A Guiding Light Read online

“I see.”

  “Bring blueberries as bribes. They tame the beast.”

  I would buy an entire blueberry farm if necessary. “Good to know.”

  “Let me convince her we’re capable of running you through a few tests and handling your monitoring, then you can go home and get some rest. You look like you need it.”

  While I had little hope of a full night’s sleep, I saw no harm in admitting the truth. “I do.”

  “I think you’ll find it much easier to get some rest tonight, Mr. Smith.”

  I hoped so.

  Chapter Five

  The tests took six hours, and by the time I escaped from the hospital, I was ready to sleep on the sidewalk. I caught a cab to the hotel, packed the hexapentin prescription in a shipping box as directed, and gave it to the woman at the front desk. In the morning, I expected to panic when I couldn’t find the damned pills.

  A pair of thin, silver bracelets around my left wrist would keep my talent leashed until my custom set arrived. Sets, if Dr. Stanton had her way. Dr. Stanton usually got her way if Dr. Potts was to be believed.

  I meant to cram in more work before I crashed and burned, but the instant I sat down on the couch, it was lights out. The ringing of my phone woke me, and the display showed an unknown caller.

  I hated unknown callers. It was a coin toss if it was important or a waste of my time.

  “Smith,” I answered, and sleep made my deep voice emerge as a growl, which in turn made me sound like a serial killer fresh off a kill.

  “Mr. Smith, my name is Alfred Knoxwin, and I got your number from the North Dakota Royal Bank. I’m calling you in regards to your shareholdings.”

  That got my attention and jolted me to full consciousness. “How can I help you?”

  “I’m looking to buy some of your shares.”

  While he didn’t sound like a New Yorker, I tensed. “I’m not selling any of my banking shares at this time, Mr. Knoxwin.”

  “Even if I’m prepared to pay you substantially over market value for them?”

  Information won and lost wars, and while I had no intention of selling, he could give me an edge—and find out who else was in the market for North Dakota. “How much over market value?”

  “Two hundred and fifty per share.”

  My eyebrows shot up at the offer. Only an idiot—me—would reject that offer. “And how many shares are you interested in?”

  “All of them.”

  I snatched my laptop and opened the lid, tapping the shift key to encourage the damned thing to wake up a little faster. After what felt like an eternity but was only a few seconds, the login prompt showed, and I tapped in my password. “You want to buy me out of North Dakota Royal Bank.”

  “According to my information, the majority of your investments is in the banking sector.”

  That was one way to put it. “Yes, I’m heavily invested.”

  “Our banking sector is projected to be rocky for the foreseeable future. Selling would be beneficial to you.”

  Had I missed something? I likely had; according to my laptop, it was almost noon, and I’d missed my normal morning routine of checking the news. “Which projections?’

  “I take it you didn’t catch the morning news?”

  I hissed curses, hit the internet, and checked my favorite financial news group. Sure enough, the sellout had begun with a bang. “That’s a big drop,” I commented. My values, as expected, had nosedived off a cliff. “Why do you want to buy my shares when there are substantially cheaper available? That’s not a wise business move, Mr. Knoxwin.”

  “You’re a loyal North Dakotan investor, and this would help cover some of your losses from staying invested in other banks.”

  The market had crashed faster than I anticipated; the first news of the plummet hit at six in the morning, and the banks had already lost half of its value. The offer wouldn’t do much to mitigate my losses across the board.

  A delay tactic would be my best bet, and I hummed while I considered the best way to get Alfred Knoxwin off my back for a few hours. “I’ll consider it. Can you give me your information so I can contact you?”

  “Of course. This must be a shock to you.”

  I bit my lip and chewed on it so I wouldn’t laugh. “That’s one way to put it. I need some time to review my portfolio.”

  “How long?”

  “I can do my review in two hours.” In reality, I would be launching the next stage of my plan and giving my software scripts a chance to buy as many of the available shares as it could, but Alfred Knoxwin didn’t need to know that.

