"Sorrow" Part 4

Stepping inside the house, she was engulfed in darkness. Immediately she was cold and rubbed her arms against her lightweight cotton sweatshirt. It was an odd moment to suddenly wonder what she must look like. Nate went around the house systematically flipping on lights and muttering something about getting a fire started. As light started to illuminate the house, she looked herself over best she could to surmise her condition. Jeans, dirty but not torn. Her running shoes had pieces of twigs and dead leaves stuck to the laces and as she touched her head, she felt a few more in her ponytail. She walked further into the house and soon passed a hallway mirror. Irrational and vain given the circumstances, she knew, she hurriedly wiped dirt smudges from her face with the sleeve of her hoodie and smoothed her hair back best she could. Still in a ponytail, but a bit more presentable. She gathered up the stray twigs and leaves and placed them in a convenient bowl of potpourri situated on an entryway table.
She was always told she looked exactly like her mother. As she took a moment to study her face, she bit hard on her lower lip to fight back tears. Some say they can't always see family resemblances. Not her. When she looked in the mirror, she always saw her mother's eyes looking back at her. Deep green eyes set in an almond like shape and long lashes. She had her father's straight nose and heart shaped face, but it was her eyes that always made people forget she looked like anyone but her mother.

She swallowed against the lump in her throat that had formed at the thought of her parents and walked further into the house.

Nate had finished with the fire and was just fueling it now with leftover scraps of wood. The house was cozy and a bit eclectic, which suited her tastes just fine. The living room reminded her a bit of her own house growing up. Antiques mixed with a bit of modern. The nostalgia helped her to relax a little more. Looking through to the kitchen she could see a saw horse set up, and new cabinets half installed. Liz remembered Nate mentioning he was in the middle of doing some work for his grandparents. This was their place and she wondered if they were here as well.

He seemed to read her mind, "My grandparents only use this as their summer place. I've been coming here on the weekends trying to finish up. Sorry for the mess." he said, motioning to the kitchen. He seemed to study her for a minute and then offered her a seat at the kitchen table. "You seem nervous." He said as he started to pull what looked like leftovers out of the fridge.

She cracked a small smile, "I was just thinking..." as she trailed off he looked at her, waiting.

"I guess I was just thinking that if this were a movie, and I watched the actress walk into a strange man's home out in the middle of nowhere, I would be calling her an idiot by now."

"Well, if it helps, you don't seem like an idiot to me." He said with some sort of emotion on his face that she couldn't quite read.

"I suppose time will tell." she agreed with a shrug. She eyed what looked like some sort of stew that he was heaping into a bowl and heard her stomach growl on cue. He raised an eyebrow and looked like he stifled a laugh as he put the bowl in the microwave and leaned back against the counter, arms crossed over his chest.
"My grandma's beef stew is the stuff of legends. You'll be full in no time." He then seemed happy to be silent and watch the food go round in round as it heated. She pulled her sweatshirt sleeve over her hand and absently played with the cuff that was fraying. Meanwhile her thoughts were going a mile a minute.

Could she trust Nate?
Why did she want to trust him?
Would he respect her wishes if something did happen to her?
Was she putting yet another innocent person in harm's way by confiding in him?

Here was this young, kind, attractive man who does handyman work for his grandparents on the weekends and moonlights as a rescuer of damsels in distress on the side. She didn't think people like him existed anymore. And to top it all off he wanted to listen to her. Wanted to help. For a split second she wondered if she was still on the beach, dreaming all of this.

