by Fiona Quinn
The senator cleared his throat. “No. Who else has this video? Is this going to be on the news? That’s not how Lily should be remembered.”
“We’ll do everything we can to keep it in-house,” Lynx said.
Prescott chuckled under his breath. “God, she’s good.”
Gage had picked up on it too. The ever so slight undercurrent of threat. You answer my questions or this might get into the public’s hands.
“You said this didn’t arrive on your phone.” Lynx put his card down in front of him. “This phone.” She put her finger on the number printed on the front. “But what about your secondary phone?”
“I don’t have a secondary phone. All of my calls go through—”
“No?” Lynx cut him off. “Not even this one?” She turned the card over and pointed to where the senator had written his private cellphone number.
The senator turned pink with embarrassment, then red with anger. He went to grab the card, but Lynx was lightning fast. Her hand covered the card and slid it back in front of her.
“Senator, would you do me a great big favor in exchange for my returning this card to you?”
The senator’s face twitched and he looked like he desperately wanted to let a slew of curse words fly behind firmly cemented lips.
Lynx offered him her innocent smile, as if the only thoughts in her head were about hot chocolate and puppies. “Can I look in your wallet for a sec?”
Thoroughly perplexed, Billings reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He slid it over to her. Lynx opened it, reached right in and pulled out the card with the symbol from the tattoos. She replaced that card with the senator’s own card and handed it back to him.
As Billings put his wallet back in his pocket, Lynx positioned the card on the table, a red x showed up on the card, and there was a flash of light that dragged the senator’s attention back to her. “Hey, what’s going on here? Is this some kind of interrogation? Are there people watching me on the other side of those mirrors?”
Lynx surreptitiously slid the card off the table and put it in her lap. “Oh, sorry. Did you get that impression? No, I’m tasked with trying to run down some information. You know, here at Iniquus, we work to bridge the chasms between the different alphabet agencies. Right now, it’s like alphabet soup.” She stopped and grinned like she’d made a great joke. “We have interest from the CIA, the FBI, the DCPD, the DOD… Gosh, lots of interest. Anything you can tell me that might help clear this up quickly and neatly would be great. Let’s start with this. How did you meet Lily?”
Chapter
Twenty-Five
GAGE
Senator Billings fumbled around in his seat. He didn’t seem sure if he should lean back or forward, if he should cross his knees or ankles or leave his feet side by side. He tried three or four different positions for his hands before he folded them on the table in front of him, like a school boy who was in trouble with his teacher.
“You met Lily…” Lynx encouraged.
“I met Lily at a party that I attended with some friends of mine. The Leibowitz’s, Ruby and Sal. All right?”
“What do they do for a living?”
“Ruby is a forensic auditor, and Sal is a lobbyist for USIPAC—the United States Pro-Israel lobby.”
“Oh yes, I’ve heard of them. They’re working to strengthen relations between the United States and Israel. Did Sal introduce you to Lily?”
“No, Ruby did. They knew each other from college. They were both studying accounting.”
“As part of that introduction, Ruby told you that Lily was a CPA over at Montrim, right? I bet that made your ears perk right up. Montrim was in your crosshairs and this woman might, through her accounting duties, be able to get some data for you. Tell me what happened after that introduction was made.”
“I brought her a drink. We had polite conversation, where I looked for points of commonality. You’re right, I wanted to woo her so that I could access more data.”
“Woo her. So your intentions were personal? Sexual?”
“No,” he mumbled. “Political.”
“But you said ‘woo’. Wooing implies flirtation and sexuality. Did you find Lily sexually attractive or politically expedient?”
“I, um…”
“Were you wooing her because you wanted to spend time in her company, or did you want to convince her that was true so you could get your hands on her…books?”
“Ah…”
“Okay, let’s try it this way. At what point in your relationship did you find yourself physically attracted to Lily Winters? Did you ever find yourself physically attracted to her? Or were you simply having sex to gain the power to manipulate her?”
“No, it wasn’t like that. I found myself attracted to her as we spent time together, and that led to expanding the scope of our relationship.”
“Before you ‘expanded your scope’, you made a flirtatious play for Lily. You wanted to see if she could help you with your fact gathering on Montrim.”
“Montrim is a—”
Lynx held up her hand. “Let’s stay on the subject of Lily for right now. You were at a Jewish event to raise support for Israel. So you knew Lily Winters was Jewish from the beginning?”
“Yes.”
“And did you use this to help convince Lily that she should help you over her own self-interests of keeping her job, and despite the potential of being labelled as a whistle-blower, which would preclude many companies from hiring her?”
The senator said nothing but looked thoroughly ashamed.
“Didn’t you think her loyalty should lie with her company since they paid her salary? Not to mention, much of the information she disclosed to you was classified.”
