2 Executive Retention Page 11

  "Insurance?" Dr. Taylor guessed. He never stopped working on Huntington's wounds. Brenda was right beside him, keeping everything organized and monitoring Huntington's pulse and breathing.

  Mark said, "Most of the patients are either elderly or victims not likely to notice an extra charge tagged on their bills. The bills are covered by insurance. The patients don't always catch the discrepancies."

  Dr. Taylor sewed two pieces of flesh on Huntington's arm. "I still have to report it."

  "As long as you don't know his name."

  Dr. Taylor would have protested, but my darling brother got there first. He shouted about lawsuits, sisters and something about a horse that nearly killed me. It was his favorite story when he was trying to prove that I was either unhinged or unsafe to those around me. Unfortunately for him it wasn't making any sense in this context.

  It was almost two hours later when Dr. Taylor leaned back and pronounced his work, such as it was, finished. He didn't stay to argue with us either.

  I wrote Derrick's name and number down on a piece of paper and handed it to him as he was leaving. "Derrick's a cop. Maybe you can tell him." Sean would tell Derrick anyway, so I saw no reason that Doc Taylor couldn't use Derrick as his official report line.

  Mark started to hoist his brother back towards the door, but Brenda was having none of it. "Leave him here. Now that he's not bleeding, let's get him into the guest room." She led the way down the hall, past the baby's room. "You take Sedona home and let him rest. I'll monitor him until morning."

  Sean's house was probably safer than my house, and Brenda would keep a professional eye on him. I was pretty certain from the look on Sean's face that we weren't all going to be invited to stay.

  Mark was more than a little reluctant, but I nodded my agreement. "It's a good idea."

  Mark didn't look convinced, but followed Brenda. As soon as he put Huntington on the bed, Brenda pushed him toward the door. "Come back tomorrow. I'll watch him."

  I grabbed his hand. "Let's go." I led the way back out, holding his hand in mine.

  When we got back into the Mercedes I thought about the fact that the shooter knew where I lived. "Why didn't whoever shot him follow him all the way back to my house?" And keep shooting?

  Mark never looked at me. "They could tell they had hit him; maybe they figured they didn't have to follow him all the way to the end." He slammed a fist onto the dash.

  My blood ran colder. "You're guessing that whoever shot him didn't expect him to make it back to my house."

  He didn't answer until I pulled into the garage, and the door was shut behind us. "I'll make sure that if they knew he was headed here, they won't come back tonight."

  I didn't have to walk into the kitchen before I remembered the casserole. "Uh-oh." I was lucky the house hadn't burned down.

  Mark checked the rest of my humble home while I turned off the oven. Thankfully it hadn't been on high, and though it was a charred mess, it had just started to smoke, so the kitchen was hazy rather than blackened.

  With a sigh, I turned to find Mark using the already ruined towels to clean up the floor.

  I pitched the casserole, bowl and all. Some things weren't worth cleaning. I made myself a cup of tea and asked if he wanted coffee. He didn't answer so I made some anyway. "Huntington, I mean Steve, says I was followed home the other night because I was seen with him at the restaurant. But…they picked up my trail at work, Mark. I know you guys are watching someone near here, so maybe they found my house because of that, but it's starting to feel like someone knows that I'm involved in the investigation."

  I handed him a large green trash bag. He loaded the towels in it. I picked up Huntington's discarded leather coat and shook my head. "What a waste. This was such a great jacket." Even if the arm could be sewn back onto the jacket, the blood and giant gunshot hole more than ruined the thing.

  Mark found the cleaning solutions under the sink. He turned back around and caught sight of the jacket in my hand. Unconsciously he aimed the cleaner in my direction, his knuckles white.

  We stood that way for a long time, him staring at the jacket and me frozen in place. Not knowing how to break the deadlock, I dropped the jacket and stepped forward, blocking the sight of it with my body. "Brenda would call immediately if Steve's status changed," I said. "And despite your investigation at the hospital, she'd get him straight there if she thought he was picking up something as innocuous as a cold while in her care. Trust me."

