Hard to Handle (24 page)

He flashed her a smile.

“What is it that we'll be asking him to do? Stop taking brides? I can't imagine he's the only one, Kaylee. He might just be the tip of the iceberg.”

“I know that, but if he's the one controlling my dad, then he's the only one we need to take out of the game.”

“Unless we can get him to use his powers for good instead of evil.”

Now Kaylee smiled at his silly teasing. “How?”

“If we have to find out what motivates him the most, and we agree it can't be money, then we have to convince him that he can have more of it without corruption than with.”

Kaylee tapped her finger on the pub table, feeling a tingling of excitement.

“That's going to require a lot of plotting,” she suggested.

“I've seen your skills, ninja. I think it's worth a shot. And if that doesn't work, we'll use a club instead of a scalpel. I'll just take a team and go in to have a chat with him.”

CHAPTER 24

Sam asked Renee over on Saturday to get her insights on a few things. Namely, the information from Mark McMann that seemed to incriminate the mayor of Baltimore in bribing Jason Holt, then forcing George Clement out of running Clement Media, and the ideas he and Kaylee were throwing around to address it. But Sam also needed an impartial perspective on the situation, and Renee would provide that. They had similar years of experience at MI5, the British secret service, investigating all sorts of plots and criminal enterprises, some involving high-level government officials. She would have a good handle on whether their plan had merit.

And, quite frankly, Sam was no longer certain of his own objectivity when it came to helping Kaylee.

Unfortunately, Kaylee thought Evan would have some ideas, and Evan brought along Nia to meet Kaylee again. And Evan invited Lucas in case they needed to hack into something quickly, and Lucas couldn't stay away from his new girlfriend, Alex, while she was in town. Noting that it was a party of seven, Kaylee invited Junior over to join them, making it eight.

At two o'clock, Sam looked around his rear yard, backing onto the river, and gave up on the idea of a private discussion with anyone. While Evan and Lucas's girlfriends chatted among themselves and played with Niko, everyone else was in the middle of a giant debate.

“I think we find the evidence we need and give it to the police,” Lucas said, handing out a cold beer bottle to anyone who raised a hand. “There is always a data trail.”

“Maybe, but we haven't found one yet. And we don't have enough leads to know which direction to go next, right?” Evan reasoned. “Seems to me that our best sources of accurate information are Holt, McMann, and George. It's in the best interest of everyone else involved to not tell us anything. Fleming, for instance. If that's true, let's look at what those sources have provided so far. We know from Holt that someone from city hall was likely involved. We can't talk to George directly, but we've gone through all the communication and records we can access from four years ago. They don't tell us much about who's influencing him, except it has to be someone powerful and connected. Now, we have the lead on Mayor Gordon from McMann, and it finally connects a few dots. So it seems to me that we either act on intel we have, or back down.”

“I say we back down,” Junior mumbled. “This is all too crazy for me. You can't just take down a city mayor—particularly one that we all think is well connected to who knows what kinds of organized crime.”

“It's no different from a senator. Three actually, but who's counting?” Lucas stated blandly.

“A czar and a prime minister,” added Evan. “Under DaCosta operations of course.”

“A few judges and a bishop,” Renee topped up.

They all looked at Sam for his contribution.

“A prince. But we were only fifteen and he was a wanker,” he told them with a big smile.

Everyone laughed.

“All right,” Junior conceded, throwing up his hands in defeat. “You guys are obviously the experts.”

“So, we agree? We'll look for a way to get to the mayor?” Kaylee asked.

“Until we have more evidence,” Lucas said.

“Agreed, let's do it,” Evan added.

Kaylee looked up at Sam, and he nodded with his support.

“Okay! I was going to call a friend of mine who works in the mayor's office, but I don't like the idea of getting anyone else involved. She's the one who gave me the lead on contract overspend four years ago. Thank God I kept her name out of it then,” Kaylee explained, leaning forward. “So I did a lot a research this morning and, from what I can remember, Lyle Gordon likes to think he's a bit of a celebrity. He throws big parties, and his wife is very social. He loves to be on the front page of major papers and thinks nothing of having his kids there with him. And from what I've pulled up, he hasn't changed at all in his second term.”

