Arctic Fire by Stephen Frey Page A

frustrated by his inability to decipher the message. He was almost sure he knew what Hunter had been driving at with the remark, and it was pretty brutal. But he wanted to hear the confession. “Well?”
    “Nothing,” Hunter said, guiding Jack away from the easel as two sad-eyed young women approached. “Come on, let’s get a drink.”
    Jack thought about pushing it, but let it go. Hunter was one of the few people he hated to confront. With almost everyone else, it wasn’t a problem.
    It was early December, and Connecticut was enjoying an unseasonably warm and sunny stretch of weather. It was a good thing for the Jensen family too. So many people had come to pay their last respects to Troy that the mansion alone couldn’t have accommodated the crowd. The place was huge, but not huge enough. Fortunately, the beautiful weather allowed Bill and Cheryl to use the sprawling stone porch at the back of the house too.
    “Sahara scotch,” Hunter ordered after they’d moved outside through a set of French doors and made it to the nearest bar. “Johnny Walker, half an ice cube, and an H 2 O molecule.” He held his hand up. “On second thought, hold that ice cube and the water molecule in the name of conservation.”
    Jack nodded to the bartender. “Same.”
    When they had their drinks, they slipped through the crowd to the stone wall framing three sides of the raised porch. From here they had a panoramic view of the Jensen barns and pastures, which stretched to an unbroken line of oak and pine trees a quarter mile away. From where they stood, they couldn’t see anotherhouse. This was pricey real estate even in a pricey town. Wall Street had been good to Bill and Cheryl.
    “Here’s the thing,” Jack said. “Troy took crazy risks all the time, and I don’t care what anybody says about how modest he was and how he didn’t care if people noticed. He cared, Hunt, he cared a lot. He was a show-off in his own way. Look at that damn front-page article he got himself in the
Wall Street Journal
about the Seven Summit thing. Jesus, what a stick-your-finger-down-your-throat-and-gag-yourself-until-you-puke crock of self-promotional crap that was.”
    “Your father got him that article,” Hunter reminded Jack. “Troy had nothing to do with it. Your father’s the one who’s friends with that editor at the
Times
.”
    “You mean my
adoptive
father.”
    Hunter groaned. “You’re thirty years old, Jack. When are you gonna get past this thing?”
    “When Bill and Cheryl start calling me by whatever my real name is.”
    “What’s wrong with Jack?”
    Jack shrugged as he leaned down and rested his forearms on the wall. “Nothing. It’s a great name. It’s just not mine. It’s the one they made up and hung around my neck when they brought me home to Connecticut in the limo from the secondhand baby supermarket in Brooklyn. It’s the name they gave me so they could feel better about me. So they didn’t have to call me Sonny or Vito or Carlo and think about who I really was every time they said it.”
    Hunter took a healthy gulp of scotch. “I love you like a brother, pal, but you are one stubborn son of a bitch, especially when the liquor starts talking.” He made a sweeping gesture at all that lay in front of them. “Look at this place. It’s amazing. And Bill’s gotten us both jobs downtown, even the second one, even after we got canned at the first place. And if you ever did havemoney problems, you know Bill would take care of you. So if you don’t mind me asking—no, no,” Hunter interrupted himself, “even if you do mind,
especially
if you mind. What the hell are you bitter about? From what I’ve heard, if they hadn’t adopted you, your ass would be riding the back of a garbage truck in the Bronx or sweeping the floors of some housing project in East New York.”
    Jack could feel the anger and frustration boiling inside him like it always did when he thought about this too much—especially, as Hunter