Chapter 11: The Board

Winslow was over the garden wall before I got the glass door open.

I stood in my father's grass in his shirt, in bare feet, while the motion lights came on one by one down the slope.

He came back four minutes later with his sleeve torn off at the shoulder and his jaw tight.

"He cleared the fence," Winslow said. "There was a car in the alley. He had the phone."

"What did he get?"

"Enough."

I looked at the lake, black and cold and enormous.

"Then Monday had better be loud," I said.

It was.

At eight fifty-five on Monday morning, the boardroom on the fortieth floor held a table for twenty and a view of the whole city.

Twelve directors sat at it who had been awake since five.

I walked in with Nadine on my left and Winslow a step behind my right shoulder.

The table went silent.

Darrell was already seated.

He sat at the head in the chair with arms, in a charcoal suit and a purple tie.

His hair was perfect, and his eyes were red.

Vivian sat on a folding chair along the wall in a lilac coat, beside two lawyers and a stack of folders.

An elderly woman at the foot of the table spoke in the dry courtesy of a bank examiner.

"Ms. Sorrell. We understand you represent Larkspur Partners."

"I am Larkspur Partners."

"So we were told on Friday."

"I'm sorry for the theater," I said. "It was a long year."

I walked up the length of the table.

Darrell's gaze followed me, hot and humiliated.

"This is a closed meeting of the directors," he said. "Rhiannon, you have no standing in this room."

"I hold thirty-eight percent of the voting stock. I have the standing of the largest shareholder you have."

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