Deal Gone Bad - A Thriller (Frank Morrison Thriller Series Book 1) (26 page)

“How much?”

“One million dollars.”

“OK, I get it,” Morrison
said. “Then, a couple of days ago, your security guy got wind of my hacker
sniffing around in his servers, called to ask if you had anything to do with
that and then took care of business.”

“Right, that’s it,” Perkins
said.

Morrison nodded. “So in
reality, you’ve pocketed seven million net, not eight.”

Perkins nodded. “Yeah,
that’s it.”

Morrison let out a long
breath. They had reached a rare moment of clarity. Now was the time to strike a
deal. He leaned forward in his chair and said, “OK, so here’s what we’re going
to do. I’m going to treat this whole affair like it was just a business deal
between you and me. You had financial trouble at the time, so I made you a
loan. Eight million dollars, of course, not seven. And now that you’ve put your
business back on its feet, you can happily pay me back. With interest. Let’s
say ten percent a year. Over three years, that’s thirty-three percent. How
about we round that up to forty percent? To cover my expenses and the trouble I
had to track you back.”

Perkins gave a quick nod.
“Fair enough,” he said.

Morrison nodded in return.
“Good, good,” he said. Then he rose. “I will pick up the money tomorrow
morning. I’ll call you with the details of where we meet.”

He extended his hand. Perkins
shook it.

“Pleasure doing business
with you,” Morrison said.

Perkins held on to his
hand a little longer. “You know, whatever anyone thinks about it, I’m fine with
what I did. I had to save my company. No matter what. I’ve got hundreds of employees,
hundreds of families depending on me for their well-being. I couldn’t let them
down. I did what I had to do, and I would do it again. Without the slightest
hesitation.”

Morrison put his other hand
on the man’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, I get it, Steve,” he said. “I totally get
it.”

*

Morrison felt great.

His lean period was finally
coming to an end. Tomorrow, a torrent of money would be raining over his head,
as sudden and unexpected as a tropical downpour. With it, he’d be able to
resume his life in style. Not pressured and constrained by the measly few
hundred bucks he had in his wallet on the day of his release. No, he would be
able to afford the greatest of luxuries, that of time.

Now that he thought about
it, Mike’s intrusion didn’t seem so annoying. Of course, he had really resented
being trapped like he was. But now, it was turning out to be a blessing in
disguise. And besides, he wasn’t done with Mike yet. Oh, no.

Even though he was driving
straight to Cowgirl’s house in the big black Navigator, he felt compelled to
call her right away to share the good news.

But before he could even
dial her number to expound on the deal he’d just struck with Perkins, he had to
put the phone down.

A noisy siren had just
erupted behind him.

Accompanied by a flurry of
red and blue lights hitting his rear-view mirrors.

He took a peek back. Then
he rolled his eyes.

Sheriff Sanford.

Their eyes met briefly. With
a smug smile on her face, she pointed at the side of the road.

What was he going to do? He
was not about to start a car chase. That would have been beyond stupid. So he sighed,
put his blinkers on and pulled over to the shoulder.

Morrison rolled down both
windows on the left side of the car. Standard procedure when you want to help the
cops relax. Offer a clear view of yourself. Appear calm, predictable, not restless
or fidgety. That way, you stood a better chance of avoiding trigger-happy
moments.

He followed the script by putting
both hands on the steering wheel at ten and two. Then he waited.

While he kept his eyes locked
on the side-view mirror, he wondered if his being pulled over had anything to
do with his visit to Perkins. Was the businessman dumb enough to have informed Sheriff
Sanford? He didn’t think so. Perkins had struck him as the polar opposite of
stupid. A smart and thoughtful guy who had read his situation perfectly and cut
a sensible deal. Calling Sanford would only have served to incriminate himself.
So this had to have come from her. Whatever it was.

Sanford did not get out of
her car at once. She stayed behind the wheel and began talking on the radio,
her gaze fixed on him.

A second patrol car
quickly appeared on the scene as backup. Morrison shook his head. She seemed
intent on making a show of his arrest. Only when the guys from the backup car
parked behind her did she get out of her own car.

She approached him carefully,
pointing her service gun in his direction.
Christ,
he thought. He was
not into violence, much less weapons. She knew that better than anyone else.
What a masquerade.

Still, he remained quiet.
His hands on the wheel. His head staring straight ahead.

“Remember what I said
about arresting you myself?” she said when she drew up to him. “Well, here we
are, Morrison. Get out of your car now. Nice and slow.”

The muzzle was two feet
away from his head.

He slowly moved his left
hand away from the steering wheel and pulled on the door handle.

“What’s that about,
Sanford?” he said before pushing the door open. “Why do you come back at me
like that?”

“Lie down on the ground
and put your hands behind your back,” she said, her voice dripping with
satisfaction.

