Adam took care of everything. He thanked the security agent and the policewoman for them both. He flagged a taxi and went to the nearest branch of Derek’s bank. He coached Kayla through signing the check and requesting a banker’s check made out to cash. They then traveled to the brokerage agency where he had set up her account. Kayla sat and let their investment discussions wash over her.
Adam took her back to the taxi and said, “There’s one more thing I need to take care of before we go.”
“Can it wait?”
“I know you’re exhausted. But this has to happen now.”
Adam asked the taxi to find them an inexpensive hotel near Paddington Station. The driver pulled up in front of a Victorian row house whose rooms were large and slightly seedy. Entering the room he had secured, Adam pulled the frayed cover off the bed and watched Kayla sink onto the mattress. “A hundred and fifty thousand pounds was as far as I thought I could push him.”
Kayla realized he took her silence as regret, or disappointment, and was apologizing. “We needed this so much.”
“I wish it was more.”
The words did not come easily, for to shape them meant giving structure to hope. She had lived so long without any. “We might be able to turn everything around now.”
“That’s my thinking. At least you’ve got more time to try.” He checked his watch. “I need to go out for a while. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“All right.” The last thing she heard was the door opening and closing. Kayla dove into sleep.
She drifted back toward the surface several times. Once when the door opened, and she opened her eyes long enough to see it was Adam. Again when the room became tainted by some sharp chemical smell. Kayla sat up and swung her feet to the floor and rubbed her face. “Adam?”
The bathroom door cracked open. Light spilled into the darkened room. “I’m here.”
She rubbed her face again. “How long have I been asleep?”
“A couple of hours. Maybe a little longer.” Adam pushed open the door.
Kayla rose to her feet and backed until she met the wall. Derek Steen entered the room. But it was Adam who said, “It’s me.”
He walked over and turned on the switch by the door. Kayla felt the world return to gradual focus. Adam wore Derek like a suit. “I took Derek’s company pass from his briefcase when I fetched his checkbook.”
“You’re going inside mvp?”
“We need to see if Derek has anything to help your dad, Kayla.”
“That’s crazy!”
“Listen to me.” Adam’s calm was unnerving. “Getting the money for your project was only half the battle.”
All her possible responses created a jumbled mess in her brain, such that the only one to emerge was, “Joshua fired you!”
Adam pointed at the table by the window. “I’ve brought you a sandwich and a juice.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You need to eat, Kayla.”
She made it around the bed and over to the window with-out taking her eyes off him. As she passed the bathroom, she smelled the odor again and realized, “You’ve dyed your hair.”
He followed her over but did not sit down beside her. The room had an old-fashioned bay window with heavy green drapes. Outside there was the rumble and hiss of city traffic. “I need to look enough like him that anybody I pass won’t be alarmed.”
She peeled away the sandwich cover and took a bite. “You went out and bought his clothes.”
“Close as I could find.”
“It’s amazing.”
Adam wore a copy of Derek’s clothes from that morning. They formed a version of city casual—cashmere sweater over a pin-striped shirt with a white collar, and a flashy foulard knotted about his neck. Fawn-colored gabardine slacks. Italian loafers. Gold watch that dangled loose.
She leaned more closely. “Are you wearing contacts?”
“Eye color was something I couldn’t risk having wrong.”
“And your face. How did you . . .”
“Makeup.” His features possessed a hint of Derek’s slackness. The tinted hair was slicked back and spiked. His eyes were gray now, not quite as light as Derek’s, but enough for someone who merely glanced his way. “These are tricks, Kayla. Like cue cards.”
Adam stood by the window drapes and watched her eat. Several times he started to speak, then caught himself. Kayla waited until she finished the sandwich and drank the last of the orange juice to ask, “What is it?”
“When we were away over the weekend, you said how perfect it was for me to escape into acting roles. Well, you were right. On the show, my role was the dissipated playboy, the guy who could have any woman and usually did. In a lot of the episodes, I needed to go from the night before to the day after. But there’s more.”
When he did not continue, Kayla said softly, “More.”
“A good actor has to find some core identification with the character and the role. When I met Derek, I saw myself.”
“You’re not him.”
“Not who I am. Who I almost became.” He lifted one edge of the drapes and stared at the night. “I was so close.”
Just after eleven, Adam paid his taxi and climbed the stairs leading from the street to the MVP headquarters. The big chrome-and- glass doors swung open before him. Adam stepped inside and crossed the lobby. He hid his dread behind a Derek-style frown. Or so he hoped. The guard behind the curved reception desk watched him but did not rise from his seat. Adam pulled his cell phone from one pocket and the pass he had palmed from Derek’s briefcase in the other. He pretended to pay attention to the phone while he approached the steel barrier. He slid the pass through the magnetic barrier and then leaned into the revolving bars. They clicked around, granting him entry.
