Corporate Treason: A Thriller

Chapter 1

The cruel, knurled hand of fate reached out for Amanda Creed once again.

This time, it found her in the bliss of a beach house situated on a windswept nook in faraway Montauk, N.Y. The bad news blew in like a sea breeze, ruffling the white curtains in the bedroom of the beach house, just as the sun’s ball of fire sank into the bay’s briny coolness.

It was a golden hour, following a golden day. The kind of day that changes the entire trajectory of one’s life. And Amanda had taken her moment – her life – into her hands. She had arranged everything: The sensual meal’s seafood splendor. The Montauk getaway. The corporate helicopter ride to freedom. The flowing white beach clothes that costumed Amanda and her Navy SEAL champion, Travis Walker, in Kennedy flair.

In short, it was perfect. And Amanda had not only seized it. She was its author. She had put all the pieces into place.

And what happened next between her and Travis was a product of chemistry, biology, and long pent-up passion. You can’t smother a fire. Not when the embers smolder, burn, and smoke. The slightest breath, the stillest breeze, can ignite a conflagration. One that consumes everything. Burns everything away. Everything except the two souls brought together as one: Amanda and Travis.

They had their moment, all right. Once they began hand-feeding each other the sensuous shellfish, all of their senses stirred. Feelings long repressed ran free. Passions pressed down deep inside exploded with newfound force and uncontainable energy. Hungry, thirsty mouths feasted upon one another. And sexual organs they both tried so long to ignore would no longer be denied. Erogenous zones flooded with heat, flowed with blood and absolutely ached for union. For oneness. For each other. For completeness. The yin and the yang.

Their love-making seemed to go on forever on that wonderful summer afternoon. Time faded. The rotation of the earth slowed, then stilled. And images of two bodies intertwined stood as high art in a moment frozen in time. These were images to last a lifetime. Shapes as they should always be. Two entities in their most perfect form.

But this union, so long in coming, wasn’t just chemical. Or biological. Or simply a product of animal spirits and baser instincts. It was of a higher order. As if preordained by the universe. As if the cogs and wheels that control the fate had finally slipped into place, now to operate for all eternity in the perfect gear.

This union was as spiritual as it was sexual. And each element elevated the other to a higher plain. A place once thought unachievable. Now, it was Amanda’s and Travis’s domain to rule together. Master and Mistress. Man and Woman. Husband and Wife?

Yes, Travis had proposed to Amanda. The words welled up, along with all the passion and pleasure. And this completed the union, cemented their oneness. And as the two of them put their bodies, those instruments of desire, through alternating paces of unbridled love-making and then languid dozing and nestling in each other’s arms, the bond between them only strengthened and solidified. It was as real as the fierce and fertile grip they had on one another.

In these moments, it was as if this new thing – this higher plain of existence – had always been the state of their lives. It seemed as if their souls had always been interlocked, connected, and joined since the very creation of the universe. There was no questioning any of it. After all, does one question the Periodic Table of the Elements? It just is.

This was the unbreakable bond between Amanda and Travis. All doubt had been disinfected. Fear had been vanquished. Questions had been conquered. They had become a new entity. Henceforth, their lives would be lived together. Not by choice, or arrangement or even conventions of state and religion.

But simply because there was no life without the other.

And then a cellphone rang. A terse, urgent message conveyed. And command given: Turn on the TV. Something was on CNN.

Just like that, this new and unshakable foundation anchoring Amanda and Travis together seemed to vanish in the wind, as if blown away like beach sand in the Montauk breeze.

All because Bree Ballentine – Amanda’s rival in all things: first her husband, then his fortune, then in a life-and-death struggle pitting their progeny against one another – had been the brutal victim of an apparent arson. Her posh penthouse in Pittsburgh had been fashioned into a flash-fire death trap. A violent, volatile tongue of flame had spit forth, as if from a serpent’s mouth, the moment Bree unlocked her front door.

But it wasn’t just the immolation of a sworn enemy that insinuated a new and unsettling sense of distance between Amanda and Travis. It was all the troubling implications this heinous act of arson carried with it.

