The Best Revenge Page 10

  “One payment was posted then removed,” Josh went on, “and reposted after the due date. After that, they were simply posted late. Even the third one, that was sent certified mail, didn’t get posted until two days after the post office showed it had been delivered. Somebody could have a legal case there, if they wanted to pursue it.”

  “Might,” St. John muttered.

  “And, I don’t know if it matters, but did you know Alden has been stashing money in an offshore account in the Caymans?”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “Mac dug that up.”

  St. John stood up. What had Josh done, assigned everyone connected to Redstone to dig into this? Harlen McClaren surely had better things to do—like finding another sunken treasure, or making another billion on some clever investment no one else saw the worth in—than poking into this tiny-scale situation.

  “He had the connections,” Josh said easily. “Apparently it’s not a huge amount, but enough to fund a very comfortable retirement. If it’s significant to you, I’ll put Ryan to work backtracking the deposits.”

  “I…” For once the monosyllabic response was because he didn’t know what to say. “Don’t know yet,” he finally answered.

  “All right. I’ll have him keep on it, just in case. In the meantime, Ryan’s working on that software you wanted. Should have a beta version in a few days, he said.”

  “Bill to me.”

  “Like hell,” Josh said. “Josh—”

  “No more about it, Dam.”

  “Didn’t have to mobilize all Redstone,” he muttered.

  “Are you kidding? They were lining up at my door to find out what they could do, once they heard it was you asking. You’ve made every one of their jobs easier at one time or another. So shut up and let them at least feel like they’re paying you back a little.”

  He sank back down on the edge of the bed. He might not talk much, but he was seldom totally speechless. He was now. And his stomach knotted even more when Josh added quietly, “Let me feel like I’m paying you back a little.”

  St. John swallowed. Hard. Fought against betraying the fact that unaccustomed emotions were tumbling through him.

  “Backward,” he finally muttered.

  It was all he could think of to say.

  “I don’t have it backward. I don’t trade on obligation, you know that,” Josh said. “Worth for worth. You’re an investment that paid off big-time.” And then, after a moment’s pause, he added, “And you’re my friend, Dameron St. John. In case you’ve forgotten.”

  “Haven’t,” St. John said, barely able to get even the single word out.

  “And since I know how much you enjoy personal conversations,” Josh answered with a laugh, “I’ll leave it at that. Let me know what else you need. Let anyone here know. It may take more of us to do your job, but we’ll do it.”

  After Josh had hung up, St. John sat on the edge of the bed, cell phone in hand. Here in this place, just a few miles from the lair of the beast, he’d been forcibly reminded that this was no longer his life. His life was far away, among the people of Redstone, who had become the family he’d never had. Who turned to him when they needed something, and who he, amazingly, could turn to.

  A woman who’d thought he needed analyzing had once asked him if he trusted anyone. His first answer—unspoken because he wasn’t about to answer someone he already knew he would never see again—had been no. But he’d realized that was far from true; he trusted anyone Redstone.

  Jessa would fit there, he thought. Perfectly. She had all the requirements for Redstone; brains, wit, drive, generosity and the kind of loyalty Josh didn’t have to demand but earned, given as his rightful due in return for his own loyalty to his people, the loyalty that put Redstone consistently among the top-ranked places to work not just in the country, but in the world.

  He had that power behind him, and he could, and would use it to bury the abomination that was his father. Forever.

  Chapter 13

  Jessa didn’t put up the Closed sign when lunch rolled around. She’d decided she couldn’t afford to close. Not that it would make much difference, the town was so used to Hill’s being closed from noon to one they probably wouldn’t even look or notice.

  It meant she couldn’t go back to the house and see her mother, but she was doing better this week. Naomi had rallied at the idea that Hill’s was in trouble, and had even said she would come in herself; she hadn’t worked in the store in years, but surely she could still be of some help.

  Jessa felt a bit slow on the uptake; she should have thought to get her mother involved in the store again. Not that her father’s absence was any less noticeable here; in fact, in some ways it was more painfully apparent, but there was work to be done, and that was always a good diversion.

  She headed back to the office to grab the sandwich she’d brought in. And stopped dead in the doorway when she saw St. John leaning against the edge of the desk, his long, jeans-clad legs stretched out before him, his arms crossed over his chest, simply waiting.

  He wore the driving cap he’d had on that first day, although when she stepped in he removed it. She wondered where he’d picked up the manners, since she knew his mother had been too far gone in despair and surrender to have bothered. The cap made her curious; it seemed from another era, dated—at odds with his young face—and yet it suited him. And showed he could care less about current style or the lack of it.

  Not that anyone cared much about current style around rural Cedar, where function was king. Anyone except Albert Alden, that is, with his city-tailored suits, silk ties and more silken tongue. Problem was, since they rarely saw the like, a lot of people in Cedar were impressed, even proud that such a polished, articulate, successful man had come from their little town.

  “Newspaper,” St. John said, gesturing at her desk with a nod.