  His tortured brown eyes finally found my face. "Yeah." The agreement exploded out around the breath he had been holding. He walked over to the jacket and stuffed it into the garbage bag. "It was his favorite jacket."

  "Mine too," I said softly. I had no idea how to offer comfort. The muscles across his neck were strung tight. His jerky movements were like those of a disjointed puppet.

  He finally stopped cleaning and changed the subject. "I don't know if anyone has marked you as a plant. The guy making the deals could easily be a board member, in which case he would know you were there to investigate."

  I would have been more reassured if he had told me that I was in no danger and that no one knew I was involved. Since he wasn't going to lie to me, I plunged into the mess. "The board members aren't involved in the day to day. How could they be skimming? How could they control which engineers worked on what?"

  He shrugged. "Someone on the board could have mentioned the investigation to the wrong person. The entire board knows about the investigation because they gave the okay to hire Steve. The chicken knows the fox is in the hen house and will fly the coop without ever leaving town." He rested his hands against the counter. He was still breathing hard. "We'll be left with nothing but a few rotten feathers and no idea where they came from."

  I poured him a cup of coffee and set it down on the counter before taking the garbage bag out to the garage.

  When I came back in, he was on the phone. He put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, "I'm going to make sure there are a few people watching your house tonight to keep you safe."

  I didn't know what to do with myself so I took my cup of tea into the living room and sat down. Dinner had been ruined, but for a change, I didn't feel like eating.

  When Mark finished his calls, he turned to me. "Steve mentioned he was coming over here to make sure you quit this one. It sounds like a good idea, especially if someone has decided you're not just another engineer."

  I shrugged noncommittally. "Yeah, he mentioned it." I got up and rinsed my cup out. There was no point in holding the cup of tea; I wasn't going to drink it. I realized that Mark was getting ready to leave. He hadn't been wearing a jacket, so there was nothing to collect. The long sleeves of his black t-shirt didn't look that warm. For some reason, I thought about the sword tattooed across the muscles of his upper arm, but couldn't remember seeing the tattoo in the lab when he had been wearing short sleeves. Then again, the light hadn't been very good.

  He saw me looking at his arm. He folded both of his across his chest and frowned down at me. "You should take Steve's advice. This one is ugly." He moved closer. He looked down at me, all at once stern and…something unfathomable. "I'll keep an eye on the place tonight, but Steve probably wouldn't have come back here unless he was certain he had lost them."

  Like a deer in headlights I couldn't move my head away from the beam. He reached up to touch my cheek, but stopped shy of the mark. "This is way out of control." His hand only stopped shaking because he grabbed the doorknob.

  As quietly as he had come hours before, he was gone.

  Chapter 17

  I wouldn't have had the courage to do what needed to be done if it hadn't been for the ego boost Mark unknowingly gave me. It would have been a lot easier to slide back into Strandfrost and fight the status quo than continue to work on Acetel's problems. Huntington originally seemed to think I had it in me. Then again, he wasn't smart enough to keep from getting shot so what did that say about his judgment?

  Checking in with
Brenda confirmed that Huntington had made it comfortably through the night and was gone with Mark first thing in the morning. Derrick came by Sean's to get a statement, but Mark had planned his visit well. He whisked the evidence away long before Derrick showed up.

  Sean, of course, directed Derrick my way, but I wasn't answering the phone, so I had some time.

  Before leaving my house, I called Huntington at his condo. I left a message inquiring about his health and basically demanding an update. He picked up as I ranted into the phone.

  "I'm fine." His voice was hoarse, but otherwise normal.

  "Thanks for thinking to let me know."

  He sighed. "I called your brother and sent them flowers and a gift certificate to the restaurant at Whispering Pines Resort."

