Predatory lenders grow fat off the general rule of the food chain: prey don’t fight back – not rabbits, not deer, and not millions of debtors. But what if victims with nothing left to lose and seeking vengeance for their ruined lives instead were to become the hunters? That’s the plot of this current events thriller: Bob and JJ, strangers at first, fight back against Roger R. Roche, who ruined lives for profit as CEO of AllBank Mutual Savings and Loan.
Bob Knight was an honest, small-town banker. When AllBank Mutual Savings and Loan buys Bob’s small bank, Roche requires Bob’s branch, like all branches, to promote high-interest rate loans disguised as special low-rate deals. Bob refuses and is forced to quit. When AllBank collapses under the weight of Roche’s high-profit but high-risk loans, Bob’s stock in the bank becomes worthless, leaving him with neither a job nor a financial cushion.
A farmer who lost his ranch to one of Roche’s loans commits suicide, and the newspaper article reporting the suicide is a catalyst for Bob’s brooding anger. He cuts out the article and staples it to the wall of his home office, then staples to the wall a photo of Roche in an expensive sports car, and another of Roche in front of his new chateau in France. As the days pass, Bob’s house echoes with strikes of the stapler against the wall, until its whole length is thick with clippings and photos about Roche.
To salve his anger, Bob attends a group counseling session held for victims of mortgage foreclosure. Listening to the stories of people who’d lost their homes just makes Bob angrier. At the session he meets JJ, the daughter of the farmer who had committed suicide. Bob wants to get to know her better, but she declines: JJ has no room in her life for a relationship, she tells him; group counseling hasn’t worked for her, and she has something she needs to do.
Group counseling doesn’t work for Bob either. He tries a vacation on the Oregon coast, but can’t escape Roche. He tries cold-water meditation in the Pacific Ocean, but is nearly carried out to sea by an undertow. Finally, he tries to drown his anger in Scotch, but each drink inflames it until, in his fury, he vows to murder Roche.
A newspaper reports that Roche will attend a special performance of an opera, and on the night of the opera Bob is there waiting. As Roche walks out of the Opera House after the performance toward his waiting limousine, Bob draws a pistol to kill him, but a bag lady pulls out a shotgun herself. She shoots at Roche and misses, Roche’s bodyguard fires back, and in the midst of the gunfight Roche gets away. Bob recognizes the bag lady as JJ, and as police sirens race toward them, Bob saves her from capture.
Bob and JJ team up to seek revenge against Roche. They begin to fall in love, and JJ realizes that with Bob she has a family again, something she’d thought she lost forever with the death of her father. She reevaluates their goal: killing Roche would give him an easy death, while the pursuit, and the guilt from the murder, would leave them no peace, ruining their chance to make it as a couple. If instead they could steal Roche’s money, that would hurt Roche every time he thought of it, give them money to help those on whom he preyed, and let them live a normal life. Bob doubts they can succeed at stealing Roche’s money and won’t back off from his plans to murder Roche.
JJ pretends to be a masseuse who is attracted to Roche. She manages to get a date with him at his house. Her plan is to drug him, copy his financial records, and find his password – but the drug doesn’t kick in soon enough, and Roche begins to rape her. Barely in time, she manages to knock him out, and she copies his financial accounts – but can’t access them online without his password, which she can’t find.
Back at home, JJ keeps searching for a way to break into Roche’s on-line accounts, while Bob experiments in a remote gravel pit with ANFO, a high explosive. He’s caught by a suspicious farmer, but the farmer, himself a victim of a predatory loan, lets Bob go when he explains that he’s seeking vengeance against Roche. As Bob continues to refuse to heed JJ’s pleas to give up his plan to murder Roche, their relationship becomes more and more tense.
Roche soon will be leaving Seattle for good, and the last day that Bob can act is approaching quickly. Bob sneaks boxes of ANFO into the banker’s garage, hidden with a cell phone trigger inside a pallet of wine and champagne for his upcoming farewell party.
JJ thinks she is getting closer to finding the password, but when she hasn’t cracked it by Bob’s deadline, he decides to trigger the bomb. On the grounds of Roche’s mansion so that he can see the explosion, and wearing a mask to remain anonymous, he dials the number for the cell phone trigger, and reaches to push the “Send” button; finally he’ll have his revenge. But what about JJ and his love for her?
Bob drops his arm – his relationship with JJ is worth more to him than killing Roche. At that moment, he’s caught by Roche’s bodyguard. Roche demands to know what number he was about to dial and, when Bob won’t tell him, Roche pushes Send. Roche’s house explodes, Roche and the bodyguard are knocked off their feet, and Bob escapes.
JJ meets him at the door of their motel with a glass of champagne; she’s discovered the password and transferred $43,000,000 of Roche’s funds through a daisy chain of banks terminating in San Jose, Costa Rica, where it will be converted to bearer bonds. In San Jose, they hire a courier to pick up the bonds at the bank. From the seat of a motorcycle, JJ watches as the courier leaves the bank with a briefcase holding the bonds. It looks like their plan worked until guards run from the bank and call to the courier to stop. JJ races forward on the motorcycle and grabs the briefcase away from the courier. The guards fire at her but miss. They fire again and hit her. She falls from the motorcycle and escapes into the crowded streets. The guards follow a trail of her blood, but in a restaurant restroom she’s able to bind her wound and, with Bob’s help, she barely escapes with the bonds stuffed in her backpack.
Their revenge is complete, and successful at least for the moment. They use the money they’ve stolen to set up a foundation for those hurt by the foreclosure crisis, but that foundation is almost their undoing in a second, outlined book featuring the same characters, with the working title, The Goodness Test.