Shadow Account (31 page)

“Then you should have known I’d figure out what you and Liz were doing. What was really going on here.”

“Yes,” Gavin agreed, beginning to sob. “I should—”

“You have no idea what’s
really going on
,” a voice behind Conner said.

Conner spun around. Paul Stone stood a few yards away, aiming a revolver at him.

“Hello, Conner,” Stone said calmly.

“Put the gun down, Paul!” Gavin shouted, standing up. “It’s over. I can’t take it anymore. Put it down.”

“No,” Stone snapped. “I think Conner got what we needed when he was in Washington. Didn’t you?” he asked, nodding at Conner. “Where’s the binder?”

How could Stone possibly know about the binder? “What the hell are you talking about? I don’t know anything about a binder.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“They were going to throw you to the wolves, Paul,” Conner said quickly. “Gavin and Liz were going to pin the insider trading rap on you if things got tough.” That was why Liz had protected Gavin right up until she thought Conner would actually push her face into the steaming water. She assumed Gavin was a better risk than Paul in a tight situation. She had it all figured out. “They were gonna throw you out like yesterday’s garbage.”

“That’s not true,” Gavin spoke up. “I would never do—”

“Shut up, Gavin,” Stone snapped. “I know exactly what you’re capable of. Remember, I’ve been with you for a long time. I’ve seen you in action. You’re a cold son of a bitch.” He smiled. “Fortunately, I’ve picked up a few things along the way. I have my own escape hatch.”

Conner’s eyes flashed to Stone’s. Suddenly he realized how Stone could know about the binder.

Stone closed one eye and held the gun out, both hands wrapped around the handle. “You know what it is, Conner? You know what it all really boils down to?”

Conner glanced at the gun. It wasn’t shaking at all. Stone was dead calm. A bad sign. “What?” he asked, taking a step back, worried that he’d underestimated the man.

Stone stepped forward. “The fact that I just can’t stand you,” he said, squeezing the trigger.

The bullet entered Stone’s head behind the right ear, shattering his skull. He toppled forward, dead before he even hit the ground.

“Oh, Jesus!” Gavin shouted, taking cover behind a chair. “What the hell is going on?”

Conner saw the three men spill out of the mansion, one right behind the other. The little bald one, then the two bigger ones. The two bigger men were carrying rifles. They were the same men Conner had seen at Baker Mahaffey a few hours ago. He bent down and quickly grabbed Stone’s revolver, then took off toward the ocean.

“Stop!” Lucas yelled as he reached the spot where Stone’s body had fallen. “Stop!”

The two bigger men were racing toward the dunes, going after Conner.

“Don’t bother,” Lucas called to them as they looked back. “We have what we need.”

Hootie Wilson handed Bennett the marble notebook as they sat on the porch of the Middleburg house. It was going to be nice living in splendor again, Wilson thought to himself. Not in the one-bedroom, starkly furnished apartment he’d been forced to go home to since the divorce had become final. “I think this is what you want.”

Bennett grabbed the notebook. “What about the woman?” he snapped.

Wilson shook his head. “She’s got a big problem with the D.C. bar association. Which I’m taking care of. Besides, she doesn’t really give a shit about this Lucas character, anyway.”

Bennett stared at Wilson for a few moments, unconvinced. Then he glanced down and rifled through the notebook, his blood pressure rising as he reached the end. “Goddamn it!” he roared.

. . .

Conner moved into a grove of trees, sucking air. That was the fastest two miles he’d ever run. It seemed like he’d lost them. Now he needed to find help. He was about to start moving again when his cell phone rang. Jackie’s cell number appeared on the screen.

“Jackie?”

“Conner Ashby?”

Conner’s eyes narrowed. It wasn’t Jackie. “Who is this?”

“Doesn’t matter. What matters is that you need to get your ass back to Gavin Smith’s place right away.”

“Why would I do that?”

“If you ever want to see Jackie Rivera alive again, you’ll get back here.”

“What the—”

“You can thank your old friend Amy Richards for giving us Jackie. We sure did.”

24

Jackie sat on the couch of the mansion’s living room. The same couch Mandy Stone had been sitting on when Conner had gotten to the mansion early last Thursday morning. Jackie was staring straight ahead, her lower lip trembling. They’d gotten her at seven o’clock this morning. Forced her into their car as she’d been coming out of her apartment to go to work.