  “I’ll call you.” He hung up.

  Who was my mysterious buyer? Everything about him and his offer seemed off. Why would an investor care about my financial situation? The loyal North Dakotan part bothered me, too.

  My first move was to verify his identity, so I logged into the stock exchange and did a search for investors in the North Dakota Royal Bank. All the New Yorkers were listed as selling, and only a few individuals had either purchased cheap stocks or had held on. Alfred Knoxwin wasn’t one of them.

  Hitting the North Dakota Association of Stock Brokers scored me a hit, and from there, it didn’t take long to figure out who he was and why he had interest in my stocks. When he wasn’t working as a royal accountant, he played with the stock market on behalf of the royal family.

  I wasn’t the only one making a move, and when I refused his offer, I expected pushback. I also expected calls to my fronting brokers who I’d trained to give interested buyers the runaround. I had ten men and women who pretended they bought for my corporation, feigned searching for the appropriate contact to refer them to, and advised me whenever someone was poking around in my business.

  I checked my email. Sure enough, a staggering number of reports had come in of people too interested in my activities. Alfred Knoxwin’s name appeared on every broker’s list, and my team would’ve given him a week-long marathon if he hadn’t gone straight to the banks to get my contact information.

  I expected the other interested parties to start making contact within a week. My first step would be to get a new phone number and notify my brokers they were to ignore inquiries. I’d pay them a healthy severance to abandon ship and find new waters to work.

  My life was about to become a great deal more complicated.

  In the hour it took me to figure out who Alfred Knoxwin was, North Dakota’s stock market plunged into a dark abyss, the decline happening far faster than I had anticipated. The markets would suffer from instability for months to come, but with so many tempting shares up for grabs, I couldn’t resist. At the press of a button, I unleashed the beast, removed my buying caps, and had all of my new corporations go on a spending spree.

  Thanks to Marshal’s warning and my caution, none of the companies would own more than a percent and a half of the available shares. Most stock brokers wouldn’t look twice at any of them. Every corporation was hidden behind a DBA, each one taking twenty minutes and sixty dollars to set up. To add to the complexity, I hid all those DBAs behind yet another identity, one I’d established fifteen years ago. I even had photo identity cards for that Adam Smith.

  On paper, he lived four hours away from Fargo and never answered his phone.

  North Dakota really needed to tighten its laws so people like me couldn’t get away with the things I did. If everything went to plan, the only way I could be traced was with a royal edict.

  To play to my normal patterns, I’d even set up a more obvious corporation, one set to snap up another ten percent of shares, adding to my obvious collection, which would total a safe sixty percent and hide the rest of my activities. Sixty percent made me the majority holder without contest and essentially the owner of North Dakota’s financial interests.

  If anyone wanted to untangle the rest of the web I’d weaved, it would require a royal edict for each and every DBA plus another royal edict to find me, the operator. Once they found me, it would take a court order with my permissio
n to unseal the rest of the records.

  Just desserts tasted sweet, and the only ones to blame were the royal family and the protections they’d put into place. I couldn’t touch them, but they couldn’t touch me, either.

  It wouldn’t last. The instant the refusal from the courts hit, the royal family would know who owned the accounts; there weren’t any other candidates. My efforts would slap them in the face.

  I had transformed myself from garbage tossed to the curb to a man on par with the king.

  It wouldn’t sit well with any of them.

  Without the buying caps in place, my new corporations snapped up all the available stocks, reining in the uncontrolled dive. It wouldn’t spare the market; as I hammered the transaction requests through the servers too quickly for the markets to adjust, the stock values remained low—and would remain low until I began the tedious process of releasing stocks.

  Until I could get positive movement in the banking sector and spread the shares around to buyers, I wouldn’t propose a stock split, either.

  The year-end dividends would be an interesting problem, too.

