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It was too much. Too much to think about now. Too much to bear in the face of everythingelse.
“Did you plan to leave Boston together before the FBI raid?” Kateasked.
Beth sighed and dropped back onto the bed. “That’s when I knew things had gone wrong, that Neil might not have been honest about what was going on. He didn’t even tell me he wasleaving.”
The sorrow was plain in her voice, and Kate had to resist the urge toscream.
Dad would never have done this to you. Never would have lied to you, never would have used you, never would have abandoned you when you neededhim.
But there was no point. They had to moveforward.
“Did you know Neil was hiding?” Kateasked.
Beth shook her head. “But I knew after the raid that he was in trouble, and I knew if he was in trouble, I might be in troubletoo.”
“So youran.”
“I didn’t know what else to do,” Beth said. “I was trying to find him, but I was afraid to call the old number or send him an email after the FBI got involved, and I didn’t have any other way to reachhim.”
“It wouldn’t have done you any good anyway. You were right: the FBI — and Declan’s company — were tracing Neil’s devices and email, but he never used them after the raid.” Kate didn’t need to know how Beth had gotten out of the country without being traced. That question was answered by the passport Kate and Declan had found in Beth’s safe deposit box before the raid. Neil had probably prepared her to run in case things went bad. “What did you do all that time you were inhiding?”
“Nothing at first. I was freaked out, afraid to go anywhere or do anything. So I just hunkered down in Morocco, which is how I started figuring out what Neil had been up to. By then, I knew I’d been screwed. Things didn’t addup.”
“What kind of things?” Kateasked.
“Like the way Neil wanted to take over WMG but didn’t seem to have any plans for the company. He wanted to know my ideas, but looking back, it seemed like he wasn’t as interested in WMG’s future as he was in taking it from Dad, from you and Aiden. And sometimes he made it seem like there were other peopleinvolved.”
Kate straightened. “Otherpeople?”
Beth nodded. “So I started digging around, trying to figure out what he’d really been up to. I started with the biggest shareholders, because I knew Neil needed more shares. Even his put together with mine wouldn’t be enough. I guess he figured I wouldn’t bother checking, and for a long time, he wasright.”
“You called shareholders?” Kate askedincredulously.
“I was nervous at first. I didn’t know if the FBI was looking for me like they were looking for Neil. But after awhile I felt safer, and most of the shareholders were willing to talk to me, probably because of my name,” Beth said. “The ones who’d been approached to sell all said the same thing — that the negotiation had been brokered by the agent for a company that was more or lessanonymous.”
“We found that out too,” Katesaid.
“It was pretty obvious by then that there was more to the plan than Neil had let on. That’s when I got pissed.” She looked down at her hands. “Not just at Neil. At myself too. I’d been so stupid. So I started looking for him. I wasn’t really thinking clearly. I just wanted him to pay for what he’d done. I wanted to show him I wasn’t as dumb as he’dthought.”
“How did you find him?” Kateasked.
“I went back through all the times he’d said things that might point to a hiding place — old friends he’d talked about, people he’d mentioned working with who might have property where he could hide out. It took a long time to make the list and even longer to start checking out the possibilities. Then I got to Gunnar Ármannsson, and that led me to that assistant ofhis.”
“Jóhanna Leifsson?” Kate couldn’t hide her disbelief. Beth had done a lot of legwork while she’d been inhiding.
“Yeah. And it turned out Jóhanna Leifsson had a relative with a rental house in Iceland, which also happened to be a place Neil said he loved during one of our conversations,” Bethsaid.
“The house where Neil was hiding was owned by the family of Jóhanna Leifsson? How on earth did you find that out?” It was something even MIS hadn’tknown.
Beth lifted one of her shoulders like it was no big deal. “A lot of phone calls and emails mostly. It’s not like I didn’t have the time to run downleads.”
“Wow. I’m impressed,” Kate said. It was the kind of investigative work that was usually outside the scope ofMIS.
“Don’t be. I was alone and scared. I got pretty good at digging for information, good at lying to people about who I was and why I needed to know things. And to be honest, I wasn’t even sure I was right, wasn’t even sure Neil would behere.”
“Did you know we were here?” Kateasked.
“Not at first. But I saw Declan putting a camera in the trees one day when I was casing the house. I was on foot, so it was easy to stay hidden,” she said. “I figured he was here with Ronan and Nick, and I figured that meant I was right, that Neil was in the house owned by the family of Jóhanna Leifsson. I waited for them to pave theway.”
