really happening, then he’d be far better off expunging any trace of the thought from his mind and never mentioning it to anyone. Which was the sensible thing to do, the rational thing to do, and Bellinger prided himself, above any other qualities he might have, on his rationality. But there was something else.
A friend had died. Not just a friend.
His best friend.
And that was something that his rationality was finding hard to ignore.
Visions of the tragic accident in the Skeleton Coast sparked in his mind’s eye, horrific images his imagination had conjured up long ago, after he’d been told about how Danny Sherwood had died.
He couldn’t ignore it.
He had to find out. Make sure. Get the whole picture.
He got himself another beer and sat alone in the dark living room, staring into nothing, his mind alternating between what he’d just seen and what had happened two years ago. A few bottles later, he retrieved his phone and scrolled down his contacts list until he found the entry he was looking for. It was a number he’d been given a couple of years ago, one he hadn’t called for almost that long.
He hesitated, then hit the call button.
He heard it ring through three, four times, then a man picked up.
“Who’s this?” The man’s tone had a detached, no-nonsense ring to it.
The sound of Matt Sherwood’s voice brought Bellinger a modicum of solace. A palpable connection, however fleeting, to his long-dead friend.
“It’s Vince. Vince Bellinger,” he answered, a slight hesitation in his voice. He paused for a beat, then added, “Where are you, Matt?”
“At my place. Why?”
“I need to see you, man,” Bellinger told him. “Like, now.”
Chapter 6
Boston, Massachusetts
No one in the crowded arena could tear their eyes away from the huge video scoreboards. Not the fans. Not the players. And certainly not anyone in Larry Rydell’s perfectly positioned luxury suite at the Garden.
His guests, the design team working on the groundbreaking electric car he hoped to launch within a couple of years, had been enjoying the treat. They’d spent the whole day in the project’s nerve center over in Waltham, bringing him up to speed on the car’s status, going over the problems they’d managed to solve and the new ones they’d unearthed. As with everything Rydell did, the project had world-beating ambitions. His friend Elon Musk— another Internet sensation, courtesy of a little online business he’d cofounded by the name of PayPal—had already launched his electric car, the Tesla, but that was a sports car. Rydell was after a different kind of driver: the legions driving around in Camrys, Impalas, and Accords. And so he’d recruited the best and the brightest designers and engineers, given them everything they needed to make it happen, and let them do their thing. It was just one of several pet projects he had running at the same time. He had teams working on more efficient wind farms, solar cells, and better wiring to ferry the resulting power around. Renewable energy and clean power were going to be the next great industrial revolution, and Larry Rydell was nothing if not visionary.
The only resource his projects fought over was his own time. Money certainly wasn’t an issue, even with the recent turmoil in the markets. He was well aware of the fact that he had more of it than he’d ever need. Every computer and cell phone user on the planet had contributed his or her share to his fortune, and the stratospheric share price his company had enjoyed had done the rest. And although Rydell enjoyed the good life, he’d found better things to do with his money than build himself five-hundred-foot yachts.
They’d had a long, productive day, overcoming a big hurdle they’d been trying to solve for weeks, and so he’d decided to reward the team by sending them off on their end-of-year break in style. He’d treated them to a great dinner, all the drink they could handle, and the best seats in the house. They’d just watched Paul Pierce slip past Kobe Bryant and slam home a two-handed dunk, and heard the first-period buzzer go, when the suspended cube of screens had flicked over to a live news feed and all noise had drained out of the arena.
As he stood there, mesmerized by the surreal display before him, he felt his BlackBerry vibrate in his pocket. The alert was one of three that never went comatose, even when his privacy settings were on, which was most of the time. One was entrusted to Mona, his PA—or, more accurately, the senior PA among the four who controlled the drawbridge to his office. Another was allocated to his ex-wife, Ashley, although she usually found it easier to call Mona and get him to call her back. The third, the one that was now clamoring for his attention, told him his nineteen-year-old daughter Rebecca was calling.
Something she rarely did when she was on a distant beach, which was currently—and often—the case. The family villa in Mexico, he thought, though he wasn’t sure. It could have been the chalet in Vail or the yacht in Antigua. Between her appetite for partying and his scant appetite for anything that didn’t concern the projects he lived and breathed, that tidbit of information had some pretty large cracks to slip through.
He pressed the phone to his ear without taking his eyes off the screen.
“Dad, are you watching this?”
“Yeah,” he replied, somewhat dazed. “We’re all standing here at the Garden watching it like zombies.”
“Same here,” his daughter laughed, somewhat nervously. “We were about to go out when a friend of mine in L.A. called to tell us about it.”
“Where are you anyway?”
“Mexico, Dad,” she half-groaned, with an undisguised you-should-know-this tone.
Just then, the initial shock veered to cheers and claps as the already charged fans let their emotions rip. The noise reverberated through the arena. “Wow,” Rebecca echoed, “it sounds wild.”
“It is,” he said with a curious smile. “How long have they been showing it?”
“I’m not sure, we just switched it on a few minutes ago.” She paused for a moment, then said, “Dad . . . what do you think it is?”
And, in what was probably a first for a man who was rightly feted around the world as nothing less than a genius, Larry Rydell had no answer for his daughter. At least, not one that he could share with her.
Not now.
Not ever.
Chapter 7
Washington, D.C .
A light rain peppered the nation’s capital as a black, chauffeur-driven Lexus slipped out of the underground garage and slunk onto Connecticut Avenue and into the sparse late-evening traffic. In the cosseted comfort of its heated backseat, Keenan Drucker stared out in silence, lost in a streaming light show of passing cars, contemplating the events of the momentous day.
The phone calls had begun about an hour ago, and in the days to come, there would be plenty more, of that he was certain.
They were only getting started.
He shut his eyes and leaned back against the richly padded headrest. His mind chewed over his plan, once
