On Friday we announced that Bryan DeVore’s The Aspen Account is our Thriller of the Week and the sponsor of thousands of great bargains in the thriller, mystery, and suspense categories: over 200 free titles, over 600 quality 99-centers, and thousands more that you can read for free through the Kindle Lending Library if you have Amazon Prime!
Now we’re back to offer our weekly free Thriller excerpt:
The Aspen Account
After a colleague at Denver’s top accounting firm dies in a mysterious skiing accident, Michael Chapman is assigned to replace him on an audit of software behemoth X-Tronic. At the same time, rookie journalist Sarah Matthews of the Denver Post starts nosing into rumors that may connect X-Tronic to her brother’s death. And the reclusive Aspen billionaire who founded X-Tronic thirty years ago begins to fear that events unfolding at his company will finally make him pay for a past he would love to forget: when he sold out friends and neglected family in his single-minded pursuit of success. Soon all three will discover just how much they are willing to risk to uncover the truth behind a conspiracy that will shock the world.
“The nature of Michael’s double life can be frustratingly elusive, but it’s exciting to watch him risk everything in order to unveil an elaborate, insidious conspiracy.” – Publishers Weekly
“Taut suspense…swiftly paced plot…an atmospheric backdrop…The strength of this debut will have many readers clamoring for more. Devore displays a sure hand in a tight, eminently readable thriller certain to draw a substantial following.” – Kirkus Reviews
“An engaging mystery story…Michael is no James Bond, but Devore portrays him with enough panache to keep the pages turning…The fascination is in the telling of how (the essential) conflicts play out. It is an enjoyable read.” – ForeWord Clarion Review
“Timely…enough plot twists to keep the reader turning the pages…For anyone who’s had enough of action lawyers, make way for a new breed of hero.” – BlueInk Review
And here, for your reading pleasure, is our free excerpt:
Prologue
Vail Mountain, Colorado
Kurt Matthews felt as though he had just made a deal with the devil—a deal he had no intention of keeping. As he sat gazing over the forty-foot drop, a cold gust brushed across his face and nearly blew the lit joint out of his gloved hand. He looked out over the tops of the evergreens and aspens sloping down below him. Hearing a rustle behind him, he swore at how easily he had let himself be lured into the secluded woods in the ski resort’s back bowls. He fought to appear relaxed.
“You’re doing the right thing, Kurt,” said the voice behind him. “Just do what you’re told for the next month and everything’ll work out fine.”
Right. Something sarcastic in that tone—he was just being toyed with. To his right, through the trees, the trail ran past like a white, frozen river, a group of four skiers working their way down the far edge of its challenging terrain. How hard would it be to get off this ledge and escape through the woods? He was a good skier, and he would have a fair chance of racing to safety if he could just get out of the trees and onto the open trail.
“A month is a long time,” Kurt said without turning around. “I don’t see how you can keep it a secret.” If he wanted to make it out of these snowy woods alive, he had to sound convincing, as if he would help keep it all under wraps.
“My God,” the voice said. “You really don’t know what you’ve stumbled on, do you?”
There was a brief silence, then a sudden hiss behind him—the sound of a fast movement in ski clothes. He must have made a mistake, said something wrong. He spun around just as something hard thwacked across the side of his head. Though the heavy ski boots slowed him, he still managed to get one hand on the front of his attacker’s red ski coat. Looking into his attacker’s eyes, Kurt felt rage explode inside him as the man cocked the metal baton for another strike. Kurt lowered his head and tried to lunge, but the baton arced again, knocking his hand from the coat and sending him reeling backward. He felt himself slide on the snow, toward the drop-off.
Frantically, Kurt scrabbled in the snow with his hands, then tried to dig in with his elbows as he slid backward. A second later, he felt the snow disappear underneath him. Falling over the ledge, he fell through the air, his speed gaining. His left thigh hit something hard, but he kept falling. Then, with a thudding jolt, he was lying in the snow, looking at the rocky ledge above.
