The Player's Club: Finn (22 page)

She took a deep breath, nodded. “People climb it every year,” she said, still uncertain.

“People die on it every year,” Lincoln added. “Especially when they haven’t put in the proper training time.”

“That’s enough, Lincoln.”

Lincoln shook his head. “I love you like a brother, and I thank God every day we started the Club,” he said slowly. “You care a lot about her. I know it’s fighting dirty…but if it means I don’t spread your ashes over Kilimanjaro or wherever, then I’ll deal the low blow, Finn.”

With that, Diana watched as Lincoln rejoined the others.

She turned, staring at Finn. “Do you have a death wish?”

He looked tortured. “Diana,” he whispered. “I don’t… You wouldn’t understand.”

She held his face in her hands.

“We’ll talk about it later,” she promised, kissing him. “Or we won’t. Don’t worry about it now, okay?”

He seemed so thankful, her heart was breaking.

She loved him, so she would let him make that choice…even though it might kill her.

FINN DIALED Ben’s number. Diana was busy with the Players. They’d found the financial information they were searching for, but they hadn’t quite winnowed it down to who was behind it all yet. It would probably take hours more. Hell, possibly days. In the meantime, Finn had no money.

He’d always thought that money didn’t matter to him, and technically, it didn’t. It didn’t matter if he lived in a swanky town house or shared an apartment with thirty guys—which, at this point, looked likely, he thought. It didn’t matter if he had a BMW or a beat-up Chevy Nova. What did matter, though, were his adventures.

If he didn’t have those, what else mattered? He shuddered, then got a grip when Ben answered the phone.

“Jeez, where have you been, man,” Ben said, sounding disgruntled. “I’ve got a few other people interested in the Everest thing. And guess what?”

“Um, Ben.” Finn tried to interrupt, but Ben was too hell-bent to notice.

“
Next week,
baby!” Ben hooted. “Tell me your passport’s in order. I can even line up a doctor to give you the shots.”

“What’s the rush, Ben?” Finn asked, a little disgruntled himself by this point.

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “What do you mean? Why should I wait? Most pledges do their challenges in a month!”

“Yeah, but most pledges don’t pick Everest, Ben,” Finn shot back. “If you hurry, you can get hurt. You could get others hurt.”

“I’m careful,” Ben protested. “More careful than you. So if this is about you, and you’re scared…”

“I’m not scared,” Finn snapped. “I could do it tomorrow
if I had the damned money!
”

There. He’d said it.

“Whoa. Didn’t know it was a money issue.” Ben sounded subdued. “Huh.”

“And with the hard-on you’ve got, I’m sure one hundred and fifty thousand or so isn’t that big a deal....”

“More like two hundred,” Ben corrected.

Finn winced. “Two hundred large. Right now I’m probably going to lose my condo and my car, so finding that kind of pocket change isn’t really in the cards.”

“Shit.” Ben went silent for several seconds, then sighed. “Okay. Well, I’ve got a spare room.”

Finn finally cracked a smile. “Great offer, but I think I’ve probably got that covered, actually.”

“That woman problem straightened itself out, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, I don’t have two hundred thousand lying around,” Ben said. “Sorry about that.”

“If you want to go without me, at least let me line up another Player to go with you…and check it out,” Finn said, regret boring a hole in his chest. “I still want to go. It just looks like it’s going to take me longer than I thought.”

“Right,” Ben said easily.

Finn paused. “You’re still going, aren’t you? Next week?”

“Yes.” His tone was absolute.

“Why are you in such a hurry, Ben?” Finn asked.

The pause drew out interminably. Finally, Ben sounded weary. “Why’d you invite me to the Player’s Club, Finn?”

“I don’t know,” Finn said, laughing. Then shrugged, even though Ben couldn’t see it over the phone. “You reminded me of me, I guess.”

“So why did you start the Club?”

Finn leaned back. He hadn’t told his story to anyone for years, and now he was telling two people in a matter of a week. “I’ve got leukemia.”

A startled silence this time. “Oh?”

“Almost died. Couple of times. It’s in remission now,” Finn said slowly, “but…”

“Yeah. I know.” Ben’s voice was a mere whisper. “I’m going blind, Finn.”

Finn closed his eyes. “Oh,” he echoed. The kid was only twenty. What had he seen by the time he was twenty? Not enough. Not enough by half, if he was going blind.

“Not for a while…but soon enough.” Ben sounded grim—but determined. “It’s degenerative, and fairly fast moving. If I’m not going to be able to see again, I’m going to damned well see everything I can.”

“I wish to God I could go with you,” Finn said, and meant it with every fiber of his being.

“Yeah, well, maybe we’ll pass the hat.” Ben’s laugh was impossibly joyful, considering. “I’ll talk to you soon.”

Finn hung up, and then sat for a moment, hands in his pockets, eyes on the skyline.

Diana joined him on the sofa and rested her head on his shoulder. Reflexively, he wrapped his arms around her.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked against his chest. “You look so sad.”

“I just…I wonder what’s the point sometimes. That’s all.”

“The Everest thing?”

He nodded. He didn’t tell her about Ben going blind—didn’t know if that was a secret he should share. But it ate at him.

