Terminal Value (25 page)

“Heather,” he said when she answered. “You okay?”

“Sure.” Her short, curt answer troubled him.

“I was worried. I was afraid you might be—”

“Listen, Dylan, I'm pretty busy. I'm on my way out the door to catch a shuttle back to Boston, and I really don't want to talk to you. Do you understand?”

“What? But—”

“I said I was fine. Just because we work together doesn't mean you have to check up on me. Okay?”

He hesitated. “Okay.”

“Good.” She hung up.

Dylan stared at his phone. Call time: twenty-two seconds. What the hell was going on? Then he had a thought. What an idiot he was! Was there someone in her office? Someone she didn't want to know what they had found or that they were working together? Could someone have been listening to their conversation? Was that why she reacted that way?

He considered racing out the door to fly back to Boston with her, but he needed to be alone for a while to think, to take time to unclutter his mind and put everything in perspective. He picked up a sponge basketball and threw it at a small hoop mounted on the back of his door. He repeated this activity with precision, all the while opening each file in his mind, reorganizing it, and, when satisfied with the process, going on to the next file. He continued to throw the ball at the hoop, but several of the files would not cooperate—the Hyperfōn file, Tony's murder, and his position in Mantric.

His mind refused to be of assistance. He feared discovering that, by joining Mantric, he had become party to a colossal fraud, and he feared he would never find out the truth about Tony. He put the ball away and punched “three” on his keyboard.

Rob answered after four rings, “Hi, Dylan, what's up?”

“I just wanted to alert you I've asked Matt to help you look through the LC-related files.”

“Yeah, he's already stopped by.”

“Good. Is he there?”

“Hell no. I sent him home for some sleep. He's a wreck.”

“Okay. Well, I just wanted you to know. When he comes back in, you and he should double-check each other's work.”

“Right. We'll get on it as soon as possible.”

“You haven't found anything?”

Rob laughed. “Do you think I'd be sitting here if I had?”

* * *

May 13, 7:05 p.m. Boston

Dylan finally caught the five-thirty shuttle back to Boston, and he arrived home still feeling unsettled and directionless, still trying to figure out what was up with Heather. He slid the knot of his tie down and slipped it over his head. He took off his sweaty shirt, removed his belt, and was kicking off his shoes when the doorbell rang. In another life, he might have let it ring. But this was not another life, so he wandered over to the front door. It might be Matt, with news about the Hyperfōn fiasco. Or it might be. . . .

He yanked open the door. “Heather!”

She gave him a quick kiss that only partly allayed his fears. “Did you just get in?”

“Yeah, about ten minutes ago.” He led her into the living room. “I would have called, but—” He sat down on the sofa and shot her a pained look. “You were so—”

“Yeah,” she said, easing herself into an armchair. “Sorry if I came off like a bitch. It was all I could think of to say to stop the conversation. I can't believe you called me!”

“You weren't alone? That was all I could think of to explain things.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I was alone. But my God, Dylan. We can't talk on the phone about what happened, about anything that's going on at the office. If Ivan secretly videotaped Art's meetings, then he wouldn't think twice about listening to phone messages or taping other employees.”

“I know. I'm sorry. I only thought of that after you hung up.”

Heather laughed, shaking her head. “Dylan, you should know I'd never talk to you like that without a reason. I figured it wouldn't hurt if anyone who might be listening got the impression we weren't on the best of terms.”

Dylan thought about her comment. She was right. “I know. Even Prometheus warned me. No more talking about what we're doing, either in the office or on a Mantric phone.”

“Or e-mail,” added Heather.

“Well, that takes us right back into the nineteenth century.”

“Not quite.” She reached into her laptop case and pulled out a couple of cheap flip phones. “This one's for you. I've already put my number in it. If we want to talk, we use these—okay?”

“Excellent.” Dylan opened the little phone and pushed a few buttons. “Tracfone, eh?” They were disposable and favored by criminals and terrorists. “Wish I'd thought of that. You did right. It's a good thing, too.”

“Maybe the danger of being taped was more obvious to me, given that I'd just spent half an hour watching Ivan's spy videos. My God, who knows what these people are up to or where else they may have placed some bugs?” She leaned her head on her hand and took a deep breath.

He eyed her critically. The strain on her face was clear.

“Okay, we need to pull ourselves together and calm down.” He looked at the pendant that hung around her neck. “I think we should watch those vids.”

“Right.”
She slipped the pendant from around her neck, tugged gently on the USB plug, and slipped it into the port on Dylan's laptop.

“Jesus,” said Dylan, reviewing the long list of files. “You got a lot.”

“This thing has blazing speed. When Tony gave it to me, he told me it could hold twenty-five hours of video. I guess we tested it today. Tony should have patented this baby. It's a monster.”

“Where'll we start?”

“Well, obviously, I haven't seen them all yet. But they're in chronological order. Let's start at the top.”

Dylan clicked on the first .avi file, dated April 29, and sat back as the media player started up. A still image of Art and Ivan sitting in a green-walled room appeared.

“Do you recognize this room?”

“Not sure. It could be the conference room off his office.” He glanced at Heather, then hit the space bar and the video began.

“Tell anyone who asks we're just checking on our own security before we go public,” Art said, consulting his notepad.

“Consider it done, Art.”

Art stared at Ivan for a moment, then stood up and paced. “We've worked too hard to let some little screw-up destroy our plans.” He turned around. “So you're going to go over every possible scenario of what could go wrong. Got it? The records, Schedule B, my private accounts. I want every single possibility looked at. Is that clear?”

“Yes.”

“And I swear to God that if somebody in your group screws up this deal, I'm going to cut your balls off myself.”

“I understand.”