  Like a ripple in a pond, share values across all sectors dropped, reacting to the banking sector’s collapse. With nothing else to do to fill the time waiting for Alfred Knoxwin to call me back, I began phase two of my plan. Using a new, disposable email address, I contacted every major news outlet in North Dakota, Montana, and Texas with a list of the New York investors responsible for the collapse along with a digital copy of the shareholding registrar taken the night before the mass sellout. The news outlets would be delayed verifying if any of them still owned shares, but I’d let them handle that part of the work.

  I gave them just enough information to hang New York with.

  The same email went to my handpicked list of investors who I thought might want to take a stab at New York.

  In a few hours, things would get heated for New York, and I’d enjoy watching the late-night news.

  Two hours to the minute, my phone rang.

  Unknown Caller.

  Perfect.

  “Smith,” I answered.

  “Will you sell?” Alfred Knoxwin asked.

  “I was going to buy more stocks, but it seems like they’ve been bought out,” I replied, checking the software to confirm no new shares had hit the market. None had. “As things stand, the market will recover, and I don’t wish to encourage the further selling of stocks. I appreciate your offer, Mr. Knoxwin, but I’m afraid I’ll have to decline.”

  “You’re declining?”

  “I see no need to sell my stocks in any of North Dakota’s banks.”

  “You’re losing millions of dollars.”

  “Until the market recovers, yes, I am.”

  Tomorrow, I’d begin the tedious process of selling stocks to nudge the market in the right direction. A mass sellout would only encourage a decline in the market. I needed to fulfill demand, slowly, building more demand so the prices would rise naturally.

  The rest of the market would follow. It would just take some time.

  “How much would it cost to make you change your mind?”

  “I’m not going to change my mind. As you said, I’m a loyal North Dakotan. Why would I sell my stocks when the worst thing I could do for the market is sell them? I recommend buying new stocks as they’re released to stimulate the banking sector. Buying stocks in other sectors will minimize the kingdom-wide decline. That’s the smart move. Use that two-fifty a share on something more productive. Have a good day, Mr. Knoxwin.”

  Hanging up amused me, and I laughed at the insanity my life had become. I’d bought an entire kingdom’s banking sector for a pittance—using money I’d liquidated out of the kingdom responsible for the collapse. I couldn’t have asked for a better situation.

  I checked my tracking software for the final totals of my buyout, and the tally stunned me into staring at the screen for a long time.

  Combined, I owned ninety-one percent of the banking sector. I didn’t need Marshal’s talent to foresee royal edicts and chaos in my future.

  So many calls from unknown callers came in I took a page out of Dr. Stanton’s book and smashed my phone. Using the room’s phone, I cancelled my plan and abandoned the provider altogether. Needing the fresh air, I hit the streets, found a new cell company, and bought two new phones, one I’d use for my business dealings and one for personal affairs.

  Once I returned to the hotel, I emailed Dr. Stanton with my new number. Ten minutes later, she called me.

  “Hello, Dr. Stanton,” I answered.

  “How has your day been? Were you able to sleep?”

  I relaxed at her questions, which indicated a general check-in rather than some other problem. “I was able to sleep. Honestly, I slept until almost noon.”

  “No chest pains or other discomfort?”

  “Nothing.” In retrospect, I realized I hadn’t even looked for my usual morning pills, nor had I suffered from any of my usual morning panic. “It was a good morning.”

  It had been a long time since I’d had a good morning.

  “Good. I’d like you to come in for a few more tests. I’m unhappy with your general blood work. I’ve contacted a nutritionist. He’ll be working with you to get you on a better diet. Frankly, your blood work is so bad I have to ask this: do you even eat?”

  “Not enough and not the right things,” I admitted. “I know it’s a problem. I’ll try to do better.”

  “I know this will not be what you want to hear, but if you require anti-depressants, they can be prescribed for you. I’d rather avoid them unless necessary, but you’re the definition of unhealthy, and if depression is an issue, we can temporarily treat it with medications until you’re on the mend.”

  I grimaced. “The suppressors are helping a lot. I know I haven’t been eating well.”