Could Amanda’s well-meaning but misguided firefighter father have had something to do with this latest strike in the war between multi-millionaires? After all, the weapon of choice was Big Al’s frenemy, fire. The element he’d spent his life’s work trying to control, attempting to tame – always out to vanquish but never extinguish. Because he loved it a little. He loved to fight it, to beat it, to best it. Because then, he’d have power over it. Or at least Big Al thought that he did.

So could Al have tried to use that fire power to settle the score between the Creeds and Bree Ballentine? And if he had? If Big Al had gone and done something stupid and foolish, what were the implications for the billion-dollar conglomerate Amanda now ran for the benefit of her two children, billionaire Ballentine heirs Samantha and Geoff?

Shudders and shivers rippled through Amanda’s insides at all the unpleasant prospects and dark implications. Suddenly, all that shellfish she’d consumed wasn’t sitting so kindly in her stomach, either. The sense of fullness and warmth that had radiated from Travis’s love and his love-making had given way to chills. Clouds had rolled in over their blissful beach house. The sun was but a memory. So was its heat and strength.

Reality – and all its unpleasantness – had found them. It had found her. Again.

And that unsettled feeling deep inside Amanda’s protesting stomach?

That was the chase, revving up for another relentless run.

Chapter 2

Amanda, who’d risen from bed, her nude body bathed in fading golden light, turned from the flickering images of the news report, her widened eyes lifting to Travis. He remained naked, too, but was covered in the swirl of sheets on the mattress that had been the couple’s oasis of ecstasy just moments before.

We need to get back, she muttered in a soft, breathy exhale full of import. Then, she began getting dressed.

Travis watched her, his broad back resting on the headboard of the bed.

She had turned on a dime, Amanda had. The complete openness of her eyes, her face, her entire body and soul throughout the magical afternoon, was gone now. Shut down and replaced by laser-focus and far-away, inaccessible thoughts.

Would it always be this way? Would Travis receive Amanda’s love and passion only in pieces parceled out in between corporate crises and family emergencies? And if that were the case, would it be enough for him? Could he love Amanda completely and utterly – giving his whole self, his entire being to her – only to receive spare parts in return? Would all the golden moments with Amanda need to be stolen time and special occasions, as had been the magic of Montauk?

Watching Amanda methodically getting dressed – putting on the vestiges of her corporate uniform, not the carefree, underwear-less white linens they had donned for their beach house getaway – Travis didn’t know. Right then, he was looking at his ever-efficient Amanda with the detached yet bemused interest of a scientist studying a research subject. In this case: Amanda Creed, the ultimate high-climbing female executive so cruelly adept at compartmentalizing her life. Chopping it up. Slicing and dicing work, family, love -- and then putting all the pieces into little boxes so never the differing fragments of her so-called life shall mix.

Amanda was a woman divided against herself. Hobbled like this, how could she keep running? How could she keep chasing the ever-elusive balance that Travis believed did not exist?

He didn’t know. And he didn’t have any more time to think about the answer. Just then, a nearly dressed Amanda plucked Travis’s business suit from the closet rack and flung it on the bed.

Get dressed, she ordered, without turning to him, not so much as looking at him.

Her tone was that of a boss, which Amanda was. Not a lover, which she had been moments ago. Not a fiancé, which technically she was, though there was no ring. Just a passionate proposal, proffered and accepted. But do such exchanges, made during manufactured moments stolen away from real life, survive in the light of day? Could their commitment exist amid the rush of Amanda’s chase?

Travis threw back the sheets and stood, naked. The woman who had worshiped at the altar of his body just minutes before, took little note and showed virtually no interest. He plucked the suit pants from the hanger, pulling them on. His biceps flexing, his Navy SEAL tattoo of the skull in the Scuba mask moving along with his taut sinew. Travis was nothing if not the good soldier. He would do as ordered. But this was no way to begin a relationship, much less an engagement. Travis knew all of this as he dutifully donned his designer business suit, the uniform of his position as director of security for all of Ballentine Equity Partners, the multi-company corporate behemoth inherited by Amanda’s two children and safeguarded by her status as company CEO.

