Stephen Frey Read Free Page B

chair, exhausted. Paul’s laughter rang in his ears as he drifted off to sleep.

    â€œ B o. Bo!”
    Bo’s eyes flashed open. The expression on Paul’s face was one of intense panic. “What’s the problem?” Bo asked blearily, coming slowly out of a nightmare.
    â€œI . . . I don’t . . . I mean—” Paul swallowed his words and held out his hands as if giving himself up.
    Bo rose unsteadily, still anchored in the terrible dream. “Tell me what the hell’s going on,” he demanded, shaking his head to clear it.
    â€œThe girl.”
    â€œMelissa?”
    â€œYes . . . I suppose,” Paul said, his expression blank. “Was that her name?”
    â€œYes,” Bo snapped, realizing with a chill that Paul had referred to Melissa in the past tense. “Tell me what’s going on!” Paul was drifting slowly toward the veranda door. He seemed detached, only vaguely connected to reality, as if he’d suffered a blow to the head.
    â€œShe’s . . . I saw her, but . . . but I couldn’t . . .”
    They stepped out onto the veranda together. “Where is she?” Bo roared, grabbing Paul by the shirt and shaking him. “Where is she?”
    Paul gestured toward the lake. “Down there.”
    Bo sprinted down the slope, guided by the spotlights illuminating the playhouse. When he reached the shoreline, he spotted Melissa. She lay facedown in the black water, nude, arms outstretched. “Jesus Christ!” He plowed into the water up to his knees, sending a foamy wake into the darkness. He grabbed one of her arms, pulled her to the sandy beach, and rolled her onto her back, dropping beside her and touching her soft neck. His fingers urgently searched for a pulse.
    He lifted her neck, leaned down, and pressed his lips to hers, forcing air into her lungs, then pumped her chest several times with his hands. “Breathe,” he urged, certain that he had felt a heartbeat. “Come on, Melissa. Stay with me, sweetheart. Breathe! Please!”
    For five minutes he labored over her limp form, trying desperately to revive her. Finally he fell back on the sand, exhausted, staring at her delicate face in the dim light. Her dark eyes were wide open, but they saw nothing. The heartbeat he had felt had been her last.
    Bo’s head dropped and he put his face in his hands. “You bastard.”

CHAPTER 2
    April 1999
    â€œ W hat the hell do you think you’re doing?”
    Bo looked up from behind an array of computer monitors stacked three wide and two high on his immense wooden desk at Warfield Capital. His brother Teddy, oldest of the five Hancock siblings, stood in the office doorway. Tall, blond, and still boyishly handsome despite his forty-seven years, Teddy had a strong physical resemblance to Paul. Teddy’s facial features were rounder and less defined than Paul’s, and he carried a slight paunch and a double chin, but there was no mistaking the fact that he and Paul were brothers. “What are you talking about?” Bo asked, irritated at the intrusion.
    Teddy stepped into the office and slammed the door, hard enough that a picture atop the credenza behind Bo’s desk tumbled to the floor. “The damn gold thing,” he snarled. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
    â€œWhat gold thing?”
    Teddy jammed his hands in his pockets and stalked past Bo’s desk to a window overlooking Park Avenue forty floors below. “You know exactly what gold thing,” he said, furious.
    Bo leaned down over the arm of his chair and picked up the fallen picture. It was a panoramic shot of the beach in front of the playhouse, taken from the top of a hill across the lake. “I’m involved with billions of dollars’ worth of transactions a day here, Teddy,” he said. “Work with me. I know you only like to deal with the wide-angle view from thirty thousand feet, but for my sake dig into