The Heaven Trilogy Read Online Free PDF Page A

But it seemed like a fleeting, inconsequential detail, like the memory that she’d brushed her teeth that morning. Too much was happening here to think of Paris.

CHAPTER FOUR
    ACROSS TOWN, Kent, light-footed and as carefree as he could remember feeling, walked up the broad steps leading to Denver’s main branch of the multinational banking conglomerate Niponbank. It was an old, historic building with a face-lift of gigantic proportions. Although sections of the original wood-frame structure could still be seen on the back half of the bank, the front half appeared as grand and as modern as any contemporary building. It was the bank’s way of compromising with elements in the city who did not want the building torn down. The stairway flared at street level and narrowed as it ascended, funneling patrons to three wide glass doors. Behind him eight lanes of Thursday morning’s traffic bustled and blared obnoxiously, but the sound came as an anchor of familiarity, and today familiarity was good.
    He smiled and smacked through the glass doors.
    â€œMorning, Kent.”
    He nodded to Zak, the ever present security guard who meandered about the main lobby during business hours. “Morning, Zak. Beautiful day, isn’t it?”
    â€œYes sir. It surely is.”
    Kent walked across the marble floor, nodding at several tellers who caught his eye. “Morning.”
    â€œMorning.”
    Mornings all around. The long row of tellers readied for business to his left. A dozen offices with picture windows now sat half-staffed on his right. Hushed tones carried through the lobby. High heels clacked along the floor to his right and he turned, half expecting to see Sidney Beech. But then, she’d already left with the others for the bank’s annual conference in Miami, hadn’t she? Instead it was Mary, a teller he’d met once or twice. She stepped by with a smile. Her perfume followed her in musty swirls, and Kent pulled the scent into his nostrils. Gardenia blossoms.
    A dozen circular pedestals stood parallel to the long banking counter, each offering a variety of forms and golden pens to fill them out. A twenty-foot brass replica of a sailing yacht hovered five feet off the floor at the foyer’s center. From a distance it appeared to be supported on a single, one-inch gold pipe under its hull. But closer inspection revealed the thin steel cables running to the ceiling. Nevertheless, the effect was stunning. Any lingering thoughts of the building’s historic preservation evaporated with one look around the lobby. The architects had pretty much gutted this part of the building and started over. It was a masterpiece in design.
    Kent stepped forward, toward the gaping hall opposite the entrance. There the marble floor ended, and a thick teal carpet ran into the administration wing. A large sea gull hung on the wall above the hall.
    Today it all came to him like a welcoming balm. The sights, the smells, the sounds all said one word: Success. And today success was his.
    He’d come a long way from the poor-white-trash suburbs of Kansas City. It had been the worst of all worlds—bland and boring. In most neighborhoods you either had the colors of wealth or the crimes of poverty, both of which at least introduced their own variety of spice to a boy’s life. But not on Botany Street. Botany Street boasted nothing but boxy manufactured homes sporting brown lawns only occasionally greened by manual sprinklers. That was it. There were never any parades on Botany Street. There were never any fights or accidents or car chases. To a household, the neighbors along Botany Street owed their humble existence to the government. The neighborhood was a prison of sorts. Not one with bars and inmates, of course. But one to which you were sentenced with the drudgery of plowing through each day, burdened with the dogged knowledge that, even though you weren’t running around stealing and killing, you