“No. I’m here to find out what Dumay is planning for me and Mena. She wants the world to believe that I tried to kill her in the courthouse. Both of you went through a lot of trouble to make it look believable. Did a good job too, since I was sent to Tiverton and assigned to the same unit where Zak Webber was serving his time. Was that her endgame? Get me sent to Tiverton so Zak could kill me?”
Russell tapped his nose and pointed his finger at Julian. “Navy trained you well. You almost got it right.”
“What part am I missing?”
“The part I haven’t quite figured out yet. Priscilla insisted that she wouldn’t be convicted of the crimes against her. She had no plans of going to prison. She planned to convince the jury she was innocent, but she didn’t give me details on that part.”
“Let me guess, Quentin is handling that?”
“Maybe,” Adam responded, taking another gulp of the rum. “My role was to set you up for premeditated attempted murder. I bribed the guards assigned to Priscilla to give her enough time alone to lure you to the anteroom. I bribed the court reporter to smuggle the vial of poison into the courthouse. And Quentin took care of getting Priscilla the burner phone to call you.”
“Stella Young, the court reporter, was working for you?” Julian took a sip of rum, anger rolling within him as he listened to Russell’s cavalier explanation of how he plotted with Dumay to ruin his fucking life.
“She was in a bind, left a woman with some bad medical problems from a car accident and was being sued. I gave her the money to settle, and she did what I asked. It was a mutually beneficial one-time transaction.”
“Then you faked phone calls to make it look like Mena asked Uma to bribe the guards,” Julian said.
“Laying a trap requires layers upon layers of intersecting evidence. You’re too smart to be obvious, that would have been a red flag for the cops. So, I had to think like you, be covert like I’d expect you to do if you’d planned this yourself. Involving Mena was necessary to make your guilt look more plausible.”
“Dumay isn’t focused on Mena, then?”
“I didn’t say that. She wants to hurt Mena, but not kill her.”
“She’s planning to kidnap Mena again.” Julian said, remembering his conversation with Dumay in the anteroom.
“Yes, but only after Zak killed you or you were convicted. She wasn’t making another move on Mena until you were out of the picture. That’s why after she found out what you did in Central Sulawesi, she was desperate to get her hands on that laptop.”
Julian cringed, draining the rest of the rum, then slammed the glass on the coffee table. “If Dumay wants me gone, why didn’t she just deliver the laptop to NCIS. That would have been easier than setting up this ruse.”
“Because she doesn’t have the laptop,” Adam said, placing the empty glass on the coffee table separating them. “I do.”
Julian raised an eyebrow. “You have my laptop from Central Sulawesi?”
“Serial number 490C224 issued to Chief Petty Officer Julian Montgomery. I’ll admit, you’re good. You damn near wiped out all the evidence of what you’d done. Almost. Took a team of hackers months to find one little thread that got missed. Those uncorrupted parts of the hard drive and a conversation I had with Enrique Rivera Ortiz helped pull all the pieces together.”
Tension clawed at Julian’s neck. “What do you plan to do with it?”
“Make you a deal.”
“I’m listening.”
“Priscilla and I are in what you’d call a standoff. I have evidence that could bury her and she could bury me, literally. That makes our arrangements tenuous at best. I can’t afford to refuse her requests, and she can’t afford to push me too far. But I’m tired of this see-saw with her. I want out. You can help make that happen.”
“Uma mentioned that Priscilla was threatening your life,” Julian said. “What’s that about?”
“She had a kill switch implanted in my heart. If a surgeon tries to remove it, the device self-detonates and I die instantly. Priscilla can control it remotely from anywhere on earth. I’m not sure about this, but I’d guess Quentin has control over it too, when Priscilla is unavailable. It doesn’t matter if I flee with Uma and hide away in a place where they can’t find me. With one tap on a computer, they can send a signal to blow up my heart.”
“You’re fucking kidding.”
“How do you think all those surrogates started mysteriously dying before they could testify against her? All from heart complications. Priscilla is smart. She didn’t engage the switch on them at the same time. She waited, staggered the murders so that doctors treating them would conclude they were having heart failure from the stress of being locked up.”
“Guess that means if Priscilla needs you to break out of PIIB custody to kidnap Mena or frame me, you can’t really say no. Seems like she has all the control,” Julian said.
“That’s where you’re wrong. I’ve been stockpiling evidence of all of Priscilla’s crimes for years. Microscopic body cameras were hidden in the buttons of my shirts and trousers where I recorded all of our interactions. The files are in safe deposit boxes controlled by different people around the world. They all know that if I don’t check in with them every twenty-four hours, they are to send the evidence to Interpol. Priscilla knows this, which is why she can’t push me too far. I do her dirty work, she pays me millions and we keep doing this awful dance.”
“Does that mean you have proof of her asking you to frame me?”
“Cell phone video that will get you cleared in a matter of minutes,” Adam said.