  So much for the niceties, she said. And obviously any explanation of where he’d vanished to last night was out of the question.

  She walked past him and looked where he’d indicated, expecting to see a copy of the Cedar Report. But there was no newsprint in sight. Instead, there was a text-dense printout that was slightly blurry.

  “A fax?” she asked.

  “No printer. Fax at the copy store.”

  “I have one you can use,” she said absently as she tried to spot in the document listing various financial interests—she assumed, given his shorthand, that they were the owners of the Report—what she was supposed to find. “It’s just an inkjet, but—”

  She stopped, frowned as a name in a subsection of a subsection caught her eye. “Wait a minute…isn’t this Alden’s corporation name?”

  “One of them.”

  She looked up at him. “You mean he owns a piece of the newspaper who endorsed him?”

  “Big piece,” was all he said, but he was giving her that look again, as if she were a student who’d done well. Only this time it pleased rather than irritated her.

  “How can he do that?”

  “A few layers deep.”

  “You mean he’s hiding his interest?”

  “Corporation owned by holding company owned by trust.”

  “Well,” she said in disgust, tossing the paper down on the desk, “that explains all the free propaganda thinly disguised as news articles.”

  “Not so free.”

  “No. Looks like he paid handsomely for it.”

  “More.”

  “More than handsomely, or there’s more?”

  “B,” he said. She waited.

  “Subsidizing Bracken’s.”

  She leaned back in the desk chair, her frown renewed. That made no sense, what did that have to do with the election?

  He went on. “Paying someone in the River Mill bank.”

  She blinked. “Paying who to do what?”

  “Your ‘late’ payments.”

  She sat upright abruptly. Then, slowly, she stood, her gaze fastened on his face.

  “
You’re telling me,” she said very carefully, “that Albert Alden is trying to sabotage not just me, but Hill’s? Why would he do that? To distract me?”

  “Partly. But if you can’t run a business,” he said with a shrug.

  She got it then. “Then I can’t run a town,” she said as the explanation dawned. “Now there’s an irony, given he inherited his money.”

  Something shifted in St. John’s face then, pain flickering for an instant in his eyes. And she remembered the night he’d hesitantly told her that the only person in the world he truly trusted, besides her, was his great-grandfather. The man who’d made the Alden fortune, who had lost his only son tragically young, had lived to see his grandson turn out a twisted wastrel who thought because he didn’t have to work he shouldn’t. The old man had been the only real support young Adam Alden had had.

  She wondered just how much the man had known. He’d died a couple of years before the abuse had become noticeable, she knew that much, but had he suspected? Was that why he’d been so close to his great-grandson, in an effort to protect him? Or had Albert Alden’s viciousness only been unleashed upon the death of the one man who had any control over him? Those were answers she needed, answers she had to have, or her heart was going to burst under the painful pressure.

  “So he really is trying to buy this election,” she said, making herself keep to the subject at hand. “And he’s not even doing that cleanly.”

  “Two years ago bought controlling interest in Riverside Paper.”

  She sank back down into her chair. Outside of the shopping area her father had shepherded, the paper producer was the biggest employer in the vicinity, and one of the biggest in the county despite the fact that it had been struggling of late, her father had said due to poor management and harsh environmental restrictions. And Alden controlled it?

  If she had to guess, she’d bet that of the working people in Cedar, nearly half got their paycheck from Riverside Paper. Which meant they owed their livelihood in part to Albert Alden.

  He wouldn’t even have to try to scare those people into voting for him. They were already scared, given the state of the company.

  “So they’ll vote for the man who figuratively signs their paychecks, whether they want to or not,” she murmured.

  “History proves,” he said. Then, amazingly, he added, “Quick learner.”

  “Me? Hardly. I feel like I’m in way over my head. This was supposed to be a small-town election, not some dirty national-style tangle.”

  “Springboard.”

  She grimaced. “You’d think if he was going to do that, he would have started at a higher level, county government or something.”

  “Influence takes time.”

  “And he’s chosen his path very carefully, hasn’t he?” At St. John’s nod, she sighed. “Politics…you know, if he’d put half this much energy into honest work—” She stopped, shaking her head ruefully. “Did I really just put politics and honest work in the same sentence?” He laughed.

  Jessa’s breath caught in her throat. It had been a short, sharp, rusty sort of sound, but it had been a laugh, and it sent a jolt of pure pleasure through her.

  He looked away, as if he’d been caught doing something illicit.

  While your father looks people straight in the eyes and lies through his bleached, straightened, perfect teeth, she thought.

  “It’s time,” he said, and she saw he was staring at the photographs on the wall again.

  She didn’t know what his plan was. And she wasn’t sure why she found herself thinking of a snowball starting down a mountain. Or a general before a strike that would change the course of a war.

  What she was sure of was that it would happen exactly as he planned.

  In his perverted abuse of his own son, Albert Alden had made an implacable enemy.

  Chapter 14

  What a difference a week made, Jessa thought.

