The Player's Club: Finn Read Free Page B

ear.
    “How was your white count?”
    Just like that, a spike of fear flooded him, until he took another deep breath. Pushed her question, and the past that prompted it, out of his mind.
    “I’m fine, Mom,” he reminded her firmly. “I’ll talk to you soon.”
     
     
    TWELVE HOURS AFTER HER phone conversation with Thorn, Diana walked into the Four Seasons Oahu, dropping off all her luggage except for her attaché case, and asked to be directed to the Macalisters’ suite. Her dove-gray business suit felt sticky and uncomfortable in the tropical heat, but fortunately she wouldn’t be outside enough for it to bother her. She glanced out the window, looking at the impossibly beautiful blue sky, the waving palm trees.
    Yeah, lucky you.
    When she knocked on the hotel room door, Betty Macalister opened it, her pale face splotchy and wan beneath the remnants of expensive cosmetics. Everything about her seemed to scream fragile, from her delicately curled corn-silk blond hair to her watery blue eyes, to her translucent porcelain skin. “Diana?” she asked. “What on earth are you doing here? You can’t expect Thorn to…to sign contracts and do business today!”
    Diana kept her face impassive, especially when she saw her boss, Thorn. He was shaking his head slightly. “I told you I was sending for Diana, remember, hon?” he said, his voice calming.
    Betty’s expression of irritation melted into confusion. “Did you? I suppose… I’m sorry, Diana. It’s been such a hard night, and…”
    “Why don’t you lie down. Take a sleeping pill,” Thorn said, ushering his wife gently into the master bedroom. A few minutes later, Thorn stepped out, shutting the door quietly behind him. He looked at Diana with murder in his eyes.
    Diana took a deep breath, then pulled a legal pad out of her case along with her mechanical pencil. She sat down at the dining room table. “What are we dealing with,” she said, voice even, “and what do you need done by when?”
    And who do you want murdered? Diana added silently.
    Thorn kept pacing, and Diana waited. She knew how he worked, especially in a temper. Her boss would need to get rid of some emotion before he could logically come up with a plan of attack.
    “I could kill him,” Thorn said finally. “He’s my only son and I love him, but for putting us through this, I swear to God…”
    He choked off the words, slamming a palm down on the back of one of the high-backed dining room chairs. Diana had seen her boss in a fury before, but it was never comfortable. She wrote Finn at the top of the paper.
    “He decided to surf the damned Banzai Pipeline. Waves the size of an 18-wheeler, for God’s sake. Even experienced surfers get killed on it. But does that stop Finn? No. Of course not. He signs right the hell up.”
    It felt like a rant, Diana thought, as he shifted to a list of Finn’s many past transgressions: running with the bulls, BASE jumping from Hoover Dam, trying to climb the Eiffel Tower. She remembered that one: negotiating with the French authorities had been a pain in the ass. If Betty hadn’t been so upset, Diana would have been tempted to leave Finn in one of their five-by-five-foot cells for a few months, merely out of spite.
    After what felt like hours, Diana fought the urge to glance at her cell phone to check the time. She understood that her boss needed to blow off steam, but when it came to family matters, he tended to use Diana as a sort of substitute shrink and sounding board. Which was fine, she reassured herself—she was more than just a lawyer to the Macalisters, she knew that.
    Still, flying overnight just to hear about the sexy, spoiled Finn was pushing it, even for her boss.
    “And now he’s involved in some damned cult,” Thorn growled.
    Her attention snapped back like a rubber band. Cults often targeted rich kids—bled them dry, cut off all contact with families. She gripped the pencil tighter. “Which cult?”
    “He’s part of that…that