Bad Company Read Online Free Page B

infrastructure just as the whole social media thing was taking off. But we were riding a wave. The business was full of ups and downs and when we hit a big down this year Brady decided to protect our interests by getting a little creative with the company finances. Moving money around through ghost accounts, and God knows what else. I had no idea what he was doing and how bad things were until it was too late. I had no idea the money Brady was moving around to keep us afloat had come from the kind of investors you’re never going to find profiled in Forbes .”
    “And the girl?”
    Denny shrugged, as if it was nothing. “I found the two of them one night, when I went back to the office. She was naked on her back on my desk, a long white line of coke between her tits and down the center of her belly, and Brady was bent over her snorting it all up through a rolled one hundred dollar bill. I wasn’t impressed and I expressed my dissatisfaction with him. Well, when his face stopped bleeding and he was still blubbing I figured it was more than just the drugs and the whiskey and the shame talking and that was when he confessed that he’d lost it all and he was scared, really scared .”
    He paused, reached up, adjusted the rear-view mirror. When he turned briefly to look at her she could see the hurt in his eyes.
    “I’d been blind,” he said. “I’d let my old buddy keep digging himself deeper and I’d been so lost in my own world I hadn’t even noticed. It wasn’t just Brady who’d blown it all: it was me .”
    “So what did you do?”
    Another shrug. Eyes back on the road ahead, the interstate still anonymous. “I made him tell me everything. I worked out who was the kingpin, the one guy who, if we could convince him to give us time and space, would protect us from all the other hyenas at the door. And I went to talk with him, to plead our case. I tell you, that’s the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life, but I did it because it was the only sensible thing to do.”
    A flash of that grin, and then he went on: “And then when that failed I took Brady gambling and in no time at all we turned a five million debt into ten and it was pretty much downhill from then on in.”
    §
    They traveled in silence for a time. Cassie flipped down the sun visor and studied herself in the vanity mirror. She looked pale and tired. Why did she have a face that showed up the day’s wear and tear like that? Why couldn’t she be one of those women who always looked flawless?
    She rummaged through her new bag for the bits and pieces she’d picked up at Walmart. A little foundation did wonders, even if she did get some of the powder on her jeans. Lips a soft pink, then some blusher to give her a bit of color.
    “It’s okay for you guys,” she said. She’d seen him glancing across at her as she worked. “Run a hand through your hair and you’re fine.” He laughed. He seemed to be relaxing again, now that he’d told her his story. When he’d been telling her, he’d tried to play it cool, but it was clear that saying those things aloud, reliving them... it was all still very intense for him.
    Doing her eyes was a little more tricky. Just as well Denny had such refined taste in cars: far easier doing her face in the Lexus than in Lou’s battered old SUV – and she’d done that more than once, on supply runs into Bangor. Shadow, eye liner, a little mascara... and all the time, Denny kept glancing across, as if he’d never seen a woman doing her face before.
    Next time he looked, she gave a brief smile and he seemed awkward. She wondered what kind of women he was used to, if he’d ever shared domestic moments like this with a woman. There was so much she didn’t know. And so odd to be feeling this way: so domestic and intimate, when they were on the run from armed gangsters!
    She mulled over what Denny had told her. His business partner Brady Lowe, the girl, the staggering scale of the money he had blown. She didn’t