Pain shrieked through his back. His legs felt as if they were someone else’s, and raising his head, he saw a bright red stain in the snow. Rolling sluggishly onto his stomach, he glimpsed a skier gliding by not fifty yards away, through the trees. Stabbing his gloved hands deep, he struggled to haul himself a few feet forward through the loose powder, ski boots dragging behind him like useless clubs. A group of three snowboarders floated past, weaving in and out of the outermost trees with barely a sound. He cried out, knowing he was too far back in the trees to be heard. As another bolt of pain shot through his head, he dragged himself forward another few feet.
A swooshing sound came from above—his attacker was skiing around the rocky ledge to get down to him. Adrenaline fired, pulsing through his body as he hauled himself forward, toward the open trail, still a hundred feet away.
You can do this, Kurt told himself. Stay focused. You can make it . . .
Pulling himself through the stand of pale aspen trunks, half blinded by the pain, he heard the swooshing above him grow louder.
1
Michael Chapman knew that he had just made the biggest mistake of his young life. Sitting in the small cubicle padded with puncture-friendly walls, he rubbed his temple to ward off a looming headache. He had gotten a little too careless during the past few months, taking too many chances, and now some of them had caught up with him. He looked at his watch: almost three—the conference meeting would begin in a few minutes. Rising from his ergonomically designed chair, he straightened his tie, took a deep breath, and walked toward the corner conference room at the end of the long hallway.
“It’s just a game,” he whispered nervously to himself, walking through the offices of the largest international accounting firm in Denver. “Stay focused—it’s just a game.”
The Pike’s Peak conference room was one of eight gravitas boardrooms spread throughout Cooley and White, in its towering office building downtown. A smooth white marble conference table stretching the length of the room was surrounded by twenty black leather chairs. As Michael entered the room, he glanced out the window. Seeing the snow-capped Rockies rising in the distance behind the Front Range, he recalled his job interview with Cooley and White, nearly two years ago in this very room. So much had changed during those two years that he only vaguely remembered the excitement he had felt on joining the firm. Now, with his career on the line, he just needed to keep his anxiety at bay long enough to survive the meeting.
The other three audit associates, already seated, were avoiding eye contact with him. Michael was their supervisor on the current audit for Pipco Industries, one of the Denver office’s twenty biggest clients. The engagement had gone like clockwork for the first two months, but as pressure for the work deadline mounted this past month, things had suddenly turned disastrous. Now he and his three subordinates waited for the emergency meeting called by his boss, John Falcon.
The door to the conference room opened, and Falcon strode into the room. For a senior audit partner working an average of a hundred hours a week, the man still found time to stay remarkably fit. Rumor had it that he slept only four hours a night. His jet-black hair and trim, tanned physique belied his fifty years, and his nonstop energy had made him one of the most successful of the firm’s forty partners. Falcon stood stiffly across the table, staring at the four auditors and making no attempt to hide his ire.
With over seven hundred offices across the globe, Cooley and White was one of the biggest international accounting firms in the world, and its Denver office was more than twice the size of the next largest firm in the city. And Michael well knew one of the main reasons for the firm’s dominance: mistakes were not tolerated.
“This is a complete disaster!” Falcon said, pressing his palms to the conference table and leaning forward. He stared a hole in each of them. “I can’t believe you’ve upset a client that pays us over a million dollars a year! Do you realize that the CFO personally called me to complain?”
The young auditors squirmed in silence. Michael suddenly realized that they were all in much more trouble than even he had thought.
Falcon turned from the table and moved to the window. Thirty-seven floors below, the city awaited a winter storm that was already swallowing up the mountains before their eyes.
Michael focused on keeping his composure. Half an hour ago, he could almost taste the strong lime margaritas at the Rio in LoDo’s bar district, where he was to meet two coworkers, Kurt Matthews and Todd Osgood, for an early happy hour. Now all he wanted was to keep his job.