  When she’d thought of St. John as a general, she’d had no idea how right she was. With an almost military precision, things began to happen.

  That it was St. John’s plan she had no doubt.

  That it was working, she couldn’t deny.

  She was awed. Amazed. And feeling more than a little wonder at the speed and meticulousness of an operation that was happening completely behind the scenes, beneath the radar.

  But what was in the forefront of her mind, despite all these things, was the ever-growing need to know, to understand, who this man was. And how he’d become a man able to bring incredible influence and pressure to bear in such a short time. How had battered, tortured Adam Alden become this coolheaded, taciturn and undeniably powerful force of nature?

  A customer drew her attention, then more of it as she had to search her memory to recall where the sewing machine needles had ended up. She smothered a sigh as she rang up Mrs. Walker’s purchase. She simply couldn’t keep up with all the stock they carried and run the store, too. She had hired a local high school student—Mrs. Walker’s nephew, in fact—to do the more physical things, like move things from the barn into the store when inventory got low, or put items on shelves. Problem was he sometimes put things away where they would fit, not necessarily where they would go in a logical way.

  As the woman left, she realized that computerizing needed to happen sooner rather than later, even if she had to go with two or three programs to accomplish what she wanted. With as much time as she spent finding things and updating things manually, she could input the data, a bit at a time. It would take a while, and for that time she’d be doing double duty, but she could handle that.

  She just didn’t know if she could handle that and this campaign at the same time. She’d have to—

  “Sewing machine needles?”

  She nearly jumped. She was getting more used to the silent way he moved, but he still startled her too often for her comfort. She wondered if that stealth mode was something he’d developed as a kid, trying to hide his presence from his father.

  “Not something we’d normally carry,” she said when her pulse had slowed to the still-too-fast rate it seemed to maintain around him, “but Mrs. Walker has been a customer for years, and it’s not that much trouble.”

  “Specialized.”

  “It’s what we do.”

  “Rare.”

  She bristled slightly. “If you’re going to suggest I stop such things, forget it.”

  He lifted a brow at her. “Wouldn’t. You know your business.”

  She took a breath. “Thank you. The efficiency expert dad consulted a couple of years ago, after he got sick, was always telling him things like that.”

  “Destroy what made you.”

  “Exactly,” she said, warmed by his grasp of what she’d tried to tell the man from Portland who had bustled about the crowded aisles and piled shelves with a sort of distaste that reminded her of a pansified prig faced with a mud puddle.

  “I’m feeling a bit harried,” she said. “Sorry I snarled.”

  He looked surprised. He knew she was under pressure, so it had to be the apology that had startled him.

  “Didn’t snarl. Couldn’t.”

  Her breath caught; he’d said it like someone who had known her for years.

  And there she was, back in the deep water she’d been trying so hard not to plunge into. Had he remembered her? Had he thought of her, over the years, when he’d been wherever he’d been, doing whatever he’d done? Or had he lumped her in with all the ugly memories of that time and this place, things to be forgotten, erased, washed away as the flooding river had washed away so much that long-ago night?

  With an effort, she made herself focus on the here and now.

  “I heard something interesting yesterday,” she said. He waited silently. “Ran into Joe Winston, who works at the bank in River Mill. He was quite rushed, he said, because it seems the bank is being audited.”

  “Happens.” His expression betrayed nothing, but she knew.

  “He said the only thing the
y’ve turned up so far is a data-entry clerk who apparently made some errors posting payments.”

  He still said nothing.

  “It probably would have ended there, but they found out that same clerk had made some large cash deposits in his own account at about the same time as the errors were made.”

  “Stupid.”

  “Yes.” She waited, but he was apparently determined not to be lured into admitting anything. So she went on. “The clerk at the post office told me there’s been a reporter from the Ledger, the big county newspaper, nosing around. Asking about Alden’s finances, his dealings, even his wife’s suicide and…his son’s death.”

  That at least got more words out of him. “Real investigative journalism?”

  She leaned against the front counter, keeping her gaze on him steadily. “Not much call for that these days, is there?” she said, almost conversationally. “Why do you suppose they care about our little election, when there’s much bigger news on the county level?”

  He gave her a one-shouldered shrug that told her nothing, but the fact that he didn’t meet her eyes told her much more.

  “But the most interesting thing I heard this week, while you were…wherever you were, is that Mr. Alden had a very strange reaction to a large personal loan he made suddenly being paid back in full.”

  “Did he.” The low, soft-voiced words were not a question.

  “He was furious. One of his clients was in his office when the phone call came, and heard it all. He was, apparently, screaming that whoever he’d loaned the money to couldn’t get out of their deal so easily. That he owned him.”

  Something came into his eyes then, something dark and deep and deadly. It was there only an instant, but it made a chill sweep through her, and the old joke about being someone’s worst nightmare suddenly wasn’t funny anymore.

  He owned him….

  She shuddered as she thought of the other contexts those words could be used in, contexts that could have caused that look in his eyes. And she understood.