“You are my plans,” she said simply. “Don’t worry about me.”
He collected her plate along with his own and put them both in the dishwasher. Then he pulled her into his arms and pressed his cheek against hers. She smelled like last night’s perfume and peanut butter, and for just a second the world slowed and he could breathe again.
He forced himself to pull back and kissed her goodbye quickly, resenting the many strangers in his home all over again.
“Call me when you can,” she said.
“I will.”
Chapter Nineteen
He let Detective Green know he was leaving, then made the twenty-minute drive into work, his body vibrating with adrenaline. The police presence was profound when he turned onto the street where the Tate Transport headquarters was situated—he counted no less than five cars, in addition to a couple of vans.
Belatedly it occurred to him that the press were going to be all over this. There was no way no one had noticed all the unusual police activity.
He parked beneath the building and took the elevator to his office level, walking into an unnaturally hushed atmosphere. The receptionist blinked rapidly when she saw him and he realized her eyes were red from crying. Having a squad full of law enforcement personnel descend on your workplace unexpectedly had to be a pretty upsetting and shocking experience.
He stopped to have a quick, reassuring word, then made his way to his office, where he found Mandy watching two DA investigators sort through files on his desk.
It was hard not to bristle, even harder not to say anything. But the only reason any of this was happening was because of actions his father and Ron had taken. Actions Garret still didn’t have a good handle on. There was no merit in getting punchy about anything or pushing back—the sooner these people found what they were looking for, the sooner he could get them off the premises and dive into damage control.
Since his office had been commandeered, he set himself up in the meeting room and had IT bring him a spare laptop to work on. The next few hours of his life were a nightmare of calls from clients, his new lawyer, Mae, his business partners in Seattle, and his mother.
True to form, Jay and Marco rejected his offer to hand back his share in the business, effective immediately, in order to spare them from being dragged into his mess.
“We’ll weather the storm. We always do. Call us if you need to scream into the void. And if you need hands on deck, we’ll be in Montana ASAP, okay?” Jay had said.
It was a measure of how stressed he was that their unwavering loyalty only made him feel worse. It felt like he was sitting behind the wheel of a runaway bus full of passengers, and he had no idea what was going to be around the next corner.
By lunchtime his head was aching and there was still no sign of the DA’s office being done with their very thorough ransacking of the office. Needing to clear his head, he decided to take a five-minute walk around the block. Maybe the exercise and fresh air would loosen the vise gripping his skull.
He was rubbing the back of his neck and circling his shoulders when he exited the building, only to stop in his tracks when a glossy redheaded TV journalist blocked his path, a microphone in her outstretched hand.
“Mr. Tate, do you have any comment on the revelation that the district attorney is investigating Tate Transport for multiple instances of commercial bribery?”
A cameraman loomed over her shoulder, the black eye of a video camera recording his instinctive flinch. The flash of yet another camera drew his attention to half a dozen other journalists waiting to pounce. He recognized insignias from the local paper as well as a cable station and local radio.
He had no idea what to say, how to respond. He felt like a felled wildebeest surrounded by jackals, and every instinct shrieked for him to hold up a hand to block the camera and scuttle back into the building.
Somewhere in the back of his brain, a voice cautioned that running away would only make him look guilty. He knew that voice was right, that he needed to stand his ground. So he willed his feet to stay exactly where they were and lifted his chin to meet the glossy journalist’s sharp gaze.
“I have no comment at this time, but Tate Transport will be issuing a statement shortly.”
“We understand you’ve only recently stepped into the business after your father, Gideon Tate, suffered a severe stroke. Has the DA indicated they’ll be pushing for charges against your father despite his poor health?”
He blinked, not ready for that one, and forced his face to return to neutral.
“As I said, a statement will be forthcoming as soon as we have more information.”
He nodded once, then turned on his heel and walked back into the building. He didn’t breathe again until the elevator doors had closed behind him.
This was a nightmare. Tate Transport was going to be all over the news. Their clients were going to freak, especially once they got wind of the charges the DA was investigating. Every single one of their clients was going to be pulling out their contracts and invoices, going over every line item with a magnifying glass.
For a moment Garret closed his eyes, panic tightening his chest and clamping his throat. His belly felt as though it was full of cement, his legs as heavy as lead. Then he felt the elevator braking as it reached his floor, and he forced his eyes open and sucked in air.
He couldn’t afford to freak out. He had people who were looking to him to set an example and lead them through this mess. He had to look as though he knew what he was doing, even if he was really just acting his fucking ass off.
The doors opened with a ping, and he gave the receptionist an acknowledging nod before making his way to the meeting room. Mandy entered seconds later looking relieved. “The lead investigator just told me they’re taking a final inventory. They should be leaving in half an hour.”
“Good. Call Alec Stone and Mae Barringer and let them know. I want a full roundtable with them as soon as possible. And send an email around to everyone and warn them that if they need to leave the building, they should use the rear exit. There are a bunch of reporters camped on our doorstep.”
Mandy’s eyes widened. “I’ll get right on it.”
