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asking if you know of her,” Lawrence said, his voice rising, “I’m asking if you know her.”
    “I, um, yes. I’ve met her at a couple of business functions. She covers local business for the Tribune , and Richmond is a pretty small city.”
    Lawrence’s eyes narrowed as he moved his hand higher on Angela’s thigh. “Those Wall Street investment bankers I mentioned do have one theory about the decline of Sumter’s stock price.”
    “Oh?”
    “Yes. As you probably know, the entire banking industry has been going through a massive consolidation over the past ten years. Small ones and big ones are gobbling each other up every day, making shareholders very wealthy in the process.”
    “I do know that.”
    “But what you may not know is that the Federal Reserve and other regulators closely monitor a bank’s performance with respect to serving low-income and minority communities. That they review those records before approving any merger or acquisition, and that these regulators can hold up profitable mergers if they aren’t satisfied with a bank’s record regarding the issue. My investment bankers believe that might be the case with Sumter. They believe that all of this bad press about Sumter in the Richmond Trib may have made it less attractive as an acquisition target to the big boys in New York, North Carolina, and on the West Coast because those entities fear that any bid they make would be held up by the regulators. My people think that the decline in Sumter’s stock price is directly related to that nasty information, which, by the way, other newspapers seem to be picking up on. My sources tell me the Wall Street Journal is considering the possibility of conducting its own investigation into what’s going on at Sumter.”
    Angela swallowed hard. In fact, she was intimately aware of how the government monitored the country’s largest banks in terms of how well they were serving low-income people. Perhaps she and Lawrence were getting to the real reason he had flown her all the way out here. He’d spent almost $500 million on Sumter stock. Now it was worth forty million less. If the Wall Street Journal decided to investigate Sumter and found anything negative, his investment might be worth far less.
    “Are you getting my drift, Angela?” he asked, reaching up and stroking her hair.
    She closed her eyes tightly, managing not to flinch. “I—”
    “One more question.”
    “Yes?”
    “Who’s Sally Chambers?”
    Angela pulled back with a start, as though she’d touched a live wire. “What?”
    “Sally Chambers,” Lawrence repeated. “Who is she?”
    Angela swallowed hard. “Why are you doing this to me?” she whispered.
    “Answer me.”
    “You have no right to—”
    “I will help you, if you help me,” he interrupted. “But if you don’t, I won’t help you. And helping me includes answering each of my questions.”
    Angela could feel herself shaking. Fear, anger, regret, and guilt were all coming together to form a hurricane of emotion. “Sally was my best friend.”
    “Was?”
    “You know what happened.” The awful image of blood pouring from Sally’s mouth and nose came flashing back, and she could feel herself losing control. “Why are you doing this to me?”
    “Sally died, didn’t she?”
    “Yes. In my arms.”
    “That’s awful,” Lawrence said softly. “You know, there’s so much we could do together, so many important problems we could solve. Yours and mine. I’d hate to see anything get in the way of those possibilities.” He smiled, then leaned forward and kissed her gently on the lips. “You’re a beautiful woman, Angela Day,” he whispered, running his fingers up the inside of her leg to her belt. “I’m looking forward to working with you.”

 
    CHAPTER THREE
    “So, how did it go?”
    Angela was gazing at the snow-covered peaks in the distance as she swayed atop the stallion behind Tucker. She was thinking about that night on the fraternity house porch