Falcon turned from the window, rubbing his forehead. “Look,” he said evenly, “I just spent thirty minutes in a meeting discussing how we’re going to respond. Do you guys realize how serious this is? We lost original invoice documents that belonged to the client. How the hell could that have happened? Michael, you’re the senior on the engagement—it’s your job to supervise the team in the field. Care to explain what happened?”
Despite his effort to relax, Michael could already feel the sweat beading on his forehead. “This was a big misunderstanding,” he said. “No one knew what happened to the documents. The client thought they had given them to us, but we thought they still had them.”
“Well, which is it?” Falcon demanded.
It was me, damn it, Michael thought to himself. I broke firm policy—took the original documents from the client’s premises and hid them in the trunk of my car for two days. There was no other way. “We don’t know,” he said. “The documents turned up a few days after we noticed they were missing.”
“They just ‘turned up’?” Falcon said, raising his eyebrows in mock astonishment.
“I found them,” said the young blonde woman sitting next to Michael. Her fingers fidgeted on the table without her knowing it as she withered under his gaze. “They were buried under some of the workpapers in the audit room.”
“They were with our papers the whole time?” Falcon asked. “So the client was right—we did have them.”
“No,” she replied. “We had already looked through everything when they went missing. I searched everything—we all did. I swear they weren’t there before.”
“But they were there, Amanda,” Falcon insisted. “If you had found them the first time you looked, we would have avoided all this.”
Leave her alone, Michael wanted to say. It’s me you want. After two days I put them in a pile of work papers where I knew someone would find them. She’s innocent. But all he said was, “It’s not her fault, John. We all stacked workpapers around the area, and the client kept bringing things in and out. These just got misplaced in the shuffle.”
“You’re missing the point here,” Falcon said. “Misplacing the documents for a few days wouldn’t have been the end of the world. It’s what happened next that really upset the client.”
“The accusation,” Michael said.
Falcon nodded. “It was way out of line. Do you realize how bad it looks that you guys accused the client of misplacing these docs, only to find out that you had them the whole time? Do you know how serious that is? The client’s procurement manager was terrified she would get fired over this, and the controller was taking heat from the CFO. Then the documents turn up in our files, and everyone realizes the whole thing was really our fault. Christ, people thought they were going to lose their jobs. This has struck a real nerve with the client—I’m doing everything I can to keep us from losing their business.”
“John,” Michael said, “I’m sorry this got so out of control, but I’ve apologized to the CFO and everyone else involved. We had a long talk, so hopefully things will calm down at Pipco.”
“Well, that’s something, at least, but it may be too little, too late. I was also appalled that you didn’t properly document the sales transaction of the discontinued operations. You should know better than to blow past an issue that important. You were careless.”
“I’m sorry about the problems on the engagement,” Michael said, “and I take full responsibility for what happened, but I think we can still—”
Falcon’s upraised hand cut him off, and Falcon shook his head as if to say there was no point in continuing the discussion. “It doesn’t matter anymore. All of you have been pulled off the engagement. It was the client’s request, and to be honest, I agree with them. We can’t afford to lose them. You will transfer all your files to me, and I’ll forward them to the new team that will be out there next week.”
Falcon strode toward the door and opened it while motioning for everyone to leave the room. “I still need to decide what we’re going to do with the four of you, but for the time being I think you all need to give some serious thought to everything that went wrong on this engagement.”
The mortified staff auditors rose from the conference table and left the room with eyes lowered, unable to look at the senior partner as they walked past. Michael put himself last in the procession so he could offer one final apology, but before he could open his mouth, Falcon shut the door so that they were the only two in the room.
“This is your third project in a row where something has gone seriously wrong,” he said.
“Yeah, I know,” Michael replied. But he offered no explanation, no rehearsed defense, nothing to counter the grave indictment. He knew he had been pressing his luck for the past few months, and for the first time, he considered the terrifying possibility that he had finally pushed it too far.