“Let her go,” Conner demanded. He was sitting beside Jackie on the couch. “She doesn’t know anything.”

“I understand that,” said Lucas calmly, standing a few feet away. One of the other two men stood beside him, pistol drawn. “I want the binder you took from Baker Mahaffey.”

“What does she have to do with a binder?” Conner asked, wishing they hadn’t frisked him and found Stone’s revolver.

“Nothing.”

“Then why is she here?”

“I want the binder,” Lucas repeated. “You give it to me and she goes free.”

“I don’t have the binder,” Conner said truthfully. On his way from Washington this morning, he’d stopped at the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Greyhound bus station. He’d rented a small locker there and stored the binder inside.

“Where is it?”

“I don’t know.”

Lucas nodded at the other man. He yanked Jackie off the couch by her wrist. She screamed as the man spun her around, wrapped one forearm tightly around her neck and put the gun to her head.

“Conner!” she yelled.

Conner leapt up off the couch, but the man turned the gun on him.

“Sit down, Mr. Ashby!” Lucas ordered.

Conner sank slowly back to the couch. He could see the terror in Jackie’s eyes, but there was nothing he could do.

“Now,” Lucas said deliberately. “Where’s the binder?”

Then Lucas’s cell phone rang.

Lucas glanced at the phone’s tiny screen. It was Brenda, calling from her cell phone. He’d seen the number yesterday afternoon when she’d called to ask him to meet her at the Washington Monument. He turned away from Ashby, Jackie Rivera, and the man holding the gun. “Hello.”

“Lucas! Lucas!”

“What is it, Brenda? Calm down.”

“Lucas, I gave that notebook you asked me to keep to the managing partner of my law firm. Somehow he knew about it. He wanted it. He made me give it to him.”

“It’s all right, Bren. Don’t worry.” It was exactly as Lucas had anticipated. Franklin Bennett had coerced her. Bennett had something on her and she’d been played. But it was just like a chess match, and, fortunately, Lucas had expected this. And done something about it.

“I’m sorry, Lucas!” Brenda cried at the other end of the line. “Don’t hate me, please don’t hate me.”

“I don’t hate you.” How he could he? She was calling to warn him of what she’d done. And she was riddled with guilt. She cared after all. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

“Lucas, I— Oh, Jesus Christ, I— Please don’t—”

Lucas heard a blast at the other end of the phone. Then silence. Then muffled voices in the background.

“Brenda!
Bren!
”

Then the connection went dead.

The world turned red in front of him. He never should have done this. He should have stayed in his quiet little world. He never should have listened to Cheetah. He should have known better. He should have tried to avoid disaster one more time. But now it was too late.

He’d outplayed Franklin Bennett, but maybe that didn’t matter. Maybe there were only degrees of losing in this match. Lucas snapped the cell phone closed and slipped it back in his pocket. There was only one thing left to do.

Conner watched the little bald man slip the cell phone back in his pocket.

“What now?” the man holding Jackie demanded.

“We kill both of them,” Lucas responded. “That was the order.”

“But we don’t have the binder yet,” the man protested, dropping the pistol from Jackie’s head for a moment.

Lucas lunged at the man just as he lowered the gun.

Conner was off the couch instantly, racing toward the struggle. Reaching them just as the gun exploded. Lucas and Jackie tumbled away, falling to the floor.

Then Conner was on the man with the gun, grabbing his wrist and pointing the gun toward the ceiling. It exploded twice in rapid succession, showering the room with plaster as the bullets slammed into the ceiling. Conner nailed the man with a quick right to the chin, and he tumbled to the couch. He tried to get up, but Conner was on him again immediately. Delivering two more wicked blows to his face. The man collapsed, unconscious.

Instantly there was the explosion of another gunshot and the whine of a bullet. The second man who had accompanied Lucas from Washington stood in the living room doorway, aiming. Conner dived for the gun on the floor, grabbed it, raised up, and fired twice. And the man in the living room doorway tumbled backward.

Conner raced to where the man lay, clutching his stomach and moaning. He picked up the second gun and turned around just in time to see the little bald one pull himself to his feet and stagger forward, his white shirt covered with blood. After a few steps, he collapsed to the floor.

Conner crawled quickly to the little man’s side. He’d saved Jackie’s life. Conner had no idea why. But he had, and that was all that mattered. “Stay still, I’m going to get you an ambulance.”

