Chosen for Power (Women of Power, #1) (15 page)

“Hmm. That feels good,” Drake sighed as her fingers dipped under the sheet.

“It’s fun to explore you in the dark.” Elle wisped her fingers along his upper thigh, teasing him.

“You know what happens to naughty girls, don’t you?” Drake’s hand ran down her spine softly and he gave her a light smack on her bottom.

Elle leaned back into his touch but instead of a moan, a scream escaped from her throat as the world came shattering down around her.

The door to her bedroom crashed open. Pieces of splintered wood flew through the air as men with guns stormed in. Drake flung himself on top of her pushing the breath from her lungs as Elle was pressed into the mattress.

“Secret Service! Hands up. Get your fucking hands up!”

Elle stopped screaming when she heard them identify themselves as Secret Service. She tried to put her hands up, but Drake refused to budge from where he pressed her nude body into the mattress. Out of the corner of her eye she saw four men encircle the room with guns pointed.

“Hands up! We will shoot you if you don’t get your hands up and get out of bed slowly,” one of the agents yelled.

“I will gladly get up, but I will not move until you pass my girlfriend some clothes,” Drake responded tightly.

Elle tried to push him off her. When government agents were pointing guns at you, you should probably do as they say. However, Drake refused. He kept her covered. In fact, she was so covered she was finding it hard to breathe. From her position under Drake, Elle held out her hands as best she could and after some murmuring felt a lump of silk land on her hand.

“Thank you,” she tried to call out from her mouth’s place against Drake’s bare chest.

She pulled the navy robe over her breasts and only then did Drake raise his hands and step naked from bed. Elle scrambled to cover herself with the robe as Drake straightened up and faced the agent at the door.

“Elle Simpson, you’re wanted by the Secret Service. Put on the robe, we’re taking you in for questioning. And here’s our search warrant for your house and your office,” the agent by the door told her as he held up the warrant. With a nod of his head, the other agents started to tear apart her room. It was then she saw more agents in her living room taking her computer and opening drawers.

“What’s going on?” Drake asked. “What is she being taken in for?”

“And you are?” the lead agent demanded rather than asked.

“Drake Charles, Elle’s boyfriend.”

The agent’s lips thinned. “Put some clothes on—after you’ve been searched by Agent Rodrick. We have some questions for you, too.”

The agent who threw Elle the robe was patting down Drake’s suit and tossed him the pants and dress shirt.

“I’m sorry,” Elle said as nicely as possible as she clung to her robe and slipped on her bunny slippers lying next to the bed. “But I don’t understand. Why am I being questioned?”

“We’ll talk at the office. Let’s go.”

Elle’s heart beat hard against her chest. She had thought getting a speeding ticket was bad. That was nothing compared to the fear she was feeling now. The two agents at the door refused to lower their weapons and, as Elle stared at them open-mouthed, she realized they also weren’t going to turn around. Elle turned her back as she slipped the robe on. As soon as she tied the belt, Agent Rodrick had her hands behind her back. Cold steel clasped tight against her wrists as the cuffs locked in place.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Elle paced the interview room in her robe and bunny slippers. A two-way mirror covered one of the light green walls enclosing the windowless room. A rectangular table with four chairs sat in the middle of the room. She’d been thrown in the small room as her request for an attorney fell on deaf ears. The agents kept insisting they were operating under protection of an executive order.

She’d been separated from Drake the second she tied her robe. Drake’s threats to the Secret Service still rang in her ears from when they marched Elle from the condo and into the unmarked car.

Elle stopped her pacing when the door opened as the lead agent and Agent Rodrick entered. Agent Rodrick looked to be in his thirties with his rec-league athletic appearance. On the other hand, the lead agent looked to be in his late forties and still in good enough shape to throw a guy through a window. The only hints at his age were the small lines around his eyes and some stray gray hairs along his temples.

“Miss Simpson, I’m Agent Murphy. This is Agent Rodrick. And you’re in serious trouble. Sit down and tell me everything right now and maybe you’ll be able to walk out of jail before you’re a senior citizen.”

Elle sat, more like fell, into the chair. “What on earth do you think I did?”

A piece of paper was shoved in front of her. “I know exactly what you did. You threatened to kill the President of the United States during her visit next week.” Agent Murphy slid two pictures in front of her before she had a chance to read the piece of paper. “With this gun you bought last week.”

Elle tried to stop the shaking in her hands, but couldn’t, so she didn’t even try to pick up the pictures. One was a picture of some kind of rifle. The second was a picture of her at a gun shop purchasing a rifle.

Drake pounded his hand against the table but got no reaction. No matter how loud he screamed or what he said, the agent wouldn’t listen to him. He’d tried to reach Elle when they dragged her handcuffed from the condo, but he’d been slammed against the wall by two agents. Since then they hadn’t seemed to care what he said.

