Red, White, and Blue

by Laura Hayden

  INSTEAD OF VISITING HER PARENTS, Kate decided to stick around home. Surrendering to her growing sense of unease, she called them and explained that she was working on a very sensitive project.

  “Of course, we understand, honey. We totally understand. When it comes to the position you’re in? Your duty isn’t just to Emily, but to God and your country.”

  Even though they had no idea of the complexity of her problems, that one simple reminder of her scope of responsibilities helped to solidify her plans. Even though she hated to ask them to lie, she did, and they agreed without complaint or question to maintain the illusion that she was home, visiting them for that weekend.

  The subterfuge would give her two days to work with Nick and unravel whatever new knots the Panamanian paperwork might have revealed. Plus she needed to tell him what she’d learned from Emily about how he’d been an involuntary part of Maia’s extortion efforts.

  When she arrived at the hotel, the look on his face confirmed her fears that the files contained something really bad. Her news could wait.

  She slid into the booth across from him. “Break it to me gently.”

  Silently he pushed several pages across the table to her. “I’ve already stashed the originals, but I made copies for you and for me. But for the most part, Dozier did a good job of covering his paper trail. That was the whole purpose of setting everything up in Panama. Their official records don’t include pesky things like the names of the owners.”

  Her sinking feeling reached new depths. “So we won’t be able to prove that Dozier owned the corporation?”

  “No, but we can prove that he’s the investment manager of the Panamanian foundation that owns the corporation.”

  “I guess that’s a good start.”

  Nick nodded. “I understand now why Donnie lives there. He’s smart, but he’s as crooked as they come. He’s probably knee-deep in this whole business. Turns out Panama is one of the more popular places to hide assets by starting an offshore corporation—in this case, Green World Energy JED Inc.” He pointed to the top page.

  “So Dozier owns the corporation?”

  “No. The corporation is owned in part by a Panamanian foundation named D-JED Energy Foundation. Since foundations don’t have owners, the official paperwork only lists some Panamanian lawyer—a stand-in name used during formation to keep it anonymous. Then the lawyer steps aside and reassigns the position to the applicant. The country doesn’t require that these changes be recorded in any official national database.”

  “So Dozier becomes the founder without leaving any paper trail behind.”

  “That’s it in a nutshell. Pembrooke set up their stock option deal in the name of Green World Energy JED Inc., which is owned jointly by three Panamanian foundations—D-JED, J-JED, and E-JED foundations.”

  She stared at the paperwork, trying to wrap her brain around an impossible concept.

  Nick pressed on. “What helps us is that Donnie got a copy of the original application that Dozier made for the foundation and the corporation.” He sorted through the pages and pulled out one from the middle of the stack. “So we have proof that shows who the D was in JED. Do you want to hazard a guess who the J and E might be?”

  Jack and Emily . . .

  “Maybe she didn’t know anything about it,” Kate said, trying desperately to convince herself of her friend’s innocence. “Maybe Dozier did all this without her knowledge or consent.”

  “Do you really believe that?” he asked quietly.

  “I want to.” Kate closed her eyes and rested her aching head on her hands. “But I don’t. And I can’t believe that’s all Maia had on the old man. What now?”

  “We work several directions. First, I sic Donnie on finding the foundation applications for J-JED and E-JED. Chances are they were started at the same time and probably with the same law firm handling the paperwork. Next, as we found out with the toll road fiasco, if there’s one Benton in the woodpile, there are apt to be others. We both need to take a very close look at O:EI and try to figure out what other companies are likely to benefit big-time from the profit it’s going to make in one, two, even three years from now. Then see if we can find any Bentons or Benton cronies at the heart of those companies. Finally we work on what Maia was up to the last few weeks of her life.”

  It was a daunting task, something better attempted by a whole platoon of federal investigators, not just the two of them. “Do you know how long it’s going to take to try to track this stuff down? You do know how many Bentons there are roaming the world, right? And Lee tells me Maia was pretty busy.”

