Chapter 64

Friday, October 18th, 3:28 pm

It turned out, driving a Porsche 911 was exactly the kind of distraction I needed to unwind and give myself a little time to process my meeting with Liz. As I gripped the steering wheel, I was amazed at how well the car handled.

The track bent through a stretch of private woodland, dark pavement cutting a swath through old New York forest that had existed here for centuries before cars were invented. I came into the turn a little too fast ... at least faster than my instincts were used to. In a normal car, I would have felt in danger by now—the body leaning, the tires complaining, and the steering wheel failing to make the car fully bend to its command.

The Porsche didn’t do any of that. It just hugged the pavement like some kind of bug defying gravity as it skittered along a wall. The wheel’s response was immediate, every tiny movement in my hands making the car bend to my will ... no delay ... no give. I turned. It turned. End of story.

The engine sat behind me, growling low and hard, then rising as I fed it more gas.

Even the seat felt like it had been perfectly engineered to hold me in place through the curve, firm leather pressed against my back and ribs, keeping me planted while the road swept left and the trees blurred at the edge of my vision. It made my own car seem like a leaky old jalopy by comparison, which was unfair, because it wasn’t. It had been a very nice car, actually. At least it had seemed that way back when I still drove myself places. Now it sat in a garage beneath my building, probably collecting dust while Hannon Security and Quinn Ryan handled most of my transportation needs.

I was never a car guy. I’d already forgotten half of what I was told made the Porsche special, but I understood the feeling. The amount of control ... the response ... It was one hell of a rush, and for a few seconds, as the car pulled through the curve and the track opened ahead of me, I forgot about the brass key in my pocket. I wasn’t thinking about Astrid and her threats. I wasn’t thinking about how many federal crimes I was committing by setting up Hiro for a historically bad deal. I wasn’t thinking about tonight’s date with Natalie and how we still hadn’t talked about what had happened on the island, or the drug-fueled threesome we’d enjoyed with Erin after.

Tyler, Ashlee ... all of it was simply erased from my mind, left behind like all those trees disappearing in my rearview mirror. All that existed was the roar of the engine, the speed, and a deep realization that I might actually want one of these things.

“I can see why people get addicted to cars,” I said, white-knuckling the steering wheel.

“I know,” Haley McGraff said, looking a lot more relaxed than I did. “I didn’t get it either until I started working for Dad.”

The bend straightened into a long, narrow path, and the trees moved past me in a blur of golds, greens, and reds as we shot forward.

“Do you have any of your own?”

“Ha!” she said. “No! I mean, they’re nice to drive, but why do I need my own collection when I can just use my dad’s anytime?”

“He lets you drive any of his cars whenever you want?”

“Well ... not any of them. There are a few that are off-limits, but it’s fine. I mean, it would be cool to drive them, but I don’t wanna be on the hook for half a million if something happened.”

I let out a low whistle. “Half a mil ... What kind of car is that?”

“The Cilindri,” Haley said a little dreamily.

“Is that a Ferrari?” I asked.

“Yes!” She seemed pleased that I knew what it was.

She rolled her head back against the seat. “Dad let me drive it once. Well, driving is a generous word. He basically backseat-drove the entire time.”

“Hmm,” I said.

“What?” she asked, looking at me a little mock-defensive.

I shrugged. “Just seems a little weird that he would let you drive a two-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar car but not a half-million-dollar car.”

She looked at me askance. “One is a quarter million more expensive than the other.”

“I guess,” I said with a shrug. “Both cost a lot of money. Maybe I just don’t see the difference.”

She chuckled and repeated my words. “Don’t see the difference ... spoken like a true billionaire.”

“Hey! A few short months ago, I had like seven thousand in my bank account! Maybe to the ultra-wealthy, a quarter of a million isn’t much of a difference from half a million, but they’re both indistinguishable to the working class, too.”

She grinned. “Oh, you still identify with the proletariat?”

I let off the gas as we approached another turn, but didn’t hit the brake. Instead, I let my momentum slow just enough to take the turn with the kind of speed that made my heart beat fast, but not enough to make me absolutely stupid.

“I’m the everyman’s billionaire,” I said.

