by T. F. Jacobs
Alex grins a sheepish grin. Chuckles a little. “I was a little scared too, you know? I took it this morning from my pharmacy and let me tell you, I was sweating bullets! This has sure been quite the day,” he says, then lets out another nervous chuckle. I can’t help but appreciate him. He’s a bit odd and awkward, but clearly he’s genuine in his vow to help.
“Well, big boy, you ready?” Dominique says, glancing down at her phone. “We better head to the airport if we want to make our flight. Aly, you good to download the files without us?”
“Yeah. I’ll connect with Brit after you guys head out.”
We each slide out of the booth.
Alex reaches out his hand for me to shake, and I take it. His palms are a bit sweaty. Obviously all the anxiety from the day is still with him. “Really looking forward to working together, buddy,” he says. He shakes my hand up and down enthusiastically.
Again, as annoyed as I am about what happened, I can tell this guy really wants to help, and I appreciate him for it. “You too, Alex. You did good today.”
He smiles that same old boyish, toothy smile.
“We gonna get these guys for your wife,” Dominique says to me. With her words and her effort today, I can’t help but appreciate her help too. I grab her hand for a shake, and her muscular grip takes mine in a quick, swift motion.
I nod. “Thanks, Dominique. I appreciate it.”
We release, and both Alex and Dominique give another wave, then make their way back across the hotel lobby. Now it’s just me and Aly.
Silence.
The rain’s beating down outside, and clearly she doesn’t have anywhere to go yet. I really don’t like this situation, but I brought her into this mess in the first place, so I suppose she can come up to transfer the files and then find another place. But that’s it.
“Why don’t you come up so that we can do the download?”
Aly hesitates. Also unsure.
“Okay.”
We head for the elevator, and the situation feels more awkward with each step.
A woman who isn’t my wife coming into my hotel room. In the elevator an elderly couple smiles at us. I’m sure they assume we are together, and why wouldn’t they?
But the thought makes me mad. At myself. Or maybe at the world. I’m not sure. The only woman I should be heading to a hotel room with is Lexi. And that’s not possible because she’s gone.
I open the door to the marble-floored room with the grand piano in the corner. Rain beats down against the massive window beside it. I turn to Aly and can tell she’s mesmerized by the luxury. The lavishness.
“Wow,” is all she says.
“I’m going to change out of these wet clothes. You can use the second bathroom to the left if you need to.”
I look down at her bag but realize it’s only a purse.
“Where’s your suitcase?”
“I didn’t bring one. Didn’t really have time. Brit asked me to go, and I did.” She shrugs.
“Hmm,” I say as I nod my head slowly. Essentially she’s telling me she doesn’t have anything else to change into.
I turn and head to the bedroom.
I come out wearing jeans and a button-up. The dry clothes feel decadent against my skin after peeling off my wet, cold suit.
Aly is sitting at the couch across from the piano, her computer on her lap. She’s still in the sleeveless black dress. Her red coat is sprawled across the arm of the couch. She’s got goosebumps on her arms.
She looks up as I approach. This isn’t what I signed up for. Her being here already feels wrong.
I sigh, turn back to my room, open my suitcase, and pull out my gray sweatshirt.
“Here,” is all I say when I return to the living room. I toss her the sweatshirt.
She thinks about it, but the goosebumps clearly make the decision for her.
She slips it on. I take a slow deep breath, still uncomfortable with the situation.
“I’m downloading the files now. Want to take a look?”
I take the seat next to her.
“I’m transferring the files to some sort of impenetrable server that Brit set up. Actually, Brit is transferring the files. She has control.”
Aly’s fingers are away from the mouse, and the screen is moving without her touch. Brit is clicking into folders, but she’s moving too fast for me to see what they are. There’s something about Congressman Ross. Then Johnson. Then Byers. My eyes fix on the file, but it’s gone in seconds.
Dozens more pass. Brit stalls on one, and immediately my eyes are drawn to the file name at the top.
Potential Scandal. Wife Is Sleeping with a Woman.
She closes out of it before I can continue reading.
More folders of more congressmen.
It’s all dirt. And he’s got a file on every congressman and congresswoman.
This is a freaking mother lode of political blackmail.
And this is how he does his deals. When threats are involved, there’s no need for bribery.
Congressman Vasquez. Took a Revolving Door Position with BlueHealth in order to get the votes to block the Healthcare Costs Transparency Act.
A revolving door? Could this be legit? It’s one of those taboo topics everyone in the industry knows about but doesn’t talk about. A deal where a politician is guaranteed a lobbyist position five or ten years in the future with a guaranteed salary and often a signing bonus on the spot. Sometimes millions. In exchange for these positions, they become puppets for that company or special interest while they are still in office.
It’s the type of thing that would sink a reelection campaign if it got out.
Aly sees it too. Our eyes meet. I can tell we are thinking the same thing. What we’ve stumbled into is big. Bigger than us. Bigger than Lexi. Bigger than anything I thought I would ever be capable of exposing.
Her rosy cheeks flush. She looks back to the computer. Nervous.
The moment turns awkward. The silence between us is palpable.
