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Kate had never spoken this way to her father’s business partner, and she wasn’t sure what was driving it. Maybe it was Irving Bass’s crack about her screwed-up relationship with her father—her need to prove, if only to herself, that it was more love than hate.
“Buck could have found a way to pay Patrick’s ransom. The reason you said no has nothing to do with the CIA. The point was to humiliate my father in front of his daughter, so I could see with my own eyes that Jeremy Peel has the power to outvote him, even when he’s right. Even when it’s a matter of life and death.”
“Interesting,” he said, as he loaded two more shells in the chambers. “And I was under the impression that Sandra Levy was the only quack psychiatrist who had your father’s back.”
“It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to see how jealous you are of him.”
“Now you’re way out of line, young lady.”
She probably was, but that didn’t stop her. “It was always my father who got the glory, the awards, the cover ofTimemagazine.”
“None of those things were important to me.”
“I believe you. I truly do. The issue isn’t that you never got those things. What bothers you is the fact thatmy fatherdid.”
“And what bothers your father is that he reports to me. The CEO is boss, but the chairman of the board is the boss of the boss.”
“Dad told me what happened after your press conference. How you’re angling to be both chairman and CEO.”
“I never wanted his job. But for the good of the company, I would take the position.”
“Take,”she said, seizing on it. “That’s the key word. For a man like you, who literally has everything he wants, there comes a point in life when there’s no joy in getting more stuff. Unless you can take it from someone else.”
He closed the break on the loaded shotgun, ready for action. “Whatever ‘it’ means.”
“Could be just about anything. Money. Power. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. Whatever it hurts the other guy most to lose. After all, if there’s no loser, what’s the point?”
He raised his shotgun, aimed, and looked ready to yell “pull.”
“Live!” he shouted.
Two live doves flew from opposite towers. Peel waited for them to cross in the middle and brought them both down with a single blast of birdshot. He broke open his shotgun and looked at Kate.
“Exactly,” he said, shooting a quick glance toward the dead birds on the ground. “What’s the point?”
The house was too far away for Kate to walk, but she suddenly couldn’t stand being in the same zip code as him. She held her ground for a minute longer, glowering.
“Let me ask you, Mr. Peel. Did it make you feel like a bigger winner when you lied and told my mother her husband was cheating on her? Or when you heard my mother killed herself?”
Peel hand-signaled to the driver of the all-terrain vehicle, who started motoring toward them.
“I think it’s time this conversation ended,” he said.
“It was long overdue,” Kate said, as she started walking toward the dirt road.
Chapter 43
A hint of dawn colored the dark cabin’s only porthole. Patrick and Olga were alone, seated back-to-back on the floor, their wrists behind their waists and bound to the upright metal pole between them. It had been two hours since they’d seen Javier, when he’d dragged the crewman’s body out to the poop deck and pitched it over the ship’s rail. Patrick wondered how many bodies the harbor at Buenaventura had swallowed. He wondered if his or Olga’s would be next.
“Olga, you awake?” he whispered.
She didn’t answer. Dozing off under these conditions was the very definition of exhaustion. Patrick pressed his elbows into her back, nudging her awake.
“Olga, I think I hear footsteps.”
They listened. The door was closed, and all was quiet, save for a faint shuffling in the distance. It sounded like footfalls on the deck.
“Could be Javier coming back,” said Olga.