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Xlibris US - Carroll N. Jackson

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126 pages

English

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Publié par	Xlibris US
Date de parution	15 novembre 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781664198173
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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A CHEAP PRICE TO PAY

CARROLL N. JACKSON

Copyright © 2021 by Carroll N. Jackson.
Library of Congress Control Number:
2021922828
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6641-9819-7

Softcover
978-1-6641-9818-0

eBook
978-1-6641-9817-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 06/09/2022

Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
835288
CONTENTS
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
Epilogue
PROLOGUE
THURSDAY DECEMBER 22
Stuart Mills snapped out of an empty daydream, his heart racing and both hands with a death grip on the steering wheel. He checked his rear-view and side mirrors, then torqued his neck for a frantic glance over each shoulder. Where was he? Was there cause for panic? No answers quickly came to mind, which was a rare and puzzling state of unawareness for a man priding himself on scrupulous attention to detail. His foot had just been yanked off the accelerator and was now poised to stomp on the brake pedal, but why? He neither saw nor sensed danger in any of the three southbound lanes. Feeling nonplussed and more than a little foolish, he dropped his foot back on the gas pedal. A little more time was obviously needed to process this fuzzy state of affairs… Just a little more time.
His disorientation slowly began to fade as he reviewed the events leading up to the here and now. He was driving to the airport, he recalled. Yes , that was it: he was going home for Christmas. Home…
Shit ! He was going to overshoot the airport exit! To make matters worse, he was trapped dead to rights, smack dab in the middle of a high-speed automotive peloton, no safe way out. His reacted with a whimper, bemoaning his fate, and then he spat out a curse, blaming a vengeful God for this unholy predicament. A devout Christian, he quickly retracted that blasphemy: God wasn’t behind the wheel, he confessed out loud, glancing skyward in repentance. It was he, Stuart James Mills, who had proceeded along the road like a middle-of-the-pack lemming, oblivious to everything except the asshole right in front of him.
He tapped his brake twice and frantically twisted his neck to again check over his inside shoulder, then tugged at the blinker as he swerved toward the last—and approaching way too fast—exit for Boston’s Logan Airport. Motorists along this heavily traveled section of Route 1 engaged in a nerve-wracking game of chicken on a daily basis. Fortunately, the young woman behind the wheel of a silver Mercedes SUV on Stuart’s right flank decided not to play today. Any other day she would have, unwilling to be bullied by another arrogant male driver, but her responsibility to safely transport three preteens to a school-sponsored Christmas party ruled out that option. She flashed her headlights and slowed down just enough to create a three-car-length gap, about the bare minimum needed for that macho asshole to merge into the exit lane.
Stuart saw the opening and committed. With a silent prayer, followed by an internal whoop of banzai , he swerved hard to the right at fifty miles an hour and squeezed in. Phew , threaded the needle , he exulted. A caring God must be watching over him today.
The new lane, impossible not to notice, was slathered with iridescent yellow surface paint. This apparently inexhaustible supply of paint had allowed for a multitude of parabolic directional arrows and tapered rows of chevrons, visual prods designed to funnel drivers into the proper lane. A forgiving, obnoxiously-loud rumble strip had been provided for the grossly inattentive and/or the utterly clueless.
The sympathetic suburban mom then scolded him with an extended honk, commuter speak for You’re welcome, asshole . Chastened, Stuart belatedly gave her a backward wave of apology. His teenage daughter once called his My bad gesture “dorky.” He smiled at the remembrance of her. It would be good to be home for Christmas... Home …
A prolonged sigh percolated from his chest: saved once again by the kindness of a stranger. He began to tingle with anticipation: the final leg of his journey lay just ahead. After three grinding weeks away from his northern Virginia home, he had finally concluded the last of his nine audits, all of them related to Massachusetts companies that had applied for outside financing.
For the most part, these applications came from mid-sized businesses that found themselves in arrears with various tax obligations, or from sketchy retail operations that lacked the capital reserves needed to purchase inventory for the upcoming year. Smaller banks and lending institutions in the Northeast relied on Stuart’s post-audit appraisals to determine credit lines. Like a triage doctor in a war zone, he had the heartless job of rejecting the clearly hopeless cases. Only the most viable would receive an infusion of funds, the true lifeblood of all enterprises.
A negative rating from him often spelled doom for an undercapitalized business, but sympathy never entered into the equation. Capitalism was economic Darwinism. He had been taught that harsh yet fundamental truism at the Wharton School of Business, where a crusty old professor of Corporate Finance constantly reminded his students that Miracle Cures 101 was NOT to be found in the curriculum. There were winners and losers, he preached, and no one was guaranteed so much as a participation trophy. If you got your ass handed to you in the mean old business world, expect no sympathy. Big boys’ games , big boys’ rules he would chant with didactic fervor. Never was a smile shown, only a fixed hellfire-and-brimstone glare that would stay with his students until their dying days.
The late-afternoon traffic heading toward the airport flowed in a heavy but steady stream. Stuart was well aware that he had barely beaten the worst of the weekday rush-hour madness that typically turned Boston’s major arteries into colossal parking lots. He breathed deeply through his nose and allowed his shoulders to heave in relief when, blessedly, he arrived at the Bargain Rent-a-Car returns lot.
The bare-bones rental company, he knew, provided sporadic shuttle service to the close-by terminals, but he decided that he would hoof it today. He was running a little late, and a brisk walk, even with the added burden of the suitcases, wouldn’t kill him. All that remained for him to do was sign off on the piece-of-shit rental car, grab his luggage from the trunk, and hustle his fanny over a short distance to the terminal. He was booked on the six o’clock shuttle to Washington. He felt safe, over the worst that life and his job could inflict on him. And he was going home.
Home . No more economy motel rooms, with their stained and lumpy mattresses, unreliable hot water, paper-thin walls that failed to muffle the blaring televisions and enthusiastic liaisons from abutting rooms, and hit-or-miss thermostats that led to some wildly fluctuating temperatures. An end to chain restaurants and their generic food that sustained without satisfying. No more POS rental cars, even though his superiors would notice and appreciate the savings. Thirty-eight, he thought wistfully, too old for the rat race.
Stuart drove with the grain over the anti-theft steel teeth into the snow-free Bargain return lot. An attendant wearing voluminous tan coveralls and hunter orange gloves waved him over to an empty slot. Slot thirteen, Stuart was quick to observe, the numerals stenciled in yellow paint on the pavement. He lapsed into a wry grin; he wasn’t at all superstitious but sure as hell had reached his lifetime quota of iridescent yellow. He waved in recognition of the attendant’s directive and pulled into the indicated stall.
The lot worker began barking out some instructions, but the roar of an outbound jet smothered his words. Stuart rolled down the window of his no-frills rental and poked his head out. An icy gust of wind swept in from Boston Harbor, causing his exposed windward ear and the tip of his nose to tingle unpleasantly. Within seconds he felt a freezing/burning sensation, as painful as the stinging aftermath of a slap on a cold cheek. He gasped and tucked his head back into the warm shelter of the car, a comforting palm now cupped over the afflicted ear. Maybe he should wait for the shuttle, he began to think. Hell , an unprepared man could die from exposure in this merciless harborside cold.
The Bargain employee approached Stuart’s car on the driver’s side. The man had a familiar face. Very familiar. It reminded him of … of him! The resemblance was eerie, right down to the chestnut-brown mustache and the thinning, longish hair. The closer the man got to him, the more shocking the resemblance became. In a ch