by Dale Mayer
Angela stared at the men. “I could probably think of other places he’s hidden stuff. He’s bad about that. Think of the old hermit with coffee cans full of coins. I’m pretty sure Greg keeps a lot of money at home too.”
“Any idea whose name is on the deed?”
She looked at him in surprise. “His name is. And …” Her voice trailed off. “I didn’t sign any papers adding my name to anything I don’t think. He was very controlling.”
“All good to know.” Warrick was busy writing down notes of everything she’d said so far. He looked up at her. “Any other hiding spots?”
“The attic,” she said promptly. “I know he was up there a couple times in the months before I left.”
“Any idea why?”
She shook her head. “No. He took boxes, shoe-box-size boxes, up there.”
“Did he ever give you an explanation?”
She shook her head. “Never. I was more like the hired help. I’m supposed to look pretty and stay quiet, remember?”
The men nodded but didn’t say anything.
She laughed and admitted, “It’s funny to look back on it now. It’s certainly not what I wanted.”
“And not your planned future.”
She nodded. “But it’s hard when you make a mistake like that. How do you trust your own judgment again?”
Warrick laughed this time. “Hey, I’m the one on the fallout of a broken relationship. I thought what we had was solid. The trouble was, a few days after she’d left, it was almost like I didn’t care anymore. So then how much did I care in the first place?”
Angela smiled. “I think if, within a week or two, you’re not bothered, not torn up about it, then it was time to break up in the first place.”
Warrick stared at her for a long moment. “Sandra said something along the same line. That the fire and magic had long since disappeared, and we’re just friends now.”
“She might have been right.” Angela reached across the table and gripped his fingers. “The good thing is, you know your heart, although damaged, won’t be shredded because of this.”
He gave a big shudder, shooting her a lopsided grin. “So true. But we were together for three years.”
“So it’s three years you could look back on with gratitude and a big smile. But now you get to look forward to something so much better.” Her hand still held his, and she squeezed it before letting go.
Then in a gentle voice, he said, “And exactly the same advice goes for you.”
She widened her gaze as she understood what he’d said. “That’s not fair. You just turned the tables on me.”
He chuckled. “It seemed to be the right thing to do at the time.” Warrick’s phone rang again.
She leaned back and laughed. “You guys are on the phone more than any woman I’ve ever known.”
Both men gave her an offended look. Warrick answered the call. “Mason, what’s up?” He listened and nodded his head.
Angela waited, hoping to catch some nuance that would tell her what the heck was going on. It was a long call.
At one point Warrick got off the chair and walked into the living room to talk.
She looked to Corey. “I gather we weren’t supposed to hear any of that?”
He gave her a lopsided look and said, “You weren’t supposed to hear the rest of that.”
She grabbed a chip from the center of the table and chomped on it hard. She hated being kept out of the loop, particularly when this was her life, her son. But they weren’t going to let her in just because she said so. She waited impatiently for another few minutes.
When Warrick returned, his face was serious. “Mason contacted the detective. The navy doesn’t want him approaching anybody. But, when Mason contacted the captain’s supervisor, he then contacted the detective. They’re all meeting tonight at a coffee shop.”
Silence.
“Really? With the detective?”
Warrick shook his head. “No, just Mason, Jackson, and his supervisor.”
“Without the detective knowing? Is that good?”
“It’s also a military police issue now, since it involves Captain Jackson,” Corey said beside her. “And that’ll trump anybody else’s investigation.”
“But it wasn’t supposed to, was it?”
“Which is why Mason wanted to talk to Jackson alone.”
She chewed on her fingernails. “I feel like I’ve opened a can of worms,” she admitted. “I don’t like it. I feel dirty, like I’m ruining people’s lives.”
“Maybe you were the final impetus in these photos coming to light. But you weren’t the one in this photograph, doing what Jackson’s doing to begin with.”
She nodded. “The trouble is, because of me, this has come to light. And now Jackson’s career, even his life, could very well be ruined.”
“It’s still not your fault.” Corey grasped her hand in his. “You were part of a chain reaction that first involved Jackson, then your husband, now you. Remember that.”
“Anything else come out of that phone call?” she asked Warrick.
He nodded. “We’re to stay here out of sight until Mason contacts us.”
She frowned. “How is that fair?”
“It’s fair,” Corey said. “You forget this is the stuff we do. There’ll be a chain of command. We’ll follow orders.”
She slumped back in her chair and glared at him. “What if the orders are wrong?”
“Then we will change the orders or ignore them and do what we have to do,” Corey snapped. “My ethics and morals are not on the line here. Jackson did whatever he did. And, right now, he’ll have to face the music. He’ll either have a reasonable explanation for this or we might get more information from him if he’s being blackmailed. If he’s been under this cloud for a long time, it might be a huge relief to him to open up about it.”
She studied Corey’s face for a long moment. “That would be nice, but how come it never seems to feel like it’s a good thing?”
He shoved the bowl of chips toward her. “Have another chip. It’ll make you feel better.”
