The Tin Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

happenstance. After that, he bought into a handful of Sleeping Beauties, then negotiated himself extremely lucrative offers to walk away. A couple of years back, though, to everybody’s surprise, he actually took control of an engineering firm with some reconstruction contracts in Iraq. The stock had plummeted during that scandal —you remember the one—that KLM business over bogus contracts and shoddy work. Anyway, the kid went over there, took charge, and, by all accounts, turned things around rather miraculously.” The attorney licked his lips, still holding Osbourne’s gaze. “Last year, he sold the firm to United Power for what can only be described as a staggering sum. And now, it seems, he’s in the U.S.—and coming after you.”
    Desperation laced with outrage surged through Osbourne’s bloodstream. “Can’t we buy him off?”
    “We’ve tried that,” Gibson said. “But no go.”
    Osbourne , blood pressure shooting up, gripped the edge of the table. “But why? What is he after? What is his motive? Any theories?”
    “Simple greed is my guess,” Dogan interjected, “like most of these takeover artists.”
    It seemed like more than greed to Osbourne. Robert Sterling behaved as if he had a score to settle. But why? And why did the man seem so familiar? Had he worked for one of the papers acquired by Golden Age? Had he been laid off like that pain in his backside Alex Buchanan?
    Taking a breath, the CEO checked his phone again. Still no bloody answer, damn it all.
     

Chapter 4
     
    Inside a silver Honda Civic parked across the street from the target’s building, Al-Jaafari seethed with rage—toward himself, the journalist, and his partner, who was playing with something making a lot of annoying bleeps and blips. Turning a heated glare on the man behind the wheel, he asked, “What in the name of Allah is that infernal contraption?”
    “It is a Game Boy,” Sahid replied with a shrug. “For my grandson back home.”
    Al- Jaafari, who had no grandchildren of his own, vehemently disapproved of such frivolities. As far as he was concerned, they encouraged “western” ways and led to sloth and idiocy. Sahid should know better than to expose his grandson to such spiritual corruptions.
    When the cell in Al- Jaafari’s pocket beeped, dread tied his intestines in a knot. He knew who was calling and could not, in good conscience, put off answering any longer. Fishing out his phone, he took a few minute to type the most judicious reply he could come up with: Our sincerest apologies, but unforeseen circumstances have forced a slight delay.
     
    * * * *
     
    Buchanan emerged from the bar, surprised to find the sky a luminous shade of charcoal. Jesus, how long had he been in there? It was twilight— the gloaming, they called it back home. Launching himself up Sixth Street toward his flat, he started singing under his breath: “In the gloaming, oh my darling, when the lights are soft and low…”
    The whisky had both taken the edge off his anguish and warmed his blood, but it was still damn cold out. Shivering, he hurried along, yearning for the overcoat he’d bought two Christmases ago in Edinburgh. He could smell frost in the air. Had there been snow in the morning forecast? He could not recall. This morning felt like eons ago.
    “When the trees are sobbing faintly with a gentle unknown woe, will you think of me and love me, as you did once long ago?”
    The song, one his mother used to sing at the piano, was making him feel sappily nostalgic. People in groups of two and three squeezed past him on the sidewalk, some in street clothes, others in costumes—“guise” as they called it in Scotland. In all the furor, he’d completely forgotten it was Halloween. All at once, he missed Edinburgh fiercely, missed his mum, missed the “guisers,” the wee ones trick-or-treating door to door, and missed “dooking fir aiples.”
    The next moment, he was a lad again, running down Raeburn Street toward the