Free The King of Fear: Part Two: A Garrett Reilly Thriller by Drew Chapman

To talk about Steinkamp?”
    “I’m here because volatility is through the roof, stocks are crashing, banks are dropping dead in Europe, and I want my chief investment officer to tell me that Vanderbilt Frink is too fucking big to fail.”
    “Come on. You know it. I know it.” Mackenzie put a hand on Wells’s shoulder and squeezed. “We’re fine, Robert. All our bets are in the black. We are a fortress, impenetrable.”
    “Too big to fail?” An ironic smile cracked Wells’s face.
    “Too smart to fail,” Mackenzie said, this time without the irony.
    Wells nodded a thanks, then stopped again at the door before leaving. “The Hamptons this weekend. Sally is cooking a roast. Should be good. We’ll drink bourbon on the beach.”
    “Deal,” Mackenzie said. “Bourbon on the beach.”

N EWARK , N EW J ERSEY , J UNE 18, 6:42 P.M.
    P atmore returned with a bag full of new pills that evening. He gave them to Garrett without a word, and with no trace of condemnation in his face, for which Garrett was extremely thankful. He also gave Garrett $19 in change. Garrett considered tipping Patmore, but wasn’t sure how do to it without insulting him. Plus, he needed the cash.
    Later, around midnight, when some of the team had drifted off to sleep in the corners of the office, Garrett decided to sample the new meds. The pills looked like Percodans, but with black-market stuff you could never be certain. He took one and waited twenty minutes, but felt nothing, so he took another, and then, half an hour after that, two more. By two in the morning, he could no longer remember how many he’d taken, but he knew that his head didn’t hurt, and the walls of the office space no longer felt as if they were slowly, incrementally, closing in on him.
    He felt good again.
    At 2:30 a.m., Avery Bernstein strolled into the office suites, unbidden, with a yapping white bichon frise at his side. He motioned for Garrett to follow him and walked into an empty corner room. Garrett checked to see if anyone else was awake—no one was—and padded after Avery, closing the door behind him. He turned on a single desk lamp and faced his former boss, who was staring out the window, hands clasped behind his back like a general surveying a distant battlefield.
    “Something’s not right,” Avery said.
    “Yeah, no pets allowed in the building.” Garrett chuckled at his own joke.
    “Glib won’t get it done, Garrett. Sarcasm is a personality defect. You’re missing something. You’re not considering all the possibilities. I’m disappointed in you.”
    Garrett sighed. He hated to admit it, but he was happy to see his hallucination of Avery reappear. He considered, for a moment, that perhaps he had taken all that Percodan for that express purpose—to see Avery again. Or maybe not . . .
    “Don’t start that shit again.” Garrett ran his fingers through his hair. “It’s so tiresome.”
    Avery turned from the window to face Garrett. His white dog sat panting at his feet. “You are wasting your life, Garrett. Your God-given talents.”
    “I’m gonna have to call bullshit here—the real Avery would never say that.”
    “I’m pushing you. To be your most effective self. As I did when I was alive.”
    Garrett had to press his lips together hard to keep from crying. That was exactly what Avery had done when he was alive, and Garrett missed Avery’s fatherly advice. Avery believed in Garrett, more than almost anyone else on the planet, and had guided Garrett’s chaotic energy into places where it could be constructive, instead of disastrous. Day after day they had talked, first at Yale, where Avery tried to keep Garrett’s frenetic brilliance on target, and then a few years later in Avery’s corner office at Jenkins & Altshuler, where Avery would try to keep Garrett from ruining his career in spectacular fashion.
    “I am trying to find a man who is going to attack the American economy. How is that wasting anything?”
    “You’re having a