“Good. Whatever's going on, I want it nipped in the bud. And I want it done now.”

The video ended.

“Any of that mean anything to you?” asked Dylan.

Heather's headshake was so slight Dylan was not sure he saw it.

“Maybe they were talking about Rich finding out about the reserve?”

Heather said nothing.

“What's wrong?”

“I don't know,” she said, half to him, half to herself. “What are these bastards up to? And what the hell is ‘Schedule B'?”

Dylan leaned back in his chair. He studied Heather's aquiline profile. “I have no idea.”

She turned her face to him. Heather was a beautiful woman; he had known that since he had first laid eyes on her. He had admired her quick wit and intelligence, but he had never before realized just how strong a woman she was. He placed these thoughts back in the “Heather” file in his mind and returned to the business at hand.

The next several videos were more mundane and much longer than the first. It didn't take them long to understand they were watching regular meetings between Art and Ivan, or Art and Christine—though why they were special enough to be recorded and archived remained unclear.

“You know what surprises me?” said Dylan as they took a break. “How Art defers to Christine's opinion.”

“I think she's a pretty scary person. Maybe he's afraid of her. I doubt he's just being polite. I always wondered how she got into the tech biz.”

“Being in finance is different. You have to know the financials backward and forward, but you don't have to be a technical genius.”

She nodded absently. “Rob is proof of that.”

There was no trace of hidden meaning. She just said it, plain and simple. That absence of resentment on her part told him she was over Rob. But it also dawned on him that he really didn't know anything about their relationship.

“What happened with you two?” he asked, and was shocked at his impudence. “Not that I have any right to ask.”

“He has bad habits,” she said. But she didn't look at him.

His face reddened, and he started another video. “This next one is dated the day before the IPO.”

“He made some bad choices,” said Heather, her tone subdued.

“What?” It took Dylan a moment to realize she wasn't talking about Art. “Oh.”

“I didn't like them,” she added.

Dylan withdrew his hand from the track pad. “What kind of choices?”

“Women, for one. He's an attractive guy, and he knows how to use it. He flirted all the time. I wrote it off as harmless, until it went beyond that.” She stared absently into the distance. “He was careless. Tony knew. I assumed he told you.”

Dylan shook his head. “No, he didn't. I don't know why, but I never wanted to know about Rob's personal life. Or yours.”

“Or anybody's.”

Dylan fell silent. This was exactly the reason he didn't have these personal discussions, he reminded himself—why he always moved past the moment with a shrug and a self-effacing smile, his standard technique for smoothing over a rough patch.

“Let's see what's next,” he said, and tapped the track pad.

“I've seen this one. You won't like it.”

They sat in silence for the next five minutes as Art and Christine discussed firing Rich. While Dylan watched the video, he felt Heather staring at him, waiting. When the video ended, he got up and circled the room, staring at the floor, his mind wandering over what he had just viewed. “I knew it,” he said, finally. “All that crap about Rich not being good enough for the job. Bastards.”

“This is evidence, isn't it? They've admitted they hid the reserve, for one thing, and for another they were trying to hide the fact. Plus they bloody well lied to you.”

“I guess so. I don't know. I mean, we stole this, more or less. Can that be used as evidence?”

“There's nothing in there about who killed Tony or why. There's got to be a clue somewhere.”

Dylan brought up the next video, dated the day of the IPO. They watched the scene unfold as Ivan crossed the room.

“Close the damn door,” Art barked.

Ivan closed the door and sat down across the table from Art.

“So what did you find?”

“I have good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?”

“I thought by now you'd know better than to ask a question like that. Just tell me the bad news.”

Ivan took a deep breath. “Your hard drive was definitely accessed. And thoroughly.”

“All of it?” said Art, the muscles of his jaw worked back and forth and tensed.

“Yes. All of it. They spent hours going through it.”

Art slammed back into his chair. “And the files?”

Ivan nodded slowly. “I'm afraid they've been compromised.”

“So what the hell is the good news, anyway?”

“I know who did it,” said Ivan.

“You do?” Art was suddenly re-energized.

“Yeah. It wasn't easy, but he used Verizon FiOS. A friend of mine just happens to work there, so I called in a favor.”

“And?”

Ivan continued. “Well, we had to trace it, of course. Turns out it was routed from the W Hotel on Lexington where these guys always stay. So, after slipping a couple of Benjamins at the hotel, I got a look at who was registered there last night.”

“Jesus, Ivan,” Art said, his tone filled with anger. “Congratulations on being a world-class sleuth
—
okay? Now just tell me who the damn person was, will you?”

Ivan frowned. “It was Tony Caruso.”

Art looked completely dumbfounded. “Tony?” he said. “Are you sure?”

“Quite sure.”

Art stood up and walked around his office. “Why would Tony do this?” he said.

“My job was just to tell you who did it. Not figure out why. I may not know why Tony did it, but from a technology perspective, he was probably the person in the firm most capable of figuring out how to. He's even better than Sandeep at getting into this stuff.”

Art resumed pacing around his office. “Where is Tony now?”

“He's been tied up in meetings most of the day. But I caught Sandeep in the hallway and told him I was looking for him. He said Tony wasn't feeling well and was going to go home. Sandeep wanted to know what I wanted, but I didn't tell him. He did not seem pleased. I think his insecurity is showing.”

“Who else knows about this?”

“No one. Just you and me.”

“No one else? You don't think he got help from Sandeep? Did you get any help from anyone else in your group?”

“No. Tony and Sandeep don't talk much, and I handled it all on my side. I even went to the hotel myself. And I didn't identify what company I was with or who I was looking for.”

“Are you absolutely sure?”

“Art, I swear to God, no one knows but you and me.”