“He has an ego,” Sam concluded.

“Yes,” Kaylee agreed. “Maybe that's his motivation. He obviously loves being mayor and being the man in charge. But another election is around the corner, and there's a city councilman who's been eyeing the job for years now. Emeril Marchesi has persistently hinted at city corruption under Gordon's leadership. In fact, Marchesi is the one who started to make noise about city budget mismanagement back when I was writing for the
Journal
. No one really paid attention to his accusations from what I remember, but it was enough to mark him as an adversarial opponent. It looks like Marchesi lost to Gordon by only a slim margin in the last election. So what if Mayor Gordon believes hard evidence of city corruption will go to Marchesi before the next election? I bet he'd do anything to prevent that.”

“Anything like what?” Junior asked, drawn back into the planning out of curiosity.

“Like declare his own stance on stopping city corruption, and using the evidence to start a public inquiry.”

The five people around her were silent for about a minute. Then Renee grinned.

“It's brilliant, actually.”

“Yeah,” Lucas added. “It sounds like something the CIA would do.”

“It does, actually,” Evan mumbled, looking at Kaylee with new eyes.

“But the mayor is corrupt, so why would he go along with this? Stop the corruption that he's profiting from?” Junior asked, clearly baffled.

“Because the evidence is going to come out anyway. This way, he can control it and use it to his advantage. Be a hero, the one to clean up a dirty city.”

“Okay, but why not just give the evidence to Marchesi and let him use it. Then get a good man into the office.”

“It's an option,” Sam noted. “But we don't know he's a good man. And we don't have any leverage to use on him, so no control over how he uses the information.”

“The evil you know, and all that,” said Evan.

“Lastly, that won't necessarily remove any influence that Dad's under, Junior. At least not right away,” added Kaylee.

There was more silent contemplation.

“Like I said, you guys are the experts in this kind of thing,” Junior told them. “But to me this sounds like a massive game of chess where we're intimidating the criminals.”

“Exactly!” Renee agreed. “It's bloody brilliant!”

Junior just shook his head and went back to listening. The others leaned forward so they were surrounding Kaylee in a tight circle.

“So how do we approach Gordon?” Lucas asked. “We can't just knock on his door with a proposition.”

“And it has to come from someone he thinks has clout in his social circles, right?” Kaylee reminded them. “I mean, the family is in the paper and local magazines every week at a charity event, or expensive social function. His wife is on two charitable boards, heads the Scottish Society and the PTA. It has to be someone from these types of circles.”

“What about you, Evan?” Lucas asked. “You're still on the board at DaCosta. That has to carry some influence.”

Evan shrugged. “Maybe—”

“Wait,” interrupted Renee. “What was that, Kaylee? His wife is head of the what?”

“The PTA?”

“No,” Renee said, shaking her head and pulling out her cell phone to type in something. “You said head of the Scottish Society. The Scottish Heritage Society of Maryland, to be exact, and one of the largest organizations of its kind in the United States according to their website. And that's going to be our in.”

Renee looked at Sam as he sighed dramatically. The others looked between them, waiting for an explanation.

“Are you going to tell them, or should I?” she finally demanded. “Fine, I'll do it.”

Renee stood up and stepped just in front of Sam then bowed, backing away.

“May I present to you,” she stated in an overly formal, proper English accent, “Samuel Mackenzie, Viscount Andri and the future Earl of Seaforth.”

Lucas was the first to snort; then Evan was laughing also. Sam rolled his eyes, and Renee had a big grin on her face. Kaylee smiled up at Sam.

“That's useful, having our own resident Scotsman who could pretend to be titled. It would definitely impress them,” Kaylee mused. “But do you think we'd get away with it?”

“You all think I'm taking a piss?” Renee replied with an even bigger laugh. “I'm dead serious. Sam's dad is the current Earl of Seaforth.”

Sam shoved his hands deep into the front pockets of his jeans and shook his head. He had not seen this coming. He shot Renee a dark look that he hoped demonstrated how annoyed he was. His family title wasn't a secret exactly, but it wasn't something that he ever talked about. Certainly not in America.

