Chapter 1

Matt Elias had twenty-one minutes to live.

He grabbed the phone from his nightstand and found his glasses. It was 3:24 in the morning. The call was from their trading desk in Frankfurt.

“Ja, Walter,” Matt whispered, turning away from his sleeping wife.

“You were right. The European Central Bank bureaucrats could not make up their minds. The DAX is plunging. What should we do?”

“Close our short position, ja?”

There was a reluctant sigh. “Ja, ja. Like your Mr. Buffet said, ‘I got rich selling too soon,’ so we also always sell too soon.”

“A profit is a profit.”

“Ja, we will talk later. Sorry to call so early.”

“Don’t worry, Walter, it’s never too early for good news.”

Matt touched the END button. That was good news. They were going to have a fabulous quarter.

In a lot of ways.

Matt pulled off the covers and put his feet down on the cool hardwood floor. No use trying to go back to sleep. He always got up by 4:00 to go to the gym. He dressed in his old sweatshirt, gym shorts, and sneakers. Downstairs he stopped in the kitchen to take a bottle of water from one of their refrigerators. They charged $7.00 for a bottle of water at the gym. He didn’t care how many hundreds of millions he was worth he was not going to pay $7.00 for a plastic bottle filled with water.

“Daddy!” Matt’s two-year old son Jon stood at the door of the kitchen wearing his favorite pajamas with a hole in the left knee. He was rubbing his eyes. “I want a glass of kitchen water.”

Matt filled a Sippy cup, walked Jon back to his bedroom, and hoisted him onto the top bunk. Jon took a couple of gulps and handed the cup to his father.

“Go to sleep,” said Matt, pulling the covers over his son.

Matt had only gotten to the door when Jon rolled over and kicked off his blanket. Matt tiptoed back in and tucked the blanket around Jon’s shoulders. He ran his fingers through his son’s curly black hair. He kissed the child’s soft cheek.

He turned off the kitchen lights and went through the back door into their four-car garage. He pressed a button on his keychain and the garage door began to crawl open. The same thought crossed his mind every morning. This weekend he would find where the kids had put the ladder, get up there, and oil that noisy, rusting chain. At the office he was the CEO and majority shareholder of a world-renowned, multi-office hedge fund.

At home, he was the maintenance man.

He’d put in a hard workout and get to the office before 6:00 for the mid-day conference call between their Frankfurt and London trading desks. Even if they always sold too early he knew Walter was going to enjoy rubbing Ian’s nose in that trade.

Matt started his car and put it in reverse. The backup lights caught a man dressed in slacks, a blue blazer, and a white shirt with a solid gray tie hurrying up the driveway. Matt slammed his foot on the brake and shifted back into park.

The man stopped. “Excuse me, sir. I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m supposed to drive Mr. Wiley to Miami International this morning.” He looked at a piece of paper in his hand and stepped to the garage opening. “It says here the Wiley residence is located at 739 Hibiscus. I can’t find it and my dispatcher isn’t answering his phone.”

Matt opened the driver’s window a crack. “What did you say the address was?”

“739 Hibiscus. My dispatcher wrote it on the work order. Maybe I misread it in the dark.”

Limousines were always coming and going from Steele Pointe. Heaven forbid one of its residents should have to drive to the airport, park in a distant parking lot, and walk all the way to the gate. It was bad enough being reduced to flying commercial and suffering TSA’s indignities.

Matt put the window down. “Let me see that. This is 115 Hibiscus.”

The driver handed Matt the piece of paper. “I’d been driving up and down the street for twenty minutes when I saw your garage door open.” There was a nervous laugh. “My dispatcher hates me being late.”

Matt turned to the dashboard, the faint light from the control panel illuminating the paper. “It says ‘739’. Did the guard out at the booth say the Wileys live here in the Pointe?” He handed back the paper. “The guard is supposed to give outsiders a map so they don’t get lost.”

The driver took the piece of paper with his left hand. “I’ll try calling my dispatcher again.” The driver held a .22 caliber double action revolver in his right hand. It was aimed at Matt’s left eye. The trigger was being squeezed. This was not a robbery.