But a man – a real man like Travis Walker – could not be both employee and Alpha Male lover/fiancé/husband. Something would have to give. And it would have to give soon. But now was not the time for such discussions. Not with Amanda in crisis mode. Not with her CEO mind in overdrive, strategizing over the fallout from the arson-executed assassination attempt on Bree Ballentine.

Questions percolated and pumped through Amanda’s nervous system, now on high alert. How would publicity from the attack affect Ballentine Equity’s corporate interests, including a just-consummated deal to enter the politically charged, mob-connected world of Internet gambling? What if a brooding Big Al, estranged from his family after grossly overacting to a misguided play for attention by Geoff that had ignited the protective firefighter’s last nerve, did have something to do with the fire-laced attempt to incinerate Bree? After all, the vile woman was believed to be the architect behind Samantha’s psychiatrist-motivated suicide attempt. And the late Brock Ballentine’s spurned second wife so nakedly thirsted for control of her tycoon’s husband vast empire. All that stood in the way of Bree and her unborn baby’s multi-billion-dollar windfall was Amanda’s two children, the rightful heirs to their father’s unfathomably large estate.

Just one thing seemed clear in those early hours of the latest Ballentine corporate/family crisis: The fortunes of Amanda’s father, her two children and their corporate inheritance all rode upon the outcome of the just-unfolding investigation into Bree’s attack.

The intermodal, tri-state commute back to the sprawling Ballentine Estate southeast of Pittsburgh was quiet. At least in terms of the terse, sparse, and sparing words uttered between Amanda and Travis, it was quiet. These utterances accounted for little more than directives from Amanda for her security chief to begin an all-out intelligence gathering operation on the arson assassination attempt and the resulting law enforcement investigation. Then, both took to their air phones: Amanda, in touch with Peggy Coyle and her wired-in access to all of Ballentine’s board of directors and the company’s upper-crust management, via the network of all-hearing, all-seeing secretaries that served them.

For his part, Travis turned to his top deputy in the corporate security department, Sara Grimes. She answered his call on the second ring.

Grimes.

What do we know about the Bree Ballentine incident? Travis asked by way of a greeting and other such pleasantries. His voice was low as he spoke from a jetliner captain’s chair next to Amanda, who was consumed by her own air phone conversation, anyway.

I’d say she’s medium-well right about now, Grimes deadpanned.

Travis grunted. Stick to security, he said. Humor isn’t your strong suit.

I thought you’d be popping champagne corks, Sara offered. Wasn’t this bitch a major league pain in the ass for your boss?

Sara liked rubbing in the fact that Travis was subservient to Amanda. The woman he dated also signed his paychecks. Wait until Sara found out the two were engaged, Travis thought. Oh, what the hell. It was a sign of the times. Estrogen was increasingly in charge – on Wall Street, on Main Street, and even in the Pentagon.

Not if there’s blowback from the investigation, Travis corrected.

Blowback how? Sara said.

You put your finger on it a second ago, he added. Who benefits the most from roasting Bree Ballentine’s surgically enhanced ass?

There was a moment of silence, then Sara exhaled. Amanda, she said.

And her children, Travis added.

You don’t think… Sara’s words fell away.

I don’t think Amanda had anything to do with it, no, Travis said. And I know we didn’t, either. What I’m not sure about -- Now it was Travis who couldn’t find the right words to verbalize his suspicions.

The father. Sara finished the thought for him, her words ripe with realization. The firefighter. A guy who would know his way around an arson. You have to know all the ways that fires can be set in order to fight them, I suppose.

Travis blew out air from 30,000 feet, as the Ballentine corporate jet raced toward Pittsburgh airspace.

Something like that, he muttered. Do we know anything about Big Al’s whereabouts these days?

You mean after he bolted that paranoia-packed gathering you called a picnic at the Ballentine estate? Sara cracked. What was it again? The son, jealous over all the attention the daughter was getting on account of her suicide attempt, faked his own disappearance? So Gramps shakes some sense into the kid. But once the old fool finally gets a hold of his anger and realizes he went overboard, he blames his whole overreaction on Bree Ballentine. Then, he storms off, vowing revenge, never to be heard from again. That the guy?