I stand. Move to the window. Hold my palm against it. The icy glass sends a chill down my spine.
Rain hammers at the glass as I gaze out into the murky abyss.
I turn around.
In the back of my head, I still have reservations about hacking the whip’s computer. About what we’re doing here. About whether or not I can trust the others. Brit. Aly.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
She looks up from the laptop, confused.
“I told you. Brit wanted us to get into the laptop.”
I step toward her to cut her off. “No. Why are you here? Why are you part of this? I thought you wanted to stay silent. So why take an active role like this?”
She stares. “I believe in what you are doing—”
“No. There’s got to be a bigger reason. My wife just fucking died. I’ve got four hundred thousand dollars in medical bills. Those are my reasons. So why are you here? What’s your motivation?”
A fire is burning inside my chest. Talking about Lexi’s death brings back the hate. The anger. The longing to tear the people responsible for her death down limb from limb. To make people pay, to suffer the way I suffer.
She bites her lip. “I see. Well, I . . .” She pauses. Inhales deep. “I had a patient with a failing kidney. We’d heard she was married to some Wall Street hot shot worth millions. Dr. Constance decided to milk her for money. Convinced her to get a transplant. She didn’t get a second opinion because she, like most people, figured she could trust a doctor. Well, the kidney took, but not without complications. Turns out the doctor didn’t connect an artery. A rookie mistake. Not one a seasoned doctor makes. She bled internally and needed another surgery, which of course cost thousands more dollars.”
A tear streams down her face, and all I can do is think about Dr. Constance and how much of a sleazy fuck he is.
She continues after sniffling. “She made it out okay, and he told her she needed to come in for weekly follow-ups. I knew she didn
’t need them, but I didn’t say anything. Well, it turned out that her rich husband had divorced her months before, and that the money had run out. The procedure wasn’t covered under her American True Care insurance, and she owed us a hundred grand.”
She stops again, her breathing too fast. She tries to slow it. “She hung herself at her apartment. Couldn’t afford the bills. Couldn’t afford to live. So she ended it.”
She bursts into tears. Buries her head into the elbow of the sweatshirt I let her borrow.
And all I can do is watch. These people are murderers. And the worst part is that the doctor probably slept like a baby. He probably still found a way to get the money out of his patient’s ex, while the woman was being pulled down from her rope, all alone.
“I thought about doing it myself. Suicide, you know? No husband, no real family left. Mom died when I was ten, and Dad a year ago. But every time I tried, I didn’t have the courage. Always found a way to convince myself not to. Thought maybe I, unlike the doctor, was actually making a difference for my patients. Pathetic, I know.”
I nod.
I see her now for what she is: a vulnerable woman. A woman bogged down by her morals, with a sadness in her eyes from being all alone in the world. I want to say something to comfort her, but my own pain is too great.
Then something she said nags at me.
“Is there anything else Brit told you that she hasn’t shared with me? I need to be kept in the loop. This plan could have unraveled if we weren’t careful.”
She looks down. Then to the laptop, trying not to meet my eyes.
“Aly?”
Her demeanor tells me there is something more.
I move toward the couch and sit beside her.
She slowly moves to meet my eyes. Takes another deep breath.
“Lincoln,” she says finally.
“The guy who Brit was working with before?”
“Yeah.”
“What about him? What’d she tell you that she didn’t tell me?”
There’s a long pause.
“He’s missing.”
I stare. My eyebrows furrow instinctively.
“What do you mean he’s missing?”
“She said it happened a couple months back. His phone was disconnected, e-mail unresponsive, and his apartment abandoned. No record of him at any hospital or morgue. Gone.”
“Why wouldn’t she tell me this?”
She looks out the window. She’s got a boundary, possibly something Brit told her she couldn’t cross. She’s torn. Takes a deep breath.
“They think he’s dead.”
The words sink in. It isn’t as though I didn’t expect them, because as soon as Brit told us the guy was gone I knew he was probably dead, but that doesn’t make having my suspicions confirmed any less impactful.
“Killed?”
She nods.
“By?”
Another exhalation. “The government.”
There it is. This is what I was worried about the whole time. That someone is on to us. That someone is already on to Brit.
“Why?”
“Because he was in deep with the Inner Medical Association. The second largest lobbying group in the entire industry. It’s part of the Big Two that make up more than half of all insured Americans, right there with American True Care. He posed as a cyber security officer. Worked his way up the chain, helping to dig up dirt in order to get deals done. He was moving fast. Even had a meeting with Joe Jones. But then he was gone. Never came back.”
“Joe Jones, as in the Speaker of the House?”
“That’s the one.”
I think back to the towering glad-hander I met earlier, with brown hair and the cleft chin.
“I met him briefly today. Seemed super nice.”
My mind tries to process what this could mean.
“Did Brit get anything from Lincoln’s conversation with the Speaker? Was there anyone he thought was on to him?”
“No. She doesn’t know if he even had a conversation with Joe Jones. He fell off the face of the earth. She said if Lincoln was alive, he would have found a way to get in touch. His mission in life was to bring it all down. He’d willingly die for it. They killed his wife and kid.”
