The King of Fear: A Garrett Reilly Thriller by Drew Chapman Page A

is a secondary concept.”
    “Okay,” she said. “What’s the name of the fund? Who runs it?”
    “I don’t know. I can’t even prove definitively that it exists.”
    Alexis crossed her arms. In the distance, thunder rumbled. Or perhaps it was just a truck lumbering across the city. She studied Garrett. His skin was pale, his eyes were lined with red, as if he hadn’t slept well in a long time. Alexis could feel the anxiety radiating off his body, as if his paranoia were a physical thing, a second skin that enveloped him. Some part of her wanted to wrap him up in her arms, put him to bed, let him sleep for a week.
    Another part of her wanted to run screaming for safety.
    “Don’t worry,” Garrett said, as if reading her mind. “Mitty drove me. And we stayed off the highways. We watched for cop cars. No one followed us.”
    If Alexis were caught with Garrett Reilly, not only would her career be over, but her life would be as well. Kline had already warned her once. She was breaking any number of federal laws, consorting with a suspect in a capital murder case, and now the proof of her complicity was standing in her garage.
    “Why do you think this fund exists?” she asked, trying to keep Garrett’s eyes on hers.
    “I can see ripple effects. When it sells equities and derivatives. Little variations in price that don’t make sense on the open exchanges. Repeated patterns—”
    “Patterns.”
    “What you pay me to find.”
    “ Paid you. You quit.”
    Garrett shrugged. “Repeated patterns of selling. Selling stuff that’s on the margins of the financial system. Derivatives, swaps, low-volume equities. Stuff that you would buy if you wanted to make sure no one was really paying that much attention to what you owned. Or what you did.”
    “Okay. This fund. You know what it’s doing?”
    “There is a correlation coefficient of plus one.”
    “It moves in perfect lockstep?”
    “Yes. A sale and then a real-world event.”
    “And the real-world event is?”
    “Attacks on corporations and banks. And now the killing of a Federal Reserve president. They’re ratcheting up. Getting bigger.”
    Alexis heard another crash, thunder for sure. A summer storm, far away, over the western suburbs, but closing in fast.
    “You’re saying there’s a fund out there—an invisible fund—that paid for Phillip Steinkamp to be shot? That this was a planned assassination? Do you realize the implications of what you’re saying? The level of conspiracy?”
    “It’s bigger than just killing someone. The fund is dedicated to creating a systemic volatility event.”
    Alexis tilted her head slightly to one side. “In English, please.”
    “Taking down the US economy.”
    • • •
    Alexis checked each hallway and stairwell in her building before Garrett followed her, clearly terrified that another resident would see him with her. Garrett wanted to laugh at this, but he couldn’t exactly blame her: he was a wanted man. That gave him the slightest of thrills; now he really was dangerous. Of course, he didn’t feel dangerous. He felt hunted.
    When Garrett stepped inside Alexis’s condo apartment, he was flooded with memories. He had been here once before, a year ago, and he and Alexis had spent the night making love. That had been their only night together, but he remembered it perfectly: the sheets, her skin, the orange sunlight streaming in through the windows the next morning. He sat on the far corner of a couch in the living room, and contentment washed over him. He realized he’d wanted to get back here for the last year—tnot to have sex with Alexis again, but just to sit quietly, in her apartment, alone with her. To talk. To be near her.
    He cursed himself silently for being a sentimental fool. Alexis Truffant had used him for his abilities, then tossed him aside when their relationship no longer mattered. He had to force himself to remember this, to imprint it on his consciousness: Alexis had screwed him over