He faced three banks of elevators. He punched the hotel number and stood in pretended concentration while he searched for the bank of elevators that serviced the seventh floor. When the hotel answered, he asked to be put through to Kayla’s room, and then headed for the central bank.
“Adam?”
“I’m in.”
She breathed easier for both of them. “You have the detective’s instructions?”
“Right here.” Detective Foley and his in-house source had come through for them again. Adam touched the pocket containing the notes from his telephone conversation, detailing the layout of Derek Steen’s floor. But Adam doubted he would need them. They were there for assurance’s sake. Like the words of dialogue he used to write on the inside of his palm, to trigger his memory in case of a panic attack. Adam stepped into the elevator, punched the button for seven, and tried to convince himself that it was just another role.
“Be careful,” Kayla said. “And come out of this safely.”
“Do my best.”
“I mean it. That’s the most important thing tonight. Your safety. Daddy would agree a hundred percent.”
“This is one gig we don’t need to be telling the old man about, though, do we?” The double doors fronting the elevators were red leather embossed with the MVP logo. Adam ran the pass through another magnetic reader, and the doors swept open to reveal the currency trading floor. He started down the central aisle.
“Where are you?”
“The money pit.”
“Where?”
The currency floor occupied almost the entire seventh floor. The windowless chamber was a hundred feet square with a thirty-foot-high ceiling. A supervisor’s balcony overlooked one end and running electronic newsboards the other. The desks were split into a dozen islands crammed inside a sea of green carpet. A cluster of late-working peons shuffled papers on a long table by the far wall. The odor of empty pizza cartons wafted across the room. “Once I thought there would be nothing finer than working here.”
“I thought you were escaping to Costa Rica.”
“Costa one week, a trading pit the next. Become the super analyst, held in awe by the traders who fought to sign my checks. Power in both fists. Money to burn.”
Each island, or trading station, had between six and fourteen desks. The senior trader occupied the central position. Some of the largest islands had two traders, but not many. Geoffrey’s station was in the far northeast corner. Each seat had a triple set of screens, except the senior, which held a double-stack so he could monitor his own positions and check on any of his juniors at the same time.
Kayla said, “Somehow I can’t see you happy living that life.”
Adam pushed through the glass door at the chamber’s far end. “Derek’s is the third office on the left?”
“According to the detective’s notes.”
Only the senior traders had offices. Adam had been around enough trading floors to know they were not expected to spend much time there. The office and the window were perks. Derek’s was not large. Nor did it appear much lived-in. Adam slipped into Derek’s leather throne. The window overlooked an empty London street. A single photo adorned the opposite wall, Derek behind the oversize wheel of an oceangoing yacht. A pair of Ray-Bans dangled around his neck. Flashing his pirate’s smile. Cold. Aloof. Invulnerable. Alone.
“Adam?”
“I’m turning on his computer.”
“Can anyone see you?”
“The door is glass, but the hallway is empty.” He fought off a sudden sensation of the chair imprisoning him, as though the real owner’s ire was able to reach out and gnaw at his bones. “Okay, it’s asking for a password.”
Kayla’s voice grew a metallic rasp. “Back in Dar es Salaam he kept a slip of paper in the bottom of his top right drawer. He could never remember when I changed the project codes.”
“Okay. It’s here.” He read the seven digits off the paper, typed them in, slipped the paper back in the drawer and slid it shut. “Uh-oh.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m looking at a second check-in screen. He’s set in another password.”
“He’s got something to hide.”
“Maybe so.”
“No maybe, Adam. He’s in this up to his eyeballs.”
“What difference does that make, if we can’t get in?” Frantically he searched the other drawers, then felt around the base of the desk. “Nothing.”
“Tell me what you see.”
“The screen shows a picture of him on a racetrack. He’s standing beside a Ferrari Formula One car.” The photo also showed Derek’s arms wrapped around two beauties wearing Ferrari T-shirts and red-leather hot pants. Adam saw no need to mention that to Kayla. “There’s a box in the middle of the screen asking for another password.”
“Which means this is his own backup system and not standard company operations.”
“Probably.” Adam wiped his face. “This is taking too long.”
Kayla went quiet. Then, “Try my name.”
Adam hesitated a long moment, then typed in the name. He paused with his hand over the Enter tab. Then pressed it.
And breathed a long sigh. “We’re in.”