  He adopted a brittle smile. “The way I see it, we have two days. That’s approximately two hundred cousins a day and four little visits to Washington power brokers.”

  She and Nick began their list-making task at the hotel coffee shop, but it didn’t take long before they suspected every innocent bystander of trying to listen to their private conversation or attempting to look at the data on their laptops.

  “We’re being ridiculous,” Kate said as they changed topics to the totally mundane for the sixth time until a passing couple walked out of hearing range.

  “Are we? If this goes where I think it’s going, we both might find ourselves in the firing line.”

  “You can’t believe that.”

  “I sure can. This whole thing stinks.”

  He rubbed at the small scar at his hairline, an inadvertent reminder to Kate that she had news she’d meant to tell him earlier.

  “Um . . . that reminds me.” She stalled by taking a long draw of her coffee, which had become tepid and tasteless. “This morning M called me into her office and told me that when it came to the blackmail situation, we’d all overlooked one important factor.”

  “What factor?”

  “We never tried to figure out, much less locate, what sort of proof Maia used to hold over Dozier’s head.”

  Nick’s eyebrows knitted in concentration. “I’d just assumed he’d said the wrong thing at the wrong time.”

  “If so, then it might have been nothing more than her word against his. Something like that might have made for bad press, but I don’t think Dozier would have paid her untold sums of money without some sort of evidence.”

  “True. He was the practical sort. I’m sure he insisted on seeing concrete proof before he paid a dime. So M has been looking for the actual evidence?”

  “Not only looking for it, but found it. It seems that Maia used her cell phone to capture a video of Dozier bragging about how much money he had made and would make from Pembrooke. It looks like Emily had her thoroughly investigated. Emily’s on edge over her. One thing Maia had on her phone was something she’d been using to blackmail Tim Colton too. It might explain why they were in the car together.”

  “Really? What was it?”

  Kate looked down, surprised to see she’d been shredding her napkin. She pushed the small bits of paper to the side. “When M’s investigators recovered Maia’s phone, they found a sound file with Tim explaining how he and two other guys jumped you because they’d thought you’d been disloyal to Talbot.”

  “That part I never quite understood. I even vaguely remember someone using the word when they switched from fists to a baseball bat. Disloyal. How?”

  “Talbot convinced them you’d leaked the information about his involvement in Angela Kasdan’s death to us.”

  The revelation made Nick sit up straighter. “But I only knew about it because I was there when you were telling him over the phone. . . .” He paused. “Oh. I get it. What a slimeball. He knew I overheard it, so the beating was his best solution to making sure I wouldn’t mention it.”

  Nick remained quiet for a moment, then slammed his hand on the table, making his coffee cup rattle in its saucer. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

  Kate stared at him. “No. What?”

  “Maybe I should be glad you don’t think like a criminal lawyer. Until now, we could only guess that maybe Tim ha
d something to do with the attack on me. Nobody had any proof. But if his confession exists, then that really does make me a prime suspect in his death. If I know M, she’ll make sure the police play connect the dots so that the blame points to me.”

  “Connect the dots?”

  He lowered his head and his voice. “Sure. Leaps in logic. What if Maia told me Tim was behind the beating? What if I decided to kill him in retribution? And what if I decided it made sense to take out her too so that no one ever learned of my real motive?”

  “Too many what-ifs. You’re not a killer.”

  “Emily would desperately like to believe the worst of me. That’s what acrimonious divorces are all about.” He sighed and closed his laptop. “Sometimes it doesn’t seem worth the time and effort to fight her.” He crossed his arms on top of the computer and rested his head on them. “Do you know how badly I want a drink right now?”

  “Don’t give up.” Kate punched him lightly in the arm to get his attention.

  He recoiled, sitting up and rubbing the point of contact. “Ouch.”