Seeing that Michael had nothing to say in his own defense, Falcon shook his head. “The others will all get negative evaluations in their employee files for their part in the project, but for you this is a little more serious.” He looked at his watch. “I’d like to take a moment to cool down, but then I want to see you in my office in fifteen minutes.”
When Michael finally walked out of the room, he looked at his watch and made a quick note of the time. Fifteen minutes. That might give him just enough time to leave the building and make an urgent call in case this proved to be the end of his career at Cooley and White. Walking down the hallway as fast as he could without drawing attention, he grabbed his coat from his cubicle and moved past glass-walled offices and more cubicles to the marble-floored elevator bay. Hitting the button, he stepped back and looked again at his watch. Fourteen minutes. He would need to hurry.
2
Michael walked out the revolving glass doors to the Wynkoop Courtyard, where fat clumps of snow drifted like goose down on the faint breeze. On sunny days, the courtyard had a lunch crowd of three hundred, but today’s storm had left it under a foot of snow, and empty. To make sure he couldn’t be overheard by anyone coming or going from the building, he walked into the center of the plaza. He stepped out into the open, lowered his head, and punched in a number on his cell phone as wet snow fell down the back of his jacket collar.
“Glazier,” a crisp voice answered.
“It’s Chapman.”
“Michael? What the . . . ! You can’t just call me like this. We’re scheduled to talk next week.”
“I wish it could wait, but there’s something you need to know right away.”
“Make it brief.”
“Something happened today,” he began. “There were some mistakes made on a project.”
“Any trouble for you?”
Michael swiped the snow off a concrete bench with his arm and sat in the center of the desolate courtyard. “I didn’t think there would be. I’ve been in this situation before, so I assumed I would still have a little breathing room with the firm.”
“You assumed?”
“Damn it, Glazier. It’s right before busy season. The firm can’t afford to let anyone go this time of year. A slap on the wrist—that’s all I expected. It’s the only way this’ll work, and you know it.”
“Not if you get fired. You can’t let that happen, no matter what. It would ruin everything.”
Michael squeezed the phone tight. His fingers were getting cold. He looked at his watch: six minutes.
“I’ve been pulled from my current project. My entire team’s being reassigned. And now I have to meet privately with Falcon.”
“Shit! What did you do?” After a brief pause, the voice known as Glazier said, “Look, too much is riding on the line. I don’t care what you have to do—just make sure you still have your job at the end of the day. I don’t have to tell you what’ll happen if you get fired—too many people are depending on you.”
“I’ve gotta go, Glazier. I just wanted to update you. I’ll touch base later.”
Michael snapped the phone shut and turned to look up at the dark monolith that housed Cooley and White. Even in the muted light of snowfall, the building’s black windowed surface had a slick sheen that earned it the nickname of the “Darth Vader building.” It was an image of power, but also of gloom and despair. Walking back across the snowy courtyard, toward the revolving doors and the inviting warmth inside, he felt as if he were heading back into the lion’s den. Glazier’s words lingered in his mind: . . . just make sure you still have your job at the end of the day. His contact was right, of course. Everything they had done together for the past three years could be destroyed in the next twenty minutes of his life.
* * *
“Michael. Please, come in.” Falcon’s demeanor had softened in the short time since their last meeting, and Michael was terrified that the man was taking the polite, respectful attitude often extended to someone before they got the sack.
He glanced around Falcon’s office, taking in his surroundings, as if he might somehow save his career by understanding the man who now held it in his hands. On the shelf sat a family photo, a black-and-white that reminded him of one of those old Austrian films set in the Alps. There were professional certificates from various states and universities, and a watercolor of aspen groves in a hanging valley.
“Well, Michael,” Falcon began, “I want to get right to the point. I know you’ve already had some meetings about your problems on your past few engagements. Because of these new problems, there has now been a great deal of discussion between the partners regarding your future at the firm.”
