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“No, but you need somebody. There’s no reason you’re doing this alone.” She shook her head, puzzled. “I don’t know why someone from Potomac isn’t with you.”
“This is my problem.”
“No, I’m sure it’s their problem. Whoever is behind this doesn’t want to kill you because you’re Ryan Hayes. They want to kill you because you’re Potomac’s in-house counsel.”
“I don’t think this has anything to do with Potomac. Jake is tearing the place apart, trying to figure out which client, which case, this is related to, but I don’t think it is about Potomac at all.”
“What do you mean? Of course it is.”
“I don’t know who I pissed off, but this is about me, personally.”
She gave him a skeptical look. “Have you been dating any daughters of cartel members?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Stealing retirees’ pensions?”
“No.”
“You haven’t been blocking your neighbor’s driveway, have you?”
He mustered up a laugh, but the concern didn’t leave his eyes.
She tried again.
“I mean, it doesn’t make sense. What could you possibly have done to warrant two attempts on your life in one day?”
“Believe me, I wish I knew. I have no clue.”
“There aren’t any hints on the drive Cyrus Ahmadi gave you?”
“So far, I haven’t found the smoking gun.” He shook his head in frustration.
“Maybe another set of eyes will help,” she offered.
“I’ll show it to you, but not here.” He looked around the noisy room. The tables were three-quarters full with the lunchtime business crowd, but nobody was paying attention to them. Still, she understood why he didn’t want to bring out whatever the materials were in the middle of the restaurant.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m going to hold you to that.”
“Please do. Now, I’m not trying to change the subject, but I really want to know. How the heck did you find me?”
Despite her lingering displeasure, a satisfied smile crept across her mouth. “It really wasn’t hard. When no one would tell me where you went, I went to see Chelsea, and she said that you told Jake you didn’t need him to print out the files from the drive because you were going someplace where you’d have access to the internet and a computer and where nobody would be able to trace it back to you. You also told them you didn’t plan to rough it.”
“I don’t. I hope that I can stick to that plan. But how did that lead you here?”
“I remember you telling Omar that when things got too busy at the Department of Justice, you would sneak off to some shipping merchant’s archive for peace and quiet so you could get some work done.”
He wrinkled his forehead, trying to recall the conversation. “I’m sure I did tell Omar that. But how did you remember?”
Heat crept up her neck and she flushed. “I pay attention when you talk.”
He grinned at her. “But it’s still several steps from nameless shipping guy to the Seamus McGillicuddy Archive.”
“Not as many as you’d think,” she told him. “I knew it was off Embassy Row, and there aren’tthatmany minor shipping industry archives. A quick Internet search returned exactly one hit. The bigger mystery is how you stumbled on the archive in the first place.”
“During my third year of law school, I took a maritime law class. One of the assignments was to research the background of a shipwreck that changed the law. Seamus McGillicuddy’s small fleet was involved in one of those cases. I went down a research rabbit hole but came to a dead end online. My professor mentioned that Mr. McGillicuddy had created a trust before he died to preserve his legacy. And sure enough, the building that houses the archive was purchased by the trust in the 1800s and has been an underutilized repository of his papers for hundreds of years.”
“So you went there to do your research and struck up a friendship with Mrs. O’Donnell?”
