But it was not over. It was just beginning.
Artemas got up and paced, his chest tight with helpless rage.
Everything she owned was mortgaged to the hilt. The house she and Richard had built so lovingly, the acreage around it, the sailboat, the cars and trucks. Richard and Frank, apparently flush with visions of the grand future that had come their way since taking on the Colebrook project, had built themselves a $2 million office last year, using their personal assets to acquire the loans. Porter and Stockman had risked everything, and for that their possessions would belong to the banks, the courts, the victims. A complete and brutal taking, in which Colebrook International would be the chief litigant.
Artemas threw the glass against a wall. The force sprayed shattered pieces. The sharp sting on his cheekbone and the dampness of blood were distant concerns. His head bent, his hands hanging limply by his sides, he thought, She lost her husband and son because of me. Now she’ll lose her home too. Because of me.
• • •
Artemas pushed the door open and got out before his driver could reach him. “Wait here, George,” he told the stocky older man who snatched at the limousine’s door and held it dutifully, as rigid as a soldier at attention. “I won’t be long.”
George shifted anxiously and touched a hand to the brim of his black cap. “I’ve worked for you a long time, Mr. Colebrook. I hope you don’t mind me saying that you’ve got the balls of an elephant, but I’ve never seen you do anything, well, reckless. I’ve figured out who you’re here to see, and, well, sir, it has me worried.”
“I’m not going to kill him, George.” The tone of voice was lethally soft, not reassuring. “I’m just going to make him wish he’d never been born.” Artemas’s attention was riveted to the building in front of him. The bustle of Atlanta’s busy streets and the office workers passing on the sidewalk might have been a thousand miles away. Cold air curled inside his open coat and sank into the dark wool of his suit. He welcomed the sensation against the heated tension in his skin. His bare hands felt hot against the sides of his trousers. Bright sunlight glinted off the tower of glass and steel awaiting him but did not penetrate his narrowed eyes. Violent justice was what he wanted, but no, he wouldn’t lay a hand on Oliver Grant. That would have ended his revenge too quickly. He wanted Grant to suffer.
The lobby was bland and cramped and utilitarian, a stark contrast to the soaring beauty that had been the Colebrook Building. He had come here several times over the years, with Julia, to discuss the project in its planning stage. His skeptical sister had wondered at the artistic skill of a contractor who chose to work in such an uninspiring place.
His business is construction, Artemas had counseled. Leave the creative genius to the architects.
That memory was sour in his throat. He had chosen the architects. Stockman and Porter. They had recommended Grant as the contractor.
My sister would be alive if I hadn’t insisted on Stockman and Porter. If I hadn’t wanted to move Colebrook International to Atlanta. If I hadn’t wanted to be close to Lily, and prove something to her. If I’d stayed out of her life, her son and husband would be alive too.
His inner conflict brought fury and frustration. His shoes clicked an efficient, swift tattoo on the lobby’s granite floor. Decisions. Guilt. Sorrow. Revenge. His dream had been noble. Selfish? Yes, that too. Lily, Lily, I never meant to hurt you. I meant to win you back. God help me.
His jaws ached from clenching his teeth. On a directory positioned on the wall beside a dull-witted abstract tapestry he found the contractor’s suite number. During the brief elevator ride up he stood in the center of the compartment, staring at the doors.
When he stepped off the elevator at the floor occupied by the building firm, his skin crawled with disgust. A receptionist at the lobby’s desk stood quickly, recognition and alarm flooding her expression. He walked past her without speaking, ignoring her startled “Do you have an appointment, Mr. Colebrook? Mr. Colebrook?”
He strode past secretaries in an open area, bathed in their stares and whispers. His destination was one of the doors in the office suites beyond them. The small brass plaque there bore Grant’s name.
He slammed a hand against it. The door groaned; its latch popped. It burst inward.
Oliver Grant, standing near a window with a portable phone against one ear, whirled in shock. When he saw who the invader was, the phone dropped to the carpeted floor. Grant leaped toward a desk littered with paperwork and punched a button on a phone console there. “Call the police,” he ordered, his voice frayed.
