Free Echoes in the Wind by Debra Jupe Page A

comfortably for the rest of our lives. We also were to be paid residuals for our song writing, not to mention compensation for the music we published. What the fuck happened to it?”
    “Good question. There should be some major royalty checks from our record company too.”
    Neither spoke for a full minute.
    “Seems unreal we’re broke. All those years, now we’ve got nothing to show for the work we’ve done.” Eric tracked to his closet. He opened a small trunk and rummaged through. He lugged out a thick folder, then carried it to his bed. Sitting on the side, he sifted through the pages in the file. “I checked in my bank account this morning, I had plenty of cash.”
    “Same here.” Blaine picked up a binder he’d evidently left on Eric’s dresser when he’d come in earlier. He settled on the opposite side of the mess of paperwork. “I went over my contracts after I got home.”
    He held open a marked place in the notebook and pointed to an area for Eric to examine. “I found the exact clause in every one of them. It’s in small print, like we discovered in Finn’s. I bet you’ll find the same in yours.”
    Eric glanced over at the passage Blaine indicated. “Yeah, I’m thinking that too.” He returned to his papers, taking several minutes to research before he nodded with a frown. “Here it is.” He tapped the paper with a forefinger. “Same as yours, same as Finn’s.” He shifted on the bed and stared at Blaine. “Dugan maintained power of attorney over all of our assets. We unknowingly signed every penny over to him.” His grimace deepened as he released a massive sigh. “This means he went into our investment and bank accounts at will. I’m guessing he cleaned each one of us out before he closed them down. Now he’s disappeared with nearly all of our cash.”
    “You said he’d be coming after us. What better way to get to us than take our holdings. He left enough in our principal account to last for a time while we were none the wiser. Now he can hide anywhere in the world and live off our millions.”
    “And use our money to hire someone to get rid of us. How’s that for poetic justice?”
    Blaine’s mouth twisted. “Bastard.”
    “That he is. But we already knew that, didn’t we? Yet we trusted him to act in the band’s best interest. We were fools.” Eric gathered his documents and straightened them before he put them back into the binder. “I’m sure we’ll get a better idea how this all happened by looking up this stuff online. We may find out if he took everything at once or a little at a time. Except, he probably pass-coded those accounts so I don’t know if we will be able to get in.”
    “More than likely he’s shut ’em down, but we should check anyway.”
    Eric glanced at Blaine. “Did you call Mitchell?”
    “I did talk to Mitchell. He’s pretty upset about Drake, and this news makes things even worse. He’s gonna investigate on his end and let us know what he finds tomorrow. Though he figures he’ll get the same results.”
    Eric slammed the folder shut. “Shit. I can’t believe we were so damn gullible. We should’ve watched our money closer.”
    “Look, I know we’re troubled over this, but still we can’t go kicking ourselves over something that’s already done. It’s not an excuse, except we were young when we hooked up with Dugan. We come from meager backgrounds. None of us knew much about investment management, because we didn’t have any money to worry over. Like you said, we always assumed Dugan took care of our finances.”
    “Oh, he took care of them all right.”
    “He did. Once we got a taste of having cash all the time, we never thought we’d need to bother ourselves over money.” Blaine rolled off the bed. “Why would we? We were a huge success. Dugan always made sure we had enough in our pockets. We assumed there’d be plenty.”
    “True.” Eric motioned to the folder. “Except us being naïve about investments isn’t a