LITMIR.BIZ

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me—” he blew more smoke to the ceiling and squinted at Adam, sizing him up for the thousandth time “—is what happened at Montgomery Inns last year…”

      There it was. The noose again. The rope that would strangle him.

      Adam felt the tension in the room. Be cool, he told himself, not showing a flicker of emotion though the sweat was running down his back and his nerves were strung tight as piano wire. “I was never charged with embezzling,” he said evenly. His eyes moved from one man to the next.

      “But Montgomery never hired you back,” a tiny, apprehensive man sitting to Brodie’s left, Bill Peterson, interjected. Behind glasses as thick as the bottom of a soda bottle, Peterson’s nervous gaze shifted to each of the other men around the table.

      “I didn’t want to go back,” Adam stated. That much was true. He’d never work for a snake like Montgomery again, though he itched to know who had set him up. The memory was still painful. Once, he’d respected Victor Montgomery and he’d thought the older man had felt the same for him. Stupid, he chided himself silently. Victor had shown his true colors and fired Adam swiftly, pressing charges against him, then, when there was no indictment, sending a severance check to him through his lawyer—through his damned lawyer! Victor hadn’t even had the guts to face Adam himself. Only the lawyer had been witness to Adam’s wrath and stared in uncomfortable silence as Adam had ripped up the check and tossed the confetti-like scraps into the air.

      Brodie’s voice brought him back to the present. “Look, Drake, before we go into direct competition with Victor Montgomery, I think we should clear this matter up. The way I hear it, there wasn’t evidence enough to indict you, and yet the money that was skimmed off the Puget West project was never located.”

      The collar around Adam’s neck felt tight, the blood thundered through his veins. The money had just vanished. No amount of going over the books had uncovered the missing cash. And in that respect, he was, as project coordinator, responsible.

      “That’s what we don’t understand,” Peterson said, while the third partner, a silent man with flat features, said nothing. “There should have been a trail. How could anyone have walked away with—what was it? Half a million dollars?”

      Adam nodded tightly, though he hoped his expression was calm. “Five hundred sixty-three thousand and change.”

      The silent man whistled.

      “That must have taken some doing,” Brodie said, stuffing his copy of the proposal into his briefcase.

      “I wouldn’t know,” Adam responded dryly.

      Brodie’s brows jerked up as he jabbed out his cigarette in the hotel ashtray. Apparently he didn’t believe Adam. “You have to understand our position. We can’t very well hand over several million dollars until we’re absolutely certain that what happened over at Montgomery Inns won’t happen to us.” He offered Adam a regretful smile. “If you could ever clear up exactly what happened over there, then maybe we could talk business. In the meantime, I don’t think we have a deal.”

      The other men nodded in silent agreement. Adam didn’t blame them. If he were in their shoes he wouldn’t trust a man who’d nearly been indicted for embezzling, a man still proclaimed a thief by one of the largest hotel chains on the west coast. Trouble was, Adam was sick of being a scapegoat.

      Pushing himself upright, Adam pulled together a grim smile and shook each man’s outstretched hand. He watched as Brodie shepherded the small group from the room. Only when the door slammed shut behind the Californians did he let out a series of invectives that would have made a sailor blush. He yanked off his tie and threw it over the back of a chair, then loosened the top buttons of his stiff white shirt. What had he expected? This meeting had been no different than the two others he’d put together.

      Face it, Drake, he told himself, you were convicted even though you were never tried. With leashed fury, he knew that the black stain on his reputation wouldn’t disappear with time. No, he had to find out who had set him up and why. Otherwise, he was finished.

      He had his suspicions, of course. There were several people with whom he’d worked at Montgomery Inns who had been jealous of his rapid rise in the corporation, a few who were desperate, and still others who were just plain greedy. Any one of those people could have set him up to take the fall. And fall he had. Once one of Victor Montgomery’s golden boys, he was now the black sheep. The Judas.

      Until he could prove himself completely blameless, he would never be able to set himself up in business. As he saw it, he had no choice. He had to do some digging and find out just who had hated him enough to frame him for embezzling money he’d never seen. For the past year he’d tried to put the damned incident behind him, but it kept rising like a phoenix from the ashes of his career at Montgomery Inns, to torment and thwart him. Fortunately, he’d already started an investigation to prove his innocence once and for all.

      

      “Quitting?” Victor’s eyebrows shot up, and he stared at his only child in disbelief. He’d just walked into the office and found Marnie sitting, waiting, in one of the client chairs. Then she’d lowered the bomb. “Have you gone out of your mind?”

      Marnie dropped her letter of resignation on his desk. This scene with her father was going to be worse than she’d imagined. Her father was shocked. Pain showed from his blue eyes, pain at the thought of her betrayal.

      “Why for God’s sake? And just what do you think you’re going to do?” he demanded, slamming his golf bag into a corner closet, then ripping off his plaid cap and sailing it across the office in frustration.

      Marnie opened her mouth to answer, but her father wasn’t finished raving. “You can’t quit! You’re my daughter, for crying out loud!” He mopped the sweat from his brow and stuffed his handkerchief into the pocket of his golf slacks.

      Marnie had been waiting for him for half the day. She wasn’t about to back down now. She’d spent too many hours arguing with herself and gathering her courage to give in.

      “I’m serious, Dad,” she said quietly, her voice firm. “This is just something I need to do.”

      “Bull!” Her father crossed the thick expanse of putty-colored carpet and glanced at the calendar lying open on his huge mahogany desk. He flipped through the pages while Marnie surveyed his office with jaded eyes.

      Opulent, befitting the reigning monarch of a hotel empire, the suite boasted inlaid cherry-wood walls. Brass lamps, etchings, sculptures and buttery leather furniture added to the effect. Behind the office, a private bath with a Jacuzzi, a walk-in wardrobe and king-size bedroom, were available whenever Victor was too busy to drive home.

      Grabbing the receiver in one hand, Victor punched a series of buttons on the phone. “Kate?” he barked, still flipping through his appointment book. “Cancel my two o’clock with Ferguson—no, on second thought—just stall him. Ask him to meet me at the site tomorrow at—” he ran his finger down a page “—ten thirty.” Scowling across the room at Marnie, he added, “Just tell him that something important came up, something to do with the opening of the Puget West hotel.”

      Marnie refused to meet the anger in his eyes and stared instead through the bank of windows in his office. Glimpses of the rolling gray waters of Puget Sound were barely visible through the tall spires of Seattle’s skyline. Thick pewter-colored clouds blocked the sun and threatened rain. A jet, headed north, was nearly invisible through the low-hanging clouds.

      She heard her father slam down the phone. “Okay, let’s get out of here,” he said, and dropped the letter of resignation she’d worked so hard to write into his wastebasket.

      “Can’t we talk here?”

      Grabbing his keys, Victor shook his head. “Not a good idea.”

      Then she understood. Shoving her arms through the sleeves of her coat, she asked, “Do you still really think you’ve got some spies in the company?”

      “Don’t know.”

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