Kitabı oku: «A Question Of Honor»

CHAPTER ONE

Chicago, Illinois

FAITH SIZEMORE STRODE quickly along the upscale residential street located a block from Lake Michigan. A light snow had just begun to fall. As she headed for the only home she’d ever known, she carried the knowledge that she was about to make a decision that would affect the rest of her life.

She moved unnoticed along the snowy sidewalk. She’d deliberately changed her appearance and was relieved that it seemed to have worked. Gone were the sleek designer clothes, her usual calf-high leather boots and the expensive shoulder bags she habitually carried.

She’d never been fond of her diminutive size—five feet two inches and barely one hundred pounds—but now she thought it might work in her favor and that it gave new meaning to the expression “staying under the radar.”

Gone were the makeup, the leather gloves and diamond studs she always wore, a gift from her father when she graduated from college. Plain and simple had been her goal. She was plain and simple right then as she neared the front of her family’s historic town house. The reporters that had dogged her every step for the past four months were clustered outside the high wrought-iron gates, and she knew this would be the real test

The “new” Faith was hunched into the wind, her chin tucked into the fleece collar of her definitely unstylish wool parka. Slim jeans were little protection against the biting cold and wind-driven snow, but her chunky boots took the slippery street with ease. A dark watch cap was pulled low on her head, almost covering her ebony hair, transformed from long, sleek locks to a cap of crazy curls that didn’t even touch the collar of her jacket.

She didn’t slow as she got to the group of reporters and the nearby protesters. She didn’t look at the house or the six-foot tall gates. Instead, she kept going, muttering, “Excuse me,” over and over again as she made her way through the crowd.

Suddenly, she felt something hit her shoulder and she turned, coming face-to-face with one of the protesters, a woman who held a sign that read Greed Is a Four-Letter Word. Faith thought it best not to say anything and picked up her pace. She was almost at the corner. Behind her the woman screamed, “Death to corporate greed!”

The security guard hired by her father was keeping an eye on the crowd. He spotted her but gave no indication that he recognized her, yet he’d seen her every day for the past month. She let out a long sigh.

She hadn’t realized how tense she’d been about doing this until that moment, and now, surprisingly, she felt vaguely faint. The feeling fled when she turned the corner onto the side street that ran along the extensive property where the hundred-year-old house stood.

She walked purposefully, nearing a narrow gate that fit snugly into the fence and led to an arch cut in the brick wall of the garage, a converted carriage house. She kept going but chanced a look back, noticing her boot impressions in the snow. No one was there. In one fluid motion, she reversed directions and retraced her steps to the gate. She quickly put in a security code on a pad, and the gate clicked, then slowly swung open.

She went through and carefully closed the gate so that it wouldn’t make any noise. She heard the lock reset with a soft humming sound, and then she turned to hurry across the snow-shrouded terrace. Ignoring a set of French doors that led to the formal dining room, she approached a single oak door almost out of sight at the top of two cement steps.

Another keypad surrendered to her code, and she stepped inside, into the almost total darkness of the utility room where deliveries were made. She didn’t need to turn on any lights because she knew the space by heart. Quietly, she moved through the kitchen to the back stairs that led to the upper floors. There was her bedroom, but she sidestepped it and went directly to her favorite room, the library.

She loved the dark wood paneling, the bookshelves soaring to the ceiling. A huge bay window overlooked the front gardens and the gates that blocked the main entrance to the property. Just being on the inside made her feel safer. When she was a child, she would curl up in one of the rich leather chairs by her father’s massive antique desk and read while he worked.

This was the only home she’d ever known, and her chest tightened as the thought flashed in her mind that this might be her last time here. She wished she could just sit in the chair and read or watch her father at his computer, instead of making such a huge decision about her future. She swallowed to try to ease the tightness, then glanced inside the partially opened library door.

She saw her father sitting behind his desk, as always. He was hunched forward, white shirtsleeves rolled up, and the eerie bluish cast from one of his computer monitors bathed his features in its pale glow. The only other light came from a low desk light. Even so, she could see the way her father was working his jaw, and the intent frown that drew his dark eyebrows together. He seemed totally involved in what he was reading on the screen, and she thought he didn’t know she was there. Then he released a low hiss of air and slowly swiveled his chair toward her.

He was absolutely still for a moment, and then he stood awkwardly as if his legs were stiff. Without a word, he crossed the room to meet her near the open door. She took a shaky breath as he came closer, inhaling the mingled scents of the fire blazing in the fireplace and the hint of pine in the air.

A two-foot-tall live Christmas tree stood by one of the windows against burgundy velvet drapes that had never been closed until recently. The tree looked pathetic. It made her wish she hadn’t insisted on getting it. She foolishly had thought that it would help them to not totally ignore Christmas this year. But since it was the only Christmas decoration in the house, its puny presence only magnified how far they’d fallen from a normal life.

