Midnight Fever (Men of Midnight #5)(31)

Instead, there had been a parade of witnesses testifying to cost overruns, to unpaid debts, to gross ineptitude. All of it orchestrated by Catherine. Yesterday had been day one. By the time the three-day parade of witnesses was over, Stanley Offutt's reputation would be in tatters and no one would dream of offering him government security contract work ever again.

Catherine couldn't wait for Monday and Wednesday, day two and day three. She'd enjoy every single second of a process that wiped Stanley Offutt out.

So. Several billion dollars' worth of Blackvale contracts, gone.

There was justice in the world, and Stanley Offutt was on his way to being a destroyed man, just as he had destroyed her husband, Nathan De Haven. Nathan had unofficially gone into business with Offutt ten years before and had lost everything. Nothing could convince Catherine that Nathan's car plunging down a cliff side had been an accident, and not him taking his despair and bankruptcy off a cliff.

It had taken her ten years of hard work to salvage the company while retaining her Senate seat. Ten years of waiting for an opportunity to destroy the man who had destroyed her family.

Payback is a bitch, she thought, and smiled.

It wasn't supposed to be that way, she knew full well. No, when scheduled, the committee was supposed to reach a definitive finding whereby Stanley Offutt would leave the premises several billion dollars richer via a number of no-bid contracts. The chairman of the committee had gone to Annapolis with Offutt and was the type of politician who had never met a cost overrun by a corrupt contractor he didn't like. Catherine would bet her children's trust funds that some of that vast lake of money would stream right into the chairman's Panamanian bank account.

She could just picture the two of them on Offutt's superyacht, the 200-foot Bellariva, basking in the sun in the Caribbean, laughing at the poor suckers who weren't as smart as they were.

Think again, boys.

Catherine had only been one of the members of the subcommittee, but she'd walked in with a briefcase full of documents, which she'd handed out and carefully explained. They'd listened to the first couple of witnesses she'd called. The chairman was unmovable, of course. A vote against Offutt was a vote against another six figures in his account.

But the other members … they'd listened. Oh yes. They'd listened and taken notes and had undoubtedly had their staffs make inquiries. Monday they would come back, more aggressive and more quietly angry. 

Each day was supposed to end with Offutt entertaining them with whiskey and strippers. Instead, the first day had seen three veterans testifying to the damage caused by Offutt's company, Blackvale. The corporal who'd sustained third-degree burns over forty percent of her body because the water heating system Blackvale installed didn't have a regulator. The private who'd lost both legs to a faulty steering system in a truck. The very nervous accountant who gave a list of materials that had undergone a thousand percent markup.

On and on. She had tons of this stuff.

Catherine had spent years accumulating the evidence while Stanley Offutt grew rich. She'd bided her time and worked hard to get on to the committee.

Offutt had smiled and nodded when he saw her yesterday morning. The fool.

After all, it had been years since they'd last seen each other at Nathan's funeral. He'd even-the bastard-offered her a loan because he knew she'd been left in "straitened circumstances", as he'd so gently put it.

She'd refused and thanked him for coming while vowing in her heart that however long it took, she'd get even.

In the end, it took ten years, but it was worth every second of time she'd spent, every sleepless night, every tear she'd shed for Nathan.

Watching the chairman's jaw drop, watching Offutt sweat, watching the tide of opinion in the august wood-paneled room turn against him …  it was as the ad said-priceless.

The chairman was as wily and slimy as they came, and it was possible that he would adjourn "for further consideration" but as long as she was alive, Stanley Offutt would never get another penny from the US government. She had more information in her computer and her aides were following an anonymous tip that Blackvale had been involved in a sex trafficking operation in 2016.

Catherine had plenty of ammo left.

As a matter of fact, why stop with government contracts?

Catherine sipped her tea, blinking. Why indeed? She put her cup down, staring at the photos on her desk. She and Nathan grinning into the camera on their first trip together as a couple, in Hawaii all those years ago. Their wedding day, madly smiling, crazy in love, so happy it had been a thing of weight and heft in their midst that day. Happiness so intense you could almost feel it.

Aaron and Emma, blinking against the sun on a family hiking trip, grinning because Nathan had forgotten to take the lens cap off for the first pictures. Catherine had reached over and gently removed it and they had all laughed their heads off, Nathan more than anyone. It was the year Nathan died, and it would be two years before she and the kids could laugh again.