Forever Driven: Forever Bluegrass #4 (18 page)

“
W
hat do you need
?” Matt asked as soon as Angela left. He didn’t need to know how the conversation went. He saw the look on Riley’s face and that said it all.

“I don’t even know,” Riley said with a hint of defeat in her voice.

“Tell me everything Angela told you,” Matt said, sitting down in the seat Angela just vacated. The jovial feel of the café had shifted. They had all picked up on Riley’s unease.

Riley told him about her conversation. “She said it was just business, but why Keeneston? That’s still bugging me.”

“Maybe it is business,” Matt murmured as his mind raced.

“You sound just like Angela.”

“No, think about it. What do you do?”

“What do you mean?”

“What’s your job?” Matt asked her.

“I run a farm.”

“Exactly. You are a farm manager. Marge Stanley is a community volunteer. Gregory Peel is a lawyer. Maybe this has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with business.”

Matt saw Riley sit up straight in her seat. The fire was back in her eyes as she looked at him. “It’s good business to build a new highway,” she repeated as his point hit home.

“Exactly. Whose business would benefit from this? Not donations, think money in their own pockets.”

Riley shot to her feet. “Where are you going?” Matt asked.

“I need to be in Frankfort. I need to know everything that’s going on.”

“I have a better idea.” Matt pulled out his phone and placed a call. “DeAndre, I need your and Aniyah’s help.”

T
wo hours later
, Matt had moved Riley’s campaign headquarters to Desert Farm. Mo and Dani’s horse farm also had a state-of-the-art security building since they were royalty. Mo and Dani’s second son, Gabe, stood next to him as Riley paced the meeting room while on the phone with Aniyah.

Nabi, the head of security for the royal family, was known for his ability to ferret out information. He was armed with a list of names of all the congressmen who supported the highway. His daughter, Faith, sat in the chair next to him.

She had her father’s dark hair and her mother’s curls. “I’ll take this one,” Faith said in her childlike voice. By the way she worked a computer, you forgot she was only nine. Her fingers flew over the keyboard as images and documents started appearing on the big television screens that covered the entire wall.

“Good job on remembering to find and then search under his wife’s maiden name, sweetie,” Nabi praised as he worked his own computer.

Riley burst into the room waving a piece of paper. “Aniyah said everyone is tight-lipped. But, she got a few more names from eavesdropping in the women’s restroom.”

She handed the paper to Nabi. “It’s going to take time to go through all these names. And Faith has school tomorrow, so I’ll be short-handed.”

“I’ll see if I can get Uncle Cade to help after school tomorrow,” Riley offered, already sending a text to Cade. “Oh good, he’s on his way over now. Maybe we can find the people behind this before the Senate votes in the morning.”

“I can try the president,” Gabe offered. “She said she’d do anything she could to help.”

Riley unconsciously worked her lower lip, and Matt knew she had an idea. “Can she make sure no federal funds are used?”

Gabe nodded. “I’ll see what I can do. Zain and Mila are in DC visiting Abby. I’ll send them to the Hill to have a little chat with the congressmen to make sure they don’t fund it either. If Zain’s winning smile doesn’t work, then maybe Abby’s
Abbyness
will sway them,” he winked before heading out of the room.

N
abi printed
off some documents and passed them to Matt who looked them over, then hung them on the wallboard under the picture of the senator in question. They had stuck up pictures of every supporter of the highway and were currently learning what their family businesses were. They were looking for anything that led back to Luttrell Foods or Hager Construction. Direct links were in green. Secondary connections were in yellow. No connections to Luttrell or Hager were marked in red.

Before Matt knew it, the wall was a quarter filled as Nabi, Faith, and Cade worked the computers. They hacked into private documents, government files, and cloud storage accounts. Nothing would be admissible and Matt just refused to observe the activity. It was a lame attempt at plausible deniability, but he was sticking to it.

His phone rang and Matt answered it immediately. “DeAndre, what’s the news?”

Matt hung up and tried not to show the stress he was feeling. “The Senate has reached an agreement. They vote tomorrow morning, and it will pass with the highway funding in it. They’ve all left for the night.”

“Night?” Riley said surprised.

“It’s ten o’clock at night, Ri,” Cade said softly.

“But we’re not even close,” Riley whispered before straightening up. “I won’t give up. We’ll just work through the night.”

“I know one person who won’t be,” the soft voice said from the door. Matt turned and saw Faith’s mother, Grace, standing there. “I’m sorry, Riley, but it’s time for me to take Faith home.”

Nabi stood and crossed the room to his wife. He placed a sweet kiss on her lips, and she looked sadly at his drawn lips. “It’ll be all right. You’ll figure it out, dear,” she told her husband so softly Matt almost didn’t hear her.

“Do I have to, Mom? I was just breaking into the juvenile records for this representative who had a hit-and-run while drinking when he was seventeen,” Faith whined.

Grace smiled patiently at her as Riley made her way over to the little girl who was no longer quite to so little. “You’ve been such a big help, Faith, but we’ve got it from here. You certainly have a talent.”

“You sure do, sweets,” Nabi said and kissed the top of his daughter’s head.

“Kale taught me over Christmas break,” Faith said about Ahmed’s and Bridget’s youngest son who was at MIT before she hugged her dad goodnight. “I hope you find out who’s behind this, Miss Davies.”