She hotfooted it back to her office, and Garret hit the space bar to bring his computer back to life. A quick search brought up the first news item about the raid.
It had been filed by the local paper just twenty minutes ago and featured a PR shot of a Tate Transport truck with the familiar red-and-blue logo emblazoned on the side. Local Transport Business under Investigation for Commercial Bribery. There wasn’t much to the story, just a few paragraphs explaining the DA had raided the building this morning as part of an ongoing corruption inquiry. There were a couple of lines covering his father’s stroke and Garret’s entry into the business. His coffee start-up in Seattle was referenced in a way that made it sound like a trust fund kid’s hobby instead of a genuine, thriving business. He groaned when he saw the photo they’d placed at the end of the story. He was standing next to a bikini-clad model at a crowded party, a cocktail glass in hand, his smile confident and wide. He looked the epitome of a rich, privileged douche. In other words, exactly the kind of guy who’d be involved in sleazy deals to seek advantage for his father’s business.
Where the hell had they dug that photo up from? He couldn’t even remember when it had been taken. Two years ago? Three? He knew it had been at a supplier’s Christmas party in Seattle, and that he’d smiled when it had been his turn to have his photo taken with the bikini girl because he hadn’t wanted to offend his host, even though he’d felt sorry for the poor woman, given it had been near freezing outside.
Mandy appeared in the doorway. “Roundtable at two. Mae mentioned she has a friend who works in crisis management. She wondered if you’d like her to bring him along?”
“Great idea. Thanks, Mandy.”
He clicked on the next story. This one featured a picture of his father on the golf course, his arm around the shoulders of a local politician. Oh, yeah,
that was a great look.
For a moment, he wanted nothing more than to punch his father’s smugly smiling image. Instead, he shut the browser window. There was going to be a lot of garbage floating around online about his family in the next few days. There would be ample opportunity for him to gnash his teeth and shake his fist at the sky over inaccuracies and slurs and his father’s foolhardiness—if he wanted to waste his energy on futile bullshit.
He didn’t. He needed to stay focused on the here and now.
The investigators left an hour later. They took the contents of multiple filing cabinets with them, all packed into brown evidence boxes. They also took one of the main servers, utterly unapologetic about the fact that doing so would cripple the business, at least until Garret’s IT team could create a work-around or replace it.
The first thing he did was empower his IT manager to do whatever he deemed necessary to get a new server operational. Then he returned to his office and started putting things to rights. Mandy soon joined him, the two of them working side by side in determined silence.
“I’ll bring in an extra chair for the meeting,” she said when they were done.
“Thanks, Mandy.”
Mae arrived ten minutes early, coming into Garret’s office and shutting the door. She studied him for a moment before moving forward and taking one of the guest seats. “You look exhausted.”
“Funny, that.”
“I’m so sorry, Garret. I had no idea any of this was going to happen. If I had—”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference. They had a warrant. And we already agreed the only way out of this is to play it straight.”
“Sure, but that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t have liked to be able to set the agenda a little,” Mae said. “If we’d had a couple more weeks, we could have approached them. You wouldn’t have the press downstairs panting for juicy tidbits. We could have kept this nice and clean.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not what happened,” Garret said. He didn’t have time to mourn what-ifs. “The bigger issue is that right now the DA probably has a better idea of what we’re dealing with than we do, thanks to Ron and the magical disappearing laptop.”
“My team is making good progress. I’ll have a preliminary report for you by next week, I promise.”
She sounded utterly certain and Garret nodded. “Good. That’s a start.”
“My friend Greg should be here any second,” Mae said, checking her watch. “He’s top-notch. Expensive, but worth every cent, especially given how messy and loud this is already.”
“I appreciate you getting him here,” Garret said. “I imagine he’s a busy guy.”
Mae’s face creased with sympathy as she looked at him. “You don’t deserve to be wading through this.”
Garret gave a tight smile. “The music stopped, and I’m in the chair. It’s just the way it is.”
The lawyer he’d retained under Mae’s advice, Alec Stone, arrived then, followed closely by Greg, the crisis consultant. Garret took one look at his designer suit and doubled his expectations regarding the other man’s hourly rate. So be it. Money was not the issue here. Keeping his father out of jail and the business viable was.
Alec dominated the first half hour of the meeting, filling Garret in on the moves he’d made to ascertain what he could about the details of the DA’s investigation. The main takeaway was that until the indictment was issued, they were simply going to have to wait to find out what the length and breadth of the charges might be, and who would be swept up in them.
“How long is it going to be before they come up with an indictment?” Garret asked.
Alec pushed his thick-rimmed glasses up his nose. “How long is a piece of string?”
Garret sighed heavily. “Awesome. So we sit around waiting for the axe to fall.”
“The other issue we have is funding. Sometimes in cases like these the DA will freeze company assets. In this case, that would mean all private and business funds.”
“Is that likely to happen to us?” Garret asked, his mouth suddenly dry. About the only thing they had on their side was access to money to mount a strong defense.
