Free Amazing Grace by Danielle Steel

will hold for a few days.”
    “No, it won't.” He spat the words angrily at her. “Some deals don't hold. This is one of them. All I need is a fucking phone.” She would have produced one for him if she could, but she couldn't. She was just grateful that their children were safe. His obsession with continuing to do business, under the circumstances, seemed more than extreme to her. She realized at the same time that it was why he was such a huge success. Seth never stopped. He was on his cell phone night and day, making deals. Without it now, he felt utterly and totally impotent, and trapped, as though someone had severed his vocal cords and tied his hands. He was nailed to the floor in a dead city, with no possible communication with the outside world. She could see that he viewed it as a major crisis, and she wished she could convince him to calm down.
    “What can I do for you, Seth?” she asked, sitting down on the bed, and patting the spot next to her. She was thinking about a massage, a bath, a tranquilizer, a back or neck rub, or holding him in her arms, or lying beside him on the bed.
    “What can you do for me? Are you kidding? Is that a joke?” He was almost shouting in their beautifully decorated bedroom. The sun was up now, and the soft yellows and sky blues she had done it in looked exquisite in the early morning light. Seth was oblivious to the room, as he stared angrily at her.
    “I mean it,” she said calmly. “I'll do whatever I can.” He stared at her as though she were insane.
    “Sarah, you have no idea what's going on. None. No concept.”
    “Try me. We went to business school together. I'm not a moron, you know.”
    “No, I am,” he said, sitting down on the bed and running a hand through his hair. He couldn't even look at her. “I have to transfer sixty million dollars out of our fund accounts by noon today.” His voice sounded dead as he said it, and Sarah looked impressed.
    “You're making an investment that size? What are you buying? Commodities? Sounds like risky stuff in quantities like that.” Admittedly, buying commodities was not only high risk but equally high profit if you did it right. She knew Seth was a genius with the investments he made.
    “I'm not buying, Sarah,” he said, glancing at her, and then away again. “I'm covering my ass. That's all I'm doing, and if I can't, I'm fucked … we're fucked … everything we own will be gone …I could even go to jail.” He was staring at the floor beneath his feet as he spoke.
    “What are you talking about?” Sarah looked panicked. He was kidding obviously, but the look on his face said he wasn't.
    “We had auditors in this week, to check on our new fund. It was an investors’ audit to make sure we have as much in the fund as we claimed. We will eventually, of course, there's no question of it. I've done it before. Sully Markham has covered me for audits like that before. And eventually we make our money and put it in the account. But sometimes in the beginning, when we don't have it, Sully helps me pad things a little when the investors do an audit.” Sarah stared at him, stunned.
    “A little? You call sixty million dollars’ worth of padding a ‘little'? Jesus, Seth, what were you thinking of? You could have gotten caught, or not been able to make the money up.” And then, as she said it, she realized that that was what was happening. He was there now.
    “I have to get the money, or Sully will get caught in New York. He has to have the money back in his accounts today. The banks are closed. I don't have a fucking cell phone to use, I can't even call Sully to tell him to cover it somehow.”
    “He must be able to figure that much out. With the whole city down, he must know you can't do it.” Sarah looked pale as they talked. It had never even remotely occurred to her that Seth was dishonest. And sixty million was no small slip. It was major. It was criminal fraud on the grandest scale. She had never for a moment