World of Trouble (9786167611136) by Jake Needham Read Free Book Online Page A

mean?”
    “Is he going back into politics? Does he want
to be prime minister of Thailand again?”
    “I don’t know. What’s he telling you?”
    “He thinks that was what the attack was all
about. He thinks someone was trying to stop him from going
back.”
    “Maybe,” Sally said, “but then again maybe it
was just an angry husband.”
    Shepherd looked away. It made him
uncomfortable when married people joked about each other’s presumed
infidelities. He had taken that tour and it still hurt far too much
for him to joke along with them.
    “It’s not what Charlie’s saying that bothers
me,” Shepherd said, going back to where they had been before
Sally’s little lurch into the inner workings of her marital life.
“It’s the things he’s doing. They’re things that make me wonder if
he’s not preparing for a political comeback.”
    “What things?”
    Shepherd paused. He felt awkward and Sally
obviously saw it.
    “Never mind, Jack. I shouldn’t have
asked.”
    Shepherd thought for a moment. If the funds
in Thailand were really family funds as Charlie had claimed, then
they were Sally’s funds, too, weren’t they? So he composed an
answer for Sally that he could at least tell himself skirted the
edge of violating client confidence.
    “Charlie asked me to reorganize the funds you
have in Thailand.” He tapped his palm against the brown envelope on
his lap. “To get it all out of the country immediately.”
    Shepherd knew he shouldn’t have said even
that much, but he wanted to see Sally’s reaction. He was
disappointed when she didn’t give him one.
    “I don’t know anything about that, Jack. That
kind of thing is way over my head.”
    He doubted that, but there seemed to be no
reason to say so.
    “Does Charlie think something is about to
happen in Thailand?” he asked instead.
    “I really don’t know. Charlie hasn’t said
anything specific to me.”
    Sally’s eyes shifted slightly down and to the
left. It was a classic tell. There was more, but she wasn’t going
to say what it was. Still, that was fair enough, Shepherd thought.
What a man tells his wife should remain between them.
    “I’m sorry,” he said to Sally. “I shouldn’t
have asked.”
    Sally leaned across and put her hand on his
arm.
    “You’re our friend, Jack. You can ask
anything you like. If I knew, I’d tell you.”
    Shepherd just nodded at that. It wasn’t true,
of course. He knew it and he was sure Sally knew he knew it, but it
would have been churlish of him to say that so he just let it
go.
    “Are you finally over that ex-wife of
yours?”
    The change of subject was so naked that
Shepherd wondered briefly how Sally had managed it without laughing
out loud.
    “Yeah,” he said. “Absolutely.”
    Sally gave him a look brimming with sympathy,
the sort of look people gave to beggars in wheelchairs.
    “Charlie and I care about you, Jack. You’re
our friend and we want you to be happy. You don’t deserve what
happened to you. You need to meet somebody new. You have to open
your heart to someone else.”
    Suddenly the conversation was turning into a
visit with Oprah.
    “Do you keep in touch with Anita?” Sally
asked before Shepherd could leap to his feet and flee.
    “Anita and I were married,” he said. “She
found somebody she liked better, she left me, we got divorced. End
of story. What do we have to keep in touch about?”
    “Charlie and I keep thinking that maybe
you’ll get back together. You and Anita were a wonderful
couple.”
    “Apparently not.”
    “Yes, you were. And surely Anita knows that,
too.”
    “It must have slipped her mind there for a
few minutes.”
    “Give her a chance, Jack. Things change, you
know.”
    “Not this thing.”
    “Never give up, Jack. Never.”
    Shepherd really didn’t want to talk about
Anita any longer. Love never comes to anyone logically and there is
certainly nothing logical about the way it vanishes. He’d had that
discussion before with too many other