“It’s fine,” she said. “You made coffee. You want some?”
“No, thanks,” she said. “Harper probably got me one.”
“Call me if you need to. I don’t encourage all my patients to do that.”
“You’ve never told me to,” Taylor said with a grin.
“Right. But I’m telling you now. Call me. Especially with the new medication. Let me know of any changes.”
“Okay, thanks.”
Taylor stepped out of the office into the hall and headed to the exit door. Harper was coming into the building carrying two coffees. “You’re finished?”
Taylor took hers. “Yes, and she gave me a new medication. She’s all over this. So am I. Feel better?”
“Yeah, do you?”
“Never better,” Taylor said. “I’m doing great.”
They went to Harper’s car, and as they drove home, Taylor sipped her coffee. She looked over at her sister. “Did you get me decaf?”
Harper shrugged. “I wanted you to sleep.”
Taylor couldn’t help the smile stealing across her face. She patted her sister’s hand, then leaned her head back on the seat. She was going to be okay. Harper wouldn’t have it any other way.
30
The press was onto them. After taking Avery to school this morning, Jamie had driven by her own house to see if anyone waited on her street with cameras and microphones. No one was there yet. She drove over to Dustin’s neighborhood and saw two local TV vans parked near his driveway. She kept driving and headed back to the Airbnb.
Dustin was waiting for her when she came in. “You want me to drive us to my office?” he asked.
She set her bag on the kitchen counter. “I don’t know. I’m thinking.”
He frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s started. I drove by your house and there were two TV vans there. Nobody at my house yet.”
“So you don’t want to go?”
“No, I do. I want to see what you guys do and how you accessed ChemEx’s security system. But we can’t go if they’re there.”
“So we take my rental car, which no one should be looking for, and if they’re at my office, we just keep driving. If they’re not there, we go in.”
She thought about it for a minute, then agreed. “Okay, let’s go.”
As he was driving, Dustin adjusted his rearview mirror. “What’s the worst that can happen if the press finds me? Can’t we get away with saying ‘no comment’?”
“Technically, that should work. But then they could follow you and torment you . . . and then there are the angry people out there who lost loved ones and want to settle the score, who show up alongside the press, and—”
“Okay, I get it.”
“I’m not trying to make you paranoid. I’ve just been through this before on a smaller scale. I’ve watched others in my firm go through it with high-profile cases. It gets really ugly.”
“I trust you.”
“Have you talked to Travis today?”
“No, not since last night. I called the nurses’ desk earlier today and they said Crystal’s condition hasn’t changed.”
She looked out the window, wishing she could get Travis into her office for an interview. She really needed to dig into some things with him. She looked over at Dustin behind the wheel, his Mountain Dew open in the cup holder just as it had been when he was a teen. She felt a little like that younger version of herself, who’d always loved the rare treat of going somewhere with him.
She forced her brain to shift gears. “You never told me. How did you and Travis wind up starting your business?”
“We got a lot of training in the Army Ordnance Corps,” Dustin said. “And when we got out, we were offered jobs with a high-tech security installation company in New York. We learned the business and came up through the ranks. About three years in, the company came under new management, and instead of staying, we decided to go into business together. We were both from Atlanta, so we came back here and started it.”
Jamie pulled her legal pad out of her bag and wrote some of that down. “So do you have employees? Or do you install things yourselves?”
“What we do is work with architects, contractors, and project managers when a building is being built. We design the security plan along with the architect, and we source the technology and contract the installation. We oversee everything. That’s how it usually works. In the case of a building being retrofitted for the security system, we still work with the company and contractors, but things are done in a different order.”
“So which was ChemEx? New construction or old?”
“New. Working with chemicals and explosives, you have a lot of regulations and a whole level of security that has nothing to do with breaches or criminal activity but with safety hazards. Our company only deals with keeping the company secure from intruders, which is why we’re the ones they look at when there’s a breach.”
“Do you monitor the equipment after the build?”
“No. The tech companies we source the equipment from offer training to the employees who will work on the security systems, and some of it is outsourced to monitoring companies. Once we finish the build, we’re finished, unless they need maintenance or repairs.”
“So you haven’t been to the ChemEx plant since you finished that build?”
“We went in after the theft to see what was breached. Before that, it had been a year.”
“Could you even get into the plant if you wanted to now?”
“Probably. We were included in the biometrics ID systems so we could test the equipment early on. It’s possible they removed us after the theft, but companies often keep us on there in case we have to do updates or check glitches.”
“So how many companies have you guys done in this area?”
“About ten.”
“And there haven’t been any breaches in any of the others?”
“No, but ChemEx was the biggest and most significant build we’ve done. It was a real boost to our business. It brought us a lot of other business. We have contracts for the next three years.” He paused and swallowed. “Those companies will probably want to pull out when they find out about this.”