Jackie was just picking herself up from the floor. “I’ll call one, Conner,” she said, hurrying to a phone on a table.

“You’ve got to get out of here,” Lucas gasped. “More people will be here soon.” He reached into his jacket pocket. “Take these,” he murmured.

These were the last ten pages of the marble notebook. Pages Lucas had ripped from the notebook before giving it to Brenda. In the end, he’d outplayed Franklin Bennett—but died doing it.

“Those pages are important,” Lucas whispered, feeling his life ebbing away.

Conner took the bloodstained pages from the little man’s trembling hand, then clasped the small fingers tightly.

Moments later, Lucas was gone.

Epilogue

Jackie picked up a glass of wine off the table and took a sip. “All right, I want an explanation.” It had been a week since the episode at Gavin’s mansion. A week since they had climbed frantically into Conner’s rental car and raced to the Easthampton Police Station ahead of any more of Franklin Bennett’s men. “What happened out there?”

“Oh, you want an explanation, do you?” Conner asked, grinning as he sat beside her on the couch.

“I think I
deserve
one.”

Conner tried to look puzzled. “Why? Just because you were held at gunpoint and almost killed?”

“I think that qualifies me.”

Conner laughed. “Yeah, I guess it does.” He took a sip of wine before he started. “Paul Stone had committed insider trading a while back. After he heard about a lawsuit involving a little biotech company in Massachusetts before the rest of the world did. He found out about the suit from one of the company’s senior executives and made around sixty grand shorting the stock. But Stone was sloppy with the way he went about releasing the information concerning the lawsuit. He did it on the company’s chat board directly from his own computer. The Justice Department nailed him right away.

“While people from Justice were interrogating Stone, he communicated the fact that he was planning to do the same thing with Global Components. But this time he had a partner.”

“Gavin Smith,” Jackie spoke up.

“Right. Now, it turns out one of the guys from Justice who was interrogating Stone used to work at Harper Manning and had been fired by Gavin Smith a couple of years ago. Gavin had fired the guy to cover up for his own mistake, so the guy was looking for revenge big time. When he heard Gavin’s name, he couldn’t believe his luck.”

“And, of course, Justice always wants to nail the biggest dog they can,” Jackie pointed out.

“Always,” Conner agreed. “Which Stone knew and was probably why he told the guys interrogating him.”

“They would have been all over that opportunity right away. Even if the one guy wasn’t looking for revenge.”

“That’s right. So they decided to set up a sting to get Gavin,” Conner continued, “simply by letting the Global Components situation play out. In return for his cooperation, Paul Stone was supposed to be able to stay out of jail when the thing was over.”

“And Gavin Smith set you up to do all the dirty work on Global.”

Conner nodded. “Because he didn’t want to take a risk in case something blew up along the way.”

“But how did Gavin find out there was something going on at Global in the first place?”

“Liz Shaw, the roommate of the woman in Miami that Gavin was seeing, had overheard two Global Components senior executives bragging about what they were doing. How they were creating billions of dollars of earnings out of thin air because they were the smartest guys in town. But Liz hadn’t heard enough for Gavin and Stone to make such a huge bet. They had to be absolutely sure the fraud was being committed,
and
they had to be able to control when the existence of the fraud was exposed.”

“So they could get in and out of the market quickly.”

“Yes.” Conner nodded approvingly.

“But who was the little guy who died at the mansion?” Jackie asked. “The guy who kidnapped me that morning, and handed you those pieces of paper at the end.”

Conner had been debriefed by the FBI. He wasn’t supposed to tell anyone what they’d said, but Jackie deserved to know. “His name was Lucas Avery.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know any Lucas Avery. Why did he come and get me?”

“Amy Richards.”

Jackie raised both eyebrows. “You mean that psycho woman you dated last winter?”

“Yeah, she told Lucas about us.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Amy knew that I cared for you,” Conner said softly. “Apparently, she’s been stalking me for quite some time. She’s seen us out together a few times and she told Lucas that was the way to get to me.” He ran his fingers over Jackie’s cheek. He hadn’t realized how much he cared about her until he’d seen the gun pointed at her head. He smiled. “Amy was right. That
was
the way to get to me. I came back to get you.”

