Fraud: A Stepbrother Romance Read online

  Sam guided the boat out of the marina, and into the bay. He pointed it towards Key Largo, and put the throttles to full.

  The boat rose and crashed into the waves, pounding the hull mercilessly. It made me queasy, but I was managing to hold on.

  Barely.

  After about an hour of getting jostled as badly as I ever had been when on a ship, I heard the three men talking.

  It was hard to hear them over the wind noise, and the waves. It started to rain, and I couldn’t quite make out what they were arguing about.

  “You slimy bastard!” Sam Parker yelled suddenly.

  “Who do you think you are? My boys in Chicago and D.C. will rip your head off and shit down your throat!” he shouted at King and Tanner.

  Sam was furious.

  “Look, asshole,” said Tanner, “you knew the score when you came on board the organization. Mr. King gets seventy percent, you get fifteen, I get five, and the rest is ‘administration’.”

  “Then, explain how it is that I am only getting two fucking percent, Tanner?” said Sam.

  “I had a look, and you are getting all my excess inventory at cost. You’re then shipping it god knows where, and I see the invoices are for ten times the sticker. So, where the hell is my cut, King?” he said.

  King just looked at Tanner, and made this weird face. His eyes kind of rolled back in his head, and his tongue stuck out a bit.

  Tanner spun Sam around, and punched him in the stomach. Sam’s breath whooshed out, and he crumpled over.

  King walked around to the other side of Tanner, and did something, but I couldn’t see what it was.

  The next thing I know, Tanner had somehow managed to get Sam to stand near the side of the boat, and that’s when I saw what was about to happen.

  I jumped out from my hide, inside the life raft, and ran towards the three of them.

  Just then, a huge wave crashed over the bow, sending me off-balance.

  King saw me.

  “So, Mr. White! You’ve decided to join us!” he said.

  “Back off, King!” I yelled.

  “You too, Tanner!” I said.

  Tanner pushed Sam, and timed it just as another wave smacked the boat. We all went reeling, but I could see Sam was about to go overboard.

  “You bastard!” I shouted at Tanner.

  I grabbed for Sam, just as Tanner yanked the rope that entangled his feet.

  Sam slipped backwards, and I heard him hit his head on the side of the boat.

  Another huge wave hit just then, and Sam fell overboard, stunned by the impact.

  Sam Parker’s eyes were wide as he fell into the roiling sea.

  But, there was no sign of life in them.

  He’d been knocked unconscious by the blow, or stunned into incapacity.

  Either way, he was dead.

  I saw the rope around his feet trailing him, and leapt at it.

  The motion of the boat caused me to fall down, right where he’d been standing.

  “Come about! Get the life preserver and toss it over!” shouted King. “Hurry, George!”

  When I got up, he was gone.

  There was no sign of him in the water, with the waves crashing all over the place.

  He must have sunk almost immediately.

  Suddenly, Tanner and King were shouting and trying to push me aside.

  They manhandled me and I saw Tanner toss a life-ring far out into the ocean.

  There was no way to tell if Parker had caught it, nor if it even was near him.

  “Why the fuck are they bothering?” I thought.

  Sam Parker had gone to Davy Jones’s Locker.

  There’d be no more barbecues or arguing about politics or anything like that with Uncle Sam anymore.

  Sam Parker may not have been my most favorite person, but he didn’t deserve to die like that.

  “George! Assure that Mr. White doesn’t escape! He pushed Sam Parker over the side!” King shouted.

  What the fuck? I thought.

  Suddenly, I looked at the cabin and saw a small red light blinking on and off, and figured it was time to get out of there.

  Tanner jumped in front of me, and I pounded my right fist into his face. I’m pretty sure I broke his nose.

  He fell backward to the heaving deck, and I jumped overboard, into the ocean.

  The “Punta Gordo II” was lost among the waves.

  I heard it going away from me, as my flotation vest kept my head out of the worst of the waves. I used my snorkel to breathe, letting the waves pick me up and put me down. I floated, letting the harsh seas do all the work. I knew that the general direction of the current would be north, along the Gulfstream. My extraction point was only a few miles from where I’d leapt off, and I knew that my team would get the EPIRB beeps, and come find me.

  It was more boring than dangerous.

  At least, it is when you have the right gear.

  *****

  About fifteen minutes later, a Coastie cutter came alongside, and some ropes were tossed to me. I climbed onto it, and it headed back to shore.

  “Things just got real, Randy,” I said.

  “What’s up? Did you find out anything useful?” he said.

  “Either we’ve got King for murder, or I’ve got bigger troubles than I think I can handle,” I replied.

  *****

  At least our team was making some progress in finding out about Robert King’s money laundering operations. We just could not figure out how he had been able to hide the transactions.

  Ever since the Patriot Act came out, banks had been more and more stringent about assuring that a legal audit trail existed for all of the ways that money was being handled. To ignore or try to bypass these regulations put the bank at great risk. Nobody wanted to be accused of assisting in the funding of terrorist organizations such as ISIS. Bankers by nature are very conservative.

