“He made more billions here,” Rock said. “And it all looks clean.”
“We can’t tell from this, but at first glance, yeah, it does.”
“Jordan’s name is on all these accounts,” I said, “and…” I tapped furiously. “He made a withdrawal from the bank in New York.” I paused. “Yesterday.”
“For how much?”
“Five hundred grand.”
“That’s it?”
“Makes perfect sense. Such a small amount wouldn’t look odd to anyone going through the accounts.”
“He’s in the US, Diamond said.” Rock wrinkled his forehead.
“Yeah. He is.” I groaned. “He’s going to run.”
53
Lacey
Jordan and I walked a few blocks to another building.
“Fonda’s apartment is here,” he said. “Come on.”
I followed him, his pistol securely in my purse with my hand still on it. He nodded to the doorman and then walked in. We took the elevator to the seventeenth floor and he slid a keycard through the door of apartment 1765.
“You kept evidence here? At Fonda’s?”
“Yeah. We made sure she couldn’t be implicated. They wouldn’t come here without a warrant, and they couldn’t get a warrant. Besides—”
“You made sure all your siblings looked guilty.”
“Right on. I learned from the best. My father himself.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just get the evidence, and then I’ll decide whether it’s enough to help you and Fonda hightail it out of here.”
“So you’re considering it.”
“Of course I am.”
But I was lying. If he and Fonda had truly killed Derek, they were going down. Hank Morgan was going down. Everyone behind this scheme was going down. And yeah, I was feeling particularly vengeful after being dragged away in handcuffs and stuck in a holding cell for hours.
“It’s in a safe hidden inside a book.” He walked toward a small bookshelf on one wall.
I stepped closer, still training the gun on Jordan.
The contents on the shelf were interesting—a mixture of romance novels and hardcover classics. Jordan pulled out a leather-covered copy Moby Dick. He opened it, and inside was a tiny safe. He entered a combination. was a thumb drive, a glasses case, and a manila envelope. He pocketed the envelope and handed me the thumb drive.
“This will show you what really happened.”
I shoved it in the pocket of my navy blazer and then eyed the glasses case. “What’s that? And what’s in that envelope?”
He turned toward me and opened the glasses case. “Fonda’s readers.” He pulled out a pair of glasses.
“She keeps reading glasses locked in a safe?”
“These are special readers,” he said. “Really expensive.”
“What?”
But that was all that came out of my mouth as Jordan lunged at me and pushed one of the temple tips into the side of my neck.
Sharp? The temple tips of eyeglasses.
“I’m really sorry about this.”
Words. From Jordan.
I dropped to the floor, losing hold of the gun.
In a haze, a blurry image moved around me. Making sounds.
A loud noise.
A gun firing.
No! No! No!
And then…
Nothing.
54
Reid
Files led to more files. “There’s enough here to implicate Dad and our half-brother for about fifty lifetimes.”
“Anything on Irene?” Rock asked.
I shook my head. “Her name is nowhere to be found. He kept her out of it.”
“Amazing. You think maybe he truly loved her?”
“Nah. Derek Wolfe didn’t love anyone but himself. He didn’t love his kids, not even this Jordan dude, or he wouldn’t have dragged him into this mess.”
“I don’t get it.” Rock shook his head. “He had everything. Every-fucking-thing. Why would he do something like this?”
“Because he could.”
Rock and I both jerked upward at Diamond’s voice. She’d sneaked into the small cubicle without either of us noticing.
“It’s just a theory,” she continued, “but I think your father, after he made a legal business out of your mother’s trust fund, realized that criminal activity paid a lot better. He took a look at where the money had come from. Your mother’s money was clean, but only because it had been laundered three or more times to get it there. It had originally come from crime, and he figured he could do the same thing. Plus, with the billions he’d already made legally, he could finance just about anything.”
“But a hunting ground.” Rock shook his head. “Who the hell comes up with that?”
“We’ll never know the answer,” Diamond said. “God knows I could never get it out of him.”
“Father Jim,” I said.
“Is dead,” Rock replied. “Sorry. I didn’t get the chance to tell you about my call with Buck. You were…indisposed.”
My cheeks warmed. What the hell? No reason to be embarrassed about making love with my wife.
“So Jim’s dead. Jordan’s gone. Morgan’s dirty.” I rubbed my jawline. “And we still don’t know who the hell offed our father. How are we going to get Lacey out of this? Get ourselves out of this?”
“This place goes a long way toward that,” Rock said. “None of us are implicated in any of it. Only Jordan.”
Diamond’s face fell.
“I’m sorry,” Rock said, “but if he did it, we need to know. My wife is innocent. So are the rest of us.”