“I know,” she said, leaning forward to kiss him. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. I don’t know what I’d do without you. Besides, it was because of me that you were there.”

Jackie kissed him again, this time more deeply. “But how did Lucas find Amy?” she asked, pulling back.

“Paul Stone.”

She took another sip of wine. “So who was Lucas Avery?”

“He worked at the West Wing of the White House. Until the president’s chief of staff gave him a special assignment.”

“The president’s chief of staff,”
Jackie repeated, wide-eyed. “You mean Franklin Bennett?”

“Yes.”

“What was the assignment?”

“Lucas was supposed to make certain there wasn’t any bad stuff floating around out in the ether about top members of the president’s administration, specifically the vice president and the secretaries of treasury, state, defense, and energy.”

“You mean the Beltway Boys,” Jackie said.

“Yup. But apparently Bennett had another agenda. And Lucas figured it out.”

“What was that other agenda?”

“Bennett really wanted the information so he could take the president down.”

“Why would he want to do that?”

“Project Trust.”

“You mean the subject of the speech the president made last week? Nailing all of you Wall Street types to the wall.”

Conner grinned at her. “Yes. I guess some very influential people inside the president’s party didn’t care much for Project Trust. He was going to propose a seventy-five percent tax rate on all income over a million bucks. And some kind of net worth tax, too.”

Jackie whistled softly. “Jesus. I’ve got some clients who’d be pretty upset about that.”

“Lucas figured out what Bennett was really up to, and he found out something very bad about one of the Beltway Boys.”

“Which one?”

“Let me come back to that.”

“Okay.”

“So Lucas figures out everything, but he horse trades. He won’t tell Bennett who the bad guy is or what he’s done until Bennett promises a big career in the party. Money, perks, the whole nine yards. Bennett agrees, but crosses his fingers behind his back. Thing is, Lucas had an insurance policy.”

“Those pages he handed to you at Gavin’s.”

Conner nodded. “Yes. He’d written everything down.”

“And what was the binder Lucas kept asking you about?”

A few days ago Conner had accompanied FBI agents to Harrisburg to retrieve the binder at the Greyhound bus station. They were going to use it as evidence against Franklin Bennett, Alan Bryson, Sam Macarthur, and Vic Hammond, as well as the Global Component executives. As Phil Reeves had said, it was the ultimate smoking gun.

“It was a binder an accountant at Baker Mahaffey put together in case he ever had to negotiate with the authorities. It detailed the fraud at Global Components as well as what the Beltway Boys had done. It showed that he had been coerced. Not that it’s going to help much,” he said, thinking back on the news of Phil Reeves’s violent death.

“No, it won’t,” Jackie agreed somberly. “Was this Beltway Boy a director of Global Components?”

Conner clapped several times. “Damn, you’re good.”

“It’s my business, Conner. I have to be good.” She paused. “But what does Lucas have to do with Justice? How did he know about you?”

“Franklin Bennett found out about what was going on at Justice with Paul Stone and Gavin Smith, and the fact that they had uncovered something nasty about Global Components.”

“So he figured he might be able to find out about the Beltway Boy that way as well,” Jackie reasoned.

“Yes.”

“And that’s the connection from Lucas to Paul Stone.”

“Right.” Conner slid his hand behind Jackie’s neck and pulled her mouth gently to his. He was going to take her to Hawaii and propose to her while they sat on a surfboard in a quiet lagoon on top of the turquoise water. In fact, he knew exactly which lagoon it would be. He’d found it one day by himself when he’d been to the Islands surfing the Banzai Pipeline. He chuckled. He might even find his way out onto the Pipeline once or twice while he and Jackie were there.

“What are you laughing about?” she asked, poking him in the ribs.

“Nothing, nothing.” He wanted to tell her so badly how he was going to propose.

“So?”

“So what?”

“So which one of the Beltway Boys was it and what did he do?” Jackie asked.

“Oh, right.” Conner picked up the remote and flicked on the television. “Check it out.”

They watched for a few moments as a commercial ended. Then a reporter appeared on the screen.

“Back to our top story,” the reporter said excitedly. “Shares of Global Components have plunged to three dollars and ten cents in the last hour of trading due to the massive financial fraud uncovered this morning at the
Fortune
500 giant. In a related story,” the woman continued, “Treasury Secretary Alan Bryson has been implicated in the exploding scandal.”