Artemas slung the office door shut and advanced on him with long strides, reaching out as he did. He shoved the phone console onto the floor. Grant backed away, holding up both hands, palms outward. “The media will climb all over both of us. We don’t need any more negative publicity.”
Artemas gave him a killing smile. “The truth won’t be negative to me. It’ll be a goddamned pleasure to see the truth made public.”
Grant had the short-legged, lantern-jawed demeanor of a bulldog, but a muscle twitched near the corner of his mouth. His flat face had a haggard pallor from weeks of intense stress, and his thinning brown hair stood out in wisps from the sides of his head. His thickly sinewed forearms, showing beneath the rolled-up sleeves of a dress shirt, gave evidence of a career that had been bred in the dirt and sweat of a laborer’s dreams. But framed photographs of Grant with the city’s social elite lined the walls, and a Mercedes key ring peeked from amid jumbled papers on the desk.
“Your ambition should have been tempered by honesty,” Artemas said, scooping the key ring into his hand then dropping it in a trash can by the desk. “Because now you’re going to lose everything. How will you like prison life? Think about it.”
“Talk to my lawyers. I have nothing to say to you.”
“Then just listen. Listen, you sleazy son of a bitch.” Artemas pulled a sheaf of folded papers from inside his jacket and threw them on the desk. “That’s the transcript of a statement Avery Rutgers gave my people this morning. His conscience got the best of him, not to mention the fact that he’s scared shitless.” Artemas leaned forward. The words slid softly, coldly, from his lips. “Your own quality-control inspector says the concrete used in the bridge’s supporting walls wasn’t allowed to cure properly.”
Grant wavered as if caught by a gust of wind. His hands dropped to his sides, then fumbled vaguely. “That’s a lie. Get out. My attorneys—”
“He says he told you as soon as he discovered it. And that you told him to keep his mouth shut or he’d lose his job. When he brought the subject up again, you said the architects had checked the problem out and agreed that it was insignificant. That’s ludicrous.”
Grant collapsed slowly, catching the back of a plush leather chair behind the desk. It swiveled toward him, and he sank into it. His mouth hung open. His eyes glazed over. “There’s no proof.”
Artemas dropped another folded document on the desk. “Core samples of the concrete have been analyzed. Rutgers was right about it. Look at the report.”
“Oh, God.” Grant moaned and put his head in his hands.
Artemas was dimly aware of straining forward over the desk, of violence rising up blindly in him. He wanted the man’s throat between his hands—he could already feel his fingers crushing flesh and cartilage. He wanted to see all the death and betrayal, all his grief, mirrored in Grant’s dying gaze.
You can’t He still has answers to give.
His fingers bit into stacks of papers, crushing them in substitution. Contempt and rage were overwhelming him. Restraint made him tremble. “I want to hear you admit that Stockman and Porter never knew you’d screwed the structural safety of their design.”
Grant lifted bleak, groggy eyes to his. Two of the building’s security guards burst into the office. They dragged at Artemas, binding their arms across his chest, cursing. His gaze never left the contractor’s. Grant’s sagging face contorted. The viciousness of a tra
pped animal replaced defeat. “They knew,” he said, spitting it as if in triumph. “They let it pass. They approved it.”
His words landed like fists. Artemas recoiled, stiffened. The guards gripped him tighter, as if their threat was responsible for holding him motionless. A prayer rose in his mind. Let him be lying. Don’t let Richard Porter be part of this.
Through the pulse roaring in his ears, he heard Michael’s deep, anxious voice speaking his name. He felt a hand on his shoulder, sensed Michael beside him and the guards. “George called from the car phone when you left the hotel,” Michael was saying. “I followed you.” He jerked furiously at the guards’ arms. “Goddammit, let him go.” Michael began to cough but continued fighting. One of the guards twisted and rammed an elbow into Michael’s chest.
