Джозеф Файндер - Company Man

Nick stared in shock. Mixed with the powerful gas smell he could detect the faint scent of Cassie’s patchouli perfume.

“Run!” she shouted. “Get out of here now! ”

“Where’s Julia?” Nick said as he started toward the exit.

“She’s outside somewhere,” Lucas said.

“Go!” Audrey screamed. “Anything — the slightest spark — can set this gas off. We’ve all got to get out of here immediately and let the fire department clear the house. Now! ”

Lucas vaulted ahead of Nick, crashing against the front screen door before he managed to get it open, then held it open for Audrey and his father.

Julia was standing on the front lawn alongside the driveway, a good distance away.

Nick raced to her, grabbed her and hoisted her up to his shoulder, and kept on running, Lucas and Audrey close behind. They all stopped at the edge of the property just as Nick heard the loud wail of sirens.

“Look!” said Lucas, pointing back toward the house, and Nick immediately saw what he was indicating. It was Cassie, standing unsteadily at the window, watching them, a cigarette dangling out of her mouth.

“No!” Nick shouted, but he knew she couldn’t hear him and wasn’t listening anyway.

There was a blinding flash, and in the next instant, the house erupted in a massive brilliant fireball.

The ground shook, and fire engulfed the house almost instantly, entirely, throwing up a great column of sparks and billowing gray smoke, and seconds later the windows popped and the glass in the French doors shattered as the door frames and the window frames flew into the air, and then the flames began to plume out of every orifice, blackening the stone walls and chimneys, lighting up the clouded sky a terrible orange, and waves of heat came after them, searing their faces as they ran. Julia shrieked, and Nick held her tight, as they all ran down the long driveway.

Nick didn’t stop until they had reached the road, when, winded by carrying his daughter, he had to stop. He turned back to look at the house, but all he could see now were the plumes of fire and smoke. The sirens of the fire trucks had gotten no louder, no closer. Nick knew they’d been halted at the security gate.

There would be very little left for the fire department to salvage.

He squeezed Julia harder as he said to Audrey Rhimes, “Before I come in to... face charges... I’d like to take a little vacation with my kids. Just a few days together. Is that possible, you think?”

Detective Rhimes stared at him. Their eyes locked. Her face was impassive, unreadable.

After what seemed an endless pause, she nodded. “That should be okay.”

Nick looked at the blaze for a moment, and then turned to thank her, but she had already started walking down the driveway toward the police car that was just pulling in ahead of a convoy of fire trucks. The blond detective was behind the wheel.

He felt something clutch his elbow, a trembling needy grip, and he saw it was Lucas. Together, dazed and speechless, they watched the inferno for another few minutes. Though the afternoon was overcast and gray, the fire blazed so brightly that it illuminated the sky a dusky orange, the color of sunrise.

The first couple of days, Nick did little besides sleep. He went to bed early, got up late, took naps on the beach.

Their “villa,” as the resort called it, was right on Ka’anapali Beach. You stepped out the door and onto the sand. At night you could hear the lulling sound of the waves lapping against the shore. Lucas, normally the late sleeper, got up early with Julia to swim or snorkel. He even taught her to surf. By the time the kids returned to the bungalow in the late morning, Nick would just be getting up, drinking his coffee on the lanai. They’d all share a meal, a late breakfast or early lunch, and then the kids would go snorkeling at Pu’u Keka’a, a volcanic reef that the ancient Hawaiians revered as a sacred place where the spirits of the dead leaped from this world to the next.

He and the kids talked some, but rarely about anything serious. They’d lost just about all of their earthly possessions, which seemed not to have sunk in yet. It was funny how they never mentioned it.

Several times he tried to bring himself to talk with them about the legal nightmare he’d face when he got home: the likelihood of a trial and the near-certainty of his going to prison. But he couldn’t do it, maybe for the same reason nobody wanted to talk about the day the house burned down. He didn’t want to spoil what was sure to be their last vacation together for many years.

It was as if they were all surfing, riding the perfect wave, and for the moment it didn’t matter that deep in the water beneath them were big, scary creatures with big, sharp teeth. Because the Conovers were up here, in the sun, and they all seemed to know without articulating it that the key to staying afloat was not thinking about what might lurk down below.

So they swam and snorkeled, surfed and ate. Nick fell asleep on the beach too long on the second day and got a painful sunburn on his ears and forehead.

Nick brought no work — he had no work — and he left his cell phone on his bedside table, switched off. He lay on the beach reading and thinking and dozing, wriggling his toes in the powdery gray sand and watching the sun shimmer over the water.

On the third day, he finally turned his cell phone back on, only to find dozens of messages from friends and Stratton colleagues who’d heard or read about what had happened to their house and wanted to make sure Nick and the kids were okay. Nick listened but answered none of them.

One was from his former assistant, Marge Dykstra, who reported that the Fenwick newspaper had run several front-page stories about how Fairfield Equity Partners had been on the verge of selling the Stratton Corporation to China, shutting down all U.S. operations, and laying off all employees — until the deal had been blocked by “ex-CEO Nicholas Conover,” who’d just announced his resignation “in order to spend more time with his family.”

It was the first good press he, and Stratton, had gotten in a long time. Marge pointed out that it was the first time in almost three years that his name had appeared in a headline without the word “slash” next to it.

On the fourth day, Nick was lying on a lounge chair on the lanai, reading a book about D-Day that he’d been trying to read for months and was determined to finish now, when he heard the distant ring tone of his cell phone. He didn’t get up.

A minute later, Lucas came out from the bungalow holding the phone and brought it over to him. “It’s for you, Dad.”

Nick looked up, marked a place in his book with his forefinger, reluctantly took the phone.

“Mr. Conover?”

He recognized the voice immediately, and he felt the old tension clutch his abdomen again. “Detective Rhimes,” he said.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your family vacation.”

“That’s quite all right.”

“Mr. Conover, this call is completely off the record, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I think you should have your attorney contact the district attorney’s office and arrange a plea bargain.”

“Excuse me?”

“If you’re willing to plead guilty to criminally negligent homicide — or maybe even just attempted tampering with evidence — the DA’s willing to recommend probation with no time served.”

“ What? I don’t get it.”

“I don’t imagine you’ve been reading the Fenwick Free Press .”

“Delivery out here’s kind of spotty.”

“Well, Mr. Conover, we both know that the DA is a very political animal — again, this is purely between you and me, you understand?”