  Since he was ill, he was the one that should have been receiving flowers, but where Huntington was concerned, everything was backwards. "Oh. You could have called me too. Are you following the doctor's orders?" It occurred to me that he had been out cold and suffering from loss of blood so he hadn't heard any instructions.

  "There's a guy here that looked me over."

  Mark had said something about one of the other condo owners being a doctor. "And did he say you would live?"

  Huntington waited a heartbeat. "Concerned?" he purred.

  "You do pay my paycheck." I was admitting nothing.

  "Ah, but you quit, remember?"

  "Yeah, yeah." And I was going to quit, as soon as I had Radar verify one or two things. "I have a couple more questions. I assume you'll be home the entire weekend resting up?"

  He grunted. I took this as an invitation to stop by whenever I wanted. With Huntington it was as close as I would get.

  After I hung up, I printed out my resignation again. I tried not to make the letter too personal, but I did say I was leaving with "great regret and felt I was forced to leave." The words were mostly for Turbo. Since he had been my boss before the promotion, that was where I delivered the letter. He met me in his office even though it was Saturday.

  When I handed him my resignation, he stared at it in disappointment. "You like the job at Acetel?"

  "No," I admitted. "But I like the idea of coming back here and fighting with Gary a lot less." I had made a deal with Huntington, and he had paid me. I didn't have to do anything overt; I would just get Radar to verify Huntington's theory one way or the other. Besides, Huntington's hoodlum friends already knew where I lived. Unless I literally went to Hawaii, they could find me. I also had a feeling it would take Huntington a lot longer than a couple of weeks to figure things out, especially now that he was laid up.

  "You aren't going to wait until after your vacation?" Turbo asked.

  "I want to give two weeks' notice. If I wait until my vacation is over, I'd be in a pickle when I was supposed to be showing up here and at Acetel."

  "Are you going to tell John personally?"

  The thought of having to look Strandfrost's esteemed vice president in the eyes made breakfast rumble in protest. "I suppose I could. I don't owe him anything though."

  Turbo didn't disagree. "How's the new case going?"

  I told him a little about it, describing my new boss and the stupid people at Kronology. Turbo knew more about Kronology than I.

  "What did you say your boss's name was?"

  "Jacques Cardin."

  "That's funny." He turned to his file drawer and shuffled through it. "Hang on a second…"

  It might have taken longer than a second because although Turbo was very good about labeling things and saving every scrap of paper that came his way, he wasn't that keen on actually getting the things filed properly.

  "Well, well, well. Isn't this interesting." He handed me a resume with a business card attached. My mouth dropped open.

  Turbo shook his head in disapproval. "I guess maybe this is why Jacques is so interested in helping the Kronology customers, huh?"

  I stared in fascination at the resume and business card. Jacques name and "Senior Engineer, Kronology Servers" stared right back at me.

  "He interviewed here, gosh…" Turbo leaned back and started thinking. "We were working on the Gummy Bear Project and that was during that really bad winter…I'd guess five years ago." He sat forward again. "Kronology has been known to buy some very, very good small companies. I knew a couple of guys who started a server business that was bought by them. Kronology has trouble keeping talent though. The ones left behind don't have enough history with the acquired technology to be able to add features or fix problems."

  "The Kronology people certainly give no impression that they know what they are doing." I pointed at the resume. "Jacques doesn't strike me as being into low-level engineering."

  "I could call my old buddies for you, see if they knew Jacques and find out what he did for Kronology." Turbo rubbed his hand together. "It would be interesting to discover what his current ties are to the company. Maybe he has stock options and stands to get rich if Kronology does well!"

  That was an intriguing thought. In the engineering industry, it was common for publicly owned companies to give engineers stock options. As the company grew, the stock price was also supposed to grow-- making the stock options a valuable part of compensation. Jacques could be sitting on stock from Kronology hoping to make money--if his old company did well. "How has the stock done over the past few years?" I asked.

  "Let's have a look." Turbo punched keys on his keyboard and after a second or two, turned the monitor on his desk my way. "Down."

