Due Diligence: A Thriller by Jonathan Rush Page A

day, morning and night, he passed it, yet he had never been inside in all of the six years he had worked at Louisiana Light.
    The kids were in bed when he got home. Margaret greeted him with an embrace. It was good to feel her in his arms.
    Margaret laughed, disengaging herself.
    “Tired, honey?” she said.
    Lyall nodded.
    “How was London?”
    “It was okay.”
    “Everything go well?”
    “Yeah,” said Lyall. “It went fine.”
    “What is it?” Margaret frowned. “Is something wrong?”
    “No.” He sat down. “Come here.”
    He pulled her to him. She put her arm around his shoulders.
    “I’m sorry I had to be away,” he said.
    “That’s okay, Lyall. I understand.”
    “No, I’m sorry, honey. I’m really sorry.”
    Margaret didn’t say anything. She knew Lyall hated to be away from the family. She knew he kept his business trips to a minimum. She was grateful for it. He didn’t need to apologize.
    “How are the kids?” said Lyall.
    “They wanted to see you tonight.”
    “I know. I’m sorry. I had stuff to do. We’re filing next week, and there’s … you know…”
    “You still can’t tell me what’s going on?”
    “I can’t, honey. I’m sorry.” He hadn’t told Margaret about the deal, even though he trusted Margaret to keep confidentiality even more than he trusted himself. Confidentiality wasn’t the reason. Recently, Lyall had avoided saying anything about work at home. It was like polluting the one thing in his life that was still pure.
    Margaret watched him. She knew Lyall trusted her. If he couldn’t tell her what was happening at work, it wasn’t as if he would have told someone else. She just hoped nothing was wrong.
    “Sorry,” said Lyall again.
    “It’s okay. Becky had a bellyache today.”
    Lyall looked at her in alarm. “Bad?”
    “She came home from school with it.”
    “And?”
    “She didn’t eat much. She went to bed early. I went up a little while ago and she was asleep.”
    “I’ll go look at her.”
    They got up and headed for the stairs.
    Their other two children, Deborah and Josh, were asleep in their rooms. Becky was awake. She lay on her bed, wide eyes watching from her pillow.
    “How’s my baby?” said Lyall, and he sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned down to hug her.
    Becky winced.
    Lyall stopped. “Becky?”
    “It hurts,” she whimpered.
    Lyall looked around at Margaret. She came forward anxiously. “Becky?”
    Becky grabbed Lyall’s hand. She squeezed. “It hurts, Daddy.”
    “Where?”
    “In my tummy. Bad.”
    Lyall and Margaret glanced at each other.
    “Has she seen a doctor?” said Lyall.
    Margaret shook her head, fear showing in her eyes. “It wasn’t this bad.”

 
    12
    Rob stared at the number. Then he started to smile.
    “We’ve got a typo here,” he said. “Pretty important one.”
    Behind him, Phil Menendez and Sammy looked around. Cynthia continued working at her computer.
    “Where?” said Sammy.
    Rob slid the document across. Sammy had asked him to proof it. It was an early draft of the discussion document that Mike Wilson was going to take with him when he flew to London to meet Andrew Bassett. The meeting was on Monday. Wilson was flying out Sunday. It was now Saturday afternoon, which gave them twenty-four hours to get it right.
    “Where’s this typo?” said Sammy.
    Rob pointed. “Twelve-point-five billion. That should be eleven-point-five, right?”
    “No,” said Sammy. “Twelve-point-five billion. That’s the offer.”
    Menendez had already turned back to whatever they had been looking at on Sammy’s computer.
    “But we ranged it. Eleven-point-two-five to eleven-point-seven-five.”
    “Yeah. Leopard’s offering twelve-point-five.”
    “That’s over the top of the range.”
    Menendez turned. “It’s over the top of your range. So what? You think your range is so great? Suddenly it’s the Bible?”
    “We didn’t just pull that out of the air,” said Rob. “We did a hell of a lot of