“Well, you’re not as insufferable as most I’ve met,” Haley said.

I took the turn with a little more heat than I expected, and even Haley looked slightly uneasy as we came through it.

“I’ll take the compliment,” I said, once I was sure I wasn’t going to lose control of the car.

Straightening once more, we picked up speed, and I felt my stomach drop as I was pressed back into the seat. I took the chance to look over my shoulder to see Chloe sitting in the back seat, gripping the edge of the seat, her knuckles white.

“You okay back there?”

Her jaw was tight as she looked at me, still unhappy. “I think I’d prefer it if you collected comics.”

Haley found that funny.

I liked Haley. She reminded me a little of Erin—only a little less sex-crazed and five years younger, pale-skinned, with light auburn hair and a cascade of freckles across her face and chest that reminded me a little of Chloe’s. She was a true redhead through and through. She also knew her stuff when it came to cars, having grown up with someone who spent all his free time eating, sleeping, and breathing them.

At first, I felt a little weird taking driving advice from a girl nearly a decade younger than me, but driving a car like this and testing its capabilities on a track dedicated specifically to pushing performance vehicles was certainly different from commuting to work in a Toyota. The weirdness only lasted about five minutes as I realized that I really did need a few pointers from Haley.

But I felt like I was starting to get the hang of it.

It certainly was a change of pace from today’s earlier activities.

After leaving Psalter, Chloe took me to the comic collector, where I met Kyle Anderson.

This man wasn’t just a collector. He didn’t simply deal in comics. Kyle was an authority. Kyle could tell you Hellboy’s first real comic appearance wasn’t Seed of Destruction, then explain the difference between San Diego Comic-Con Comics #2 and Next Men issue #21.

He had a copy of Albedo Anthropomorphics #2, which meant he owned the first appearance of Usagi Yojimbo ... and of course, he also had Comico Primer #2—the first appearance of Grendel—stored behind a double layer of glass.

I also learned that The Tick first appeared in a newsletter from New England Comics.

I hadn’t asked for any of that information, but he’d been dying to share it anyway as we walked through an entire apartment dedicated to his collection.

Even though I’d never be an enthusiast on his level, I was a man who enjoyed comics just as much as anyone else, and I decided to have him start putting together a list of Batman comics.

I liked Batman—especially now. It was a story about a rich man who wanted to make the world a better place, and I could identify with it. The man also wasn’t a saint, which I could also identify with.

Kyle seemed a little put off that I was going after something as jejune as the Dark Knight, but I was paying him a lot of money to do this, so by the time the meeting was over, I left with a burgeoning Batman collection that would be delivered to my apartment next week.

Throughout it all, I kept in regular contact with Erin to try to get some answers about the key Liz had given me. She reminded me that she had found a document listing several lockboxes at different locations. There had been no mention of keys or even of exact locations in the original documentation she found, which was just a note implying their existence and the cities they might be located in.

Honestly, I’d forgotten all about them. Apparently, Erin hadn’t, and she was about to jump out of her skin with excitement over the possibility of my locating one of their keys. We didn’t even really have any strong evidence that it was the case, but it was the only lead she had. I sent her a picture of it, and she told me that she would get right on it as soon as her other duties permitted.

On my way to McGraff’s, I stewed over what it could possibly be a key to.

Answers to every single question I had about my family?

Blood diamonds?

A first edition of Mein Kampf?

With Colin Gerrard, there was no telling.

I just didn’t know the guy well enough. The ones who were familiar with him would tell me a few things, but they only knew parts of him. Chandler could tell me about how savvy a businessman he was. It was about the same with Karl Yunger. Hiro had known him, but I wasn’t about to have a congenial dinner with Hiro Tanaka and ask him questions about my grandfather.

I had a feeling that if I was ever going to know more about Colin Gerrard than old business-related war stories and what newspaper clippings told me, I needed to talk to someone who actually knew him.

Like his daughter.

Only, Nina wouldn’t take my calls.

“Turn! Turn! Turn!” Haley said, snapping me out of my thoughts.

We’d approached the next curve in the track much faster than I was used to, and Haley’s warning spooked me. I overcorrected and almost sent the car soaring into the forest that lined the track. My heart was in my throat as a loud buzzing erupted from the Porsche’s wheels coming into contact with the track’s rumble strips.