Travis frowned inside the comfortable corporate plane’s cabin. When put like that, it seemed so obvious. And so stupid.

Al, Travis thought. What in the hell did you go and do now?

Well? Travis pressed, looking for facts, not Sara Grimes’s sardonic assessments at how dysfunctional the Ballentine family had become in wake of its multi-billion-dollar windfall and all the ungodly problems that came along with it.

It’s not like we had him under surveillance or anything, Sara pointed out. Where does he go, anyway? The town fire hall? A couple of drinking-man’s dives and a few wing and pizza joints? Al’s nothing if not predictable.

Yeah, Travis grunted. Until he’s not. Why don’t we try to piece together his movements over the past week?

We could do that, Sara answered, then paused. But if it ever comes out that Ballentine security was looking into one of its own, won’t it make Al Creed seem all the more guilty to the real detectives who are going to be all over this anyway?

Travis grimaced. Sara was right. But he didn’t like not knowing what Big Al had been up to since blowing his lid with Geoff and falling out with his own family.

Scratch that, Travis corrected. I’ll talk to him myself. Just keep tabs on the police investigation. And do it so nobody knows that you’re keeping tabs. I mean nobody. Handle this personally. No records. No paper trail. No e-mails. You report only to me on secured and scrambled lines.

It won’t be a problem, Sara assured. Perhaps, she sounded over-eager. After all, she liked reporting personally to Travis. She liked it a lot.

Just then, Travis thought of another problem. Perhaps, an even bigger one than the police investigation. And certainly, many times more dangerous: Hank Savage. Travis’s one-time rival in the Navy SEALS who had sold out everything he every stood for to become Bree Ballentine’s henchman heavy and her gigolo on-demand.

What about Savage? Travis said, unease in his voice.

Bree’s bodyguard? Sara said, placing the name. Nothing about him in the initial reports. Supposedly, no one else was injured in the flash fire. Just Bad Boob-Job herself.

Yeah, well, if Savage is unscathed, we can expect a counter move, Travis said, his brain mimicking the sociopathic thought pattern of the renegade SEAL -- who never met an act of violence that he didn’t like. Obviously, Savage is going to jump to the same conclusion -- that it was us.

I’ll tighten security another notch, Sara offered. But it’s not like we can do a whole lot more. I mean, we’ve been at DEFCON One since Samantha’s suicide attempt.

I know, Travis said, weariness creeping into his voice. What we need is intelligence. Good intelligence. We need to know who hit Bree. And we need to know what Savage is up to.

The hum inside the Gulfstream cabin filled the silence in the conversation.

Damn it, Travis finally muttered. I’m going have to go back to Alex.

That female carpenter you used to work with? Sara asked, perhaps a note of jealousy in her blurted, high-pitched question.

My friend, Travis corrected. At least Alex used to be. Before I put her up to cozying up to Hank Savage, and she called me on it.

The three of you? Sara put in, her tone tentative. There’s something weird going on, isn’t there?

She’s gonna hate me, Travis whispered, real conflict ringing in his strained, hushed voice. But I have no choice. Savage is that much of a wild card. And he’s had it out for me since SEAL training.

And you? Sara prodded. Have you had it out for him?

Travis acted like he didn’t hear the question.

Just stay on him and this arson investigation, Travis commanded. And do it so nobody knows.

Roger, a chastened Sara chirped.

I mean nobody, Travis repeated, his voice sounding low and gravely over the air phone connection. Then, he disconnected the call.

Travis turned his eyes to the oval window. The sky was dark and cloudy, but the lights of Pittsburgh shown like a miniature Christmas display, far away and miles below on a distant, otherwise dark horizon.

They were returning to reality, all right. Right back into the thick of things.