He paused to let this last comment sink in before continuing. “It has been suggested that we let you go from the firm. Michael, I don’t know if you realize this, but after we conclude our work this year for Pipco, there’s a very good chance they will begin shopping around for another accounting firm. We could be losing a client that generated substantial revenue for our firm last year. That is not a mistake many people in your position would survive.”
Michael didn’t say anything. He sat in silence, maintained eye contact with the partner, and nodded his head, looking appropriately concerned, aware that the wrong word or gesture could spell the end for him at the firm. You can’t get fired.
“When you joined our firm two years ago, you had scored in the top one percent in the country on the CPA exam. You were one of our most promising young professionals. But over the past six months you seem to have lost interest in your career. Your performance evaluations have gone from ‘exceeded expectations’ to ‘met expectations’ to ‘needs improvement.’ Michael, I don’t understand this. Is this really the profession that you want to be in? You need to tell me what’s going on.”
For what seemed an eternity, Michael looked down at the desk. What would his father think of him if he could hear this? Ernest Chapman, one of the most respected accounting professors in the Midwest, had written textbooks, won national awards, and was practically a deity at Kansas State. It horrified Michael to think of how his father would feel if he knew his son was on the verge of getting fired from this prestigious firm.
He could see the bright image of snow, rising in reflection on the polished desktop as it drifted downward outside the window. Falcon had a point, though—Michael was growing tired of his life in the firm. All he really wanted right now was to go have a margarita with Kurt and Todd. Why should he put himself through this torture? No, just a little longer, he told himself. Just last a little longer and you’ll be free.
He could feel Falcon’s eyes on him. “I’ve been having some personal problems lately,” he lied.
“Michael, we all have problems, but in this kind of environment we need to handle those problems, or we won’t succeed.”
“I know, I know,” he said apologetically.
“Look, we want you to be able to succeed here, but this situation has become so severe that we need to formally place you on our ‘action plan’ program. You need to come up with a detailed plan specifying exactly what areas you need to improve on and how you plan to achieve each of your goals. I need to see some immediate improvements. Traditionally, the time frame for the action plan is thirty days, but because we’re in our second week of busy season, I’ve decided to extend it to sixty days. That should give you the entire busy season to show us if you’re ready to continue your career at Cooley and White.”
A swarm of thoughts surged through his mind, the most prominent being that he still had his job. After everything he had done in the past few months, he had somehow been able to diminish his reputation within the firm without being fired. This last incident had nearly been the end to everything he had worked so hard to achieve, but somehow, after the dust had settled, he was still standing. Glazier was right: he had been way too careless. There would be no more room for mistakes.
“Thank you for this second chance,” he said. “I will get my personal life together and will focus one hundred percent of my energy on improving my performance.”
The partner smiled. “I know you will. Let’s get the plan on paper in the next few days so we can see how we’re going to tackle this. Unfortunately, I’ve had to take you off the Pipco engagement. But we’ll get you scheduled on another client by next week, and then we could . . .” Falcon broke off his sentence as his phone rang. He looked at the number and then back at Michael. “Well, let’s circle back on this tomorrow morning.” He turned and picked up the phone.
Michael flipped open his portfolio and made a quick note. Then, closing the folder, he stood up to leave the office.
“Oh, my God,” Falcon said into the phone. “No, no, Patti. Thank you, but I should be the one to send an announcement to everyone . . . No, I’m okay . . . I’ll take care of it.”
Michael turned back to look at the senior partner after the call ended. Falcon was looking with a bemused face at the receiver.
“Is everything all right?”
Falcon shook his head. “That was my admin. She just received a phone call from Kurt Matthews’s parents. There was some kind of skiing accident. This morning his body was found, frozen in the woods at Vail.”