“I can’t give you a definitive answer on that yet,” Alex said, his expression apologetic. “I’ve reached out to the DA, though, and if they do go that route I’ll negotiate for the business to have funding to remain operational. I’m just mentioning it in case it comes up, so you know we have a plan in place.”
Greg shifted in his chair. “This is where I’m going to jump in, if that’s okay.”
“Please,” Garret said, gesturing for him to take the floor.
“By close of business today, Tate Transport is going to be a national talking point. There are going to be think pieces on corruption, analyses of the players, and every bit of public information about you and your family is going to be gone over with a fine-tooth comb. You on Facebook, Garret?”
“I have a profile, but I don’t use it regularly.”
“As of today, your profile needs to be private only, along with any other social media sites you use. And just to be safe, you’re going to remove any images you’ve uploaded anywhere. Your father a big social media user?”
“No. He’s old school,” Garret said, indicating his father’s brag wall.
“So there are going to be photo archives of all this glad-handing then,” Greg said, eyeing the many images of a smiling Gideon with a disapproving twist of his mouth. “Not much we can do about that, unfortunately. So, moving on.”
For the next twenty minutes, Greg sketched the scale of the crisis Garret was dealing with in blunt, no-nonsense terms. He talked about the press, but mostly he talked about the company’s reputation and relationships with its clients.
“You are going to have people cancelling contracts. You are going to have people questioning every invoice Tate has ever issued. This company has broken faith with its customers. And let’s not forget that when the indictment comes out, there are going to be red faces among some of your clients when it becomes clear they were involved in these illegal transactions too. Expect mud throwing and blame shifting. Expect civil suits.”
The headache gripping Garret’s skull ratcheted tighter and tighter as the other man began to detail the kind of exposure Garret could expect personally.
“Expect for some enterprising reporter to dig into every possible angle of your private life. They’ll look at your college admission, your grades, your affiliations. They’ll look for any dirt they can find on your start-up in Seattle. Ex-girlfriends will be contacted, friends exploited. Any vulnerabilities in your past are going to be weaponized. You got a partner, Garret?” Greg asked, his blue eyes as remorseless as a laser.
“Yes.”
“Then she or he needs to be prepared too. This is going to be brutal. Nothing will be sacred.”
Greg started on strategy then, talking about getting ahead of the story, issuing statements, and reaching out to clients to offer assurances. He talked about selling Garret as the new sheriff in town, there to clean up any previous improprieties and move on with a clean slate.
Alex stepped back in then to outline the kind of defense that would be required, the additional staff and consultants Garret needed to authorize, and the budget Garret would need to allocate.
By the time they were done and he was alone in his office again, he felt as though he’d spent two hours in a wind tunnel. This day had moved beyond nightmare territory into something else altogether.
He felt annihilated. And angry. And scared, because the hill he was about to climb was steep and dangerous and the climb might go on for years, if Alec’s predictions regarding the charges and subsequent court process were accurate. He wasn’t just climbing for himself, either—he was climbing on behalf of his employees and his family.
Life as he knew it was over.
The thought echoed in his brain as he gathered the phone Mandy had purchased for him this afternoon and his briefcase. It was barely six, but he needed to
decompress. He needed to go somewhere people weren’t looking to him to have all the answers. Someplace he could let all his anger and despair loose from the cage he’d confined it in throughout the day.
Sierra. He needed Sierra, the only person he could be totally honest with right now. The only person he fully trusted.
He sent Mandy home on his way out, insisting she walk out with him. Her day had been hellish, too, but she’d been a rock. His father had done one thing right when he hired her, at least.
Then he got in his car and nosed cautiously out of the underground garage, only relaxing when he saw the press were no longer camped out in front of the building. Thank heaven for small mercies.
He was about to turn onto the lakeside road when his phone rang.
“Garret, it’s me,” Mae said.
“Hey. Everything okay?” he asked, his gut tightening as he braced himself for yet another shovelful of crap. After all, why should it stop just because business hours were over?
“Nothing new from my end. But I wanted to mention something to you just in case it hadn’t occurred to you. This is none of my business, and feel free to tell me to butt out, but you mentioned today in the meeting that you’re in a relationship, so I kind of put two and two together . . .”
“If you’re asking if Sierra and I are together, the answer is yes,” he said.
Mae sighed. “Look, I don’t want to rain on your parade, but I can’t stop thinking about what Greg said about the amount of scrutiny you’re going to be under in your professional and private lives and how that extends to anyone you’re involved with. Garret, has it occurred to you that once the press work out who Sierra is, they won’t have to dig far to find out about the accident?”
He frowned, his hands tightening on the steering wheel. “No. I hadn’t gotten that far.”
“That’s why I wanted to mention it. Because there is not a journalist alive who wouldn’t wet their pants over finding out that the son and heir of the now-infamous Gideon Tate is connected romantically with the daughter of the people Gideon killed in a car accident years ago. You know they would eat that story up with a spoon,” Mae said.
More Than a Cowboy (The Carmody Brothers Book 3) Page 24