Chapter 9: Hands Only

On the drive home from the opera benefit, I decided to find out what Finbar Hulme planned to do when he caught me.

It was the first time in my life I had used my own engagement for reconnaissance.

His car was warm, and his driver was behind glass.

The city slid by outside in wet gold lines.

"Tell me the worst deal you ever lost," I said.

He glanced over from the other side of the seat.

"That's a strange question for a woman in a dress."

"I'm told I have strange hobbies."

He loosened his tie with one finger.

"A bearing plant in Toledo," he said. "Two years ago. I had the financing and the buyer."

"And?"

"Then a holder I couldn't identify bought nine percent through three shell accounts and voted no."

"Why no?"

"I never learned. The sale collapsed, and forty of my people lost their jobs."

My throat had gone dry.

Two years ago I had read the Toledo plant's books for one night.

I had seen what the sale would do to its pension fund.

I had not known there were forty people in the other column.

I had only known what I had stopped.

"Do you know who it was?" I said.

"A ghost. It signs itself Greywater." He turned his head. "If I ever find them, Miss Drinkwater, I'm going to buy them lunch."

"That's generous."

"And then take their plant."

His voice was perfectly pleasant.

I looked out at the wet street, and I thought: there it is.

Not hate, and not rage.

Just a man who would explain his reasons over a very good lunch and leave you with nothing.

"I'd have thought you'd be angrier," I said.

"I'm saving it," Finbar said. "Anger is expensive."

Rain ticked on the roof.

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Raised the Wrong Girl, So Five Brothers Came for Me from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.