He slowed as he came to a building with a business sign near the street—“GreyWebb Securities, Inc.” There didn’t seem to be any press around yet, so he entered the parking lot.
“GreyWebb,” she said. “A combination of your last names?”
“That’s right.”
Jamie got out of the car and followed Dustin to the door. Dustin unlocked an outer lock, then opened a door into a small foyer with a biometric scanner on the wall. He let it scan his palm, then his eye.
“Because we have to keep blueprints of our security systems secure, we had to install it all on this building, too.” He let her in when the interior door opened.
She had expected rooms full of TV monitors being observed by employees, but the big room looked more like a construction office than a tech company. And they were the only ones here.
“Interesting,” she said, looking around.
“We’re at the end of a job right now. We were supposed to start a build a couple of weeks ago, but the project was delayed by a month. Another one is starting in three weeks. They’re big jobs that’ll take a year or more for our part. We’ve been working on the current one for the last ten months or so.”
She hated the thought that the whole business could fall apart now. Unless she could get him acquitted in a very public way, there was no future for GreyWebb.
“When the ammunition plant was broken into, were you liable in any way?”
“That remains to be seen. But they did let us in to see what went wrong. It was clear pretty early that the security video had been doctored and that the electricity was down that night.”
“Why?”
“Good question. There wasn’t a storm, and there were no reported power outages in the area. If equipment malfunctions, the manufactu
rer is responsible, but if it’s tampered with, that’s another thing.”
“So what kind of security did you install there?”
“I can’t get specific,” he said, “but in a general sense, I can tell you that we designed multilayered theft-proof systems, from the parking lot and landscaping to the windows and doors, with multileveled biometrics to get into the building. Most of the employees in the building have to scan their ID cards to get in, but in the more secure areas, the scans get more advanced. The highest security rooms, where chemicals and explosives and the ammunitions themselves are stored, even scan vein patterns in the employees, so they’re almost impossible to breach.”
“Then how do you explain the theft?”
“Either it was an inside job, or someone there let the thieves in.”
She walked around, looking at framed pictures of some of their jobs on the wall. “So when the power went down that night, did all the security systems stop functioning?”
“No, most of them are also battery powered as backup. But the power outage might explain why the security footage had an interruption.”
Dustin had come a long way. She wished she could go back to fifteen years ago, when he’d run out of money for his last year of college, and tell him that he would build a business from nothing, and it would be successful. “This is impressive, Dustin. Pat would be proud.”
He breathed out a laugh. “No, she wouldn’t.”
“She would. Look what you’ve done.”
“Yeah, I bet she loves that whole prison thing hanging over me. She always knew I had that potential.”
“I always knew about your real potential.”
He leaned on a counter. “You were the only one.”
“My mom liked you.”
He smiled. “Yeah, I guess she did. I appreciated that. How is your mom?”
Jamie walked across the room and looked at black-and-white pictures on the wall of Travis and Dustin at work sites. “Mom’s doing well. She’s a big help with Avery.”
“Avery’s great, by the way.”
She smiled and turned back to him. “Thank you. She likes you.”
“I always wondered,” he said. “Was Joe a good dad?”
Her smile faltered. “He was . . . Well, she wasn’t that old. He was just . . .”
“That would be a no?”
She turned back around. “He had problems,” she said. “Don’t get started on I-told-you-sos.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” he said. “I’m sorry I asked. It was insensitive.”
“No, it’s okay.” She sat down at one of the computers. “He wanted to be a good dad. He tried. He just couldn’t seem to hold it together for long enough stretches.”
She knew what he was thinking. He had warned her away from Joe several times when she started dating him. He’d told her Joe used drugs, that he was a different person behind her back. He warned her that she could ruin her life with him. Why hadn’t she listened?
When she and Joe got engaged, Dustin signed up for the army. He’d told her there was no connection between those two things, but she had sometimes wondered.
She was quiet as they drove back to the rental.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked.
She smiled. “I’m just processing things.”
“My case?”
She drew in a breath. “No. Dustin Webb as an adult.”
He gave a faint smile. “I know the feeling. I had to process Jamie Powell as an adult.”
She made sure no one was behind them when they turned onto the street where the Airbnb stood. Checking her watch, she said, “I have to get to the office. I have a staff meeting.”
Dustin sighed. “I keep feeling like I need to go check on my work site. I have all these people to call and appointments to cancel.”
“Don’t call anybody,” she said. “Don’t cancel anything. Just keep your head down.”
“I always thought it was innocent until proven guilty.”
“Don’t believe it. Not in a case where everybody’s watching.”
He didn’t say anything else as they got out of the car. She transferred her bag to her car. “You’ll feel better if you’re not trolling the Internet reading things about yourself,” she said.
“Probably.”
“What you can do is bring Travis to my office today so I can interview him. Do you think he can get away?”
