“Not exactly,” I replied. “But then, trouble might not be the right word.”

18

Michael O’Connell told himself that his best skill was waiting.

It was not simply a matter of biding his time or sitting around patiently. Real waiting required all sorts of preparations and planning, so that when the moment that he was anticipating arrived, he was already significantly ahead of everyone else. He conceived of himself as something like a director, the sort of person who can see an entire story, act by act, scene by scene, right to the end. He was a man who knew all the endings, because he alone constructed each and every one.

O’Connell was stripped to his boxer shorts, his body glistening. A couple of years back, while browsing in a used-book shop, he had come across an exercise-regimen book that had been popular in the mid-1960s. This particular book was drawn from the Royal Canadian Air Force manual on physical fitness and was filled with antique drawings of men in shorts doing squat thrusts, one-handed push-ups, and chin lifts. It also had curious exercises he performed, such as springing into the air and lifting his knees so that he could touch his toes. It was the opposite of all the Pilates, Billy Blanks, Body by Jake, and six-minute abdomen-exercise programs that dominated daytime television channels. He had become proficient in the RCAF exercises and beneath his loose-fitting, worn student garb sported a wrestler’s physique. No vanity-driven health club membership or soulful, long runs alongside the Charles for him. He preferred to hone his muscles alone, in his room, occasionally wearing a headset blasting some pretentiously satanic rock group, such as Black Sabbath or AC/DC.

He dropped to the floor, raised his legs above his head, then lowered them slowly, pausing to hold his position three times before stopping with his heels just inches above the hardwood floor. He repeated this exercise twenty-five times. But on the final repetition, he remained in position, arms flat at his sides, holding himself immobile for one minute, then another. He knew that somewhere after three minutes he would start to feel discomfort, and two minutes later, distress. After six minutes, he would feel significant pain.

O’Connell told himself that it really wasn’t about developing muscles any longer.

Now, it was about overcoming.

He shut his eyes and shunted away the burning in his stomach, replacing it with a portrait of Ashley. In his mind, he slowly drew each detail, with all the patience of an artist devoted to duplicating every signature curve, every small, shadowy recess. Start with her feet, the splay of her toes, the arch, the tautness of her Achilles’. Then move up the length of her leg, capturing the muscles in her calf, to her knee and thigh.

He gritted his teeth and smiled. Usually he could hold his position all the way past her breasts, after lingering a long time contemplating her crotch, finally to the long and willowy, sensuous curve of her neck, before he was forced to drop his heels to the floor. But as he grew stronger, he knew he would someday complete the mental painting, filling in the features of her face and hair. He looked forward to developing that strength.

With a gasp, he relaxed and his feet bounced hard against the floor. He lay for a moment or two, feeling sweat trickle down his chest.

She will call, he thought. Today. Perhaps tomorrow. This was inevitable. He had put forces into play that would ensnare her. She will be upset, he told himself. Angry. Filled with demands, none of which meant a thing to him. And, more critically, he reminded himself, this time she will be alone. Frantic and vulnerable.

He took a deep breath. For an instant he believed he could feel Ashley at his side, soft and warm. He closed his eyes and luxuriated in the sensation. When it faded, he smiled.

Michael O’Connell lay back on the floor, blankly staring up at the whitewashed ceiling and a single unshaded hundred-watt bulb. He had once read that certain monks in long-forgotten orders in the eleventh and twelfth centuries had remained in that position for hours on end, in utter silence, ignoring heat, cold, hunger, thirst, and pain, hallucinating, experiencing visions, and contemplating the immutable heavens and the inexorable word of God. It made absolute sense to him.

The thing that troubled Sally was a single offshore bank account that had received several modest deposits from her client’s account. The sum in question was somewhere near $50,000.

When she had called the bank in Grand Bahama, they had been unhelpful, telling her that she would need an authorization from their own banking authority, implying that that was difficult to obtain, even for SEC or IRS investigators-and probably impossible for a single attorney operating alone, without subpoenas, or State Department threats.

What Sally could not fathom was why someone capable of raiding her client account had seemingly only stolen one-fifth of the amount. The other sums, arrayed through a near dizzying series of transfers back and forth through banks all over the nation, were still traceable, and, as best as she could tell, likely to be recovered. She had managed to have the sums frozen at nearly a dozen different institutions, where they rested untouched under different and transparently phony names. Why, she wondered, wouldn’t someone have merely transferred all of the cash into the offshore accounts, where it was in all likelihood completely untouchable? The majority of the money was simply hanging out there, not stolen, but waiting for her to undergo the immense difficulty in recovery. It troubled her deeply. She could not say with any precision what sort of crime she was the victim of. The one thing she knew was that her professional reputation was likely to take a blow, at the least, and more likely be crippled significantly.

She was equally uncertain who had attacked her.

Her first suspicion, of course, fell on the other side in the divorce case. But she did not understand why the opponents would make such serious trouble for her-it would significantly postpone matters and make things more difficult, in addition to dragging out the action in court, which would only cost everyone more money. In a divorce, she was accustomed to people behaving irrationally, of course, but this stumped her. People were usually more blatantly petty and obnoxious when they tried to make trouble. And, so far, this assault had a subtlety that she had yet to fully understand.

Her second suspicion, then, became some other opponent in some other case. Someone she had bested in some year past.

This unsettled her even more, the idea that someone would harbor a need for revenge over some time, waiting months, perhaps even years, before acting. It was Sicilian in nature, and seemed to her to be something right out of The Godfather.

Sally had exited her office early and walked through the center of town to a restaurant that sported a fake-Irish name and had a quiet and dark bar, where she nursed her second Scotch and water. In the background, she could hear the Grateful Dead singing “Friend of the Devil.”

Who hates me? she asked herself.

Whoever it was, she knew that she needed to tell Hope. She dreaded this. With all the tension between them, this was the last thing they needed. Sally took a long pull of the bitter liquid. Someone out there hates me and I’m a coward, she thought to herself. A friend of the devil is a friend of mine. She looked at the glass, decided that there wasn’t enough alcohol in the entire world to cover up how miserable she felt, pushed it away, and with what little remaining steadiness she had, started to make her way home.