  “All right. I’ll let this go for now—assuming your blood work looks better in a few weeks. I don’t know what you’ve been eating, but you may as well have been eating cardboard.”

  Since lying to the woman trying to help me was stupidity of the highest order, I sighed and replied, “Macaroni and cheese with tuna fish.”

  “Please tell me that’s not it.”

  “The occasional can of beef stew.”

  Dr. Stanton took several loud, deep breaths. “Okay. It’s even worse than I thought. Let’s start with the basics. Every meal, have some vegetables or a salad, and try to eat at least three meals a day, none of which include macaroni and cheese or canned beef stew. The tuna is good for you, so you should have that at least once a week.”

  As I had since the day I’d been born, I viewed the vegetables and salad with loathing, but I’d hold my peace. I could choke down a few vegetables or a salad. It wouldn’t kill me.

  Probably.

  “What about the nutritionist?”

  “If I tell him what you’ve been eating, I’m going to have to prescribe him anti-depressants.”

  “Does that mean I get to skip the nutritionist?”

  “No. I’m going to call him, tell him you’re an emergency-level mess, and threaten to have you hospitalized if you try to skip a single appointment.”

  “Isn’t that a bit harsh?”

  “If he has an opening today, you’re meeting with him, or I will bring a zapper with me and send you to the hospital myself.”

  Remembering the various warnings about antagonizing the pregnant doctor, I gulped and replied, “I can do today if he’s available.”

  “I’ll call you back.”

  She didn’t leave me waiting long. Within five minutes, my phone rang. “That didn’t take long.”

  “He’s willing to make a house call to your hotel. We can be there in twenty minutes.”

  I gave her my room number. “I’ll be honest with you now, I missed breakfast.”

  “How about lunch?”

  “I think I woke up when lunch was supposed to happen, but I missed that, too.”

  “You’re goi
ng to test my skills and my patience, Mr. Smith.”

  “Sorry, Dr. Stanton.”

  “Don’t be sorry. When you’re given your new diet, follow it.”

  I agreed to keep her from wanting to kill me when she arrived.

  To appease Dr. Stanton, I ordered something before they arrived, picking something that seemed healthy enough. The pasta was in my comfort zone, and the tomato sauce counted as a vegetable. It even had chunks of other vegetables tossed in, including squash. It arrived at the same time they did, and both of them regarded the dish with open suspicion.

  “Acceptable,” the older gentleman with Dr. Stanton declared. “I’m Dr. Wilson, and if half of what Dr. Stanton has told me is true, you’re going to feel like a new man in two weeks—as long as you follow my guidelines.”

  He set a printout on the coffee table.

  “I’ll try to do better,” I promised.

  “You’re going to make yourself sick if you eat too much variety too soon, so for now, pasta-based dishes with more than fake cheese will be acceptable. Try to include a small salad to begin adapting your digestive system to new foods. The printout I’m leaving has a list of dishes that will work while you transition to a healthier diet. If I toss you into the diet I want you on right away, you’ll probably be sicker than a dog for a month, and I’d rather avoid that. Macaroni and cheese and canned beef stew does not count as a diet.”

  “Don’t forget the tuna fish,” Dr. Stanton muttered.

  “He can have as much tuna as he wants. He can eat it straight out of the can for all I care. If he wants to eat four cans of tuna a day, that’s great. But that tuna better be accompanied by some form of vegetable.”

  They read me the riot act, swore to check my progress through blood tests, and promised hell if I showed no sign of improvement within the next two weeks. As I had no doubt she’d live up to her threats, I promised to cooperate.

  I even lived up to my word and choked down the vegetables, cursing both doctors between each bite.

  After they left, I checked the news for information on the stock market collapse. As I’d hoped, the media had taken my anonymous accusations and posted it to their outlets, including every single name. Someone had done their due diligence, too. Beside each name was the number of shares the accused had owned, their purchase value, and their sell value.