Chapter 3 - The Gathering of Jackals
The Elk Grove Village office of Apex Facilities Group smelled of floor wax, citrus degreaser, and cheap dark roast coffee.
It was located in a light industrial park between a plumbing supply distributor and a tool-and-die shop. Through the high, uncurtained windows of Katherine’s second-floor office, you could see the belly of the transport planes sinking toward the runway at O'Hare every four minutes, their landing lights burning through the November mist.
Katherine sat at her steel desk. She had three folders open in front of her.
Her office manager, Mrs. Gable—a woman of sixty-four who had worked twenty years in shipping for Sears before the retail apocalypse drove her into Katherine’s employment—knocked twice on the glass.
"There’s a car in the bay," Mrs. Gable said without expression. She held a clipboard with the morning’s supply manifests. "A German car. Silver. He didn't park in the visitor slot; he parked right across the rollup door for Bay Three. Joe can't get the pallet jack out."
"It’s Trevor," Katherine said.
"He looks angry," Mrs. Gable observed. "He kicked the bumper of the forklift."
"Call Joe. Tell him to take his fifteen-minute break in the back. Don't let any of the warehouse crew get between Trevor and the stairs."
"I have the phone in my hand, Katherine. One button for the village police."
"Not yet," Katherine said. "Let him climb the stairs."
Trevor didn't knock.
He hit the door with the heel of his palm so hard the safety glass shuddered in its zinc frame. He was wearing the camel-hair coat he had bought for Cecily’s family Thanksgiving, but it was unbuttoned, his tie skewed, his hair damp from the drizzle outside.
"What the fuck did you do?" he screamed.
His voice broke on the *did*. He didn't look like the golden boy from Northwestern now; he looked like a man who had just looked out the window and seen the water rising past the sill.
"Shut the door, Trevor," Katherine said. She didn't look up from her screen. She was checking the payroll deductions for the night shift at the Des Plaines clinic.
"Don't give me that corporate bullshit!" He lunged across the desk, slamming both hands down onto the green blotter. "The bank canceled the entire refi. Vance won't even take Dad’s call. He sent an email to the restaurant’s legal counsel five minutes ago—they’re initiating the foreclosure on the building and the county sheriff is coming on Friday to execute the tax levy! Do you know what that means?"
"It means you have forty-eight hours to clear your personal belongings out of the office behind the bar," Katherine said.
Trevor’s face went the color of skim milk. His nostrils flared. "You did this on purpose. You sat there last night, knowing you were going to pull the rug out from under us. Because Mom made a joke? Because of a fucking toast?"
"You think this is about the toast?"
"What else could it be about? You’ve always been like this! Touchy, jealous, bitter because you couldn't hack it at school, bitter because Dad gave me the Lantern instead of you—"
"Trevor."
She didn't raise her voice, but she stood up.
Katherine was five feet eight inches tall. In her work boots, she looked him straight in the eyes. Her desk was clear except for one piece of paper: the printout of Melissa’s photograph.
She turned it around and slid it across the blotter with one finger.
Trevor looked down.
The anger didn't leave his face, but it curdled. It turned into something sour and greasy. His pupils contracted until they were two black pinheads against the bloodshot sclera.
"Where did you get this?" he whispered.
"Melissa took it off Dad’s desk while you were sleeping off your scotch," Katherine said. "Line one-oh-four. *North Star Digital LLC.* One hundred and forty thousand dollars. What did you buy, Trevor? Bitcoin at sixty-eight thousand? Ethereum? Or was it some private placement your fraternity buddies told you couldn't lose?"
"That’s none of your business," he croaked, but his fingers twitched against his coat pockets.
"It became my business when you instructed Arthur Vance to cross-collateralize this facility," she said, tapping the desk. "You didn't want a guarantor, Trevor. You wanted a hostage. You wanted my company’s clean assets to secure the note so when your margin calls wiped out the Lantern’s accounts, First Midwest would come here and take my trucks instead of taking your Audi."
"Dad knew," Trevor spat, trying to claw his way back to his feet. "Dad signed off on it! It was a family plan!"
"Dad didn't read the rider," Katherine said cold. "Dad hasn't read an entire contract since 1994. He saw four hundred and twenty thousand dollars and he thought his clever boy was saving the ship. But you knew. And Mom knew."
