The Angels' Share (The Bourbon Kings #2) - J. R. Ward Page 0,83
meeting now. But he’d been given no choice.
When he finally got into the single line, things started to move, and he almost laughed when he finally pulled up next to the workers in their orange bibs, hard hats, and blue jeans.
They were installing a chain-link fencing system to keep people away from the drop.
No more jumping. Or at least, if you insisted on trying it, you were going to need to get your climb on first.
Hitting spaghetti junction, he took a tight curve, shot under an overpass, got onto I-91. Two exits later, he was off at Dorn Avenue and going down onto River Road.
The Shell station on the corner was the kind of place that was part drugstore, part supermarket, part liquor store … and part newsstand.
And he intended to go by it as he made a right. After all, there was going to be a copy of the Charlemont Courier Journal at Easterly.
In the end, though, his hands made the decision for him. Wrenching the wheel to the right, he shot into the service station, bypassed the gas tanks and parked by the double-doored silver freezer that had ICE painted across it along with a picture of a cartoon penguin with a red scarf around its neck.
The baseball cap he pulled down low over his face had the U of C logo on the front.
At the pumps, there were a couple of guys filling up their pick-up trucks. A municipal vehicle. A CG&E cherry picker. A woman in a Civic with a baby she kept checking on in the back.
He felt like they were all staring at him. But he was wrong. If they were looking in his direction, it was because they were checking out his Porsche.
A tinny bell rang as he pushed into the cold space of the store, and there it was. A line-up of Charlemont Courier Journals, all with the headline he’d been dreading splashed above the fold in Las Vegas Strip–sized font.
BRADFORD BOURBON BANKRUPTCY.
The New York Post couldn’t have done it better, he thought as he got a dollar bill and a quarter out. Picking up one of the copies, he put the money on the counter and gave a rap of his knuckles. The guy at the cash register looked over from whoever he was helping and nodded.
Back at the Porsche, Lane got behind the wheel and popped the front page flat. Scanning the first set of columns, he opened to the inside to finish the article.
Oh, great. They had reproduced a couple of the documents. And there was a lot of commentary. Even an editorial on corporate greed and the rich’s lack of accountability, with a tie-in on karma.
Tossing the thing aside, he reversed out and hit the gas.
When he got to the main gates of the estate, he eased off on the speed, but it was only to count the number of news trucks parked on the grassy shoulder like they were expecting a mushroom cloud to take flight over Easterly at any second. Continuing on, he entered the property at the staff road and shot up the back way, passing by the vegetable fields that Lizzie cultivated for Miss Aurora’s kitchen and then the barrel-topped greenhouses and finally the cottages and the groundskeeping shed.
The staff parking lot was full of cars, all kinds of extra help already on site to get things prepared for the visitation hours. The paved lane continued beyond that, mounting the hill parallel to the walkway that workers used to get to the house. At the top, there were the garages, the back of the business center, and the rear entrances to the mansion.
He parked by the maroon Lexus that was in one of the spots reserved for senior management.
As soon as Lane got out, Steadman W. Morgan, chairman of the Bradford Bourbon Company’s board of trustees, emerged from his sedan.
The man was dressed in golfing clothes, but not like Lenghe, the Grain God, had been. Steadman was in Charlemont Country Club whites, the crest of the private institution in royal blue and gold on his pectoral, a Princeton Tiger needlepoint belt around his waist. His shoes were the same kind of loafers Lane wore, without socks. Watch was Piaget. Tan was earned on the links, not sprayed on. Vitality was good breeding, careful diet, and the result of the man never having had to wonder where his next meal was coming from.
“Quite an article,” Steadman said as they met face-to-face.