“Finn, it’ll be all right.” She held him tight. “I promise, it’ll be all right.”

“I don’t know how.”

She smiled. “The guys found most of the info we needed, including Lincoln’s file. It’ll take some time to destroy his financial history. Let’s go home.”

“You mean your house?”

She nodded, then took him by the hand. “It can be your home as long as you want it to.”

He drove them back, then followed her into her house, up to her bedroom. They made love, slowly, tenderly…with lots of deep, intense kissing. When his body joined with hers, he felt a sort of peace he hadn’t ever known. He felt more alive than he could ever remember, too.

Afterward, in the darkness, he held her cradled against his chest, their heartbeats matching in time. “The Everest thing…”

“I told Ben I can’t,” he said. “He wants to go next week. I just can’t afford that.”

“How much is it?”

“Two hundred thousand.”

She was quiet, and he felt sure he could hear her recriminations:
What sort of idiot pays that much money to do something that crazy? That dangerous? That…

“I could give you the money.”

“What?”

“I have savings,” she said. “Macalister paid me well, and…other than the house, I don’t really live all that extravagantly, and…”

“You’ll need the savings,” he said, feeling slightly ashamed. “I mean, I’m sure we can get this cleared up, but until then—”

“I’ve got a couple million,” she said, shocking him even more. “If you really want to go, then you should go.”

He sat up, staring at her in the dim light. He couldn’t make out her expression. “I thought you’d be like Lincoln,” he said eventually. “You know. Thinking I’m nuts. Thinking it’s a death wish—like you asked.”

“I hate it,” she whispered. “The thought of you up there makes me break out into a cold sweat. But if it means that much to you, then you’ve got to do it.”

“What if I died, Diana?”

“Then you’ll die doing what you love.”

He snuggled against her, holding her for a long time, thinking she’d fallen asleep. Until she spoke quietly in the darkness.

“Sometimes dying seems easier than living.”

He squeezed her tight—and wondered if that was exactly what he was doing.

15

THE NEXT MORNING, Diana was hard at work analyzing the financial information copied from Macalister’s. Tucker had covered his tracks, still, at some point she would have to reveal the fact that she’d hacked into the Macalister network to prove her own innocence.

At one time, Thorn would’ve looked at that and considered it moxie—the kind of take-no-prisoners, find-a-solution-at-any-cost mentality that he’d hired her for. Now he might simply suspect that she was covering up her own tracks and that her criminal blood was finally proving true. How could he trust her again?

Screw that. How could you trust
him
again?

She frowned as that thought crept to the forefront. No matter what else he’d done, she owed Thorn a lot. Her education. Her job experience.

You were a well-paid wage slave who put up with his temper and jumped through flaming hoops to keep him happy.

She quickly got up, started pacing. Where was all this coming from? Had she had this resentment the whole time…or was it new and quickly spreading?

Could she get rid of it?

Did she want to?

She was still turning the matter over in her mind when Lincoln knocked on her home office door. “Finn let me in. He said that I could talk to you.”

Lincoln still sounded reserved, even after their discussion in Tucker’s kitchen. Though at least she felt as if they were on the same page, finally. She nodded, motioning him in.

He handed her a small sheaf of paper. “I took the liberty of going a few levels deeper,” he said. “The guy we’re looking for is somebody named Victor Sharonvsky. Somebody in the controller’s office.”

She frowned, trying to match a face to the name. “I’ve heard of him, but I’m not sure I’ve ever met him.”

“I pulled his employee file, as well,” Lincoln said, completely expressionless as he handed her another small pile of paper. “Seems clean as a whistle.”

Her eyes narrowed. “So it seems.” But something was off. She could feel it in the marrow of her bones.

“How far are you willing to go with this?” Lincoln asked.

She closed her eyes, knowing what he was asking. Would she be willing to bend the law again?

“I’m not like my family. I’m not stealing, I’m not hurting anyone. I’m not even ‘following orders’ this time. This is self-defense. If this is the guy framing me,” she replied, “then all the way.”

“Good.” Lincoln pulled yet another sheet from the file. “I took the liberty and had his financials pulled.”

She winced. “You didn’t have to do that.”

Lincoln waited until she met his gaze. “Yeah, I did,” he said. “Because you’re a Player now, and besides, you love Finn. Anybody who loves him is somebody I’m going out of my way to protect.”

A moment of silent understanding passed between them. Then she took a quick glance at the papers. Her eyebrows rose.

“He’s losing a lot of money,” she murmured. “A lot, and regularly.”

“I’d suspect gambling,” Lincoln said. “With some digging I’m sure we can find out who he owes money to. It would make the most sense.”

“Hmm.” So she’d had her world destroyed because some idiot felt like betting on football, she thought. There were probably worse reasons, but she couldn’t think of one offhand.

“I’ll also bet that this wasn’t his idea,” Lincoln added. “Looking over Victor’s employee file shows he doesn’t have a background in computers, and while the job was a little sloppy, it was still conceived by someone who knows how to run this particular con.”

“Sounds like you’d know,” she retorted. “That’s not a judgment, just an observation.”