“Faith,” her father said in a quiet voice as he caught her in a hug that was so tight she could barely take a breath. But she savored it, storing it up in her memory to grab when she would need it. He finally released her, smiling at her, but the expression didn’t reach his intent blue eyes. “I didn’t think you were going to come back here for a while.”

At five feet ten inches, he wasn’t an unusually tall man and his frame had always been trim from playing squash or from running. But to Faith he had always seemed like a giant. After her mother had died when Faith was four, he’d been her security, a man who could fix her world with the wave of a hand; her rock, the one person she trusted completely; and most of all, her dad.

Now that was all changing before her eyes. He was diminishing, as if the pressures of his life over the past four months were crushing him downward slowly and painfully. His once lightly graying hair was just as thick, but the color was now pure white. The lines etching his eyes and mouth had deepened considerably, and any tan he’d had, had faded away, leaving his skin almost ashen.

Faith had never doubted that her father could conquer the world, yet here he was fighting for his life. She felt that sense of loss completely and refused to make things worse for him.

She skimmed off her woolen cap. “Those vultures out front are not as good as they think they are,” she said, trying to lighten the mood. “And neither is that guard. I went right past all of them, even one of the protesters, and none of them even blinked.”

Any trace of a smile on her dad’s face was gone as he uttered, “You cut your hair.” He turned away from her and went to his desk. He dropped heavily into his leather chair and swiveled back and forth until his gaze met hers. She could see pain and sadness in his expression and it was almost her undoing. “Did you get subpoenaed?” he asked flatly.

“No, I haven’t.” She claimed a leather chair across from him. “I haven’t heard anything, but Baron is on his way over here,” she said quickly. “I would have called to let you know, but...” She shrugged nervously as she tugged off her gloves and pushed them into her jacket pockets. Baron Little, the head of her father’s legal team, had insisted on meeting with her, and she thought she knew why. What he had to say probably wasn’t good. “I was afraid someone might be listening.”

“Everything here was swept this morning. It’s clean, at least for now.” His eyes narrowed on her hair. “You haven’t had short hair since you were a year old, and suddenly...”

She had thought she’d never do more than trim her hair, but that had changed. “I wanted to fool all of them, and I did.” She motioned to the tall windows covered by the heavy drapes. “I wanted to be here with you when Baron told me what was happening.” She tried to keep her voice steady. “You haven’t heard from him about the subpoena, have you?”

He sat forward so abruptly that some papers skittered off the desk and settled on the thick Turkish rug. “No, but the grand jury is being impanelled. Got word yesterday about that. They’re going to file charges. It’s a given.” He raked his thick hair with his fingers. “They have to.”

Faith couldn’t even swallow, her throat was so tight. “Maybe they won’t,” she offered up, but knew she was being delusional.

“They will,” he said with resignation, “but I won’t let them pull you any more deeply into this. Besides, you can’t tell them anything they don’t already know.” He spoke evenly, and she knew that he believed that. “What would they gain, really?”

She wanted to point out that she had been and still was in the middle of things since that awful day four months ago. Federal agents had swarmed LSC Investments, where her father had worked for over twenty years and had been a full partner for all but four of those years. That day everything had changed.

She’d been in her glass-walled office talking to a prospective client about investments when she’d heard the loud voices and confusion in the main area. Then an assistant marshal had been at her door, telling her to step away from her desk. She’d been among the group of employees to be escorted off the premises, forced to leave everything behind. Her father and the other partners hadn’t been so fortunate. She hadn’t seen her father again for almost twenty-four hours. The Feds had confiscated everything to do with the business, from client files, computers, logs, employee workups and all banking information, both domestic and foreign.

Now, after four torturous months, there was going to be a decision about what charges would be filed against the partners, two of the company’s financial officers and seven other employees. A bad dream had irrevocably turned into a nightmare. Her world and her father’s were taken over by lawyers and bail and affidavits and depositions, and her father was central to it all.

Accusations of mishandling clients’ money, obstructing justice and fraudulent practices came down like a stinging hailstorm. And even with one of the best legal teams in the country working to prove her father’s innocence, she had watched him sink deeper and deeper into the abyss.

She swallowed hard, hoping her face didn’t give away her sickening fear. He still didn’t know what she knew. She found she couldn’t tell him. And now... A week ago, Baron Little had mentioned that her name was being bandied about to receive a subpoena to testify in front of the grand jury. That had come out of the blue for her, shattering any hope she had of being able to avoid that very thing.

She couldn’t tell the attorney anything, not when she couldn’t trust that he wouldn’t have to reveal what she knew to the prosecution. She wasn’t about to tell anyone about eight months ago when she’d gone to her father’s office to find out when he could leave for home. A simple thing.