Fortunately, I drifted back into the center of the track and immediately set to work regulating my nervous system.

Haley had one foot on the dashboard, one hand on my seatback, and the other pressed against the glass as if bracing against the interior would actually save her. She looked at me wide-eyed and gave me a weak grin. “You good?”

“Just got a little distracted,” I said, returning her weak smile with one of my own. My throat was a little dry. “Didn’t expect that turn so soon.”

“Yeah,” she said. “They come up awfully fast when you’re driving a car like this.”

I spared a glance over my shoulder for Chloe, who wouldn’t look at me. She stared straight ahead, stone-faced but a little pale around her eyes.

“Sorry,” I said, turning my eyes back to the road.

She didn’t respond.

By the time I finished a third loop of the track and made it back to the lot, I’d gotten much more comfortable with handling the car. I was comfortable enough that I successfully came to a stop by braking hard and turning the wheel sharply, causing the Porsche to spin a little over 180 degrees and leave roughly 20 feet of skid marks on the pristine asphalt before it came to a complete halt.

I glanced out the window at the tire tracks. “Got a little overenthusiastic there ... sorry.”

“Don’t be! It’s why we have the track. Dad is pretty anal about keeping it well-maintained. It’ll probably be gone in a few weeks,” Haley said, getting out of the car. As she did so, I couldn’t help but notice how well her jeans molded to an athletic ass before tapering up to a slender waist. She turned and bent back into the car, catching me looking as she grabbed her sweater. Her green eyes sparkled, and she gave me a grin, and in my attempt to look away, I happened to look down as she was bent over the driver’s seat, her shirt draped just enough to show the tops of pert, freckled breasts that hung from her chest, encased in a black bra. My eyes immediately bounced off those and back to her eyes. She looked even more amused.

Then she straightened and threw her sweater back on.

“Thanks for letting me drive the car,” I said, running my fingers over the trim.

Haley stepped aside to allow Chloe to get out, sweeping some loose hair out of her face, blown there by the soft breeze that swept across the parking lot on a chilly October day.

“No problem! Thanks for giving me the opportunity to charge my dad some overtime! And the company wasn’t bad either.”

She gave me a wink, then turned to hold out a hand to Chloe. “Sorry that I wasn’t a threat to your boss or anything. Hope it wasn’t too boring.”

Chloe’s mouth drew into a thin line as she took it. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say he wasn’t in danger. It certainly wasn’t boring.”

“Do we need to take it back to the garage?” I asked.

“I’ll do it,” Haley said, glancing at my helicopter sitting in the parking lot. “I’d have to bring you back anyway.”

“Ah,” I said. “Yeah, thanks.”

Then I glanced at Chloe. “How much time do we have left before I need to get back for my meeting with Karly?”

Chloe checked her watch. “We’d need to leave in about twenty minutes to make it in time.”

I climbed out of the Porsche and leaned against it, my elbows resting on the frame as I looked back at Haley. “I know we can’t drive it, but could I possibly take a look at the Cilindri?”

Her eyes seemed to glow a little brighter at that. “Sure!”

Friday, October 18th, 5:45 pm

I checked my phone—fifteen more minutes before I needed to get ready for my date with Natalie.

Setting my phone down, I leaned back in my office chair and looked over the problematic page in the script, then back up at Karly. She sat in a chair opposite my desk, making our relationship feel much less casual than it had become lately.

She wore a white button-down shirt that hung loosely off her shoulders, showing off her collarbones and more of her creamy chest than I was used to seeing, which I found a little distracting. Half her hair was pulled back behind her head to keep it out of her face. She was wholesomely beautiful in a way that made you want to lay your head down in her lap and just talk to her. Her eyes were bright and warm, and as we talked, she maintained eye contact and seemed to hang on every word I said.

My assistant had been hounding me to make a move on her since the moment we’d met, and she was newly single. Her relationship hadn’t made it past the rooftop incident in Vegas, where she’d been present when the attack happened. Her boyfriend had ditched her in order to find cover, and Karly had interpreted that as the true measure of his character. They’d been dating for a while.