Artemas jerked away from them, caught one in the face with his fist, and shoved the other one aside. Michael was bent over, gasping, one hand unzipping the leather aviator jacket he wore with jeans, fumbling inside past a white sweater, searching the inner pockets. “I’m all right,” he said, as Artemas grasped him by one arm. He found his inhaler and straightened, shaking his head. His dignity and self-rebuke were fierce. He jerked his arm away from Artemas. “All right.” Artemas’s chest heaved as deeply as Michael’s. He pivoted toward Grant. “I don’t believe you.”
Grant rose like a drunken boxer, gripping the edges of his desk and swaying, his vindictive gaze boring into Artemas. “You will. I’m not going to hell alone. Ask Lily Porter to tell you what she knows. Ask her why Stockman and her husband and I were all so goddamned crazy by the end. Then live with that truth!”
Two police officers ran into the room, then halted. “I want these bastards out of here,” Grant yelled, pointing at Artemas and Michael. Artemas raised a hand in warning as the officers stepped toward him. The terrible dread inside him became fierce efficiency, a litany of commands. Turn away. Take Michael to the hotel Make certain he’s recovered. Go to Lily. Make her talk.
Eighteen
The click of her flat blue shoes was the loudest sound Lily had ever heard, and every step closer to the door of James Colebrook’s hospital room made a sharp throb in her pulse. She had come once before. The memory was fuzzy; maybe it had been the week after the funerals. Almost six weeks ago. Eternity Yesterday Aunt Maude had insisted on driving her here that time, thank God.
Lily remembered standing at the foot of his bed, staring at him speechlessly, lost in the horror, seeing the tiny clear tube running from under the sheet to a yellowish bag attached to the bed’s lower railings, and his leg, swaddled in white from hip to foot and hanging in slings. His face had haunted her—eyes closed, asleep, deathly white, a limp shock of hair the color of Artemas’s feathering his high forehead. He resembled Artemas so much—with the same sharp cheekbones, the same harshly sculpted mouth, but his features were leaner, more elegant.
His wife had been the only other person in the room. She had risen from a chair and come to Lily silently Lily recalled looking down into a stunned, pretty face framed by straight, mink-colored hair. She recalled holding out a hand to Alise Colebrook, and that Alise had taken it. Whatever they had said to each other had been compassionate, and there had been quiet tears. Lily wasn’t certain how long she’d stood, watching James sleep, holding his wife’s hand.
She stopped outside the open door, her heart hammering in her throat. Her body reacted to emotions she didn’t know she felt; everything was buried too deep. She knew she was nervous because she felt the physical sensations, but her mind was calm, almost sluggish. She heard voices inside the room. Several different ones, but all female. Then a low murmur. Masculine.
She had to make these people understand that there was no reason for them to suspect Richard.
She brushed a hand over her clothes and glanced down, stalling for time. Straight dark skirt, white blouse, camel-colored cloth coat. Black hose, blue shoes. Blue purse dangling from the other hand. Wide gold wedding band and large diamond engagement ring. Nails bitten to the quick. Long dull braid of hair fastened with a black band, lying on her right breast. She plucked a dozen stray wavy strands from her coat’s lapel Her hair was falling out all over the place—streaking the throw pillows on the den’s couches, clogging the shower drain, filling her brushes. Nerves, Big Sis had said.
The respectable inventory reassured her that she was thinking rationally. She hadn’t noticed much about the selections while she was getting dressed.
She started to knock on the door, then lowered her hand. Knocking seemed too polite, as if she were about to breeze in carrying flowers and a fruit basket. Lily lifted her chin and walked slowly into the room.
When they saw her, there was shocked silence. She halted just beyond the corner of the bathroom wall, where the room opened up. Their faces flashed across her mind like slides changing too fast. Cassandra. Dark accents. Whip-thin. Standing. Elizabeth. Blond. Zaftig. Standing. Alise. Delicate. Sitting on the edge of a chair.
Lily’s breath rattled in her chest. James, finally. No sling. No catheter. A pillar of white extending from his left hip, lying parallel to the ridge his right leg made under the sheet. He was sitting up with bright white pillows stuffed behind him. A silky black pajama top hung loosely on his powerful shoulders and chest.
His face was pale and furious. “I suppose,” he said in a low voice, “you didn’t have the guts to face the cripple until now.”
