honestly don’t know what you mean.” My eyes grew wide.
“You know something though.”
I knew something all right – I’d been set up. The money isn’t at his other apartment. It isn’t here because someone else has already gotten to it.
Could it be Rose? Although they hadn’t been together long, Rose could already have a key to the apartment. Had she really needed to borrow money for rent, or was that just a cover story to direct attention away from herself? But, how had she opened the safe on her own? I hadn’t looked into her background much. Had I missed something crucial? I thought she was a fluffy headed socialite. Why she was interested in a gardener, I had no idea. Did she know he’d been lying to her? If so, and this was about money, why hadn’t she just blackmailed him?
Who else? Eberhardt probably knew about the money. He’d been employed by Richard for over a year, and they seemed close. He drove Richard to his father’s firm as well as to his other “side jobs.” But if Eberhardt was going to steal from Richard, wouldn’t he have done so long before now?
Are Rose and Eberhardt working together? I glanced at Eberhardt and realized he had the look of a professional bodyguard. He moved away from the chair and stood imposingly in front of the door. His body language said there would be no escape. He was a big, scary-looking man in a suit, tall with wide shoulders, muscular, with a scar across his left cheek. He was the kind of man who looked like he meant business, the kind of man I didn’t want to cross, if I could help it. My gut told me that Eberhardt had, and always would have, Richard’s back.
I realized then that there was one other person who could have orchestrated this. She wouldn’t have double-booked, would she? Is she crazy? Doesn’t she realize who she’s messing with?
Richard turned the chair around and sat down. Casually, he leaned his arms across the back of it and faced me. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and sat up straight. I looked directly into his eyes, showing no fear, and dropped the innocent act.
“Who are you, Madeline?” Richard asked.
I responded with a question of my own. “Why haven’t you told Rose the truth?”
“That’s none of your business. Who are you?”
“That depends.”
Richard shook his head. “Depends on what?”
I softened my tone. “What’s the money for?”
He looked at me steadily for a moment, calculating, and then shared just a little. “All right, that money was meant to help people, the sick, the needy, those the Elite step upon or push out of the way. People like your father, I suspect.”
I felt a catch in my throat. Could he possibly understand? Why did he refer to the Elite as if he wasn’t one of them? Wasn’t Richard the type of person who stepped on people to get ahead? Weren’t they all?
The last war created the Divide among our people. The Elite and those they considered useful received money, medicine and care. They didn’t just survive; they lived. However selfishly, they lived, and everyone else…
I thought Richard was one of them. I wouldn’t have taken the job if I’d thought otherwise. Why would he be interested in people like my father? Artists and dreamers, idealists. Hell, everyone who wasn’t a member of the Elite, was either used or left to rot and die.
I thought for a minute longer while Richard waited patiently for me to make the next move. Elaine Ramsey was on one side of the Divide. I was on the other. Which side of the Divide was Richard on?
Ramsey had hired me to find and return her money, and in the process, eliminate Oren Johnson, a gardener, a nobody. If she’d known who he really was, she wouldn’t have ordered a kill, not for the amount he’d stolen. The Elite wouldn’t hesitate to squash those beneath them for touching their precious gats, but they’d never hire a Freelancer to kill one of their own, not unless the stakes were much higher. Maybe the stakes are higher than I thought.
I’d never had a problem eliminating the wealthy and corrupt. In my experience, the two went hand in hand. I believed my job made Tkaron a safer city. But, I never took out the innocent or downtrodden. Those were the people I wanted to help.
But now… I realized now that Richard hadn’t given me any