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“Prowling around in some old case files.”
“Oh, yeah? Why?”
I told him all about it.
CHAPTER 11
MY EYES OPENED at 3:15 a.m. Maybe the spicy pizza had given me a bad dream. Or maybe I just sensed that Joe was lying beside me with his eyes open.
Either way, I knew something was wrong.
I rolled over to face my husband and put my hand on his pajama sleeve.
“Joe? Are you OK?”
He heaved a sigh that almost stirred the curtains across the room. Something was keeping him awake, but what? I quickly reviewed our evening at home, and apart from my asking him “How was your day?” to which he’d answered, “Pretty good,” our conversations had been all about my cases and me.
That made me feel terrible.
I shook his arm a little bit.
“Joe? What’s going on?”
He said, “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t. What’s wrong?”
Joe sighed again, then plumped the pillows, rearranged the duvet, and drank some water.
Then he said, “Brooks Findlay, that little shit. He fired me. Man, I was not expecting that.”
“What? But why?”
“He gave no real explanation. Just change of direction, blah-blah. Which was a lie. ‘You’re out. Your check’s in the mail.’”
I was shocked by the news and equally blown away by how coldly Findlay had axed my husband, and not just because what hurts Joe hurts me. I say this because Joe was deputy Homeland Security director. He is supremely knowled
geable, has a good bedside manner, and has top credentials from DC to the moon. Port authorities are his specialty.
Brooks Findlay, on the other hand, had gone from business school to an office job in LA. If you ask me, hiring Joe might have been the highlight of Findlay’s career. Maybe he didn’t like standing in Joe’s shadow.
“I can’t believe this, Joe. You were completely blindsided?”
“I had not a clue. If I’d screwed up, Findlay would have been happy to tell me what, when, and how. So it’s gotta be that Findlay doesn’t like me. Or someone above Findlay doesn’t like me. It stinks. But it doesn’t really matter.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“Because I’m not ready to retire. I’ll get something better, but I have to close the door properly before the next door opens.”
Joe grabbed his phone and tapped some keys.
Geez. It was still only 3:30 a.m. I heard a cracked voice at the end of the phone. My husband said, “Brooks, it’s Joe Molinari. Listen, you cut me off this morning, so I didn’t get a chance to tell you. I had a breakthrough on the project. Yeah. Big one. Key to the whole damned puzzle.
“But you reminded me that we have a confidentiality agreement, so I deleted the work. Don’t worry. I scrubbed the disc. The info is unrecoverable. No one will ever see it.”
I could hear a squeaky protest coming over the phone, but I couldn’t make out the words.
“No, no. That’s all. I wanted to tell you that you didn’t have to worry. It’s like it never even existed. Sleep tight.”
