Page 30 of Fool’s Gold

Matt acknowledged this with a nod, even as his blood ran cold. “If I’m being held liable for charges against Besse as a whole, the corporate Legal Department will expect to take the lead in my defense.”

Wilde snorted. “Right now, Matt, you shouldn’t trust them to defend you against a parking ticket. And, no, you’re not being held responsible for anything that happened before you took the role of CEO. Agent Morales called me before we came over and suggested that you’d probably have a case against your current employers when all is said and done, but he hasn’t given me any confidential details.” He smirked. “I honestly hadn’t thought Bessecouldn’tget lower, but when I heard the actual new CEO neededmyservices? Yeah, even I was surprised. And there’s not much that surprises me these days.”

Norah passed him a fresh-baked chocolate chip cookie and beamed. “Have a cookie, dear. Tell me, how is your grandmother doing?”

He bit into the cookie and closed his eyes, an expression of perfect bliss on his face. “You know my grandmother? I assume you mean Grandma Dorothy. Grandma Winnie has been dead for years.”

She nodded happily and sipped from her coffee. “Dorothy Wilde and I were neighbors on the same farm back in the fifties. She got a nice job in Atlanta working for the telephone company—I think it might have been 1965. We stayed in touch though, and we play bridge at the senior center every second Tuesday of the month.”

Wilde stared at her for a second, and then he laughed. “Oh, you’rethatNorah Taggart. She’s doing well—had a bit of a scare with the flu, I won’t lie, but she’s doing great now and I’ll be happy to tell her you asked about her.”

Norah preened a little. “Please do. I know it’s still a bit iffy to go to public places but if it’s okay with Matthew, I’d love to invite her to come by for dinner sometime soon.”

Matt shook his head, grinning. “Leave it to you to know everyone somehow, even in a big city like Atlanta. And, Grandma, it’s your house, you don’t need to ask. Your name is literally first on the deed.”

She squeezed his hand. “You’re a sweet boy, Matthew, but it’s still polite to ask.”

Wilde passed her a business card. “You can give me a call, and I’ll make sure we can set it up.”

Morales cleared his throat, but his eyes shone a little. “Sorry. I’m happy to facilitate the reunion, but...”

Norah’s cheeks turned pink. “Of course, of course. Apologies.”

“Hopefully, soon all of this will be part of the past.” Jack put a hand on Matt’s shoulder. “We’ll deal with the people trying to bump you off, and the reunions can be the whole focus of get-togethers like this.”

“From your lips to God’s ears.” Kingston gave a little smile.

Irvine cleared his throat. “So we do have an update. It turns out that Farnsworth does care about certain things more than he cares about money. Specifically, his soul and keeping it attached to his body.”

“Farnsworth has been specifically linked—read caught on camera—to hits in Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, Egypt, South Korea, and Yemen. We’re in Georgia, which is a death penalty state, but he didn’t succeed in killing you or anyone else. He’s willing to make a deal if we agree not to extradite.” Morales tugged at his collar and looked away. “It’s ugly, I admit I don’t like it, but let’s be real. I will always prefer to go after the people buying lives than the people getting paid for it.”

Matt pressed his lips together as he wrapped his head around the agent’s words. It was a radically different way of looking at murder for hire, and he suspected the Feds weren’t fans. When he looked at it the same way he looked at any other business though, he had to admit it made sense.

“Deal with the demand and the supply solves itself.” He made himself shrug as if he wasn’t talking about the purchase of a hit man—the commodification of murder.

Morales ducked his head and gave him a sheepish grin. “Yeah, I know. Kind of grim and definitely not pretty, but let’s face it. It takes a special kind of nasty to pay someone else to deal with your vendetta for you.”

Jack cleared his throat. “Anyway. Are we positive that the call is coming from inside the house? I know Farnsworth is pricey, and some of those board members seemed sketchy to say the least. But that doesn’t mean they’re ‘hire a hit man to take out your own guy’ sketchy.” He scrunched up his face. “It doesn’t mean they’re not, of course.”

“Yeah, let’s not kid ourselves. A lot of those guys would kill their own mother for a sandwich.” Wilde snorted. “They weren’t raised right.”

Norah patted his arm. “Well, that’s true, but Matthew has seen something similar in his audit days. Nothing so repulsive as hiring a hit man, of course, but really, what do they gain if Matthew dies?” Her eyes brightened. “It certainly isn’t sympathy. When those average workers from Besse were killed, I thought people were going to dance on their graves.”

“People are.” Samaira sniffed in disdain. “I saw it. Despicable.”

Matt shuddered. The dead, of course, were dead. They were past caring about their graves. It was about the living. “Grandma, you’re right. I did see a company deliberately tank their own stock after a bad public relations hit.”

Kingston blinked and shook his head, like he couldn’t quite shove the thought in. “I’m sorry. Explain that again. Like I’m five. They tanked themselves?”

Matt took a breath. “Yeah, I didn’t do a great job with that one. I apologize. I was the lead on an audit when a company had a major scandal. It was a big healthcare provider group, and they were hiding a huge number of liabilities. Which we found, I want to add. Anyway, it was pretty bad, and the CEO resigned. The board brought in a turnaround guy, but a handful of board members had already bought stock in a competitor. They were hedging their bets, figuring the original company was going to go under anyway. When it didn’t, they decided to take matters into their own hands.”

His blood ran cold, and for a moment he couldn’t breathe. With the healthcare firm, taking matters into their own hands had meant forcing votes that were in direct opposition to the company’s best interests. With Besse, those votes had been defeated.

“If Matt dies, the market isn’t going to be patient and wait for Besse to turn itself around. Regulators won’t either.” Wilde steepled his fingers together and, maybe without meaning to, angled his body to block Norah. It was like he was protecting her from the rest of the room, or the concept of harm.

Matt appreciated it.

Jack patted him on the back until he could breathe again.

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