He thought he was funny, but Zach stayed the course. “You would have remembered her when she came to you a year later, looking for me.”
“Man, you two are awfully serious.” He sipped his drink again, his brow folding into a hard frown. “What’s going on? Why are you asking about some hookup from four years ago?”
“Because that hookup ended up pregnant,” Zach told him, “and wanted to tell me I had a kid.”
Marshall sat back, palms facing Zach. “Whoa, what? I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
Zach’s anger flared.
Stick to the facts.
Josh’s advice helped Zach maintain control.
The clink of something hitting the floor drew Marshall’s gaze.
“Sorry,” Josh said. “Silverware.”
While Josh was picking up his utensils, Zach said, “I just want to be crystal clear here. You’re saying that while I was working in Sumatra doing a shoot and article for Surfer magazine, no woman contacted you to get ahold of me?”
“Look,” he said, “I don’t know what’s going on, but, dude, four years? I mean, I could look back at calendars for meetings, but I’d remember a chick claiming to be your baby mama.”
“What about paying her to go away? Would you remember that?”
“What the fuck?” Marshall picked up his drink and slammed it back, then cracked the table with the glass and looked at Josh. “Can you believe this? Did he hit his head on a reef or something?”
“Or something,” Josh replied.
Marshall turned to Zach, and all the fake lightness he’d come in with vanished. “It’s been a long day. Call me when you’re ready to go over the series contract, but I wouldn’t wait. There are a lot of surfers in this town who’d kill to get this part.”
He reached for his briefcase, but his hand hit the seat. Marshal looked around. “What happened to my—”
“Briefcase?” Josh held it up on the other side of the table.
Marshall looked between them. “What the hell’s going on?”
“I could ask you the same thing.” Zach picked up a file folder he’d tucked beside him and pulled out the copy of the check, sliding it in front of Marshall much the way Tessa had done to Zach a couple of nights before. “What is this?”
Marshall framed the paper with his hands, studying it like he’d never seen it before. “I have no idea. It looks like a cashier’s check from your account.”
“Look at the date.”
“What about it?”
Patience. Perseverance. “It was drawn on the account while I was in Indonesia. While I was working and traveling for four different projects. While I didn’t have so much as one bar of cell service eighty percent of the time.”
Marshall turned his head and narrowed his eyes on Zach. “Are you accusing me of—”
“I’m not accusing you of anything. I know you did it,” he lied. Zach might be ninety-nine percent sure of it, but he was holding on to that one percent uncertainty before he went all in after his kid. It was a huge cliff, and he didn’t want to dive until he knew he was going after his daughter. “I’m giving you a chance to tell the truth. And before you think about lying again, I’ve already had the bank print the daily activity of that account during the months I was out of the country. I already have proof of you transferring in twenty-five grand. And of that twenty-five grand being pulled out in this cashier’s check the next day. Now, tell me—how could I have done that from bumfuck nowhere on the other side of the planet?”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” He stabbed his finger at the paper, his face growing red with anger. “That’s your account, dude, not mine.”
“You’re joint,” Josh spoke up for the first time. “Which makes it your account too. And we have video tape of you in the bank branch a mile from your house, making a transaction.”
Zach tried not to look shocked at that information, because they didn’t have any video tape. Josh must have seen something that told him Marshall needed a shove.
When his agent started to shake his head again, Zach’s patience snapped. He fisted the front of Marshall’s shirt and jerked him so hard, the buttons popped.
Nose to nose, Zach told him, “If you don’t start talking, right fucking now, I’ll have the IRS auditing your ass back to the Stone Age. But only after I have your ass thrown in jail for fraud. Which is a felony, in case you didn’t know. And when the IRS finds more instances of fraud—and they will, because we both know you didn’t pull shit like this just once—they’ll charge you for each incident as a separate offense. You’ll be looking through bars for at least a decade—”