She shook her head. “It’s hard to believe anything short of getting Joshua back will make me feel better.” She glanced at the other photos. “Do we know any of the other men?”
“This one’s a politician. Ex-politician actually,” Warrick said. “He was in congress for a few years. He isn’t anymore.” He picked up the photo. “I’d love to know why.”
“Call him,” Corey said. “Or at least get the detective to call him.”
Warrick frowned. “Not sure he wants to take any more phone calls from me.”
Corey bounced to his feet and grabbed the photos. “I’ll phone the detective. It could be, because of these photos, that he’s no longer in congress. Somebody has to talk. We need to break this open, so we can put it to rest.” He dialed the detective and walked out of the kitchen.
Angela watched him go, then turned to Warrick. “How do you do this all the time? Dig into the dirt in other people’s lives? Deal in all this murder and mayhem and war stuff?”
“It does take a special temperament,” Warrick said. “It’s not for everyone.”
“I can’t stand even being close to it. Just seeing all this stuff makes my skin crawl, and I want to take a shower.”
He nodded. “Sometimes I feel that way too. Sometimes we hear some of the most debased things about people. You go home, and you have that shower, and you start all over again the next day. But while this is a relatively small issue, most of the time I’m dealing with big issues—guerrillas, terrorists, mercenaries. There are wars all over the world. That’s normally where my focus is, but behind a lot of them are people like these who hire guns to go out and do the jobs they don’t want to do themselves. Or drug dealers working large scale, and, instead of taking cash, they take weapons in payment.”
She stared at him. “I just don’t get how you could do that every day.”
He leaned forward. “Because, if I don’t, who
will? If there aren’t individuals like Corey and me protecting people in this world, who is there to protect you?”
“There shouldn’t be any need to protect anybody,” she said fiercely.
“And you’re not that naive. The fact of the matter is, we don’t live in a perfect world. And, as long as we don’t, we have to have protectors and guardians of the innocent.”
“Life sucks,” she exclaimed as she continued to glare at him. “It’s not the life I want to see.”
“Nobody wants that,” Warrick said. And then he offered her one more of those lovely gentle smiles and said, “So remember that’s why Corey and I do what we do. So you can live a life where you are untouched by most of this, and hopefully the people being persecuted and ravaged by war right now will see an end before they’re killed and slaughtered like beef.”
She snapped. “It still sucks.”
He chuckled. “Like Corey said, have a chip. It will be good for your jaw.”
She glared at him even more, picked up a big tortilla chip and chomped on it fiercely.
*
“I can call him myself,” Corey said quietly to the detective. “But you know it’ll go down better if it comes from you.”
“All I hear is you keep getting into my investigation,” the detective snapped. “How many times do I have to remind you and your buddy to stay out of it?”
“We’re not staying out of it as long as we have a woman and her son in danger,” Corey said, his tone implacable. “Just be damn happy we’re coming to you with all the information we turn up.”
An odd silence followed on the other end of the call, and then the detective gave a snort. “Is everyone in your unit as hard-headed as you two?”
“Worse,” he said coolly. “So contact the congressman, ex-congressman, and get back to us.” He hung up and stood in the living room for a long moment, waiting for his temper to cool. He understood the detective’s point. But this was going to blow. The more information they had before that happened, the better. If Angela’s husband had any idea what was going on behind his back, he’d already be making plans to skip the country. And he’d likely take Joshua with him. And that meant Angela would never see her son again.
“Is everything okay?” Warrick called out.
Corey strode to the open doorway. “You could say that. The detective is getting a little fed up.”
Angela looked at him. “So? He should be trying to solve this.”
“The thing is, he’s busy. This isn’t his only case. We’re not even sure this is a case.”
“So then let’s do it ourselves. You know any of these other men? Any of them we can call up out of the blue?” Angela asked.
“Do you really think that if we called one of these men and said, ‘Hey, we have some incriminating photos of you having sex with another guy,’ that they’ll talk to us willingly?” Corey asked her.
She stared at him for a long moment. And then her lips twitched. “Okay, so maybe not if we put it that way.”
He shook his head. “Not if we put it any way.”
Warrick interrupted. “On that same note,” he tapped the photo on his monitor, “isn’t that Elizabeth? From Royal Investment Funds? She used to be among the brass until she decided she was more suited to the private sector.”
“Elizabeth Wheaton?” Corey walked closer and studied the enlarged photo. “That is her. Why is that photo important though?” He studied the lone woman standing at the edge of a cliff. She wore a business suit, but her feet were bare.
As he looked, Angela came around to see the photo as well. “Oh, interesting.”
The two men looked at her. “What’s so interesting? She’s just standing there.”
“Sure, but that’s a popular suicide spot in the area. Although why that’s of interest, I’m not sure,” Angela muttered.
“She’s the CEO of a large investment company. If anybody thought she was suicidal, it would have devastating effects on their stocks.” Corey leaned closer. “But still, this photo doesn’t scream that she is suicidal, just that she’s standing there.”