Chapter 3

At a private airfield just outside of Pittsburgh, Amanda and Travis hurriedly transferred to the corporate helicopter for the final leg of the journey home. The chopper would spirit them over the thickly wooded Western Pennsylvania countryside to the sprawling, rural Ballentine estate.

The hour was late and the summer night was as black as ink. The time for phone calls was through. And though they sat strapped into separate seats in the cabin of the helicopter, Travis reached out for Amanda’s hand. He gripped it firmly.

She turned to him, as if just noticing he was there. But as she studied his kind eyes that radiated from his handsome, seen-it-all face, her own features softened, too. It was as if the mere sight of Travis Walker’s centered, peaceful aura could calm Amanda and slow her chase. This, more than anything else, was why she could never, ever afford to lose him. Without this fine Navy SEAL’s solid anchor in her crazy, hurried life, Amanda would be rudderless. She would be lost, utterly. Lost and lonely.

Her lush lips curled into a half-smile.

Not exactly the ending I had planned for our getaway, she said, then looked down as if not wanting to read the clouds this might summon to Travis’s crystal blue eyes.

He squeezed her hand, then shook it slightly. She lifted her eyes to his.

It was the best, he said as their stares locked like lasers. I mean that.

Travis nodded, as if trying to convince Amanda of a basic fact, now obscured by so much doubt and undermined by such a lack of confidence that its essential truth could be ignored.

Thank you for planning it, he said. Because what happened there – that was the real us. Travis’s eyes radiated warmth and meaning as they bored into Amanda’s, as if glimpsing her heart and soul.

Regardless of what happens, he implored. "We have to remember that. We have to remember how good we can be. How good we are -- together."

Amanda’s eyes welled with wetness, and when she glanced at her lap, a single solitary tear slid down her right cheek.

But do we have to be removed from the world in order to find ourselves? Amanda wondered in a low, timid voice, as if afraid of the answer.

Her eyes lifted again. This time, they brimmed with sadness.

Can we be that good – that perfect – amid all this?

Amanda tossed up her free hand as if gesturing at the plush corporate helicopter as a symbol of her life’s frantic pace. But she meant everything: The company. Her troubled kids. Her hot-blooded renegade firefighter father. And now, the Bree Ballentine investigation.

Travis squeezed her hand again. And when she turned away, he reached his free hand and gently guided her beautifully sad face back to his.

We just have to be present, Travis smiled. Whatever’s going on, we have to be present with each other. Whatever time we have together has to count. It’s got to count for everything.

Amanda shook her head ever so slightly. I get so fixated on things, she whispered in self-rebuke. So consumed.

But Travis wouldn’t let her get away with blaming herself. And he would not allow her to signal defeat before giving their life together a fighting chance. A SEAL battles to the bitter end – to the death! – always.

Today, you fixated on me, he pointed out. You were consumed by us. And that was pretty damn great. It shows we can have that anytime we want. As long as when we close the bedroom door, it shuts out everything else. Everything but us: Alive. Awake. All there. All in.

That’s you, Travis, Amanda said. That’s you to a T. I think that’s what I love most about you. Your intensity, in all things. You make me feel like the only woman on earth when we’re together. As if at that very moment, nothing else matters.

Because it doesn’t. Travis’s voice was urgent.

But Amanda glanced away. She was shaking her head. No. See. No!

What? he pleaded, lifting her chin again.

That’s you, Travis, Amanda answered. It’s not me. Oh, you’ve tried to teach me. I remember you telling me that story about your grandfather and the steel ingot in the mill. How it taught him to be in the moment, no matter where he was. And how he taught you those same lessons.

He lived it, Travis nodded, smiling at the memory of his steelworker grandfather. I don’t think I ever saw him unhappy a day in his life. At the mill, his mantra kept him alive. If you dared daydream, you ended up like the poor guy who took a nose dive into molten steel, only to be forever memorialized by his coworkers by that steel ingot they painted his name on. The one made from the molten batch that had incinerated his body.

Travis paused, his eyes far away now, peering into the past.

But at home, he said, resuming the story. With my grandmother. With me… Travis’s words trailed off, then returned strong and sure.

