“Hello,” I say. “I’m calling on behalf of Lucas Davenport about your investments.”
Lucas rolls his chair around to face me. “What are you doing?” he whispers fiercely.
I turn to face him and hold up a hand. “Is there a problem?” the woman asks.
“No problem,” I say. “I just need to confirm some numbers.” I reach over and grab papers and flop around by the phone. “Oh, hmm. I can’t seem to find your last name. I just had it.”
“Becker. Sue Becker.”
“Right. Huh. Well, Sue, you aren’t the person I meant to call at all. I feel like a fool.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it. We all have those moments. What was your name again?”
“Roberta,” I say. “I’m new, so please, if you don’t mind, don’t tell Lucas I screwed up.”
“Of course. Not a problem. Have a better day now, Roberta.”
I hang up and look at Lucas, who is glaring at me. “Tell me about Sue.”
“How and why did you just call her?” he demands.
“I found her number on my father’s desk, but there was no name. You invest for this entire stinking-rich town. It was a good gamble that you invest for her. Who is she?”
“Thirty-five. Pretty. Fake nice. The kind you know will turn into a bitch once you date her. She’s the new town manager under your father and the daughter of Martin Becker, a New York senator.”
“That sounds positively uninteresting,” I say.
He hands me a new document drive. “There’s your file, but it doesn’t look fully updated yet.”
“The murder was last night.”
“The murder was last night,” he repeats. “You say that like it’s, ‘Oh, the dinner party was last night.’”
“Dead bodies are my thing,” I say.
“You are a freak, Lilah.”
“Okay, but can you actually cross-reference all these cases to look for matching names and data, or do I have to manually do it all? Because I just did a project that way last night, and it was hell.”
“I can,” he says, “but I need to build a program to do it. Which cases do you want next?”
“New York City.”
“Which will be the most well protected. This is going to take a while.”
“On television they just punch keys and pull it up.”
“So you can either get one of those actors to do this for you, or I can build a back door and protect us before I go in.”
I tilt my head and frown. “Why are you so testy? You’re never like this. I’m the bitch. You’re the nice guy.”
“Because I am,” he says, turning away from me.
I study his profile for a moment, or more like ten, frowning as I turn away. Hacking must be messing with his head, and his nerves are making me nervous. I force myself to refocus on my work, inserting the document drive. For the next few hours, I study that file and the ones that follow, looking for clues and scribbling down notes, researching every book, movie, record album, and CD listed as a potential clue, but I end up in a corner of dead ends.
Lucas has finally moved on to creating a database for me when Kane sends me a text: Walk away from Lucas and call me.
That doesn’t sound good, I think. I stand up. “I need to call my boss and get some fresh air.”
Lucas nods but doesn’t look up. Anxious to find out what this is about, I hurry out of the room and down the stairs, then make my way to the backyard. Once I’ve shut myself outside and plopped down on the diving board, I call Kane. “What’s wrong?”
“My guy connected the overseas money from Ying Entertainment back to Wilkens Capital, a big hedge fund group out of New York City.”
“Have you pulled the client list?”
“Yes, but the owner, Red Wilkens, is known to do off-books deals. He was even investigated by the FBI last year and came out of it squeaky clean.”
“And I have reason to believe that the FBI is covering for Pocher’s political recruits.”
“They are,” he says. “Which is why I’m going to have to have a friendly chat with Red, one-on-one, in the near future.”
“I assume rope and a chair are involved,” I say. “And don’t reply to that. I don’t want to know.”
“We do what we have to, beautiful.”
“Jesus, Kane. Shut up. I can’t hear that shit. And at this point, I don’t have to be a profiler to look to Pocher as the person pulling the assassin’s strings. He has one political agenda after another and a connection to my mother, and Laney Suthers had a client list of powerful men that could have included him or any of the politicians he supports.”
“Pocher is too smart to pull the strings himself. He’d work through someone else who might not even know it’s him.”
“There’s a way to get to him, and I’m going to find it. Have you seen the actual client list for the hedge fund? Do we know if he’s on it?”
“I have it and he’s not, but as I said, Red goes off books, and often.”
“I need to see that list.”
“That’s why I’m calling. Lucas is on that list. He does business with Red.”
“Of course he does,” I say. “He’s the go-to guy in all of the Hamptons.”
“I don’t like the connection.”
“What are you suggesting he’s involved in? Laney’s and Rick’s murders? My attacks? Hiring an assassin? The blood tattoo says they’re all connected.”
“He’s connected, Lilah.”
“Then he can help us find out the link between the hedge fund and Ying Entertainment.”
“Hold back until I do more research.”
“I’ll think about it. Right now, I need to wrap up here and go see my brother. And thanks to you and your legal action, claim jurisdiction. And with it send a message. I’m here. I’m not leaving, and come and get me. I’ll be ready.” I start to hang up, then add, “Protect Lucas.” That’s when I disconnect and intend to check the time, but the photos from my father’s office are on my phone.
I start tabbing through them again and land on the page that had three phone numbers, one that I have yet to call. I punch it in, and a male voice answers, “This is Greg.”
“Greg,” I snap, shoving off the diving board and standing.
“Lilah,” he says, sounding as surprised as I am pissed.
“What the hell is this? You have a strange number I don’t know that my father has been calling?”
“Easy, Lilah.”
“Don’t fucking ‘easy Lilah’ me,” I say. “What the hell is this, Greg?”
“This is my new number for the security job,” he says, his voice dipping in random places and then lifting. “I didn’t have cards yet at the party. Your father wanted it for some political fund-raiser.”
That dip and lift is what he does when he’s undercover and lying, which is why I hated for him to go undercover. “You’re lying. I know when you’re lying.”
“I’m not lying. You’re attacking me.”
“What are you into, Greg?”
“You know me. I’m one of the good guys.”
“Good guys go bad and not always because they want to. We need to meet.”
“I’m on that book tour, which means Chicago right now and on to Washington.” There are voices in the background. “I have to go. I’ll be back in a week. Will you be there?”
It feels like a trick question, an information grab. I don’t trust him. “Call me when you get back.” I hit the End button and glance up to find Lucas leaning on the doorway with the glass door now open. Feeling really damn sick of everyone around me being dirty, rotten criminals, I walk toward him.
“That didn’t sound good,” Lucas comments, and I join him. “Want to talk about it?”