“Of course. I’ll have Louis bring me in.”
“Look smashing.” He grinned, his hand sliding underneath her fur jacket and giving her butt a squeeze. “I’ll walk around until I spot the sexiest woman there.”
“Better be on time then,” Merrill said, winking coyly. “Someone else may have the same idea.”
“It’s been lovely sharing the slopes with you, Ms. Simons.” Dani clasped her fingers in his. “Let’s do it again.”
“And you, Sven.” She giggled, using the ski-instructor fantasy name she had given him after two bottles of champagne. “Please feel free to come off the trail whenever you’re in town.”
He smiled, drawing her to him to give her a kiss. Merrill put her palm against his shirt and held him off just slightly, brushing her lips across his cheek. “I’ll see you there.”
His BlackBerry rang. He sighed when he saw the caller. “I have to take this,” he said. He motioned to the driver and climbed into the backseat of the Merc. He waved to her. “Until tonight.”
The black doors shut and the darkened window rose, slowly obliterating Dani’s face.
Merrill’s houseman, Louis, packed her bags in the Audi. He opened the door and she got in.
Yes, everything is perfect, she reflected. The Audi passed through the wire gate of the private terminal and wound onto the access road leading from the airport.
Everyone loved Dani. He was charming, affable, and successful, and he made her feel twenty years younger in bed. She’d be a fool to let something get in the way.
She didn’t like the sensation of distrust gnawing inside her.
There was just this one thing.
“Back to the house, Ms. Simons?” Louis turned around and asked.
“Yes. I have to change. I have an appointment in town.”
CHAPTER FOUR
They didn’t talk about it much. Over their coffee. The grisly scene on TV.
Only that it was someone Hauck had known from around town, Annie lamenting how these break-ins were getting crazy and how lots of people were buzzing about it, even at the restaurant. She shook her head, bewildered. “And what kind of person could have done that to such a beautiful family? For what? Money?”
Hauck shook his head in dismay. He didn’t know.
He chewed on seven-grain toast, quiet, leafing through the papers, until Annie realized he was still affected by it. There was something there that didn’t seem to be going away.
“I know you feel you have to do something about this.” She came around the counter and put her arms around him from behind, stroked her knuckles softly against his face. “But that’s over now. You’re a businessman now, right?”
He nodded halfheartedly.
She winked and pinched his nose. “So, go biz.”
Hauck had been working for the Talon Group for six months now. He still felt a little awkward with the transition, being an executive for the first time in his life after being a cop for so long. Dressing up in a suit and tie, doing meet-and-greets at Fortune 500 companies, trying to close deals for data protection and internal forensics with corporate controllers and heads of company security who sometimes recognized his name from the prominent cases he had worked.
Part of him still felt like a fish out of water. Even when he deposited his paycheck and saw about three times what he’d been earning before.
Hauck showered and shaved, his short dark hair barely needing to be brushed. He still looked trim and fit in his towel, despite being on the other side of forty. He dressed, choosing an oxford shirt and a salmon-colored tie to go with his blazer. Annie hopped in as he was getting out. It was a visiting day at her son’s school. Afterward she’d trade her dress for jeans and head to the restaurant.
In her towel and with wet hair, she straightened Hauck’s knot when he came in to say good-bye. She centered his jacket across his shoulders and smiled, pleased. “You look nice.”
“So do you,” he said, his finger tracing along the edge of her towel. “We should pick up on that thought later.”
“Sorry. Later I’ve got two turns for dinner and about two dozen lobster and jicama spring rolls to make. Rain check though.”
“Deal. Anyway, say hi to Jared for me. You remind him I want to see him at practice Wednesday.” Hauck had begun coaching a twelve-and-under hockey team and he was teaching Jared, Annie’s son, who was nine and had Down syndrome, how to skate. The other kids seemed to like having him around and all picked up on his positive attitude. Jared seemed to enjoy it too.
“I will. And you sure you’re okay, babe? I know how you can’t do anything about that poor family now and how that makes you feel.”
“I’m okay,” he said, patting her butt. “Promise.”
Annie smiled and pushed him to get out. “Like you would even tell me if you weren’t…”
Downstairs, Hauck tossed the newspaper and his briefcase into the front seat of his new, white BMW 550i-the one change he’d allowed in his life since accepting the job with Talon, having traded in his ten-year-old, gas-guzzling Bronco-and pulled out of the garage.
He drove down to Greenwich on the Post Road, which ran parallel to the highway. Greenwich was different now. Even here, downturn had hit hard. For the first time in years, you could find vacancies along the avenue. Whole floors were now empty in the red-brick office complexes where once-inviolable hedge funds had reigned supreme. Word was that half the gated homes along North Street were privately for sale.
For years, the joke was that “white-gloved” cops directed the traffic on Greenwich Avenue, past Saks and Polo.
Now the cops were gone-no need anymore.
Stopping at a light, Hauck went over his day. He’d been trying to track down this mortgage “thief” who had closed on three multimillion-dollar refinancings on the same property on the same day-the county clerk’s office having taken several months to catch up with the high volume in mortgage recordings-and was now, surprise to no one, nowhere to be found. He also had a one o’clock with Tom Foley, his boss, who wanted him to meet someone.
At every light, the image of the murdered Glassman family kept edging into his mind.
C’mon, he urged himself, flicking on the radio. Like Annie said, that chapter of your life is over now. He had to accept there was nothing he could do. He turned to the all-sports channel and wove onto Bruce Park toward the bottom of Greenwich Avenue, past the station where he used to work, minutes from his new, fancy office on Steamboat. He listened vacantly to the sports jockeys rambling on about the free-agent baseball signings, basketball playoffs, all the while his blood continuing to heat like a backed-up furnace and throbbing with a familiar ardor.
Are you okay? Ty…?
No, he wasn’t okay. He sat at the light with this pent-up feeling in his chest, fingers wrapped tightly around the wheel.
Until he couldn’t take it anymore.
Hell with the new chapter.
As the light changed, he jerked the Beemer into a sharp left onto Mason, barely avoiding a turning bakery truck, its horn blaring. He sped back up the hill and onto the Post Road, swinging a left onto Stanwich, his heart racing with the same familiar rush he’d felt for twenty years.
CHAPTER FIVE
About two miles down, Hauck hung a right at Cat Rock Road, the fancy houses thinning on each side. A mile down, he ran into a police barricade, the winding road narrowing to one lane. A blue and white police car was set up blocking the road, waving only local traffic through. Hauck downshifted. A chain of news vans had pulled up on the side of the road like a caravan.
Lowering his window as he approached, Hauck saw a patrolman he recognized, Rob Feretti.
“Lieutenant!” the cop exclaimed, peering in the window, instinctually addressing Hauck with his old rank. “Nice wheels…What brings you out here?”