From Lang’s feed, I heard rustling. People were moving. The meeting was probably ending. Time to aim for the fences.
“Listen, I have to make one last lap before I meet up with Miss Lindstrom. I’m only telling you this because I know I can trust you.” I touched her shoulder. “Lisa, I’m afraid there’s someone toxic in the organization. Someone near the top. Does that make you think of anyone?”
She glanced over her shoulder like she was afraid she was being watched. “I’ve heard rumors that someone’s going to be ex-communicated.”
I didn’t flinch. “Do you have a name?”
“No, but Devlin Masters comes to mind.”
Shit. Devlin was only a bit player, and Anson was too smart to get his own hands dirty. There had to be a high-up go-between, someone so shady that even Lisa would notice.
“Although, I wonder about the new IT guy Howard hired. Everyone in the Thousandaire Club calls Mr. Anson Howard.”
Membership has its privileges, I guess.
“I only met him because we had to process some forms at our office,” she continued. “He gave me a bad vibe. He was kind of like…”
Fuck me. “Like me? It’s okay. I’m not offended. But how? He was partly Asian?” I asked hopefully.
“Oh, no! That’s not what I meant. Taylor’s very… Precise. He can be very still. He seems to notice everyone.”
“Are you hearing what I’m hearing?” Wheeler said in my earpiece.
“We’re all hearing it,” Kat said.
“Do you remember Taylor’s last name?” I asked Lisa, although I assumed it would be fake.
“Taylor Stewart.”
“Lisa, thanks for your help,” I said as I trotted away. “I have to do that perimeter check.”
“Lang,” I said, but as I did, I saw him coming out the door with the first throng of people leaving, following a few feet behind Savannah.
“I’m getting her out,” Lang replied. “I’m not a fucking idiot.”
Since I was her bodyguard, I didn’t have to keep my distance. “Miss Lindstrom,” I said, as I took her elbow and guided her quickly away from the building.
“Something wrong?” she asked. “More wrong than that weird meeting, I mean.”
“I sure as hell hope not,” I said, but my gut was twisting into a knot of warning.
If Lisa’s assessment was right, Anson wanted Devlin out and had recently hired a former spec ops guy. There was probably no hope in hell that those two things were unrelated.
34
SAVANNAH
Istared at the pages of content that had been sent to L&M’s Annapolis office. Kyle, acting as my courier, had retrieved them an hour ago, and now the entire team had gathered to see what had arrived in the envelope with no return address.
The letter I held in front of me was a copy of the one Anson or his flying monkeys had sent to the investor I’d pitched four days earlier. There were full-color pictures included. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted to shout it was a lie, and it wasn’t fair, and I’d been wronged. But everyone sitting around the conference table with me knew that.
I’d been too busy noticing Anson’s followers love bombing me to notice they’d been surreptitiously photographing me at the WCI meeting.
“I look guilty,” I said.
Anson’s message to me was clear. Any time I tried to bring in an investor to save L&M, Anson would share the photos and his version of events, which was that I’d stolen company money and tried to launder it through WCI. They would believe him because his ties to Wall Street and big players in venture capitalism still ran deep. He was a self-made multi-millionaire and one of them. I was an upstart woman who’dbankrupted her own company and was looking for someone else’s money to steal. That VCs rejection email had been in my inbox first thing this morning.
“I understand him wanting to blame Savannah and cover his own tracks,” Kyle said, “but why is Anson hell-bent on destroying the company?”