“The kids will be in daycare, and Wendy will probably be at the hospital. Maybe he can come.”
“It’s really important,” she said. “Stress to him that your entire future might depend on it. No pressure.”
“I’ll do my best.”
She got into her car and pulled away. She hoped Travis would do what was necessary for Dustin.
31
“I realize this is a PR disaster.” Jamie sat rigid in the conference room after the staff meeting, fully prepared to fight to keep Dustin’s case. When the partners had asked her to stay behind to brief them on it, she’d known things could go badly.
Max wasn’t helping. He sat in his chair in that way he had, with his legs crossed at the knees and his torso slumped back. It had never bothered her before, but today it looked smug. “This client was found with boxes of explosives in his trunk right after the bombing.”
“First of all,” she said, “he didn’t have bombs in his car. He had one ingredient, and not much of that.”
“That ingredient was a plastic explosive,” Max said.
“Please let me finish,” Jamie cut in. “I have security camera video from the hospital’s parking lot, showing two people loading something into his trunk the night before the bombing. There were dozens of people who could have broken into ChemEx. Employees, contractors, security people . . .”
“The guy was in the Ordnance Corps of the army,” Max added.
Jamie’s eyes met and held those of her mentor. “I was going to mention that,” she said, not disguising the vexation in her voice. She turned back to the other attorneys, who listened with censure in their expressions. But she was determined not to wilt. “He was in the Ordnance Corps, so he does know how to assemble and disassemble bombs. That doesn’t make him a likely suspect. It makes him a likely target.”
“And he installed the security system at the ammunition plant in question?” John asked.
“Yes. I’m still convinced he’s innocent. But even if he wasn’t, he has a right to competent counsel.”
Sue Brackton, another partner who had also become Jamie’s friend over the past two years, leaned forward. “Honestly, I think the PR for the firm is a good thing. It raises our profile.”
“But the PR is negative,” Max said, moving out of his slouch and leaning both arms on the table.
“Still,” Sue said. “Negative PR raises our profile. Especially if we get behind her and she wins the case.”
“I will win,” Jamie said, “because he didn’t do it. I’ve known this man most of my life.”
Paul Lewis closed his file and steepled his hands in front of his face. “We’ll have press camped out at the front door.”
“We don’t usually shy away from the press,” Jamie said.
“No, we don’t.”
“I disagree,” Max said. “He isn’t our type of client.”
Jamie snapped her head at him. “You mean because he isn’t the head of a major corporation or the son of a Fortune 500 mogul? This is not a pro bono case,” she said, enunciating the words distinctly. “His fee will be covered. And as for his ‘type,’ his caliber is miles above the inside traders and embezzlers that we often represent.”
“I don’t know,” John said. “Maybe Sue is right. It will get national attention. If Jamie handles this case as well as she’s handled her others, it’ll come out in our favor.”
A hush fell over the room, and finally Max sat straighter. “Looks like I’m outnumbered. Guess I’ll go along with it, but, Jamie, you’d better not let us down.”
“I won�
�t,” Jamie said, closing her file on Dustin and scraping her chair back from the table. “Thank you, everybody. If you’ll excuse me, my client should be waiting.” But as she left her colleagues in the conference room, a sense of deeper purpose fell over her. She had to win this case. There was no other option.
32
The bodies had been released, and the families had started funeral arrangements. Desiree’s parents had set her funeral for tomorrow, and they’d asked Taylor to speak.
“I don’t think you should do it,” Harper told her as she sat at the table with an untouched salad in front of her. “Look at you. You can’t even eat. Have you taken the new medication yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Go take it now.”
Taylor wished her sister would go home. She went to the kitchen for a cup of water and took the new pill. “There. I took it.”
“Seriously, Taylor. How can you do a speaking engagement right now?”
She was getting so tired of this. “It’s not a speaking engagement. It’s a funeral for my friend.”
“It’s too much to ask of you!”
Taylor sighed and dropped her face into her hands. Maybe Harper was right. “I don’t even know what I’ll say. That I’m sorry I saved myself and left them?”
“It was a bomb, Taylor. How in the world could you have saved anyone?”
When Taylor couldn’t answer, Harper tried again. “Please, just try to eat.”
Taylor forced herself to take a bite. She picked up the remote and turned on the TV. The news channel she had been watching earlier came up. The chyron at the bottom of the screen made her gasp.
Arrest made in bombing at Ed Loran rally. “They arrested somebody!” she said, turning up the volume. She waited as the current story ended and the broadcast segued into the next one.
“Police say they got an anonymous tip that security contractor Dustin Webb was connected with the bombing. When they pulled him over, they found RDX, a plastic explosive used in the bomb, in the trunk of his car. We reached out to his attorney, Jamie Powell of Lewis, Brackton and Devereaux in Atlanta, but she has not responded.”
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