the ceiling. "So that's that."

"Almost."

"What else is there?"

Laura slid up on top of me with a hungry smile. "I'm not quite roughed up enough; I think one more time should do the trick."

*****

I watched the accountant transfer the money to Laura's account. Laura sat back with cold satisfaction etched on her beautiful face.