Andrew Gross - Reckless

He nodded, flattening his lips. “Yeah, I think so, Annie.”

“Oh, Ty…” Her eyes glistened. “How could you possibly keep something like that from me?” She stared, tears about to flow, as if she was looking into a face she had seen a million times but that had now changed. “What have you gotten into, Ty? You have a new life for yourself. You have me. What hold does she have on you? What is it that’s dragging you back there, Ty?”

“I’m not dragged back anywhere, Annie…”

“Yes, you are.” She nodded. “You are… This woman’s dead, Ty. I’m here. Why are you willing to throw it all away? Why can’t you love me like that?”

“I do love you, Annie,” he said. “I do.”

“No.” She shook her head with tears in her eyes. “Not like that.”

He wanted to reach out and take her in. He wanted to tell her there was more to it. More than he was saying. But what hurt him was that she was right. They had only made one commitment to each other. Dealing in the truth. Honesty. She deserved that one thing.

And he had withheld it from her.

“I won’t even ask you where you’ve been.” She tried to smile bravely. “I mean, it’s not my business. You’re a good man, Ty. I know that, and I know you’d do anything for me. And for Jared. You’ve already proven that. You treat him like a son. But he’s not; I know that. And I’m not your wife either.”

“I was in Serbia, Annie. And London.” He swallowed. “I was with an agent from the Treasury Department, and we were tracking someone who may have been responsible for her death.”

“Serbia?” Annie shook her head, wiping away a tear. “London. Well, at least it wasn’t anywhere exciting or glamorous, right?”

“We weren’t exactly on a Butterfield and Robinson bike tour, Annie.”

That made her smile. “I’m sure. Was it dangerous?”

He looked at her, not really wanting to say. Not now. “I guess.”

“You guess…” She sniffed a little cynically and shook her head. “So did you catch him? The person who did this thing.”

“No. He’s dead. Annie, listen…” He took hold of her hand and squeezed it in his own. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I held things from you. I’m sorry to have hurt you in any way. That’s the last thing I wanted to do. Or that you deserve.”

“You’re damn right it’s the last thing I deserve. But I can’t make you love me either, can I? And I deserve that too. I don’t need the roses or the Valentine’s Day hearts or some big commitment. But I deserve to be loved, don’t I?”

“I do love you, Annie…”

“No.” She shook her head. “I meant like her.”

She smiled at him one more time, then glanced at her watch. “I guess firing up the grill doesn’t exactly seem like the thing to do right now.”

He looked at her and tried to smile back. “No, I guess not.”

“I hope you find ’em, Ty.”

“Who?”

“The one you’re looking for.”

Hauck didn’t know if she was talking about April’s murderer or maybe someone else.

She got up. “You know, it’s not like me to leave with something corny like this…” There was a wistful twinkle in her clear blue eyes. “But I guess I was always hoping, inside, when you went to someplace like London, it might have been with me.”

She brushed past him and he reached for her arm.

She stood there for a second in his grasp.

“Regarding April, I haven’t told you everything. There’s one more thing…”

“I’m sorry, Ty.” Annie pulled free. “But I don’t want to know.”

The e-mail flashed on Naomi’s laptop when she logged on at six the next morning. It was a short, three-line response, and she stared at it in her oversize Princeton tee. She read it twice, just to make sure.

It changed everything.

She waited as long as she could, showered, her heart racing. Then she punched in the number on her speed dial. “Ty…”

“Hey.” He sounded groggy.

“I figured you’d be jet lagged. You okay?”

“I’m okay,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Didn’t sleep much. I’ve been up since three. Just something personal. What’s going on?”

“I got something back from Bern.” Her voice shook with excitement. She told him about the response. From the assistant consul general at the embassy there. “A private jet, registered to a Dubai aviation company, landed in Geneva at seven twenty-one A.M. June twenty-fifth. Hassani passed through immigration there half an hour later. That’s the day before Thibault’s lift ticket was dated, Ty.”

“Geneva’s not Gstaad, Naomi.”

“Geneva’s the closest airport to Gstaad for someone clearing immigration. It’s only a two-hour drive away. I checked. Hassani was there, Ty!”

She had tried desperately to fit it all together ever since she had received the reply. It was clear now something important had taken place there. A conspiracy mapped out, put in motion months later by the largest stock fund in the world dumping U.S. securities. Two investment managers secretly paid off to conceal massive losses at their teetering banks, then killed, setting in motion a terrible slide in the already reeling financial sector. Stocks sent plummeting. Banks going under.

The walls tumbling down.

Now she had to get her people involved. Hassani was in New York. This might be their only chance to get him. The FBI, the Justice Department…What she had to do now was figure out who she could trust.

“Who have you told about this, Naomi?”

“No one,” she replied. “Just you. But I can’t keep it that way any longer. Hassani’s in New York. He’s there for the Reynolds Reid annual meeting. I’m not certain for just how long. I know Geneva’s not Gstaad, but we can prove he was in the area at the same time as Thibault and al-Bashir. We have the transcript of him on the phone setting the plan in motion. The flow of cash from one of his firms to pay off James Donovan. The three of them were behind a plot to take down the economy of the United States, Ty. Marty al-Bashir basically admitted that much.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I’m going to jog on it first. There’s a lot at stake. Not to mention my career if I blow this up. I was thinking…” Something al-Bashir had said had occurred to her. About how it wasn’t terrorism but something much, much larger. “What if there were more than three? What if there were others involved? Who were there. What if this Gstaad Gang had a few more paying members?”

“I’ve thought that too,” Hauck said back. “And I’m already on it, Naomi.”

He was getting ready to leave when his cell rang. Steve Chrisafoulis.

“I want you to see something, Ty,” the Greenwich detective said. “Are you near a computer?”

“Can be,” Hauck said back, throwing his car keys on the counter and heading to his desk.

“We had an ID come back. One of Sonny Merced’s buddies in Iraq. They knew each other in the Hundred-and-first over there. I told you we were checking that out. He also worked as an armed security consultant with GTM, the security firm that told Merced to get lost. Talon’s firm.”

“Yeah.” Hauck turned on his computer. “I remember, Steve.”

He logged on to his e-mail account. He saw the message flashing. He clicked it open and then the attachment.

A photo came on the screen.

A man in fatigues, leaning on an armored vehicle. From his GTM days. Muscular, ripped. In a gray army T-shirt, brandishing an M4 rifle. His hair short, wiry, pulled back in a stubby ponytail.

Jack “Red” O’Toole.

“I’m on it, Steve…”