Free The Knowland Retribution by Richard Greener

want to keep something. This was your wife’s.”
    Leonard replied, “All of it.”
    â€œI can help you. I know someone who can handle the jewelry. I will take the diamonds myself, if that’s alright with you. The art work too?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAnd the books, the music, the furniture?”
    â€œAll of it.”
    â€œOkay,” he said.
    â€œSell it all,” Leonard said.
    â€œI understand. I’m sorry Mr. Martin. I’m so sorry.”
    Leonard nodded, but said nothing more.
    He went to cash with his portfolio and then moved the cash and closed his brokerage account. He called Nick Stevenson and told him he wished to exercise his option to sell his interest in the firm. He insisted on accepting only twice his best year’s salary.
    â€œLenny, your share is worth much more. Much more. You must know that.”
    â€œIt’s okay Nick. That’s what I want.”
    â€œWhat do you say we just keep you as a partner—inactive—but still a partner? You don’t have to sell.”
    â€œI know, Nick. Thanks, but this is what I want.” Arrangements were made. The money was transferred to Leonard’s bank.
    It all came to just about twelve million dollars, including the money from the Knowland settlement. He told Nick and Harvey that he was moving to the Bahamas, that he planned to buy a boat, that he would write when he settled himself. He said goodbye to Carter and Carter’s family, telling them the same story. He didn’t bother calling his sister. And then, he was gone.
    He bought a house in Jamaica that was little more than a hut. He bought a boat not much bigger than a dinghy. He also bought a vacant lot in Raleigh, North Carolina, and 270 acres in the high desert north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. These properties were titled in the name of a corporation he set up in North Dakota. After the closing, each was quitclaimed twice until the property belonged to Evangelical Missions Inc., a North Carolina entity with an address that was the empty lot. Leonard bought an SUV in North Carolina. He drove to New Mexico, and as soon as he arrived there, the vehicle was titled to Evangelical Missions Inc. In New Mexico, his nearest neighbor was eight miles away, an Indian ninety years old and half blind. He never went near the Bahamas.
    By mid-April he had settled into his new home, a renovated hillside hunting cabin hunched into a thicket of brush, at the end of a winding dirt road miles off the main road into his own property. The cabin had electricity, but no phone. The front porch stood above a clearing that marked the end of the dirt road. Inside, made entirely of logs, he had a living room with a vaulted ceiling and a large fireplace, a small kitchen area, and, down a short hall, a small bedroom and a toilet and shower. He had a radio, plus the one in his SUV, but no television. His laptop computer connected to the Internet via the cell phone belonging to Evangelical Missions Inc. In nearby Taos, he bought simple, wooden furniture, a table and some chairs, a small couch, a couple of lamps. He did not buy a bed. For months Leonard had been having nightmares, awful dreams where strange creatures reached out for him only to grab Nina, Ellie, and the boys instead. The monsters savaged them while Leonard watched helplessly. One night, while still in Alpharetta, he awoke suddenly, disoriented, shaking, and tearful, and tumbled out of bed onto the floor. He didn’t get up. He stayed on the floor and fell back to sleep. He slept the rest of that night without further attack by the demons. He hadn’t slept in a bed since. Each night he climbed into a sleeping bag on the hard wooden floor of his small bedroom, zipped himself in, and waited for the bad dreams. They came, but not every night, and he credited this partial success to his new sleeping arrangement.
    Leonard had a single goal in mind, a simple objective, but one
he knew would take time. It