All his life, Michael had never been good at handling death. He tried to take a deep breath, but the air felt shallow and insufficient in his lungs. He felt as if he were suffocating. The horrible realization was settling into his mind. Not Kurt . . . It wasn’t possible. His eyes focused again on the impressionistic painting of aspen trees—shimmering yellow leaves and a dusting of new snow. His head felt light; the painting seemed to give off a sense of violent chaos. He had to leave Falcon’s office, had to quit the firm. He had to get out. But no matter how badly he wanted to start a new life, he knew that he couldn’t leave Cooley and White . . . not yet—not until the game was over.
3
The silver elevator doors opened on the eighth floor of the Commerce Building, headquarters of the Denver Post. The young woman with flaming red hair stepped into a hive of activity as various staff reporters and seasoned journalists pounded away on their laptops, scrambling to file their stories before deadline. A small cluster of employees hovered around a mounted television, making snide remarks as a politician spoke into a dozen microphones. But the redheaded woman kept her head low and largely ignored the activity around her.
“Oh, my God, Sarah, you poor thing! What are you doing here?” a veteran copyeditor said, getting up from her desk and rushing toward her.
“Mrs. Adams,” the young woman said, “is Jack around?”
The copyeditor reached forward and gently grabbed the woman’s shoulders as if she had just returned unharmed from some perilous journey. “Oh, Sarah, I’m so sorry. Come here, child.” She pulled the woman close and hugged her. “You shouldn’t have come in. You know you don’t have to be here—everyone would understand.”
“Is Jack around?” Sarah Matthews asked again in a quiet voice.
The copyeditor gently released her. “Honey, he’s in his office.”
Sarah nodded. “I’m okay. Really. I just need to ask Jack a question.” And taking a deep breath, she nodded briefly before sidling around the woman and heading to the senior editor’s office.
Her knuckles made a hollow dinging sound on the glass door. Jack Bayman looked up from his phone and waved her in. He sat hunched over his desk, tie loosened, sleeves up. Barking some final words into the receiver, he hung up.
“Sarah, you shouldn’t be here,” he said, standing up and sending his chair rolling backward. “I want you to take the week off.”
“Jack, I have a story I want you to put me on.”
“A story? Jesus, what are you trying to do to yourself! You’re in no condition to investigate anything right now.” He shook his head in bewilderment. “Go home, Sarah. Please, take some time off. That’s not a suggestion; it’s an order.”
She stood her ground. “Jack, after I broke the McCleery story, you said I could pursue anything I wanted for my next major piece—you promised.”
“And you can. But you oughta give yourself some time off right now? I don’t know of any journalist who would be back at work after what you’ve been through. Take a week off, and we’ll discuss any story you want once you come back.”
Sarah was getting frustrated now. She hadn’t expected this resistance from her editor. She knew he was just trying to help, but she also knew she didn’t have a choice.
“This story can’t wait,” she said with a crackle of frustration in her voice. “I’ve already started on it. If you don’t support me, I’ll just quit and freelance it to the Tribune or the Times when I’m finished.”
“Come on, Sarah . . .” Her boss stepped around from behind the desk, studying her determined expression. “You’re the best rookie reporter I’ve seen in years. I’m not going to lose you. You know this paper’s behind you all the way. I just think it’s too early for you to be back here. I’ve seen too many good journalists burn out in this job just as their careers were reaching their prime. It’s a tough business. You’ll learn that in time, but meanwhile you should learn to take it easy when your editor tells you to.”
“Jack, this story’s a hell of a lot bigger than a slimy city manager.” She walked forward and grabbed the copy of the Post’s morning edition on his desk. Picking up a red pen, she scrawled something in the margin of the front page.
Jack leaned in to read it, and his eyes shot up to her. “That’s crazy.”
She shook her head.
“I don’t believe you,” he said. “What could you possibly have?”
“I can’t tell you—not yet.”