“Are you kidding me?” Lucas asked with eyes squinted. “How did I not know this?”

“Wow,” Evan added. “Now I've heard everything.”

“Okay, let's all calm down. It's hardly a big deal. Viscount isn't even a real title, it's just a courtesy, really,” he mumbled. But his friends continued to look at him like he had grown another head.

Kaylee cocked a brow at him and Sam shrugged.

“So what do you think?” Renee continued. “Will his majesty here be impressive enough to get the mayor's attention?”

“Yeah,” Kaylee replied. “I think he'll do.”

Renee went back to her phone to do more research on the mayor's wife, Emma Gordon, and her Scottish Society activities. Evan, Lucas, and even Junior started to pepper Sam with a bunch of random silly questions about the peerage in Great Britain. Sam answered a couple but ignored most. Kaylee just listened. Her eyes connected with his every once in a while, but Sam couldn't tell what she was thinking.

“I think I've found the perfect occasion,” Renee announced, holding up her phone in victory.

“What?” Kaylee asked.

“There's a fancy dinner coming up next Saturday in support of a Celtic kids' summer camp. Looks like the Scottish Society is a big sponsor.”

“Next week? That's really soon,” Kaylee said, biting her lip. “Won't tickets for something like that be sold out? Maybe we should go for something a little further out so we have time to get ready.”

“It's either now or never,” Renee advised. “I don't see anything posted that would work in August. So, if we don't act now, we'll have to see what comes up after that. And it has to be something that the mayor will attend, not just his wife.”

“What do you guys think?” Kaylee asked the group.

“If we're going to do this, now's as good a time as any,” Lucas said, and Evan nodded.

“Sam?” Kaylee finally asked, turning to face him.

“A week is plenty of time in our business, so let's do it,” he told her.

Kaylee looked around again. “Okay, it looks like we have a plan for a plan.”

The party broke up soon after, and by early evening, Sam and Kaylee were alone eating a meal of leftovers from lunch.

“So, the future Earl of... what again?” she finally asked.

“Seaforth,” Sam provided. He'd known the topic was going to come up again with Kaylee. She had been too quiet about it in the afternoon.

“Right.”

“What?” he demanded when she just looked at him, assessing.

“Nothing. I'm just thinking about how little I know about you.”

“I'm a pretty simple man. There's not much to know.”

She snorted rather rudely. “I'll assume you're being extremely sarcastic.”

Sam shrugged. But it did raise a good point. So much of their interactions up to now had been focused on Kaylee's family, her relationship with Evan, her situation with Antonoli. And all with a great deal of scrutiny. It seemed a little unfair that she did not have the same insights into his life other than whatever small comments he may have made when they first met.

“What do you want to know?” he asked.

She started with the easy stuff, about his family and life near Inverness, Scotland, while growing up. Sam was an only child. His mom ran a small luxury inn on the family property, Seaforth Manor, while his dad dabbled in farming on the surrounding land.

“What did you do before you joined Fortis?” she asked.

“I worked for MI5 as a security advisor in London.”

Her mouth fell open.

“MI5? As in the British spy agency? Like Sean Connery and James Bond?”

“No, that's MI6,” Sam corrected with a tolerant smile. “MI5 is our secret service. That's how I met Lucas actually. We worked on a project together with Interpol.”

“So you weren't a spy?” she persisted, looking at him closely as though to test for the truth.

“Definitely not.” There was no need to tell her that up until a year ago, her very own Evan DaCosta had actually been a spy for the CIA, code name “Ice.”

“Huh, British secret service,” she echoed. “I can see what you mean about being a simple man.”

He chuckled.

“So, what else? Any marriages, children? Other lovers?”

“Nope, none of the above.”

Sam felt as though there was another question on her mind, but Kaylee didn't put it forward.

“Well, that's all I can think of right now,” she finally conceded. “Except, do you own a kilt?”

“Aye, of course! Two actually. And before you ask, no self-respecting Scotsman wears pants under his kilt.”

“Good to know,” she replied, laughing. “Now, all we have to do is get the future Lord of Seaforth invited to a party next weekend. But I'm sure I can take care of that.”