“Thanks, Faith.” Riley hugged her. Grace smiled worriedly at them all as she put her arm around her daughter and took her home.

Matt watched as they left for the night. Annie arrived shortly after with a late night snack for them, and he and Riley worked side-by-side reading through all the documents Nabi and Cade could find that could be relevant.

* * *

T
he shadows
in the parking garage crept across the floor as the moon rose in the night sky. The cars pulled to a stop and the lights were cut. Doors opened and footfalls echoed against the concrete walls.

“You idiot. How did you fail?”

“The man I hired barely escaped with his life. I’ll get her tomorrow. You can count on it. It was a damn good thing I was there, or we’d all have been caught.”

“I’m tired of doing it your way. I’m sending my man in to help.”

“You just have to do everything your way.”

“We all know who the brain is here—me. Now shut up. It’s my time to take over. Riley Davies is a dead woman.”

“It’s not just Riley. It’s that reporter, too.”

“Matt Walsh? Can’t you just spin him a story?”

In the dark, a head shook. “She’s sleeping with him. He knows too much. He went after my man, shot him in the shoulder. For a reporter, he seemed very confident with a gun.”

“Damn,” they cursed in the dark as reality settled in.

“If he’s not a reporter, then who is he?”

“Doesn’t matter if he’s dead.”

“I agree. We need your man too. The lovebirds can die together in a car accident. Whatever it takes to make it look like an accident. It can’t relate back to us. He hasn’t left her side. It shouldn’t be that hard to kill them both at the same time.”

They all agreed and parted ways. Like smoke in the night, they disappeared into the shadows.

* * *

T
he central computer
room had no windows. Only walls filled with television screens and now paper trails on supporters of the highway. It was why Matt was surprised when his phone rang at the same time Riley’s did.

“DeAndre, what are you doing up so late?” Matt asked into the phone at the same time he heard Riley greet Aniyah. It wasn’t late. It was early, very early on Monday morning, and the Senate had just passed the budget.

“Shit!” Riley cursed as she hung up. “They’re bringing it to a vote in House today. I have to go.”

“Today?” Cade asked in surprise and got up and stretched. He was going to be late for his class.

“It’s just a prelim vote. It won’t pass, but it will give the House a chance to respond to the parts of the Senate bill they have issue with. It tells us where we have to start the bargaining. They’re pushing this hard and fast. I need to get to Frankfort. Aniyah said people have been stopping by my office since six this morning.”

“She was there that early?” Matt asked.

“She never left, bless her heart. She slept on the sofa. She said she wasn’t going to leave until this den of vipers was killed. Her words, not mine.” Riley shivered.

Matt stood up. “Okay, let’s go.”

“You can’t go,” Riley said suddenly.

“Why not?”

“I need you here to help with all this,” Riley said as she waved to the papers sitting on the desk, including the ones Nabi just handed to Matt.

“Someone needs to go with you.”

“I’ll go with her,” Gabe said as he walked in, looking devastating in a tailor-cut suit. “It might be good to have a member of a royal family who brings a lot of revenue to the state by your side, especially one armed with a letter from the president of the United States saying she hopes Congress will not authorize any federal funding to be used for this project. Abby and Zain also have the assurances of the Speaker of the House and the Majority Leader.”

Riley squealed before leaping into Gabe’s arms and hugging him. “They were counting on five million in federal funds. This could kill the bill.”

“I just hope it’s not too late. The president wouldn’t put anything in writing until it was a reality, not just a debate. And my mom sent me with this,” he pulled out a bag and handed it to Riley. “I guess it’s a good thing I came back to Keeneston for a short layover before heading to Paris,” he winked as Riley hugged him.

“A suit. Thank goodness. I’ll be ready in five minutes.” Riley rushed into the bathroom and slammed the door.

“Have you found anything out?” Gabe asked quietly.

“Not really. We have a lot of potentials but no definite suspects,” Matt told him as Gabe went to look over the wall of suspects.

“Could this have anything to do with us?”

“Us?” Matt asked.

“The Ali Rahman family. We’ll lose a good chunk of land if this goes into law. We honestly didn’t think it would. Today, Father and I will be meeting with the governor to try to stop this. If she changes her tune, then maybe the legislature will, too. I’m hoping with the pressure from the president, she’ll see it as a blemish to her record. We have international news outlets picking up the story. Also, we have the best attorneys fighting the legality of the proposed highway and they’ll be presenting their arguments as well.”

“Why didn’t you do that sooner?”

“It gives the opposition time to mount a defense. In politics, it’s all about appearance, not facts. Towns who have fought this in the courts have lost due to the Supreme Court’s ruling. We don’t want to fight it in court. We want to fight it in the media. A small town in Indiana just did that and won. They didn’t give the opposition time to come up with their own spin. Camera crews are arriving in Keeneston within the hour to start filming the town. The story will be live by eleven this morning and calls from across the country will pour in right in time for us to meet with the governor,” Gabe explained.

Matt shook his head. “Politicians,” he said with a curse.

Gabe just grinned. “I would take offense, but I’m a diplomat. Completely different,” he laughed.

“Okay, I’m ready,” Riley called as she rushed out of the bathroom. “What did I miss?’

“That Gabe’s a diplomatic badass and Frankfort will have no idea how to handle that.”