After they hung up, Hauck sat there, his stomach hollow, his skin tingling, then sank back against the bench. The choice was to walk away from Alpha. His promise to Watkins and Dani. From making Robertson pay for what he’d done. Because he damn well knew that if he didn’t, no one else would lift a finger to. Or walk away from Talon. His career.
I hope you make the right choice, son.
He thought about how Kelli Watkins would feel. They all leave. Or become part of them.
And Chuck Watkins, who’d just taken a bullet meant for Hauck.
He got up and went back to the bar. The group of gals had left. The bartender came up again. Hauck indicated another drink.
“The pretty brunette over there said they’d be at Justice Snow’s later if you wanted to come by. It’s a hot spot here in town.”
“Thanks.”
He sat back at the bar. His insides were buzzing like a tuning fork. We’ve all met and we’re pretty united. Hauck didn’t exactly have a graduate degree in corporate shrewdness. What had changed?
Then it struck him. A shot to the belly at first; then it wormed up like something heated in his bloodstream until it was a throbbing in his head. He thought back to the first time Foley had called him out here. Or Brooke.
“Take that young niece of yours or whatever she is and …”
He was pretty sure he had never mentioned Dani. To either of them. All he’d said was that he was out here for a friend.
The bartender brought his drink and Hauck downed it in a couple of gulps. What the hell did Foley know?
“You gonna join them over at Justice’s?” he asked. “Fun times.”
Hauck shook his head and motioned for a check. “Room service.”
CHAPTER SIXTY
He got the answer he was looking for just a few minutes later.
An NBA playoff game was on that he wasn’t paying much attention to, and he had just picked through a pretty fair burger. He was surfing around on his phone—answering an email from Vern Fitzpatrick, the head of the Greenwich police force, his old boss, who wanted to see him, and a couple of business-related things that he forwarded on to Brooke.
At the same time, going over his conversation with Foley.
If there was one thing he’d learned in the time he was on the boat, it was that what drove him wasn’t the money. Or the fame. Or power. He’d surely been on enough news shows. I hope you make the right choice, son. He thought back to a time when he was the happiest, and it somehow took him back to when he was working for the NYPD, on the fast track to detective, his whole career ahead of him, with Jessie and Rachel, his two young girls, his family whole and together, immune from harm.
He could never go back to that, of course.
He’d been happy when he was drifting around the Caribbean with Naomi, no plan or destination. But he knew that was more of a postponement than a life. And he knew he could never go back to that, either.
And he was happy when he went up against the Gstaad Group, a force much more powerful than himself, and whom no one had had the will or the courage to take down.
He had.
Or the other times in his life he’d stood up when no one else did.
And Hauck saw it now. Clearly. As if for the first time. Just who he was. Stripped of the high-arcing career and all the TV interviews and fleeting fame. Out here. In a place he had no connection to. Alone.
He saw that he felt most alive, most infused with purpose, when he went up against them.
Against those forces no one else would.
What he was doing here.
It wasn’t very complex. It wasn’t even remotely heroic, no matter what they said.
All he’d ever wanted to feel was the sense that he was doing some good.
He leaned back and watched some Indiana Pacer guard do a crazy-ass dunk on a fast break. His whole life wasn’t so much more than a big, transparent cliché. There are those in the white hats and the black hats, Jen Keeler had told him, and don’t confuse the two.
He didn’t. He’d never confused them.
There was never much doubt about which hat he wore.
The game turned into a rout and there was nothing more he could occupy himself with online. He scrolled down Google News before calling it a night. He had to make up his mind about Foley’s ultimatum, but something told him that he already had, and that he had for a long time, weeks, while his soul and body mended. He just hadn’t admitted it to himself maybe. Until now.
Flicking through the headlines, something caught his eye.
Normally he might have breezed right by it, but a single word grabbed him, pretty much punched him, listed under Colorado Business news: “RMM Agrees to Be Acquired by Oil Conglomerate.”
He opened the link. The oil and gas exploration company had agreed to be taken over. Jen Keeler had said they were in talks for this. Whatever they could pump out of the ground only improved the bottom line. And for that, they needed all the water they could get. The stock had jumped sixteen points that day.
But it was something else that caused Hauck to stop, that gave him the answer he was searching for, and changed the course this whole thing was heading in.
What’s changed, Tom?
In a way, it even made him chuckle with mock respect.
It explained Foley’s ultimatum. Why Talon’s board had gotten together. Why it was so urgent that he come back. Why it had to be done tonight.
It also explained how his boss knew about Dani.
The company acquiring RMM was Global Exploration.
Talon’s client.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
So that’s how Foley was getting his information. And why it was all so important. Why it had to be acted on now. He needed Hauck out of the way. What Hauck was trying to do was only stirring up things up out here. Things that could screw the deal should they come out.
I’ve spoken with the executive committee. We’re united on it.
Bravo, Tom, you played your role to a T. Hauck couldn’t help but give him a sardonic applause.
His phone sounded again. Hauck checked the screen. Geoff Davies. He pressed the answer button.
Dani.
“How’re you doing?” he answered.
“I guess all right. It’s all kind of like a dream, what happened today.”
“I know.”