  It was one thing to hide Nazi gold in their vaults that had been confiscated from Polish Jews, but it was a completely different thing to provide money that purchased weapons that now were being used against US allies

  Including bankers…

  The indiscriminate nature of terrorist bombings, especially in the London banking districts, had forced the banks’ officers to finally take these steps seriously.

  Working in concert with the state departments of both European Union countries and the United States, the banks were clamping down.

  What made this so frustrating for our team was that somehow Mr. Robert King had managed to find loopholes.

  Shell companies only held his money for a very short period of time and paid exorbitant instant interest rates to make sure that the transactions were kept as secret as legally possible.

  But we suspected that couriers were used that would bring bearer bonds into former Eastern European countries, where they were converted to Russian or other currencies. Once that was done, they were arbitraged due to the interest rate differences between member countries and other markets such as China or Korea.

  It was a difficult and tangled web to unravel, and we had the best forensic accountants trying to decipher how it was being done.

  Our team’s task was to find any possible evidence we could that would be used to indict King.

  After several months of surveillance, we had determined that the “Disco Inferno” was a common meeting point for King and his associates.

  Most of our ways of conducting secret investigations of the ship were unsuccessful.

  We finally came upon the plan of attaching a Limpet microphone to the hull of the yacht. The transmitted sound was recorded onto a small hard drive in the device. In this way we were able to monitor conversations held on board the ship. The electronics inside it would also capture all the radio and cellular traffic within 20 yards of the yacht. Then it would beam it to a satellite, using an encrypted method.

  We had the NSA to thank for this, as they had developed the technology 10 years earlier for use in Middle Eastern embassies.
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  After only a few weeks, we had finally managed to gather enough evidence to mount the legal assault, and had gone to Judge Turner for a search warrant.

  The Judge was reluctant to issue one based on the evidence we provided, so we had to go back for one last try.

  That’s how I found myself bouncing around in a small speedboat, acting like a drunken fool, so that I could attach a second Limpet mic to Kings’ yacht.

  *****

  Randy was on duty when we had finished recording the latest conversation between King and his buddies.

  “Derek, I think you need to hear this,” he said.

  I came over to where he was listening and picked up one of the headsets. I could make out King speaking to several other men.

  “Are you sure?” said King.

  “We checked the birth records and other available documents, and they are definitely connected,” said another man.

  “Derek White and Megan Greene were raised by your current bitch,” he said.

  “They are step-siblings. It’s interesting to note that Megan Greene has never married nor had a serious relationship since leaving the home to pursue her college and law degree. We searched all available databases, and could discover nothing that led us to believe she ever was romantically involved with anyone. Ever.”

  My stomach did a flip flop when I realized what they were intimating. Megan might be a virgin!

  “We think, and our psychologists agree, that she is in love with her stepbrother,” said the voice.

  I could hear King laughing.

  My mind was racing, and my heart was thudding in my chest!

  “Furthermore, even though Derek left to join the Navy almost 10 years ago, we could find no evidence of his being romantically connected to anyone either. He did have a three-month period where he was dating an Air Force pilot but she was deployed to Afghanistan. We discovered that, upon her return to the states, she had moved onto another relationship,” said the voice.

  Randy was giving me one of those looks I knew so well.

  Randy’s specialty was lie detecting.

  If he knew something was true, he would arch his eye, like Mr. Spock used to do on Star Trek. When he was hearing something that he doubted, he would purse his lips as if he were sucking on a lemon.

  Right now his eyebrows were arching to beat the band.

  If this were true, then Megan loved me as much as I loved her.

  *****

  The discussion on board the “Disco Inferno” continued for almost an hour.

  During that time, Randy and I heard details regarding how the money was being moved.

  We had to admit it was ingenious.

  But then we heard something that made my blood run cold.

  “What can we do about this cunt, Megan Greene?” said King.

  “Well, we obviously need to remove her from the situation entirely, Mr. King,” said a voice.

  It was a different man speaking now. I knew the voice well.

  It was George Tanner.

  The man who killed Sam Parker.

  “I have an idea, that will rid us of both Megan and Derek White, and even that bitch you have sucking your dick, if you want,” said Tanner.

  “Let’s hear it,” said King.

  Randy and I listened to how Robert King was going to solve his problem.

  For the first time in my life, I felt fear

  But, it was not fear for myself.

  It was fear for Megan.

  *****

  “What are you going to do Derek?” asked Randy.

  “We have to board the yacht,” I said.

  “That puts this operation a whole different light,” said Randy. “You have to get authorization for this.”

  “I don’t think I have the time, Randy. I need you to back me up on this. What you say?” I asked.

  “Dude, you know I have your back, but this is out of band,” he said.

  “You could get a court-martial for this, you know that?” he said.

  One thing I could always count on Randy for was to come up with the absolutely worse-case scenario.

  “It’ll be fun,” I said.

  Randy gave me a different look.