He complied and soon felt
a pair of cuffs close around his wrists. She put them on tight. His hands immediately
started to go numb.

When she was done, she
bent down to whisper in his ear. “We found your prints at the apartment,” she said.
“The lab had to run through a lot of ’em, but we finally got a good set.” She
made a small pause. Then she added, “So much for not being a violent guy, Morrison.”

Here we go again.

Back in interrogation room
number two.

A deputy sat Morrison on
the cold steel chair and cuffed him to the bolted table leg. Then he was left
alone between the white cinder-block walls.

Five minutes passed. Then
ten. Twenty. Thirty.

Was it some tactic
designed to build up some tension in him? To cause him to fret and worry in
anticipation of what lay ahead? He didn’t know.

But one thing he did know was
that he was in big trouble.

If Sheriff Sanford really
had his prints, then she had every right to detain him. At least for a couple
of days—enough time for the district attorney to debate whether those prints
were enough to prosecute him or not.

Of course, he didn’t have
anything to do with the murders, but they didn’t know that and, after all, he
was a convicted criminal. The odds were stacked heavily against him. They would
not give him the benefit of the doubt.

So that meant he could not
attend to his deal with Perkins tomorrow morning and ride off into the sunset.

Unless he found a way to
extricate himself from this delicate position.

There was a way to do
this, of course.

But it was like walking on
a tightrope.

You could do it, yes.
Technically it was feasible.

But you were not allowed
to slip. Better be careful and weigh up your every move before you proceeded. Because
the slightest mistake would bring you down.

The heavy steel door
opened. He looked up. Sheriff Sanford walked in. Alone.

“Want to call up that
lawyer of yours, Morrison?” she said. “The one with the funky glasses? If you
want to do it, now’s the time.”

He shook his head. “I
don’t need him,” he said.

His answer surprised, and
pleased, her. “Fine,” she said. She sat down opposite him with a notepad, a pen
and a voice recorder, her back ramrod straight.

Take the initiative
, he thought.
You have
to take the initiative.

He nodded toward the voice
recorder. “Are you recording this?” he said.

“Not yet.”

“Great. It’s better that
you don’t.”

“Why is that?”

He ignored her question.
“And you don’t have a video system, right? Nothing concealed in the ceiling filming
us or anything.”

“No, it’s broken. That’s
why I have the voice recorder.”

“Good. Don’t switch it
on.” He paused for a moment. “You’re gonna thank me for this.”

Her eyes widened. “I’m
gonna thank you, Morrison? Gee, you’ve got some nerve. I mean, for Christ’s
sake, there are two dead bodies at the morgue because of you. One of them a kid
barely two years old. I don’t think I’m about to thank you for anything.”

“I haven’t killed anyone.”

She tilted her head and gave
him a hard stare. “It’s always the same with you criminals, isn’t it? You’ve
never done anything wrong. It’s never your fault. How sick can you be?”

He restated the obvious.

“I haven’t killed anyone.”

“Then why have we found
your prints at this poor guy’s apartment? Care to explain that, Morrison?”

It was so ironic. He had really
done nothing wrong in that apartment. So he simply told the truth.

“He was my hacker. I’d
given him some urgent work to do, but he wasn’t responding anymore. That
worried me so I decided to go check on him.”

She gestured to start the
recording device, but he held his hand up.

“Don’t,” he said, “or I’m
just gonna shut up and call my lawyer.”

As she pondered this, he
could see that he had hooked her. She left the recorder alone and nodded for
him to continue.

“The front door of his
apartment was unlocked,” he said. “So I simply let myself in.” He looked down
at the table. “It wasn’t long before I saw him. Well, them. Someone had killed
them both.” He shook his head slowly. “It was horrible. I was almost sick in
there.”

“Then what did you do?”
she asked.

“I heard some scratching at
the front door, so I went to the fire escape and got the hell out of there.”

“We found your prints in
the kitchen too,” she said.

“He was a hacker but I saw
no computer. I just looked around to see if I could find anything, that’s all.
I barely had a few minutes before somebody showed up.”

“His wife,” she said, “who
discovered the dead bodies of her husband and her only child.”

He shook his head. “It
saddens me as much as you, but it’s not my fault. Think about it. If I had gone
there to kill him, would I have left my prints all over the place? I would at
least have worn some gloves. Come on, it’s ridiculous.”

“Why did you flee then?”

“I had hired him to do
something illegal, I don’t deny it. It would’ve meant trouble for me. And
besides, you would’ve been inclined to think I’m guilty, right? So I preferred
to avoid the trouble.”

“A hacker,” she said. He
could see her trying to absorb the information. She thought about it for a
moment before she asked, “What kind of work did you give him?”

That’s where it got
interesting.