Even when she’d arrived outside his office and heard the raised voices of two of the partners, she hadn’t thought much of it. They’d had disagreements over the years. She’d been ready to turn around and just go home on her own, but she stopped when she heard Winston Linz, a founder in the company, speak harshly to her father. “You’re not simon-pure, Ray. None of us are. You’re in this with us, and it’s working. Leave it alone. The commission from this deal will be enough for all of us to retire on someday.”

Her father’s voice had come back with burning anger in it. “Don’t you threaten me, Win. Don’t you even try!”

“Works both ways. If all you’ve done comes out, you’re dead in the water. So do what you have to do and make it happen, or—”

“Or?” her father demanded.

“Or it’s over, at least for you.”

She heard another voice talking about an account of a client she had never heard of before, Kenner Associates. It sounded as if the man was reading from a file about a new investment account. He finished with “They want it done. They want it finalized and they do not want anyone screwing it up.”

“You don’t have a choice, Ray,” Linz said bluntly.

All of them were silent for a long moment, then her father spoke again in a tone that sounded calm, but Faith knew otherwise. “It will be finished. I will make sure of it personally with Mason. I’ll sew it up.”

She’d walked away, not understanding and not asking anyone about it, not even her father when he eventually got home that evening. Even though they worked in the same company, doing the same things, hers less important than his, they both took care of their own business. He never questioned her about any of her clients. She would never question him about his dealings. And it was forgotten until the world exploded and that same client, Kenner Associates, came up again.

It had turned out that Kenner Associates was a year-long sting operation, executed to trap those involved in substantial financial misdeeds. Faith had been sick, immediately knowing that if she told anyone about what she’d heard, it could be the end of her father. It showed knowledge and complicity with the others in the core deal where violations had occurred.

Her testimony, if she ever had to give it, could be the last nail in the coffin of Raymond Sizemore. She would be responsible for sending her father to prison. And she couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t. She was also a horrible liar, so not being truthful on the stand was out.

She tasted bitterness in her throat. “I need to know if I’ll be subpoenaed to testify or not,” she said earnestly. “I can’t.”

He watched her intently. “Just tell them the truth,” he said in a low voice. “That’s all they want.”

She flinched at his words. The truth. Yes, she could tell the truth. She bit her lip hard. “You know it’s not like that. They pick and choose. Reinvent how things appear.”

“Faith, this is the Federal government, not some quack sheriff in a Podunk town that you’d be tangling with as if you’d gotten a traffic ticket. And if you don’t testify, it will make you look as if you’re guilty of something, which you aren’t. Refusing a subpoena is as good as putting yourself in jail.” He hit the top of his desk with the flat of his hand and the sudden sound made Faith jump. “You can’t. I won’t let you do that.”

She wasn’t about to refuse to obey a subpoena. It wouldn’t get that far. “I won’t be subpoenaed. I’ll be gone. I told you that I’d just disappear.” And she knew they’d find her, but the time between then and now was what she could control. Until whatever indictments were secured, she couldn’t be anywhere close to anyone in the case, or in this city, or even the state.

“I’ll deal with what I have to deal with,” she stated simply. “I’m twenty-six, all grown up, an adult, and I can do this. I will do this if I have to.” He’d done so much for her all of her life. He’d loved her and cared for her as a single parent, encouraged her to go to college when he realized she had his knack for figures and planning. With her newly minted MBA degree, he’d paved the way for her to join his firm, work her way up, and become an associate with her own office and list of clients she advised.

Sorrow overtook his expression now. “Why?” he asked.

“Because I won’t hurt you, even indirectly,” she said. “When Baron gets here, we’ll know if I have to do anything beyond stand by you.”

As if her mention of the attorney had conjured him, there was a soft chime from one of the computers. Her dad turned the monitor enough for her to see the image on it. Baron Little, a huge man made to appear even bigger by the expensive overcoat he’d chosen to wear, stared up into the security camera by the main entry. He flicked a wave at them and her dad hit a key. They waited for him in the library. They heard the front door open and close. Heavy footsteps sounded in the hall, and then Baron Little, the brains behind her father’s defense team, came into the room.

The man’s size belied his surname and made the room seem smaller. He glanced from Raymond to Faith as he came to the desk. “I was hoping you were able to get here without a problem,” he said to Faith, his gaze taking in her altered appearance, but he didn’t say a thing about it.

“Well?” Faith managed to get out, hating asking, but anxious to know what direction her life would take after tonight.

The large man had been undoing the heavy buttons on his overcoat, but his hands stilled at the single word. “The grand jury is set, and they should be sending out a server in two days. You’re going to be on the list.”

