Collision Course (18 page)

Chapter Ten

Charles
Bennett had chosen not to go into the office early. He sat waiting in his den
for confirmation from Serrano that his men had completed their task the night
before. The drug lord would call with the details then fax him a photo of the
man as proof the deed had been accomplished.

An
unfamiliar case of nerves had him in its grip. Not used to being at the mercy
of others or in a situation where he had lost control, he was distressed it
happened here. The entire debacle distracted him from his regular business, and
he struggled to make sure nothing slipped through the cracks. He had good
executives he could depend on, men he trusted who had nothing to do with his
other activities. But even they were beginning to ask him if he had a problem.

He also
had to hope everyone on his ghost payroll was still in place. Individuals who
could watch his back and let him know if the wrong people stumbled on
information about his illegal activities. At the moment, he couldn’t contact
anyone and ask. The lower his profile the better.

Today,
once he had confirmation Haggerty had been taken care of, he’d lock himself in
his office and go over the latest reports from all of the component companies
making up Bennett Global Enterprises. He would conference with Serrano and
Al-Salaki to make sure all their current projects were on target and then find
a way to withdraw from the situation for a while. At least until someone
identified Trey’s body and the expected media circus subsided.

He’d
passed on coffee this morning, not sure his stomach would tolerate it. He
sipped tea instead, as he waited in his den for the phone to ring.

Damn
it! Call! What’s taking so long?

As if
summoned by his thoughts, the instrument beside him chirped to signal an
incoming call. He answered so fast he almost knocked his cup over.

“Is it
done?” he asked.

“Yes.”
Serrano growled the word.

He
sounded unsettled, his tone of voice disturbing to Bennett.

“Something’s
wrong,” he guessed. “Tell me what it is.”

“The man
is dead, but I hate to confess my men could not get any information from him.
We still don’t know if he searched the files for information and whether he
found something he passed along to someone else.”

“What?”
Bennett spat. “I knew they’d screw it up. Your men got a little overeager in
their questioning and killed him before he could tell them anything. Am I
right?”

“Not
quite.” Serrano’s voice still held an odd tone.

“Then
what? I demand to know.”

The
silence stretched out for a long moment before the drug lord answered him.

“He kept
telling them they had the wrong man. Insisted he didn’t know what the hell they
were talking about.”

A taste
of acid rushed into Bennett’s mouth. “He answered the damn phone. El-Salaki’s
message must have had some effect on him.”

“I don’t
know what to tell you. On the one hand, we no longer have him running around
loose. On the other—”

“On the
other,” Bennett interrupted, “we don’t know who else out there knows about our
business. Who he came into contact with. What he might have passed along.”

“How
much can he have learned?”

“Too
fucking much, if he found a way to get into any of those closed files.” He
gripped the receiver harder. “Go ahead and fax me the picture of him so I can
figure out what kind of story to tell people. I’ll have to contact his family
with something plausible and arrange a funeral.”

“This
isn’t over,” Serrano reminded him. “We have a shipment in process, another
waiting and an air of uncertainty I don’t like.”

“Just
send me the damn photo and I’ll get back to you.”

He
slammed the received down and slumped in his armchair, his entire body one ball
of tension. Fucking hell. What a mess.

At the
whir of the fax machine, he walked over to his desk to retrieve the photo when
it came through. But once he held it in his hand, an ice cold feeling swept
through him, chilling his blood and slowing his heartbeat. Anger vibrated
through his body as he dialed the number for Serrano.

“
Bueno
,”
the familiar voice answered.

“No, you
asshole. Not
bueno
. Not good. Your thugs killed the wrong damn man.” He
raised his voice. “Do you hear me? The wrong fucking man.”

“Of course
I hear you,” Serrano bit off. “If you don’t lower your voice, the whole world
will hear you. Hold on.” A buzz of low conversation in the background then he
returned. “Are you positive?”

