Silent Partner Part 6

"I'm sorry, Angela," Lawrence offered quietly. "Perhaps I can a.s.sist you there."

She glanced up. "If you help me, I'll help you" had been Lawrence's words at the beginning of the meeting. "How?"

"A man in my position can wield a certain amount of influence. And often these things come down to who's got the bigger gun."

He didn't have to tell her that.

"Candidly," Lawrence continued, "there aren't many guns bigger than mine."

"Mr. Lawrence . . . I mean, Jake," Angela interrupted herself, turning to face him. "That would mean a great deal to me," she admitted, grasping the incredible opportunity that lay before her. "I miss Hunter so badly sometimes." She hated begging but, when it came to her son, pride ran a distant second.

"Let me talk to my people." He patted her knee again and smiled.

This time she smiled back, and slipped her hand into his. She hated herself for what she was doing, but Hunter needed her. And she needed him. "Thank you, Jake."

"I can't promise anything. Just that I'll look into it."

"I appreciate that so much."

"There's another thing," he said, sliding his hand up her leg a few inches.

"What's that?" She forced herself not to pull away.

"Why haven't you been promoted to director yet?"

"Excuse me?"

"You told me earlier that you were a vice president at Sumter Bank."

"Yes?"

"Isn't director the next t.i.tle above vice president?"

"Director, yes. After that it's managing director, then senior managing director."

"Well, I've taken a look at your personnel record at Sumter, and it's outstanding. You've generated a significant amount of business for the bank, and you've never been a discipline problem. Shouldn't a woman with that kind of record have been promoted to director by now? My aides tell me that several of your peers who haven't performed anywhere near as well as you have, including two women, are directors earning a good deal more income than you are."

Angela shrugged, trying not to show emotion. That issue was a constant and bitter source of frustration.

"Did you know that human resources has put you up for that promotion twice?"

She glanced up.

"And," Lawrence continued, "your boss has stonewalled the process both times."

Angela stared at Lawrence, trying not to show emotion.

"Why do you think that is?" Lawrence asked.

"I don't know," she replied, her voice raspy. She'd always considered her boss, Ken Booker, a friend. He'd always blamed her not getting promoted on human resources. Now Lawrence was telling her it was the other way around.

"Could your background be a factor?" he asked directly.

"I suppose anything is possible."

Lawrence hesitated, gently caressing her thigh. "But that explanation doesn't seem entirely plausible. I mean, if you're performing well, wouldn't they be afraid to lose you to another bank?"

"They don't seem to be."

"Could your not getting the promotion have anything to do with the fact that senior executives at Sumter Bank perceive you as a troublemaker? Even though there's nothing on your record to indicate that."

Angela's eyes flashed to Lawrence's. "What are you talking about?"

"Any possibility that they suspect you are a certain newspaper reporter's source of some very negative information regarding the bank's poor record of service to minorities in its market areas? In the last few months theRichmond Tribune has turned up the heat on Sumter Bank about that poor record." Lawrence hesitated. "There was one particularly damaging article written by a reporter named Olivia Jefferson that came out last week. That article led people to believe she might have a source inside Sumter."

Angela said nothing.

"Do you know Ms. Jefferson?"

"I think I may know of her."

"I'm not asking if you knowof her," Lawrence said, his voice rising, "I'm asking if youknow her."

"I, um, yes. I've met her at a couple of business functions. She covers local business for theTribune , and Richmond is a pretty small city."

Lawrence's eyes narrowed as he moved his hand higher on Angela's thigh. "Those Wall Street investment bankers I mentioned do have one theory about the decline of Sumter's stock price."

"Oh?"

"Yes. As you probably know, the entire banking industry has been going through a ma.s.sive consolidation over the past ten years. Small ones and big ones are gobbling each other up every day, making shareholders very wealthy in the process."

"I do know that."

"But what you may not know is that the Federal Reserve and other regulators closely monitor a bank's performance with respect to serving low-income and minority communities. That they review those records before approving any merger or acquisition, and that these regulators can hold up profitable mergers if they aren't satisfied with a bank's record regarding the issue. My investment bankers believe that might be the case with Sumter. They believe that all of this bad press about Sumter in theRichmond Trib may have made it less attractive as an acquisition target to the big boys in New York, North Carolina, and on the West Coast because those ent.i.ties fear that any bid they make would be held up by the regulators. My people think that the decline in Sumter's stock price is directly related to that nasty information, which, by the way, other newspapers seem to be picking up on. My sources tell me theWall Street Journal is considering the possibility of conducting its own investigation into what's going on at Sumter."

Angela swallowed hard. In fact, she was intimately aware of how the government monitored the country's largest banks in terms of how well they were serving low-income people. Perhaps she and Lawrence were getting to the real reason he had flown her all the way out here. He'd spent almost $500 million on Sumter stock. Now it was worth forty million less. If theWall Street Journal decided to investigate Sumter and found anything negative, his investment might be worthfar less.

"Are you getting my drift, Angela?" he asked, reaching up and stroking her hair.

She closed her eyes tightly, managing not to flinch. "I-"

"One more question."

"Yes?"

"Who's Sally Chambers?"

Angela pulled back with a start, as though she'd touched a live wire. "What?"