“I’m telling you, Elle would never make threats against the President. She has no reason to do that.”

“And I’m telling you, Mr. Charles, we have ironclad evidence. Emails, gun registration, and surveillance from the gun store. Your girlfriend is going away for a very long time. Now, the question is: will you be joining her?”

“Joining her?” Drake’s head snapped back. Wait, was he being interviewed or interrogated? They’d asked him all about his business and all about his relationship with Elle. Did they really think he and Elle were in this farce together?

“That’s right. Maybe you helped her. She’s your girlfriend and you love her. You’d do anything for her, maybe even kill for her.”

“Look, Agent . . .”

“Wallace.”

“Look, Agent Wallace, Elle wouldn’t do that. She’s not that type of person. Neither of us has any reason to kill the President. While we’re political in the sense that we vote, we’re nowhere near the extremist type. Neither of us has even used our money to get any particular person elected. Furthermore, she’s never mentioned anything against President Nelson. In fact, we both voted for her. Why would she want to kill her?”

“Her email suggested it was due to the stricter transparency in banking regulations. What do you know about that?”

“Quite a bit actually. Elle met with the old bank trustees a month ago or so. They were upset because
she
was putting more regulations on reporting from her banks than the government required.” Drake stood back up and started pacing. He headed over to the two-way mirror and looked at his reflection. “Check it out. Her secretary will have records of it. The motive is bullshit because it’s fake. She didn’t do this.”

He saw Agent Wallace rise behind him and pick up the file he was carrying. “I’ll do just that. She’s in an interview room down the hall. Along with Elle’s family, friends, driver, and office manager. This is your last chance, Mr. Charles. Tell me what I want to know or when they tell me, and they will tell me, I’ll hold you as an accomplice.”

Drake turned around and looked Wallace in the eyes. “Go ahead. There's nothing to find. And watch out for Shirley; you’re just her type.”

Jessica couldn’t feel her face. The blood had been drained for so long she was sure she’d never be able to smile again. Men in black jackets, black SUVs, and guns had shown up at her house to escort her to the downtown office of the Secret Service in the middle of her night. Her husband had protested, her children had screamed, and Jessica hadn’t been able to put together a coherent thought since.

“I’m sorry,” she said flustered at the agent sitting across from her. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, but that was all she could tell as she stared down at her hands in her lap.

“It’s okay. Take your time. It must be quite a shock to discover your boss was planning to kill President Nelson.”

Jessica looked up from her entwined fingers and felt her heart start to beat again. “No, Agent Wallace. It’s not that. I’m sorry that I can’t believe such an asinine assertion. She wanted even stricter transparency in reporting. I have her notes from the meeting at the office. Elle Simpson is the best woman I know, and she'd never kill a person in cold blood. And I’m sorry,” Jessica stood quickly, so quickly in fact she swayed a bit, “but I will not tolerate you saying this about her. I refuse to believe it, and I refuse to be part of this corruption.”

Agent Wallace looked up at her and slowly slid a photo across the table. Jessica looked down at it and felt her stomach drop. It was Elle purchasing a rifle.

“Oh, fiddlesticks.”

“Exactly. Would you care to amend your statement about Miss Simpson?”

“So, you’ve never been close with your cousin?” Mary heard the question and didn’t quite know how to answer.

“I don’t know. Yes. No. Kinda,” she stammered. Mary had also been escorted from her mother’s house to the Secret Service Office in the middle of the night. For the last ten minutes, the obscenely cute Agent Wallace had been asking her all sorts of questions about the family.

“Kind of? Because it sounds to me as if your cousin hired you out of pity and only keeps you around as some sort of lackey. You just told me every time you try to talk to her, she’s with her sisters or Miss Westin. So, how well do you really know your cousin?”

“I’m not a lackey,” Mary said softly, but with steel to her voice. “I do more than Elle even knows about. She may not appreciate me, but I’m far smarter and more resilient than she gives me credit for being.”

“I’m telling you, I don’t care for one minute what that picture is. That is not my daughter,” Margaret Simpson declared.

Agent Wallace sat back in his chair and Margaret stared him down. “And how do you know this is not your daughter?”

“I’m her mother, aren’t I? I gave birth to her. I raised her and that is not my daughter. It’s not one specific thing. I can just tell it’s not her. A mother knows.”

“And you think that will hold up in court and save her from a life in prison?”

“If there’s one mother on the jury, then yes.”

“How do you explain this email then?”

Margaret picked up a copy of an email and read it. Sure it said it came from Elle, but it wasn’t her words. “I may just be an old woman, Agent Wallace, but even I know there are ways to hack email accounts. My daughter is a stickler for grammar and business terms. This threat is too fluffy and too dumb-sounding to be from her.”

