Thriller
Date Published: 11/17/2018
Publisher: Black Opal Books
Lynette Sommer ends her carefully calculated PowerPoint presentation in the Hancock Tower with a pink slip shoved across her desk and a standing order to vacate the premises immediately. Richard Lancaster, III, races through The Pru with a tie stuffed down the front of his khakis and an overzealous security guard hot on his trail. At the Boston Public Library, Carl Razer finds himself in the midst of a manic encounter from a teenage book enthusiast who has let the glitter and glamor of Twilight destroy what is left of his brain cells. And then it gets progressively worse, as three homegrown terrorists—Matthew, Mark, and John—destroy three vital Boston landmarks—The Hancock Tower, the Pru, and the Boston Public Library—with the drop of a backpack and the flick of a switch…
Chapter 1
|
L
|
ynette
Sommer stood before a sea of familiar faces. Male faces. Each one had turned
his attention directly toward her. She clicked through the PowerPoint slides,
each one culminating, building on the one before it. Most of the eyes were
glazed over, or at least turned in the
opposite direction. Hunched over bodies covered leather seats. A few yawns
filled the crowd. No hands shot up to stop her, but not a soul seemed intrigued
by what she had to say. Even her boss, sitting at the head of the table who had
seemed to support her and told her she was a star pupil within the firm, seemed
to have backed off. Of course, he hadn’t seen her presentation ahead of time.
No pre-brief. She had given him some of the finer points and run a few ideas by him before she delved in and sprinted
toward the finish.
She
still had a dozen slides to go, and more than twenty minutes left in her
presentation. The seconds ticked by on a clock at the opposite end of the room.
Cold
air pumped through the floor, and she shivered. Lynette gripped the remote in
her hand tighter, emphasized a few pertinent points, and then walked to the
other side of the screen, careful to avoid the projector light. Her wool skirt
rubbed her thighs as she walked. The conference table was long and black, nearly
the full size of the room, and the leather chairs swiveled. The men’s eyes
focused on empty notepads, or on the reception area behind the glass wall. The
glass reflected multiple smartphones.
She
didn’t like losing.
She’d
lost before: softball games and soccer
matches. Lynette left it all on the field, sprinting toward the net or around
the bases, her arms like pistons at her sides. She’d always been quick, a
natural runner. The track coach had tried to recruit her, after watching her
sprint around the soccer field like a tornado searching for land. But her heart
lived in fields of green and seas of dirt, square white bags and wide nets, in
polyester shorts and shirts.
The
faces in front of her now, though, felt dirty, used up. The men cold and dead,
lines and creases fully formed on their faces with mouths closed in silent
trepidation. The one at the head of the table scrolled through his phone with
the flick of his index finger.
She’d
practiced the presentation over and over, used a mirror, and whatever else she
could think of, as she hit the high points and skirted past the low ones. She’d
gone over the finer details of the slides, point by point, with her head held
high and her mouth opened wide. Yet, she didn’t feel at ease. Instead, Lynette
felt tightly wound, on edge, the carpet nearly catching a heel, her lips nearly
numb, and her face almost there as well. The air shot up through the vents and
smacked her face with each turn of her heel. She’d given presentations in this
conference room for literally four years, and each had gone better than this
calamity. She’d seen faces turned up toward her, eager faces, happy, with a
smile of encouragement here, or a polite nod there. But not now. Now she felt
as though there were seventeen guns pointed in her direction, and all she
needed was one itchy trigger finger.
Sweat
cascaded down her fingers and smacked the blue carpet. Lynette clicked to the
next slide.
“This
company is hiding money, plain and simple, gentlemen. It’s cooking the books to
deliver consistently successful quarters. Each quarter one to three cents ahead
of projections. And it’s fraud. Hidden beneath these numbers is another Enron
or Worldcom. A disaster awaiting the right financial auditor. When this one
tanks, you don’t want to be floundering for one of the life rafts.”
She’d
shown them charts, numbers, and graphs to back up her data. A specific line on
Xanthic’s balance sheet and income statement—the same line, in fact—was off
each time. She wasn’t sure how anyone could have missed it. It had taken her
less than a day to discover the error of Xanthic’s ways. The executives were
slick and polished and aided by slippery politicians with fat bank accounts and
college mistresses, salesmen who talked one game and delivered another. Instead
of running a company, they should have been running for office. Congress. A
place where golden parachutes were passed around like umbrellas before a spring
rain.
Not
being able to account for every dollar bothered her. Having the trail of gold
shoved right under her nose made her fists clench and her heart race.
“Thank
you, Lynette.”
“But
I’m not finished. I have—”
Her boss bowed his
head. “You most certainly are.”
About the Author
Robert Downs aspired to be a writer before he realized how difficult the writing process was. Fortunately, he’d already fallen in love with the craft, otherwise, his tales might never have seen print. Originally from West Virginia, he has lived in Virginia, Massachusetts, New Mexico, California, and now resides in Colorado. When he’s not writing, Downs can be found reading, watching movies, traveling, or smiling. To find out more about his latest projects, or to reach out to him on the Internet, visit the author’s website: www.RobertDowns.net.
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