CHAPTER NINETY-SEVEN

Karen drove home.

Her fingers trembled on the wheel. Her stomach had never felt quite so hollow or so uncertain. Was she in danger now?

How could Saul have done this to her? To Charles?

Someone she’d trusted like family over the past ten years. Someone she’d run to for support herself. It almost made her retch. He had lied to her. He had used her to get to Charlie, just as he’d used her husband. And Karen knew she had brought it on herself. She suddenly felt complicit in everything that had happened.

Even in Charlie’s death.

Her mind flashed to Saul, standing up at the memorial, speaking so lovingly about Charles. How it must have amused him, Karen seethed, for fate to have intervened so beautifully. To get such a potential liability out of the way.

And all the while Charlie was alive.

Did Charlie know? Did he ever realize who it was who was after him? He thought it was his investors, in retribution. These are bad people, Karen… But Dietz and Hodges, they worked for Saul. All along it was just his frightened longtime partner. Trying to protect his own cowardly ass.

Oh, Charlie, you always did get it wrong, didn’t you?

She turned onto Shore, heading toward the water. She thought of going straight to Paula’s but then remembered what Ty had told her. She turned onto Sea Wall. No sign of anybody. She pulled the Lexus into the driveway of her house.

The house lights were off.

Karen hurried in through the entrance off the garage and flicked on a light as soon as she got into the kitchen.

Immediately something didn’t feel right.

“Tobey!” she called. She straightened the mail she’d left on the kitchen island. A few bills and catalogs. It always felt a little different with Alex and Sam out of the house. Since Charlie was gone. Coming back to a darkened house.

She called again, “Tobey? Hey, guy?” He was usually scratching at the door.

No answer.

Karen removed a bottle of water from the fridge and went into the house with the mail.

Suddenly she heard the dog-but somewhere distant, yelping.

The office, upstairs? Karen stopped, thought back. Hadn’t she left him in the kitchen when she went out?

She headed through the house, following the sound of the dog. She flicked on a light near the front door.

An icy jolt traveled up her spine.

Saul Lennick sat facing her in a living-room chair, legs crossed.

“Hello, Karen.”

CHAPTER NINETY-EIGHT

Her heart crawled up her throat. She looked back, frozen, the mail falling to the floor.

“What the hell are you doing here, Saul?”

“Come over here and sit down.” He motioned, patting the cushions of the couch next to him.

“What are you doing here?” Karen asked again, a tremor of fear tingling across her skin.

Something in her shouted that she should immediately run. She was near the door. Get out of here, Karen. Now. Holding her breath, her gaze darted toward the front door.

“Sit down, Karen,” Lennick said again. “Don’t even think of leaving. I’m afraid that’s not in the cards.”

A figure stepped out of the shadows from down the hallway to her office, where Tobey was loudly barking.

Karen froze. “What do you want, Saul?”

“We have a few things to go over, you and I, don’t we, dear?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Saul.”

“Let’s not pretend, shall we? We both know you saw Charles. And now we both know he’s dead. Finally dead, Karen. C’mon…” He patted the couch as if he was coaxing over a niece or nephew. “Sit across from me, dear.”

“Don’t call me ‘dear,’ Saul.” Karen glared at him. “I know what you’ve done.”

“What I’ve done?” Lennick’s fingers locked together. The avuncular warmth in his eyes dimmed. “What I’m asking you isn’t a request, Karen.” The man down the corridor moved toward her. He was tall, wearing a beach shirt, his hair gathered up in back in one of those short ponytails. Somehow she thought she’d seen him before.

“I said come here.”

Her heart starting to pound, Karen moved toward him slowly. Her mind flashed to Ty. How could she get word to him? What were they going to do with her? She lowered herself onto the couch where Lennick had indicated.

He smiled. “I want you to try to conceptualize, Karen, just what the figure ‘a billion’ really means. If it were time, a million seconds would be about eleven and a half days. A billion, Karen-that’s over thirty-one years! A trillion-” Lennick’s eyes lit up. “Well, that’s hard to even contemplate-thirty-one thousand years.”

Karen looked at him nervously. “Why are you telling me this, Saul?”

“Why? Do you have any idea just how much money is on deposit offshore in banks on Grand Cayman and in the British Virgin Islands, Karen? It’s about 1.6 trillion dollars. Hard to imagine just what that is-more than a third of all the cash deposits in the United States. It’s almost as much as the GNP of Britain or France, Karen. The ‘turquoise economy,’ as it’s referred to. So tell me, Karen, a sum so vast, so consequential, how can it be wrong?”

“What is it you’re trying to justify to me, Saul?”

“Justify.” He was wearing a brown cashmere V-neck sweater, a white dress shirt underneath. He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. “I don’t have to justify anything to you, Karen. Or to Charles. I have ten Charleses. Each with sums under investments just as large. Do you have any idea who we represent? You could Google them, Karen, if you wished, and find some of the most prominent and influential people in the world. Names you would know. Important families, Karen, tycoons, others…”

“Criminals, Saul!”

“Criminals?” He laughed. “We don’t launder money, Karen. We invest it. When it comes to us, whether from the sale of an Old Master painting or from a trust in Liechtenstein, it’s just plain old cash, Karen. As green as yours or mine. You don’t judge cash, Karen. Even Charlie would have told you that. You multiply it. You invest it.”

“You had Charles killed, Saul! He loved you!”

Saul smiled, as if amused. “Charlie needed me, Karen. Just as, for the purpose of what he did, I needed him.”

“You’re a snake, Saul!” Tears trembled in Karen’s eyes. “How is it I could be hearing you like this? How could I have gotten it so wrong?”

“What do you want me to admit, Karen? That I’ve done things? I’ve had to, Karen. So did Charles. You think he was such a saint? He defrauded banks. He falsified his accounts-”

“You had that boy killed, Saul, in Greenwich.”

“I had him killed? I kept fucking around with those tankers?” Lennick’s face grew taut. “He lost over a billion dollars of their fucking money, Karen! He was playing a shell game with his own bank loans. Loans I set up. I killed him? What choice did we have, Karen? What do you think these people do? Pat you on the back? Tell you, ‘Jolly good run of it, we’ll do better next time’? We’re all at risk here, Karen. Anyone who plays this game. Not just Charles.”

Karen glared at him. “So who was Archer, Saul? Who was that man in the back of Samantha’s car? Did they come from you? You bastard, you used me. You used my children, Saul. You used Sam. To get to my husband, your friend. To kill him, Saul.”

He nodded, a bit guiltily, but his eyes were cold and dull. “Yes, I used you, Karen. Once we discovered that Charles was somehow alive. Once we realized that all the fees that had remained in his accounts offshore after he supposedly died had been withdrawn. Who else could it have been? Then I found that note sheet on his desk with the numbers of that safe-deposit box. I had to find out what was in them, Karen. We weren’t getting anywhere tracing the accounts. So we tried to frighten you a bit, that’s all. Put you in play, in the hope, slim as it was, that Charles might contact you. There was no other choice, Karen. You can’t blame me for that.”