Victor
B ecca didn’t have to wait long for Shepherd to have everything arranged for her to meet with John Standish.
She woke snuggled tightly against Carter when both of their phones chimed invitations to the meeting in Shepherd’s office that would take place at eleven hundred hours, eleven a.m. The subject line was ‘Prep for Standish Meeting’.
Becca rolled back into Carter, resting her head on his chest after they’d both viewed their screens.
“Really, he had to send this invitation at six a.m.”
Tessman chuckled.
“He’s probably been up working for hours. The man’s a machine.”
Becca chuckled with him.
She let herself relax against him, taking in the sensation of being held by him.
“I like waking up like this.”
“Me too,” he said, though truthfully, had it been waking naked after a night of incredible sex, he would have liked it far better.
He pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
“It’s comfortable.”
“I appreciate you didn’t try to have sex last night,” she said.
“I mentally just wasn’t up for it. I felt mentally, maybe emotionally exhausted last night.”
Tessman chuckled again.
“You were asleep minutes into the movie. I’d say you were exhausted all the way around. Do you feel more rested this morning?”
“Yes, thank you, I do. Do you think the meeting with James Standish will be today?”
“Most likely today or tomorrow,” he replied.
“What if I don’t get him to admit anything?”
He detected nervousness in her question.
“Sometimes it’s what they do after they’re confronted, and the meeting is over, that yields the results we need. Even if he admits nothing, he may make a phone call after you leave that is damning. Or go meet someone, which is good because then we know who the co-conspirators are. We’ve even had perps try to bolt after they’re confronted. A few even committed suicide. If that isn’t a declaration of guilt, I don’t know what is.”
“Suicide? Yeah, I’d say that’s a huge declaration. But that isn’t what I want. I want to know who all was involved in it. I want to hear the full scope of who and why come from his mouth.”
“I hope you get what you need, but Becca, you have to be prepared for it to not go that way. It’s a crap shoot, how much info we’ll get out of him, even if he does admit his part in it.”
“I know,” she said.
“He does, after all, have the right to remain silent and not incriminate himself. I just don’t know how we’re going to get to the truth if he doesn’t admit it.”
“Have a little faith in the agency. We’re pretty good at what we do.”
She didn’t doubt that at all.
***
In the office at eleven a.m. there were familiar faces.
Carter, of course, Jackson and Brielle, and the two men who had helped at her sister’s house the other night, Flores and Robinson.
There was a fifth man she’d never seen, who introduced himself as Winston.
Carter told her he was a team medic.
A team medic was always assigned to a mission.
“We’ve made an appointment for you with Standish at Well-Life for sixteen hundred today,” Shepherd said.
Becca did the math in her head.
Four p.m. That didn’t give her much time to get ready for it.
“We’ll have all five team members on site during the meeting. Jackson and Tessman will go in with warrants again and keep Shirley Craig from HR busy. Robinson and Flores have appointments with the other partner, Marvin Ackman, so they’ll be in the building, just down the hall from Standish’s office. And Winston will be stationed in the car in the parking lot with the recording equipment. Becca, we’re going for anything incriminating, if not an outright confession,” Shepherd said.
He passed a packet of papers across the table to her.
“Lassiter has several scenarios scripted out for you. Familiarize yourself with the content before you go in.”
Becca lifted the papers and scanned the front page.
Then Shepherd passed a case with earbuds across to her.
“You’ll be on our comms. Because you are unfamiliar with using them, we’ll only transmit to you if prompts are needed while you’re in with Standish. But they’ll be on transmit from you, so we will hear and record all that transpires while you’re in the room with him.”
“You’ll need a word that will be your panic code to us,” Tessman said.
“A panic code?” she asked.
“Surely, you don’t think he’ll do anything to me in his office, do you?”
“Becca, if we’re right, he hired someone to kill four people. He may not have gotten his hands dirty with the deed, but he won’t hesitate to hurt you to keep you quiet to cover it up,” Jackson said.
That was a sobering thought.
“What if it was Marvin Ackman?” she asked.
“What if Nicole got it wrong?”
“My money’s on Standish,” Tessman said.
“Your sister went to him. If it wasn’t him and he told Ackman, who then sent the killers to her house, Standish would have at least suspected. He’s not innocent in this.”