Jack turned and walked to the outside window. He stared out at the vast lawn, turning brown in the early winter weather, that stretched between City Hall and the Capitol. Pedestrians moved between the two buildings, past park benches where a few homeless people lounged in the sunshine.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll let you look into it. But you sure as hell better keep me informed on this one. No more of that cloak-and-dagger crap like with the McCleery story. If you really do find something, we’ll discuss running it. But it better be airtight, understand?”
When he turned around to look at Sarah, he saw only the glass door swinging to and a flash of red hair bobbing around the corner.
* * *
Michael walked into Falcon’s empty office Thursday morning. The partner’s laptop sat on the other side of the desk, and its whisper fan told him the man couldn’t be far away.
“Morning, Michael,” Falcon said as he walked into the office. “Glad you could make it.”
“Morning.”
“Michael, this is regarding Kurt Mathews. I know the two of you were good friends. Kurt was also one of my five senior associates, just like you are. He was supervising one of my biggest clients.”
“X-Tronic,” Michael said, referring to the largest software company in Colorado and the fourth largest in the country. They specialized in large-scale business application software that rivaled Oracle, Microsoft, and Cygnus International.
“Yes. Well, as difficult and shocking as his death is, we still have business in the firm that needs to be done. We’re right in the middle of our three-month scheduled work for their year-end financial audit. My team’s been working at X-Tronic for the past six weeks, and Kurt was running the engagement in the field. We’re in a real bind with scheduling, so you’ve been assigned to replace him until we complete the engagement. I know it must seem awkward to take over for a coworker and friend so soon after his death, but we have to get this done. Now, despite the terrible circumstances that brought it about, you should recognize this as the golden opportunity it is: you can get off the probation you’ve been placed on.”
Michael was speechless. Yesterday his neck was on the block, and today he was being handed the lead of the X-Tronic audit team. He could scarcely believe his luck. During graduate school at Kansas State, he had written extensively about X-Tronic and its ambitious founder, Don Seaton, in his thesis examining the correlation between ambitious corporate leadership and innovative financial growth strategies. Mr. Seaton had become a legend in the world of high-tech executives, rising from a humble upbringing in New York City to become a self-made billionaire through the success of X-Tronic. There was no businessman in the world whom Michael respected more.
But Michael’s excitement was soon eclipsed by the reality of his situation. He felt a twinge of guilt at the thought of finishing the project Kurt had begun. It had been less than twenty-four hours since he first heard of his friend’s death, and now he would have to sift and scavenge through his friend’s computer files and work papers, searching for any information relevant to the audit engagement. He felt ashamed. How could he just start working on X-Tronic as if nothing had happened? How could he just brush aside his friend’s death?
“When do you want me to go out to X-Tronic?” Michael asked, hoping he would be given some time to digest the news.
“Right away,” Falcon said without emotion. “I’m e-mailing you the contact information and directions now. Kurt’s work papers are in the audit room they set up at the company, and I’m having the IT department scrub the files from his laptop for anything related to X-Tronic. You should have those by this afternoon.”
Michael stood and turned to leave the room, but Falcon stopped him. “Oh, one more thing—I’m afraid I’m going to have to keep a close eye on you during this engagement. I don’t have to tell you this is your last chance to succeed at this firm. If you do exactly what I ask, we won’t have any problems. We just need to get through the next month; then the project will be done.”
Michael nodded, but he had concerns. There weren’t a lot of good reasons for Falcon to put him on an audit of one of the firm’s largest clients. Sure it was possible that the scheduling committee had found no better options because of Kurt’s sudden death. But getting assigned to a large client after repeated mistakes was a scenario Glazier had warned him about. His instincts were now on high alert.
4
Forty-five minutes after leaving Falcon’s office, Michael arrived at the Denver Tech Center high-rise that would be his workplace for the next two months. Stepping out of his silver Audi, he slung his computer bag over his shoulder and looked up at the impressive twenty-story glass building in the center of the corporate suburbs. So this was the headquarters of X-Tronic. The software company had acquired fame fifteen years ago when it bought up three smaller companies and beat a hostile takeover bid from a larger competitor during the same twelve-month period.