The words felt like a hand shoving her chest to her backbone. Lily looked at him with dull agony, struggling to breathe.
Alise leaped up. “James, she came here before. I told you.” But the look Lily received from her contained icy dignity. There was no compassion in it. “You shouldn’t have come back.”
James appeared not to notice either his wife’s fiercely soft words or her loyal, protective movement to his side. “If you’re looking for my brother, he’s not here. He might be interested in hearing whatever you came to say, but I’m not.” His gray eyes were hard on Lily’s. His mouth took a crueler slant. “And when this family is finished with you, you’ll know better than to expect any welcome from him, either. In fact, he’s trying to find you, as we speak. I’d say your illusions of friendship won’t survive much longer.”
Lily dragged her voice from the clenched fist inside her throat. “I’d trade places with you if it would change what happened—if it brought back my husband and son, or your sister, or any of the others who died.”
“What a nice sentiment. What a useless sentiment.”
“Have you all made up your minds?” she asked, looking from him to his wife and sisters. “Without any evidence?”
Alise’s eyes were shuttered. She said nothing. Cassandra’s expression was as vividly contemptuous as James’s. “The evidence is accumulating at a dazzling pace.”
Lily shook her head. Were they blind? “What evidence? There’s nothing.”
“God fucking damn,” Cassandra said.
Elizabeth Colebrook stepped forward, scrutinizing Lily as if she were an unfinished china pattern. Her expression was akin to Alise’s—restrained, disgusted, but not blatantly cruel. “You obviously haven’t heard from your attorneys yet.”
“Heard what?”
James leaned forward quickly. The careless movement made him grimace, and he panted. The ruddy splotches of color on his cheeks gave him a feverish look. Alise uttered a small cry of dismay and knelt on one knee by his hips. She clasped his shoulders. “Please, don’t. You have to rest.”
Again James ignored her. The hatred in his eyes twisted Lily’s stomach. “Avery Rutgers,” he said.
“I don’t know him.”
“Oh? He worked for Oliver Grant.”
“Dozens of people did. Either directly, or through subcontractors.”
“Rutgers was Grant’s quality-control expert. He couldn’t quite reconcile that with the deaths of more than a dozen people. He called our attorneys this morning.”
When Lily only frowned in desperate bewilderment, Cassa
ndra interjected, “He said the concrete used in the bridge was shit. That Grant knew and didn’t replace it. And when Artemas confronted dear, doomed Mr. Grant, he confessed that your husband and his partner knew as well. They knew the bridge might not be safe, but they didn’t do anything.”
Lights burst in Lily’s vision. Her face felt cold, her legs like rubber. All these weeks, she’d never come so close to fainting. She took two wavering steps toward a wall and leaned, facing it, her forehead bowed to the hard, cool surface. Oliver was responsible. Not Richard. Not Frank. She’d never believe they’d collaborated with Oliver. She wanted to kill him. She wanted to drag him to Richard’s and Stephen’s graves and kill him with her bare hands.
Her one goal was to get out of here and find him. Through a haze of black hatred she heard James’s voice, speaking to someone else. “… immediately. I won’t have her pass out in my room. I’ll let her lie on the floor like a goddamned piece of trash, if she does.”
“We’ll send someone as soon as we can, Mr. Colebrook, ” came the grainy, disembodied answer over the nurses’ intercom.
Lily pivoted unsteadily, fury surging into her muscles. “It’s not true. I don’t care what you’ve been told. Whatever Oliver did, he did alone.”
His face convulsed in rage. “The only question is, how much did you know?” James was shouting. “And if you don’t know what your husband was capable of, what does that say about your judgment?” Sweat glistened on his face and stained the front of his shirt. The others were agitated, closing in around him, trying to push him back on the pillows. “Anyone who fucked—anyone who even smiled at—the bastard or his partner is responsible for doing this to me!”
Lily snapped. She lunged to the end of the bed and clung ferociously to the foot railing. “Does that include Julia? Do you condemn your own sister for falling in love with Frank Stockman? Do you think she believed she couldn’t trust him? What blame should that place on her?”