to see this is getting completely away from us. First you talked us into kidnapping Cummings, and now Ellie is dead? My dear, sweet Ellie is dead?”
Had Craig and Ellie been lovers? Athena didn’t know. But she wasn’t about to let Craig, or Artemis, or anyone, blow up her plans. “Ellie was one of my dearest friends, Craig. We’ll all miss her terribly. But she wouldn’t have wanted us—wanted you—to quit now. She knew you were a genius, that you deserved your chance. We’re so close to becoming rich beyond your comprehension. Ellie wanted that, too, for herself and for us. Craig, will you be ready to go live on Monday?”
His eyes went back to his monitor, as she’d hoped. “I’ve already tested, Athena. The signal is still too weak. I told you we need more panels installed.”
“That’s already in progress, Craig. They’ll finish installing them by the end of the day Saturday. When they’re done, we’ll be able to hear a whisper.”
56
* * *
Athena walked down the short corridor, through the kitchen, and out the back door of Redemption House, the lovely colonial she’d bought several years ago for a country getaway, now their headquarters. It was set back a half mile from a little-used country road, a perfect spot, isolated enough for safety, but close enough to Bexholt to reach in under an hour.
She tossed her car keys in the air, caught them handily, and unlocked her silver Audi. She would get to Coverton and Bexholt with enough time to speak to her brother and dear daddy. She laughed. Daddy, in particular, would have a stroke if he knew what was going to happen, what she, his daughter—a mere woman—was making happen. She turned off the AC, opened the convertible top, and sang Katy Perry’s “Roar” at the top of her lungs.
Fifty-two minutes later, she parked in her personal space next to her brother’s at Bexholt. Her father’s space was on the other side of her brother’s, his gleaming black Bentley directly in front of the main entrance to Bexholt, of course.
She walked around to the passenger side of her Audi, opened the door, and shoved it against her brother’s driver’s side panel. A pity about another lovely gouge in his white Mercedes.
She strode through the main entrance into the huge gold marble-floored lobby with seasonal photos of Maryland on its white walls and smoothly morphed into her alter ego, Nikki Bexholt.
* * *
Nathan Bexholt, COO and heir apparent to his powerful father, Garrick Xavier Bexholt, turned from the large window overlooking the lovely three-acre park twelve floors below. His own office had the same awesome view of the small decorative lake. His sister Nikki’s office overlooked the Bexholt campus, their R&D buildings and the warehouse complex with its lines of shipping trucks, white with bright blue lightning bolts on their sides. He rubbed his neck, wished there was someone to massage the knots out, but that would have to wait. Crissy, his wife of fourteen years, was in Paris, probably on the lookout for an artist/lover with oily black hair and a concave chest who splashed red and black blobs on a white canvas. Who cared? They each had their own lives. Their two boys were at Andover, and thank heaven, in good standing. He turned to face his father, who wasn’t wearing his usual go team expression. He looked tired, pensive.
Nathan said, “What a day. I still can’t believe it—Eleanor Corbitt, dead, murdered. I sent everyone in accounting home after a Detective Raven of Metro finished interviewing, even hauled two employees out of the bathroom to speak to them. Apparently there were some FBI agents here as well.” He shrugged. “Of course, no one seemed to know anything helpful. It’s a pity she didn’t have any close friends here at work.” He rubbed his neck again. “I knew her, Dad, I knew Eleanor. She was nice, competent, always on point, on the quiet side, but really sort of intense—” Nathan paused, saw his father raise a salt-and-pepper brow, and added, “She kept her private life very private. I never heard any gossip about her after she divorced her husband, a gold-plated jerk, I heard.” Nathan turned away to look out at the park. “I have no clue what she did when she left work every day. I hope whatever it was didn’t lead to this.”
Garrick Bexholt joined his son at the window. “Your mother told me she saw Eleanor once in one of those women’s centers