It took her about two minutes flat to inhale the warm stew he placed in front of her. She knew she must look like an animal, but quite frankly didn't care. She hadn't eaten since that morning and as it turned out, Nate hadn't been exaggerating with the whole stew of legends thing.
"More?" He asked after she was finished.
"Er, no, I'm good. That was amazing though. I didn't realize how starving I was."
He smiled. She liked his smile she decided.
"I could see that. Thought I was going to have to intervene before you ate my grandmother's good spoon as well."
She should have been embarrassed but wasn't. Maybe she was under the spell of a full stomach and the fire that was heating the house, but for the first time in months, she felt a foreign emotion. Comforted.
He poured her a glass of water and sat back down across from her.
"You wanted to unburden your soul to someone."
"Oh that." She still felt good under the affects of the food and the warmth, but a small pang of fear made her heart beat a bit faster at the reminder of what life had been like up until a couple hours ago.
Liz clasped her hands together and stretched them forward across the table. She looked Nate square in the eyes and said, "I don't know you. I don't even know if I can trust you. I want to trust you, but the simple fact is I need to trust somebody. This seems crazy to me, but it just turns out there is no one else to tell. I also need to warn you that what I tell you could put you in serious danger if anyone were to find out I told you. If that is a responsibility you would care not to sign up for, I understand fully. I can tell you a place you can drop me off and we can part ways now. You saved my life, have been more than helpful and fed me the best beef stew I have ever had in my life. You really have done more than enough already. You don't need to get any deeper into this. Most people wouldn't."
Without missing a beat he placed a hand over her clasped fist and said, "I'm not most people."
Liz looked at his face. His features were so kind and his eyes a startling blue that she was shocked she hadn't really noticed before. "No Nate. I don't think you are."
"Secrets." He said.
"What?"
"You said you had a secret someone was willing to kill for."
Liz sat back in her chair and heard the sorted tale fall from her lips without much effort. Her soul longed for the release of confession.
"I guess I'm smart. At least, that's what I've always been told. Always tested extremely high in school growing up, even skipped my sophomore year in high school."
"Wow." Nate said looking genuinely impressed.
Liz waived a hand in front of her and scrunched her face up in a look of distaste. "I could have cared less. Everyone has something they are good at. Numbers were easy for me. It seemed like a big deal for everyone else, my parents included. They were a little less than thrilled when they would find me using my abilities for non educational purposes."
"Non educational?" Nate gave a quizzical look.
"Oh, you know. I could make a tidy sum counting cards or figuring out the pattern to test answers. I may have sold a few things like that to the interested consumer."
"Nice." Nate said as he rubbed his fingers across his mouth attempting to hide a smirk.
"What? I only had an older brother. Who knows, maybe under a sister's influence I would have had a more girlie racket going on."
Nate rolled his eyes, but smiled. "Continue."
"Anyways, I was a kid. I was talented, and not living up to my potential as they say. Pretty typical. After high school I got accepted to Yale. Something about being there, away from home, surrounded by people who had a genuine joy for knowledge..I don't know. All the gears lined up for me and I just decided to grow up I guess. Seems weird or cheesy maybe, but, I threw myself into my studies, Mathematics and Economics especially. Became the biggest school nerd you've ever seen."
His eyes locked with hers, "Somehow I doubt that," he said.
She laughed, and the sound of it was foreign to her ears. She hadn't laughed in so long. Could she really be telling him all this?


"Last winter, I came home for Christmas. I hadn't seen my family in months, and we had all grown alot closer, more tight knit. Probably a combination of some maturity and distance I'm sure. My brother Ryan was home as well. He had already been away for a couple of years at Harvard Medical School."
"Wow, Yale and Harvard. Your parents must have been extremely proud."
"Yes, proud, and with two kids at Ivy league schools, nearing broke. Don't get me wrong, my parents had always provided us with a very comfortable life. Every budget has it's limits though, and I knew my parents were reaching theirs. Ryan was always smart and capable, but had to work hard at his studies. He got into Harvard but not with a scholarship. I had a partial one, but I could have easily gotten a full ride had I applied myself properly in high school.
When I returned to campus after the break, an opportunity to ease my parent's financial burden seemed to fall in my lap. I was approached by a man who said he had been referred to me by my Economics Professor. He introduced himself as Mark Jamison. He was retired FBI and currently a consultant for a high growth commodities trading firm. He gave some spiel about trying to recruit the smartest and the brightest mumbo jumbo to come and do some work for them. Going into it I wasn't even sure of what I would be doing exactly. All I heard was that they were willing to pay a six figure salary for what sounded like number checking."
"Number checking? Are you dumbing this down for me?" Nate asked with a raised eyebrow.