  “Don’t forget Dozier’s deathbed confession. He said he was—and I quote—‘so sorry’ about what he did to Maia. If that’s not a confession of something terrible, I don’t know what is. He was frantic to be forgiven for everything he’d done, including whatever it was he did to Maia.” Her mind raced ahead. “If you think about it, the fact that Maia was blackmailing Tim means that it’s still a good argument for it being a case of murder-suicide.”

  Nick shook his head. “No one believes that Tim drove into a wall and risked killing himself simply to stop her from blackmailing him.”

  “What if she had plans that would bring down Emily’s government and destroy Talbot’s reputation forever? She had the goods. She could have done it. It would have destroyed people’s trust in the presidency for a long time. Tim Colton might have given his life to stop her, if that was the case.”

  Their gazes locked across the table, and after a moment, he drew a deep breath and placed his hand on his laptop as if to open it again. “I’d like to believe that of him. But, remembering the feel of his fists on my skin, it doesn’t seem likely. . . . And there’s something else. . . .” He hesitated.

  “What now?” Kate asked.

  “M doesn’t like the idea of a stalemate, and I think that’s about the best we’re going to be able to do chasing this info down. Maybe she doesn’t even like having us know about it. If she’s willing to lie, cheat, and steal to maintain the status quo, I don’t want to even think about what she’s willing to do to get ahead. And if we’re chasing something she wants kept secret, she’s going to do everything in her power to stop it.”

  “She won’t do anything to hurt me.” Kate wanted to sound resolute and firm, but the words and the sentiment behind them were unavoidably hollow.

  “You hope she’s not going to hurt you. But you can’t be sure.”

  “I have nothing to hide. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “You’re talking to me right now. That alone is tantamount to treachery.” His features softened slightly. “And what about last night?” He reached across the table as if he was going to touch her hand.

  Okay, so we kissed. But that’s all. She pulled her hand back and hid it beneath the table in her lap. “Nothing happened last night.”

  After a beat, he diverted his gesture by reaching for a packet of sugar. “I know that. You know that. But it might not have looked like that to someone else on the outside looking in.” He tore open the packet and poured it into his cold coffee, stirring with more vigor than necessary. “Imagine an investigator with a camera sitting outside my door. You come out in the wee hours of the morning, looking much less put together than you usually are. We kiss and he gets everything on film.”

  The mental image robbed Kate of breath for two diametrically opposed reasons. She sagged against the wall of the booth. “But there was no camera. Was there?”

  “No, but there were two FBI agents there, sent on a fool’s errand in the middle of the night.” He took a sip of his coffee and tried not to make a face. “How hard would it be for M to have had them sent? Or anticipate that, when confronted, I’d call you for help? Or that you’d respond in the middle of the night? Or that you’d be able to stop their questions by mentioning your discussion with their boss? A discussion that M witnessed, maybe even engineered in the first place?”

  What had initially appeared to be an unfortunate situation just grew much more ominous, and the consequences more threatening.

  Nick templed his fingers over his laptop. “I hate to say it, but when M’s involved, we have to be suspicious of everybody and everything.” He began to straighten the papers, tapping them into neat piles and inserting them into the folders. “I’m not sure we should be seen together right now. For your sake.”

  She resisted the urge to swivel around and survey the increased traffic in the coffee shop. “So what do we do?”

  “We separate but stay in communication online as we search the records from different locations. A bunch of different locations.”

  “You mean like move around physically?”

  He nodded. “Call it paranoia, but yeah, I don’t need to stay in one place.” He leaned forward, tapping the laptop. “Someone kept pinging my computer every time I got online at home. The firewall has stopped any efforts to hack in, but it’s made me think twice. Could be nothing. Could be something. If I move around, it’ll be harder to track me down. And right now? I don’t want to be where M or anybody in her employ can find me—in the real world or the virtual one.”