"Sally Chambers," Lawrence repeated. "Who is she?"

Angela swallowed hard. "Why are you doing this to me?" she whispered.

"Answer me."

"You have no right to-"

"I will help you, if you help me," he interrupted. "But if you don't, I won't help you. And helping me includes answering each of my questions."

Angela could feel herself shaking. Fear, anger, regret, and guilt were all coming together to form a hurricane of emotion. "Sally was my best friend."

"Was?"

"You know what happened." The awful image of blood pouring from Sally's mouth and nose came flashing back, and she could feel herself losing control. "Why are you doing this to me?"

"Sally died, didn't she?"

"Yes. In my arms."

"That's awful," Lawrence said softly. "You know, there's so much we could do together, so many important problems we could solve. Yours and mine. I'd hate to see anything get in the way of those possibilities." He smiled, then leaned forward and kissed her gently on the lips. "You're a beautiful woman, Angela Day," he whispered, running his fingers up the inside of her leg to her belt. "I'm looking forward to working with you."

CHAPTER THREE.

"So, how did it go?"

Angela was gazing at the snow-covered peaks in the distance as she swayed atop the stallion behind Tucker. She was thinking about that night on the fraternity house porch nine years ago. Lawrence had brought it all screaming back to her. "What?"

"Did he lay the Jake Lawrence charm on you?" Tucker wanted to know.

She could still feel Lawrence's hot breath as he'd leaned forward to kiss her. Still remember that look in his dark, dead eyes. The touch of his fingers running up her inner thigh. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Try to get you to have a little drink with him, then move in?"

She smelled whiskey on Tucker's breath as he turned in the saddle. Hopefully, the flask was still relatively full. He seemed steady enough, and it wasn't as if she had any other way of getting down the mountain. "I told you, John," she said, "it was abusiness meeting."

"Excuse me for living. I just know how Lawrence is." Tucker pushed the brim of his hat back as they neared the point where the trail turned tricky. "He's seduced other pretty young things in less time than it took him to get you into and out of that cabin."

"I thought you told me last night you respected Mr. Lawrence's desire to protect his privacy."

"So?"

"So here you are talking about his s.e.xual exploits with an outsider."

"Ah, the h.e.l.l with him," Tucker grumbled after a long pause. "Maybe this is the whiskey talking, and maybe I'll be sorry I said anything tomorrow, but Jake Lawrence can be a real p.r.i.c.k."

"What do you mean?"

"He makes a lot of promises, but he'll never be mistaken for a postman."

"I don't-"

"He doesn't deliver," Tucker said, clarifying.

"Oh." Angela glanced down into the canyon to her left. "What kind of promises does he make?"

"Money, jobs, relationships. He does his research, finds the opportunity or the weakness, then makes the appropriate pledge." Tucker laughed harshly. "I've heard it all on this trail. Young women can be amazingly naive."

"How do you know he doesn't deliver?"

"I have my ways."

Angela hesitated. "Mr. Lawrence asked me to work on a project with him. I believe you can tell a great deal about how a person will conduct themselves in business by the way they lead their personal lives."

"You aren't going to like what you hear."

"Explain what you-Oh, G.o.d!" She wrapped her arms around Tucker's waist as the stallion slid unexpectedly on a patch of ice, then reared up on its hind legs. She pressed her face into Tucker's jacket and shut her eyes tightly. "John!"

"Whoa!" Tucker called, making a soothing, clicking sound with his tongue and cheek. "Steady, boy!" The horse dropped its hooves back to the snow, then snorted loudly and sidled quickly to the left, within a few feet of the cliff. Immediately Tucker kicked hard with his left heel, pulled the right rein toward the rock face and the horse bolted away from danger. When they had stopped short beside the rock face, Tucker reached into his jacket, leaned forward in the stirrups, and fed the animal a carrot. "That's a good boy," he said calmly, patting the stallion's neck as it chomped loudly on the snack. "What a ride, huh, Angela? Like a roller coaster, but better."

Tucker wasn't even fazed, Angela realized. They'd come a few inches from certain death, and for him it was as if nothing had happened.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, sure," she gasped.

Tucker gently urged the horse ahead when it had finished the carrot. "What were you asking me about?"

She took a deep breath to calm herself. Her heart was still pounding. "How do you know Jake Lawrence doesn't deliver on his promises?" she asked again.

"Oh, that's right," he remembered, nodding. "Simple. I checked. There was this one girl who told me on the ride back to the lodge all about how Mr. Lawrence was going to take care of her sick mother. Lawrence convinced her of that while the two of them were sitting on the cabin's couch in front of a fire drinking Irish coffees. She was still pretty drunk and she wasn't holding back. She told me what went on, and she told me what he'd promised before, during, and after he took her back to the cabin's master bedroom. I called her a couple of months later, and Lawrence hadn't done a d.a.m.n thing for her."

"How did you know where to find her?"

"I drove her to the airport after taking her back down the mountain, and right before I put her on Lawrence's plane, I jotted down her telephone number. I told her I was his right-hand man, and that I might need to get in touch with her to follow up. She bought it."

"And Lawrence hadn't done anything for her when you called?"

Tucker waved his hand. "Hadn't even contacted her."

"What was wrong with her mother?"

"Lung cancer."