“And don’t forget, the chances are good that he was responsible for your parent’s deaths too,” Jackson added.
“My contact at the NTSB has come up with nothing conclusive on the crash,” Shepherd said.
“He can’t confirm, nor can he rule out something was tampered with.”
Becca scanned a few more of the scripted prompts.
“So basically, I’m going to try to bullshit him that I have more proof than I actually do, and convince him I want to be paid off to stay quiet. I’m not sure he’s going to believe I’m capable of blackmail. He’s known me for a really long time.”
“And you’ve known him for the same amount of time,” Shepherd said.
“Would you have believed he was capable of murder?”
“Point,” she conceded.
“Here’s the thing,” Brielle began.
“You never really know what a person is capable of. Money and greed corrupt. Some people can justify selling off little pieces of their souls until there’s not much left. And then when they’re backed into corners of their own making and see no way out of, other than to commit horrible acts they would never have considered themselves capable of.”
Becca nodded, though she really didn’t want to believe that James Standish, a man her mother trusted, had become greedy and corrupt, and was capable of murder.
“So what if he admits nothing to me and throws me out of his office?”
“We planted a bug and a camera in his office last night,” Shepherd said.
“And we’ve tapped into their phone system. If he throws you out, we wait and see what he does.”
Becca was shocked to hear they had.
“Do you have a warrant? Will anything we get be admissible in court?”
“Yes and no,” Shepherd answered without explaining further.
Then his gaze shifted to Jackson and Tessman.
“Give her instruction on how to use our comms and run her through practice scenarios so she’s ready.” He paused for a moment, and he scanned those at the table.
“Anything else?”
Becca shook her head as the others, except for Shepherd, came to their feet.
Evidently, the meeting was over.
She also stood, as did Shepherd.
And while Shepherd still intimidated the hell out of her, she felt a strange level of comfort with the entire routine.
“How’d they get into Well-Life to plant cameras and mics?” she whispered to Carter after they were in the hall.
“We walked through the front door with the overnight cleaning crew from the temp agency,” Flores answered.
“Well, I personally didn’t, but two of our team members did.”
She was surprised he’d heard her.
She thought she’d whispered quietly enough.
She watched the other men and Brielle turn left and mount the stairs.
Carter pointed her down the hallway, towards the kitchen and Angel’s desk.
“We’ll use Coop’s office to prep her,” Jackson said.
“I wish we had more time,” Becca said.
“Nope, three hours is perfect,” Jackson said.
“Too much prep is worse than not enough. And don’t forget, Winston will be on comms feeding you prompts if you need them.”
***
“James will see you now,” Jill, Standish’s administrative assistant, said, breaking in on Becca’s thoughts.
She was re-reviewing in her mind the points she needed to cover from the different scenarios they’d practiced earlier that day.
Jill stood in front of Becca and was motioning towards the door to his inner office.
Becca hadn’t seen her get up from her own desk or walk over.
“Thank you,” Becca said, shooting to her feet.
She followed Jill to the door.
Once there, Jill swung it open and then stepped back for Becca to enter.
“Becca, I was so surprised to see you on my appointment schedule for today,” James Standish said, rising from his desk.
He crossed the office and extended his hand.
Becca reluctantly shook his offered hand as Jill closed the door.
“Come, sit,” he said, motioning to the small conference table to the right of his desk.
“I won’t be here long enough to get comfortable, James. I found it. I know. And for me to keep quiet, it’s going to cost you.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.
“Nicole knew it. She left me the proof and made a recording in which she said that she was going to come talk to you. And then they were dead,” Becca said accusingly.
“Now wait just a minute,” Standish blurted.
“Their deaths had nothing,” he began, but Becca cut him off.
“Their deaths had everything to do with it, and you know it. What I need to know is, was it deliberate? Did you know what the combination of those chemicals would do before they got sick? Or was your first instinct afterwards to cover it up rather than to get them help?” Her voice was demanding and unwavering.
She was channeling her best trial attorney cross-examining a hostile witness like she’d seen in countless legal thrillers.
“Nick was careless. Nick poisoned himself,” James Standish insisted.
“No,” Becca argued. “We both know that Nick was just like my mother. He was methodical, careful, and risk adverse.” At the mention of her mother, she saw James flinch.
