“I owe you one, Jack. If ever you need me…”
“Yeah.” Jack laughed. “I know where to find you.”
“BREATHE,” ANNIKA said. “Breathe, darling.”
Alli shivered. “I … I don’t know how I’m going to live like this.”
“Like what?”
“Not feeling.”
Annika shook her head. “I’m not at all sure I follow. If you don’t feel anything why did you risk your life to save Liridona?”
“That’s not the same.”
“Why isn’t it the same?”
Alli was trembling uncontrollably now, tears running down her cheeks. And then she sobbed. “I miss Emma so much.”
Annika enfolded her, kissed both her cheeks. “I know.”
“No, you don’t know. I—”
“But I do know, Alli. If I were to lose Jack…”
She let her words trail off and Alli stiffened in her arms.
“You love him,” Alli whispered.
“Yes.”
Alli collapsed against her. “Then you do know.”
“I know your heart is broken.”
Alli buried her face in the crook of Annika’s shoulder. “You won’t tell Jack.”
“Of course not, darling. You will.”
Alli pulled away from her. “But I can’t.”
Annika smiled. “But you must. Don’t you see that the secret is a barrier between you. Telling him will bring the two of you closer. Besides, this is your authentic self. Embrace it.”
Alli wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “What if he doesn’t understand?”
“Jack?” Annika appeared deeply amused. “Dear God, girl, you must be joking.”
DENNIS PAULL met them when they landed in D.C. just shy of six hours later. While he was arranging for Edon and Liridona to enter the States, Henry Holt Carson showed up. That was a surprise, but one that Jack welcomed. Carson was at the heart of the conspiracy, Jack knew that much. It was the why that needed confirmation.
He approached Alli, but when he tried to put his arm around her, she shrugged it off her.
He was looking at his niece, but he addressed Jack. “You kept her safe from harm, I see.”
“She kept herself safe from harm.”
Now Carson did look at Jack. “I’ll never forgive you.”
“For taking Alli away,” Jack said.
“He didn’t take me away.” Alli’s tone was indignant. “He saved me from being arrested.”
“You wouldn’t have been arrested,” Carson said. “I would have seen to that.”
“I’m not in your control,” Alli said. “I’m an adult. I make my own decisions.”
Carson shook his head. “This is what you did to her.”
“Mr. Carson,” Jack said slowly and deliberately, “you’re hardly in a position to lecture anyone on parenting skills.”
All the blood drained from Carson’s face and his hands curled into fists. “You’ll regret saying that, McClure.”
Jack took a step toward him. “I’ve had it with your threats and your bullying. I know you’re behind all of this.”
“All of what?”
“Everything that’s happened.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“On the contrary,” Annika said, appearing as if out of nowhere, “he knows precisely what he’s talking about.”
“You!” Carson goggled at her. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“You don’t give a shit about your niece,” Annika said. “What you can’t forgive Jack for is meddling in your little scheme.”
“And I would’ve gotten away with it,” Carson snapped. He turned to Jack. “Your meddling cost me everything.”
“You’re the one who hired John Pawnhill,” Jack pointed out. “And Pawnhill was working with the Syrian, bringing over Xhafa’s girls and selling them at the Stem.”
This seemed to surprise Carson. He was silent for some time. He looked deflated. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter, all the belligerence drained from it. “I was just trying to do the right thing.” He glanced away for a moment. “Just after Eddy was elected, I learned of a plot to assassinate him. The man behind the plot was the Syrian.
“In the absence of more information on the attempt itself, I decided that the best course of action was to go after the Syrian’s infrastructure. Someone at my bank suggested we look at other, smaller banks, to see if the Syrian was using them to move money around. I knew that if we could intervene there, we could shut down his financial system.
“I was directed to a company called Safe Banking Systems, because their antiterrorist software is the best in the business. They identified Middle Bay, but couldn’t get any farther because no one knows the Syrian’s real name or his aliases, so he isn’t on any PEP list. Then Eddy was killed and I was devastated. Directly after Arlen was sworn in, I went to him and told him about the plot. Together, we decided to go after the Syrian. I decided to buy Middle Bay. This way, I could find out just how the Syrian was using the bank, and once I knew that, I could control him.”
“So Crawford intervened and fast-tracked the buyout through the regulatory process.”
Carson nodded. “Time was of the essence.” His shoulders slumped. “But somehow the Syrian got wind of what I was doing. Pawnhill has a rep for being the best international forensic accountant in the business, but he must be working for the Syrian. Pawnhill destroyed all the records of the Syrian’s accounts and transactions.”
“Maybe not all. Billy Warren stumbled across the transactions and made copies.”
Paull frowned. “Pawnhill found his copy and destroyed it.”
“I think our clever little Billy made more than one copy.” Jack turned to Alli. “Remember when I asked you about Billy you said he was a closet neo-Luddite?”
Alli nodded. “Sure. He thought computer data was too insecure. He said, ‘Give me a pen and a sheet of paper any day.’”
Jack nodded. “That’s why I think he stashed a hard copy of the Syrian’s account data.”
JACK WENT through Billy Warren’s apartment more or less as John Pawnhill had done earlier, except he knew what he was looking for. Alli, Annika, Carson, and Paull watched him, Carson still with a fair degree of skepticism.
At length, Jack returned to the living room and looked more closely at everything. Then he went to the lacquer cabinet that held the books, stereo, CDs, and the like, and took down the first of the two large albums. This one held photos of Billy’s life. After paging through it to the end, Jack put it back and took out the second. Writing on a page.
Jack calmed his mind, gradually stopped the spinning of the whirlpool, reducing it to lines of text. Haltingly at first, then more easily, he read the title page of Billy’s graduate school thesis. The first ten pages were more difficult because there were twenty-two lines of type filling each page. Jack skimmed, struggling.
Then he turned to the eleventh page. It was totally different, and so were the next fifty pages. Pages and pages of numbers, six columns to a page. These were the Syrian’s account transactions from Middle Bay Bancorp.
