66

I have never hit anyone in my life. I don’t know how. But as Sam and I sprang up from the water, both of us soaked now, I raised my fist, drew it back and punched him.

My hand connected with his cheek, but it didn’t have the force I wanted.

“Izzy, stop!” he yelled as I raised my hand again. This time, he easily caught my fist as I swung. “Jesus, Izzy, stop it.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”

I tried to raise my other arm, but he caught that, too. We were in the shallow side of the pool in about four feet of water.

Sam pinned my arms to my sides and spun me around so that I was facing the building. A beautiful building, I noticed, which just pissed me off more. He wrapped his arms around me while I squirmed and struggled.

“Iz, Iz,” he kept saying, loud at first, then softer and softer as I realized how much stronger than me he was. And then I felt those arms-the ones that had held me every night for the last few years. And I felt his jawbone as it rested itself against the side of my forehead. And I felt his chest against my back. And I felt his breath in my ear. I heard him saying, “Iz, Iz, it’s okay.”

Finally, I was still. I closed my eyes and pretended for one moment that it was two weeks ago when I loved him unquestioningly, even though the wedding was making me nuts, when I would have sworn on my life that I’d never spend a day wondering if he loved me.

“Baby,” he said. “God, baby.” He spoke these words so quietly into my ear, it was like a dream.

Finally, he turned me around and bent down a little and stared into my eyes. His were so green-more green than I remembered. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“What have you done? Just tell me. Now. Fast. I need to know.”

“Let’s get out of the pool.”

Water dripped from my hair, running into my eyes. “No. Tell me. I’m going crazy. You have no idea what you’ve done to me.”

“I didn’t mean to, Iz. I swear.” His blond hair, white-gold now, gleamed in the sun.

“Tell me!” I started to raise my fist again.

He pinned my arms to my sides once more. His face twisted as he seemed to struggle with what to say.

“Sam!” I yelled, my voice ragged with the agony of being so close and still not knowing.

“Okay, okay, I wasn’t supposed to, but here it is. I’m just going to tell you quick.” He took a massive inhale. “Forester told me about those letters he was getting, and that stuff the homeless guy was saying.”

“Yeah, he thought someone might be trying to hurt him.”

He nodded. “Before he got the letters, Forester had been buying Panamanian real estate-he thinks this place is going to be big-but in the last month, he bought even more property, sight unseen. He put it all in the corporation, knowing that it was easily transferable if anyone had possession of the shares. He sat me down and asked me if I would do something for him.”

“What?”

Sam shuddered a little. His eyes looked over my head. And I could tell he was remembering.

67

Sam always loved the way Forester inhabited a room. It was impossible not to know when the man was around. He took up space, in part because he was tall and handsome, but even more so because he radiated an intense presence that no one could ignore.

That day, Forester sat in front of Sam’s desk talking about his portfolio, the way they did every month. But at one point Forester paused, adjusting his silver tie and sitting forward ever so slightly. “Look, son, I have a favor to ask.”

“Sure,” Sam said. “Anything.” He loved when Forester called him “son.” And he meant it when he said he would do anything, because Forester was like a dad to him and, like a good parent, Forester would never ask anything of him that Sam couldn’t, or shouldn’t, do.

“Well, it’s more than a favor.” Forester glanced behind him, as if double-checking that Sam’s office door was closed. “But I don’t know who else to turn to.”

“Anything,” Sam said again.

Forester fixed him with an intense stare. “There are some people you simply can’t trust in life-whether it’s business or personal. We all know that’s true, right?”

Sam nodded, yet he considered himself lucky. With the exception of his father, he trusted most people in his life.

“And that’s fine,” Forester said. “Those kinds of people don’t even pretend they’re trustworthy. But I’ve learned from building Pickett Enterprises that there’s also a different variety of people-people who appear to be trustworthy, people you believe in, but then later you find you were wrong. You shouldn’t have trusted them at all.”

Sam nodded again. He could see how true that would be if you ran a large company the way Forester did, and as usual, he was ready to soak up the words Forester said, to learn any knowledge he could from the man.

“The problem,” Forester continued, “is that such people sometimes don’t show their true colors. Not for a long, long time. And so, you don’t know who those people are.”

He told Sam about the letters, and the comments the homeless man had made about how Forester would join his dead wife if he wasn’t careful.

“Who would do that?” Sam had asked, an indignant tone to his voice.

Forester opened his palms and stared at them, as if he could divine the future there. For the first time since Sam had known him, Forester looked helpless. “I don’t know, son, but I’ve become…” He seemed to falter with his words. An expression, one that looked almost like embarrassment, crossed his features. “Well, let me tell you, these letters have me scared, because I’ve looked around at my life and I’ve realized something. Nearly everyone in my world has something to gain from me being gone.”

“That’s not true,” Sam said.

Forester nodded. “It is. For so long, the opposite was the case. I was the head of the ship at Pickett Enterprises, and the ship couldn’t run without me. There was no one who knew all its parts, no one else who could steer it. But now I’ve gotten this company running on autopilot. It doesn’t need me anymore, not really. Chaz or Walter. They could run it fine. And Shane? Not yet, but someday soon. This was how I wanted it. But now…”

“Now?” Sam said, prompting him.

“Now, I’m frightened. And because you’re not one of those people who has something to gain from my death, and because I am certain that you’re not one of those people who has yet to show your true colors, and because you’re one of the few people I can trust, I have this…Well, this favor to ask.”

68

“He told me if anything happened to him, if it seemed that any of the threats had come true, I should take the shares to Panama, sell the real estate and hold the earnings until the whole mess could be figured out. He knew that would tie up the estate. He didn’t want anyone to get the estate, especially not Shane, until it was obvious what had caused his death.”

“He asked you to do this?”

“Yeah. But I don’t think he believed anything would happen so soon.”

“But…wait. You were at his house on the night he died.”

“How do you know that?”

I shook my head. “Why were you there?”

“He called me that night-right before we went to Cassandra’s office-and he sounded really strange. He asked if I was willing to do what we’d talked about. I said yes. Then he got off the phone pretty fast, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I had a really bad feeling. That’s why I left Cassandra’s. I drove up there…” His mouth tightened the way it does when he was fighting tears. I’d only seen him do it a few times.

“Did you do something to him?” I asked softly. “Did you hurt him?”

He shook his head hard, and gave me an irritated look. “Of course not. I kept calling him on the way up there, and he wasn’t answering. I had this terrible feeling. His place was locked up when I got there, so I went around back and…”