Liz raised one right back, "Stock traders, brokerage firms, they all have ways of trying to predict the rise and fall of the stock market. Each one will always claim they've figured out the best and surest way to predict the market. Which shares will hit big, when should they sell, that sort of thing. The truth is there is no magical way to predict the stock market. Tons of things affect rises and falls in share prices, whether gradual changes or sharp spikes. The best way to understand how the market fluctuates is to study trends."
"Trends. Or patterns." Nate said processing the information quickly.
"Yes. Patterns. Numbers. Two things I excelled at, and they knew it. Mark tried to gloss over it, but I picked up on subtle clues that the firm had some pretty prominent clients. Powerful ones even. I guess they thought I would be helpful in figuring out market trends, in turn making money for their clients, which makes money for the firm."
"It's always about the money." Nate said with an edge to it.
"Yes. I guess it is. For everyone, me included."
"Were you able to help them?"
"It didn't seem overly difficult to me. Stock market trends are like people. After you study how a person reacts to different situations, you start to have a pretty good feel over time how that person is going to react to something. Stocks are the same. Get to know them and they'll pretty much show you what they are going to do. It started to just feel like an equation. I'd plug certain factors and variables in and it pretty much guaranteed a particular outcome."
"You were good at it, weren't you?" Nate said as more of a conclusion than a question.
"In the interest of time, I'll cut to the chase. Yes, I was really good. So good that the firm started to give me more and more responsibilities, and more pay. I was paying for my school and sending checks home to help with Ryan's school. My parents refused at first. Said I should put it away for after school. I planned an impromptu trip home. Just for the weekend. I wanted to show them just how much I was making and that I wanted to do this. We were a family, and family looks out for each other.
My flight was due to leave late that evening and I had been scrambling all day to make sure I was caught up on school and work before I left. Every day before I leave for the night, I leave my latest report on Mark Jamison's desk and so that night was no different. I dropped the folder on his desk and in my haste knocked some files onto the floor. I gathered up the papers trying to leave everything as it was, when I saw it."
"Saw what?" Nate had moved to the edge of his chair, his back straight.
"A couple months earlier a company came across my desk for my typical analysis. TruLen Worldwide. They were a relatively new company and there had been alot of buzz around them. Supposedly TruLen was a conglomerate. Several of their companies were rumored to be on the cutting edge of medical technologies. Their research in cancer and childhood leukemia was circulating in the business world as being on the cusp of having actual cures. Their stock had shot up in the last six months and on the surface it seemed like it was the next sure thing."
"On the surface? You seem like you were skeptical from the get go."
"It had seemed like they had just come out of nowhere and were suddenly going to save the world. Like I said. Stocks are alot like people. What if someone just showed up on your doorstep one day, informed you that they were your new neighbor and would like to mow your lawn every week just for the heck of it."
"Doesn't happen." Nate said matter of factly.
"Exactly. Too good to be true is definitely a factor to be considered in any equation. After some digging, I was convinced of my initial instincts. TruLen supposedly owned a bunch of other highly successful medical research companies. The more I looked into, I couldn't exactly prove it, but I would have wagered my life savings that they were little more than shell companies. Didn't really exist. Just a way to move money around, seem bigger than they were, that sort of thing."
"That's a pretty big accusation Liz."
Liz shrugged. "Like I said. They were clever enough with it. I couldn't out and out prove anything. All I know is that even when people try and make numbers lie, they don't. No matter how pretty it all looked, it was off and I could see it. I gave my report to Mark Jamison and flagged it as urgent. TruLen was getting alot of media coverage supporting and pumping it up. I knew we had big investors who would be chomping at the bit for a piece of the TruLen pie. When I was stacking the files back on Mark's desk, I saw one marked TruLen Worldwide. It wasn't my place to open the file. It was just morbid curiosity. I knew my report went against the current trend and I was interested to see how it was being received. There were a few papers in total, the first being a copy of an internal memo between Mark and the brokerage's CEO, Andrew Craig. Long story short," Liz stopped to take a long swallow of her water," The brokerage firm knew that TruLen was bogus and they were selling it to all their big players. Bottom line? With all the smoke and mirrors around it, all the generated hype, they could get investors to pump millions into TruLen. In the fallout that would eventually follow, the firm would make massive profits by deceiving their investors. All the while being able to appear squeaky clean. Everyone had believed in TruLen. Who could have predicted it would have failed? would be their case. And they'd get away with it. I made a copy of the file, made a copy of my report and left for the airport."