Her heart sank. Faith had to will herself to get to her feet. “Thank you,” she whispered, and then she looked at her dad. “I’m leaving.” When he started to argue, she stopped him. “Please, no, I have to. I had it worked out in case I needed to, and now I do.” She felt almost numb as she moved around the desk to bend down and give her father a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll call when I can. I’d never do anything to hurt you,” she said. “I love you.”

He grabbed her hand. “Where are you going?”

“Away,” she said matter-of-factly, not wanting him to know anything. This was all her doing.

He let go of her and reached into a drawer to his left. He took out a large red square envelope with a Christmas bell design on it and offered it to Faith. “I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to give you this early, but...”

She took the card from him, hugging it tightly to her chest without opening it. “I didn’t get you anything,” she said as a tear rolled down her cheek.

Her dad stood, brushed at the moisture on her face with an unsteady hand, then pressed her to him. “As long as you’re my daughter and believe in me, I’ve got all I need,” he uttered. “Merry Christmas, Angel.”

Faith forced herself to leave without looking back. She moved quickly. Her dad’s use of the nickname he’d given her as a baby hurt her so much. She brushed past the attorney and would have left if Baron hadn’t said her name.

“Faith.”

She paused and closed her eyes, keeping her back to the room. “I can’t tell you anything,” she said.

“I don’t want you to. Just be safe, and if you need anything...” He touched her shoulder and she saw him hold out a business card to her. “On the back, my personal numbers. Use one of them if you have to.”

She accepted the business card without looking at it and slipped it into her jacket pocket. The attorney spoke again. “Hold on, I got the files you asked for.” She had almost forgotten he’d promised to get her copies of files from the Kenny setup that would be used in any case against her father. She turned to see Baron with a thumb drive. “Lots on there,” he said.

She took it from him and, without looking at her father, walked away. She retraced her path and checked the security screen by the side door. No one. Only falling snow and leafless trees bending in the growing wind.

Minutes later she reached the old import she’d bought from a private party two days ago. She couldn’t register the car in her name, so she chose not to register it. The tags were good until June, so she felt she had enough time to use it and keep her name off the title. She’d parked seven blocks away from the house and felt slightly breathless from the walk by the time she slipped behind the wheel.

She got the engine going, then set the heater on high, which, she’d found on the way there, meant warm enough. Sinking back into the seat, she stared at the red foil envelope in her hands and watched the snowflakes melting on the surface.

She tugged the sealed flap open with hands that were less than steady and looked inside. There was a small plastic card and a flat box in green foil. She caught the plastic card between her fingers and pulled it out. She almost cried at her father’s ability to hate what she was doing and yet help her if she had to do it, even when he was afraid for her. She’d emptied her back account and had enough cash to keep going for a good amount of time. But only her father would think of the one thing she hadn’t considered.

She was holding an Illinois driver’s license with her picture and vitals, the same ones on her real license. She was five feet two inches, 105 pounds, with black hair and blue eyes. But what wasn’t right was the name, Faith Marie Arden, or the address, somewhere in Rockford, Illinois. Arden had been her mother’s maiden name, and she didn’t even know anyone in Rockford.

She wasn’t about to try to figure out how her father had managed to get the license; she was just grateful that he had. “Thank you, Dad,” she whispered as she put it in her wallet. She opened the glove compartment and slipped her valid license under the sales papers for the car. She sat back and reached inside the foil envelope again to take out the only thing left. The box.

It had a single strand of ribbon around it, and she undid it, letting it fall to her lap. Opening the box, her eyes filled with hot tears as she took out a delicate gold bracelet with a single charm on it. It was a locket in the shape of a heart. Her mother’s. Something her father valued beyond measure. But he’d given it to her. Through a blur of tears, she manipulated the tiny lock and the heart fell open. Inside was a photo of her when she was just born, and on the other side was a photo of her mother and father on their wedding day.

When she had been very young, her father would open the locket and tell her stories about everything he could remember about Marie Arden. She heard how they met, fell in love and how thrilled they were when their daughter was born three days before Christmas.

She studied the images of three people at the start of their lives together. Her mother was gone. Her father was in real danger of being destroyed. And she was driving away from the only person who mattered in her life. She started to drop the bracelet back into the box, but spotted a folded piece of paper lying on the bottom.

She took it out, opened it and read, “Merry Christmas, Angel. You were the best Christmas present ever. Dad.”

Faith swiped at her face again, wishing she could wear the bracelet, but afraid to. It was so delicate. Still, she had it with her. She put the note and bracelet away and pushed the box into the glove compartment.

As she pulled away from the curb, she felt the tires slip on the fresh snow, then gain purchase. She was heading south, away from Chicago. She paid no attention to the Christmas decorations adorning the streets, and by the time the city was in her rearview mirror, she felt an overwhelming sadness mixed with a strong conviction that she was doing the best thing for everyone.

“Merry Christmas, Mom and Dad.”