videos from the office building, found the parts where Boyington had confronted her and sent all of them to the police department, to the officer who had arrested Boyington. Then just for good measure, she added background on the names she already knew of the other men Cyrus Parks had hired to track her, and documented all the times she’d moved because of it since she’d come to live in Dallas. She sent a signed electronic statement and forwarded it, too, and considered her part in that done, unless it ever went to trial, which she doubted. People like Cyrus always paid their way out of trouble.
Ten
Cyrus Parks was at a business lunch, and as it began winding down, he took out his debit card to pay. Minutes later, he was shocked when the waiter brought it back as declined.
“Good Lord! Are you serious? There must be something wrong on their end,” he muttered, and pulled out a credit card, only to have it declined, and then the third one he used came up the same way.
One of the men finally took pity on him and paid.
“There’s obviously some computer glitch attached to your name. I’ve got this. No worries.”
And the moment his friend said it, Cyrus’s heart skipped a beat. It can’t be. Surely not.
“Yes, obviously,” Cyrus said. “I’ll get my tech people right on it and hope it isn’t some hack job from a disgruntled employee.”
“In our level of the world, it happens,” another man said, and they soon parted company.
But the moment Cyrus was in his limo, he began to panic all over again. He checked his phone for messages that would alert him to what was happening, but there were none.
“Where to, Mr. Parks?” the driver asked.
“Home. Take me home.”
It took thirty-plus minutes to navigate the traffic, but the moment Cyrus was inside his house, he hurried to his office. The first thing he did was pull up his private email. He recognized all of the senders, except for one. All it said was PAYBACK.
“Oh God, oh God,” he muttered, as he opened it and read...
I’m not dead and your hit man, Boyington, is in jail. You should have left me alone.
“No, no, no,” he muttered, and logged in to his bank. There was a one-dollar balance. His heart sank, as he began checking into all of the accounts where his money was kept, and one after another, they each had a one-dollar balance.
His rage at Wyrick was nothing compared to his anger at the hit man. He’d just paid him the rest of the contract money to quit the job and leave her alone. The bastard had taken the money and went after her anyway. Obviously, he had failed in the process and given up the name of the man who’d put out the hit.
The only good part of this whole shit storm was now Cyrus knew the hit man’s name. He’d deal with him first and Wyrick later.
He started to reply to the email, only to realize it was gone. He grunted. Of course it was. He did not create fools.
The bank had been hacked. They would have to replace the money that disappeared, but that would take time. The other places he’d hidden money didn’t have that same insurable feature. That money was gone.
Universal Theorem had a constant flow of income, but this was Cyrus’s personal income. It was going to take time to build the accounts back up, and in the meantime, he was, as they say, a little short on cash.
* * *
Charlie rested in the recliner next to Annie’s bed, but his legs hung off the footrest and he was too tall to stretch out. His eyes burned from lack of sleep, and he was moving on autopilot, but sleep was impossible. There was no way to sleep through the sounds of her breathing or the intermittent moan she would emit.
Doris would raise the head of Annie’s bed, and for a while that would ease her labored breathing...until it started all over again.
Doris knew. Charlie knew. Everyone in Morning Light knew. Annie Dodge was in her last days.
He lost track of time, and didn’t even know whether it was day or night until he’d get the call that his dinner had been delivered and was waiting at the front desk.
At first he’d felt guilty about leaving her, but even he knew he had to eat sometime. But after a while, that call became the momentary escape he needed.
And every evening