Bennett wanted to reach
through the phone and strangle the man. “Are you kidding? Haggerty was my
executive vice president. Of course, I’m sure. Tobias, this is a major fuckup.
Now you have a strange body to dispose of without raising questions, and Trey
Haggerty is still out there someplace in a position to ruin us all.”

Silence
stretched out on Serrano’s end of the phone. The arrogant drug lord would never
admit to making a mistake but he’d made a colossal one here. Well, he’d let
Serrano figure out how to explain what happened and he, Bennett, would pick up
the search in his own way.

“Don’t
call me for a while,” he said at last. “Clean up your mess and I’ll clean up
mine.”

“We need
to meet. The three of us.”

“I need
to find Haggerty,” Bennett reminded him.

“And we
all have to protect our business arrangements. So, tomorrow. You will come here
again.”

The line
went dead before Bennett could say anything else. He stared at it for a long
moment before slamming it down. He would do what he should have done in the
first place—run the hunt himself. If he hadn’t felt so uncomfortable at his own
complicity in what happened, he might have fought the other two men to start
with.

Well,
he’d do it now, and he had some ideas of his own to implement.

But as
he stood there in his den, mind spinning, he couldn’t decide which emotion
gripped him the strongest—anger or fear.

*****

They
arrived at the gun range the next morning about fifteen minutes apart in
separate vehicles. Casey walked a thin line when it came to exposing their
relationship to the people in town who knew her so well. Good thing his motel
happened to be so far outside of town. Not much local traffic driving by, and
with his room on the side of the building away from the highway they were
pretty much hidden from the world. Her parents had to be aware of where she’d
spent the past two nights, but she was a big girl. She could deal with them.

Ira
Guillory had already seen them together so at least they didn’t have to pretend
they barely knew each other. Anyway, anyone eating at the Half ’n Half would be
aware Casey had been taking coffee breaks and lunch with him the past couple of
days.

He
watched her assume her shooting stance, aim and rip off three-shot volleys.
Beneath the faded jeans and old t-shirt lay her ripe, firm body. He could still
taste her on his tongue and her scent seemed to cling to him.

In a
situation as precarious as his, he had no business getting involved with
someone. Of course, he was sure it happened for the very reason his emotions
were running close to the surface and his nerves felt raw and exposed. At thirty-five
he’d had his share of relationships, some casual, some not. But he didn’t ever
remember having an instant connection with a woman the way he did with Casey.

There
was another ingredient even more compelling than the physical attraction.

Trust.

He’d
liked the women he’d been with in varying degrees but he couldn’t think of one
he’d trust with his life the way he did Casey. You couldn’t manufacture
something like that.

She
emptied her clip, turned to him and smiled. Instantly he had an even more urgent
need to get his situation resolved so it didn’t spill over onto her. And so
they could talk about a future together.

“I’m
going to try one last thing today.” He spoke low as they walked back to their
vehicles. Voices carried in the clear morning air.

“What?”
She unlocked her truck and tossed her gun bag into the back seat. “After what
you showed me last night, I think you have plenty to go with.”

“I want
to make sure I can nail the men he’s partnered with, too. If I can get one
layer deeper, I’ll find the evidence to nail them all.”

Concern
etched deep lines on her face. “T.J., don’t do something that’s going to bite
you in the ass. Please. I explained I have a friend who can continue the work
in a secure environment.”

“I told
you I don’t want to bring anyone else into this,” he insisted. “Contacting Max
Rider will be risky enough. I have no idea who else will find out about it.
Someone on his staff might even be on Bennett’s payroll. Casey, the list of
people he bribes is enough to make you sick.”

“Okay, okay.
But you need to get ready to contact your friend fast. I have a feeling you’re
already living on borrowed time.”

“One
more day,” he promised. “Then I’ll call Max.” He scanned the area, noted Ira
was nowhere to be seen and pulled her against him for a quick hard kiss. “See
you at the Half ’n Half.”

When he
would have pulled away, she wrapped her arms around him and held him close. “Be
careful, T.J.”