  If it were anyone other than Nick, Kate would have readily agreed it was just rampant paranoia talking. But given the circumstances over the last forty-eight hours, her ability to distinguish between fact and speculation had taken a real beating.

  She looked around, finding exactly what she needed to help him with his quest. “Stay here for a minute,” she commanded.

  Although clearly confused by her order, he remained seated in the booth while Kate walked over to a newspaper rack filled with the usual assortment of free tabloid newspapers. She selected one she used to read when her mornings started in a similar coffee shop near the campaign headquarters in Old Town Alexandria.

  Kate carried the paper back to the table and laid it out, opening it to the classified section in back. “See this ad I’m pointing to?”

  “‘Unending Fantasies Escort Service,’” he read aloud with more than a bit of distaste.

  “I’m going to continue to point to it, but instead, look at the other page, at the bottom.”

  “What am I looking for?”

  “The box at the bottom of the second column that shows the URLs for all of the free Wi-Fi networks in the area—Arlington, Alexandria, and the District. You can stay on the move, even stay in your car, but continue working online.” To add emphasis, she pulled out a pen and circled the gaudy ad filled with impossibly built women as if it were the true the topic of their tête-à-tête.

  “Interesting juxtaposition,” he said under his breath. Then he added in a slightly louder voice, “If you say so,” as he stood and stowed his laptop into a black briefcase.

  He leaned closer. “I’m going to buy a prepaid cell phone and call Donnie to see if he can wring a little more out of the law firm’s records—mainly the applications for J-JED and E-JED. And I’m going to see what our little Maia was up to.”

  “We may be too late. Emily said Jack got out before the storm and was headed there. And Maia’s dead, with all her secrets.”

  He tucked the file into his briefcase. “Then this may be our only real proof.”

  He tore a corner from the newspaper and scribbled something on it, handing it to her. “Here. This is the e-mail address I’ll set up as soon as I get to the next Internet location.”

  He looked up, his eyes smudged with lack of sleep. “They may or may not be trying to monitor your computer, but I wouldn’t take any unnecessary chances if I
were you.” He paused as if he wanted to kiss her but feared being seen. Instead, he managed a weak smile. “Talk to you soon.”

  When a young couple rose and walked out only moments after Nick departed, Kate wondered if her sudden feeling of fear was a product created solely by the intersection of her imagination and his paranoia.

  She looked down at the e-mail address he’d scribbled.

  We.Are.Not.Paranoid@gmail.com

  BY MIDNIGHT, KATE WAS EXHAUSTED. She’d moved every hour from hot spot to hot spot, and the constant interruptions only served to slow her down in her efforts to uncover more information about the various holding companies and try to find the Benton cronies in the midst.

  When she finally took a break, she sat back to assess what she’d uncovered. Basically diddly-squat. Not only was there no smoking gun, there was no hint of smoke at all. But the bigger question she had to ask herself was what would she do with such information if she found it?

  What if Emily’s family turned out to have their fingers deep in the pie of O:EI? What next? If she threatened to expose them unless they pulled out, would she be any better than Maia Bari? Sure Kate’s motives would be different and it wouldn’t be a matter of wanting anything in return, but the similarities in their methods would likely haunt Kate to her last day.

  Where did loyalty end and duty to a higher cause begin? What if Emily knew nothing about her family’s involvement? Should she be forced to shoulder the responsibilities for their misjudgments?

  Kate prayed for guidance several times during the night but hadn’t yet felt the hand of God pushing, pulling, or nudging her in a specific direction. It didn’t mean that no answer was forthcoming. Perhaps she’d already been told what to do and was too resistant to listen or understand. Or maybe she was being too impatient in wanting an answer.

  Right now.

  She shivered as the wind buffeted her car, making it rock back and forth even though she was parked on a side street in Old Town. The rain had picked up over the last hour, so she switched on the radio, hoping to find a weather report. She didn’t have to search hard. The Emergency Broadcast System was in the midst of issuing a tornado watch.