“And let’s talk about my mother, too. She would never have allowed these chemicals to be used in the lab. If she was here, the development of this drug would never have taken place. Is that why you did it to her?”
“Careful Becca, you need to walk a fine line on this topic,” Winston’s voice came into her ear through the comms.
“I didn’t do anything to your mother and father’s plane,” Standish said, a bit too aggressively to be believed.
“Nicole came in here with those same accusations. She was as wrong as you are.”
“Ah, so you confirm that Nicole came in here and confronted you about this before they were killed? That’s not a coincidence, James. How could you have had them all killed, my nieces, little girls, for God’s sake! Shot in their heads in their beds. Jesus Christ, James! You’re a father.”
“No, I didn’t do that. I have no idea who,” he said.
She interrupted him.
“Bull shit! Don’t lie to me. You know exactly who ordered it if it wasn’t you, probably even know who actually did it. And had I not been at Nicole’s house packing their things up when those men came back to look for it, I would never even have known there was something I should be looking for.” Something then occurred to her that she hadn’t thought of before or mentioned to the people at Shepherd Security.
“Something they were willing to die to get, willing to kill me for. And I would never have found it. But you couldn’t be patient and wait, could you? Why not? What was time sensitive in it? That’s what I can’t figure out.”
Standish’s lips tipped into a grin that told her she’d overplayed it.
She had just said something that told him she didn’t know it all, certainly didn’t know enough.
“Get out,” he said.
“If I leave, your one chance to stop me from going public and ruining you and Well-Life walks out the door with me,” she bluffed.
“Oh, and right now, the proof is with a friend that will release it if anything happens to me.”
She returned James Standish’s determined stare.
“This isn’t who you are, Becca. You’re not going to try to ruin Well-Life. Your mother gave her soul to this company.”
“My mother died because of this company, and it’s being hijacked and perverted into something she’d never support. Caustic, dangerous chemicals had no place in her company.” She watched his face as she said it.
Yes, he knew how dangerous the chemicals were.
“And when someone got sick because of it, she would have blown her own company up by going public with what happened rather than covering it up.”
“Nick knew the stakes,” Standish said.
“He made his own choices, and his skill wasn’t up to the task. What happened is on him. And then he snapped, and he killed his family and then himself. That’s what the police ruled, and they were right.”
“No, they weren’t. They’ve already reversed that ruling and are looking for the real killers who staged the scene to look like a murder-suicide. They were sloppy and didn’t do the job right. Even I saw the inconsistencies to know Nick didn’t do it. This is closing in on you and Well-Life, James. I can help you or I can bury you. Which is it going to be?”
“You don’t know shit,” he said.
“Get out.”
She ignored him.
“It crossed the blood-brain barrier, didn’t it? That’s what Nick was trying to do, but what crossed was not what he intended. Was it fatal? Is that why they were killed? Or were they going to go public? I’ll admit I don’t know that part, the why, and that’s what keeps me awake at night.”
“You better get used to sleepless nights, sweetheart, because I have no answers for you. I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about, ravings of a mad woman. Go get some mental health help. You need it.”
“Fuck you, James! We both know what was going on in that lab, the dangerous chemicals and compounds that should never have been combined. Has the research at least been halted?” By the look in his eyes, she knew it was still ongoing.
“Shit, it hasn’t, has it? You still have someone working on it. You’re still trying to bring it to market. Sonofabitch! That’s it, isn’t it?”
“This meeting is over. You take whatever it is you think you have and go to anyone you want with it. You don’t have shit,” he said.
He charged across the room and flung open his door.
“Good day, Miss Elliot.”
“Go, Becca. You’re done there for now,” Winston’s voice came into her ear.
The last thing she wanted was to leave.
She felt close to getting James to say something, anything, that would make it all make sense.
As she walked past him, she whispered, “this is not over.”
Her heart pounded in her chest as she trotted down the stairs.
Her mind was reeling.
They were still working on it.
Someone else was conducting the research that had poisoned Nick and the whole family.
And something else was going on, she was sure of it.
Something that made those men go back to Nick and Nicole’s home while she was there, something they were willing to kill for and die for.
Something time sensitive. But what?