Jenna nods for him to continue.
“We see if there’s an amount he’d take in compensatory and punitive damages to back down.…”
“Or?” Jenna knows where this is going.
“Or I give that same money to someone like you who knows how to deal with these types of problems.”
This confirms he knows about her time with The Corporation. It’s unsettling. But he’s a billionaire and likely has unparalleled access to intel—an entire squad of former spooks and other shadowy special operators on his payroll. It’s unclear why he doesn’t use his own people for such work. But maybe he can’t—can’t tell them the reason for the hit. Or he wants to ensure it’s not traceable to him.
He leans back in the leather seat of the sedan, waits for her response.
“If this is about Derek taking revenge, money won’t matter to him.”
“Maybe,” Artemis says, like a man who knows that money often can shift the paradigm, overcome morals, emotion, sentimentality, even family ties. Particularly with the politicians who probably regularly approach Artemis with their hands out.
He glances at the folder. “It should have what you need.”
Jenna doesn’t look at the dossier. She’ll study it later. She reaches for the door handle.
“There’s something else,” Artemis says.
Jenna sits back, waits for him to continue.
“We need to be concerned about the FBI. My contacts tell me that Brood—the father, not Derek
—has come to the Bureau’s attention.”
Jenna swallows down a dry throat. “That doesn’t make any sense. If Derek Brood wants us dead,
why would he go to the Feds about what happened to his father? He’d be the obvious suspect if we’re all killed.”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Artemis releases a breath. “But maybe it’s not Derek Brood talking to the Feds.”
“Then who?”
“Only five people were there that night.”
“Yeah, and one’s dead, and the rest of us are targets. And we all have something to lose.”
Artemis holds her gaze without blinking. He still brings to mind a robot—that’s what Derek and his crew called him, wasn’t it?
“I’m not suggesting it’s any of us. But maybe someone has been talking.…”
“Not me.”
“Of course, not you.”
He could be right about the others. She hasn’t kept up with them, but it’s possible one of them told someone—a girlfriend, a priest, an AA sponsor, someone.
“We need to talk to Donnie and Nico,” he says. “Find out if they slipped.”
“We,” Jenna says.
Artemis’s face remains expressionless. “I don’t think we want me running around playing detective. It will only draw attention.”
He’s right, of course.
“What about your security team?”
“I’d have to tell them things we wouldn’t want me to. Besides, Donnie and Nico adored you.
They’ll trust you.”
“I saw Donnie at the funeral.”
“He was hard to miss,” Artemis says. “He’s staying at the Four Seasons. He has a friend with him. My guys put a tracker on his rental car this morning.” He hands her a smartphone. She glances at the screen and it shows a map with a blue dot.
“You have one of those for Nico too?”
“No. But he’s here too, staying at the Ritz.”
Jenna nods. Just as she thought, both of her foster home siblings came. For Ben.
“Look,” Artemis says. “I think Derek Brood is behind this. If we can convince him to back off, we can make this problem go away.”
Jenna thinks about this. “If he won’t take the money and I have to take care of things, you can donate that money to charity.”
Artemis cocks his head to the side, not computing.
“He threatened my family. This one’s on the house.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
DONNIE
Reeves handles the driving on I-95 South. Donnie hasn’t told him why they’re going to Chestertown.
He’s not sure himself. But Ben’s law clerk’s words continue to echo through his head: He said to tell you that you all had it wrong. The proof is with Boo Radley. The problem: Donnie doesn’t have a damn clue what that means. He has huge gaps in his memory—most caused by whiskey, vodka, tequila, and white powder, not necessarily in that order. For the life of him, nothing’s ringing a bell.
Maybe seeing the old haunts will jog it loose. He’s not keen on traveling down memory lane, but this is for Ben. And to get the money for the book he agreed to spend one full week with Reeves. The literary agent wants a draft by month’s end, no doubt concerned that the clock is ticking on Donnie’s fifteen minutes of fame.
A white work van speeds past.
Donnie points at it. “When we first started touring, there’d be eight of us living in a van like that, playing dive bars across the country. We’d each get seven dollars a day for food. By the end, Tom had his own tour bus, there were two for the crew, and one for the rest of the band.”
Reeves looks ahead at the road. “How was that, living on the road?”
“Nothing else like it, Hemingway. I loved it.”
“Did you all have, like, homes, or…？”
“Yeah, after we went platinum the first time everybody had a home base. I had a crib in LA, the rest were spread out.” Donnie doesn’t mention that he had to sell the LA property and currently rents a studio apartment in North Hollywood. “Three of the guys were married, had kids. But we were on the road about two hundred days a year.”
“What’s it like, living on a bus most of the year?”
“It’s kinda like you never grow up. Other than getting from one show to the next we didn’t have any real responsibilities. Our manager would take care of paying the bills for everybody’s home base.
We had only three rules.”
Reeves turns his head, like this might be something he can use for the book.
Donnie ticks them off. “One, if you bring a girl on the bus there’s an ID check and an NDA gets signed. That was the result of an unfortunate incident when our bass player met a seventeen-year-old who lied about her age after a show in Phoenix. That was a mess.”
Reeves’s eyes widen.
“Maybe don’t put that part in the book.” Donnie smiles. “Rule Two: no number twos on the bus.
The smell gets in the vents and it’s a big hassle to clean out the septic tanks.”
Reeves scrunches his face. “I think I’ll leave that out too.”
“Understandable. And Rule Three: no drugs on the bus.” Donnie doesn’t mention that he was the genesis of that rule, but he probably doesn’t need to. “Other than all that, you live for the show, then the afterparty, then you’re on to the next town. You watch a crapload of movies.”
Reeves follows the GPS’s voice and veers off the exit for Chestertown.
Donnie feels acid crawl up his throat. It’s been twenty-five years.
“Where to?” Reeves asks.
“I suppose to where it started.”