He began by recapping the
failed operation from three years ago. She knew about it, of course, but she
didn’t know everything. He provided her with a lot more details. The four other
banks he had lined up, exactly the same way he had set up Chelfington Bank.
Four hundred accounts for two million dollars per bank. As he spoke, her eyes
widened. If he’d needed further proof of her innocence, there it was.

This was all news to her.
A big surprise.

“When I was released from
prison, I had to check if anybody had acted on this setup.” He decided to
muddle things a bit to preserve Johnson’s anonymity. “So I contacted the hacker
that had helped me with the setup and asked him to conduct an audit.” He made a
small pause. He could see she was eager for him to continue with the story. “He
found out that over a few days right after my arrest, eight million dollars
were withdrawn through a string of ATMs in New York City according to my plans.
Somebody had crossed me.”

An air of triumph spread
across her face. “If somebody crossed you, that means you had accomplices. I knew
it,” she said. “I knew it.”

She peered at the recorder,
but he shook his head. “This stays off the record,” he said. “Of course I did. But
I never told you about them. And I never will. I don’t rat on my friends. Besides,
it’s not any one of them that crossed me. It was somebody else.”

She frowned. Clearly, she
had not expected that.

He thought the moment was
well chosen to make a longer pause. He remained silent and gazed at her with a
serious mask.

Let her realize on her own
that he had just said something important. Something really important.

As if she was picking up
on his thoughts, he saw her face change. The confident façade started to give
way. Doubts crept all over her.

“Why tell me all of this
now?” she said. “Why be so open about all those crimes you committed?”

That’s right,
he thought.
You’re about
to be hit by that eighteen-wheeler and have the wind knocked out of you. Sorry,
but you asked for it.

He continued. “As you can
imagine, we needed a lot of equipment to carry out that operation. Only sophisticated,
top-quality gear would do. One of my associates was charged with sourcing it, and
he was able to do it right here in Acton. Can you guess where?”

She didn’t say anything.
But she could guess. Oh, yes, she could.

“That’s right,” he said. “Perkins
Electronics. They had pretty much everything we needed.”

The truck was barrelling
down toward her at full speed. Had lost all its brakes. She could see it
coming. It was visible in her face. In those arched eyebrows. In the suddenly ashen
color of her skin. She was no longer paying any attention to the voice
recorder. At this point, turning it on would’ve been the furthest thing from
her mind.

“Now, you’ve got to give
it to him, Steve Perkins is a pretty clever guy. If I hadn’t seen him with you,
in a private, intimate moment, I probably wouldn’t have made the connection.”

“What connection? What are
you talking about?” she said.

“He’s the one who crossed
me. He’s the one who put his hands on the jackpot.”

She fluttered her eyes as
if she were trying to dislodge some little piece of dirt.

“Bullshit, Morrison.
There’s no truth to that.” Her voice sounded weak, as if she were trying to
convince herself.

“Remember when you
arrested me?” he said. “I had a USB flash drive. The details of my setup were all
in there. When your lover learned about it, he had no qualms about using you to
access it. And then he sure made good use of it.”

She was staring into
space. Stunned. “It’s not possible,” she said.

“It’s all true. By now,
you know it. You’re a smart woman.”

“Steve would never do such
a thing.”

“He admitted everything to
me this morning. And he will pay what he owes me. Call him if you want. But
think hard about what you’re gonna do with that information. Think real hard. Eight
million bucks were stolen from four banks because of you. Because of your
carelessness in handling some important piece of evidence. If it came to be
known, that wouldn’t look good on you. It really wouldn’t.”

“Is that a threat,
Morrison?”

“No, I’m simply stating
facts. If you don’t release me, I will open my big mouth. And if something
unfortunate ever happens to me, my associates will open their big mouths too. It’s
as simple as that.”

“But the two murders?
Who’s responsible for them?”

“Perkins told me that one
of the banks’ security guys tracked him down a few days after he hit them and
blackmailed him. My hacker lifted some dust and stumbled on that guy again a
couple of days ago. That’s why he got taken care of. It’s a sad tragedy, but I
strongly suggest you let the matter be. There’s no way to bring them back. Call
Perkins if you want. He will tell you as much.”

She shook her head. Bit
her lip. Then she left her things on the table and stormed out of the room.

When he was alone, he let
out a big breath. That was a bold move, but he didn’t have a choice. He had to
go for it if he wanted to get out of there.

His pitch had struck home.
He knew it. But how would she react now?

Morrison rubbed his eyes
with his free hand. The temperature had gone up quite a bit within that
confined space. He could feel sweat pooling under his armpits.

As it turned out, she was
only gone for a few minutes.

“You’re a scumbag,
Morrison,” she said.

She held the key to his
cuffs. Her face was ashen.

“No, I’m a pragmatic,” he
said. “Just like you are.”

She bent over him and
uncuffed his hand.

“Get out of here,” she
said. “I never want to see your sorry face again.”