They Gave My Sister the Hotels, So I Stayed to Take Them Back novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: The Bond

The injunction needs a bond Elise can't post, her mother calls her medicated to the press, her firm puts her on leave and a stranger named Noah offers help she refuses, so she checks into the hotel and finds her card blocked until Dorinda claims her.

"One point six million," Damon's lawyer said, before the courtroom door had even closed behind us. "Cash or a surety. By five o'clock."

He said it to the hallway, not to me.

He wanted the reporters on the bench to hear.

My own lawyer was a friend from college who did contracts, not this.

She touched my elbow.

"The judge gave you the injunction," she said. "That's a win."

"It's a win I can't afford."

The judge had been fair.

She'd read the hospital records and frowned at the date on the guarantee.

Then she'd said the bank was entitled to protection while I proved it, and set the bond.

I had two hundred and ten thousand dollars in savings.

I'd been proud of that number yesterday.

"There's another way," my lawyer said quietly. "Ask the court to freeze every company account until the signature's tested. Nobody moves a dollar."

"Including payroll."

She didn't answer.

The Bellweather paid two hundred and twelve people every other Friday.

Housekeepers. Line cooks. The bellman who taught me to whistle with two fingers.

Freeze the accounts, and the hotel closed inside a week.

Damon would still have his auction, and two hundred and twelve people would have nothing.

"No," I said.

"Elise, it's the only lever you've got."

"Then I'll find another one."

Damon's lawyer was still watching us.

He smiled and tapped his watch.

Down the hall, the elevator opened, and my mother stepped out in a cream suit and pearls.

A reporter from the Galveston paper got up off the bench.

"Mrs. Bell, can you comment on your daughter's claim?"

My mother put a hand on her heart.

"Elise has been through so much," she said. "She's on very strong medication since her surgery. She isn't herself."

"Is the hotel being sold?"

"The hotel is in wonderful hands," my mother said. "We're asking everyone to give Elise some privacy while she heals."

She looked past him, straight at me.

There was nothing in her face at all.

Then she let the reporter walk her back toward the elevator, talking about my father.

My phone buzzed.

My managing partner.

I almost let it ring out, and then I didn't.

"Elise," he said. "I'm so sorry about your dad."

"Thank you."

"I just had a call from a bank in Houston."

I closed my eyes.

"They told me there's a fraud question with your name in it," he said.

"There is. I'm the one asking it."

"I believe you," he said, which meant he didn't know.

"But you audit banks for a living. I can't have you on client work with this open."

"So I'm fired."

"You're on leave. Paid, for now. Don't come in Monday."

He hung up before I could thank him or tell him where to put his leave.

I stood by the courthouse window and watched a container ship slide past on the channel.

Everything I'd built in eight years in Houston had just come down to a voicemail.

"You're Elise Bell."

A man had stopped a few feet away.

He was tall, broad in the shoulders, in a navy jacket with his shirtsleeves rolled underneath.

Dark hair, gray at the temples too early. A nose that had been broken once.

I'd seen him at the memorial, standing by the windows, not drinking.

"I'm not giving comments," I said.

"I'm not a reporter. Noah Mercer."

He didn't offer his hand, which I liked.

"I run hotel turnarounds," he said. "The union sends me in when an owner's about to sink a property with people in it."

"The union sent you to my father's memorial?"

"No," he said.

"I sent myself. Damon Halberd bought my father's hotel in Corpus Christi eleven years ago."

"He drained it in eighteen months. My father lost everything he had."

His voice didn't rise at all.

"I've been waiting a long time for Damon to sign something stupid," he said. "I think he just did."

"And you want me to be the stupid thing he signed."

He almost smiled.

"I want the Bellweather open in thirty days," he said.

"I know a lender who might refinance it. I know which staff will talk. You know the books."

"I know a stranger who turned up at a funeral with a plan."

"That's fair."

"I'm not looking for a rescuer, Mr. Mercer."

"Good," he said. "I'm not one."

He held out a card.

I didn't take it, so he set it on the windowsill beside my hand and walked away.

I left it there for a moment.

Then I put it in my pocket and drove back to the island.

The Bellweather's lobby was cool and smelled like gardenias.

I walked up to the front desk with my overnight bag and my own credit card.

"One room, please," I said. "Thirty nights."

The young clerk typed, then stopped typing.

She glanced toward the back office.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Bell," she said. "There's a note on your name from Mr. Halberd. I'm not allowed to check you in."

Two guests at the next station turned to stare.

Behind me, a voice like a car horn said, "Then don't."

Dorinda Dillard came across the lobby in her housekeeping smock, reading glasses swinging on their beaded chain.

She took my bag out of my hand.

"She's staying with me," Dorinda said.

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