The Chimera Secret Read Online Free Page B

of the
hedge that was only four feet high, and a wrought-iron gate locked with a simple bolt and padlock.
    Three routes of entry and egress. No, four. The southeast corner’s bedroom window opened out just above the slanted roof of the double garage below. An alarm system’s claxon was
attached to the wall beneath the eaves, a deliberately overt statement announcing the presence of a security system within. Not that Ethan would have to worry about that. He wasn’t looking to
break into the house.
    He was expecting somebody else to break out.
    The road opened out as he reached West North Avenue, turned right at the junction and resisted the temptation of the Starbucks on the corner. His belly was still full from his lunch with
Natalie, and his mind likewise filled with thoughts about Joanna and the mysterious footage he’d seen so many months before.
    ‘
You seen him yet?
’
    Nicola Lopez’s voice crackled through the microphone in his ear. Ethan replied between breaths as he jogged, the microphone picking up his voice and relaying it to his partner back at
their office. Nicola Lopez was several years his junior, but as an ex-police detective she was no less capable.
    ‘He hasn’t shown. It’s a long shot anyway.’
    Ethan had jogged past the big colonial every day for the past five, hoping for a brief glimpse of Marty Sedgewick, a 48-year-old banker out of North Cleveland, Chicago. Marty had been one of the
high fliers of the nineties and beyond, forging a serious career in investments and emerging markets. Four-million-dollar mansion. Condo down on the quays Florida way, along with a mooring for his
forty-two-foot cruiser. Then the economic bubble burst. As his employers faced economic ruin, Marty faced the sudden and unexpected spectre of bankruptcy when he was fired from his post in a
dramatic move by the bank for which he worked. Instead of making the smart play and downsizing his life before the shit hit the fan, Marty Sedgewick got himself an idea too good to be true. He told
his wife and three kids he’d left his job and was setting up for himself.
    Using his credentials as a big man in the market, he played out what was left of their personal fortune, convincing everybody that he was a businessman thriving in the middle of the recession
and that they, too, could have a slice of the pie. Baffling a series of investors ranging from executive jet companies to private childcare nurseries, he sucked in almost seven million dollars
before the fraudulent Ponzi scheme he’d engineered collapsed around him like a deck of cards. With four million dollars of other people’s money to his name, Marty Sedgewick promptly
abandoned his family and hightailed it to Mexico. He quite possibly could have stayed there had he been able to keep a low enough profile, but unfortunately Sedgewick couldn’t keep his
remarkable coup to himself, and fourteen months later his overworked mouth had gained him a mugging, lost him almost a million bucks and ultimately landed him back in Chicago, this time in Cook
County Jail.
    Ethan was more used to pursuing hardened criminals with nothing to lose than people like Sedgewick, a pasty, balding man who worshipped greenbacks over his own flesh and blood. However, it had
proven far harder to track Sedgewick down after he’d jumped his hundred-thousand-dollar bond than Ethan had anticipated. Somehow, the creep still had people willing to shield him from the
law, specifically in River Forest. The trail had led Ethan to the street he now jogged every day, which unfortunately for Sedgewick was just a few blocks away from the good offices of Warner &
Lopez Inc.
    Ethan turned left onto North 72nd Court, jogging past a parade of shops before he reached a smallholding on the corner by a parking lot. The nondescript block held a single, security code
protected door that led to the four small businesses within. He reached up and punched in his number as he entered the building and