Over the past four years, he had kept up with developments at X-Tronic. On the front page of the Wall Street Journal, the company had continuously beaten analysts’ earnings expectations, just as it had been one of the few stocks whose price continued to rise even during the sluggish financial markets of the dot-com collapse many years earlier. He found it hard to believe that he was now in charge of auditing their financial statements—the same statements that would have the attention of the financial wizards of Wall Street.
The lobby, floored with a harlequin pattern of elegant red and black marble slabs, was the size of a basketball court. A few expensive couches in the center divided the entrance from the security desk at the far end. He walked across the marble floor toward the security officer, who was already eyeing him.
“I’m here to see Jerry Diamond,” Michael said. “I’m one of the auditors from Cooley and White.”
“Is this your first time at X-Tronic?” the guard asked in a bored monotone.
“Yes.”
“One moment, please.” The guard flipped around to his computer. “Your name, please?”
“Michael Chapman.”
“Yes, here it is. Looks like you’ll need an extended pass.”
“I plan to be here for two months.”
“Follow this corridor down to the elevators. You’ll need a security pass to go up into the building, but you don’t need anything to go down. Just go to the basement and follow the yellow line on the floor. It leads from the elevator to the main security office. They’ll check your identification and issue you a pass. Then come back to me, and I’ll tell Mr. Diamond you’re ready.”
Michael wasn’t surprised at the tight security; after all, programming codes and other intellectual property were any software company’s lifeblood. If the wrong person ever got access to sensitive information in the building, it could cost the company its competitive advantage and billions of dollars in future revenues.
Michael spent the next fifteen minutes getting his security pass. Afterward, waiting in the lobby for Mr. Diamond, he gazed up at the eighteenth-century French painting that covered much of one wall. An ancient Roman in a red cloak offered swords to the extended arms of three warriors while, at the far right side, a small group of women huddled in an archway, weeping in each other’s arms.
“It’s very powerful, isn’t it?”
Hearing the friendly baritone voice behind him, Michael turned to find a man in his mid-forties, wearing a tailored suit. He was big: six-four and 250, most of it muscle. And his square jaw and shaved head made him look like a battle-hardened field general transposed into a life requiring tailored business suits instead of razor-creased uniforms.
“Have you seen it before?”
“The Oath of the Horatii,” Michael answered, “but not the original.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because I saw it in the Louvre three years ago.”
The man smiled. “Do you know what is happening in the painting, or did you just memorize the name in Paris?”
Michael realized he was being tested, and saw little reason to hold back now that the challenge had been extended.
“The three brothers, the Horatii”—he gestured with his eyes at the three men receiving the proffered swords—“were chosen by Rome to challenge the Curiatii, champions of the town of Alba. In this scene, as they receive their weapons from their father, they are taking an oath that they will either win or die.”
“Win or die?”
“Yes. It symbolizes courage in the face of risk—and the desire for dominance.”
“And the women?”
“Weeping for the men, whom they may never see again.”
“Very good. Michael Chapman, I presume?”
“Yes,” Michael said, extending his arm in the same direction as the Horatii in the painting. “Jerry Diamond?”
The man nodded. “Please follow me and I’ll introduce you around.”
They walked to the elevators, and Diamond pushed the button, then turned to look back at the corridor. “One more question, Mr. Chapman: why do you think X-Tronic has that painting in its lobby?”
Michael looked at the man’s dark eyes. “I thought it was X-Tronic’s way of saying this is an extremely competitive software company.”
Diamond smiled. “Good, Mr. Chapman. Very good indeed. By the way, that painting is the original. Mr. Seaton purchased it from the Louvre for fifteen million dollars when he was in Paris last year, and insisted that it be placed in the front lobby so that everyone would see it when they first enter the building.” He stepped aside and gestured for Michael to take the first step into the elevator. “Welcome to X-Tronic, Mr. Chapman.”