Ride the Thunder by Janet Dailey Read Free Book Online Page A

exhaled a thin stream of smoke.
    “The company doesn’t mean shit to you!” Max scoffed at that possibility.
    “You’re right,” Brig agreed with a crooked smile. “I’m calling in my markers.”
    “I don’t have any of yours.” Max rocked the chair forward, whitening a bit. “You know what the provisions were in the old man’s will. Unless you work for the company, you are entitled to zero.”
    “And you know I could have contested that.”
    “It was your choice. And you decided not to,” his cousin retorted. “You didn’t want any of his ‘ill-gotten’ gains. You already had your blood money, money you’d earned yourself.”
    “You wouldn’t be sitting in that chair if I hadn’t stepped aside,” Brig reminded him coldly. “You wouldn’t even be there if I hadn’t given you proxy to vote my shares. I’m not here to take that chair away from you. The company is yours. But you owe me, Max.”
    Max looked prepared to argue. Instead he issued a tight-lipped demand, “Tell me what you want.”
    “I need a loan.” It was a grudging admission. “Twenty thousand.”
    Amusement flashed across his cousin’s face. He hesitated for an instant, then opened the center drawer of his desk. Pulling out a folder, he tossed it onto the desk in front of Brig. It was marked “confidential.”
    “Read it.” Max gestured toward the folder and leaned back in his chair, resting his elbows on the sides and tapping his fingers against each other.
    Brig hesitated, then picked it up. It was a financial statement prepared by a firm of certified accountants, complete with a balance sheet, profit and loss statement, a list of assets and liabilities, long term and short term. Brig gave the first two pages a cursory glance of identification. When the figures began to sink in, he studied the report more closely. A sinking sensation began in his stomach. He shot a hard look at the man behind the desk. His cousin’s initial expression of amused satisfaction had given way to one of grim resignation.
    “It’s the latest audit, delivered yesterday,” Max stated. “I can keep it under wraps for a couple of months, maybe more. This company doesn’t have twenty thousand dollars, Brig.”
    “With you as President, I should be surprised the company hasn’t gone bankrupt before this.” He dropped the report on the desk, fighting the anger and frustration that was welling inside. “How did it happen?”
    “The profits started dropping off from the stores.You know the kind of shape the country’s economy has been in. I tried to diversify and made a couple bad investments.”
    “A couple? It took more than a couple to get the company into that condition.” Anger, contempt, and disgust all mixed together in Brig’s response. “You should be sued for gross mismanagement.”
    “Dammit, Brig!” Max came to his feet in angry self-defense.
    “Forget it. I won’t be the one to sue you. I take it no one else has seen this report?”
    “No one.”
    “Then I haven’t seen it either. All I want is my twenty thousand,” Brig stated. “I don’t care whether I get it from the company or you personally. And don’t try to convince me that you haven’t sucked off a fortune, because I know you better.” The desperation of his own personal situation brought an extra edge of harshness to his voice. He was fighting for his life.
    Max appeared to squirm in his chair. He could no longer meet the desert-brown eyes. “I haven’t got it either,” he admitted after a long pause. “Everything I have, and everything I could beg, borrow, or steal, is wrapped up in a land development project in California. Condominiums. I can’t get it off the ground.”
    A cold rage spilled over Brig. He wanted to grab Max by the shirt front and smash his fist into those handsome features until they were a bloody pulp. Before the urge for violence could overwhelm him, Brig walked stiffly to the window. He’d been a fool to come here, a fool to hold