“Too dumb-sounding?”

“That’s right.”

“No evidence. Nothing to help with proving your daughter’s innocence except you know that’s not her in the picture because you’re her mother. And she didn’t write this letter because if she had, it would have been better written?” Agent Wallace asked with disbelief.

“That’s right. And I have a trunkful of her writing at my house. I’m sure you’re already looking through it, but you’ll see. These aren’t her words and that’s not her. Meanwhile you’re so focused on her, you’re not looking for the person setting my daughter up. Did it ever occur to you that she is being framed? There’s already been a PR attack against Elle and Simpson Global. Is it really that much of a stretch to think someone would do this to ruin my daughter and her company?”

Finn’s hands curled into tight fists under the table. Agent Wallace was trying to be his friend and all he wanted to do was to slam his fist into the agent’s face. Not that he wasn’t being nice to Finn and simply doing his job. The agent wasn't doing anything illegal from what Finn could tell. But he still wanted to slam his fist into Agent Wallace for the things he was saying about Elle.

“She did it. She’s going away for a long time. What I need to know is if she was planning it alone? Tell me about Drake Charles. When did they start seeing each other?”

“They met at Christmas. He’s a good guy. He takes care of her. Something she’s needed for a long time,” Finn said as calmly as he could.

“You care about her?”

“Of course I do.”

“Do you love her?”

“I do. I imagine I love her as much as one can love his sister. She encouraged me through school. She never thought of me as a has-been ballplayer. No, she saw me for me and supported my hopes and dreams. There is no way a woman like that would kill someone over politics. You’re looking at the wrong person, Agent.”

“Then how do you explain this?”

Finn picked up the picture and looked at it closely. Something about it nagged him, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. “I don’t care what this looks like. Elle wouldn’t kill the President. But I do think you should talk to Hailey Duveaux. She was fired a couple months ago and is believed to have sent out a fake press release about Elle.”

“Why was she fired?” Agent Wallace asked as he wrote something down on a pad of paper.

“Sleeping with clients. Elle found it degrading and completely unethical. She was fired instantly and has been bad-mouthing Elle ever since.”

“Anyone else have a grudge against Miss Simpson?”

“Plenty. She’s a force in changing the landscape of business. She wasn't raised with a silver spoon in her mouth, Agent Wallace. She worked for everything she has and she’s done it at the side of her employees, not on their backs. And we love her for it. But others do not. She cares more about her employees’ happiness and doing things right than anyone I know. How many employers provide daycare on-site so the employees can have lunch with their kids? So mothers can feed their babies throughout the day? How many employers reward their employees based on their merits and hard work, and not who they kiss up to? The harder you work, the better job you do, the bigger your bonus.”

“She sounds like the perfect boss. Then who doesn’t like her?”

“To get all the perks, you have to follow the rules. Anyone who violates our contract, like Hailey did, is immediately fired. Not many people have been, but the ones who cross the line are let go without severance. Then there’s her competition. The old men out there don’t appreciate a young lady coming in and doing their job better. Their best employees leave for Simpson Global once there’s an opening and never look back. Then you have people like Chord McAlister who tried to take over her company only to be pummeled, figuratively, by Elle for daring to try it.”

“Do you think President Nelson got in her way? If she pummeled this Chord guy, what’s stopping her from doing it to the President?”

“I said, figuratively. Elle ruined his career and took over the company that had tried to oust her. She didn’t beat him up. In fact, he’s the one that grabbed her hard enough to leave bruises the other week. No, if President Nelson crossed Elle, she wouldn’t be dead. She’d be packing up her belongings and moving out of the White House, alive.”

Bree sat at the table with her legs and arms crossed. She dangled her heel off her toe as she listened to Agent Wallace accuse Elle of threatening to kill President Nelson. It didn’t make sense. Elle would never do something like that. She believed in using her words, not weapons. Agent Wallace seemed to blow off her statement that Elle wanted more transparency and more record keeping when it came to banking than the bill President Nelson had recently signed. No matter what she said, Agent Wallace was twisting it against her sister.

He threatened her and accused her of being an accomplice. But after the letters she got in the mail, his threats didn’t cause her to blink an eye. So, she sat calmly and listen to him accuse her sister, Drake, and herself of this ridiculous set-up.

Then when she tried to help by offering another suspect, he’d acted as if she hasn’t said a word.  He’d completely ignored her suggestion to look into Hailey and now her patience was at an end as she tried to tell him about the bank fraud.

“I’m telling you, a woman who looked just like Elle tried to clean out two million dollars the other week. Just call First Peachtree and talk to the officer there.”

“Or maybe it was just your sister getting her cash ready to take out the President. Your sister did this. We have more evidence than we need to put her away and all you can say is that you know she didn’t do it?”