Steven Gore - Final Target

Burch leaned farther toward Gage. “There were two. One was the Podolskaya Group…and since the client had investments in Ukraine-”

Gage held up his hand. “Don’t tell me. It’s Gravilov.”

Burch sat up, then flinched in pain and pressed his palms against his chest. “Does Peterson know?” Burch’s voice rose. “Is he talking about two indictments? Like I’m some kind of mob lawyer?”

Gage shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’m not sure he even knows all the ways Goldstake Bank is connected to SatTek-”

“It’s what?” The color drained from Burch’s face. “That can’t be-”

Gage nodded. “Goldstake Bank now owns the SatTek facility.”

Burch slumped. “And that means Peterson can connect me at both ends, make me look like the one who put this whole thing together. Bigger even than Granger. Just like he’s been trying to do all along.”

“Not yet, but it’s just a matter of time.” Gage looked down and thought for a moment. “Maybe…” Then back up at Burch. “We need to loop back, before SatTek. You know anybody at Granger’s old firm in New York?”

W estbrae Ventures Executive VP Herb Smothers was wiping his mouth with a cloth napkin as he answered the front door of his Westchester County colonial outside New York City the following night. He was still dressed in his suit slacks, starched blue shirt, and red tie. His sandy hair was short and graying at the temples. His face was open and friendly, as if expecting a neighbor-until Gage identified himself and said, “Jack Burch suggested I talk to you.”

Smothers’s Ivy League face slammed shut. He clenched his teeth and locked his eyes on Gage. “And I told Jack I had nothing to say.”

Gage heard the clunk of rubber cleats on the walkway behind him, then a male voice saying, “We sure fucked up those assholes.” Then another male voice laughing and hands slapping. He glanced over his shoulder as two men in their early twenties, wearing mud-splattered blue and yellow striped rugby shirts, emerged from the darkness and into the light cast by the porch fixture. They alerted like Rottweilers to the tension on their father’s face and came to a stop behind Gage.

The larger of the two pointed at Gage’s back. “This guy giving you a problem, Pop?” The two stepped forward, bracketing Gage, their shoulders touching his and their stale beer breath wafting toward him.

Smothers looked back and forth between his sons. Uncertainty clouded his face as he grasped the absurdity of having his drunk sons come to his rescue.

Smothers fixed his eyes on Gage, but spoke to his sons, “I’ll take care of it.”

Gage turned sideways to allow them to pass, then back toward Smothers as they thunked across the marble foyer and toward the kitchen.

“Smart move,” Gage said. “Now tell me about Granger.”

Smothers shook his head. “You wasted the trip.” Smothers’s voice was now firm, as if a businesslike tone could convince Gage to leave with his questions unanswered. “I couldn’t even if I wanted to.” He then tried a limp my-hands-are-tied shrug. “Corporate counsel locked the whole thing down the moment Granger walked away from Westbrae. It was mutual. He doesn’t talk about us. We don’t talk about him.”

“Granger’s dead. It’s not like he can sue anybody. And somebody in Westbrae has got to start showing some courage-and it might as well be you.”

“It’s just…” Smothers’s voice weakened. He leaned forward and peered into the darkness. Fear showed in his eyes. “You don’t understand who Granger was…and the people who he…”

But Gage did understand. “You’re afraid of something worse than getting fired.”

Smothers nodded, then swallowed hard. “I can always get another job-”

“But not another life.”

Smothers flinched at the words, then spread his hands in acknowledgment and defeat. “After what happened to Jack and to Granger, I can’t…”

Gage’s mind flashed on a bouquet that had stood by Burch’s bedside in the hospital.

“I know you want to help Jack. That was the message you were really sending with the flowers.” He looked back over his shoulder and made a show of inspecting the cars parked in the shadows along the street. Then once again at Smothers. “What do you say we step inside? I’ll make my pitch and you decide whether you can help.”

Smothers thought for a moment, studying Gage as if the answer lay with Gage, not within himself.

“The grand jury is already meeting, moving like a locomotive,” Gage said. “And I’m running out of time to derail it.” Gage shrugged. “If Jack gets indicted, it’s all going to be out of my hands. His lawyers are going to hit Westbrae with subpoenas for every piece of paper and e-mail that has anything to do with Granger, and probe into every crooked thing he did and what Westbrae knew about it. They’ll lay Westbrae open like a filleted catfish.”

Gage slowly shook his head, as if in commiseration. “I won’t be able to stop it.” He then tossed Smothers a life-line. “But I don’t need everything, I only want to know about one thing…Just one thing.” Gage locked his eyes on Smothers. “And just between you and me.”

Smothers swallowed. “What’s that?”

Gage pointed into the house. “I think we better talk inside.”

Driving back to the airport an hour later, Gage had what he needed, but was furious that with the grand jury clock ticking down, he’d consumed eighteen hours getting it.

But it finally made sense why Granger suddenly showed up in California. He had used Kovalenko and Goldstake Securities in a pump and dump with a Midwestern restaurant chain, and Westbrae had buried the crime in money before the SEC could find out about the scam.

The links in the SatTek chain snapped tight as Gage approached the rental car return at JFK. Gravilov had been running the SatTek scam from the beginning: first through Granger, then through Kovalenko, and, finally, through Alla Tarasova-and had been protecting it one dead body at a time.

Gage flashed back on the burglar’s shoulder crushing into him outside Burch’s office, then shuddered at the irony. The burglary had probably saved Burch’s life. If there was anything in the SatTek file suggesting that Burch had connected SatTek to Goldstake, Gravilov would’ve had to finish Burch off.

Gage pulled to the stop in the Hertz return line and reached toward the glove compartment for the rental agreement, but his hand froze as his heart sank. Gravilov’s people had been watching Granger the whole time. And by forcing him to run to the government to make a deal, Gage had flushed him out so they could pick him off.

He looked into his rearview mirror, now chilled by the thought that he might have led Smothers into the same trap-but then caught himself. It was a trap the coward deserved to be in. If Westbrae hadn’t concealed Granger’s crime, there never would’ve been a SatTek scam-and no need for a cover-up that left Burch bullet-ridden and Granger and the Fitzhughs dead.

But at least tonight, for whatever reason, Smothers had done the right thing.

Gage reached for his cell phone. “You have any vacation time?” he asked, but he didn’t wait for Smothers to answer. “Take it, now. And as far away as you can get.”

C an you come to the lab?”

“When?” Gage asked, swinging his legs over the edge of his bed. He smiled to himself. The excitement in Blanchard’s voice dissipated the gloom that had enveloped Gage during the sleepless night.

“Now’s a good time.”

“Who is it?” Faith asked, propping herself up on a pillow.

Gage covered his cell phone’s mouthpiece. “It’s Blanchard.”