Billings dropped his hands between his thighs and rubbed them together as if they were cold and he was trying to warm himself. “You’re right, at first I played on Lily’s loyalty to Israel. She knew things were being developed at Montrim that would be a disaster to Israel. Later, I discovered that Lily had three brothers in the military. She grew up as a navy brat. When she went to work for Montrim, she thought she was helping keep her brothers safe by supporting the scientific work that gave the US military its edge. As she rose in the hierarchy and was given higher security access, she realized some of the projects Montrim was developing were genocidal. She was sure the American people would think Montrim’s developments were horrific. But she couldn’t tell anyone. When we spent time together, and I explained the thrust of my concerns, we were already on the same page. I simply gave her an avenue to help make things right.”
“What did this have to do with accounting discrepancies?”
“Do you know that Montrim is working on soundwave technology that destroys animal cell walls? That’s you and me. We’re animals. Lily had major moral issues with the projects she was assigned to. She was happy to help me bring it to the world’s attention. If she left, someone else would just take her place. If she stayed, she could keep an eye on things.”
“You said that Lily was a military brat. She had this in common with Dr. Zoe Kealoha. Do you know that name?”
“Yes.”
“In what context?”
“Lily was roommates with Zoe until she was able to move into a place on her own.”
“Lily moved into a townhouse in central DC—that’s big bucks. Not really possible on a CPA’s salary. But there’s a parking garage right next door. Would you say that you helped Lily find that place so you could make your way into her house without detection?”
“I needed a safe place for us to meet.”
“Who paid for this safe place?”
“USIPAC did after I told them that Lily was helping me with Montrim.”
“Why would USIPAC be concerned with Montrim?”
“I’m not going to comment any further on USIPAC.”
“We have a witness who says that you were over at Colonel Guthrie’s house drunk Thursday night, and that Colonel Guthrie knew about yo
ur affair with Lily.”
“Stan is an old buddy of mine. We were out drinking one night. Our wives were at some female doings. Art center show, maybe. I got soft on scotch and told Stan that I had fallen in love with Lily. I was considering leaving my wife to be with her. I deserve happiness too.”
“The colonel tried to dissuade you?”
“He thought it was political suicide. But I won my election last November. I’ve got six years for my constituency to forgive and forget. There’s a template for true love making an affair okay. They had that going on in Carolina with their governor, after all. He told everyone he was incommunicado because he was hiking the Appalachian Trail, for gosh sakes. Turns out he’s down in Buenos Aires having a lovefest with his mistress. He comes back, does some mea culpas, and is elected to the House of Representatives. He’s doing fine. I never lied to my state. I lied to my wife, but everyone understands that goes with the territory.”
“The colonel thought this sounded wrong though, you and Lily?”
“A man of my age, and let’s be honest, my shape, with a pretty young twenty-something? It’s a stretch, even for my imagination.”
“What direction did his lack of trust lead you?”
“Stan suggested that I get the whole picture on Lily before I left my marriage. That was sound advice from a good friend looking out for my best interests. I appreciated his concern, even if I didn’t believe they were founded.”
“Still, you acted on his advice?”
“I hired a private investigator to follow her. See who she was interacting with, see if she was someone’s asset.”
“That seems like a smart move. The PIs, how did you come to hire them?”
“PI. Just one. He likes to work alone. I got his name from Stan.”
“What did the investigator find? Was Lily true to you?”
“Yes. And she was providing me with a great deal of information.”
“PIs, especially good ones, are expensive. How did you pay for this and not have it discoverable if you came under scrutiny?”
“USIPAC.”
“Again? They’ve been very generous to you and Lily.”
“I’ve always been pro-Israel. Always gone out of my way to help them in the Senate. I told a contact there, a higher-up, about the soundwave program. In my estimation, it’s meant to take out the whole Middle Eastern Peninsula. If no one knows about that technology, it can be deployed without ramifications. There would be no way to trace it back to the United States. With everyone removed, the United States could easily go in and control the oil. They would control the world.”
“Ah, so you do know why USIPAC was interested in helping Lily help you.” Lynx picked up the remote control. “I’m going to put three photos up on the screen. Would you please tell me if you recognize any of the men pictured?”
Lynx clicked to show the first man Gage killed, then the second, then a picture of their prisoner.
“No, I don’t recognize any of them.”
“Did you think it was a conflict of interest that Colonel Guthrie is involved with Montrim, and you are fighting against Montrim?”
“He’s not with Montrim. He’s with DARPA. DARPA has contracts that involve Montrim, but he’s an army man through and through. Look, he’s a good guy, but he ultimately acts like a politician looking out for his own rear end.”
“The irony of you saying that is spectacular. Let’s go through this again, shall we? I need to drill down on this PI a bit more. I promise we’re nearly through here.”
“You said this had to do with Lily’s death.”
“Exactly. This PI concerns me. He wasn’t simply following along with Lily’s day so you knew she bought orange juice at Giant supermarket before her yoga class. Your friend Stan had specific reservations that needed to be assuaged and certain shadows that needed to be searched.”
“Stan thought it odd that Lily and I would get so hot and heavy so quickly. He suggested that the CIA might have planted her as a honey trap. He said they had a name for assets who slept with men to get information and blackmail power over them. They call them swallows. A swallow, for damned sake. Lily! Stan thought the soundwave technology and other Montrim projects were important to the CIA, so they’d try to stop me from shutting them down.”