"Mom didn't know the details!"
"Mom knew enough to tell twenty people that I was the biggest mistake she ever made, twelve hours before she expected me to hand over my life to save yours."
A heavy step sounded on the stairs.
Richard Sinclair appeared in the doorway.
He looked ten years older than he had under the chandeliers of *L’Amore d’Italia*. His camel-hair coat was missing a button; his blue eyes were watery, the yellowed whites showing through the loose folds of his eyelids. He leaned against the doorframe, breathing through his mouth with a wet, rattling whistle.
"Trevor," Richard wheezed. "Stop."
"Dad, she has the internal ledger," Trevor said, not looking back. "Melissa gave it to her. Melissa’s a traitor."
Richard didn't look at Trevor. He looked at Katherine.
For thirty years, Katherine had looked at that face and seen the arbiter of her worth. He was the man who had forgotten her high school graduation because Trevor had a regional tennis match in Rockford. He was the man who had told her that women didn't understand the restaurant business, that her little cleaning company was "cute," like a child playing with a cash register.
Now, he looked like what he was: an old, ruined debtor standing in the house she had built without him.
"Katie," Richard whispered. "Please."
The word was thick with phlegm.
"The bank won't listen to Trevor," Richard said, taking two shuffling steps into the room. He reached out, his hand trembling, as if he meant to touch her shoulder, but her eyes stopped him three feet away. "They’ll listen to you. Vance respects you. If you call him—if you just tell him it was a clerical error, that you’re coming in this afternoon—we can stop the notice. They won't put the padlock on the door. Katie, your grandfather built that bar with his own hands after he came back from Normandy. You can't let them take the sign down."
"Grandfather built a tavern," Katherine said. "You turned it into a debt mill. And Trevor turned it into a bucket shop."
"It was an investment!" Trevor yelled. "It was going to pay off three to one! If the market hadn't turned in October—"
"Shut up, Trevor," Richard barked, though there was no thunder in it, only the miserable whine of a broken dog. He turned back to Katherine. "Katie... what do you want? Do you want the deed? We’ll put the property in your name. We’ll make Trevor the manager, he’ll work for you—"
"Work for me?" Katherine laughed. It was the first time she had laughed in twelve hours, and the sound made both men flinch. "Trevor couldn't run a leaf blower without breaking the pull cord. I wouldn't let him clean the grease traps at a Mobil station."
"You arrogant little bitch," Trevor snarled, stepping toward her. "You think you’re better than us because you have some grease-monkeys scrubbing toilets? You’re nothing! You’re the same thick-ankled girl who couldn't finish five semesters of college!"
Katherine picked up the desk phone.
She didn't dial 911. She dialed the intercom for the warehouse floor.
"Joe," she said into the receiver.
"Yeah, Boss?"
"Bring the large pallet truck up to Bay Three. The silver Audi is blocking the door. Hook the straps to the rear axle and drag it into the alley. If the transmission drops out, leave it on the gravel."
"Got it, Katherine."
Trevor’s face turned from white to purple. "You touch my car and I’ll—"
"You’ll do what, Trevor?" Katherine asked, her voice dropping into that terrifying, basement-level calm. "You have no money. You have no credit. In forty-eight hours, you will have no job. And if you don't take your father and get down those stairs in thirty seconds, I’m calling the Cook County State's Attorney’s Financial Crimes Division to ask them why four hundred and twenty thousand dollars in corporate loans were diverted to an unregistered digital exchange through *The Brass Lantern’s* accounts."
Trevor froze.
He looked at the paper on the desk. He looked at Katherine’s eyes.
For the first time in his life, Trevor Sinclair understood that the girl he had kicked under the dinner table for twenty years was not his sister anymore. She was a creditor with teeth.
"Come on, Dad," Trevor muttered, grabbing Richard’s elbow with a rough, nervous yank. "She’s crazy. Let her rot."
Richard didn't move for three seconds. He looked at Katherine, his mouth opening and closing like a carp in a bucket.
"Katie," he whispered. "We’re your family."
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"No," Katherine said, sitting back down in her steel chair and opening her third folder. "You’re a collection of liabilities I’ve decided not to assume."
***