  The stock chart showed a pretty steady decline over the last five years with occasional bursts of hope, one of which was occurring right now. The price had climbed about five points in the last month. "If Jacques has options, he has reasons to help Kronology succeed even though he doesn't work for them anymore."

  Turbo shrugged. "If he bought the options outright when he left, he might now be sitting on a loss--and maybe he figures helping Kronology is a way to try and goose the stock back into the money."

  Jacques could help Kronology until the cows came home, and it might not make any difference. That didn't mean he wouldn't try. In addition to stock options, if Jacques was solving customer problems and charging the customer on the side, he could be raking it in on all sides. "I guess it wouldn't be a bad idea to hear what he did for Kronology."

  I left Turbo looking happy with his self-assigned task of contacting his old friends to dig up dirt about Jacques' background. I was less pleased with my own remaining chores. Before I left Strandfrost for the final time, I went to my old office and sent an email thanking the guys that had reported to me. Even though I hadn't been officially fired, the grapevine would know. I pitied myself enough without seeing it in anyone else's eyes. I was grateful Turbo had agreed to meet me on the weekend.

  I consoled myself with the thought that it would probably take Mr. Vice President and his ward of suck-ups two more weeks to figure out I was gone. Turbo would mention it and turn in my resignation, but the big-wigs wouldn't pay any attention until they got desperate. Oh well. Maybe if I got killed, Strandfrost would somehow end up paying out the life insurance policy.

  I went to karate practice to get rid of some adrenalin, and then after a quick shower, drove over to Sean's house. Much to my annoyance, Derrick was there.

  He harassed me immediately.

  I waved him away. "Look, the guy showed up at my door with wounds. I have no idea how it happened. I brought him here because I was hoping Brenda could help. It was an emergency!"

  "Address?" Derrick asked tersely.

  Dutifully, I gave him my address. "He lives with you now?" Derrick compressed his lips. I thought Sean was going to swallow his tongue.

  I rolled my eyes. "I thought you wanted my address, you goof! Huntington lives in the condominiums in Alpine Hills. I don't know the exact address." A total lie. During the three weeks of pretending to be the condo owner, I ordered more merchandise than I ever had in my life. I knew the address very well.

  "Is he stil
l working with Federal Agents?"

  That, I honestly didn't know. "He showed up on my back porch. I brought him here. I don't know where he was going or where he was coming from." The loser hadn't told me. I couldn't even give Derrick the address of the home Huntington had under surveillance.

  "Uh-huh. I expected you to be more cooperative, Sedona." Derrick tapped his pencil against his notebook. "I bet your brother can advise you on why it is smart to help the authorities."

  His genuine enthusiasm and belief in the system was touching, but I still wasn't going to tell him I was working for Huntington again. What good would it do anyway? "I have no idea who shot him. I saw no one on the porch and no one on the way over here. In fact," I said recklessly, "I made sure no one followed us here."

  Sean's eyes bulged. Uh-oh. He hadn't thought of his own personal danger until my big mouth pointed it out. My feet rolled toward the door.

  Brenda caught my arm before I could make it through the living room. "Us girls are going to have a nice little chat now, so you leave Sedona alone. I need some advice with this pregnancy thing, and you two are taking up all her time."

  Sean's mouth dropped open. He looked at Derrick for help, but Derrick was busy frowning and flipping through his notebook to see if he had any more rude questions.

  Sean sputtered, "But Brenda!" He implored her with his hands. "Why in the world would you want her advice?"

  Brenda sniffed. "Because she's a professional."

  I'm pretty certain that didn't really explain why she was asking me for help. Nonetheless, neither of them was going to take on a dangerously unpredictable pregnant woman.

  Brenda dragged me into what was fast becoming a nursery. The walls were a brilliant shade of yellow that nearly blinded me. A new changing table and crib were parked lovingly in the corner.

  "Now," Brenda whispered. "Tell me how you think I should lay out this little pregnancy problem to my boss."