"The company you work for? They know you have these files?"
Liz gripped the water glass in both her hands and rolled it back and forth. "Yes."
"What about your family? You haven't been able to go back to them for help?"
Liz felt a now familiar heaviness in her chest and she struggled to keep her breathing even and her emotions in check. She looked up into Nate's eyes with every intention to tell him the facts. Nothing more. Nothing less. Her resolve shook under the gaze of what seemed like genuine concern. She felt her eyes fill with tears and everything around her took on a blurry outline. Her thumb rubbed the rim of the water glass over and over as she tried to compose herself. "I did go to my family for help. It's what got them killed."
Nate suddenly stood up. So forcefully that his chair fell backwards crashing to the floor. "You're lying!" he shouted but not really at her. It was like he was already having a conversation of some sort in his head. Trying to put some puzzle together and realizing he didn't have all the pieces.
Liz stood up, her face flushed with shock, with raw emotion seething out of her, "What on earth do you mean I'm lying?!"
Nate seemed to compose himself. He set his chair upright and signaled for her to sit as well. "I-I'm sorry. Please. Sit. I just wasn't prepared is all. Please, really, sit. Tell me."
Liz realized she was shaking . She sat back in her chair feeling emotionally spent. Just finish this thing, she told herself.
"The firm somehow figured out I had made copies of the documents. My theory is that Mark's office was under surveillance. When I came home that weekend I poured over the file with my dad. I thought he could help me figure out what to do with the information. He told me he had a connection he could work. A friend of a friend of someone at the SEC. In the meantime he wanted me to quit. Come up with an excuse, any excuse. He would call me when he had more information to go on. I hugged my parents goodbye and that was the last time I saw them alive. By the time I landed in Connecticut my brother called. The police had called him first. There had been an accident. The authorities didn't rule out foul play but also couldn't prove it. Their brakes hadn't been cut, but their brakes had definitely not worked. No skid marks. They died instantly, or so they tell me. I grabbed the red-eye back to Washington. I found their house ransacked. I instantly found the key that went to the false drawer in my dad's desk. The file was there with a post it note on top. The name and number of his contact. He knew too much and he was instantly dispensable. All that was left was me and the file. I made Ryan hide with a close family friend, and I've been on the run ever since."
"Where's the evidence? Do you still have it?"
"Yes. It's safe."
"You want me to know. In case they succeed in--"
"In killing me."
Nate swallowed hard and she could see the furrow between his eyebrows getting deeper.
"The beach. Where I was when those men found me. I used to go their as a kid. My parents would call it "our beach." It was a small cove and never drew any crowds or visitors. It was peaceful with hollowed out spaces in the rock that jutted out over the water. Great for "exploring" when you're five." Liz smiled at the memory and fought hard against the accompanying emotion that rose up.
"There's a small opening on the south side of the rock. You would miss it every time if you didn't know what to look for. My mom called it our "treasure chest." We could put whatever treasures we found on the beach there and they'd always be safe. That's where the evidence is."
Nate's voice was heavy with some sort of emotion, "What were you doing there tonight Liz?"
"Checking on it. It's been risky, but I've been in careful communication with my brother. He has set up a meeting with the FBI, tomorrow at 11."
"Liz, you need--"
Nate was cut off by the sound of the front door rattling. Someone was unlocking it? Nate's grandparents? She looked at Nate for some confirmation and saw nothing but fear distort his features. She stood up fast and clumsily, knocking her glass to the floor, shattering it. "What, why do you look like that? Wh-who is that?!"
The front door opened and with a flourish entered Mr. Handsome and Mr. Ugly.
"You about done with your date, Nate?"
Nate had gone pale and looked like he was going to be sick.
"She tell you where it is?"
Liz spun on Nate. For all intents and purposes he was a complete stranger, and he had no loyalty to her. She had no reason to feel betrayed. But she did.
Nate's voice came out strained and low, "Yes. Yes she told me where it is."