Chapter 25
CHAPTER
MAGGIE HAD NOT COME HOME; she was probably holed up in a Starbucks redoing her pitch, Nash figured. He had tried Judith’s phone, but it had gone to voicemail. Then he recalled that she was having drinks and dinner with a girlfriend.
He’d changed into khaki shorts and a Polo shirt and tennis shoes, then made a tuna sandwich and added a bag of baked chips, and ate it standing up in the kitchen with a glass of iced tea.
It felt like his college days, when breakfast, lunch, and dinner might all be rolled into one meal, depending on how much or how little he had in his wallet.
He drove off in his Range Rover, and a few minutes later pulled into a parking space at the park where he would bring Maggie as a child for soccer practice and matches.
It was hopping on a fine, warm night. There were people playing tennis under the lights.
He could hear the cries from the adjacent baseball field where a rollicking game was clearly going on.
A number of people strolled along the paths through the trees.
A nice, early-summer’s evening, and here he was waiting for a call from the FBI.
He put his AirPods in and started down a path that he knew led to the soccer field.
The phone rang at precisely nine o’clock.
“Where are you?” asked Morris.
“I’m at the park near my house. Just going for a nice walk like lots of other people.”
“Yeah, well, just keep your defenses up. Strange stuff happens all the time.”
Nash said pointedly, “Really? I had no idea.”
“Touché.”
“Have they found Lombard’s remains?” asked Nash.
“No.”
“What indiscretions?”
“Excuse me?” said Morris.
“Duvall said Lombard and the others had made indiscretions that led to their being found out and killed. What sorts of indiscretions? I need details.”
“You’re going to work with us then?”
“I’m still going through my due diligence. So, indiscretions?”
“Danielle Cho, we think, divulged some information to a coworker she trusted. That coworker let it slip to someone who could not be trusted. In Alexandra Singer’s case, we believe it was her boyfriend.”
“Her boyfriend? Did he betray her?”
“Not exactly. We believe that Steers’s group already suspected Singer. Piecing things together, we think they set up her boyfriend with a woman. She probably got him drunk, they had a one-night stand, and he more than likely spilled things he shouldn’t have. Singer died shortly thereafter.”
“Yes, from a fall at the Grand Canyon. And the boyfriend?”
“He was on the trip with her to the canyon. He vanished right after she fell.”
“Dead?”
“I would bet my house on it,” said Morris. “He was a distinct loose end. And the way the media reported it, if there was foul play, they blamed the disappearing boyfriend. The local police are in full agreement with that assessment. Very neatly done on Steers’s end.”
“And Lombard’s indiscretion?”
“We think he divulged something to his wife or one of his adult children. They might have let it slip. Anything else?”
Wife and adult children—good to know. “Yes. Black Cliffs Investments.”
“Never heard of them.”
“Really? I contacted Roland Zuckerman, the CEO, who has been trying to get me to jump there for years. I made noises about wanting to do just that. I got turned down flat. A similar result happened with another such firm. I would assume the same would occur with the seven other investment outfits who wanted to hire me.”
“What can I tell you, Mr. Nash? It’s national security.”
“Won’t it look suspicious to, say, Rhett Temple that firms that lusted after me now won’t touch me with a ten-foot pole?”
“It’s pretty simple. You can be part of the solution or the problem.”
“And my demands? The money, the personal security, all the rest?”
“Working on it. But I can tell you that you’re valuable to us.”
“The normal way to show you value someone is by giving them what they’ve asked for, or at least close to it.”
“Like I said, working on it.”
“Then work faster,” said Nash curtly.
He ended the call and walked to the soccer field, where a group of teenagers were playing a match. They were fit and active and energetic and most of all free of… shit, he thought.
I have a wonderful wife and daughter. Plenty of money. Beautiful home. A job that is challenging and has taken me around the world. And now?
Nash sat on the bleachers and watched kids simply being kids, and right now wished more than anything that he could be one of them, too.