those lines. She was married to the FBI and she couldn’t-or more accurately, wouldn’t-take time to form a meaningful relationship. Her answer surprised him.
“Fear,” she said, staring straight ahead. “Maybe you’ll change your mind about dinner.”
“Look at the bright side. Think of all the money we just saved,” he said.
“Seeing expensive shrinks?”
He nodded.
“I think my word was a little more honest than yours. Want to try again?” she asked.
“Not really, but I believe in playing fair.” When she didn’t say anything, he took a deep breath and jumped off the precipice. “Okay… My word is
“Well, now we’re getting somewhere. What’s your best childhood memory of him?”
Nathan didn’t hesitate with an answer, because it was one of the few good memories he had, and he could probably count them on one hand. “We were fishing. I don’t remember where, some lake up near Yosemite. I reeled in a big one, or what seemed like a big one, you know, to a kid. He was so proud of me. I remember his smile.” He turned toward the window, grateful for the dark interior. “You’re way out of my league, Holly. After ten minutes, you’ve hit the bull’s-eye with me. Am I really that transparent?”
“Not at all. Just truthful.”
“This isn’t easy to talk about.”
“I appreciate you’re confiding in me. To be honest, I expected you to be all business.”
“I thought the same thing about you. I thought all you’d want to talk about was the Bridgestones.”
“I do want to talk about them, but it’s a three-hour drive up to the cabin. I’ve never met anyone like you.”
Nathan said nothing.
“It’s a compliment.”
“If you say so.”
“How did you know about the buried money?”
“I didn’t. Not with certainty, but I’m betting the Bridgestones have been dealing in Semtex for awhile. They obviously don’t take checks as payment, so they need to move huge amounts of cash around and it’s not easy to do without someone on the inside of a financial institution. They can’t just fly overseas with suitcases full of cash. They’d need someone they really trust to launder it. They probably do it through bogus third-party loans, so they’d need someone to process the transactions. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have numbered accounts in the Caymans or Switzerland or wherever. They’ve probably been making lots of smaller deposits over the years.”
“So how do we catch them?”
“You probably won’t.”
“If we could, how would we do it?”
He thought about it for a few seconds. “Follow the money trail.”
“It’s a dead end, we’ve looked at it.”
“You have to find their insider.”
Holly thought about that for awhile. “Any ideas who it might be?”
“I’d start with Leonard Bridgestone’s military background. Someone he knew from the Gulf War, someone who’s now working for a financial institution. Whoever it is, he’s getting a percentage for his services. There would be signs. Someone who’s living beyond his means. A huge house. Expensive cars. A stock portfolio, those kind of things. Things that can’t be explained by his reported salary. If nothing turns up, then do the same with Ernie.”
“Good thoughts.”
“Find their insider, and you’ll have a better chance of finding them. If it’s someone they’re blackmailing, or threatening, it’ll be nearly impossible. I suppose you could start with local branches, but it’s likely they travel out of state to make the deposits. Probably Nevada, where large cash transactions are common. Harv and I had a similar situation once. This woman was getting a divorce and suspected her husband was hiding money. His old college buddy had managed to launder just under three million dollars just like I described.”
“I thought you guys ran a security company.”
“We do, but we’ll take on private investigative work too.”
“So how did it turn out?”
“We blackmailed him.”
“You serious?”
“Yep. When we confronted him, he was really belligerent until Harv showed him the error of his ways.”
“Do I want to know what Harvey, you know… did to him?”
“No. At any rate, he wrote a check for just over two million dollars to stay out of jail. He was worth ten times that on paper, but as they say, cash is king. She offered us ten percent, but we only accepted three.”
“That was generous of you guys.”
“We made money on the deal.”
“Still, you turned down a lot.”
He shrugged. “It didn’t seem right taking that much. We were doing okay. Besides, she referred us to several new clients, who in turn referred more. It snowballed. In no time we were turning down jobs because we didn’t have the staff to keep up. There’s another possibility with the Bridgestones.”
“What?”
“They’ll come after you. Not you literally, but the FBI. Under your banner, I killed their little brother. They can’t be real happy about that.”
“You think they’ll try to avenge him.”
“It’s a possibility I wouldn’t discount too much.”
“Based on what those guys were peddling up there, that’s a scary thought.”
“If I were you, I’d double my security measures for awhile. Maybe you should take that vacation. Get out of town for awhile.”
“If anything happened, I couldn’t live with it.”
“They could be long gone. They might not give a damn. I suppose it comes down to two choices. Either they’ll cut and run right away, or they’ll cut and run after avenging their kid brother. There’s no way to know which.”
“Which do you think?”
He took a breath and sighed. “At the compound during the raid, one of the brothers, I’m pretty sure it was Ernie, made a mad dash across a hundred and fifty yards of open ground to rescue his little brother after he knew SWAT teams were present. I was about to light him up when the other brother took a few shots at us. Either that was the most reckless act of stupidity I’ve ever seen, or the most selfless act of bravery. I’m leaning toward bravery, but it’s probably a little of both.”
“Then you think they’ll try something before they flee?”
“I’d say there’s a good chance.”
“Against us, the FBI?”
He nodded. “They aren’t terrorists, Holly. They don’t have some fanatical ideology of religion or hatred driving them like Al Qaeda. It’s all about money. If they try something, it won’t be random. They won’t bomb a city bus or train station or sporting event. They’ll go after whoever hurt them. They don’t have a lot of time so they’ll pick a target of opportunity, something that doesn’t require a prolonged surveillance. Who knows, they might already have something planned. It wouldn’t surprise me if they did.”
“What can we do?”
“That’s just it, there isn’t much you can do except increase security. When it comes right down to it, we’ve always lived in a fragile society. Chaos is only a major disaster away. You remember the New York City blackout in the late seventies?”
“Sort of.”
“I was reading about it online recently. Rioting and looting were out of control. Over a thousand fires were lit, entire city blocks torched. When it was all said and done, nearly four thousand people had been arrested and three-hundred million dollars’ worth of damage had been done. There was no hurricane or earthquake or flood. The lights went out. Everybody was pointing fingers at the city, saying it should’ve been better prepared, should’ve done this, should’ve done that. The bottom line, it’s impossible to protect society from itself. It’s been proven over and
