55

Brenda slid the passports out of the cardboard envelope and spread them before Jason. Three for him, three for her. Each cover was embossed with the emblem of a different country. They would be Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders. He flipped one open. He would have to memorize his new names.

“How did you do this?”

“I told you—I know some people who know some people. That whole six-degrees-of-separation thing.” She still wore her work clothes, and Jason hadn’t removed his jacket yet. They’d been in her apartment for only five minutes, but everything was changing. The whole world was changing.

His face stared back at him from inside the passport, the picture embossed into the page. He held it under a lamp to try to see how they had inserted it, angled it under the light, but he saw no imperfections in the surface of the page.

When he held this document out to the customs official, that face would be the face of a fugitive.

The other two were equally well done. If there were any flaws in the documents, they were beyond his ability to see.

“They look good. Really good.” They were the last piece of the puzzle. With these, he could establish the overseas accounts. And the two of them could travel without leaving a trail.

Underneath his starched shirt, a drop of sweat trickled down from his chest and lodged near his belt.

He ran a finger over his brow and it came away wet.

“What’s the matter?”

He slipped his new identities into the inside pocket of his jacket. The credit memo covering the $30-million loan to Northfield was nearly finished. A loan the company had never applied for. A loan the management of Northfield knew nothing about.

Sweat was breaking out from every crease of his body. It was the passports that were doing it to him. Even the credit memo as he’d drafted it had the taint of fantasy to it. It was still a game, and at any point he could fold up the board, box up the pieces, put it on a shelf, and walk away. But now he and Brenda had passports, and good ones at that.

Too good.

“How exactly did you get these?”

She smiled. “A lady never reveals her secrets.” She stepped to him and slid her arms around him, her hands moving up to his shoulders, his neck, the back of his head. In an instant, her lips would be on his and he would be finished.

He pulled away. “No, really. I want to know how you got these.”

Her hands moved back to his shoulders. She let her eyes roam over his face, his chest, back to his eyes. “I told you. I know this girl from college whose daddy has connections.”

“Who’s the girl and who’s her daddy?”

“Darlin’, what’s the matter with you? You wanted me to get the passports, and I got them. They’re good. Real. I don’t know how they got them, but they did. They swapped out the pictures or something. She said they should be good for at least a few weeks. That’ll get us wherever we want to go.”

“And what makes you think you can trust her?”

“She was my best friend in college. I know I can trust her. You’re just going to have to take my word for it.” She stared at him a moment, her head turning, eyes at an angle toward him, and that smile crept back onto her face. “Come on over to the sofa, darlin’.”

She pulled at him, and he obeyed. They sank into the cushions together, and her hands began to move over him again. “I love it that you’re so taken up in the details, Jason. It’s what’s going to make this work. You’ll get that loan approved tomorrow, you’ll get the accounts opened and funded. It’s happening, Jason. We’re going away together. You and me, forever.”

Her hands coasted over his arms and chest; her face was close enough for him to feel its warmth. She pressed against him, her breath a caress on his neck. He wanted to tell her to stop, but with every sensation he weakened.

Instead, he said, “So how many people know about this? There’s your friend, her father, the passport guy. Who else?”

She didn’t stop the movement of her hands. “Nobody knows, Jason. Not really.” She brought her lips to his neck, his ear, his cheek, her hands pulling him to her. “All they know is they did a favor for my friend. They saw those photos—that’s all. Nobody knows our names. Don’t worry, darlin’. We’re going away together.”

She pulled him toward her, but he resisted. It was maddening. It had gotten out of his control. Others were in on it now. It had gone beyond a game with a pretty girl. Beyond revenge for Serena’s affair, beyond getting even with Vince and Mark and the whole bank system that had brought him to this place of desperation and fury. And yet, Brenda . . .

She would not relent. Her hands, her lips. Every inch of his flesh cried out to her with an urgent reach. The longer he endured her touch, the weaker he became. Stories filtered through his mind—of a man strapped to the mast of a ship to prevent him from yielding to a siren song, of a man shorn of his hair and blinded by his enemies, abandoned by his God. Where were the mast ties now? Where was God when he needed him?

Here. Here in her arms, her hands, the movement of her body against his, a cascade of motion and desire, Brenda, her eyes the green of a sea in sunshine, her skin milky, tender and hot, her flesh—here was his god.