Twenty Years Later(98)
“Long. How is he?”
“Settled and enjoying island life. I may or may not have turned him on to single batch Jamaican rum.”
Avery smiled.
“He’s really anxious to see you.”
“Did the boat get here?”
“Yesterday, right on schedule. Christopher wanted to inspect it, but I told him we had to wait for you.”
“How did it look?”
“The boat? Great, but I don’t know anything about boats.”
“It’s a beautiful boat,” Avery said, remembering the day in June when she and Connie Clarkson had taken it for a sail through Green Bay. That morning’s sail had been a final inspection during which Avery made sure the vessel could do what it needed to.
“I’ll take your word for it,” Walt said.
Then, it was quiet for a long time as Walt navigated out of the airport and onto the main highway that would take them to Negril. He finally spoke after thirty minutes.
“I missed you,” he said.
Avery looked over at him. “I still think you’re an asshole.”
“No argument from me on that front. Just know that I’m working really hard on changing that.”
A minute of silence passed before Avery spoke.
“I missed you, too.”
“I’ll take that,” Walt said, keeping his eyes on the road. “I’ll take that any day of the week.”
Walt reached over and took her hand. She didn’t resist.
*
Most of the drive to Negril was on the main road, which was populated with tour buses, vans, and motorcycles that slithered in and out of traffic. The ocean was to Avery’s right. The water was crystal clear nearer to shore, offering a glimpse of coral deep beneath its surface. Farther from land the water turned a rich cobalt. Palm trees were everywhere. In the city of Negril they exited the main road and headed toward the interior of the island—away from the tour buses and far from the ocean and beaches. The roads on this leg of the journey were narrow and shaded by heavy foliage. In some spots the road was so slight that Walt had to pull to the side to allow oncoming traffic to pass.
The further into the rain forest Walt drove, the more excited she became. She didn’t speak for the last thirty minutes of the trip. All Avery wanted was to get there and see him.
“Five more minutes,” Walt said.
Those minutes felt like hours until Walt finally slowed the car, made a right turn, and pulled up the driveway of a well-kept blue house tucked into a nook of mangroves and palm trees. The closest neighbor was two acres away and very much out of sight. This had been the perfect place for Christopher to stay while Avery finished the last of her plans. Walt had promised that it would be.
“Thank you,” she said.
Walt nodded, and then pointed at the house. “Get in there.”
Avery opened the door and stepped onto the pebbled driveway. A dog ran down the driveway to greet her. The front door of the house opened and Christopher walked onto the front patio. Avery ran for him.
CHAPTER 76
Negril, Jamaica Friday, October 29, 2021
CHRISTOPHER MONTGOMERY WAS THREE YEARS OLDER THAN HIS LITTLE sister. Age, however, provided little leverage and no advantage. Avery was better than him at most things—she had been a better student and was a better sailor. She was more charismatic and outgoing. She could likely, if things ever got out of control between them, overpower him in a wrestling match. But there was one thing Christopher beat her at. Math. He was a savant when it came to numbers. Math and all its derivatives came easily to him. In fact, he had never felt the need to learn the subject. The knowledge was somehow already in his brain. He was born with it. All he had to do was organize the information and apply it to any version of math. In college, he majored in mathematics. After college he earned a master’s degree in applied and computational mathematics. If he had had a normal father, perhaps Christopher Montgomery would have become a professor or an actuary for the insurance industry. Instead, he took his mathematical brain to Wall Street and joined Montgomery Investment Services as an analyst.
Christopher applied himself to studying the market and determining the probabilities and statistical analysis of making money by trading stocks and commodities. Surprising to no one, he was very good at it. So good, in fact, that he rose to the top of the food chain at his father’s firm and was soon offering his advice not just to his father, but to every partner, about which industries to place the hedge fund’s assets into. Christopher became so lost in the statistical analysis of the firm’s funds that he couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Until one night when he was alone and working late. His mind functioned best when the offices of Montgomery Investment Services were empty. That was when he first began to unravel the fraud that was taking place. It took him weeks of working through the night to dissect the firm’s financial misdeeds.
The offices of Montgomery Investment Services occupied the entire fortieth floor of the Prudential building in lower Manhattan, and once Christopher smelled corruption, he didn’t care how many chances he took. Late at night, after the cleaning crew was gone, he entered his father’s office and searched through his computer. He did the same to each of the partners. What took the feds two years to uncover, Christopher had learned in two weeks. Montgomery Investment Services was dirty as sin, and Christopher’s name and brainpower was behind nearly every deal that had been made.