“But with her shoes off.” Warrick nodded. “It’s not that it’s horrifically damaging, but it would likely push her buttons, let her know she’s being watched. And, because her shoes are off—which is a typical sign of somebody who’s suicidal and looking to jump—she might react exactly the way they want her to.”
“But it’s thin.”
Warrick nodded. “It doesn’t take much though, does it? To ruin a reputation? To create shareholder panic?”
At that, Corey had to agree. If the photos held any trigger for the people in them, it was likely to create havoc in their lives. He scrolled through his contacts and said, “I do have her number.” He hit Dial. And then put it on Speaker.
“Corey?” A woman’s warm voice filled the room. “What’s up? I haven’t heard from you in at least a year.”
“And I’m sorry this isn’t exactly a social call,” he said. “I have a problem—a case. A woman and her son are being victimized by her husband, the boy’s father. One of the things she did before she left was take photographs of some stuff lying around his office.”
“What’s that got to do with me?” Elizabeth asked.
“What’s your email? I want to forward you one of these photos.”
She gave it to him. He relayed it to Warrick. “Warrick is here with me. He’s sending it to you now.”
“I’m still at work, but I have my personal laptop so I should be able to open it up here.”
He waited.
He heard her swallow hard, then her voice turned harsh. “Where did you get that photo?”
“In the house of a man named Greg Buffalo.”
Silence.
“Elizabeth? Are you being blackmailed?”
Her voice was ragged. “Yes, I am.” And she burst into tears.
Corey pinched the bridge of his nose. “Can you tell me about it? I know this has to be hard, but you know one should never pay a blackmailer because it will never end.”
“And yet how does one not pay a blackmailer?” she whispered brokenly.
“Does he have other stuff on you, or is this the only photo?”
“He has a couple more like this. One where I actually tried to jump.”
“I’m so sorry.” Corey’s voice was low and compassionate. “How long ago was this?”
“A year. One very long year. If I thought it was bad before, it’s been just hell since.”
Corey looked over to see tears in Angela’s eyes. “I’m sorry to hear this bastard has his claws in you. You need to know that we’re trying to bring him down. I’ll do what I can to keep these photos quiet, but the police already have them.”
“The thing is, it’s been over a year now. I’ve been wondering about just stopping payments. But, if he did publish those photos, then what? Obviously I was going through a bad patch, and life wasn’t worth living for a while.”
“Is it something you can share with others before it goes public? The board of directors, your family?”
“That’s one of the reasons why I got so depressed. My husband was diagnosed with stage four cancer and died very quickly, as you know. That was followed by a car accident that took our eighteen-year-old son.”
Everybody could hear the pain in her voice. Corey hated himself for having to bring all that back up. “Anybody would understand you going through a bad period because of those circumstances.”
“Yes, but, at the time, we were involved in a merger. A merger that was and has been very good for us. If anybody had any idea I was ‘mentally unstable,’ the merger would never have gone through.”
“How are you feeling now?”
“Like I said, it’s been a hell of a year. But I don’t feel like jumping off cliffs anymore—if for no other reason than I never know whose taking pictures,” she said, her tone bitter.
“What I need from you now is information on how you were approached, how you communicate w
ith him and how you pay him.”
“That I’ll be happy to give you. Of course I’m really hoping you take down this asshole, and you can stop this. I’m not proud of what I did and how close I came to walking away from all this. Yet, when I look back, I can understand it. But I’m not now where I was then.”
“All of us can understand. Never doubt that,” Corey said in a gentle voice. “You’ll be that much stronger for this experience too. But let’s make sure we put an end to it. You aren’t the only one caught in this asshole’s net.”
Elizabeth sighed at those words. “No. Of course I’m not, am I?” There was a hard clang. “Don’t worry about me. That was just my scotch glass hitting the desk a little too hard. I never considered he might be doing this to other people.”
“We’ve got seventeen different photographs. And a spreadsheet. We’re still trying to decode the spreadsheet, but it entails several pages.”
“Bastard. I have an email he used to contact me. I presume it doesn’t lead anywhere. Otherwise he wouldn’t have left it in use. And I have a bank account number. I do a transfer into the account every month.”
“Because I have the spreadsheet and we’re trying to decode it, and yet I know it’s not something you want to share, but could you tell us how much you were paying?”
“Five thousand. Five thousand a month every month for the last year.”
He thought about that. “And yet …”
“I know. It’s not very much. He could have asked for one hundred thousand. At the time I would have paid it. But I probably wouldn’t have continued to pay it.”
“No, but this way it becomes something you’re willing to pay just to have it all go away.”
“Exactly. But I have been thinking it was time for this to stop. I just didn’t know what to do about it. So your call is actually very timely,” she said. “However, it would be much nicer if you called to go for coffee or dinner, maybe drinks out or barbecue in your backyard, something that was so not this.”
He chuckled. “If I wasn’t in hiding with Warrick and the woman who’s involved, I would definitely have you over for a barbecue. So how about I take a rain check, and, when it’s safe for us to pop to the surface, and hopefully safe for you to stand on a cliff without having people take photographs, we’ll have that barbecue.”
