Free Amazing Grace by Danielle Steel Page A

thought that Seth would be corrupted by greed into doing a thing like that. It put everything between them in question, in fact their whole life, and more importantly, who he was.
    “I was supposed to do it yesterday,” Seth said grimly. “I promised Sully I would, by close of business. But the auditors stayed till almost six o'clock. That's why I got to the Ritz late. I knew he had till two o'clock today, and I had till eleven, so I figured I could take care of it this morning. I was worried about it, but I didn't panic. Now I'm panicked. We are utterly, totally, and completely screwed. He has an audit that starts Monday. He has to put it off. The banks here won't be open by then. And I can't even goddamn call him to warn him.” Seth looked as though he was about to cry as Sarah stared at him in shock and disbelief.
    “He must have checked by now and seen you didn't make the transfer,” she said, feeling slightly dizzy. She felt as though she were on a roller-coaster ride, barely able to hang on, without a seatbelt. She couldn't even imagine what Seth felt. He was risking prison. And if so, what would happen to them?
    “Yeah, so he knows I didn't make the transfer. And then what? With the goddamn earthquake shutting the whole city down, I can't get the money back to him now. He's going to have a sixty million shortfall when his auditors show up on Monday morning, and I can't do anything about it.” He and Sully Markham were both guilty of every kind of fraud and theft, crossing state lines. Sarah knew, as Seth had when he did it, that it was a federal offense, and about as bad as it could get. It didn't even bear thinking. She felt as though the room were spinning as she looked at him.
    “What are you going to do, Seth?” Sarah said in barely more than a whisper. She fully understood the implications of what he'd done. What she couldn't understand was why he'd done it, or when he'd become a criminal. How could this be happening to them?
    “I don't know,” he said honestly, and then looked her in the eye. He looked terrified, and so was she. “I may go down on this one, Sarah. I've done this kind of thing before. And I've helped Sully out too. We're old friends. We just never got caught before, and I was always able to clean it up at my end. This time I'm up shit creek.”
    “Oh, my God,” Sarah said softly. “What happens if they prosecute you?”
    “I don't know. This one's going to be hard to cover. I don't think Sully can postpone the audit anyway. The timing of it is at the discretion of his investors, and they don't like giving anyone time to do fancy footwork or cook the books. And we sure cooked them. We fucking fried them. I don't know if he tried to postpone his audit once he saw we had an earthquake and I didn't transfer the funds back to him. Sixty million is a little tough to slip under the rug. And it's a hole they'll notice. Worse yet, the trail leads directly to my door. Unless Sully pulls off a miracle at his end before Monday, we're totally fucked.
    “If the auditors figure it out, the SEC will be after me in about five minutes. And I'm a sitting duck waiting for it to happen here, but I can't run away from it now. If it happens, it happens. We'll have to get a terrific lawyer and see if we can make a deal with the federal prosecutor, if it comes to that. Other than that, I'd have to run away to Brazil, and I'm not doing that to you. So I guess we sit here, waiting for the other shoe to drop, after the dust settles from the earthquake. I tried my BlackBerry a little while ago, and it's as dead as a doornail. We just have to wait and see what happens … I'm sorry, Sarah,” he added. He didn't know what else to say to her, and there were tears in her eyes when she looked at him. She had never, ever suspected him of being dishonest, and now she felt as though a wrecking ball had hit her.
    “How could you do something like that?” she asked, with tears rolling down her cheeks. She hadn't