  One I’d never seen before.

  “You’re crazy,” he said.

  “Does that mean you won’t help me?” I asked.

  “No, no. It means that I’m just as crazy as you, I guess,” he said laughing.

  I clapped him on the back and we got to work.

  We’d have to get lucky, and we’d have to be good.

  But most of all, we’d have to get lucky.

  Chapter 9

  MEGAN

  I was still recovering from my helicopter ride.

  After we had landed, Tanner and King gave me instructions as to how to arrange the meeting that would lead to Peg’s demise.

  It was brilliantly simple, and even though I only incidentally would be involved, the entire thing would be videotaped with cell phones from several angles by their associates.

  It would guarantee that I would be held responsible should I say anything.

  My head ached with trying to figure out ways I could tell somebody or warn Peg.

  Even though I didn’t like her, I couldn’t bear to think of her being killed like that.

  King was tossing her away like a worn-out rag.

  I’ve never come across anybody as callous and unfeeling, or as selfish and narcissistic.

  I shook with anxiety and rage.

  And I was scared.

  Not for myself, but for Derek.

  *****

  I fed Nigel, and then I took a shower to try to calm down.

  While I washed my hair I was thinking of options.

  The water felt wonderful, but I was still very tense, trying to use my legal mind to come up with solutions.

  Nothing seemed concrete or sure enough that it would work.

  I got out and toweled my hair dry.

  I wrapped the towel around my body, and then sat down on the toilet to shave my legs.

  And, then, I started to laugh.

  I laughed for a few minutes, then I began to cry.

  I wept uncontrollably.

  I was caught by King’s horrible plan, and Derek would only stay out of prison unless I allowed King to kill my stepmother!

  I was powerless to do anything. There was nothing I could legally do to …

  Suddenly, I stopped.

  Slowly, I turned, and looked into the mirror.

  “I am an attorney, and my highest duty to my profession is the ethical pursuit of justice within the confines of the legal system,” I said to my reflection.

  “What you are thinking is not legal, Megan. Do you want to go to jail yourself? What if you fail? Do you want Derek to die?”

  I looked at the mirror, but there was no answer.

  But, I knew what she was thinking -

  “Stupid bitch!”

  *****

  I decided I would simply just not participate with the killing of Peg.

  My plan was as simple as they come.

  1) Get a gun.

  2) Set up a meeting.

  3) Shoot the bastards.

  4) Kill myself.

  Only in that way could Derek be totally safe.

  Fuck Peg.

  I really didn’t care if she lived or died, but I wanted no part in it.

  I was tired of not being able to have Derek, and this way I could die, proving to myself, at least, the extent of my love for him.

  Although he’d never find out, I hoped the Universe would be more kind to him.

  He deserved to find true happiness.

  This way, with me out of the picture, Derek could live and find love.

  My eyes watered when I thought of how noble and selfless this was.

  “Derek, my one true love! At last you can be free!” I told myself.

  But, there was still Nigel.

  Oh, poor little doggie!

  What would
I do about him?

  *****

  After my epiphany, I found I was ravenous.

  I guess all that throwing up finally caught up with my stomach.

  I needed some food, so I took out a frozen dinner, one of those fancy Weighty Watch things from the Diet Club or whatever.

  Reading the instructions, I started some water to boil for some frozen spinach.

  Then, I turned on the television, to catch up on the news.

  While I made dinner, I could hear the latest news wench on Channel Ten going over the latest.

  Suddenly, as I was putting my Veal Provencal into the microwave, I heard something that made my blood freeze.

  “Captain Derek White, former Navy SEAL, Medal of Honor recipient, and the man who saved his team mates from dying in training exercises four years ago has apparently been killed in an accident during maneuvers off of the Dry Tortugas.”

  I dropped the dish I was carrying and it crashed onto the floor.

  “Derek! Oh, no!” I screamed.

  I fell to the floor, on my knees, the pain as if someone had stabbed me with a knife straight through my heart.

  The television report was light on any further details, but I listened in horror as the anchor droned on.

  I lay there moaning and wailing my grief.

  I accidentally knocked Nigel’s water dish over, and the water spilled over the floor.

  “That can’t be true!” my mind cried out.

  And, suddenly, another part of me felt immense relief.

  A part I hated.

  The cowardly part that told me that now King had no power over me.

  His trump card had been played, and the Joker had taken him out of the game.

  There was no way he could use Derek to hurt me now.

  Oh, my poor, darling Derek!

  As I lay on the kitchen floor, dying from grief, the water boiled and the frozen spinach melted all over the counter.

  Nigel came up, panting, and yipped.

  He sat down on his rear, and watched me grieve for my lost love.

  *****

  I eventually came back to my senses.

  My dinner was completely ruined, but I wasn’t hungry anymore.

  Nigel licked my nose, and then jumped on my head.

  I stood up.

  Taking the now empty pot off of the stove, I carefully put it into the sink.

  Turned off the stove, being careful not to burn myself.