Read Online Blood risk by Dean Koontz - Free Book Online Page A

"Can we talk about the loan, please?"
        Mellio moved his lips up and down, like a man with something caught in his throat, finally closed his mouth and ordered his thoughts. He said, "Michael, there is an account in this bank composed solely of the monthly allowance checks from your trust-which you have not picked up or cashed in more than three years. I believe there are now thirty-seven deposits in the account, each in the amount of ten thousand dollars. I cannot see why you would wish to make a loan when you have these funds available."
        "Credit me with at least a modicum of intelligence, Mr. Mellio," Tucker said. He sounded tired, and he was tired. This sort of fencing was something he was no good at and was, to boot, completely out of practice for. He was anxious to be done with Mellio, the bank and the city so that he could get back to the most pressing problem of all- getting Merle Bachman out of Baglio's mountain estate before the driver was forced to spill everything about the rest of them. "I am aware that my father has conditioned the delivery of those checks, and I am thoroughly acquainted with what I would be losing by meeting his conditions. I have a good lawyer. He and I have talked a great deal about all of this, all of you."
        Mellio looked shocked again, apparently decided that this was not one of his better roles, gave up on it and got very businesslike. "Okay, by signing the waiver to get your allowance checks, you'd be endorsing your father's control of the inheritance. But what does that matter, Michael? It's nothing more than a formality, anyway. Your father, by virtue of your mother's will, already has control."
        Tucker sighed again, slumped down in his chair, looked at his watch: a quarter of nine. The Klee was beginning to strain his eyes, and the dark teak paneling seemed to be closing in on him. "Signing for the allowance checks, I'd be signing away my right to carry on with the suit we now have in federal court. I'd be limiting myself to the position of a minor for the rest of my life-or for the rest of my father's life, anyway."
        "But you've said you only care about having money to spend," Mellio argued quietly. "This way, you would have that nice monthly check."
        "I said that I could get along on a hundred and eighty thousand a year, but I can't possibly make it on a hundred and twenty. One thing I did acquire from my father was expensive tastes."
        "The allowances could be raised, naturally," Mellio said.
        Tucker shook his head. "No. It's not just that. Once I'd signed the waiver and no longer had a lever to use against my father, he'd have more control over me than I want him to have. He could even cut back the allowances until I had to knuckle under and go through the charade of learning the business from him."
        "He wouldn't do that," Mellio said.
        "You're full of it," Tucker said politely, smiling.
        Mellio said, "You must hate him."
        "Not merely that; I loathe him."
        "But why?"
        "I have my reasons."
        He thought of many things, but most of all he thought of the women his father had kept, a string of mistresses which, cruelly, he hadn't hidden from his wife. In fact, he seemed to take some strange pleasure in flaunting his adultery in front of her. Tucker remembered sitting with her, once when he had come home over the holidays from the boarding school, listening to her as, hating herself, she told him about his father's women. She had been a strong family-oriented woman, and this was an attack at her base, her sacred foundation. She had huddled in upon herself and cried, silently, shaking, her face cold to his touch. If only his mother had had a bit of Elise in her, less of an old-fashioned outlook and more modern fire, she would have stood up to the old man; she would have left him. Instead, she had stayed on, unable to admit it all had gone bad. Then the cancer, the long slow