Shadow Account by Stephen Frey Page A

school on time, and none of them were ever in trouble with the law. Not for so much as jaywalking.
    Despite the demands on her time, Jackie attended City College, graduating with honors in business. After college, she accepted an entry-level audit position in the Manhattan offices of a national accounting firm, earning $18,000 a year. Seven years later she made partner. And, three years after that, resigned from the big firm to found her own consulting practice. Aware that she’d reached a ceiling as strong as steel and clear as glass. She’d come a long way for a woman from the Bronx who didn’t have an Ivy League background, but she’d come as far as she could. She wasn’t bitter about it, just pragmatic. The way she always was.
    “Hello, Conner.” She met him at the door of her understated fifth-floor office in the Empire State Building. Now thirty-five, she’d quietly accumulated a million-dollar net worth with twelve-hour workdays and savvy stock market investing. She could have had the big showroom office downtown with a panoramic view of the harbor, but she didn’t see the need. More important, she believed that kind of opulence would turn off clients who wouldn’t want to pay a high hourly rate just so she could watch ships sail beneath the Verrazano Bridge. “Nice to see you.”
    “Nice to see you, too, Jo.”
    “Come in,” Jackie said, motioning as she moved back to her desk. “Close the door.”
    He grinned, watching her walk away in that confident stride of hers. Quick steps, shoulders back, chin pushed out defiantly. A small woman—just five two and not much over a hundred pounds—Jackie had dark brown eyes, a thin face with high cheekbones, full lips, shoulder-length straight black hair, and a trim figure, highlighted by her chalk-stripe pantsuit.
    “Do you ever wear dresses or skirts?” he asked. It occurred to him that he’d never seen her in anything but a jacket and pants.
    She stood behind her platform desk, stacks of papers neatly arranged in a line across it. “Rarely,” she answered in her Spanish accent. She was a vivacious woman who gestured constantly with her hands when she spoke. “If I did, how would men see my best asset?” she asked, turning and patting one hip provocatively.
    Conner chuckled as they sat down. “You’re a tease, Jo.” It was a forward thing to say, but they were close friends.
    “Excuse me?”
    “You lure men into your web with that body, then drop them cold once they’re caught.” She rarely dated a man for more than a few weeks. When they got together for dinner or drinks, Conner always got an update on her love life. “Once you get bored, you cut them loose,” he said, imitating a pair of scissors with his fingers.
    “I cut them loose because they’re losers. Like the last one.” She grimaced. “Why do I have such bad luck with men, Conner?”
    “What was so terrible about the last one?”
    “He was a serial liar. Get this, he tells me he’s a lawyer at a big Wall Street firm. Then I find out he’s a clerk at the department of motor vehicles. Which would have been fine,” she added quickly. “I don’t care what a man does for a living. I just can’t handle being lied to.”
    “What you can’t
handle
is commitment.”
    “Can, too.”
    “I bet you don’t even want to get married.”
    “Wrong.”
    Conner smiled. “Then marry me, Jo.”
    “Ay Dios mío!”
She brought her hands to her face. “Oh, no.”
    “Why not?”
    “Talk about a tease. I’ve seen the way you flirt with women.”
    “Oh, you’re just—”
    “And the way they flirt back,” she continued. “I couldn’t take all that. No, no. I like our relationship the way it is. Friendly.”
    Last February—shortly before he met Amy Richards—Conner and Jackie had had dinner at a place on the West Side near her apartment. Promising each other as they sat down that it would be a quick meal because both of them had commitments early the next morning. Three hours and