That’s where the simple magic of living in the moment really paid off. Life, love and laughs – they literally radiated from this man, he said, a wide grin at the mere memory of his gregarious grandfather. It was like my Gramps owned the world. Only, he wasn’t a man of means. Far from it. I don’t think he ever had more than a month’s wages saved up in the bank. But he owned his own house. And he owned his time. And he reached out with those big hands of his, and he grabbed each and every moment that life offered and he put himself there.

Travis’s eyes returned from the past and focused on Amanda’s fine face. It was etched with both confusion and compassion. As if she were trying to follow along, attempting to understand. But she just couldn’t. It wasn’t her nature.

That’s the way to live, Amanda, Travis implored. The only way.

Hmm, Amanda grunted, uncertainly. But back then they didn’t have smartphones, e-mail and the Internet.

Travis looked wistful as he tried mightily to understand this wonderful woman, as much as Amanda was trying with him.

Yeah, he said. But we still have off switches.

He offered this hopefully, but Amanda frowned.

Not for our brains, we don’t, she said, her voice dour.

Just then, lights flashed outside the cabin window. Amanda leaned toward the glassed oval, as if eager to break away from the conversation.

Far below, she could see the white H of the Ballentine compound’s helicopter pad. The landing was encircled in red, and she could feel the craft descending. As her senses took all of this in, she couldn’t help wondering: Was her relationship was Travis heading south as well? After reaching such lofty heights of love and lust, wasn’t it bound to?

After all, everything succumbed to gravity, didn’t it? Even once-in-a-lifetime relationships.

Perhaps, bliss just couldn’t be sustained in the real world. Not the one Amanda Creed moved in, competing so desperately to win on all fronts. And she had tasted victory’s sweet nectar with Travis. Only now, nothing less than perfection would do. Amanda knew this, and she feared she could not live up to such a high standard. And she didn’t want she and Travis wearing themselves out, chasing something just beyond their reach for the rest of their lives.

That would be the worst fate of all. And they’d only grow to resent each other.

Now that they had experienced the lofty heights of their ecstasy and explored the bottomless depths of their love, nothing less would do.

Anything but that intensely pleasurable plateau would be a disappointment.

And what would hold them back? Amanda was terrified that she and her complicated, crazy life would prove to be the earth-bound, material-laden weight in their lives. She just wouldn’t stand for that. She couldn’t live with such depressing, soul-crushing knowledge. So better not to even try. Right?

Amanda watched through the porthole window as the helicopter softly touched down. Earth underneath her now and a pile of problems just outside the aircraft’s door, she turned to her lover.

There’s so much to talk about, Travis, Amanda said, her words sounding rushed, her eyes tacking toward the helicopter door, which would open momentarily, setting Amanda on her never-ending chase anew.

I just can’t think about us right now, she pleaded. Not with everything going on.

She shook her head and held her arms tight to her body, as if withdrawing from him. But Travis reached out, resting a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

I know, he said, his sympathetic eyes radiating understanding. And I’ll help you with everything. I’m not going anywhere, Amanda. Time is on our side.

She looked at him hopefully then: A little girl protecting herself from a broken heart, but desperately wanting to believe.

Travis nodded, his eyes locked on hers. Amanda’s lips seemed poised to say something. Perhaps, at long last, Amanda was ready to accept this honorable SEAL’s lifeline of a long, pleasurable existence of love, laughs, and simple joys.

But then the cabin door opened and the helicopter crew unfolded the stairs. Amanda’s escape was at hand. And she took it.

We have to go now, was all she could manage, before rising and making for the exit.

Chapter 4

They took the glorified golf cart from the helipad to the mansion. Travis had called ahead, instructing the estate staff to have the cart ready. There was no need for a full security detail, however. Not with the gated, video-monitored and heavily guarded estate and sprawling grounds already on high alert. It had been this way since Samantha’s suicide attempt, and it would continue to be so until all the ramifications stemming from the strange arson-laced assassination attempt on Bree Ballentine could be understood.

Besides, Travis was the best-trained and most highly lethal of all of his staff. And he never went anywhere without his