Free Risk by Jamie Freveletti Page A

had overwhelmed the Miami Beach police, and so private muscle was advisable if a business could afford the expense.
    This year several restaurants had decided to close rather than face the inevitable crime wave. Most locals fled for the weekend, but Ryan was staying put.
    He bought a Café Cubano, the dark, sweet coffee that was the hallmark of the Cuban population in Miami, and began his walk toward Meridian, the street where he lived. Each step away from flashy Ocean Drive and the long white beach brought him toward far less affluent areas. Miami Beach south of Fifth Street boasted multi-million-dollar condominium complexes and expensive steak houses, but north and west still contained a few dingy pockets of housing, and all of it contained the drug dealers, drifters, homeless, addicts, and mentally ill fringe elements that populated just about every beach town in the world. Miami was a study in contrasts and always would be.
    To the north was a Jewish Mikva bath center, and to the west a Catholic church. He heard the pulsing of electronic dance music and then the strains of a classical piece before turning onto his street. Here, there were older houses with plaster walls and louvered windows. Tropical plants and bougainvillea filled his courtyard and poured over the stone wall in a riot of red flowers and green leaves. Lush ferns and the smell of orange greeted him as he swung open the metal entrance gate.
    His neighbor, Mrs. Feldstein, stepped out of her door. At eighty she still had the sharp mind and quick tongue of a former New Yorker. He watched her take in his messed up hair and what he knew were dark circles under his eyes. She inhaled and gave him a frank look.
    â€œHow are you doing?”
    This was the question that always threw him. When well-meaning friends asked him how he was doing, he was always tempted to say, I lost my wife and best friend at thirty-five, how well do you think I’m doing ? But now, just as always, he managed to reply, “I’m getting through, bit by bit.”
    Mrs. Feldstein gave him a nod full of empathy. “I know what you mean. When I lost George, I was numb for a year. Give it time. Time heals all wounds.”
    And so does walking into the ocean and never coming out, he thought. He grabbed the morning paper off his stoop, managed a smile for Mrs. Feldstein, and closed the door. Inside, he showered, shaved, threw on a suit, popped some antidepressants, then headed out to face another day.
    He never saw the man slip into his house.
    R YAN WORKED IN risk management for a large insurance company. They wrote all kinds of policies, and today his stack of work included preparing a risk analysis for a “key man” and kidnap rider. The policies were meant to protect the CEOs of major multinational companies when they traveled to the troubled areas of the world. The kidnap insurance covered the fees of a trained hostage negotiator, the expenses incurred in flying them to the hot areas, and eighty percent of the ransom paid. He picked up the first file on his desk and opened it. The usual twenty page application was clipped on the right side, and a five-by-seven-inch photo on the left.
    The face of the morning runner stared back at him. She wore her hair down, instead of in a ponytail, and for the first time he also saw that she had green eyes, a straight nose, and a guarded expression, as if she didn’t really trust the photographer. His hands shook as he reached for the application. Her name was Emma Caldridge, and she was the lead chemist and CEO of a company called Pure Chemistry, based in Miami Beach. She had just acquired the CEO title, and the company requested a five-million-dollar kidnap rider with a ten million death benefit should she be killed.
    Ryan whistled under his breath. The limits were high for a CEO of a small company. Oil executives would demand high rates because they often traveled to unstable countries in the search for natural resources, but