*****

“Can you
do it?”

Charles
Bennett perched on the straight-backed chair next to Adam Rothschild, his
expensive techno-wizard. An observer would say there couldn’t be two men more
dissimilar. Tall, lanky Adam lived in t-shirts with various types of writing on
them and jeans that always looked as if they came from a thrift store. His
blond hair touched his shoulders and, unless he tied it into a tail, it often
swung forward over his face. Bennett wondered how he could even see but decided
he didn’t need to know. He got what he paid for. He didn’t care about anything
else.

The
computer genius worked out of his home, an address that appeared nowhere in any
of the BGE personnel records. Bennett paid him from one of the blind accounts,
Adam’s entire job being to keep the coded files up to date and secure. Bennett
fed him the information on an encrypted handheld computer and Adam plugged it
in and protected it. In theory, no one could access it except the two of them.

There
were those who would call him an idiot for keeping a record of every
transaction. Maybe so, but he considered the records his insurance in case
either of his so-called partners got itchy trigger fingers. If anything
happened to him, Adam had written orders where to send the information. The
system also helped him keep track of money being funneled into BGE accounts.

On his
orders, Adam had begun building yet another firewall, one the techie assured
him would be even harder to crack than the existing one. He should have come to
Adam when Haggerty first disappeared, Bennett told himself for the hundredth
time. His own arrogance had tripped him up again. He’d refused to believe
Haggerty could slip through their fingers as easily as he’d done or could hide
himself away undetected. He’d been convinced at any moment he’d have the man in
his hands. Instead, an innocent man had been killed and they were left with a
body to dispose of in a way strictly off the grid.

And the
final arrogance, the self-assurance no one could penetrate the firewalls. Adam
had guaranteed it against all but the most sophisticated hackers. And Bennett,
again arrogantly, had deluded himself that no one he knew could penetrate the
curtain of secrecy. But Haggerty was smart. Clever. Resourceful. Bennett had to
believe, the way things were going, the man might somehow manage to open the
sealed files.

He
remembered now the man was the biggest information hound in the world, a trait
that made him valuable at BGE. Bennett had seen him sit at his computer for
hours during a negotiating period, digging out every hidden scrap of
information about the target company. Now he might be using those skills to
find out the real truth about his boss, and Bennett couldn’t tolerate that.

So here
he sat, his glare warning Adam not to make any smart remarks or ask the wrong
question, just create yet another layer of protection. A final complicated
firewall hiding the most secret layers of information. The guts of it. He
wanted electronic traps set so anyone breaching the electronic trap would leave
a trace Adam could follow.

“Are you
sure you can do it?” he asked again. “Something to tell us if Haggerty, in
fact, digs into these files? Failsafes aren’t always infallible. I should know
from years of being in business. What if he’s into them already?”

“I’d be
damn surprised,” Adam told him. “But this little baby will trip him up and he
won’t even be aware of it.” He laughed, the sound tinged with egotism. “I can
do whatever you want me to with it. Watch.”

His
fingers flew over the keys. Bennett had no idea what the strings of code
appearing on the screen stood for, nor did he want to. He only cared the information
be locked up in a virtual safe.

“Okay,
let’s give it a test run.”

Adam
slid his chair over to another computer and began typing on that keyboard.
Bennett studied the screen as a coded document appeared.

“If
whoever you’re interested in has any hacking skills at all or uses any kind of
decent decryption program he can get into the interior folders.” He scowled at
Bennett. “I wanted to set a more sophisticated firewall in the beginning and,
if you remember, you said it wouldn’t be necessary.”

Bennett
ground his teeth. He didn’t like to be reminded of anything his overconfidence
cost him.

“Water
under the bridge,” he said. He hoped the little shit wouldn’t also remind him
they’d have Haggerty by now if he’d agreed to his suggestions in the beginning.
He kept his eyes glued to the monitor, watching documents appear one after the
other.