Forbidden Fantasies Bundle(144)

“You’re a genius, Zoë McNamara.” He lifted her out of the chair and whirled her around. “You’re an absolute genius.”

Then as suddenly as he’d grabbed her, he set her down and frowned at her. “Hadley Richards must be worried as hell about you right now. You’re a loose end. And he’s already tried to kill you once.”

Zoë stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“Those two thugs who grabbed you when you followed me away from the Blue Pepper—I assumed they were working for Bailey and they were after the envelope Gage sent you. But now we know that they weren’t working for Bailey. And we know that Hadley Richards doesn’t hesitate when it comes to eliminating anyone who poses a threat to him. I’d say you’re at the top of his current hit list.”





16




“MAYBE IF WE TAKE IT one more time from the top,” Ryder said as he set down his empty bowl of chili and moved to his whiteboard. “We should be able to figure something out.”

Zoë glanced around the room. The expressions on the faces of Gage, Bailey and Jed were not hopeful. From what she could see, they were experiencing the same discouragement that she was feeling.

For the past two hours, they’d tried to look at the facts from every possible angle. Not even the hiatus they’d taken while they’d eaten Jensen’s chili had helped.

Ryder pointed to his whiteboard where he’d drawn appropriate lines from Hadley to McManus Pharmaceuticals to Manning Imports and to the Vidal drug cartel in Colombia.

“In a nutshell, one of the subsidiary companies of McManus is laundering money for a drug cartel. Hadley Richards either discovers this or knows it and is worried that someone else might find out. So seven months ago he hires a new data analyst, takes her under his wing and gives her a special assignment. When she’s able to trace the money trail in less than a day, he decides to act on a plan that he must already have had in place.”

“Oh, he had it in place all right,” Bailey said. “He’s a very meticulous planner. I’ve never known him to miss a trick.”

Gage took up the summary. “He either knows or suspects that Frank Medici is about to uncover the real business that Manning Imports is involved in, so he assigns Zoë the task of researching Lucifer, and he arranges for Jed to contact Frank Medici on the same night that he has Frank taken out.”

“Then he pressures me to resign and forges my name on the reports that frame Lucifer,” Zoë finished.

“And he gets the director to authorize my assignment to take out Lucifer,” Bailey said.

Jed ran his hands through his hair. “We’ve got motive, but we still don’t have enough proof to get a prosecutor interested. It will be Hadley Richards’s word against Zoë’s. And McManus Pharmaceuticals will hire the kind of legal team that will stall and try to whitewash everything. They’ll all scrape through it.”

Zoë folded her hands together in her lap. “If our goal is to clear Lucifer’s name, maybe we don’t need more than motive. Instead of going to a prosecutor, let’s go to Hadley Richards.”

Everyone turned to look at her. She cleared her throat. “Everything Hadley has done so far has been motivated by a fear of exposure. He doesn’t want even a hint of this coming out.”

Bailey nodded in agreement. “She’s right. He’s killed Frank Medici and attempted to kill both Jed and Zoë in order to keep this information quiet. It isn’t just his wife’s company he’s trying to protect. He’s got his eye on the director’s job, which should be up for grabs by the end of the year.”

“I think we can get Hadley to clear Jed’s name if we promise him that we won’t reveal anything about the money laundering,” Zoë said. “I’ll contact him and arrange a meeting. I’ll offer my silence about the forged reports, if he’ll clear Jed’s name. Of course, I’ll let him know that all the information is in the hands of a third party who will mail everything to the Washington Post if anything happens to Jed or me.”

For a moment there was another stretch of silence in the room.

Bailey was the first to speak. “You’re suggesting we let him walk right into the directorship in return for Jed’s name being cleared?”

Zoë smiled. “Not necessarily. I’m hoping that Hadley will try to find a way around our little deal and trip himself up.” She turned to Ryder. “You probably have some kind of recording device I could wear?”

“I do.” Ryder grinned at her.

“No,” Jed said. “I can’t let Zoë do it. It’s too dangerous. I’ll arrange to meet with him.”