If what she is saying is true, this would go beyond any corruption I thought I knew about. “How?”
“He was uninsured. His wife was in labor on New Year’s Eve. I don’t know the details, but Brit said his wife wasn’t even taken into a room until she’d passed out. She had a blood clot, and the baby had been strangled by the umbilical cord. He lost them both. And the kicker was that he too got the bill for it. He ended up doing IT work for the hospital because he couldn’t afford the bill.”
The pieces are falling into place. I remember Brit saying he worked for the hospital and caught her trying to hack the billing system. She’d also said that he let her off the hook in exchange for side projects. I’m starting to get a picture of this man, Lincoln.
He sounds like me. A man wronged by the system who found himself a part of it. A man who wanted to bring it down any way he could.
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah,” she replies.
“So Brit thought if she told me what really happened to him, I wouldn’t go through with her plan? I’d think it was too dangerous?”
She shrugs. “It was Brit’s idea, not mine. She only told me because I wasn’t sure about coming in the first place, and she wanted me to know how important the issues we are dealing with are. She said the reason she wanted us here was not only for Connelly’s computer, but also for your safety. You are the most at risk, and if you are going to pull this whole thing off, then you need help. She doesn’t want a repeat of what happened with Lincoln.”
Everything is coming to light. The connections are more vivid.
“If Lincoln truly was killed, then he had to have been on to something big. Something that someone powerful wanted covered up,” I say.
“Exactly. But the question is by who? How far up does this go? Is the Speaker of the House involved? The Senate? The vice president? Even the president?”
My eyes fix on her, unblinking. Would the government really kill an American citizen? Would lobbyist firms or special interests?
I awaken from my daze and walk to the phone on the wall beside the window. A crack of thunder rattles the glass, causing me to jump back.
Aly lets out a shriek.
Rain swooshes against the pane, and when I try to look outside, my view is obstructed by the blanket of hazy water pouring down.
“The download to the remote server finished. I should go find a motel.”
She closes her laptop and slides it into her purse.
Another crack of thunder sends vibrations through the glass.
I can’t let her go out in this. Not while I’m in a lavish, spacious room all by myself.
“Just stay here tonight. There are two beds anyway.”
She looks up. Thinks about it, not convinced.
“This storm is too bad to go out in. Save yourself the money.”
She tightens her lips, still unsure. “Okay. But I can take the couch.”
“Whatever you want. I’m going to order room service. Care for a bowl of tomato bisque and grilled cheese?”
Half hour later we scarf down the elegantly prepared soups and sandwiches while the lightning continues to crack outside every few minutes.
I take a long hot shower in the second bathroom. The perks of a penthouse suite, courtesy of good old American True Care.
By the time I come back out, Aly is asleep on the couch. She’s still wearing my sweatshirt and her dress, which looks extremely uncomfortable.
Rain continues to beat against the window, and I’m nearly shivering, so I know she’s got to be cold.
I grab the blanket from the second bed, then gently place it over her body.
She turns her head in toward the cushions but doesn’t wake.
I look down at my wedding band.
For a moment, I can’t tell whether this is all a dream, or if this is actually happening. The entire situation feels strange. A woman I barely know is sleeping on the couch of my extravagant hotel room that was paid for by the company I’m fighting to expose. What am I supposed to feel? Guilt? Sadness? Angst?
All I feel is numb. My wife is dead, and when she died, a part of me was ripped from my body.
I sink into the ultra-soft bed, which adjusts to the curvature of my torso. I stare at the ceiling. My mind speeds into overdrive, reflecting on what has happened.
The aloof-as-a-log Connelly.
Aly, Dominique, and Alex showing up out of nowhere.
Aly nearly sedating the congressman.
The mysterious Lincoln, who is missing.
And now Aly asleep in the room next to me.
What would Lexi think if she found out? What would she do?
Actually I know what she’d do. She’d make some sort of quip about how we should have a threesome. And the second I gave it an ounce of thought, she’d snap at me. Teasing, of course.
Damn I miss that.
I pop two sleeping pills, and when they hit my system, I go out cold.
When I wake eight hours later, Aly is gone. The rain has stopped, and my sweatshirt is folded on the couch.
I throw my clothes into my bag, then send for an Uber to the airport.
Chapter 10
I’m sitting outside of Rebecca’s office. Two days have passed since the meeting with Connelly, and we haven’t heard a single word. He’s gone silent.
I know this meeting with my new boss won’t be pleasant. I drum my fingers against my knee as I wait.
“She’s finishing up her call. You can go in now,” her robotic assistant tells me.
I stand, iron out my pants with my hands, then push the door inward.
She’s on the phone. Her eyes are fierce. Pissed. She’s in a no-BS kind of mood. Her hair is straightened but somewhat frizzy. She’s wearing a silver sleeveless dress, and she looks good. Again, she knows it.
“We’re done,” she says and then slams the phone down. Her glass desk rattles from the impact.
Her eyes fix on me. Narrow slightly.
Then she smiles.
What’s going on? She looks happy. Did Connelly push the bill forward?