“The CIA would stop you?”
“That’s what Stan suggested.”
“Were you sharing any information with Lily?”
“Well sure. We shared data back and forth. She knew what I had found out, and tried to corroborate it with internal evidence. Stan said it was possible that she was actually using black propaganda, seeding my research with fake information so I would be completely discredited and become a laughingstock while Montrim sailed off into the sunset.”
“But you never believed it. You just went through the motions to reassure your friend. Do you think that Montrim found out that there was a whistleblower, and decided to take her out of the equation?”
Billing put his head in his hands. “God.”
“Let’s go back to Zoe Kealoha. You said you recognized that name as Lily’s old roommate, yes? But that was only a small portion of that story. I’d like you to finish it. How do you know Dr. Zoe Kealoha from Montrim Industries and how is she tied to your friend Colonel Guthrie?”
“Now that, I have no idea about. I know that Zoe and Lily were roommates, college friends.”
“Okay. What did your PI tell you about Lily’s death? If he was following her, he should have details.”
“All of this happened before. I didn’t need any more proof. I trusted Lily. I asked him to stop.”
“So he took his last paycheck and left.”
Attention moved to the door when a knock preceded the entrance of the woman Titus had called Margot. “Forgive me, Lynx, it’s time.”
Lynx checked her watch. “Senator, thank you so much for speaking with me. I have a plane I need to catch. Someone will be in to attend to you in a moment.” She leaned over and shook his hand.
The senator was obviously confused with this sudden shift. “Wait. You were going to—”
But Lynx was already out the door.
Chapter
Twenty-Six
GAGE
Prescott made a sucking sound with his teeth. “Oh, the tangled webs we weave. Are you all following this? Do you get what’s going on?”
“The window is getting a little cleaner,” Titus said.
The door popped open and Margot beamed her smile on Titus. Gage tipped his head to see Titus’s reaction to Margot. Titus looked the way Titus always looked. Like you’d better get the heck out of his way.
“Sir, Lynx asked me to give you this card. It’s the man who did the PI work. She said that according to the senator’s facial tells that it’s the name of the man who was captured by the Panthers today. She’s going to call you as soon as she gets in her car with more information.”
“Okay, thank you. Margot, would you see that the senator is shown to the atrium to meet up with his driver? Tell him that we’ll contact him on his private line if we have any further questions. And suggest that at some point that we will release the video we have back to him. But make it subtle. It’s a reminder for him to behave.”
“Yes, sir.” Margot was out the door.
Titus stood. “Let’s head back to the war room, and get Nutsbe going on a computer search.”
***
They had just pushed through the Panther room door when Titus’s phone buzzed on his hip. “Titus here.”
“Lynx.” Gage heard her answer.
“I’m putting you on speakerphone. The Panthers, Gage Harrison, and Damion Prescott are in the room.”
“Hey, sorry about leaving so abruptly. I got caught up and forgot about the time. What did you do with the senator?”
“Margot shooed him out the door. I’m just now bringing the search to Nutsbe’s attention. Did you pick up anything else?”
“Some leads to run down. The senator definitel
y knows who your prisoner is, and he felt shamed by the association. I’m saying that’s your guy, Levi Schultz, or an alias. You may want to drill that one deeper. Did you get his phone when you made the capture?”
“We did. It’s on airplane mode until forensics can make sure it’s not got a failsafe to wipe it.”
“I’d say his contact numbers are going to be gold. I’d check for any photos of Lily, who she was with, and video or audio files. Forensics should be able to track them down if they were taken with that phone.”
“Nutsbe’s giving you the thumbs up.” Titus said.
“Here’s another thing Nutsbe should check—no, actually, two things, no, three things. Gosh, I wish I wasn’t heading out of town. This is such a good puzzle.”
“I’m taking notes,” Titus said. What he really meant was that with Lynx on speakerphone, Brainiack was at the whiteboard taking notes.
“One. The senator said that he met Lily at a party with the Leibowitz’s. I remember seeing that on the calendar pages that you sent over. It had little hearts all over the place. Before that party, I only saw Ruby or the Leibowitz’s name one, maybe two other times. After that party, skip ahead a month, and you start seeing Ruby’s name listed two or three times a week. The senator said that Ruby was a forensic auditor. I may be going out on a limb here, but it might be a good idea to have Ruby Leibowitz in for a little chat to see what she has to say about Lily. My bet is that Lily needed to know how to look for the information that the senator needed to make his case.”
“Got it. We’ll make contact,” Titus said.
“Number two. Thursday morning, Lily had an appointment that was just indicated as 10 a.m. Victoria Park. It’s odd that Lily left work for an appointment in a park on a Thursday morning. And Thursday was bitter cold. My thought is to check with the DMV for Levi and get his plates. Then Nutsbe can run Levi’s plates through the ALPR scanning system and see his route through the city that day. Do the same for Lily and see if those routes overlap.”