From the novel The Pawn by William Hammett
Copyright 2020, 2025
All Rights Reserved
CHAPTER ONE
Montgomery, Alabama – Present Day
The gate clanked open at 7:03 a.m. sharp, and Robert Hennessey stepped into the morning light with a faded canvas duffel bag slung over his shoulder and the weight of thirty-six months of hell pressing on his spine. He blinked against the sun—an unfamiliar sensation after the fluorescent tomb of Kilby Correctional Facility. He’d imagined this moment so many times, always thinking it would feel like victory. It didn’t. It felt like waking up in a different life, one he hadn’t chosen.
He paused just past the gate, unsure what to do next. A white Mercedes idled along the curb beyond the razor-wire fence. He squinted. No, it couldn’t be.
Rachel.
She stood leaning against the driver’s side door, arms crossed, sunglasses perched atop her dark auburn hair. In that fitted navy pantsuit and low heels, she looked more like she was about to cross-examine God than greet a disgraced ex-husband fresh from prison. His mouth went dry.
The last time they’d been in the same room, she’d called him a “calculated thief hiding behind expensive suits and clever accounting.” That had been in front of a federal jury, of course. She hadn’t called him Bobby then. She’d used his full name, clipped and cold: Robert Charles Hennessey.
But here she was now. And when he finally stepped toward the car, dragging his feet as if he weren’t sure the asphalt would hold him, she spoke with that same strange edge of affection she hadn’t used in five years.
“You were had, Bobby,” she said.
He stopped. Just stopped. The heat was already building, and a sheen of sweat crept up under his collar. He shifted his bag and stared at her.
“You waited three years to tell me that?”
She popped the car door. “Get in. It’s a long story.”
He hesitated, then tossed the duffel in the back and slid into the passenger seat. The leather was cold and smelled faintly of her perfume—bergamot and something citrusy he still couldn’t name. She pulled out onto the road, saying nothing for a full minute, and he watched her out of the corner of his eye.
Same profile. Same perfect jawline. Same impossible blend of sharp and soft. He’d once known every freckle on her shoulder.
“You didn’t answer my letters,” he said.
She didn’t look at him. “You wrote from prison. So did Ted Kaczynski.”
“Jesus, Rachel.”
“Sorry. It’s been a long three years. For both of us.”
They drove in silence past shuttered warehouses and strip malls that looked older than the laws he’d supposedly broken. The world hadn’t changed much in three years. But he had.
“You said I was had,” he finally said. “That what? I was framed?”
She shook her head. “Not framed. Set up. You did what they said you did—you just didn’t realize you were doing it for someone else.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“No, but it’s the truth.”
He rubbed his temple. “Genevieve?”
Rachel exhaled through her nose, slow and tight. “No. But she was adjacent. She let it happen.”
He turned to her. “She was my attorney. She could’ve fought harder.”
“She was also your mistress, Bobby. One of those things was an ethical breach. The other was just a bad idea.”
“So she let me try to keep her name clean?”
“I don’t think it was about ethics. I think she wanted out.”
He stared out the window at the blurred Alabama pines. “I always wondered.”
Rachel gave a short, mirthless laugh. “You never do—until it’s too late.”
Another mile passed in silence. They turned onto a two-lane road lined with kudzu and potholes. She slowed the car.
“I want to help,” she said, barely above a whisper.
He looked at her like she’d slapped him. “Why?”
“Because I know who did it. I think I can prove it. But I need your help.”
“You sent me to prison.”
“I did my job,” she snapped. “Don’t you dare paint me as the villain here. You embezzled five million dollars from your hedge fund, Bobby. Or thought you did. But the accounts were manipulated—two offshore fronts weren’t yours. The routing signatures weren’t exact. I missed it. Genevieve buried it.”
He turned to face her fully. “You’re saying I was a pawn.”
“I’m saying we both were.”
The car pulled off into a gravel lot beside a run-down diner with a flickering sign: Gracie’s Grill. She killed the engine.
“I don’t know if we can prove it,” she said, facing forward, hands tight on the steering wheel. “But I think we can find the person who really moved that money. And maybe you get your name back. Maybe not. But at least you’ll know.”
He studied her profile again, trying to see if she was playing him. But Rachel never played. She prosecuted.
“Why now?” he asked. “Why help me?”
She looked at him, really looked.
“I can figure out how to solve a case,” she said softly. “I can read financial trails, parse motive, break a witness on the stand. But I haven’t figured out the human heart. Not mine—and definitely not yours.”
He felt something crack deep in his chest, and the cynic in him tried to scoff. But the man who’d lain awake for a thousand nights behind concrete walls felt something else. Maybe guilt. Maybe hope. Maybe both.
“Where do we start?” he asked.
She turned the key again, and the engine hummed to life.
“Atlanta,” she said. “Genevieve’s there. Living in a condo worth three times what her salary should’ve allowed.”
He smiled grimly. “That’s a hell of a lead.”
Rachel pulled onto the road again and didn’t smile back.
“Yeah,” she said. “Now we just need to stay alive long enough to follow it.”
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